http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/ What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/42399 Wed Aug 23, 4:52 PM ET

More than 200 women have been raped in a refugee camp in Darfur in the past five weeks, a sign of the worsening humanitarian crisis in the violence-wracked Sudanese region, an aid group said Wednesday.

The increased violence came as the U.N. Security Council discussed a draft resolution to replace an understaffed African Union peacekeeping force with a larger, more effective U.N. mission in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003.

The number of rapes in Kalma camp — one of Darfur's largest with about 100,000 refugees — was one measure of the increased violence throughout the region. Another measure was a rising number of people fleeing their homes and of attacks on aid workers, said International Rescue Committee, which collected the information.

"This is a massive spike in figures. We are used to hearing of two to four incidents of sexual assault per month in Kalma camp," said Kurt Tjossem of the rescue committee.

The group did not specify who committed the rapes. Refugees in the past have accused pro-government janjaweed militia of harassing them.

The aid group's statement echoed a report issued by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan a day earlier that said there were thousands of documented cases of women and children abducted for forced labor or forced sex.

"Grave violence against women in Darfur continues to worsen," Annan said. "Girls have been targeted in interethnic conflicts as a deliberate form of humiliation of a group, and as a means of ethnic cleansing."

Violence flared three years ago in Darfur when ethnic African tribes revolted against the Arab-led Sudanese government. Khartoum is accused of having unleashed in response a paramilitary group known as the janjaweed that have been blamed for much of the atrocities.

Measuring the violence in the vast, arid Darfur region has long been notoriously difficult, with pro-government armed groups and rebel factions often barring access to international observers, and Khartoum providing scarce information.

International pressure has been mounting on Khartoum to let a large U.N. mission into the country to resolve the crisis.

On Wednesday, four U.S. congressmen ended a trip to Sudan, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum said. The delegation was led by Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn., chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the embassy said.

The International Rescue Committee statement said more than 50,000 people have been made refugees in recent weeks, joining some two million people previously displaced by the conflict.

Last month alone, nine humanitarian aid workers were killed and 20 vehicles were hijacked in Darfur, the New York-based IRC also said.

The U.N. and several aid organizations have also warned that a peace agreement signed in May between the Sudanese government and the main Darfur rebel group only led to more violence and a worsening of the humanitarian crisis.

Although several militias and paramilitary forces operate in the region, most of the recent clashes are blamed on infighting among rebel factions who disagree over the peace deal.

Dissident rebels are also suspected in the killing of two African Union peacekeepers earlier this month.

The financially strapped African Union has requested the transfer of its mission to the U.N., saying it is not able to do long-term peacekeeping. But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir remains staunchly opposed and has warned that Sudan's army would fight any U.N. forces sent to Darfur.

The draft U.N. resolution plans to replace the 7,000-strong African Union force with some 22,000 U.N. troops.

Sudan wants African Union troops to remain in Darfur and be beefed up with the money that would be spent on a U.N. force.

The African Union's mandate runs out Sept. 30, and the organization's officials have warned the mission could then have to leave Darfur if the international community does not provide more support.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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]]> Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:52:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/42399 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/41233
Hope and Sadness as World Trade Talks Collapse
Jeffrey Allen
OneWorld US
Tue., Jul. 25, 2006

The Bush and Blair administrations, along with other global powers, have long touted trade as a central element in the fight against global poverty. Many international aid and development organizations agree, but disagree with the approach the world's wealthier nations have taken on the issue, arguing that the global trading system is set up largely to benefit the global "haves" at the expense of the "have nots."

As the primary forum where the rules of global trade are set, the World Trade Organization (WTO) can play a key role in either exacerbating or eliminating poverty. The latest negotiations centered largely around the subsidies wealthy countries offer their farmers, which allow them to undercut most farmers in poorer countries. This makes it virtually impossible for farmers in poorer countries to compete on international markets and often even on their home turf, thus decimating their hopes of earning a decent living through their crops.

Global aid groups have taken varying positions on Sunday's "collapse" of trade negotiations. Some had held out hopes that a poverty-reducing deal could be hammered out; others believed that wealthy countries would never agree to such a deal, and so the suspension of talks was the best possible outcome. Here are some of their reactions to the news.


From ActionAid:

"We must now look to the future for global trade--which remains a central element in the fight against poverty. There must now be root-and-branch reform of the WTO if it is to be a force for good in the world, rather than a forum for the rich to exploit the poor....

"ActionAid estimates that the EU and US still spend $100 billion per year on farm subsidies that undercut producers in poor countries. All rich countries promised was a re-packaging of existing domestic support rather than real cuts to the amount of money going to rich farmers and corporations....

"The WTO will still exist--it is only these particular negotiations that have been put on ice. But their suspension does offer an opportunity for root-and-branch reform that bans exclusive meetings and makes the organisation more inclusive and democratic."

[Read the whole Q A: ''Where Next for World Trade?'']


From the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI):

"The collapse of the WTO talks represents a huge setback for developing countries. The agricultural trade policies of the industrialized countries harm the economies of many developing nations, where millions of poor people are dependent on agriculture for food and income. But too much is at stake, especially for the world's small-scale farmers, to play the "blame game" and point fingers. Instead, we need to look forward and identify the opportunities that lay ahead....

"First, if free access of least-developed countries to wealthy-country markets is increased from 97 percent of imports to 100 percent, as proposed by the E.U., world income would increase by an additional $14 billion over the compromise scenario. Most important, about half of these additional gains would go to the poorest countries, increasing their income dramatically from $1 billion to $7 billion.

"Second, if the percentage of agricultural products defined as sensitive and special were reduced from 5 percent to 1 percent, as proposed by the U.S., world income would increase by an additional $7.3 billion over the compromise scenario. This would especially benefit developing countries where agriculture is an important source of employment and export earnings--most notably in middle-income countries.

"While the talks have collapsed for now, it is far from the end of the Doha Development round. The negotiations will continue, because ultimately reduction of agricultural protectionism and subsidies is in the interest of most countries, industrialized and developing alike."

[Read the whole statement from IFPRI.]


From the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, CAFOD

"The Catholic aid agency is bitterly disappointed that talks have collapsed and said hopes for achieving a development outcome lie in tatters due to the failure of rich countries to put the longer term interests of developing countries and the global economy before the short-term and selfish interests of domestic lobby groups....

"The U.S. gave the rest of the world a choice between agreeing to unacceptable proposals or seeing the multilateral system collapse. This is no way to show global leadership or create an international trading system that meets the needs of all.

"The EU must also take responsibility for the talks reaching this sad point. They consistently put the needs of their own farmers and business above the needs of the poor....

"CAFOD partner Jack Jones Zulu from the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) in Zambia says: 'The collapse of the talks takes us backwards and will impact heavily on development in the South as we continue to trade under an oppressive system.'"

[Read the whole statement from CAFOD.]


From Oxfam America, the U.S. arm of the international aid group Oxfam:

"What distinguishes this failure, and makes it a tragedy according to the organization, is that these trade negotiations were launched for the express purpose of benefiting millions of poor people in developing countries around the world. The U.S. and other countries made this commitment at the launch of these negotiations in 2001 and although the trade deal was supposed to be finished by 2004, talks have continued on life support, deadline after missed deadline.

"'The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about an international trading system that is not rigged for the rich and hurting the poor has been put on ice,' said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. 'Five years of haggling and debating have ended in a sad display of political failure.'

"At the G8 meeting in St. Petersburg only a week ago, a spark of hope was lit when heads of state sent their trade ministers back to the table to negotiate, arming them with orders to be flexible. But today's impasse shows that it was not enough. The central hurdle was, and remains, the trade distorting agricultural subsidy programs maintained by rich countries like the U.S. and the agriculture tariffs maintained by the EU."

[Read the whole statement or visit Oxfam's ''Make Trade Fair'' site and see what you can do to help.]


