Message of the Day: Human Rights, War, Hunger, Economic Opportunity, Environment, Disease, Population, Personal Growth

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The Issue of the Week and Message of the Day sections of World Campaign have encountered technical issues which resulted in these sections going offline. This is a notification while the problems are addressed and Issue of the Week and Message of the Day sections are restored.

Updated: March 31, 2018

The Issue of the Week and Message of the Day links are back online in a new format.

They are linked with the format adopted for the Forum last year when it was confronted with technical issues.

The current formats are part of a transition to site upgrades which have been in process for some time, and may be for some time, as noted before. The amount of content alone over nearly two decades for World Campaign, much less the decades more for the organization it is a project of, Planet Earth Foundation, is enormous, and has had significant historic impact. Organizing it is a daunting task. Much less determining what to use and the venues for using it, especially as headlines every day substantiate our many concerns about the internet we have articulated at length over many years.

Planet Earth Foundation was formed in March, 1977, and is beginning its 42nd year. The years of formation work before that led to and resulted from a world travel and research program, and before that in working by the founder, Keith Blume, as a student for Robert Kennedy’s campaign for president in 1968. World Campaign was co-founded in 1999 by Lisa Blume, the co-principal of Planet Earth Foundation, who began her key role at the Foundation thirty-one years ago as a coordinator for The Campaign To End Hunger in 1987. All these and other related events and projects have been described at length over the years and will be revisited as usual when relevant. The purpose of all the above work has been to bring information and spur action on the great issues facing the planet, as noted from the outset.

In the meantime, the many years of archives on Issue of the Week, Message of the Day and the Forum are not accessible at this time. The Forum has been in its present format for nearly a year now, which has its archives available. Our practice on the Issue of the Week and Message of the Day has been to keep major excerpts of posts for the past few years on current posts chronologically. This material will be reposted in segments here, starting with this post. We begin, after the following update, with post segments from the current year to date.

When the Issue of the Week and Message of the Day sections went offline a few days ago, posts after 2/22/18 were not accessible.

To recapitulate, they addressed the 15^th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War and ongoing updates on activism for gun control in the U.S.

We noted that the former was barely covered in the media. The Iraq War had an enormous impact on the U.S. and internationally. The issues were not simple, as we’ve covered before and will again, although the roots of lack of basic needs and basic rights for all were and are there as always. The impact in Iraq and elsewhere continues. But barely a mention.

Another symptom of the current hyper-toxic combination of corporate entertainment and profit-driven media (as opposed to independent news divisions generally long-gone, although excellent journalism is still to be found), a reality TV White House, politics of image over-substance hitting new lows, and a culture redefining the extremes in inequality, consumerism, narcissism and nihilism.

The issue of gun control, however, broke through the noise.

One of the last posts, on March 13, noted that the first modern gun control measure, in 1968, was a result of the three nationally and globally traumatizing assassinations in the U.S. of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. 50 years ago in a few days, and Robert F. Kennedy 50 years ago in June.

The 50th anniversary of the King assassination will be addressed in a post in the near future. The issues King represented and fought for could not be more relevant today. The virtual silence in the media in any meaningful way at this point (doubtless it will receive significant but likely brief coverage shortly), about the 50^th anniversary of the only person with a national holiday in U.S. history other than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (the latter not even a federal holiday, before the two became part of President’s Day as noted before), is deafening. And instructive on the increasing lowering of the bottom of the behavioral sink in U.S. culture.

In the March 13 post, the 50^th anniversary of the announcement by Bobby Kennedy on March 16, 1968, of his campaign for the presidency, was noted. This was widely covered, as among other things, it began an extraordinary campaign that ended with his being killed—after King’s death, the final blow for a generation in many ways. The impact on history is unfathomable.

Before King’s death, he and Kennedy were virtual allies in the same causes of ending war, poverty, racism and providing basic needs and rights for all—the question of the U.S. right to “moral leadership on the planet”, as Kennedy said in the last words of his announcement on March 16.

King, the Freedom Riders (who pushed King along with others including Malcom X who was assassinated in 1965) and other events, had pushed JFK and Bobby from not caring about civil rights to becoming historic figures themselves on the issue. JFK’s national TV address on civil rights in 1963 was stunning.

