Upon hearing the sad news that the visionary jazz saxophonist and flutist Sam Rivers died just after Christmas at the age of 88, I started scrounging for the notes I’d taken at a special guest appearance he made with pianist Jason Moran on October 4, 2001. It took a while to sift through the scribbling, but the exercise led me to a short piece I wrote about the experience. That is took place at Walker Art Center, a modern art museum in Minneapolis, was particularly fitting, since the composer and bandleader will forever be remembered for his abstract expressions. Here are a few graphs from the review, which originally ran in Jazziz magazine: 

This much anticipated, one-night, one-time only gig was inspired by Moran’s third solo effort for Blue Note records, Black Stars, which features Nasheet Waits, bassist Tarus Mateen [Scott Colley played bass in Minneapolis], and Rivers on tenor, soprano, and flute. Like the CD, the 90-minutes set was an often stormy, sometimes sun-drenched, but always soulful journey to the sharp corners that define the outskirts of modern jazz. Unlike the studio summit, which showcases Moran’s promise as writer and River’s concision (which, like the hole of his career, is criminally underappreciated), the Walker performance bore a palpable urgency, a hang-it-all-out-there vibe characterized by telepathic teamwork and fearless individualism. In fact, after listening to Black Stars, I thought Rivers, who pushed Blue Note toward the avant-garde in the ’60s and fueled the New York loft scene in the ’70s, might have been holding back a little on the recording. I even wondered if it was Moran, not Rivers, who should’ve been billed as a special guest.

After watching the two of them onstage, though, there is no question that the pairing was not a commercial conceit, but a marriage of like-minded artists. Like Rivers, Moran uses the full range of his instrument, belies scholarly pretension, and manages to be as musical as he is adventurous.

Ultimately, though, it was Rivers, pushing himself physically, pulling at the edge of time-tested tunes such as his own “Inspiration” and “Unity,” who left the most stirring impression. Just ask Waits, who sat behind his kit, perpetually grinning in disbelief as Rivers played off his every snap, crackle, and pop. (Waits himself was an unexpected treat, working his equipment’s limitations with a harmonic sensibility rare among young drummers.) On soprano, Rivers conjured visions of Coltrane, searching for spiritual release. On flute, he was cat-like, skipping and scatting seamlessly above the fray. And on tenor, he jump-roped from register to register so quickly, so smoothly, that his most experimental wanderings seemed downright lyrical.

“It’s the guy’s integrity,” Moran told the crowd. “That’s what you want to emulate. He’s just so upfront and direct with everything he does.”

During the show’s high mark, a delicate duet featuring the veteran and the young lion, the two swayed gently, as if they had played together for years—as if they knew they may never share the stage again. Titled “For Peace,” the song paid tribute to a friend of Moran’s who was killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. If you closed your eyes and let your imagination ride along, you could envision a world so beautiful, so harmonious, that such violence truly would be unthinkable.

Shout outs to photographer Mike Dvorak, who covered the show with me that night, and NPR’s A Blog Supreme, which recently posted a link to an exhaustive Rivers discography.

Image by Tom Marcello , licensed under Creative Commons  

Given Barack Obama’s anemic approval ratings and the republican's underwhelming roster of presidential hopefuls (who, thankfully, will not be seen in another gang bang until 2012), it’s somewhat surprising that there hasn’t been more talk of a third-party movement in the mainstream media. Especially since, the horse race coverage notwithstanding, Mitt Romney has already purchased his party’s nomination, which is sure to leave a large percentage of conservatives disillusioned—again.

According to a piece written by Alec MacGillis for The New Republic, however, the D.C.-based political organization, Americans Elect is set “to hold an online convention to nominate a bipartisan ticket for president and vice president” next summer. And, the author opines, those who would scoff at the idea of a viable alternative to the two-party solution—especially Obama loyalists—do so at their peril.

Americans Elect, which has already raised tens of million of dollars and has a tony list of supporters, have gathered more than half the signatures needed to make next November’s ballot in all 50 states. And while the group is quick to criticize calcified hardliners on both sides of the aisle, they are particularly critical of the sitting president.

“Democrats suspect that Americans Elect, with its self-described appeal to the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ part of the spectrum, will pull more votes from Obama than from the GOP nominee,” MacGillis reports. “And they can hardly be reassured by the anti-Obama pedigree of some of those behind Americans Elect, including pollster Douglas Schoen, a so-called ‘Fox News Democrat,’ and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who famously dismissed Obama as an ‘elitist’ after the 2008 primaries.”

Source: The New Republic 

Image by Warrenski , licensed under Creative Commons  

As I write this, the FBI has yet to confirm that Abdisalan Hussein Ali, a 22 year-old man born in Somalia and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was one of two suicide bombers who killed at least 10 people in Mogadishu on October 29. According to a piece in the New York Times  published a day later and an update posted by Minneapolis Star Tribune  reporter Allie Shah the morning of November 1, however, circumstantial evidence is mounting to suggest a connection between Abdisalan Hussein and the bombing, which is linked to Somalia’s Shabab rebels.

Regardless how the story turns out (the FBI says it will have DNA tests completed insude two weeks), Abdisalan Hussein did disappear in 2008 and, according to the Times, was “known by the F.B.I. to be one of an estimated 30 Americans who have joined the Shabab, at least 20 of whom came from the Somali community in Minneapolis.” What’s more, Allie Shah reports, “to date, the FBI has confirmed that two suicide bombers in Somalia came from Minnesota,” which has the largest Somali population in the U.S. (over 60,000 according to the latest estimates).

The first of those bombers, Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis, drove an SUV packed with explosives into an intelligence office in Bossaso, a port city in the Somali state of Puntland, killing at least five people in October, 2008. Believed by the FBI to be the first U.S. citizen to carry out a suicide bombing on foreign soil, Shirwa Ahmed is the subject of a must-read story from Virginia Quarterly Review, which is excerpted in the May-June 2010 issue of Utne Reader.

Author Nicholas Shmidle tracks Shirwa Ahmed’s tragic trajectory from refugee to Minnesota high school student to terrorist recruit and, in the process, helps the reader understand the challenges and temptations that face Somali-born men struggling both to assimilate and stay connected to their war torn homeland. (As the Times points out, “many Somali-Americans have returned, not to fight, but to help rebuild the country, including the current prime minister and his predecessor.”)

“Paul Gill, a lecturer and terrorism expert a that University College in Dublin, believes that group psychology oftentimes provides a better template for understanding terrorism recruitment than religion does,” Shmidle writes. “When it comes to suicide bombers, ‘the group becomes the primary source of sustenance. It becomes more about group in-love than about hating America or hating the West,’ Gill told me. ‘It’s much like joining the marines or becoming a member of a football club: It’s hard to back out once you’re in.’ ”

Image by ExpertInfantry.com , licensed under Creative Commons  

Here’s an image worth posting on Facebook, putting on a t-shirt, or sticking on a bumper.

“Free as a Man,” created by Serbian artist Predrag Stakic, is the winner of an online competition conducted by the Human Rights Logo Initiative, which is on a mission to make the design an internationally recognized symbol for human rights.