From Christian Aid:
"Christian Aid said that the collapse of the trade talks removed the single most important weapon in the fight against global poverty....Poor countries desperately needed a fair trade deal so that they could grow out of poverty and not rely on hand outs. This tawdry squabbling at the rich world's high table has now put paid to that....

"How can this allegedly great trading organisation continue to function when it cannot perform the basics of what it was designed for? This is an extremely serious matter and I suspect we are back to the drawing board on trade--with all the damaging consequences that will have for poor countries."

[Read the whole statement from Christian Aid.]


From Friends of the Earth International:

"Campaigners from Friends of the Earth International today welcomed the collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s trade negotiations. This means that there is now time to review and reconsider the multilateral trading system in its entirety.

"This will be welcome news to millions of people around the world who feared that a WTO deal would have further impoverished the world’s poorest people and caused irreparable damage to the environment. Developing countries, including India, also fear that a WTO deal would cause immense harm to millions of small and subsistence farmers....

"Ronnie Hall, Trade Campaigner at Friends of the Earth International added: 'The delay created by the failure of the Doha negotiations must be used to review past negotiations and analyse the flaws in the WTO system as a whole. It will allow us to reflect on how to develop multilateral governance systems that will genuinely promote fair and sustainable societies that benefit everyone.'"

[Read Friends of the Earth's complete statement here.]


From the Center for Global Development:

"The U.S. should not be on the defensive in these talks and it cannot take a leading role as long as it is. Washington should take the offensive and thereby shift the spotlight back to the EU's much higher agricultural support and to India’s failure to engage seriously. U.S. negotiators could still do this relatively easily...

"What happens next?

"If I'm right that fear of losses in this fall's mid-term elections is keeping the [Bush] administration from offering even minor concessions, then the trade talks are unlikely to get serious again until early 2007. But then France holds presidential elections in April and similar political constraints there could mean that serious negotiations are not revived until mid-2007....Sadly, unless something unexpected changes in the next few weeks, I think that the next chance for a pro-development multilateral trade deal won’t arise until after the U.S. presidential elections in 2008. I hope I'm wrong."

[Read the whole Q A with Kimberly Elliott, author of ''Delivering on Doha: Farm Aid and the Poor.'']
]]> Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:58:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/41233 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/38389
I feel immensely grateful that there are 12 and 13 year olds in America taking a stand and getting actively involved. I also feel humbled that I am personally not doing more. What will I tell my own children when they turn 12 or 13 and asked what was I doing as the world sat and watched this horror unfold. This article was in the Op-Ed of the May 7th 2006 IHT.

Heroes of Darfur
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

For three grueling years, Eric Reeves has been fighting for his life, struggling in a battle with leukemia that he may eventually lose. And in his spare time, sometimes from his hospital bed, he has emerged as an improbable leader of a citizens' army fighting to save hundreds of thousands of other lives in Darfur.

Pressure from that citizen army helped achieve a breakthrough on Friday: a tentative peace deal between the Sudanese government and the biggest Darfur rebel faction, brokered in part by U.S. officials. We should be skeptical that this agreement will really end the bloodshed — past cease-fires and promises have not been honored — but also rejoice in a glimpse of sun over the most wretched place in the world today.

If the violence does diminish — and that will take hard work in the months and years ahead — part of the credit will go to Mr. Reeves, a scholar of English literature at Smith College who has used an arsenal of e-mail messages, phone calls and Web pages to battle the Sudanese government and American indifference. He was the first person I know to describe the horrors of Darfur as genocide, and he financed his quixotic campaign by taking out a loan on his house.

Perhaps the most striking distinction in the history of genocide is not between those who murder and those who don't, but between "bystanders" who avert their eyes and "upstanders" who speak out. Professor Reeves has been a full-time upstander on Sudan since 1999, back when the people being slaughtered there were Christians in the south of the country. He noticed immediately in 2003 that Sudan had diversified into butchering Muslims in Darfur, and his frantic blowing of the whistle helped alert me and others. Visit his Web site, sudanreeves.org, but be careful — his fury may set your computer smoking.

I don't agree with every bit of Mr. Reeves's analysis, and sometimes I flinch at his stridency. But there's no better excuse for stridency than genocide.
While Darfur has been incredibly depressing, the grass-roots movement in this country to stop the genocide is immensely inspiring. (To join, go to Web sites like www.savedarfur.org or www.genocideintervention.net.) The activist kids just bowl me over: girls like Rachel Koretsky, a 13-year-old who organized a rally in Philadelphia, distributed circulars and conducted a raffle to raise money for Darfur as her bat mitzvah charity project. So far, Rachel has raised $14,000 for Darfur.

Or kids like Tacey Smith, a 12-year-old in the farm town of Gaston, Ore. After seeing the movie "Hotel Rwanda," she formed a Sudan Club with a few friends and has raised $400 for Darfur by selling eggs, washing cars and asking for donations instead of birthday presents. Her best friend's Christmas present to her was raising $50 for Darfur. Now
Tacey is organizing a Darfur fair next month.

President Bush has been more active lately on Darfur, and without the administration's relentless pushing the peace deal on Friday would have been impossible. But by and large, there has been a vacuum of leadership on Darfur over the last few years, and ordinary Americans — particularly young people — have tried to fill it. I don't know whether to be sad or inspired that we can turn for moral guidance to 12-year-olds.

Then there are the entertainers. Frankly, I think it's bizarre that we turn to movie stars for guidance on international relations. But in this case, I bow low to George Clooney, who had the guts to travel to the Darfur area last month, and to Angelina Jolie, who has visited the Darfur area twice and is pushing for action on Darfur more forcefully than almost anyone in Washington.

It gets weirder: "CBS Evening News" decided that genocide wasn't newsworthy, devoting only two minutes to coverage of Darfur in all of 2005 — but there's excellent coverage on MTV's university network and in episodes of the TV show "E.R." set in Darfur. And one of the best presentations of life in Darfur is in an extraordinary video game developed with help from MTV and available free at www.darfurisdying.com. In the game, you're a Darfuri, trying to survive as Sudan's janjaweed militias hunt you down.

So that's how the response is unfolding to the first genocide of the 21st century: a video game is one of the best guides to understanding the slaughter, and our moral vacuum is filled by teenyboppers and movie stars.
Someday we will look back at this motley army of children and celebrities, presided over by a man struggling with leukemia, and thank them for salvaging our national honor.
]]> Wed, 10 May 2006 00:36:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/38389 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/35037
These cuts are mainly so the wealthy and elite in the US can save a few dollars, that they don't need, in tax. And the money for the war? According to recent reports much of the oil money from Sadam that was supposed to be helping to pay for the rebuild is missing and unaccounted for as well. Sloopy and suspicious. And US tax payers have to foot the rest of the bill.

Disasters are looming around every corner for the US if we do not do something and soon. I confess I did not actually watch the State of Union address but I was cautiously hopeful when I saw they headlines talking about the need to cut our foreign oil dependency and talking not just about drilling but conservation. But, it was all smoke. His spin team has been back-tracking every step. There is very little chance he will push, or even allow, one or both of two measures that are needed to cut our consumption -- fuel standards and gasoline tax. The dollars he talked about committing to research in renewable energy is apparently less than was actually already allocated.

As for the deficit, according to an article I read in the Miami Herald, the budget bill won't reduce the deficit with its projected $38.8 billion in savings over five years. Pending tax-cut measures that will cost between $60 billion to $95 billion over five years not only will wipe out any savings but actually increase the deficit.

No big secret what team bush priorities are. What are yours???]]> Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:20:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/35037 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34483
It is a problem caused purely by human short-comings such as greed, ingnorance and a lack of morals or compassion.