By 1968, campaigning on March 26 in Seattle, ten days after announcing he was running for President, Bobby Kennedy told anti-war students at the University of Washington that he would end the draft deferment for students. He was booed. So, he said, you think it’s okay for affluent whites in college to avoid the draft while poor blacks die in Vietnam? That’s not acceptable. He was cheered. He was against the war, of course. But that wasn’t his point.

Ironically, it was March 26, two years later, that Kennedy’s (and King’s, in his famous Riverside speech) call for land reform in South Vietnam, was carried out (pushed for by, among others, Roy Prosterman, later Planet Earth Foundation’s initial president). The New York Times called it probably the most radical non-communist land reform of the 20^th century. As I.F. Stone had remarked, you can’t win a war in a peasant country on the side of the landlords. Viet Cong recruiting dropped off dramatically after the land reform. But too late to salvage the situation.

As an aside, Ken Burn’s documentary series on Vietnam on PBS last fall was extraordinary. It was extremely even-handed in showing the atrocities and failures and heroism and tragedy all around. Its main shortcoming was that while it showed the backdrop often in great detail, it did not emphasize with clarity the impact of lack of basic needs, and why, in peasant countries, north and south. The failed Stalinist land reform in the North and belated land to the tiller reform in the South were mentioned but not focused on. Overall, the series was magnificent, nonetheless. As film-making, the style of the opening scenes of film going backwards, ripping at the hearts and souls of anyone alive and conscious then or impacted since, who wish it could be so, which by definition included related traumatic events of an entire era, was brilliant.

Robert Kennedy was the only virtual co-president in history, with his brother, the president. That’s a longer story. But the two managed to keep the nuclear destruction of the planet from happening in 1962 when it came closest to happening. And they began the process of nuclear arms control, with President Kennedy reaching out to Soviet Premier Khrushchev, who was also chastened by the close call of nuclear Armageddon, and who accepted Kennedy’s proposal for the Test Ban Treaty.

We also commented in the March 13 post on President Trump’s accepting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet. The only U.S. president to ever even consider this (the left and right historical versions of political reality being turned on their heads in too many ways to count, but the key word being “reality” and what that ends up being). We echoed Nicholas Kristof’s sentiments. Perhaps the only likely alternative to a horrific war, including a nuclear war. And incredibly dangerous. The physical and metaphysical result of these two in the same room being an impenetrable mystery.

In the same post, we noted the passing of Stephen Hawkings. His “Touch and Go“ quote about the future of the human species, or not, was well-aired. If we could make it for two hundred years (that’s the good luck part), we had a good chance, as we would have expanded throughout space. Maybe so. Or maybe poor space, if we couldn’t change on Planet Earth first.

So speaking of change, back to that year of pivotal change in the U.S. and world-wide, 1968.

Today, March 31, is another 50^th anniversary of one of the most impactful moments in U.S. and world history.

As we often query, you know what it is, right?

Not from any significant media reporting.

On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson—who championed civil rights, the war on poverty and expanded the New Deal through Great Society programs that enhanced access to basic needs for all to the highest level in American history, but whose presidency was destroyed by the Vietnam War—announced to national and international shock on live TV that he would not run for re-election.

This was two weeks after Bobby Kennedy announced he was running against him on March 16, after anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy had come close to winning the New Hampshire primary against LBJ on March 12. The majority of LBJ’s live TV address to the nation and the world was to announce what Kennedy, McCarthy and the anti-war movement sought—a stop to bombing and offer of peace talks with North Vietnam.

LBJ’s announcement that he would not run virtually guaranteed that five years to the month after President Kennedy had been assassinated, his brother would have been elected president. We can cite all the reasons why this still might not have happened. And all the reasons why it would have been virtually unstoppable.

It’s also been noted by us before that there were serious flaws in the actions of JFK, RFK and MLK.

We noted for instance in a previous post: “President Kennedy’s 100th birthday was last weekend. To acknowledge reality fully, he was the sexist mad man in chief in the mad men age. Bobby had to be his keeper. But they both evolved, in lightning speed in both cases at the end of their lives.”

