The Silent Crisis

"This is the silent crisis of developing countries. You never see a child die from education on TV, but make no mistake about it. Children die from lack of education all the time. Children are more likely to grow up and have HIV/AIDS, they are more likely to die in infancy or before the age of 5, particularly determined by the education of their mothers. So this is a life or death issue. There are 100million children who will not see the inside of a classroom this year.
This is a silent global crisis...today as we sit, there are more children out of school in
Africa as there are in school in the United States. Probably about 60% of the out of school
children are girls.

-Gene Sperling, Wide Angle: Back To School, PBS

A fascinating and fantastic documentary on Wide Angle concerning the state of education around the world, focusing on seven children in developing and developing countries, painting the stark contrast between the haves and the extreme have-nots in this world; showing the precariousness of the situations faced by so many of the very poorest in this world. The smallest burdens on a poverty stricken family can change the lives of the young; school fees of only a few dollars per year will change lives. Poverty can be so easily remedied, the fact that this is not being met is a disgrace; universal primary education is a global human right that needs to be met.

Tomo Geshe Rimpoche

"As long as we regard ourselves as superior to others or look down upon the world, we cannot make any real progress. As soon, however, as we understand that we live in exactly the world which we deserve, we shall recognize the faults of others as our own-though they may appear in different form. It is our own 'karma' that we live in this 'imperfect' world, which in the ultimate sense is our own creation."

Tomo Geshe Rimpoche, 1925, Tibet

Chickens in a Cage

"We have built a system we cannot control. Most of us, in order to have a house, and car, a refrigerator, and so on, must sacrifice our time and our own lives in exchange. We are constantly under the pressure of time. We have created a society in which the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, and in which we are so caught up in our own immediate problems that we cannot afford to be aware of what is going on with the rest of the human family or our own planet Earth. In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over some grains of seed, unaware that in a few hours they will be killed."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Kristof and Darfur

"Sudan’s government dispatches rapists the way other governments dispatch the police, the better to terrorize black African tribes and break their spirit."
-Nicholas Kristof, NY Times, 8/31/08


Nicholas Kristof illuminates a new book about the be released in the States entitled
"Tears of the Desert," the first memoir written by a female caught in the Darfur genocide.
The story comes from Dr. Halima Bashir, who has risked her life to publish this work, after first risking her life to treat young victims of the unspeakable brutalities being perpetrated by the Janjaweed in Darfur, Western Sudan.

Here's some of Kristof's article (masked in the cloak of an OpEd...but keep up the incredible work...Kristof is a fearless pioneer in journalism. He continually publishes human rights stories from the deepest, darkest corners of the world, stories that other major media outlets brush aside with a long pole; stories that stir the mind and trouble the heart. Stories that we should be hearing, stories that will create the outrage needed to stop the atrocities being committed by governments and rebel groups around the world. I applaud you, Nicholas Kristof, once again).

In 10 days, Halima’s extraordinary memoir will be published in the United States, at considerable risk to herself. She writes in “Tears of the Desert” of growing up in a placid village in rural Darfur, of her wonder at seeing white people for the first time, of her brilliant performance in school.

Eventually Halima became a doctor, just as the genocide against black African tribes like her own began in 2003. Halima soon found herself treating heartbreaking cases, like that of a 6-year-old boy who suffered horrendous burns when the state-sponsored janjaweed militia threw him into a burning hut.

One day she gave an interview in which she delicately hinted that the Darfur reality was more complicated than the Sudanese government version. The authorities detained her, threatened her, warned her to keep silent and transferred her to a remote clinic where there were no journalists around to interview her.

Then the janjaweed attacked a girls’ school near Halima’s new clinic and raped dozens of the girls, aged 7 to 13. The first patient Halima tended to was 8 years old. Her face was bashed in and her insides torn apart. The girl was emitting a haunting sound: “a keening, empty wail kept coming from somewhere deep within her throat — over and over again,” she recalls in the book.

Sudan’s government dispatches rapists the way other governments dispatch the police, the better to terrorize black African tribes and break their spirit. What sometimes isn’t noted is that many young Darfuri girls undergo an extreme form of genital cutting called infibulation, in which the vagina is stitched closed until marriage; that makes such rapes of schoolgirls particularly violent and bloody, increasing the risk of AIDS transmission.

Halima found herself treating the girls with tears streaming down her own face. All she had to offer the girls for their pain was half a pill each of acetaminophen: “At no stage in my years of study had I been taught how to deal with 8-year-old victims of gang rape in a rural clinic without enough sutures to go around.”