Nicholas Kristof is a champion of this issue and he has written a number of articles on the subject. I find this one interesting as it addresses some "quick wins" and also finds something positive for which to give the Bush Administration credit. Kristof is correct in his focus. While we compassionately want to save all the pour souls already being held as sex slaves, if we can focus on trying to save potential future slaves and on drying up the industry by making it less lucrative we would already be accomplishing a great deal.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 24, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Hitting Brothel Owners Where It Hurts
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Calcutta

Imagine what you would have done if you'd been in Hasina Bibi's sandals.

She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat.

Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms.

But Hasina, in contrast with most girls who are trafficked into brothels, had a fourth-grade education and was literate. So although she earned no money, Hasina asked customers for tips and was able to amass a secret stash of rupees. She learned a bit of Hindi. Finally one day she jumped into a rickshaw and ran away.

It would be nice to say that she lived happily ever after, but trafficked children rarely do. Ashamed to return home, Hasina is now an independent streetwalker here in Calcutta.

So as we try to develop policies to reduce sex trafficking, there are a couple of lessons here. First, it's difficult to extricate girls from prostitution after they've been trafficked. It's far more cost-effective to focus resources on reducing the number of newly trafficked people each year - now hundreds of thousands.

Second, educating girls is the best way to give them the tools to resist trafficking or escape brothels. In the long run, one effective way to knock down brothels is to build schools.

But that's for the long run. To have a more immediate impact, we need to reduce the economic incentives for traffickers. Here are my suggestions:

Pick our battles. Look, prostitution will always be around. But progress is possible by targeting the very worst abuses, like the brothels that imprison girls (some boys are also trafficked for sex, but not as many).

Emphasize criminal sanctions. Effective law enforcement may not rescue many individual children (those numbers are tiny), but it deters all brothel owners from forced prostitution and from pimping minors. If brothel owners see that they risk jail for imprisoning and peddling 13-year-olds, they instead employ semivoluntary 17-year-olds who claim that they are 18 (few people in poor countries have good documentation of age). In this world, that's real progress.

Focus on virginity sales. In some areas, like Southeast Asia, the business model of sex trafficking depends on selling virgins for $500 or more apiece. That's where traffickers reap their biggest profits. So let's encourage sting operations that arrest both buyers and sellers of virgins. Buyers are usually wealthy foreigners, often Arabs or ethnic Chinese, and a few heavily publicized arrests would help dry up sales of virgins.

Inspect brothels regularly for prisoners. Frequent inspections make the brothel owners more likely to employ willing prostitutes rather than unwilling ones. During inspections, girls should also undergo mandatory testing for diseases, including H.I.V.

Some people worry that cracking down on trafficking just drives it underground. I don't worry too much about that. The brothel business depends on being readily accessible, so driving it underground makes it less profitable and smaller. And my interviews with brothel owners suggest that many find the business only marginally more profitable than peddling pirated DVD's or smuggled cigarettes. Eat into their profits a bit more, and they'll switch businesses.

The first step is to put forced prostitution on the international agenda, just as the abolitionists put slavery there in the early 19th century. To his credit, President Bush, far more than his predecessors, has pushed other governments to crack down on sex trafficking. His State Department office on trafficking should get a medal.

Mr. Bush could make the issue a higher global priority by raising it in his State of the Union address and in his coming visit to India. Just imagine if he visited the New Light anti-trafficking center here in Calcutta. A local woman, Urmi Basu, used her savings and American foundation grants to build New Light, which battles trafficking, teaches English to the children of prostitutes and provides health services. (Here's a video of Ms. Basu and a list of aid groups that do great work fighting trafficking is at www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)

Mr. Bush could do so much good by leading dignitaries and TV cameras through a red-light slum and down a fetid alley to the sewer-side offices of New Light. The entourage could then spotlight reformers like Ms. Basu, the abolitionists of the 21st century.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company ]]> Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:38:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34483 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34371

January 20, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Wayward Christian Soldiers
By CHARLES MARSH
Charlottesville, Va.

IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?

Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.

Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.

The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.

Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.

Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."

On this page, David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.

"Privately, in the days preceding the invasion, I had hoped that no action would be taken without United Nations authorization," he told me. "I believed then and now that the American and British governments erred in proceeding without United Nations approval." Reverend Stott referred me to "War and Rumors of War, " a chapter from his 1999 book, "New Issues Facing Christians Today," as the best account of his position. In that essay he wrote that the Christian community's primary mission must be "to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the cross."

What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

Charles Marsh, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia, is the author of "The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today."



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]]> Sat, 21 Jan 2006 23:12:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34371 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34343
Life is not all bad. It is just that the “news” very often is. In fact, my life in particular is wonderful. But rather than go on at length at how awesome my husband and children are, even though they are awesome, or how spoiled I am to have a great nanny and therefore time to do volunteer work, or how I never want and probably never will want for food or shelter or a safe and peaceful life etc., I will mention a briefing I attended this morning.

The briefing was with a high-ranking official in USAID. It was interesting and informative and part of it was certainly “glum” in as much as we discussed the sheer magnitude of the tragedies and disasters that have occurred in the world recently. But let’s not focus on that. Instead let’s focus on the warm fuzzies. The official mentioned, almost in passing, the heroic efforts and dedication of the US military in places just as earthquake struck Pakistan. He said we would be proud.

Great! I want to be proud. Especially in light of stories such as my last post about the air-strike in Pakistan that killed innocent civilians including women and children. We need more of that kind of information filtering down – both inside and outside of the US. He also talked about the amazingly heroic efforts of the Pakistani army. These are the stories that my soul wants to hear. I would like to hear more of them.

p.s. How are you? And, more importantly, who are you? : -) just wondering who might be reading these posts. Send me a message!
]]> Fri, 20 Jan 2006 23:59:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34343 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34319
Last I checked we were not at war with Pakistan. Not that war excuses civilian death in my opinion anyway. Many, many innocent civilians have died in what at best is a questionable war in Iraq.

I understand the US government has a duty to protect US citizens over that of other nationalities. But, can we really morally place a higher value on US lives?

Even if you for some reason experience no moral outrage or even sadness at the wanton disregard for life (non u.s. citizen life that is) we should be worried about the growing anti-US sentiment this fuels. Even if the strike did kill high ups in al-Qaida things like this actually make us more at risk to terror. The high ups will be replaced, and with the swelling ranks of recruits fueled by on by acts and attitudes such as this, they will be easily replaced from thousands willing to die to feat the enemy -- the U.S.

Derrick Jackson's is the only article I have seen on this subject. I am guessing (hoping!?) there were others. Not living in the US I am out of touch with popular sentiment. Is there no protest? Does everyone feel OK with what is going on?

Derrick Z. Jackson: Remorseless support
The Boston Globe
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2006

BOSTON When teenagers show no remorse for mistakes, we call in the therapist. When killers show no remorse, we want life sentences or death row. When the United States makes deadly mistakes, remorse is unnecessary, because, of course, it is never our fault.

Thinking we could nail Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, our military launched an airstrike into a Pakistani town just over the border from Afghanistan. We smoked 18 people at a dinner that al-Zawahri was allegedly going to attend, but apparently skipped out on. The provincial government claims that four or five foreign militants were killed, but local witnesses said women and children were among the rest.

This is of small concern to the White House. President George W. Bush has never apologized to the Iraqi people for the three years of carnage done in the name of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that were never found. Bush always dodges the need to show remorse on the premise that "we are up against people who show no shame, no remorse, no hint of humanity."

He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists in November of 2003, "There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."

With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest mistake in Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked Tuesday if regrets were forthcoming, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to talk about the incident, saying only, "I think you've heard our comments about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, "Al Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."

On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off the airstrike by saying, "The biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize the country. ... These are not people who can be dealt with lightly."

Last weekend's political talk shows had influential senators, both Republican and Democrat, issuing remorseless support of the mistake. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, basically blamed Pakistan for the mistake. "It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?" he said. "It's like the wild, wild west out there ... the real problem here is that the Pakistani government does not control that part of their own country."

Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, who is on the intelligence committee despite a career of unintelligent comments on race and sexual orientation, justified the strike and targeted assassinations by saying, "There's no question that they're still causing the death of millions of - or thousands of innocent people and directing operations in Iraq." Bayh seconded that by saying to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I agree wholeheartedly, Wolf. These people killed 3,000 Americans. They have to be brought to justice."

But no one should dare attempt to bring America to justice. Senator John McCain of Arizona played the game on CBS's "Face the Nation" of issuing an apology and then immediately qualifying it. At one juncture, he said, "It's terrible when innocent people are killed. We regret that. But we have to do what is necessary to take out Al Qaeda, particularly the top operatives."

At another juncture, McCain said, "We apologize, but I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

The equivocation guarantees that it will happen again and again. The world is our wild west. When we miss the villain at high noon and the bullets fly past the saloon to kill mothers and children, we still flip the barrel to our lips, blow a triumphant puff, twirl the gun back into the holster and say, "Darn sheriff should'a told everyone to stay inside."

McCain said, "This war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly Al Qaeda does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want to equate our behavior with theirs."

The airstrike in Pakistan reaffirms how our behavior is plummeting in the direction of the evil we proclaim to fight. At home, we are appalled by drive-by shootings that take out innocent children. Abroad, the fly-by airstrike is the source of no remorse, with dead children and mothers taken very lightly.

(Derrick Z. Jackson's column appears regularly in The Boston Globe.)

Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com ]]> Fri, 20 Jan 2006 08:00:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34319 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34290

January 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
If You Give a Congressman a Cookie
By NORMAN ORNSTEIN and THOMAS E. MANN
CONGRESSIONAL Republicans are suddenly taking a strong interest in lobbying reform. Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, are rallying behind a reform package that will include measures like increasing disclosure and doubling the length of time after leaving Congress before lawmakers and staff can lobby their colleagues. These are commendable and desirable reforms. But to get to the root of what ails Washington's political culture, a more basic change is necessary.

The two of us have been immersed in Washington politics for more than 36 years. We have never seen the culture so sick or the legislative process so dysfunctional. The plea deals of Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, the indictment of Tom Delay and his resignation as House majority leader, and the demise of Representative Randy Cunningham notwithstanding, this is not simply a problem of a rogue lobbyist or a pack of them. Nor is it a matter of a handful of disconnected, corrupt lawmakers taking favors in return for official actions.

The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress. Over the past five years, the rules and norms that govern Congressional deliberation, debate and voting - what legislative aficionados call "the regular order" - have routinely been violated, especially in the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic break from custom.

Roll call votes on the House floor, which are supposed to take 15 minutes, are frequently stretched to one, two or three hours. Rules forbidding any amendments to bills on the floor have proliferated, stifling dissent and quashing legitimate debate. Omnibus bills, sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no notice, let alone the 72 hours the rules require. Conference committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private, sometimes even adding major provisions after the conference has closed. Majority leaders still pressure members who object to the chicanery to vote yea in the legislation's one up-or-down vote.

To be sure, bills have been passed under this regime, on party-line votes with slender majorities. But the results have not always been true to party objectives or conservative ideals. Democrats aren't the only ones undermined by a process whose methods, like the cynical use of earmarks for pet projects, serve to bloat government bureaucracies.

Some of the abuses are straightforward breaches of the rules. The majority Republicans bypass normal procedures and ignore objections that parliamentary rules have been violated. They then reframe substantive issues as procedural matters that demand party discipline. Other abuses do not violate the rules, but they do transgress longstanding practice. For example, House rules don't set a maximum period of 15 minutes for most roll call votes. But since the advent of electronic voting in 1973, 15 minutes has been the norm.

In 1987, when the majority Democrats once - and only once - stretched a budget vote to 30 minutes because they found themselves unexpectedly down by one vote when time was supposed to expire, the minority Republicans loudly protested, with their whip, Dick Cheney, saying it was the worst abuse of power he had ever seen in Congress. Now it is routine to bring up a bill and troll for enough votes to pass it, even when a clear majority of the House - 218 members - has voted nay.

What has all this got to do with corruption? If you can play fast and loose with the rules of the game in lawmaking, it becomes easier to consider playing fast and loose with everything else, including relations with lobbyists, acceptance of favors, the use of official resources and the discharge of governmental power.

We saw similar abuses leading to similar patterns of corruption during the Democrats' majority reign. But they were neither as widespread nor as audacious as those we have seen in the past few years. The arrogance of power that was evident in Democratic lawmakers like Jack Brooks of Texas - the 21-term Democrat who was famed for twisting the rules to get pork for his district - is now evident in a much wider range of members and leaders, who all seem to share the attitude that because they are in charge, no one can hold them accountable.

Indeed, Mr. Hastert showed open contempt for the House ethics process last year when he fired the Republican chairman of the ethics committee and ousted two Republican members after they did their duty and reprimanded Tom DeLay for three violations of standards. Mr. Hastert then appointed two members to the committee who had given large sums to the DeLay legal defense fund - when the main matter pending before the committee involved Representative DeLay.

The same attitude produced the K Street Project, in which the new Republican majority, led by Mr. DeLay, used its governmental power to demand that trade associations and lobbying groups fire Democratic lobbyists and hire designated Republicans, who could then be expected to show their gratitude by contributing generously to party candidates and committees. Jack Abramoff was one of the progenitors of that initiative.

What can be done? First, Mr. Hastert; Representative David Dreier, the Rules Committee chairman; and the new House majority leader should declare that there will be a return to the regular order and to a reasonable deliberative process. And they must be prepared to follow through on that declaration.

But there are also rules reforms that would help. Two- or three-hour votes should become a thing of the past. Any major bill should be presented at least three days before it is considered, unless a supermajority votes to waive that rule. Votes should be required on objections to excessive earmarking in bills, and members should be required to declare that they have no personal interest in the earmarks they promote. Real debate and reasonable amendments must be allowed on most bills, and the integrity of conference committees needs to be reestablished. Finally, if there is to be real and credible ethics oversight, that process, too, must be overhauled.

Quick and decisive Congressional actions could minimize the damage done by the explosion of scandals related to Mr. Abramoff. But lobbying reform alone is a temporary solution. The real solution is for Congress to behave like the deliberative body it is supposed to be.

Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. They are co-authors of the forthcoming "The Broken Branch."



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]]> Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:05:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34290 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34023

WASHINGTON Shortly after 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 30, 2005, the White House sent out an e-mail message with an innocuous "Statement by the President" in the subject line. As might be expected of a seemingly routine announcement released in the dead time before New Year's weekend, almost no one paid attention.

But last week, Washington opened its eyes. President George W. Bush's quiet little statement not only set off fireworks at the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Judge Samuel Alito Jr., but also has ignited a new debate about the Bush administration's drive to expand the powers of the president.

To start at the beginning, Congress late last year passed what became known as the torture amendment, sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Bush at first opposed the amendment, but gave in when it became clear that it had overwhelming support from both parties on Capitol Hill.

The president then invited McCain, his old political nemesis, to the Oval Office to announce that he agreed with him and "to make clear to the world that this government does not torture."

But on Dec. 30, after signing the legislation into law with no ceremony at his Texas ranch, Bush issued an accompanying "signing statement" - the 8 p.m. e-mail - that Democrats and some Republicans say asserted that he could ignore the law if he wished.

Specifically, the statement said that the administration would interpret the amendment "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch and as commander in chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on judicial power."

McCain issued a strong statement rejecting Bush's assertion, even as the White House has repeatedly declined to say what the president meant. But Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, had no doubts and told Alito at the hearings that Bush had in essence stated that "whatever the law of the land might be, whatever Congress might have written, the executive branch has the right to authorize torture without fear of judicial review."