An initial call for entries went out in May and kicked-up 15,000 submissions from more than 190 countries. After a healthy period for public comment, a jury made up of 36 designers, human rights advocates, and concerned politicians from around the world chose 10 finalists.

Because the aim of the initiative—which was supported by a host of supporters and partners, including Google, Typo London, and Cinema for Peace—was to create an image “by people for people,” the logo is an open source product, free for use without restrictions.

In an essay published by The Nation magazine on September 19, journalist and pacifist Colman McCarthy reports that in 1970 only one American college offered a degree in peace studies, but that now, according to the Peace and Justice Studies Association, there are more than 500 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs available on U.S. campuses. “Nationally, the peace education movement is growing—some say surging—because of the continued failure of military solutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the belief that alternatives to violence do exist,” McCarthy reports.

A regular columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, McCarthy co-founded the Washington D.C.-based Center for Teaching Peace with his wife in 1985 and, by his own estimation, has taught more than 8,000 students to examine their choices regarding violent reaction versus nonviolent response. “Instead of asking questions, be bolder and question the answers,” he writes. “What answers? . . . Those that say that if we kill enough people, drop enough bombs, jail enough dissenters, torture enough prisoners, keep fighting fire with fire and not with water, we’ll have peace forever.”

While the good news regarding the growth of diplomatic scholarship is both welcome and encouraging, what makes “Teaching Peace” especially compelling is McCarthy’s ongoing struggle to make the subject not just a collegiate elective, but part of the core curriculum in secondary education; a move too many public school boards still view as somehow subversive and private schools dismiss as academically insubstantial (read: unnecessary in the pursuit of Ivy).

“I’ve been accused of teaching a one-sided course,” McCarthy writes. “Perhaps, except that my course is the other side, the one that students aren’t getting in conventional history or political science courses, which present violent, militaristic solutions as rational and necessary.”

As partisan activists have proved again and again over the past 20 years, lasting political movements begin and end on the local level. McCarthy’s tale is a reminder that citizens who wish for a more peaceful future should take the fight to their neighborhood’s next school board meeting.

Source: The Nation 

Image by crazebabe21, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Back in the good ol’ days, when a nuclear family could leave its bomb shelter unlocked at night, America had soft power to burn. The country’s cultural ambassadors and renegade auteurs outgunned the taciturn commies, whose idea of a party still involved military bands and Lenin t-shirts. When the Cold War finally ended, MTV’s Kurt Loder was a global menace and punk rock was still armed and dangerous.

As Shikha Dalmia writes in Reason, the magazine of free minds and free markets, today’s young Muslims are not nearly as susceptible to the calculated chaos of Western pop culture as yesterday’s youth of the East Bloc. “While hip hop and heavy metal have helped inspire some of the street protesters demanding more freedoms across the Middle East and northern Africa,” Dalmia observes, “outside of the hardcore early adopters these cultural subgenres remain more voyeuristic than aspirational.”

This is no small thing, especially since the West’s use of hard power over the past decade—troops in Iraq, drone attacks in Afghanistan—has, in most cases, served to both weaken its reputation and further strengthen religious fanatics, who need a devil to blame for their hateful rhetoric and murderous behavior.

There is hope on the cultural horizon, however. And, no, Lady Gaga will not have to suit up for battle. India’s film industry is the free world’s new shining star—all kitsched-up, scantily clad, and subversively cool. “Islamic fundamentalists have long worried about the threat that Bollywood poses to their puritanical demands,” writes Dalmia, who is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. “They have ample reason to be worried: About 3 billion people, or half the planet, watches Bollywood, and many of them live in the Islamic world. By depicting assimilated, modernized Muslims, Bollywood—without even trying—deromanticizes and thereby disarms fanatical Islam.”

Like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the powers that be in Pakistan, “India’s cultural twin in every respect but religion,” have tried to censor Bollywood and demonize its romantic heroes and heroines, who often fall in love outside of marriages already arranged, battle to mediate modernity and tradition, and navigate a Technicolor world free from conservative dress and outdated moral codes.

“Even as Pakistan’s resistance to America’s drones and raids has grown, its resistance to Bollywood’s soft power has crumbled,” Dalmia concludes. “The extremists who find sympathetic audiences when directing fire and brimstone toward the Great Satan are powerless to prevent Pakistanis form consuming Bollywood blasphemies.”

Source: Reason 

Given the corruption that crashed the American economy (again), and the current administration’s unwillingness to seriously address class issues or corporate greed, it’s hard to find fault with Occupy Wall Street.

The “leaderless resistance movement,” which started in New York City on September 17 and continues to attract protesters to Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, is viewed by many, including Noam Chomsky, as courageous and honorable.

“Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street—financial institutions generally—has caused severe damage to the people of the United States and the world. And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power,” Chomsky says. “[The protests] should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.”

On the Washington Post’s editorial page, staffer James Downie concludes that “as long as the sluggish economy continues to hit Americans—and especially young Americans—hard, expect more and bigger demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street—unfocused, sometimes excessive, but fundamentally justifiable.”

Not everyone who agrees with the protesters’ principles is impressed, however. In an essay posted on Ted Rall’s website on September 26, the political cartoonist, commentator, and author says that “for me and other older, jaded veterans of leftist struggle, [Occupy Wall Street’s] failure was a foregone conclusion”—and that “yet another opportunity to agitate for real change was being wasted by well-meant wankers.”

This is not to say Rall doesn’t believe in the cause. The author of Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back from the Right, acknowledges in the first sentence of his critique that Occupy Wall Street “is and was important.” If only because it represents the first major repudiation of the Obama administration by the American left. But, he argues, good intentions are not enough, especially when the stakes are so high.

“Michael Moore complained about insufficient media coverage, but this non-movement movement was doomed before it began by its refusal to coalesce around a powerful message, its failure to organize and involve the actual victims of Wall Street’s perfidy (people of color, the poor, the evicted, the unemployed, those sick from pollution, etc.), and its refusal to argue and appeal on behalf of a beleaguered working class against an arrogant, violent and unaccountable ruling elite—in other words, to settle for nothing less than the eradication of capitalism.”

Rall desperately wants the protesters to be better organized, and points out that a number of those who did get interviewed by the mainstream media lacked a central message and the ability to articulately unpack key issues. To hammer home his point, he implores the kids in the park to “lose the clown clothes.”

“It’s not the early 1960s; you don’t have to wear a suit like the civil rights marchers did,” he writes. “But how about showing up on national TV looking decent, like it’s Casual Friday?”

Rall is a provocateur, and a few progressives have already taken him to task both for his hyperbolic prose and for his failure to support the troops. Fair enough. There’s a lot to chew on in this tirade, however, and when everyone goes back to their lives and Wall Street continues its run toward ruin, it demands a dispassionate revisitation.

Sources: Occupy Wall Street, Ted Rall, Washington Post 

Image by Carwil, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Paul Chappell still lives by the examples his Korean American mother set when he was growing up in Alabama: “Don’t talk too much; be stoic; be calm; be respectful; be on time; don’t gossip; keep your word; fulfill your promises; dress conservatively.” The 31 year-old West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran is neither soft-spoken nor passive when it comes to his decidedly progressive convictions, however.