The Lost Boys

"The Lost Boys arrived in America after walking a thousand miles through the wilderness of Africa to escape their country's deadly civil war. They had passed through a world without food or water. They had survived attacks by lions and hyenas, and they had survived the bombing raids of the Northern Arab government, who wanted to see them finished off. "

Friedman on China

Democracy will constrain growth, will constrain short term development; this is an inevitable fact in a landscape where people have rights, where people have a say. Vocalization is not congruent with explosive growth; take a look at the chasm between India and China in their race to be the next global power. However, democracy will promote growth in the long-run; growth must be tied to the needs of the people, who are the true voice of government in a democratic society; this has failed to materialize in America in the recent years. Why? Our democracy is broken. Our broken infrastructure is a direct result of our broken democracy.
We must begin to be a country for the people, by the people; we must overcome the divisiveness, and look into the future, plan for the next generation, much as China has already done.

Thomas Friedman:

Seven years ... Seven years ... Oh, that’s right. China was awarded these Olympic Games on July 13, 2001 — just two months before 9/11.

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink...
But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.

Praying for His Holiness

In the news this morning...let us all pray for the good health and speedy recovery of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the reincarnation of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion.

(CNN) -- The Dalai Lama, Tbet's spiritual leader is suffering from exhaustion and has canceled his international trips for the next three weeks, according to his Web site.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has canceled his travel plans.

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been experiencing some discomfort in the past couple of days," a statement on the side said.

The statment added that doctors put his condition down to exhaustion and have advised him to cancel his engagements pending the results of medical tests.

it said planned trips to Mexico and the Dominican Republic were now shelved.

The 73-year-old Nobel laureate last week inaugurated a Buddhist temple in the south of France and met with French first lady Carla Sarkozy.

"The Dalai Lama is fine, he's just exhausted. He has had a hectic schedule for the last year, with events scheduled almost every day," Tempa Tshering, a representative of the Dalai Lama in Delhi, India, told CNN.

He added that the Dalai Lama was "just postponing" the trips he had scheduled for the next three weeks, and will take some time off in Dharamsala, India -- the home of the self-proclaimed Tibetan government in exile.

The Dalai Lama's press secretary, Tenzing Takla, told CNN the spiritual leader "has a little bit of discomfort in his stomach. He is going for a check up now."

The Dalai Lama fled to India from Tibet in 1959 after Chinese troops crushed an attempted uprising.

He has spent most of his live campaigning for the rights of Tibet's citizens, angering Beijing, which accuses him of trying to foment violent rebellion in the Himalayan territory

Diamond Sutra

Buddhism has a lot to offer. Mainly it makes you very happy. You remove all your negativities, and the qualities of your emotions improve and you become content. The individual becomes responsible for the individual's world, so any misfortune you might have is not blamed on an external force, like God. Rather it is due to your own state of mind. If you learn to observe your mind throughout the day, from hour to hour, and are very careful to be compassionate to other people, then the result after months or years is that your own mind becomes extremely contented. And thats what people want. So Buddhism works.

In the Buddhist tradition, a businessperson is not really successful because he or she has made a lot of money, nor even because the person has made a lot of money and knows how to enjoy it fully. The end is as important as the beginning and middle; you must be able to come to the end, the inevitable end, and look back on your life in business and say honestly that it was all worth it-that all your intense hours and years of effort have had some real meaning.

-Michael Roach, The Diamond Sutra

Why We Fight

War as a way of life, war as a way of governance, war as a misguided principal of power.

The "military industrial complex", the term first coined and warned against by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation in 1960. The military industrial complex which now exercises enormous influence in the corridors of power of the U.S. government, from the Lobbyists creating talking point agendas, to the Congressmen who must answer to the economic realities of their constituents every two short years.

The "military industrial complex," which has so neatly and clearly manifested itself with the current war in Iraq, with an added corporatized component pouring gasoline on the fires of war.

Eisenhower:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

thoughts

The Buddhist world movement is not accurately thought of simply as a "world religion," understood as a set system of beliefs and institutions that parallel those of religions. It can be viewed in that way with some validity-indeed both proponents and opponents do so-but it is only one third a religion at most. It is more fundamentally a way of living and a pattern of ethics, a basis for numerous civilizations that emphasize individualism, wisdom, gentleness, altruism, and universal equality. And it is a way of understanding the world, a tradition of sciences based on the possibility of human beings developing a complete and accurate understanding of the realities of life and death.
-Robert Thurman

Pale Blue Dot

• Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot...

• Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe:, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Enlightenment

I was glancing through an old Zen story, in which the disciple asked his master:
"Master, how do you put enlightenment into action? How do you practice it in everyday life""
"By eating and by sleeping," the master replied.
"But master, everyone eats, and everyone sleeps!"
To this the master replied, "But not everybody eats when they eat, and not everybody sleeps when they sleep."


Our lives are lived in a constant state of distraction; modern technology only compounds the problem, while inserting itself deeper and deeper into our daily lives by the day, creeping into our subconscious, rooting out mindfulness. In the name of productivity, connectivity, and ultimately, interdependence, we creep into our technologically-laden bubbles. Never, it seems, to eat when we eat, or even to sleep, when we sleep.