The behavior of JFK toward women, and in therefore hurting his wife and family, was deplorable. It was still an age when reporters turned the other way and expectations were different. Respecting privacy had its upsides. Enabling sexism had its obvious downside. And to what extent JFK’s sexual affairs, as the most powerful person on earth, may have in any cases also been an abuse of power sexually may never be clear (it was more clear in the case of Bill Clinton, in an age of more transparent reporting as well, and particularly now as feminists who supported him have said they shouldn’t have because they believe he sexually assaulted women).

There is no compelling evidence we know of that Bobby was anything but faithful to his wife, but he certainty enabled JFK’s behavior even if disapproving it, while increasingly calling JFK on it, if for political reasons alone.

We also noted in a previous post the contradictions in MLK, which we believe the evidence shows he was moving past: “He treated women as sex objects at times at the further expense of his wife and family. He was sexist and homophobic with some of his closest allies who made the movement and made him possible in many ways. He also associated with the above at a level many didn’t at the time. And no one who was out front on the principles he was would have failed to move past the above limitations as the culture did after he died in no small part because of the principles he died for.”

We’ve already posted at length on issues such as how Donald Trump managed to get elected in spite of egregious behavior and allegations of sexual assault, the context of Hillary Clinton being burdened with the actions of her husband and her own enabling, the loathsome state of the culture, the reaction to increasing inequality with the working class being abandoned by both poltical parties for years, and many, many other issues.

We’ll revisit these posts as well, as the above issues are hardly finished playing out. The issues of the Trump presidency are too many to list in brief. On a broader scale, nationally and globally, economic inequality is reaching a boiling point. And sexual abuse, especially starting with children, is increasingly becoming a powerful social issue. Basic needs and rights for all. The bottom line of everythingas we keep reminding.

The last few years have been filled with extraordinary anniversaries. We have covered many of them, and will revisit them and more, as they continue to impact history and the immutable reality that we are increasingly one people on one interconnected planet that will either move forward to function as such or to not exist.

Thirty years ago on Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, as it is variously known in the Christian tradition of Holy Week culminating in Easter Sunday tomorrow, one of the principals of World Campaign was in St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while the other was in Seattle helping to coordinate the Campaign To End Hunger. Tutu had recently been jailed and released. The Nobel Peace winner was the primary anti-apartheid leader while Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned. In the cathedral that night, while watching Tutu wash the feet of attendees, everyone knew that every moment was a dangerous one. But only one thing to do. Take action. Stand firm. Who knew at that moment how much positive change was about to come in South Africa. And in many ways even more so around the world with the end of the Cold War.

Then, regression. And the basic issues of equality in the seemingly endless struggle. Now at another notch up of danger. And opportunity.

This year, Good Friday in the Christian tradition and the Passover Seder in the Jewish tradition occurred on the same day.

Nicholas Kristof posted today his piece for the Sunday Review in The New York Times Tomorrow:

“God and Her (Female) Clergy”

“Ever since Eve bit into an apple in the Garden of Eden, God has been rough on women.

Or, more precisely, the men who claim to speak on behalf of God have routinely disparaged women or discriminated against them. …

Yet a revolution is unfolding across America and the world, and countless women will be presiding this weekend over Easter and Passover celebrations. In just a few decades, women have come to dominate many seminaries and rabbinical schools and are increasingly taking over the pulpit at congregations across the country.

“What we’re seeing before our very eyes is a dramatic shift; in my mind it’s as big as the Protestant Reformation,” says the Rev. Serene Jones, the first woman president of New York City’s Union Theological Seminary — where almost 60 percent of the students are now female.

“We’re seeing a new day of understanding of who God is,” Dr. Jones added. “When the people who are representing God, making God present, have female bodies, that inevitably changes the way you think about how God is.”

Dr. Jones argues that over time women will come to dominate religious leadership and that this will powerfully reshape Americans’ understanding of God from stern father to more of a maternal healer and nurturer. “It changes the way you think geopolitically about the greatest truth,” she says.