A peace activist and author of two books, including The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our Planet and Our Future, Chappell now lives by the words of civil rights leader James Lawson, who said that the “difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training, strategizing, planning, and recruiting.” And, having seen combat up close and personal, he believes that that a world without war is not only possible, but that “what’s naïve is to think that wars can continue and humanity will survive.”

In a wide-ranging interview posted online earlier this year by KoreAm—a monthly magazine that covers and analyzes the news, culture, and “people of Korean America”—Chappell engages on a wide-variety of subjects: The racial challenges of his childhood (his father is white-and-African American); the seeds of terrorism, which grow in the soil of hopelessness; and the strategic importance of seeing things through the eyes of both your opponents and those you hope to persuade.

In a particularly thought-provoking segment of the conversation, Chappell compares war to slavery, both flawed institutions based on inaccurate assumptions and opportunistic lies.

“Today, many of us believe that human beings are naturally violent, so war is inevitable,” he tells interviewer Leslee Goodman. “Look at who benefits from that myth. If human beings are naturally violent, politicians can’t be held responsible for making war; they’re just trying to protect us from the violent people all over the planet. Weapons makers can’t be held responsible; they’re just trying to help us defend ourselves. But in truth humans aren’t naturally violent, so we’re all responsible. War is a choice. General Omar Bradley, a veteran of World War II, said, ‘Wars can be prevented just as surely as they are provoked, and we who fail to prevent them share in guilt for the dead.’”

Source: KoreAm  

Image by dewwww, licensed under Creative Commons.  

As we were reminded ad nauseam on every media platform for a week, the mass murders committed on 9/11 continue to have an incalculable impact on foreign relations, world economics, and the broader culture. It’s a certainty the same will be true for decades to come. And while you may feel as though the event and aftermath has been covered from every conceivable angle (including pieces on how the attacks affected professional athletics and may have led to America’s latest recession), a just released, essential collection of essays go beyond the strained headlines and over-boiled melodrama.

The book, Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World (University of California Press), functions neither as a political autopsy nor an emotional anthology. Instead, it examines the tragedy from a philosophical distance that, while far from dispassionate, forces readers to consider the unintentional causes and subconscious effects of violence, both individual and collective.

The eight chapters, written by over 100 visionary thinkers who span generations and transcend borders ethnic (Federico García Lorca, Reza Baraheni), religious (Deepak Chopra, Rabbi Arthur Waskow), and political (Chris Hedges, Henry Kissinger), are strategically broken into two parts. The first takes a “Deeper Look” at the origins of fear and consequences of grief while convincingly establishing the editors’ broad definition of terrorism, which includes acts of aggression against any unarmed civilian, no matter the perpetrator. The ruminations in the second section, “Paths to Transformation,” demand unedited honesty, empathy for all, and raw self-reflection, all essential in the quest of equal peace and meaningful justice.

Given last week’s media blitz, no one could be blamed for wanting to take a deep breath and little down time before diving into such a collection. Keep it on your reading list, though, as the latest anniversary fades and the popular narrative around 9/11 further simplifies the complicated causes and horrific effects. Both historical distillation and timeless psychological treatise, Transforming Terror rivets and moves because it dares to recognize 9/11 not just as a painful tragedy, but an unwelcome opportunity.

Image by Bennett 4 Senate, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Regardless of the author, political “tell alls” rarely tell readers anything they didn’t already know or firmly believe, except that the self-proclaimed hero or heroine of the tale is even more brilliant, arrogant, genuine, superficial, or petty than we dared dream. And given what I can only imagine lurks in the bionic heart of former Vice President’s Dick Cheney, I’m not making plans to curl up with his new book, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, over the Labor Day weekend.

I have found one reason to be excited by the VP’s 576-page curtain call, though. The international human rights organization Amnesty International is shrewdly taking advantage of the momentary media buzz around the book’s release to remind people of the lies that Cheney, his boss, and their loyalists told and continue to tell to justify “institutionalized torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances”—all immoral and indefensible violations of the Geneva Conventions and the United States Constitution.

“Amnesty International is reiterating its call to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. custody,” Tom Parker, policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights for Amnesty International U.S.A., said in a press release on August 25.

On August 30, supporters of the organization showed up to protest Cheney’s appearance on NBC’s Today Show, and their signs calling for accountability were caught on camera. That afternoon, Amnesty members delivered a copy of Cheney's memoir to a spokesperson at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., along with a personal letter to Holder demanding that his office look into crimes committed during the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror.”

Amnesty also launched Cheney’s Conscience, a parody account on Twitter that it hopes users will read and repost in an effort to remind people of the vice president’s actions in and out of office.

I’m still unsure why President Obama decided against pursuing his predecessors in the courts. A good case could be made that he simply wanted to keep his options open and continues to allow, if not encourage, torture and rendition off the grid. A more generous interpretation is that he didn’t want to get mired in a highly polarizing political fight. Either way, it’s a good guess he assumed Bush and Co. would show some gratitude and stay silent on the issue. Cheney, in particular, has chosen to do just the opposite. If there’s any justice, his braggadocio and the inventive work of organizations like Amnesty International will cause the Obama administration to reconsider its passivity.

Image courtesy of Amnesty International . 

I’m not sure whether or not beauty pageant contestants wish for world peace these days, but lately the very idea, like Miss America herself, seems both antiquated and absurd. Including the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are 18 wars being waged at this very moment. And given America’s open-ended “war on terror,” the racial climate in Europe, the economic strife in Africa, and the globe’s seemingly endless supply of stubborn dictators, you couldn’t blame a person for concluding that things are going to get a lot worse. In fact, it’s easy to write-off anyone who dares to question the prevailing doom-and-gloom as a bleary-eyed idealist.

In a Foreign Policy piece that even the most cynical of realists will find hard to blithely dismiss, however, Joshua Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at American University, concludes that “President Barack Obama was telling the truth in June when he said, ‘The tide of war is receding.’ ” And Goldstein, who authored Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide, has the data to back up his optimism.

“The last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers . . . of the Peace Research Institute Oslo,” Goldstein points out.

Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.

Goldstein’s overall argument—that the end of war is “downright thinkable”—is structured around what he sees as a related series of commonly held misconceptions: war has gotten more brutal for civilians; wars will get worse in the future; a more democratic world will be a more peaceful one; peacekeeping doesn’t work; and some conflicts will never end. In each of these sections he artfully combines historical comparisons, recent data, and analysis to either counter the stated assertion or, at the very least, encourage a reassessment.

At times, Goldstein conflates his data or becomes almost too mathematical, forgetting to factor in the subtleties of human behavior and the vagaries of fate. But for the most part, he forces the reader to rethink current history and question the chaotic narrative that distorts our expectations.

Source: Foreign Policy 

Image by Jayel Aheram, licensed under Creative Commons. 

