Xenia releases first in a series of podcasts on One in Three

Today we introduce the first in a compelling series of audio interviews surrounding “When It Hits Home: An Evening Concerning Intimate Partner Violence.”

This interview is a conversation with Lagueria Davis and Gabe Miller, director and producer of One In Three, the film that will be pre-screened in Xenia’s joint event later this week.  To listen, click on the link.  To download this interview for further listening, simply right click on the link and choose “save as.”

Gabe and Lagueria podcast

5th annual Matthews Banquet highlights

The 5th annual Sam Matthews Social Justice Award Banquet was held on Thursday, February 11th in honor of longtime Norman resident and supporter of Bridges, Jim Agar.  Over one hundred people were in attendance to bear witness to this man’s amazing story and his work as a volunteer leader in the Norman community.

We were very fortunate to have wonderful speakers to help us with our evening.  Rev. Chris Moore, Associate Pastor at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, opened the evening with a blessing over the meal.  The blessing also challenged us to honor those in social justice who have come before by taking up the cause ourselves.  To see a transcript of Rev. Moore’s prayer, click here.

Commissioner Lisa Schmidt, of the Norman Human Rights Commission, read a letter from the mayor and made our keynote remarks on social justice and community engagement.  Lessa Keller-Kenton, one of Xenia’s interns this semester, wrote a wonderful reflection on Commissioner Schmidt’s remarks.  Take a look here.

Finally, here are a few more photos from the event.  To see all the photos, take a look soon in Xenia’s media gallery or visit our Facebook page.

Rev. Chris Moore’s opening prayer from the 5th annual Matthews Banquet

I always get a little nervous when preparations for our annual Matthews Banquet come around.  There are so many intricate details to be worked out, and many of them have to come in sequence.  For example, we can’t book the caterer or the flowers until we know how many people we’re expecting.  We can’t know how many people we’re expecting until we have sent out invitations.  And we can’t send out invitations until we have selected our award recipient.  I actually think there’s a line on my Matthews master checklist that says, “worry about absolutely everything until you can’t eat or sleep.”  My friends tease me about this last one because everything always turns out just fine, whether I worry or not.

At any rate, one thing I never have to worry about for very long is the lineup of speakers we get for our banquets.  We have been very fortunate in the last five years to have some of the best speakers in the area assist us in honoring our recipients, and this year we were particularly lucky.  Xenia dialogue fellow and local pastor Rev. Chris Moore offered our opening blessing, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.  It’s exactly the kind of charge I needed at that moment (I don’t mean a “charge” like the one you get drinking an energy drink, but charge as in “charged with a responsibility” or an assignment or challenge).

I offer you the opportunity to share in this charge, and I submit Rev. Moore’s prayer for your review:

Gracious God,

Open us up this evening. Awaken us to a new dawn.

Remind us again that you are the god who seeks not our offerings or sacrifices but seeks that we care for the orphan and widow, for the powerless and marginalized.

You are the god whose law is written on our hearts.

Create in us a new awareness. Birth in us a sense of our own power that we might act where we live and be your hands and feet in the world. Reign in our pride, temper our egos, and tame our wild individualism so that we might live out of your spirit of justice, peace, and creation in a world which does not hunger for more absolute certainty or judgement, but is starving for a little compassion.

Too often we think your work comes only in the big things, that we must change the world in a day if we are leading meaningful lives. Too often we only think of the glorious moments, we remember a speech on the steps of the capital in Washington D.C. that evoked a new dream of equality and still sends chills down our spines without also remembering of the marches yet to be walked, the sting of fire hoses yet to be felt, or the beatings and hatred yet to be endured.

We remember the names celebrated by the fleeting winds of fame, but have never know the names of people who just stood their ground, or signed their name, or simply did the right thing when the time was upon them. Remind us that your way doesn’t come in glorious light or shining spectacle. What you ask of us isn’t the spotlight or the 15 minutes. You seek our hearts and minds, you seek our dedication, you seek our souls.

As we prepare to share a meal together let us do so remembering all of those people who have produced it, from the farmers to the drivers, to the handlers to the cooks and servers. May this food nourish our bodies and may our fellowship feed our spirits. And as we gather together to celebrate one among us who has made a difference, let us remember that we can all make a difference with every day, every encounter, every decision. There are no small things to you.

Free us from the temptation of apathy or fame and set us on the same path of all of those nameless ones who have changed this world. Those who held no grand vision or elaborate plan, but who saw pain and healed it, who felt misery and responded to it, who witnessed suffering and addressed it.

Let us be present now, in this moment and beyond to a world in the need of the witness of the power of faithful love and unconditional grace. Let us, as your servant Ghandi once said, “be the change we wish to see in the world”.

Amen.