Alito was not just an interested observer at a hearing. In 1986, as a lawyer in the Reagan administration's Justice Department, he had helped Edwin Meese 3rd, then attorney general, develop a new theory that signing statements could be used to advance the president's interpretation of legislation.

Before then, the statements had been largely triumphal proclamations. Alito wrote that the new signing statements would "increase the power of the executive to shape the law" even as they created resentment in Congress.

At his hearings, Alito distanced himself from the memo, calling it the work of a government employee, and sidestepped questions about his current view on the statements. At this point, their legality is largely untested.

But one thing is clear: Bush has issued more than 100 of them, which scholars believe may be more than any other president. (Signing statements have been around since at least the administration of Andrew Jackson.) More significant, scholars say, Bush has greatly expanded the scope and character of the signing statement, even from the time of the Reagan administration.

"The whole history of American government is one of trying to figure out what executive power actually is, so here is the president saying, 'Well, it's my job to tell you what that power is,"' said Andrew Rudalevige, an associate professor of political science at Dickinson College and the author of "The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power After Watergate."

Scholars say that many of Bush's most significant signing statements have been attached to national security and intelligence legislation and that he frequently uses them to assert that the administration regards requirements to turn over information as purely advisory.

For example, in signing the legislation that created the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said that while the law established "new requirements for the executive branch to disclose sensitive information," he would interpret the law "in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to withhold information" for national security.

As the members of the Sept. 11 commission soon learned, they had a difficult time obtaining information from the White House.

"Now, we can't prove that the reason the administration held back the information was because of the signing statement, but it announced its intentions quite clearly," said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University and the author of "By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action."

Bush also used a signing statement, in November 2003 to assert that an inspector general created for oversight of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led administration that governed Iraq, should "refrain" from audits or investigations into matters of intelligence or counterintelligence.

In December 2004, Bush used a signing statement to say that in the act that created the new post of national intelligence director, he considered "advisory" those provisions setting forth how - and from whom - he received intelligence information.

Or as Rudalevige put it, "The president is basically saying that those structural changes are nice, but I don't have to listen to anybody in particular."
]]> Sun, 15 Jan 2006 23:57:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/34023 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/33912
"As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we are led by defeatists - wimps, actually.

What's so disturbing about President Bush and Dick Cheney is that they talk tough about the necessity of invading Iraq, torturing terror suspects and engaging in domestic spying - all to defend our way of life and promote democracy around the globe.

But when it comes to what is actually the most important issue in U.S. foreign and domestic policy today - making ourselves energy efficient and independent, and environmentally green - they ridicule it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is possible or necessary

Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at home and abroad.

Living green is not just a "personal virtue," as Mr. Cheney says. It's a national security imperative.

The biggest threat to America and its values today is not communism, authoritarianism or Islamism. Its petrolism. Petrolism is my term for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices - in oil states from Russia to Nigeria to Iran - that result from a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. ....

... there's a huge difference between what these bad regimes can do with $20-a-barrel oil compared to $60-a-barrel oil. It is no accident that the reform era in Russia under Boris Yeltzin, and in Iran under Mohammad Khatami, coincided with low oil prices. When prices soared again, petrolist authoritarians in both societies reasserted themselves.

We need a persident and a Congress with the guts not just to invade Iraq, but to impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes a real energy policy with longterm incentives for renewable energies - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded last year as an energy bill.

Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation, energy efficiency and environmentalism are some hobby we can't afford. I can't think of anything more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots, real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green.

Green is the new red, white and blue.

]]> Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:24:00 EST http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/33912 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30172
It looks at the evolving needs of education from a very “big picture” standpoint. Contrast this with the energy being consumed by arguments over religion in the classroom, intelligent design etc. in the US. Another interesting article on the web-site highlights an interesting program attempting to address some of what Dr. Johnston describes in his article , check out http://www.newhorizons.org/spneeds/gifted/fraserhenry.htm

Erica

In thinking about the future of education, some overarching questions come to mind. These are three interwoven and indeed very big picture questions:
How do we best understand the times in which we live?
What specific skills, perspectives, values, understandings, and sensibilities will we need to meet the critical challenges ahead, the challenges of the future?
How do we educate for these particular skills and sensibilities -- and here I refer not just to the content of education, but equally the processes through which we educate and the nature of the relationships -- student to teacher, student to student, student to community and world -- through which we learn?

When culture is relatively stable, the average person doesn't need to give big picture questions much attention -- we appropriately relegate them to philosophers and the like.

But in times of significant change and challenge, the situation becomes dramatically different. The big picture comes to have ultimate practical importance.
When I look around us, I see change happening at a startling array of levels. Besides the obvious technological changes, we find all sorts of familiar cultural handholds becoming less secure: these from externally defined gender roles, to once and for all moral rules to teach our children, to institutions that we could once generally rely on to fulfill basic needs. Reality today is a newly uncertain and often "messy" quantity.

How do we understand this? Is it good or bad? And what does it mean to educate in such a reality and for the challenges such a reality presents?

Recent statistics show, for example, that while thirty years ago sixty to seventy percent of people in the United States had general confidence in their institutions -- in their schools, their governments, their churches -- today the figures range between twenty and thirty percent.

As a psychiatrist, and someone deeply concerned about youth, I find one statistic particularly troubling, and symbolic: this the more than doubling of teen suicide rates we have witnessed over the last ten years. We face the simple fact that a significant portion of our youth, often many of the best and the brightest, don't see an adequately compelling image of the future to warrant the vulnerabilities of daily life. The times we live in can easily seem at best frightening and overwhelming.

Today's changes ask a lot of us. But at least as I see things, the confusions we feel today are less often ultimately about culture being somehow broken -- about us having gone astray significantly -- than about finding the courage to turn some important next pages in the human story. Once appropriate personal and institutional assumptions have simply become too small for how large human experience has become.
Increasingly culture is not supplying the same kind of ready-made maps. And when we try to use the old ones, more often than not they bring frustration rather than fulfillment.

The challenges ahead ask a lot of us. And what they ask has the potential to make us more, often in very important ways. What do they ask? Quite a number of things. Let me touch on just a few

• They ask a greater comfort with uncertainty and complexity. (Things like gender roles have protected us by making life a bit smaller -- a bit more manageable. Gender roles dramatically reduce the variables involved in both identity and love. Today, more and more, we are being challenged to surrender such protection, to meet life's fundamental questions unadorned.)

• They ask greater self-knowledge (necessary if we don't have things like gender roles to guide us) -- and equally a greater knowledge of others, of those we engage -- from intimates and coworkers, to other cultures and species.

• They ask a greater completeness, if you will, in our being and our understanding (from relating more as whole people in love -- rather than as two halves that together make a whole -- to a similar greater wholeness and completeness in how we relate as parents, as leaders, as newly global citizens.)

• And they ask a new level of human responsibility. We are being challenged to address a growing array of new and complex moral quandaries -- from very personal concerns to the ultimate question of how we as a species wish to define progress for the future. Our times don't ask us to be God, but they demand more and more that we be willing to engage questions of Godlike consequence.

So today's new questions ask a lot. And they easily overwhelm, have us run from the magnitude of what they ask -- into addiction, diversion, absurdity. They ask big questions, challenge us to be large. (One could argue even that they ask a kind of growing up as a species.)

Recently, I tried out the previously mentioned of four specific questions on some friends and colleagues.. From their responses, they came up with a list of "tasks for education in the future."
I invite you to bounce your reflections off of this list, to challenge it, add to it. They put their seven tasks in the form of -- of course, more questions.

# 1 --Times of change require a capacity to innovate and skill at managing process and uncertainty. How do we educate for greater creativity in this sense -- and not just for the artist types, but for everyone?

# 2 --Increasingly, today's challenges require us not just to be knowledgeable, but to address deep questions of meaning and value, moral questions if you will. How does one teach the engagement of questions of meaning and value and do this without imposing narrow moral dogma on one hand or falling for an empty, anything goes moral relativism on the other?