We live in a country where a stunning number of TV meteorologists still aggressively deny the existence of climate change, so I couldn’t help but be both surprised and a bit encouraged by the results of a national poll conducted last November. It seems that Republicans who dare to take a “green position” on climate—which essentially means admitting that something needs to be done to keep the earth’s temperature from rising—could end up wooing undecided voters without alienating their core constituency.

According to The Daily Climate, Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment called 1,000 randomly selected participants and asked them to evaluate a hypothetical Senate candidate based on a number of issues and found that “taking a green position on climate won votes . . . and taking a not-green position [which includes sticking with coal and oil as the nation’s dominant energy sources] lost votes.”

Based on a detailed breakdown of the data, researchers concluded that while Democrats could strengthen their base by focusing on climate, Republicans hoping to woo Independents and disappointed Dems had more to gain at the moment, especially if their opponents stay silent on the subject. “On taxes and the economy, the Republicans are singing one note,” Bruce Cain, professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Daily Climate. “The only way to win is by shining the light on the differences.”

This analysis squares with the findings of another Stanford poll released a year ago, which found that “three out of four Americans believe that ‘the Earth has been gradually warming due primarily or at least partly as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it.’ ”

Whether or not taking a pro-green position on the stump would actually result in actual legislation after the polls close is another question altogether, of course, but it will be interesting to see if data like this changes the conversational climate come primary time.

Source: The Daily Climate 

Image by paul nine-o, licensed under Creative Commons. 

The assumption that human beings are inherently selfish—interested in the greater good only when it serves their own interests—has long-influenced capitalism’s most prominent thinkers (Adam Smith, Alan Greenspan, Gordon Gekko) and served as a litmus test for modern America’s so-called political realists. Employees are best motivated with bags of carrots and a big stick. Without law there is no order, and without the threat of punishment there is no law. We’re all out for number one. Greed is good. Dogs eat dogs.

Just turn on the news anytime of the day or night. The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming.

A compelling counter-narrative is emerging, however. In the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, Yochai Benkler points to “recent research in evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, political science, and experimental economics [that suggests] people behave far less selfishly than most assume.”

“Evolutionary biologists and psychologists have even found neural and, possibly, genetic evidence of a human predisposition to cooperate,” he writes.

In the piece, “The Unselfish Gene,” Benkler, a Harvard law professor and author of The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest (Crown Business, 2011), aims to reach executives and managers who he believes must abandon traditional motivational strategies in favor of techniques that “rely on engagement, communication, and a sense of common purpose and identity.” Along the way, though, he points to scientific discoveries and psychological theories that will engage any reader who pines for collective solutions to common problems.

In one cited experiment revolving around cooperative behavior, for example, a majority of subjects consistently behaved cooperatively (some when treated reciprocally, others even when it came at a personal cost).  In another revealing set of studies, participants showed that traditional incentives, such as monetary awards and the threat of punishment, actually hampered productivity and discouraged engagement. This can be explained in part by neuroscience that shows that cooperation, when chosen freely, simply makes people feel good.

“No, we are not all Mother Teresa; if we were, we wouldn’t have heard of her,” Benkler says. “However, a majority of human beings are more willing to be cooperative, trustworthy, and generous than the dominant model has permitted us to assume. If we recognize that, we can build efficient systems by relying on our better selves rather than optimizing our worst. We can do better.”

Source: Harvard Business Review 

Image by lumaxart, licensed under Creative Commons. 

In an essay disguised as a long-form book review, writer Mark Schmitt delivers a decidedly progressive but even-handed evaluation of the current administration that culminates with a refreshingly pragmatic take on President Obama’s pragmatic political philosophy.

Published in the July-August issue of Boston Review, “All About Obama: A President Without an Ideology” should be required reading for progressives who, in the midst of an intensely polarized period of American history, initially mischaracterized the Democratic nominee as a rabble-rousing leftist, and have since compounded the mistake by labeling him as a weak-kneed sellout. Schmitt’s analysis should also be assigned to the president’s apologists, who too quickly dismiss or ignore his failings—the most egregious and disappointing being the continuation of the Bush administration’s abuse of civil liberties, foreign and domestic.

Schmitt first establishes that, thanks to a series of bureaucratic reforms, such as the strengthening of the Environmental Protection Agency, and social progress, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Obama will doubtless receive a kinder historical treatment than either Clinton or Carter. But his lasting legacy will be no more transformational, especially if health care reform fails to survive the shifting political winds, which is not just possible, but increasingly probable. After all, Obama is ultimately a mainstream politician, or, as pseudo-revolutionaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann like to say, a Washington insider.

While this analysis is beautifully written and expertly argued, it is not unfamiliar. What’s refreshing is that Schmitt doesn’t single out the administration for scorn. In fact, in many ways, despite the somewhat misleading tone of the headline, the essay comes to the president’s defense, in no small part because of the political, economic, and legislative barriers he inherited—including a friendly Congress that became decidedly uncooperative and impotent in a matter of months. Without letting Obama off the hook, the author holds a number of actors accountable, including the right-wing and mainstream media (often one and the same), and those citizens who voted for the Illinois senator and then assumed their work here was done.

As Schmitt reminds us, and as Utne Reader discussed prior to the 2008 elections, the president is not a superhero. He cannot single-handedly break the chains of reality or behave radically without expecting a radical response from an enemy. He must have a fan base capable of delivering tough criticism, but willing to do a lot of legwork and heavy lifting long after the polls have closed and the nasty, grinding task of governing in a representative democracy begins.

“Obama, therefore, has the challenge of building a more coherent ideological vision (as he did in his April 13 speech on the budget), or resorting to small-p pragmatism, just trying to get reelected and get some things done,” Schmitt concludes. “If he is to take the first path, though, it falls on liberals to help build the pyramid of ideas and organizations on which he and future presidents can stand. It can’t be all about him.”

Source: Boston Review 

In an essay disguised as a long-form book review, writer Mark Schmitt delivers a decidedly progressive but even-handed evaluation of the current administration that culminates with a refreshingly pragmatic take on President Obama’s pragmatic political philosophy.

Published in the July-August issue of Boston Review, “All About Obama: A President Without an Ideology” should be required reading for progressives who, in the midst of an intensely polarized period of American history, initially mischaracterized the Democratic nominee as a rabble-rousing leftist, and have since compounded the mistake by labeling him as a weak-kneed sellout. Schmitt’s analysis should also be assigned to the president’s apologists, who too quickly dismiss or ignore his failings—the most egregious and disappointing being the continuation of the Bush administration’s abuse of civil liberties, foreign and domestic.

Schmitt first establishes that, thanks to a series of bureaucratic reforms, such as the strengthening of the Environmental Protection Agency, and social progress, including the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Obama will doubtless receive a kinder historical treatment than either Clinton or Carter. But his lasting legacy will be no more transformational, especially if health care reform fails to survive the shifting political winds, which is not just possible, but increasingly probable. After all, Obama is ultimately a mainstream politician, or, as pseudo-revolutionaries like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann like to say, a Washington insider.