Still Blaming the Victim…

News and Analysis…

In preparation for the Xenia Institute’s upcoming event on intimate partner violence, I thought it worth while to examine how issues related to domestic abuse (such as rape) are dealt with in the news. Depressingly, aside from the occasional 2 second headline, these issues are still largely ignored by the public… and when addressed it can met by a decidedly negative response. Indeed there are still those who try and blame the victims of abuse alongside their assailants, as demonstrated by a recent, rather controversial survey taken in England.

BBC News | Almost three quarters of the women who believed this said if a victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.

One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker’s house for a drink.

The survey of more than 1,000 people in London marked the 10th anniversary of the Haven service for rape victims

More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack….

The survey also found more than one in 10 people were unsure whether they would report being raped to the police, and 2% said they would definitely not do so.

The main reasons were being too embarrassed or ashamed (55%), wanting to forget it had happened (41%) and not wanting to go to court (38%).

StyleCaster | Harrison may be right that women engage in victim-blaming as a way of feeling safe, convincing themselves that only people who act a certain way get raped. It’s possible, too, that a decline in the numbers of young women who identify with feminism have made more young people convinced that a woman who wears a short skirt is “asking for it.”

Shakesville | These results feel sensational, because ZOMG even women blame victims! But the reality is that when people disproportionately targeted by sexual target victim-blame, it is frequently, among women who have not been raped, an attempt to disassociate from the ugly reality that there’s no magic strategy to insulate oneself from all possibility of sexual assault. Or, among victim-blaming survivors, a reflection of guilt and shame—a misplaced feeling of responsibility for one’s own rape.
That doesn’t make the victim-blaming any more justified (or less depressing), but it does provide a context that most media coverage will lack.

New Stateman | But the fact is, if so many people are ready to believe that a woman is culpable in her own violation, jury trials will inevitably be affected: it is a self-perpetuating, vicious circle. While the majority of people in the Havens poll were keen to assign partial blame to the victim, one in five women said that they would not report it to the police if they were raped, saying that they would be ashamed, or would not be believed. This feeling is justified — just last year a freedom of information request showed that some police forces were failing to record more than 40 per cent of reported rape cases — but we have no hope of changing police attitudes if these attitudes continue to proliferate across society.

We urgently need education; a high profile campaign, starting with schools, to educate the public and eradicate the view that rape is sometimes deserved

Best on the web…

Herpes Drug Might Also Slow HIV Progression  | Business Week

New research suggests that people who are infected with both HIV-1, a strain of the AIDS virus, and herpes simplex virus type 2 could benefit in more than one way by taking a herpes drug called acyclovir. In addition to treating herpes, the medication appears to also slow the progression of HIV.

Computer Engineer Barbie Had PhD In FUN (And Breaking Down Stereotypes) |  Gizmodo

Barbie’s had 124 careers since 1959, ranging from Stewardess to Paratrooper. Today she gets her 125th: computer engineer. You can tell she’s smart ’cause she’s got glasses, and reads nothing but binary.

Barbie’s latest career move is also significant for being the first decided entirely by online vote. Though maybe it’s not so surprising that the internet community was especially inclined to see a Bluetooth-rocking geektastic Barbie.

Winter Olympic Medals Made From Recycled E-Waste  |  Scientific American

When Olympic champions are crowned at this year’s winter games in Vancouver, these elite athletes will be taking home more than just gold, silver or bronze medals—they will be playing a role in Canada’s efforts toreduce electronic waste. That’s because each medal was made with a tiny bit of the more than 140,000 tons of e-waste that otherwise would have been sent to Canadian landfills.

Newsweek’s Palin Cover: Sexist or On Target?

Analysis…

  The cover of this week’s Newsweek features Sarah Palin in activewear showing off her beauty queen legs.  The photo was originally given to Runner’s World but Newsweek has put it front and center on the national stage.  The headline of the cover story reads, “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?”  The cover has been called sexist and demeaning by some.  Others retaliate that Gov. Palin voluntarily posed for the picture which makes it fair ground.  But, why did Newsweek choose this particular picture afterall?

Obsidian Wings | There’s nothing scandalous about Palin showing some skin, or wearing Spandex. But this cover image is deliberately styled to make the then-governor of Alaska look like a Vargas pinup girl. Unlike the other images in the series, this one references her status as a governor. As she poses like a swimsuit model, she’s clutching one icon of political power–the Blackberry–and leaning on another. The theme isn’t Sarah Palin, athlete. The theme is Sarah Palin, Sexy Governor. (As in: one of those dime store Halloween costumes: sexy cop, sexy ladybug, sexy sanitation worker…)

Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this? 

The Brody File | You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Newsweek. They have accomplished being biased and sexist at the same time. Quite a feat. This cover has got to be a new low right? They don’t use a photo of Palin on the campaign trail. No instead they take the sexy Runners World photo. Yes she posed for it but don’t tell me they didn’t purposely use that photo to make a point? I predict this cover will become a bigger story over the next 24-48 hours and let’s face it. This isn’t JUST about media bias. This cover should be insulting to women politicians. Where’s the sexy photo of Mitt Romney? Why not a picture of Tim Pawlenty with an unbuttoned shirt relaxing on a couch in the Twin Cities?