Kids With Cameras

The stunning documentary Born Into Brothels brought me to tears some years back; the story was both heartbreaking and soul igniting in its individual spotlights on the children of prostitutes in Calcutta's Red Light district. Through this work, a few of the children were given a chance; they were provided with an avenue of escape, a narrow crack of light in a perpetually dark existence. This crack continues to widen with the help of Kids with Cameras and Hope House, which will provide a free education to other children stuck in the cycle of poverty and abandonment in Calcutta, following in the footsteps of the great saint, Mother Theresa. In this unconventional manner, Born into Brothels, the film, became a social justice campaign in itself; this is an extraordinary level of significance for a film. A truly grand metamorphosis.

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/bornintobrothels/

Herbert

Where is the real attention being diverted? Nonsensical "Drill here! Drill now!" photo ops, and both candidates failing to show up at their day jobs for crucial energy bill votes....when can the attention be diverted to the real issues facing this country after 8 years of neglect? In this land of promise for so many, in this land of the American Dream, the promise is slipping. We need change.

"Most voters go into the booth woefully uninformed. Presidential campaigns are largely a compilation of 30-second television ads, endlessly speculating talking heads and nationally televised debates featuring gotcha questions and rigidly enforced time limits that preclude truly thoughtful answers....
What we haven’t had is a deep exploration of problems here at home that are threatening the very vibrancy of the nation, including: the dismal employment picture (there are many more Americans out of work than the official statistics show); the terrible toll that the housing and mortgage crisis is taking on families from one coast to the other; the tens of millions of Americans who are without health insurance coverage; the stunning high school dropout numbers; and a demoralizing problem with violent crime in several parts of the country."


--Bob Herbert, NYTimes

The Way of the World

What is the way of the world? What direction is this country, a pillar of the world we live in, heading? Is either road currently being promoted as the path to the future a viable departure from the way things now are?
Is there anything truly progressive, anything that will give the needed change, that is encapsulated, fabricated from the current mechanisms of political machinery?
Or is the way of the world simply more of the same?

More of the same media saturation on stories that simply do not matter for public discourse in this country...more of the same non-coverage of stories that should be shaping our political thoughts, towards either end of the spectrum?

A story such as the bombshell Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind is reporting on in his new book, The Way of the World...a story of the fabrication of a letter, sanctioned and commissioned by the CIA under direct orders from the Bush Administration, from the former head of Iraqi Intelligence, Habbush, to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind Explains...

And then the letter. In the fall of 2003, when the White House is facing the most serious charge of the Bush presidency, that we went to war under false pretenses, they come up with a plan of how they might use Habbush, the White House. They order the CIA to have a fabricated letter created ostensibly in Habbush’s hand, backdated July 2001, solving all the White House’s political problems. As one of the key on-the-record sources says, it was a check-the-box for all of the problems politically the White House was facing in the United States.

That, of course, is illegal. You cannot have the CIA run disinformation campaigns on the American public. Just imagine the havoc that would ensue if that were not a law. That’s why right now Congress is investigating.

This behavior is illegal, and is not becoming of our country. This is not the government that our forefathers struggled to create; it is not a government of checks and balances, of transparency, and of the people, by the people. This is a government of deception and partisanship, special interests, and power abuse. We need change.

Another Rethink

The reasons are paved in the good intentions of rich nations, good deeds that have punished Ethiopia with perpetual want.
-Alex Perry, Time Magazine


One of the countries that I have recently visited, Ethiopia, finds itself again facing a famine. The country remains on the knife's edge; one year of bad crops, and babies with distended belies are lowered into shallow graves dotting the countrysides; there is no margin of error in this harsh land. However, the very methods set up to ensure the survival of the destitute, have continued to compound the problem. This is truly, "The problem from hell." After years of aid-corruption and mismanagement in the development business, a startling admission from Mafa Chipeta, East Africa coordinator for the Food and Agriculture Organization:

"This is not an emergency only for this year. This is a persistent problem that we have failed to deal with. Aid needs a complete rethink." In many places, because food comes so abundantly from abroad, local farming is an undeveloped and unreliable source of sustenance. The farmlands may appear teeming but Ethiopians know enough not to trust it. And so, food is apportioned with Malthussian rigidity."

a vital chance wasted, again

The world comes together and falls apart, yet again.
The Olympic Games draws the attention of billions, a glimmer of hope, an amalgamated vision in a fractured world; yet Georgia and its provinces lie in ruin, Russian tanks rolling with impunity, allies shirking responsibility, further faith in the US's vision of the world further diminished.