While this analysis is beautifully written and expertly argued, it is not unfamiliar. What’s refreshing is that Schmitt doesn’t single out the administration for scorn. In fact, in many ways, despite the somewhat misleading tone of the headline, the essay comes to the president’s defense, in no small part because of the political, economic, and legislative barriers he inherited—including a friendly Congress that became decidedly uncooperative and impotent in a matter of months. Without letting Obama off the hook, the author holds a number of actors accountable, including the right-wing and mainstream media (often one and the same), and those citizens who voted for the Illinois senator and then assumed their work here was done.

As Schmitt reminds us, and as Utne Reader discussed prior to the 2008 elections, the president is not a superhero. He cannot single-handedly break the chains of reality or behave radically without expecting a radical response from an enemy. He must have a fan base capable of delivering tough criticism, but willing to do a lot of legwork and heavy lifting long after the polls have closed and the nasty, grinding task of governing in a representative democracy begins.

“Obama, therefore, has the challenge of building a more coherent ideological vision (as he did in his April 13 speech on the budget), or resorting to small-p pragmatism, just trying to get reelected and get some things done,” Schmitt concludes. “If he is to take the first path, though, it falls on liberals to help build the pyramid of ideas and organizations on which he and future presidents can stand. It can’t be all about him.”

Source: Boston Review 

Save for the country’s top executives, almost everyone working in American business is doing more with less. So when serious journalists—an inherently cynical lot in the first place—grumble publicly about budget cuts, story quotas, and the pressure to blog or tweet, it makes sense that people outside of the industry aren’t moved to sympathy. Not only that, but we are bombarded with so much information online, in print, and over the airwaves, that it sometimes feels as though the world would keep spinning if, in a worst-case scenario, a few reporters had to find another way to make a living.

The problem is, more and more journalists and college graduates are forgoing the trenches to pursue a different career path. Instead of reporting the news, they’re working to help manipulate it as public relations specialists. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in fact, in 1980 there were .45 PR people and .36 journalists per every 100,000 workers. As of 2008, that number had shifted radically. There are now .90 PR people per 100,000 workers and just .25 journalists. As Columbia Journalism Review reports in its May-June 2011 issue, that’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped and better financed to influence what the public sees and hears.

“I don’t know anyone who can look at that calculus and see a very good outcome,” communications professor Robert McChesney, who recently co-authored The Death and Life of America Journalism, tells the bimonthly magazine. “What we are seeing now is the demise of journalism at the same time we have an increasing level of public relations and propaganda. . . . We are entering a zone that has never been seen before in the country.”

“True Enough: The Second Age of PR,” written by former New York Time reporter John Sullivan and copublished with ProPublica, explores the ways that corporations, the government, and other well-funded entities are able to influence news coverage, especially as fewer journalists have less time to report deeply on fast-moving stories. For instance, Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, tells Sullivan that in order to compete with their peers, editors and publishers put an even higher premium “on time, on speed, on getting the first bit of information up quickly. Often that first bit of information is coming from government agencies or public relations.” What’s more disconcerting is that even when reporters eventually do go back and flesh out a story, it’s the initial headline that’s quickest to spread and leave the most lasting impression.

Public relations agencies have also become adept at getting news outlets to treat corporate representatives and other sources with a clear agenda to act as sources. For precedent, just consider the number of former military personnel, many of them working for think tanks or weapons-making companies, who are tapped to opine about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Not only are they biased, but viewers perceived them to be more credible, since they are now independent of the government and media.

So, whether or not you feel sorry for those ink-stained wretches at your local paper, consider this: “Journalism,” CJR opines, “the counterweight to corporate and government PR, is shrinking.” 

Source: Columbia Journalism Review 

Image byfreddthompson, licensed under Creative Commons 

One of the Seventies’ most celebrated auteurs, the enigmatic Terrence Malick is notorious for his stingy filmography. Until now, and since releasing Badlands in 1973, a contemplative meditation on obsessive love and true crime, the director has only made three other films: the visually stunning Days of Heaven in 1978; 1998’s The Thin Red Line, still the most poetic treatment of the psychological casualties of modern warfare; and, just three years ago, The New World, a lush, painstaking examination of explorer John Smith. Which is why the relatively quick arrival of Tree of Life, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, not only comes as a pleasant surprise, but makes one wonder if the 67-year-old director senses that time knows no respect for a slow-moving muse. News that his next project is set to begin production in 2012 only fuels that hope.

Regardless, Malick’s latest is his most ambitious and emotionally rewarding. A hypnotic treatise on the spiritual tension that springs from our physical and philosophical interactions with creation, Tree of Life requires audiences to not only engage on an intellectual level rarely evoked in the modern cineplex, but its languorous pace and dreamy aesthetic both encourages and allows viewers to engage in real-time self reflection. In fact, attempting to describe the film’s “plot” or its potent aftertaste seems as futile as it does difficult, if only because the viewing experience will vary so radically for each audience member. Tree of Life’s power depends on whether or not its hallucinogenic tone, sparse dialogue, and raw emotional terrain succeed in animating each viewer’s inner voice (or voices). 

This sort of experience demands concentration, which is why it will be fascinating to watch how domestic audiences respond to the film on opening weekend, and why it was so smart to screen its regional premiere at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. A string quartet couldn’t have expected a more attentive or carefully attuned crowd; appropriate, given that the film’s overall affect more closely resembles the all-consuming embrace of a live musical performance.

Malick’s wife Alexandra Wallace, who later revealed that Tree of Life was the favorite of her husband’s films, introduced the movie, along with co-producer Bill Pohlad (Brokeback Mountain) and actress Jessica Chastain, who enjoyed wide critical claim for her turn in the title role in the Los Angeles’ Wadsworth Theatre production of Salome.

Chastain’s presence proved to be especially apropos.

Tree of Life’s predominant narrative is anchored around the life of a midcentury American family, its tortured patriarch, and three preteen boys lurching toward puberty. The brothers, thanks to a combination of artful editing and pitch-perfect casting, are both believable and haunting. Pitt, save for a scene-nibbling turn now and again, lets his demons burn slowly and gives his fellow performers space to pivot off the tension. But, ultimately, it’s Chastain’s film. As the young mother, she struggles to infuse her household with touches of humanity or, more to the point, a sense of transcendent grace. And it is this struggle and her presence, at times almost ghostly, that most engages and endures.  

A week after the country celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers quietly occupied a hockey arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to meditate on the power and possibilities of peace. It was a welcome break from the saber rattling, and a reminder that truly inspiring, lasting leadership requires love and compassion.

To begin the day’s festivities, which included two speeches and a private luncheon at the University of Minnesota, the Dalai Lama delivered a 90-minute tutorial on the central tenants of Tibetan Buddhism. Sitting on a makeshift throne and surrounded by some two dozen monks, he and his longtime interpreter, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, covered a lot of philosophical ground—in particular, an in-depth discussion of the Four Noble Truths.

The central message, however, was as simple as it is elusive: Only when we transcend the concept of self can we begin to eliminate the ignorance that breeds our suffering. “The notion of ‘I am’ is the source of all problems,” His Holiness said. “It is the source of all other false views and perceptions.”