Alas, a Blog | One cannot point out the absurdity of Sarah Palin’s wallowing in sexist tropes without using the very sexist imagery that she herself approved of. Yes, the image is appallingly sexist. But that is not Newsweek’s fault. It’s Palin’s.

Using a photo shoot that Palin posed for and endorsed after the fact to make the point that Palin is a caricature of herself is not sexist. It’s good journalism. Believe me, I will defend Palin from true sexism wherever it rears its ugly head. But this is not a case of sexism being used to attack Palin. This is a case of Palin’s own sexism being used to attack Palin. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Huffington Post | ”We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” Meacham said, in a statement provided to Huffington Post. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

 Daily Intel | On the one hand, she may have a point: Why did they choose that particular photo — and not any number of other, more clothed photos — if not to demean her? On the other hand, she’s the one who put on the shorts and posed for the photo in the first place, albeit for a different publication.

News…

How Birth Certificates Save Lives | Change.org

You wouldn’t necessarily think that something as simple as a birth certificate can keep a child safe from traffickers, but it can. In fact, birth registration is the front line of defense against child slavery around the world. And Plan International is making it their job to count every last child.

Hooking Up for Sex: Sluts or New Feminist? | ABC News

“A popular thing to say among this intellectual crowd, in the ivies and in feminism in general, is to say that sex is empowering and a real woman uses her sexuality in any way she pleases,” said Rachel Wagley, a 20-year-old sociology student who is TLR’s co-president. “It’s blatantly false and a lie that this culture tells to girls for their own benefit.” Silpa Kovvali, a 21-year-old computer science concentrator, argued in a Harvard Crimson editorial that there is nothing “inherently degrading” about engaging in casual sex — in fact, she said, it can be “empowering.”

Unfriend: Not a Simple Word | Huffington Post

The New Oxford American Dictionary chose the verb “unfriend” as its 2009 Word of the Year (WOTY) and defined it this way: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.” The word “has both currency and potential longevity,” explained Christine Lindberg, Oxford’s senior lexicographer on the OUP Blog.

Band Aids and Beyond

Analysis…

The Ethiopian government is asking for emergency aid of $285 million to feed 6.2 million people.  The country, faced with extreme drought and 4 years of bad harvests, is requesting donations from the international community.  A report titled Band Aids and Beyond calls on international donors to adopt a new approach that focuses on preparing communities to prevent and deal with disasters before they strike. The report also focuses on providing resources for communities, such as irrigation for crops, grain stores and wells.

Matthew Yglesias | I don’t think we should construe the existence of famine conditions in the Horn of Africa (there are problems beyond Ethiopia) as a reason not to send additional troops to Afghanistan. But I do think it’s a reminder that we shouldn’t look at individual elements of our foreign policy in isolation, or see the Afghanistan situation with tunnel-vision. Is there some reasonable calculus of risks in which it makes sense to spend tens of billions of dollars on prevent a situation of chaos in Central Asia but doesn’t make sense to spend a fraction of that in the Horn of Africa? Alternatively, if the US lacks the tools and skills to solve profound governance and economic problems in the Horn of Africa why do we have the needed skills and tools to solve the in Central Asia?

The Moderate Voice | The human race, generally, tends not to want to act in its long-term best interests, reacting to emergencies rather than proactively avoiding or planning for them. So, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether OxFam will be heeded. But the fact is that drought need not lead to famine, as tragically, it so often has in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

NPR Blogs | Ethiopia is asking for $285 million in emergency food aid for 6.2 million people facing famine. Oxfam says that the imported aid helps, but that the country needs longer-term investment in irrigation and well systems to avoid a food crisis every time drought strikes.

Shakesville | In the long term, Ethiopia needs “drought-resistant seeds and technical support to incorporate soil conservation and soil improvements on their small plots of land” and “more family planning services are needed so the population doesn’t double again in another 25 years.” The international director of Oxfam, Penny Lawrence, also notes: “If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores, and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them.”
So, Shakesville can go in one of two directions (or both): In support of providing immediate food aid (Americans: urge your congress people!), and in support of providing long-term tools.

News…

Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming  |  Pew Research Center

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking  |  NYTimes

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

Does Military Service Turn Young Men into Sexual Predators?  |  AlterNet

A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.
Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause’s with silence, or denial, or by blaming “a few bad apples.” But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.