# 3 --Increasingly, today's questions demand that we step across the lines separating usual domains of understanding -- they are multidisciplinary, systemic, dynamically interwoven. How does one teach for the ability to work with wholes and interrelationships, as much as specifics and parts?

# 4 --Today's challenges more and more require us to engage questions collaboratively -- at all levels, from small work teams, to neighborhoods, to global interaction. How does one teach for the ability to collaborate?

# 5 --The questions ahead require us to better understand diversity of all types -- gender, ethnicity, religious, temperament, learning style, as well as the contradictory complexities of our own psyches. How does one teach for the capacity not just to tolerate diversity and complexity but to be enriched by it, use it powerfully and creatively?

# 6 --Increasingly, today's challenges require us to be facile with new technologies, particularly new communications technologies. These technologies have equally the power to enrich the connections between us and to isolate us from others and ourselves. How does one teach for greatest skill in the use of new technologies, and for the greatest wisdom in that use?

And finally #7 -- and perhaps of greatest importance -- More and more, today's challenges ask us to take responsibility in questions that before have not been human concerns. How does one teach for this degree of personal and social awareness and this degree of personal and social maturity?

As I see it, bring the greatest courage and wisdom to the single question that all of these others are ultimately about: Simply, what does it mean to educate for a future that matters?

In conclusion. Much in the best of education is eternal -- good education is just good education. But as well, if this list gets at anything important, in the decades ahead we will need to be rethinking the goals and processes of education in some fairly fundamental ways.

The following article is based on a keynote address given by Dr. Charles Johnston at the Albuquerque Conference on the Future of Education at the Albuquerque Academy in October, 1996.
]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2005 04:46:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30172 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30159
The media is finally waking up and calling shots as they see them, and there are certainly many many shots to be called. This collection of investigations is from Trish Wells and is carried on Yahoo News. I certainly recognize there are corrupt Democrats as well. I support accountable and responsible government, no matter which party.

In fact, I believe party politics is a leading reason of WHY there is so much corruption. Much of it is about staying in power. Anyway.... Here is the list from Trish.

Sen. Tom DeLay's indictment Wednesday isn't the only legal trouble involving Republicans. Among other woes:

-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee is being investigated over whether he used insider information in deciding to sell Hospital Corp of America stock from his blind trust shortly before the price fell. The sale netted him millions.

-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California is under investigation for the sale of his California home to a Pentagon contractor at an inflated price. He's on the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

-Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio faces questions over his connections to Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who in turn is being investigated for his business dealings with the Tigua Indians and the funding of trips for members of Congress.

-A special prosecutor is investigating who revealed the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame. The probe has reached as high as White House adviser Karl Rove. No charges have been filed.

-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced conflict-of-interest allegations over a $5 million contract with two bodybuilding magazines.

]]> Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:11:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30159 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30119
The web-site ourfuture.org makes it very easy to write to your representatives and demand they take action to reinstate the minimum wage.

Are you looking for a very easy, immediate action you can take right now?

We must stop this ridiculous pattern of cronyism, corruption and favoring the rich and the power elite. Three of the first things Bush did in
reaction Katrina was to say there will be no new taxes to pay for Katrina,congratulate Brownie on a good job and to suspend a law requiring decent minimum
wages.

We now know his administration, led by a man who is now facing criminal charges (at last some accountability!) has signed no-bid contracts that will give billions to multi-national corporations like Halliburton without any guarantee that they will hire displaced people to rebuild their own communities.

Congressman George Miller has just introduced legislation (H.R. 3763) to reinstate the wage protections that were suspended by decree of President Bush, and I call on you now to demand that congress supports Rep. Miller's legislation.

Everyone that works hard should be entitled to a decent wage - especially the people we want to help get back on their feet after this enormous disaster.

We must ensure that our government works for us and reflects our wishes. You must let your representatives know what you want them to do. They work for us!

Follow the link below to write to your representatives.

http://action.ourfuture.org/action/index.asp?step=2item=27805 or visit www.ourfuture.org

Thanks! Erica]]> Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:23:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30119 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30093
Although there are some steady streams of criticism and a growing chorus of rallying calls, the Bush Administration appears to still be getting away with murder, at least figuratively although many would say literally.

The chances of proper investigation into Katrina are beginning to grow slim. It has now become clear that even while most of the world was deep in mourning and shock, the Bush in crowd was busy trying to make a buck through no-bid rebuild contracts. This was largely being led by Mr. Safavian, a G.O.P. loyalist and veteran lobbyist appointed to run the entire government's purchasing policy without any proper experience or credentials, until he had to resign abruptly to face arrest on charges of obstructing justice in a deepening investigation into lobbyist corruption in Washington.

Day after day I am now reading the papers with completely mixed emotions. I completely outraged by many of the facts I am reading. But, my heart starts racing with excitement because at last the unbelievable cronyism and corruption in the government is being exposed. Then I feel sick as the realization sinks in that this still may not be it, they still might get away with it. Then I feel energized as I vow to help lead the charge and create a civil society movement that will take back government and create a system that is actually by and for the people. Then I feel frustrated because I am not sure how to do this, especially since I live in Singapore and have two small children. I am not prepared (yet!) to hop a plane and camp out in front of Bush’s ranch, although I admire those who do just that.

The facts remain though. You do not have to dig deep to find case after case of cronyism at best and possible corruption and outright criminal offenses or criminal neglect at worst. Franch Rich in his article “Another Gilded Age of corruption” highlights many, some of which I have listed below:

-There is the whole Safavian, Jack Abramoff circle that is too complicated for me to understand or recap here. Suffice it to say that arrests are beginning to happen which indicates it must be serious stuff.
-The appointment of “Brownie” to head FEMA with no qualifications.
-The recent nomination of Julie Myers as the new head of immigration and customs enforcement for homeland security. Myers is the niece of General Richard Myers and has just married chief of staff for the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff. Her chief qualification to run an agency with 20,000 employees and a $4 billion budget was serving as associate counsel under Kenneth Starr.
-Tracy Henke has been nominated as Homeland Security’s new executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. She is apparently an “Enron-style” spin master who has ordered politically damaging information to be deleted from high-level reports in the past. (When the official, Lawrence Greenfeld, complained about this, he was of course demoted).
-Another official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, has recently been demoted for question irregularities in the awarding of some $7 billion in no-bid contracts in Iraq to a Halliburton subsidiary.
-Lawrence Lindsey, the president’s chief economic advisor, was pushed out when accurately projected the cost of the Iraq war.
-General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff was pushed out after estimating the number of troops required for securing Iraq.
-There continues to be no proper inquiry into human rights abuses at U.S. military bases, despite the fact that dozens of men are now going on hunger strikes.
-Senate Majority Leader Frist has both had a total conflict of interest between his political agenda and his stock holdings and now, on top of that, is possibly going to get away with a monster case of insider trading.

So, we can see there is a definite history of surrounding themselves with friends, qualified or not, and clearing out anyone who dares talk about things that do not fit in with their agenda. Remember, this is a President who used to brag about not watching or reading the news. A President who therefore was unaware about people being (and dying!) in the Superdome until days after Katrina hit when an aid finally gave him a memo.

Bush could not possibly have any serious intentions of even trying to do what is right and best for the country and the world if he has no interest in even understanding the real situation or trying to put qualified people in important postings. It is all about spin so that they can implement their own agenda in a vacuum.

How can we continue to let these things happen? How can we stop them? Where is congress? Where are checks and balances?

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?

I need a hero!
]]> Mon, 26 Sep 2005 21:58:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/30093 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29966
It is a good example of the concept that aid and effort should be focused at the village level rather than on bureaucratic agencies or macro efforts. I also think it is a wonderful way to generate awareness and support for the campaign. It turns what often can be a bunch of hard to grasp words and figures into something real, something you can touch and feel. I fully support any efforts that cultural celebrities undertake to use their celebrity in support of a cause. Why not?