Consciousness has no beginning or end, the audience learned, since it evolves over an individual’s past lives. Proof that there is no such thing as a static, personally defined “self.” Only when a person recognizes this truth can he or she become truly compassionate toward the suffering of fellow beings. “Pain brings anger. Pleasure brings attachment,” said the 75-year-old teacher, draped in red and yellow robes. “A serious practitioner [of the Buddhist faith] meditates on impermanence—from that evolves mindfulness . . . Once you develop some awareness about overcoming adversity, then you can see that same potential in others.” 

Throughout the morning, His Holiness frequently broke into his unmistakably mischievous laugh, particularly infectious because he is usually laughing at himself. His heartiest chuckle came after he leaned into his microphone to tell the crowd, eyebrows raised for dramatic effect, that in “one of my many, many, many previous lives I was the President of Egypt.” 

It had been 10 years to the day since the Dalai Lama visited Minnesota, which has the second-largest Tibetan population in the United States. On Saturday, His Holiness, who is preparing to turn over his political power while remaining Tibet’s central spiritual leader, sat for a 30-minute press conference, an unusual gesture. Asked specifically about the death of Osama bin Laden, he allowed that the act might appear understandable given the circumstance, but then reiterated his absolute belief that “violence is wrong” and leads to “unexpected consequences.”

Later that afternoon, the Dalai Lama held a private meeting with nearly 200 Chinese students from the Twin Cities area. The dialogue, during which His Holiness argued that China needs to ease up on censorship and asked all in attendance to open their minds to new possibilities, was reportedly respectful and ran 45 minutes longer than the allotted hour that was scheduled.

The crowd that gathered for the first event Sunday, which attracted a more concentrated number of Buddhists, was smaller than the near sell-out crowd in the afternoon. And it’s a good guess, given the Twin Cities progressive roots, there were a few Westerners in attendance whose knowledge of Buddhism begin and end with yoga and meditation. For those casual viewers, His Holiness had a parting word of advice: “You can only eliminate suffering through your own practice . . . but eliminating stress, anxiety, and suffering is not for the self, but to serve others.”

When we caught up with Steve Earle, he was hanging out in New Orleans on the set of HBO’s Treme, waiting to shoot a scene for season two. It’s the second time Earle has gotten into character for the show’s co-creator, David Simon. In Simon’s critically acclaimed The Wire, he played a bit part as a former junkie turned 12-step guru. In Treme, he plays an insightful street musician named Harley. In both cases, he has drawn on personal experience. “The Wire really required no acting,” he says wryly. “The role called for a redneck recovering addict. I could do that.”

Earle—a Townes Van Zandt disciple and self-described hillbilly—is a storyteller who’s drawn on personal experience and keen observation to create more than a dozen studio recordings, including three Grammy Award winners, and a collection of short fiction. This month, his newest recording, I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive, hits the streets. Next month, his debut novel of the same name will be published by Houghton Mifflin.

In the midst of the most prolific period of his career, the down-to-earth but steadfastly irreverent Earle talked about his move to New York, the craft of writing, and the art of politics.

Let’s talk about the new record. What will we hear when we hit play? 

In a lot of ways, it’s the most country record I’ve made in a long time. There’s fiddle on it, pedal steel, and some things I haven’t used in a while. It features the same rhythm section that [the record’s producer] T-Bone Burnett worked with on the Alison Kraus/Robert Plant record [Raising Sand]. Dennis Kraus, who also plays in my bluegrass band, is the bass player. The guitar player is Jackson Smith, Patti’s son. Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek is playing fiddle. There’s a duet with [wife] Allison [Moorer]. And it also includes “This City,” which we recorded in New Orleans for Treme. T-Bone came to town to record that song, and Allen Toussaint wrote the horn charts. The rest of it was recorded in like five days in November.

What does a producer like T-Bone Burnett bring to the table? 

When I produce I’m an arranger. I’m a cheerleader. T-Bone is all of that. Over the years he’s assembled a group of players that I’ve heard him and others compare to the Stax house band. But there’s a difference: The Stax group, the Wrecking Crew, and all these other sections were put together to make hit records. This group of people was put together to make art—and to make it appear effortless. It was hard to get us all together because of schedules and other stuff, but once we got in the studio it was the easiest record I’ve ever made.

Death is reoccurring theme on the new record. What accounts for that emphasis? 

What happened in the last three years is that my dad died, and he was really sick before he died. My family, which is very close, still hasn’t recovered from it. It got me thinking about my experiences with mortality and spirituality. I’m a hippie basically. I grew up in a pretty wide-open spiritual atmosphere. And it’s one of the things that saved my life. I think that when I finally decided that I didn’t want to die and I could get clean, I had no problem with the spiritual element of it. I never questioned whether there was a God or not. I’m not a Christian or anything close to one, but I definitely believed there was a power greater than myself. That helped a lot. That was half the battle. My spiritual system is 12-step programs.

So you still go to meetings regularly? 

Trust me, when I stop going to meetings you’ll read about me somewhere else.

In May, your new novel, also titled I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive, will be in bookstores. It seems you’re really stretching out as a writer.  

This is the first full-length novel. I published a collection of short fiction about nine years ago. I’ve written one play. That’s why I moved to New York, because of theater. I’m working on a play now. And while I swore that I’d never write another novel toward the end of this last project, I already have an idea for another one. I just like to write. It was kind of recovery thing. I started writing poetry and prose after I got clean. I also think all the other creative things I do make my home-base craft stronger. I think that’s borne out by the songs on the new record.

As a writer, what is your daily discipline? And where do you get your ideas?  

I write what I’m going to write the first few hours of the day before the phone starts ringing. I write with a computer. I don’t use a pencil anymore. I wake up early, like 6 or 6:30, and write most of what I’m going to write by the middle of the day. It’s funny: I don’t understand people who wander around New York City with ear buds in, because you’re just listening to the same shit over and over again, and you’re missing all the music, and you’re missing all the lines, and you’re missing all of that stuff. Writing is not that original. It doesn’t spring full grown from a person. It’s coming from without.

So has relocating to New York affected you creatively?  

I moved to New York to breathe the same air as Tony Kushner. I don’t think I could have continued to create anything if I would have continued living in Tennessee. And that’s nothing against Tennessee. It just became more and more of a hostile environment. Not in the sense that people were hostile to me, but I just felt a little stimulus-starved. I was really in danger of becoming an old fart there, just stagnating.

You’re known for your work against the death penalty, and from the stage you can be very outspoken. Does politics fuel your work? 

I’m not a political writer. I know people have a hard time believing that. There’s political stuff on my records, but the songs have always been about the way politics affects human beings. But I still write more songs about girls than I do anything. I write and I make things up. And I’m outspokenly political because I think I would be a pussy if I wasn’t. To have realized as much from doing something that I love to do and to not use that position to talk about things that I think are wrong would be irresponsible. If I irritate other people, it doesn’t cost anyone any money but me—and I’m OK with that. I’m just trying to keep from going to hell.

How are you feeling about the current political environment?  