‘Family values’ of Mexico drug gang  |  BBC

They decapitate, torture, and extort. Then they pray, and donate to charity.
The “Familia” cartel is perhaps the most extreme example of the paradoxical enemy which Mexico faces as it tries to defeat organised crime.
It is a fight which would be much easier if the cartels were simply maverick gangs on the fringe of society.
But they are, in many areas, part of society.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

Analysis …

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is under national scrutiny over whether he attempted to block an investigation into the quality of forensic science that was key to the conviction of an Oklahoma native convicted in the arson deaths of his three children. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004, his conviction primarily resting on the testimony of fire investigators whose findings of arson have been disputed by experts. A former member of a Texas panel that examines the quality of forensic evidence in cases such as Willingham’s recently reported feeling pressure from the Texas governor to back off the case. Willingham’s case is bringing the discussion about the death penalty, and the chance of executing the innocent, into national discussion, and whether the death penalty will be abolished when most Americans, Gallup reports, support it.

Read more about Willingham’s case in the New Yorker. Nightline also dedicated a segment to his case (hat tip to Jack & Jill Politics for the video link):

Ta-Nehisi Coates @The Atlantic |  “The death penalty promotes our sense of order–it offers assurance that those who savagely violate our most cherished morals will be harshly penalized. The question, for me, is what will we tolerate to preserve that assurance? What I hope will come out of this case is a more honest debate about the death penalty. I strongly suspect that Rick Perry–at this point–knows that something went badly wrong in Willingham’s execution, and yet still believes in the death penalty. What I hope will emerge is death penalty advocates honest enough to admit that no system of state-sponsored execution can be infallible, because people are fallible. I want them to come out and say what’s clear–innocent people will be executed. I want them to stop treating us like children, and make the argument.”

Obsidian Wings |  “My own pet theory, then, is that capital punishment has become an ideological issue on which aspiring GOP politicians must show party loyalty to get elected and to ascend the intra-party hierarchy.  If, however, they show the slightest hesitancy on executing the inadequately represented, their future in politics is over. In short, ostentatious support for capital punishment-on-demand is all benefit and no cost for ambitious GOP judges and officials.”

Balloon Juice |  “Americans’ support for the death penalty is not isolated. It is of a piece with Americans’ (negative) attitudes about evolution, just to cite one example (I’m sure I could find others but I find the topic depressing); that is to say, it has more to do with superstitions and conceptions of good and evil than with reason. Probably the most we could ask for right now is to have the people administering the lethal injections dress as pimps so that in the event of another wrongful execution the New York Times and Washington Post treat it as an important story.”

Megan McArdle @The Atlantic |  “Yes, I’m opposed to the death penalty.  But even if you’re not, you can’t possibly think that it’s okay to avoid investigating whether your state’s forensic methods risk putting innocent people in jail, or sending them to their death.  No matter how strongly you favor the death penalty, I’m sure that you agree that its purpose is not to execute people; it’s to execute justice.  A value which Rick Perry seems determined to butcher.”

Lawyers, Guns and Money |  “Essentially, Willingham was convicted based on two things: junk-scientific non-evidence that the fire was arson, and the ludicrously implausible testimony of a mentally ill jailhouse snitch. Amazingly, Jackson concedes that the central forensic junk science was “undeniably flawed” and doesn’t mention the snitch’s testimony at all, but continues to assert that Willingham was guilty. Nina Morrison systematically dismantles the remaining “evidence” Jackson cites.”

News & Analysis …

United Nations: 1 Billiion Going Hungry  |  TruthDig

Global hunger is a “world emergency” now, if it wasn’t before, with the number of hungry people rising to a record 1 billion, according to the United Nations. Given this scary statistic, it’s not looking good for a goal, set in 2000, to reduce the number of people going hungry worldwide by half by 2015.

This is Why We Torture  |  OpenLeft

Neither the MPs at Abu Ghraib nor the guards at Guantanamo Bay started the US down a path of being a nation that tortures all by their lonesome. They didn’t even order it. And why should it be so surprising that there would be little squeamishness about torturing foreigners when our domestic culture has been encouraging in-house torture for a very long time?

The torture of US citizens is common in prisons. This includes dehumanizing solitary confinement and the threat of rape torture. Prisoner advocates have been pointing out for a very long time that prison rape is a casual punchline praised for universally accepted, though never proven, deterrence benefits. US prisoners of war considered solitary confinement among the most terrible tortures and nearly everyone considers rape to be torture, but we allow these things to be done in our country every day.

America’s Optimism Addiction  |  The Daily Beast

Looking on the bright side has become all but mandatory in our culture, Barbara Ehrenreich argues in her new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

When I reached Ehrenreich by phone at her Virginia home, I asked her about a paradox raised in Bright-Sided’s introduction. Americans stress positive thinking more than any other culture, and yet by measures of self-reported happiness, we’re not faring so well. We rank low compared to the Danes, the Dutch, even the Malaysians. “If there has been a decline in happiness in America, and we don’t shape up well compared to other countries, including, weirdly, Finland, which I always thought of as very dour,” Ehrenreich said, “it relates to all this work we do to make ourselves be more positive. Positive thinking is imposed on people in a lot of settings. If you’re in the typical corporate workplace, you are exhorted to be positive. You’re told nobody wants to be around a negative person—which could mean somebody who just raises questions now and then, questions like ‘Isn’t our subprime exposure dangerously large here?’ People were fired for that in ’05 and ’07, right up until the end of the housing boom. You just could not say something like that.”