Granted, an enormous distance remains to achieve equity, especially in Catholic, evangelical and Mormon churches and in Orthodox synagogues. Women studying to be ministers or rabbis share wrenching #MeToo tales of sexual abuse and of infuriating gender pay gaps. …

It’s a disgrace to humanity that for millenniums we’ve placed a divine stamp on discrimination against women, insisting that inequity is actually sacred. But just as religion was initially used to justify slavery but later to inspire abolitionists, faith is now evolving from a rationale for suppressing women to a means for empowering them. …

There’s a legend in progressive Judaism that a man once angrily protested that a woman no more belongs at a synagogue pulpit than an orange belongs on a Seder plate. So these days when celebrating Passover, some Jewish families include an orange on the Seder plate.”

Last night, the principals of World Campaign were guests at a Seder with the grandmother presiding with three generations present.

There was an orange on the plate.

The following are segments of posts from the start of this year.

DATE : 2.20.2018

 

(Update.2.22.18.)

Jeremy Peters has just posted an extremely telling article in The New York Times today (appearing in print tomorrow) on the NRA Chief’s attack against anyone associated with gun control at the conservative CPAC conference:

“The head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, leveled a searing indictment on Thursday against liberal Democrats, the news media and political opportunists he said were joined together in a socialist plot to “eradicate all individual freedoms.” …”“And oh how socialists love to make lists,” he said, “especially lists that can be used to deny citizens their basic freedoms.”

What universe is he in?

What is a socialist plot? This used to be “communist plot” by people like him–but communism in that sense ended with the Cold War. And the largest dictatorship in the world today is only communist in name–its an uber-capitalist dictatorship in fact. So why didn’t he say capitalist plot? Socialism is a democratic system or is comprised of many democratic parties in most of the world today. Where capitalism often thrives as well.

Oh, and did he call out Social Security as a huge socialist threat?

No, because although the initial opponents of FDR’s programs tried this, conservatives have for decades tried to outdo liberals in supporting such a popular program, along with Medicare. It’s all gibberish.

And, if you’re for gun control, much less repealing the second amendment, you’re trying to “eradicate all individual freedoms.” He might want to start with disabusing his brain of this disconnected rant by reading the first amendment.

And gun control advocates who are socialists (again–huh?) are making “lists that can be used to deny citizens their basic freedoms.”

OK, somebody take the LSD out of the NRA water. Some facts please on whose making what list for what?

Oh, and another of many history lessons about list-makers. There was this thing called Watergate where this strongly conservative-backed Republican US president tried to destroy the constitution who made an “enemies list” of those who opposed him (or were perceived to) and was the only president in US history forced to resign. He helped the rise of the modern NRA in some ways by his law and order politics–although he also supported various gun control ideas, but in part because of the NRA didn’t pursue these ideas in some areas. But then he expanded the FDR-LBJ welfare state, so maybe he was a socialist, right? Oh, but the NRA chief doesn’t talk about these popular programs that would most closely be associated with something akin to socialism.

Welcome to the rabbit-hole.

Of course, even CPAC was clearly unsure of its political sea-legs, as Peters points out:

“Mr. LaPierre’s name was initially left off the program. Then, on Thursday morning, the conference’s organizers released a revised schedule with both Mr. LaPierre and Dana Loesch, an N.R.A. spokeswoman, added as speakers.

Outside the hall where they spoke, an N.R.A. booth was broadcasting hours of online video programming from its in- house news channel, NRATV, which the organization has used as an early-warning system to alert its followers to gun control efforts.

Ms. Loesch, who just hours earlier had appeared subdued as she spoke softly in defense of the N.R.A. at a contentious forum in Florida hosted by CNN, reverted to the caustic, insult-lobbing persona she has cultivated on NRATV, where she is also a host.

Speaking before Mr. LaPierre, she called for more guns in schools, denounced the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as political persecutors and accused liberals of trying to sabotage the existing background check system for gun purchases.”

More guns in schools? Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio who has been supported by the NRA said this was a terrible idea, and said he was re-thinking other positions on gun control as well.

Persecuted by a Justice Department run by a Trump-appointee? Well, gosh, there’s a conversation.

And sabotaging the “existing background check system”?

What system? The one that 99% of the American people say needs to be changed to even come close to actually being a real background check system–with support across the political board but which politician cowards haven’t done because of the NRA to date–but which the ground appears to be shifting quickly on now?