I’m pissed off. I’m angry. It’s tough for me. But I try not to be negative, and I’m dedicated to being part of the political process. I’m having a hard time. I’ve always thought that Obama was a little bit too Clintonesque for me to be comfortable with. He wants to make everyone happy so desperately. It does count that he’s black, though. It does count that we elected a black president. We are a better nation for that.

So, a new record, a new book, a play in the works, a new season of Treme—you’re in the midst of one helluva year. 

The record comes out in April, and I’m going to do a record store and radio station tour. In May I’m doing a book tour. And then the band starts touring in June. It will be good. If I stay really, really busy, make music, and talk to my sponsor, I should be OK. 

As reporter Mike Miliard points out in “You are Being Watched,” most recently published by the Sacramento News & Review, those vested in online privacy have been “drawn to a battle between two conflicting notions—and the winner of that battle may determine what kind of Internet we end up with.”

“The voices advocating for increased privacy protections argue that our actions online should remain invisible—unless we give our express consent to be watched and tracked,” Miliard writes. “But some of the most powerful voices on the Web are beginning to suggest that you should be responsible for your online actions: that your anonymity on the Web is dangerous.”

Those in the first camp are most concerned about corporate opportunists and government spies, known collectively as Big Brother.  Even if some citizens haven’t yet surrendered their anonymity to Facebook or Twitter, when anyone logs in at work or browses almost anything online their every keyboard stroke and mouse click is being tracked, analyzed, and saved. “Your smart phone—jam packed with apps coded by who knows who and potentially loaded with spyware—is a picket homing beacon, trackable by satellite,” Miliard reports. “There are trucks with cameras on their roofs, trundling past your apartment, duly noting your unsecured Wi-Fi signal.” Walmart is even “putting radio frequency identification tags in your underwear."

There are also, according to a special report Miliard references from the Washington Post, some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in the U.S. developing programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence.

While Big Brother gets all the ink, though, there’s an equally insidious threat to our privacy that some Internet advocates have come to call Little Brother. “Who is Little Brother?” Miliard asks rhetorically. “He’s all the people you know, sort of know or wish you didn’t know: creepy, barely remembered high-school classmates; Machiavellian co-workers; your angry ex. But mostly you really don’t know who Little Brother is, because Little Brother is anonymous. He or she is part of a sea of nameless faces: the anonymity-emboldened tough guy on a message board, or an auteur posting a sadistic video on YouTube, or an obsessive Twitter stalker, or, sometimes, a malicious suburban mom hiding behind a hoax identity while taunting a teenager to suicide.”

Because Big Brother thrives on information and his Little Brothers require anonymity, the ability to legislate an effective privacy policy for the rest of us is mired in paradox. As Miliard writes, “Any measure that would allow Google to track the sources of a Chinese hacker attack would also enable the Chinese government to track its own dissidents.”

Or, as the Sacramento News & Review points out in the tease for Miliard’s well-reported overview: “Don’t want the government, big industry and some 15-year-old to know your secrets? Guess you’re out of luck.”

Source: Sacramento News & Review  

Image by o5com, licensed under Creative Commons. 

With Christmas morning mercifully in the rearview mirror, you might think America’s marketing and advertising industries are ready to start acting like adults—at least until Valentine’s Day. But over the last decade, turning impressionable youngsters into full-time consumers has become a corporate obsession, reports Z Magazine: “In the United States alone, expenditures on marketing to children skyrocketed from $2 billion in 1999 to $15 billion in 2005.”

And even though the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission acknowledge that young children are uniquely vulnerable to commercial messages, the U.S. government hasn’t passed significant legislation on the issue since 1990—giving companies carte blanche to “surround children with messages at school, on the school bus, on the Internet, on cellphones and videogames, at doctors’ offices, zoos, museums, with viral marketing (i.e., fake word of mouth), grass-roots marketing, guerilla marketing, immersive marketing, and so on.”

Yosef Brody, who penned the Z piece and is a clinical psychologist in Paris, references recent studies establishing that young children are prone to pay particular attention to TV commercials, but they can’t discriminate its form or intent from other programming. A majority of these ads are for junk food, which is directly related to childhood obesity, considered a health epidemic and correlated with diabetes and hypertension (conditions that have tripled in teenagers since 1980).

Gender stereotyping and violence are also rampant.

“Recent research shows that a high level of exposure to commercial messages is a significant cause of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and psychosomatic complaints, including headaches and stomachaches,” Brody writes. “Sociologist Juliet Schor found robust evidence that the more that psychologically healthy children become involved in commercial culture, the worse their mental health becomes, and that the more that emotionally disturbed children disengage from commercial culture, the healthier they get.”

Source: Z Magazine 

Image by giovanni_giusti, licensed by Creative Commons  

On the modern battlefield, where civilians and combatants are often indistinguishable, and virtual warfare is increasingly common, soldiers are routinely required to grapple with life-changing (and potentially life-saving) moral dilemmas in a split second.

Prospect magazine reports that in an effort to establish a consistent code among U.S. troops caught in these ethical crosshairs, West Point is requiring that all of its officers-in-training take a course on “just war” theory, which includes a series of classic, academic conundrums rooted in the writings of philosopher and theologian, Thomas Aquinas.

The first scenario, which will be familiar to most college kids, is called Spur: A runaway train is hurtling towards five unsuspecting people. If you simply flip a switch you can send the train into a spur (a stretch railroad track reserved for loading and unloading) and save their lives. But one man is chained to the spur and will be killed. What would you do?

While you’re mulling that over, consider Fat Man: The same train (or trolley) is about to kill five people. You’re standing on a bridge over the tracks next to an overweight fellow. If you push him off the bridge his bulk would stop the train and save the endangered. The action will, however, kill the “fat man.”  Do you shove or don’t you?

According to Prospect writer David Edmonds, “study after study” has established that about 90 percent of people faced with these hypothetical questions could live with switching the train onto a spur, and roughly the same percentage believes it’s wrong to sacrifice the heavy guy.

“What, then, is the relevant ethical distinction between them?” Edmonds asks. “This question has spawned a thriving academic mini-industry, called trolleyology.” And “trolleyology encapsulates the deepest tensions in our moral outlook. To test out our moral intuitions, philosophers have come up with ever more ingenious scenarios,” which attract “some of the smartest minds in moral philosophy.”

One of those wise guys is Jeff McMahan of Rutgers University, who “believes the trolley problem lends weight” to a doctrine of double effect, first established by Aquinas. “Crudely put,” Edmonds writes, “the doctrine allows you to perform and act that has some bad consequences, if on balance the act is good, and if the bad effects are unintended.”

This would explain why the cadets Edmond spoke to while reporting for Prospect were uniformly fascinated by trolleyology and would not kill the fat man. “They explained that the two scenarios represent the distinction between targeting a military installation knowing that civilians will be killed, and deliberately killing civilians. It’s the difference, they say, between how the U.S. and how al Qaeda wage war.”

Officers at West Point acknowledge that creating a class of philosopher-soldiers equipped to think freely carries risks in a field that regularly demands groupthink. And there’s more than a few philosophers who believe the world is too complex to use trolleyology as a way to train armed men and women to deal with the real world.