Young Invincibles Weigh in on Health Care  |  RaceWire

The Center for Community Change has launched an effort that inserts yet another voice into the current healthcare debate: young people.

The prevailing perception of 20-somethings is that they are at the peak of their health. But the numbers tell a different story. In 2006, the number of uninsured young adults climbed to 13.7 million people, accounting for approx. one third of the total uninsured population. In fact six preventable deaths a day occurred in 2000 among adults aged 25-34 due to lack of insurance. And since young people of color, particularly Latinos, comprise the fastest growing population in the nation, the ranks of uninsured youth are likely to be mainly black or brown. And in their communities there is less access to standard tests, procedures and drugs.

Are We Bipartisan Now?

Analysis …

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe crossed party lines Tuesday to give the lone GOP vote to the help the current health insurance legislation get out of the Senate committee. Her vote, which she described as “when history calls, history calls,” was seen as a win for Democrats, who have been working to get  bipartisan support for the bill. But is one vote really a measure of bipartisanship? What does bipartisanship mean in the current climate? And what will Republican response be?

Pandagon |  “It’s amazing how bipartisanship became a value the second that Democrats won Congress and the Presidency.  It’s really a triumph of the right wing noise machine’s strategy, based on Calvinball, the game from “Calvin and Hobbes” where you just make up the rules as you go, and not only are they subject to change at any point in time, but they are always changing.  Under Bush, bipartisanship was not some higher calling that had to be achieved at all costs.  I’m sure the word was used, but it just wasn’t a big deal.  Now, it’s taken as a given that Republicans should basically make all the decisions, even though they lost power.  This is presumably because they are whinier.  As I was noting to someone in email this morning, conservatives generally have the “got no life” advantage over liberals.  To be more exact, what they have is the “got no ideas” advantage.  Since their two main ideas are to stop progress and destroy it where they see it, they don’t waste a lot of time on stuff like actual work or coming up with ideas.  That gives them plenty of time to whine and cry, in hopes that they can get concessions just to shut them up.”

Salon |  “What may be more important down the line is what Obama and Democratic leaders have to do to keep Snowe on board. In his brief afternoon remarks, Obama didn’t mention the biggest flash point left to resolve as lawmakers try to combine all the different versions — the public insurance option. Snowe voted against replacing the co-ops in the Finance bill with a public option, and she reiterated her opposition to such a plan Tuesday before she announced her support for the bill. There may be room to maneuver there; Snowe has said she might go for a public option rigged with some kind of “trigger,” so it would take effect only if insurance rates didn’t come down without it even after reform.”

Obsidian Wings |  “Basically, it’s a big collective action problem.  On closely divided issues, the Dems would be better off collectively if they all stuck together.  However, any individual Senator would be privately better off by defecting from the group.  Indeed, there’s a premium on being the first one to defect. Snowe illustrates these benefits of defection.  First, by voting “Aye,” she’s gained enormous influence over the final bill.  She’s also amassed an infinite number of chits with the other party (and has attained rights to any Baucus grandchildren).”

Chris Cillizza @The Washington Post |  “While Snowe’s support is no guarantee that moderate Democrats will ultimately support the bill, it does give them some level of political cover to do so. With a Republican backing the bill, people like Lincoln, who faces a serious reelection test next fall, can vote for what they can accurately describe to voters as a bipartisan effort to reform the health care system. (Assuming Snowe is the only Republican who votes for the bill on final passage, you can expect Lincoln’s eventual opponent to dismiss a single GOP vote as something short of true bipartisanship.)”

The Daily Beast |  “In the nightmare scenario of Rep. Paul Ryan—probably the House Republicans’ leading expert on health care and the federal budget—he’s standing in the crow’s nest of the Titanic shouting “Iceberg!” There’s plenty of time to turn the ship around, but no one is listening.”

News …

Obama Quietly Deploying 13,000 More Troops to Afghanistan  |  Truthout

President Barack Obama is quietly deploying an extra 13,000 troops to Afghanistan, an unannounced move that is separate from a request by the US commander in the country for even more reinforcements.

The extra 13,000 is part of a gradual shift in priority since Obama became president away from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Asylum Access  |  The Good 100

The average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years, with fewer than 1 percent of refugees worldwide resettling in the United States or any other developed country. Meanwhile, refugees are routinely denied the right to move freely, work, or access education despite the fact that these rights have existed in international law for decades. Enter Asylum Access, the only U.S. organization that directly helps refugees in Africa, Asia, and Latin America assert these rights. To get the job done, AA sends lawyers to the countries where most refugees actually remain. Through grassroots outreach, education, and legal representation, Asylum Access gives refugees the tools they need to pursue their rights to live safely, work, put kids in school, and build a new life for themselves.