The domestic front is ruptured along a fractured populace; a populace who gets information from sound bites, 30 second ads masked as fact, campaign slogans barked to obedient dogs wagging tails. A populace that continues to have the wool spun over its eyes by its elected representatives. Something critical has happened in this country, something critical has happened for the future of this nation, and I have not heard a word on the major media whose responsibilities are continually shirked in favor of more of the same nonsensical inane spin.

Congress failed to pass the renewable energy bill for the EIGHTH time this year; subsidies for alternative energies are set to expire without renewal at the end of the year, throwing the future of solar, wind, and other non-petroleum based technologies into flux; investment needs security; security for investment in these new technologies was to be secured through this bill; our government has failed us, yet again. McCain did not show up for the vote. Obama did not show up for the vote. What were they doing that was so critical to the future of this country that can provide a valid excuse for a failure of action? They both have ads on television promoting alternative energy; the both rail on the subject; McCain can not utter a sentence at this point without demanding drilling for more oil. They have both failed, our Senate as a whole has failed us again at a critical moment.

Thomas Friedman concludes:

Without taxing fossil fuels so they become more expensive and giving subsidies to renewable fuels so they become more competitive — and changing regulations so more people and companies have an interest in energy efficiency — we will not get innovation in clean power at the scale we need.
That is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid — so bloody stupid — that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power — when you didn’t."

Silence is deafening

"The Agronomist": Jean Dominique

In the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, in a crumbling studio surrounded by high fences, Jean Dominique spoke out against a successive wave of foreign imperialistic interference and home grown military dictatorships, a disasterous cacophony of violent forces. Jean Dominique braved his own mortality and spoke out against brutality and oppression as the rules of the day; if he hadn't been shot and killed outside of Radio Haiti on April 3, 2000, his voice would undoubtedly still be railing against the injustice which continues to plague this troubled land. Dominique used his pulpit to rally against ingrained corruption and negligence, and of the corrupting influences of power, as manifested through his one time confidant, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who lost favor after gaining power and becoming embroiled in the trappings of his office.
Haiti now ranks 146th out of 177 countries on the UN Human Development Index; about 80% of the population lives in poverty, with little hope of emergence. Foreign interference with Haiti's domestic political crises have done little but fuel the fires of discontent. I question if Dominique's work and voice have had any lasting affect on the economics of the country; however, I do not question his legacy as a crusader for freedom.

“The only weapon I have is my microphone and my unshakable faith as a militant for change, veritable change,” --Dominique

why shouldnt the world know about this

"The things you see here are not meant to be seen...every day it's murders, rapes, robberies...counting dead bodies, counting shot and wounded children....I know what we do is good, I know that we are helping, and that's the only reason I can stay. You see people who have no value for human life...they cut the ears off, they pluck the eyes out, burn people alive. Shoot children. That's what we see here. Actually evil, evil people. They sit there and smile at you and shake your hand, but you can see in their eyes, you can see it. Its like seeing the devil. And you know whatever you hear, they are going to go do it again. If every single one of them was gone this world would be a better place."

Brian Steidle, official military observer for the African Union, on Darfur and the Janjaweed, from the film, "The Devil Came on Horseback"

"The criminals, tormentors, and assassins, they don't wait. Stop them."
-Elie Weisel

Children Walk Very Fast

-Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan government minister who is involved in negotiations with the Lord’s Resistance Army, on why children are abducted and used as soldiers in so many conflicts around the world


According to the PBS website:
Children are sought after because they are obedient, daring and abundant. Many child soldiers are abducted or recruited by force; others join as an escape from poverty, for the perceived sense of belonging and protection, or to avenge violence against family members. For some children armed groups are a source of food and their best hope for survival.
Since 1986 the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has battled with the Ugandan government in an effort to establish a theocratic state. As many as 66,000 children were abducted by the LRA during two decades of conflict. In some regions of Uganda, nearly a quarter of LRA forces were girls. Child soldiers were also used, to a lesser degree, by the national army, local defense units, and government-backed militias.

Wide Angle on PBS is one of the few news outlets which brings the untold stories from the untold creases of the world; I commend Aaron Brown for his unconventional angle, for covering stories such as the child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda; stories that affect the lives of countless souls who live without a common voice.

Joseph Kony and his unique band of psychopathic, Messianic killers have ravaged northern Uganda for decades; they have recently walked out of peace talks with the US backed government in Kampala, and promise more of the same ravaging of civil society. When is the time for foreign military intervention? What is the correct situation for a global military power to step in, use its superior intelligence gathering capabilities, and capture and/or kill the leadership of a rebel group fighting for the sake of destruction? The personal stories of some of the former child soldiers of the Lords Resistance Army, abducted from their villages and lives, raped and terrorized into killing their families and relatives at the whim of commanders, was aired by Wide Angle. The individual stories of individuals trying to resurrect their shattered lives. This is such an important issue which gets little media attention; thank you PBS.

What can I do?

http://www.bettybigombefoundation.com/

http://www.childsoldiers.net/