Perhaps most repulsively, the following, in the Peters article:

“Ms. Loesch also saw fault for the shooting in the news media, saying killings were always good for business. ‘Many in legacy media love mass shootings,’ she said. ‘Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back.’”

Crying white mothers of gunned-down murdered children! What does their race matter, except to where her base mainly is found? NRA champion for the oppressed of color? The media is a money-making endeavor which we have lacerated time and again. But it also represents reality in an important way when reality intrudes, and she may be the last person on earth with the right to say any of the above. Again, the first part alone is one of the most offensive traumatizing atrocities against the loved-ones of murdered children imaginable.

This is a desperate lunge for the base to try to stop the tidal wave. The base might respond, but it’s getting smaller. The wave may be stopped at the moment as it has been before for many reasons–only to come back stronger until it prevails.

Or, it may not be stopped now. And the audience at CPAC apparently sees the writing on the wall. Again, Peters:

“But the temperature on stage was noticeably hotter than in the audience, which gave Mr. LaPierre and Ms. Loesch polite but mostly unenthusiastic applause.”

2.20.18:

The war on children continues.

The threshold of enough children killed, in mass shootings (and many more, children and adults, in gun violence every day), to end the gun reign of terror, has not been reached.

Or maybe it has.

Not because of the adults (save some). But because maybe the children’s revolution on this issue has begun.

The kids killed in their school in Florida were high school kids. High school kids can cause a lot of trouble–the right kind of trouble that got Nelson Mandela nicknamed “troublemaker”–if they decide to. The line between stunned trauma and outraged action often takes time to cross. It has, and it may yet–but that’s where we’re headed.

And when a nation of high school students realizes that it can shut down the nation to stop the killing if it so decides, then the Berlin Wall moment will come.

As the New York Times editorialized tonight (in tomorrow’s print edition):

“Will America Choose Its Children Over Guns?”

As surely as there are camels’ backs and straws to break them, moments arrive when citizens say they’ve had enough, when they rise up against political leaders who do not speak for them and whose moral fecklessness imperils lives. We may be witness to such a moment now with the protests by American teenagers sickened — and terrified — by the latest mass murder at the hands of someone with easy access to a weapon fit for a battlefield, not a school.

These kids have had enough. They’ve had enough of empty expressions of sympathy in the wake of the sort of atrocities they’ve grown up with, like last week’s mass shooting that took 17 lives at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Enough of the ritualistic mouthing of thoughts and prayers for the victims.

Enough of living in fear that they could be next in the cross hairs of a well-armed deranged killer, even with all the active shooter drills and lockdowns they’ve gone through. Enough of craven politicians who kneel before the National Rifle Association and its cynically fundamentalist approach to the Second Amendment.

They are asking in what kind of country are children sent off to school with bulletproof book bags strapped to their backs — capable, one manufacturer, Bullet Blocker, says, of “stopping a

.357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, 9mm, .45 caliber hollow point ammunition and more. …

Sensible young people have it in their power to make their senseless elders take heed — and act. We saw it happen during the Vietnam War half a century ago. Young people, initially reviled by establishment forces as unwashed, longhaired traitors, energized an antiwar movement that swept the country and, even if it took years, ultimately ended America’s misguided adventure in Southeast Asia.”

In a related article today, The New York Times reported:

“From California to Florida, teenagers walked out of classes, stopped traffic and made stirring speeches calling out their elders for inaction.”

In the end, for all the other legitimate issues that need to be addressed–the issue is guns.

Obviously keeping guns out of the hands of anyone with a history of violence or threats of violence, the severely mentally ill, raising the age of legally being able to have guns, making assault, virtually automatic and semi-automatic, etc. weapons such as the AR-15 illegal (the norm forever until recent years), improving background checks and community and law enforcement prevention and response and on and on all make sense. But focusing on keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill per se for instance avoids the larger point even on this issue; go to the root cause of the health issues and among other things provide effective affordable treatment for everyone–and do it with intellectual integrity recognizing the limitations of our knowledge and the points in intervention needed to safeguard both the individual and community. That’s another issue that we’re prehistoric about.