This is a lead in to my next post which will be about Bono. ]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:17:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29966 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29965 Katrina has provided a convenient example to what many African advocates have said for years “we must spend some billions to erect levees against those forces now, or be ready, as in New Orleans, to spend countless hundreds of billions to clean up the mess later.”

The article, by Michael Wines draws heavily from Jeffrey Sachs. A few more quotes below:

“Sachs essentially argues that a perfect storm is building in Africa: a confluence of the AIDS pandemic, extreme poverty, mass hunger, illiteracy and, he would say, potentially devastating climate change. Not tackling these problems now, he says, is penny-wise and pound-foolish, for the costs of salvaging the continent later are likely to be huge.”

“Spending money wisely now to forestall Africa's problems is both an economic and political no-brainer, even if one believes the continent's problems will never worsen. “

“Hunger, he says, is but one example: Across much of the continent - and certainly in Niger - rich nations have spent billions to rescue nations from famine but a tiny fraction of that to introduce modern farming practices that might make the continent self-sufficient. Malaria is another: Spending to prevent or eradicate the illness, while rising, is far below the economic cost of the sickness and death it leaves behind. AIDS, illiteracy - the list is long. “

Another recent hit in the media by Jeffrey Sachs is The Diary of Angelina Jolie (http://www.mtv.com/thinkmtv/features/global/diary/angelina_jolie/). Sachs and Jolie travel to a village in Kenya where Sachs shows Jolie first hand how small efforts, such as a $10 mosquito net, in the village are fundamentally changing life in that village forever.

“Spending two long days in Sauri, Sachs exposes Jolie to every corner of village life to reveal his vision for ending extreme poverty by 2015. In a small hut, he demonstrates how a simple $10.00 bed net keeps families safe from Malaria, a disease that kills over three million people every year. In an open field, Jolie learns how basic instruction in proper farming techniques and fertilizer use can produce enough food to keep villagers alive on land that has failed to yield sustainable crops for generations. And, in a moving sequence featuring the town's young people, Jolie discovers how free school lunches are giving children a reason to come to class and learn - and that one computer is connecting this tiny village to the rest of the world.”
]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:09:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29965 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29877
Even if in the end the Administration was going to go that route, how could it possibly be decided before any understanding of the extent of the situation or any review of the options and their repercussions was done??

Oh, yes, I remember now. Our Administration does not like to look at facts or reports or real numbers. They don’t affect them and their friends and power-elite buddies anyway. Who cares if the country is bankrupted for centuries. These people have their own accounts and investments. They will look after themselves. They don’t need a safety net.

They can afford private healthcare, will never need social security or welfare, will always have a ride out (be it car, plane, helicopter, yacht) in cases of impending disasters, and of course they can also stay at the holiday house, or ranch as the case may be. Interest rates going up, well that is probably a good thing, right, more interest income. No need to borrow in these households. You get my point.

Some current early estimates are putting a price tag on Katrina of about $200 billion. Bush is suggesting to fund this completely by debt or possibly with some more spending cuts. Remember, government is a bad thing we need to get rid of entirely. Yes, let’s further cut those frivolous entities like Medicare, HUD and FEMA.

The papers have put the interest price tag on this borrowing at $10 billion per year indefinitely. Your great- great-great grandkids will be saddled with this debt, all so that the wealthy and really, really wealthy of today can get their tax cuts.

Cutting taxes for the rich is an outrageous reason to pile up debt. “Since 2001, tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 a year, the top 3 percent of the income ladder, have accounted for about $330 billion. Republican leaders have now pledged to push ahead with more deficit-inducing tax cuts for the wealthy - costing up to $70 billion over five years. Their most cherished is an extension for two years of temporary low rates for dividends and capital gains, scheduled to expire in 2008. About half of those cuts would flow to people making more than $1 million a year. “ (NYT Editorial, September 19, 2005)

Do you think people making more than $1million a year need some help from the government at the expense of your children and their children, at the expense of the families who have lost everything in Katrina, at the expense of our brave soldiers risking their lives in Iraq without the proper equipment, at the expense of the poor and the lower income in our own country that cannot afford healthcare, at the expense of the billions of poverty stricken people the world over that will suffer as our aid budgets are cut?

Getting up and using words to say I am accountable is commendable but a far cry from truly being accountable or responsible. We can not let this happen. Please.
]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:50:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29877 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29853
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 14, 2005
Singapore

There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down.

That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.

Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior positions in the government, judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line.

From Singapore's early years, good governance mattered because the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds with the Communists, who were perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so the state had to be the same and more.

Even after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people built reserves of $100 billion.

"In the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it. But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. ... [So] the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree of accountability in Singapore."

When a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in April 2004 and four workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that top executives of the contracting company should be either fined or jailed.

The discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.

We let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health crisis of 40 million uninsured. Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in Iraq without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill.

Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?"

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ...[But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."
]]> Mon, 19 Sep 2005 08:33:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29853 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29768
The New York Times
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005

Let's face it: Most Americans wouldn't know a Millennium Development Goal, a Monterrey Consensus, or a Doha round if all three jumped out and hit them in the head. But those phrases have life-or-death importance to more than two billion people around the world who survive on barely anything. And at the United Nations on Wednesday, President George W. Bush used them in front of the world.

To understand this good news, here's a quick primer.

The Millennium Development Goals make up an ambitious agenda adopted by the United Nations in 2000. Chief among them is the goal of cutting global poverty in half by 2015 by tackling such problems as hunger, disease and women's inequality. The goals also include vague wording about how poor countries need to adopt good governance, and about how rich countries need to give them money.

As this week's UN summit meeting approached, Bush's flame-throwing UN envoy, John Bolton, struck all mention of the Millennium Development Goals from the text of the agreement the world leaders are supposed to sign. After saner heads prevailed, some of that language was restored, although the agreement remains weak. On Wednesday, Bush said it clearly: "We are committed to the Millennium Development Goals." Full stop.

That's important because the United States, the richest country on earth, is most able to help poor countries reach these goals.

That brings us to the Monterrey Consensus, named for the city in Mexico. (Diplomats like to name things after the city where they decided to do something.) In 2002, many members of the group meeting in New York this week trooped down to Monterrey to figure out how they were going to pay for the Millennium Development Goals. The text they signed said, "We urge developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts toward the target of 0.7 percent of gross national product as ODA [official development assistance] to developing countries."

Since then, Britain, France and Germany have all announced how they plan to do that by 2015. The United States, which was rated the world's second-stingiest rich country (behind Italy) by a UN report this month, gives just 0.18 percent of its GNP to poorer countries. And since Monterrey, Bush administration officials have taken pains to tell everyone that the United States didn't commit to the 0.7 percent goal. But it's right there in Paragraph 42 of the Monterrey Consensus. And Wednesday, Bush said, "I call on all the world's nations to implement the Monterrey Consensus." Including, we hope, America.

We end today's lesson with the Doha round, the trade negotiations begun in Doha, Qatar, in 2002. That was just after Sept. 11, 2001, when America and Europe, trying to woo poor countries to join the war against terrorism, finally agreed to start negotiating an end to farm subsidies. Those subsidies hurt farmers in poor countries because they keep the price of products artificially low, giving poor countries little chance on the world market. Since then, no one has cut anything, and the negotiations have degenerated into the usual bickering between Europe and America. Meanwhile, the poor keep starving.

On Wednesday, Bush declared: "The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same. This is key to overcoming poverty in the world's poorest nations."

These were exactly the right words, and we applaud them. Now, America, let's get to it. The world is waiting.

]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2005 01:12:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29768 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29740
Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one is the true joy in life. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege - my privilege - to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love.