On the other hand, as more and more wartime decisions are made in front of a computer screen, where officers tell drones and robots who to shoot and who not to bomb, scenarios once considered entirely hypothetical might begin to more closely resemble the real thing.

Image by West Point Public Affairs , licensed under Creative Commons .

Three months after 9/11, 20 men deemed dangerous to America landed at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. In the nine-years since, nearly 800 detainees—often arrested without probable cause and held without being tried or even charged—have been jailed on the Cuban island. Some have been released, some have been tried, and some have committed suicide. And Carol Rosenberg, a reporter for the Miami Herald, has covered it all.

“Carol’s daily accounts are what you need to read to understand Guantánamo 101,” Karen Greenberg, executive director of New York University’s Center on Law and Security tells David Glenn, who wrote a profile about Rosenberg for Columbia Journalism Review that was published in November. “She’s still the only person who can contextualize what’s going on. Carol’s has been the consistent presence.”

She’s also a dogged daily reporter (an increasingly rare breed), who pushes back at the military’s efforts to limit information; files sharp, 1,000 word stories chronicling everything from the most mundane regulations to the most colorful detainees; and is completely uninterested in punditry. She isn’t even peddling a book. Instead, Rosenberg sleeps in the uncomfortable media tents at the Naval Base and cultivates her expanding list of sources, proving that institutional cooperation and feel good stories are not only unnecessary, but a waste of time.

“Reporters’ movements on the base are heavily stage-managed and during waking hours they’re almost never out of earshot of a public-affairs staff member,” Glenn writes. “Rosenberg has done much of her work here by gaining the trust of attorneys, guards, medical workers, and other personnel—and then finding way to communicate with them from Florida.”

Her scoops include a story about the Pentagon’s decision to create a joint task force to conduct interrogations at Guantánamo and a piece introducing Salim Hamdan, who, according to Glenn, “was one of the first detainees slated for trial before the Bush administration’s early military tribunals.”

It comes as no surprise, then, that Rosenberg’s tenure at the base has been threatened. In 2009, she was accused of unprofessional conduct and in May she was temporarily excised—along with three Canadian reporters—for allegedly violating a protective order. A few months later, she was given a First Amendment Award by the Society of Professional journalists.

“She’s a hard-ass. She’s tough as nails,” MSNBC contributor Bob Franken tells CJR. “But she doesn’t cut corners. The military sometimes seemed like they only wanted us to offer light color commentary and root for the home team, and Carol never played that game.”

Source: Columbia Journalism Review 

Image by Dharmit Shah , licensed under Creative Commons . 

“About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.”

So begins Steven Thrasher’s riotous take on the white brain, which, the New York-based freelance writer observes on the cover of the September 29 Village Voice, has finally gone “haywire in spectacular fashion.”

And why? Well, for one thing, the President of the United States is black, which isn’t sitting particularly well with prejudiced citizens who, Thrasher argues, are seeking cover in the Tea Party movement. What’s more, “for the first time in their lives, baby boomers are hard up against it economically, and white boy is becoming outnumbered and it’s got his bowels chilled with fear.”

Thrasher’s aggressive, albeit satiric tone will turn off most moderate readers and has enraged a legion of conservative and libertarian commentators. And, the Voice being the Voice, not one column inch is reserved for nuance. As a piece of political essay writing, however, “White America has Lost Its Mind” is as refreshing as it is well-argued. In large part because Thrasher has the audacity—and the forum—to take off the gloves and fight foment with foment. 

Can you help a brother on health care? No.

The economy? No.

Financial regulatory reform? No.

Now, some folks can be forgiven for thinking, as they watched the political drama in Washington unfold over the past two years, that this was just another form of the same old thing they’d put up with in one way or another in this conflicted multiracial country.

But there is another explanation.

White people have simply gone sheer fucking insane.

To bolster his thesis, the author points to recent polls conducted by Newsweek and CNN, which show that nearly a quarter of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim and that he was “probably or definitely” born in another country. And Harris found in an online poll that 14 percent of Americans believe the President is the antichrist, with nearly a quarter of Republicans saying so. Thrashers then goes on to give examples of how these statistics, which he believes are racially charged, manifest themselves in mainstream media and politics—from the sham attacks on ACORN to the demonization of Muslims and immigrants.

The funniest and most insightful stuff—especially considering that the midterm elections take place in just a few days—comes near the end of Thrasher’s tirade, where he wonders aloud who, except for the craziest of Caucasians, could excuse the ignorant rantings of New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino or Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell.

 As for the Tea Party, which is threatening to have a big night Tuesday?

Suddenly, other angry (and obviously confused) white people began organizing their own “tea parties” and, from the start, had to defend themselves from charges that there was more than a little racial component to their movement.

Few were really surprised, for example, when Tea Party Express President Mark Williams turned out to have penned a letter that could have been written in the worst decades of Jim Crow: “We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just too much to ask of us Colored People and demand that it stop!”

Source: The Village Voice  

Last fall, environmental journalist Gar Smith authored an opinion piece for Earth Island Journal in which he argued that cap-and-trade for emissions—designed to allow polluting companies to purchase credits from greener peers to offset their environmental impact—is a morally bankrupt con game on par with the ancient Catholic Church’s doctrine of indulgences. The doctrine he describes is a “once popular practice” that “allowed rich parishioners to purchase remission for their sins by making contributions to the church’s minions.”

The comparison compels, particularly because Smith saves some space to wonder what would happen “if we applied the medieval logic that underlies the granting of ‘pollution indulgences’ to other aspects of human behavior?”

Admissions Trading: We know politicians lie. With Admissions Trading, politicians would no longer fear having to admit to their fibs: They could continue lying to the public as long as they purchased Truth Credits from Buddhist monks and young children.

Omissions Trading: Did you forget to recycle? Did you forget that vow to eat organic? With Omissions Trading, forgetful souls could “offset” their bad habits by purchasing performance credits from the conscientious. Thanks to the genius of market-based solutions, the morbidly obese could continue to overeat – just so long as they remembered to purchase Calorie Credits from health-conscious neighbors and malnourished Third World villagers. You want that extra helping of dessert? Just pay someone else to forgo dinner.

Remissions Trading: People with terminal cancer could buy Recovery Credits from cancer survivors and individuals who are cancer-free. Of course, remissions trading wouldn’t cure the cancer and the buyer would still die from the disease. In other words, it would be just as effective as cap-and-trade’s pollution credits.

Possessions Trading: The filthy rich could buy Poverty Credits from the very poor. This is one trading plan that could significantly improve the overall health of our planet and its people but, when it comes to redistributing wealth, this is one idea that the well-to-do just don’t seem prepared to indulge.

I missed this piece when it was first published, so thanks to the editors at Resurgence magazine, who reprinted a version in their March-April 2010 issue.

Source: Earth Island Journal 

Utne Reader editor in chief David Schimke recently spoke up for the alt press at the Dole Institute of Politics, which has hosted a series of election-related panels this year. Schimke was part of the institute’s latest lively panel, “Media Coverage of Campaign 2008: Magic or Misguided?” Check out video from the media panel here, and browse other Dole Institute videos here.