All issues related to this tragedy and the endless number preceding it are inter-related. But the bottom line here is guns. The US has far, far, far more gun deaths than any other developed nation. It also has far more guns. The places where there are no guns there are virtually no gun deaths.

In the wake of tragedies such as in the US, other countries have enacted strict gun control–quickly.

On the day of the slaughter of the children in Florida, Kai Ryssdal on NPR’s Marketplace said he was repeating a refrain he’d used, sickeningly, ever since Sandy Hook–there’s more gun retail stores in America than Starbuck’s on the planet.

On CBS This Morning yesterday, a teacher wounded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who helped others escape said:

“I personally witnessed one of my kids, his name is Peter Wang, holding the door pushing kids through the door while bullets are coming at him. I don’t know many adults who could have done that, let alone a 14-year-old boy.”

Wang, a JROTC student, was one of those killed.”

And although he wasn’t at the point of ending the second amendment, the teacher said:

“I say, there’s no point to somebody having an AR-15. And if somebody wants to argue with me on that, that’s cool. If you want an AR-15, we’ll go to the range, I get to shoot at you, I get to graze you with a bullet, I get to catch you with fragments like I did, and then after that if you still want to buy said weapon, cool. Then I’m going to have you talk to a psychologist.

“Because that gun is not designed to do anything besides kill people. The round itself is unstable … That’s not normal,” he said.

But the people who the shooter was staying with had no problem with his having the AR 15, or other guns–they weren’t exactly sure how many.

This was just the last stop for the 19-year old who had been expelled from the school. His adoptive mother had just died. His family history has only murkily been focused on. It obviously had serious problems, as he did. The lack of focus on his life from the beginning has been a major deficit in coverage, and in understanding the context for what he became. The focus on all the more recent disturbing signs begged the questions about his life from birth, how he was formed, as well as why the recent huge red flags about killing weren’t acted on in a number of ways.

Again, from today’s New York Times:

“Driven by rage and grief over one of the deadliest school shootings in modern American history, students from across the country were taking action in hopes of pushing their lawmakers to rethink their positions on gun control, even as the Florida State House rejected a move on Tuesday to consider a bill that would ban assault rifles. …As the news began to spread aboard a bus of students headed to the capital, Anthony Lopez, 16, a junior, slammed his head back on the bus seat. He placed a hand on his forehead. ‘That’s infuriating,’ he said. ‘They’re acting inhuman.’ …(Updated) ‘This shooting is different from the other ones,’ said Daniel Bishop, 16, who sat side-by-side with his sister on the second bus. “Sandy Hook, they were elementary school kids who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Virginia Tech was 2007, a different time. But this one, I just have a gut feeling — something is going to change.’ …’We definitely have a moral obligation to do something, considering that so many innocent people that we know passed,’ said Mr. Bishop’s sister, Julia Bishop, 18. ‘These adults, these politicians, these lawmakers, these legislators, they were supposed to protect us. And they didn’t.’”

This issue is about much more than the horror of mass school shootings. Its about more gun deaths by far in other circumstances, on the streets, in homes, and related to many other issues, from child abuse, to adult abuse, to addiction, to mental health, to class, to race, and so on, to a culture that glorifies bloody violence.

Social movements themselves take twists and turns. This is a birthing moment in some ways and there will be great pressure on and great disagreement within any such movement before it gels into a powerful force. Everything in the culture will resist, consciously and unconsciously, the idea of such a movement at all, much less led by teens. It may be quashed with rhetoric and other issues quickly. It may become the next issue that crumbs of action and the constant tease of more turn into the next favored flavor social issue of the status quo that provides cover for the lack of real change.

Nonetheless.

Today, tomorrow, whenever, the camel’s back is twitching.

 

2.10.2018:

As we write, twenty years ago to the hour, the principals of World Campaign were landing in Palm Springs having flown from Seattle, to celebrate the 95th birthday of the grandmother of one of them. They took her out to dinner and were the only family members with her for the occasion. One was her eldest grandchild and a central maternal figure to him and the other her granddaughter-in-law who she called the daughter she never had. She was staying in a very modest home, by herself. A far cry from the high-end Palm Springs home her deceased husband and she had built many years before. They split time between Seattle and Palm Springs by season every year.