Date Rape-Preventing Lip Gloss Debuts  |  Cosmetics Design

A lip gloss that comes with a date rape drug testing kit has been launched in the UK with plans to make it available in vending machines in bar and club toilets.

The five 2LoveMyLips gloss products contain a drug testing kit in the form of a pink taper that can detect GHB and Ketamine.

Managing director of the company 2LoveMy, Tracy Whittaker, explained that girls on a night out with suspicions about their drink can just dab the taper in, and watch to see if the colour changes to blue.

Why Many Guantanamo Detainees Ordered Released Are Still Stuck There  |  ProPublica

When President Obama took office and ordered the detention center at Guantanamo closed by next January, the biggest challenge was supposed to be the hard cases. Those were the ones in which the detainees were too dangerous to be let go but in which the evidence was insufficient for an American court, or had been obtained through torture, or would endanger national security if it became public. But a case decided last month in a Washington, D.C., federal court shows that for the Obama administration, the far easier cases—in which a judge has ordered a detainee released because there’s no evidence he poses a danger—can also be hard.

Obama to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ But When?

Analysis …

President Obama again pledged to end the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law at the Human Rights Campaign fundraising dinner Saturday. While the latest Nobel Peace Prize recipient’s support to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military received support, he also received criticism for failing to provide a timetable on when that repeal would happen. Obama’s speech came the day before National Coming Out Day; that was also the day when thousands of gay activists marched in Washington, D.C., for GLBT rights.

HotAir |  “All it would take to end it is an executive order.  Obama is, after all, the Commander in Chief.  Obama wants Congress to take the heat for this as well, though, and has passed the buck on the issue since his first day in office.  What’s more, on this issue, Obama has it right.  DADT served a useful purpose in showing that gays can serve honorably in the military, but the time has come to end it.  Unfortunately for his cheering throngs at the HRC dinner, Obama doesn’t have the courage of his own convictions to take that step himself. In other words, these sound an awful lot like his other promises — which Jim Geraghty reminds us always come with expiration dates.”

Andrew Sullivan @The Atlantic |  “Look: I didn’t expect these issues to be front and center given his appalling inheritance; I know he has many other things on his plate; I didn’t expect the moon; I didn’t believe he would do any of this immediately; I understand that the real job is for us to do, not him, and that most of the action is in the states. And I remain a strong supporter of him in foreign policy and in the way he is clearly trying to move this country past the ideological divides of the recent past. But the sad truth is: he is refusing to take any responsibility for his clear refusal to fulfill clear campaign pledges on the core matter of civil rights and has given no substantive, verifiable pledges or deadlines by which he can be held accountable. What that means, I’m afraid, is that this speech was highfalutin bullshit.”

Balloon Juice |  “Could someone please tell Andrew Sullivan and the rest of the crowd that the last President, a fellow named Bush, dedicated his administration to openly persecuting homosexuals through the FMA and through ballot initiatives in tight races in 2004 all while his Justice department refused to hire and even fired gays and lesbians or anyone who had any ties to organizations that might associate with gays and lesbians. The President before him, a Democrat by the name of Clinton, passed DADT and signed DOMA. Now, you have a President who not only campaigned on and has stated repeatedly that he will work to end DADT, DOMA, and any number of other issues important the cause, but who went to the HRC, proudly took the podium, and advocated his support for their cause in front of the entire nation. And the result? He’s getting shit on for not doing things fast enough.”

Pandagon |  “This was a well-crafted, oddly familiar address if you’re a political junkie, because it felt like a stump speech, a post-election speech and a WH LGBT photo op address patched together. I understand his support for equality; what I didn’t hear is that civil rights of human beings are any more important than any other political issue he faces. That correcting a grievous wrong affecting the lives of American taxpayers he wants support from on other issues is ok to shuffle down in the pile of issues. Honestly, it’s good to know where you stand—statements of support without any timelines at this stage in the game is frustrating and very informative. But it doesn’t mean we won’t continue to press for them, no matter what Barney says.”

The Daily Beast |  “The real question for gay-rights supporters is whether anyone should be surprised by the administration’s inaction given Obama’s public opposition to gay marriage. In Maine, opponents of marriage equality are handing out flyers with quotes from the president, who has cited his “Christian values” as the motivation for supporting civil unions instead of marriage. In the run-up to the election, the hope was that he was concealing his true feelings in order to get elected. But the fact that gay-rights organizations and activists settled for this shows how far behind the political process trails the culture. The president and the gay lobby may wake up soon and find that, as the president said of Republicans at the Democratic National Convention, the ground has shifted beneath them.”

Related link: Gay Rights No Longer a Fringe Issue  |  Global Post

News & Analysis …

Nearly One in Four Persons on Globe is a Muslim  |  Informed Comment

The Muslim world is the labor pool of the next century, and is also the custodian of much of the world’s fuel. New American crusades of the sort favored on the right of the Republican Party may finally induce imperial overstretch and deeply harm the US. Some 5 percent of the population cannot dominate by force 25 percent of the globe and what may eventually be 33% of the globe.