I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

]]> Thu, 15 Sep 2005 04:18:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29740 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29739
I read in one of the many wonderful op-ed pieces in the IHT that Bush did not know there were people stranded in the Superdome until 4 days after Katrina hit. An aide walked into his room and handed him a memo and that is how he learned of this horrendous situation. This is a MASSIVE breakdown in communication. Forgot about advisors, do they not have television and the Internet in the West Wing?

And, what about the old adage of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Did the Administration and FEMA not know the hurricane was coming? Did they just not care? Did they just think that someone, perhaps the completely unqualified head of FEMA, was going to take care of things?

The Bush Administration has a history of not knowing about, not understanding, not heeding or simply not caring about important pieces of information. There was the report warning that Al Qaeda was likely to highjack planes to conduct a terrorist attack. There was a report indicating there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was the report warning about the quagmire/ terrorist breeding ground that would be created if we deposed Saddam. There are endless reports about Global Warming and human rights violations at our army bases and prisons. And, of course, there were reports high-lighting the potential for disaster if the New Orleans levees broke. Despite the report, millions were diverted from the levees in order to fund a war in Iraq that was waged based upon lies and deception of the American public.

Why is it often considered unpatriotic to ask questions about these issues? I think it is unpatriotic to NOT ask these questions.

We also must do more than just ask the hard questions regarding Bush and his decisions and actions. We must ask what we can do to get our troops home from Iraq. We must ask what we can do help the survivors of Katrina. We must ask what we can do get Bush and the power elite out of office.
]]> Thu, 15 Sep 2005 04:00:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29739 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29703
The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Forewarned that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means.
On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans had perished in New Orleans. Many people had “refused” to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain “stubborn.”

It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well for them.

It should be remembered that most of them had jobs before Katrina’s lethal visit. That’s what most poor people do in this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs, sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not because they’re lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on poverty wages while burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive taxes.

The free market played a role in other ways. Bush’s agenda is to cut government services to the bone and make people rely on the private sector for the things they might need. So he sliced $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system of pumping out water had to be shelved.

Army Corps of Engineer personnel had started work to build new levees several years ago but many of them were taken off such projects and sent to Iraq. In addition, the president cut $30 million in flood control appropriations.

Bush took to the airways (“Good Morning America” 1 September 2005) and said “I don’t think anyone anticipated that breach of the levees.” Just another untruth tumbling from his lips. The catastrophic flooding of New Orleans had been foreseen by storm experts, engineers, Louisiana journalists and state officials, and even some federal agencies. All sorts of people had been predicting disaster for years, pointing to the danger of rising water levels and the need to strengthen the levees and pumps, and fortify the entire coastland.

In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of wetlands. Again, that old invisible hand of the free market would take care of things. The developers, pursuing their own private profit, would devise outcomes that would benefit us all.

But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and barrier between New Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. And for some years now, the wetlands have been disappearing at a frightening pace on the Gulf‘ coast. All this was of no concern to the reactionaries in the White House.
As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private charity. It was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that “private charity can do the job.” And for the first few days that indeed seemed to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went into action.

By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense failure of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief had not arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the looting than with rescuing people, more concerned with “crowd control,” which consisted of corralling thousands into barren open lots devoid of decent shelter, and not allowing them to leave.

Questions arose that the free market seem incapable of answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it take helicopters five hours to lift six people out of one hospital? When would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks? the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water?

And where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the $33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005?

By Day Four, almost all the major media were reporting that the federal government’s response was “a national disgrace.” Meanwhile George Bush finally made his photo-op appearance in a few well-chosen disaster areas---before romping off to play golf.

In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany, Venezuela, and several other nations. America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a most deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for another punch in the nose? Were the Cubans up to their old subversive tricks?

I recently heard someone complain, “Bush is trying to save the world when he can’t even take care of his own people here at home.” Not quite true. He certainly does take very good care of his own people, that tiny fraction of one percent, the superrich. It’s just that the working people of New Orleans do not number among them.
]]> Tue, 13 Sep 2005 21:37:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29703 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29648
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all
6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

Now consider the following:

If you woke up this morning more healthy than ill... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death ... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep ... you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy

]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2005 03:11:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29648 http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29645
There has been mind-blowing ineptitude in the emergency planning and response efforts. We are still a very long way from a remotely adequate response to this situation. People are still homeless, hot, hungry, jobless and worried about friends and family and we have a looming environmental disaster.

There were many heroes as well, although I have not seen many of them being heralded. People should be able to point out that something went incredibly wrong without being accused of playing politics or a blame game. The fact that we are completely over-stretched by supporting another huge disaster, the Iraq War, is part of the problem. The fact that we are dealing with a government that is under-funded due to ridiculous tax breaks for the wealthy is another part. And we are also dealing with a government that is far more interest in public relations campaigns and keeping its core constituency and friends and family happy and employed than actually governing the country. Their campaign has largely been based in creating fear among Americans and then claiming they are the people best able to protect America. This claim was either a lie and they actually did not give a damn about protecting Americans outside of their circle or their best was not nearly good enough.

I have cried every day this week reading articles about the senseless misery resulting from Katrina. Of course, I do this all the time as there is no shorter of senseless misery in the world. Can you, you personally and not some unnamed person on the TV, imagine watching people being murdered or committing suicide and having to live with dead bodies around you? Can you imagine your children watching this? Can you imagine watching your own baby die of heat exhaustion? This is not in a developing, poverty stricken, or war-torn country. This is not during the immediate deluge of the hurricane. THESE THINGS HAPPENED DAYS AFTER THE DISASTER IN A SHELTER IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

We need change. We need a government that is by, for and of the people. We do not need a government that is owned by big money and big business. We do not need a government that is owned by the energy companies. I was amazed when I read that in Bush’s two elections, oil and gas companies gave Republicans 79 percent of their $61.5 million campaign contributions. (Derrick Z. Jackson, IHT, September 3-4, 2005). My first thought was that this helps to explain why America appears to have its head deep in the sand on issues like energy conservation, renewable energy sources and global warming.

I do not profess to know everything or even nearly everything. I think that is part of the problem. We do not have all the answers or even all the questions so we sit rather than crying out for it to stop. I do not have much time to learn about all the issues and all the endless factors that are involved in making foreign and national policy. It was though obvious to me that, even before Katrina, things were horribly off-course in America. In just about every way you would care to measure, I felt we were heading in the wrong direction. The huge losses of human life (American and foreign) in Iraq and the financial and psychological impact it was having on Americans was not even of enough concern for Bush to call short his month long holiday, or even pretend that he was concerned, when angry citizens cared enough to start camping out near his ranch.

I hope the scenes from the past weeks are the tipping point.

We must ensure that the tax cuts for the very wealthy do not get renewed again. The Bush Administration is intent on dramatically cutting the federal government. This is the government that we rely on for environmental protection, education, healthcare, safety nets, and programs to address urban poverty. This is also the government we rely on for Homeland Security, The FEMA and the National Guard. To make matters worse, the money he saves on so-called big government he is giving back to wealthiest and most powerful in the form of tax cuts and credits.

We must inform people at the grass-roots level. Talk to your friends, family, and colleagues. Demand action from your local representatives. Make the mainstream media cover the real issues. We are a wealthy, peaceful, modern, free democracy. We have a huge percentage of the world’s wealth. Yet, we are not even able to take care of our own - let alone make substantial contributions to combat poverty, disease, war and environmental destruction abroad.

Tonight as I put my beautiful, happy, innocent children to bed, I will once again remember to be thankful for the life I am able to give them. I will vow to try to do things, even small little things, to make the world a better place for them. Even small, seemingly little things can make the world a better place for those children whose mothers and fathers are not able to promise them a safe, clean, war free, carefree life.

I will also hope that there are other people out there making the same vow. Together we do actually make a difference.
]]> Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:32:00 EDT http://ewalpole.tigblog.org/post/29645