He had passed away three years before. The principals were in Palm Springs when he felt his impending passing. They helped arrange their return to Seattle and the beginning of the sale of their home in Palm Springs. They were deeply involved in his care during the months leading to his death. It was an extraordinary experience, and another story.

The grandmother had played the typical female role of her era. He worked and made the money and ran the finances. She was the housewife. Both of their stories had started on farms in poverty or at risk of it at the turn of the 20th century. Their families, like so many Americans, had emigrated to the US a generation or two before, in her case an extension of the Irish emigration that had in the main begun to escape the Great Famine that was one of the horrors associated with English rule. She was one hundred percent Irish and Catholic to the bone.

After her husband died, she, who loved him dearly (just as he was devoted to her), nonetheless underwent an inspiring transformation starting at 92 years old.

She did things on her own she never had. She spoke about family history and dysfunction in a way she never had. She was the only girl in a large family in which all her brothers were alcoholic. That was never a secret as it was impossible to hide. But never talked about so openly, much less the impact of such dysfunction in the next generations. The extent of her own suffering as a child was in some ways never revealed by her, a classic defense mechanism still, but like gravity for her generation. Children are the most vulnerable and must come first, she always reminded, with increasing consciousness and willingness to act on what that meant. She was compassionate, tough, anxious and peaceful all at once. Immediately recognizable as a prototype of raging Irish beauty from youth to old age.

So here she was, on her own, on her 95th birthday. Going out to celebrate with her eldest grandchild and the daughter she never had at an old favorite spot on Palm Canyon Drive. Never more sharp or alive, honest and learning and growing. Before too long after this, she began to fade, but this too she faced with great courage, and often with amazing humor–a characteristic she had always shared with those who knew how to connect with it. She died, as we’ve noted before, on her husband’s birthday, less than two months shy of her own 99th birthday.

One hundred and fifteen years ago today.

She grew up in, lived in and died in, a sexist world to varying degrees. She was treated differently, in life and in death, even as the grand maternal figure, than the grand paternal figure, her husband.

She was fifteen years old when, one hundred years ago this week, the right to vote was achieved after great struggle, by women in the UK. It took a few more years to become universal. She was eighteen when women got the vote in the US.

There are still women who can’t vote in the world. And those who can on paper, are often kept from doing so, or vote, as do many men, in contexts which are a pretense of democracy, or democracy corrupted by power and money. The latter would be everywhere to varying extents, in some ways worse than ever.

But back to women for a moment. How its it possible that half of a species could be relegated to subservience in such a rudimentary way for most of history?

Women treated as things.

But then how many men are also treated as things?

And first and foremost, how many children, by both men and women, which virtually guarantees that adults will be?

The rich and powerful have throughout history relegated everyone else to the status of things. And the corruption of the values that allow this, until the pressure explodes and creates upheaval, corrupts everything. We are as sick of writing this as you are of reading it. But when the lifeboat gets closer and closer to capsizing, it’s required repetition.

Throughout history, everything gets better, and everything gets worse. And what will happen in the evolve or die equation is up to us. Yes, another of our ongoing refrains. And for those most victimized, the horrible paradox, one of many that comprise reality, is that it is utterly unfair to expect the victims to have to be the ones to face every terror in order to become liberated.

But that is reality.

The corruption of our species and our times could not be more grotesquely exemplified than by an event that occurred during the Super Bowl last Sunday in the US.

First, let us take a detour.

On Friday night, we had the privilege of being invited to see and hear a high-school classmate of one of us speak at the primary weekly speaker’s meeting in Seattle of Alcoholics Anonymous. Of Irish Catholic alcoholic family background, his relationship to the word “God” was not friendly. So, as with many in AA, he needed to find other ways to define and experience spiritual growth and the universe that is larger than any of us, yet contains all of us. He expressed this eloquently in numerous ways, with the conclusion oft-heard of the centrality of service to recovery.

After being in recovery for about a decade (now over three decades) he married his wife, who was present. She had as a condition of their marriage required her own sobriety in solidarity with his, even though she had no addiction issues. He movingly thanked her publicly for this for the first time Friday night to the thunderous applause of a packed hall. Afterwards we talked, among other things, about an article that had moved them about our history and current condition as a species and as a society. It dealt with the Native American concept of “Wetiko”

The article “Seeing Wetiko” by Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk, appeared in The Utne Reader last year and Kosmos in 2016 originally.