Obama’s strategy, of positive engagement, is the only viable way forward.

Stuff White People Do: Shuttle Between Whiteness and Ethnicity   |  Stuff White People Do

(Today) is Columbus Day in the United States. Like many other countries in “the Americas,” we still mark this day, officially and otherwise. Celebrations of the efforts of Columbus usually erase the horrors of what he and his men did to indigenous peoples, thereby erasing as well the indigenous peoples themselves.

Blinded by the Light  |  Miller-McCune

Plants, animals and humans developed with an internal clock — the circadian rhythm. It’s a 24-hour cycle that affects physiological, biochemical and behavioral processes in almost all organisms.

Civilization brought with it artificial light to homes in every village, town and city across the world, and as more buildings and factories came online, industrialization increased and the population continued to expand, our nighttime sky looked a lot like the day, changing our deep, dark sleep patterns and altering that 24-hour internal timekeeper.

With that, all living creatures’ lives changed in ways only now becoming clear to us.

The Scarlet A in Oklahoma  |  Political Animal

If you haven’t heard about the new abortion restrictions in Oklahoma, take a few minutes to watch this segment from “The Rachel Maddow Show” from the other day. (The segment on Oklahoma begins in earnest around the 2:12 mark.)

The Atlantic’s Tali Yahalom had a good item summarizing the problem this week: “A new Oklahoma law will require the details of every abortion to be posted on a public website.

Mothers — or would-be mothers, rather — will be prompted to answer 37 questions that range from her marital status and race to how many times she’s ever been pregnant.”

Nicaragua Journal: Ghosts of the Revolution

People in the United States often say that “real” social change must begin with the individual. What one sees in Nicaragua is a dialectic between individual change and changed social and economic conditions. The individual spirit is nurtured by the community, which gives opportunity and hope to the individual, and which itself depends upon the individuals who sustain it. A collective spirit emerges. The inherited poverty of the past and the hard times of the present are enlightened. Individuals share the spirit to build and create, to go beyond the given society. This spirit of struggle and hope is the heart of the revolution.
– John Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are: Reflections on the Nicaraguan Revolution

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

My visit to Nicaragua took place a little more than a month before the nation’s planned 30th anniversary celebrations of the 1979 revolution that brought the ouster of dictator Anastasio Somoza and the opposition Sandinistas (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or FSLN, and named after early 20th-century guerilla revolutionary and national hero Augusto César Sandino,) into power. There were signs of the celebration everywhere, if you looked for it. The most obvious, of course, were the cotton candy-colored posters and billboards that decorated the right-of-ways of the highways and the walls of buildings in León.

Pink, by the way, is the new color of the Sandinistas, replacing the party’s  traditional colors of red and black, and leading some critics of President Daniel Ortega to question is commitment to the ideals of the revolution. They say he’s turned he’s become a bourgeois, free-market supporter that’s hungry for personal political power. Other defend him, saying that he’s still on the side of the people. I heard arguments on both sides while I was in Nicaragua. And this is what I’ve learned about the revolution and the civil war, and wished I’d known before going.

After the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza on July 19, 1979 (after armed struggles that killed more than 30,000 people), the FSLN, which named Ortega as president, or “first among equals,”  began a series of reforms meant to undo the harm caused by the Somoza family’s decades-long dictatorship. These reforms included literacy programs, free health care clinics, and education and land reforms that took land that had been “confiscated” by the Somoza regime and returned it to the campesinos (farmers) with an eye toward creating collective or cooperative farms. According to a recent article by Al Jazeera about the anniversary of the revolution:

The Sandinistas installed a so-called government of national reconstruction encompassing moderates from the business community, intellectuals and both conservative and Marxists politicians.

It was a revolutionary experiment without precedent in Central America.

The new government promised political pluralism and a mixed economy, which included initiatives such as a widely-praised literacy campaign that reduced the illiteracy rate from 60 per cent to just 13 per cent.

Not everyone favored Ortega’s style of government. A BBC article about the revolution says that the Sandinistas began to lose support because people found Ortega’s style of government “authoritarian and proto-communist.” These reforms, as well as Nicaragua’s ties to communist Cuba, led the U.S. government to believe that the Sandinistas were creating a base for the spread of communism throughout Latin America. In the early 1980s, the U.S. government under President Reagan began funding covert and overt CIA operations to fund a counter-revolutionary group, or Contras, with the goal of undermining the Sandinista government, and implemented economic sanctions against the country . The Sandinista government responded defensively, implementing censorship and other authoritarian measures, and turned to the Soviet Union to buy arms for its army. The result: 12 years of bitter civil conflicts that divided the country, killed more than 50,000 people (out of a then-population of 2 million) and devastated Nicaragua’s infrastructure and economy. Ortega and the Sandinistas were voted out of office in the 1990s, and a non-Sandinista government led the country for 16 years. However, Ortega was re-elected president in 2007 with less than 35 percent of the vote. According to an article by Global Post, Ortega — like a few other Latin American presidents — hopes to change Nicaragua’s laws to allow him to run for president again in 2012, and perhaps an unlimited amount of terms after that.

That’s the textbook history — maybe even the Wikipedia history — full of facts to act as little signposts for interpretation. Whether the revolution was good or bad for Nicaragua politically or economically isn’t really the question (it’s always good when a dictator is ousted, no question); whether its results and ideals were able to last might be a better one. Critics say that Ortega’s presidency suffers from corruption, too, with government jobs and public works projects going to friends of Ortega’s wing of the party, and all government workers being pressured to join the Sandinista party. But Ortega still has his supporters:

Eden Pastora, a former Sandinista hero of the revolution who later fought against the government as a Contra leader, agreed the government is doing many good things, and he does not agree with those who call Ortega a “dictator.”

“Where is the dictatorship if there are no political prisoners? Where is the dictatorship if there is no one being tortured? Without any people killed? Without any exiles? Without anyone being beaten? Tell me, where is the dictatorship without a single media outlet closed, not a single radio station, television station, newspaper or magazine?” he said.

Nicaragua still remains the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Unemployment is high, hovering at 80 percent, and most people in the country live on less than $1 U.S. a day. It’s not uncommon to see families picking through the garbage dumps to scrounge food or other items for survival. For all the revolution’s promises, has it been able to deliver?

Like any country, Nicaragua’s politics and its economy are not self-contained. We visited Ortega’s home, a guarded compound located across from a park in a middle-class neighborhood in Managua (Ortega’s home, incidentally, also serves as the seat of government; his attempt, I was told, to stay in touch with the people). Our group leader went inside the guard shack and asked whether  we might be able to take pictures of the home or talk with someone about Ortega’s policies. She returned and joked, “He said Daniel says we have a picture if we can get the IMF to forgive Nicaragua’s $6 million loan.” With such global pressures to keep in mind, I’m sure that my opinion, as an outsider from a country that’s responsible for putting most of that pressure onto Nicaragua, doesn’t outweigh those of the Nicaraguans who are quite literally living with the ghosts of the revolution in their homes and communities.

On our first full day in Nicaragua, my group visited a marimba school in a small neighborhood in Managua. The marimba is a national instrument of Nicaragua, and the backbone of the campesino music that provided a soundtrack to its history. The school provides instruction for children in the neighborhood and those around it, providing scholarships where they can, so that this piece of Nicaraguan culture doesn’t die away.

We were treated to a performance by a group of teens who were studying at the school; at one point, a young girl left her spot behind the marimba and began to dance to the music of a traditional Nicaraguan ballad that had been sung during the revolution and the civil conflicts afterward. Our group leader began to weep. A committed social justice worker who has been traveling to Nicaragua several times a year since 1986, she was moved by how much Nicaragua has changed since the first time she had heard that song and now. “Back then,” she said, “that little girl would have been carrying a rifle and ready to go off and fight. Now she’s dancing to music.”

We didn’t have to go far to see what might have happened to that little girl 20 or 30 years ago. Attached to the marimba school, which is a still-functioning liberation theology-style base community, is the Garden of the 13 Martyrs, a small cemetery that cradles the remains of 13 members of the neighborhood who died during the civil war. Two of them were young women, barely out of their teens before dying in the conflict. We found their pictures in a room in the school that displays the photos of the 89 youths from the neighborhood who died in the conflict, some of them bystanders who were caught by a bullet or a bomb. A sign hanging over the cemetery proclaims in black-and-red Sandinista letters: “Nuestro Pueblo Es El Dueño de Su Historia, Arquitecto de Su Liberacîon (Our People are the Owners of Their History, the Architects of Their Freedom).” Our host at the school, one of the teachers, told us that the garden represents their understanding that Jesus’ resurrection is found within the people: Those they lost during the conflict and the freedom they fought for are not lost, but is still to be found among the people that keep their memory alive and take up the work that is left to be done. And in addition to the garden, to the school, there’s also a clinic that provides free health care to the neighborhood, and a youth center that provides tutoring and a place for neighborhood youths to go in the afternoons. The government may not be able to continue in the spirit of the revolution, but it lives  on in the people.

Did the revolution make a difference? I still don’t think that’s the question. Did it have significance, did it mean something? No doubt that it means something to those who lived through it, suffered through it and are building a world out of the wreck the revolution and the U.S.-backed war left behind. The question that I found myself left with is what difference this event has made for me, and what responsibilities I bear as both a U.S. citizen and a person of faith who is committed to creating a socially just world. These are questions I’m still working out, haunted as I am by all the ghosts of the Nicaraguan revolution.

Watch …

Al-Jazeera has a four-part report on Nicaragua’s history, including the revolution and its legacy. You can access all four parts below:

Next Page »