Here’s how it starts:

“It’s delicate confronting these priests of the golden bull

They preach from the pulpit of the bottom line

Their minds rustle with million dollar bills

You say Silver burns a hole in your pocket

And Gold burns a hole in your soul

Well, uranium burns a hole in forever It just gets out of control.

– Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Priests of the Golden Bull”

What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if we went on to say that this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating, according to the laws of cultural evolution, and that it remains so clandestine in our psyches that most hosts will, as a condition of their infected state, vehemently deny that they are infected? What if we then told you that this ‘mind virus’ can be described as a form of cannibalism. Yes, cannibalism. Not necessarily in the literal flesh-eating sense but rather the idea of consuming others— human and non-human—as a means of securing personal wealth and supremacy. …

Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). It deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of Gaian life) is a logical and morally upright way to live.”

You get the picture. The above references will get you to the rest of the article–don’t miss, as we have a penchant for saying. The concepts are similar to much of what we’ve been communicating for decades, as have been by many others for eons. But in many ways a superb presentation of the concepts.

The Super Bowl itself is an archetypal modern example of the gladiatorial using and destroying of humans by humans for mass human entertainment from projected individual and tribal aggression to extraordinary performance to emotional manipulation (well, then there’s the Olympics–sexually abusing and in every other way using and abusing children and adults in service of the same, as we, Bryant Gumbel on “Real Sports” and many others have been expressing for some time–but at least this year the peace fakery may possibly have some real impact). In a hopeful sign, the pro-football audience is waning (although still huge) and parents increasingly refuse to send their boys to the slaughter of the farm leagues. Boys who are abused physically and psychologically by the process and are taught violence and power are a requirement of self-worth (the whole culture teaches these things), while girls are taught to enable this and seek power by being sex objects on the sidelines (the culture teaches this too, and that women seeking power should emulate the above, exemplified by adult women increasingly screaming for blood on the field as loudly as anyone).

So, what follows is a Rorschach test of your basic sense of awareness and conscience. And a wakeup call of a scream through the ages.

One of the hallmarks of the Super Bowl is that it’s also the Super Bowl of advertising–that medium generally used to feed every most base impulse we have to consume.

So, we’re watching, live, as monitoring media and culture is a critical part of our work, which public service advertising has also been a critical part of.

The image is of a Dodge Ram truck. The voiceover sounds so familiar. But its instantly brain-exploding and you don’t at first know why.

NO! That is NOT the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr.!

NO! that is NOT his famous “The Drum Major Instinct” speech of exactly 50 years before to the day!

NOT at the start of this 50th anniversary year of that year of years in the US and around the world–Vietnam (this is the 50th anniversary of the second week of the Tet Offensive) and Civil Rights and King and Kennedy and on and on–1968.

The New York Times reported:

“The online blowback was swift for Ram on Sunday after the carmaker used a sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the voice-over for a Super Bowl ad. …

The commercial showed scenes of people helping others while Dr. King extolled the virtues of service. At the end, the phrase “Built to Serve” was shown on the screen, along with the Ram logo. …

Adding to the disconnect, the sermon in question, delivered exactly 50 years ago, touched on the danger of overspending on items like cars and discussed why people “are so often taken by advertisers.” That was not lost on the ad’s detractors.

The general sentiment: Did the company really just use Dr. King’s words about the value of service to sell trucks?

The King Center said on Twitter that neither the organization nor the Rev. Bernice King, one of Dr. King’s daughters, is responsible for approving his “words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement.” It said that included the Super Bowl commercial.

Ram approached Dr. King’s estate about using his voice in the commercial, said Eric D. Tidwell, the managing director of Intellectual Properties Management, the licenser of the estate.

“Once the final creative was presented for approval, it was reviewed to ensure it met our standard integrity clearances,” Mr. Tidwell said in a statement. “We found that the overall message of the ad embodied Dr. King’s philosophy that true greatness is achieved by serving others.”

Ergo, the holistic nature of everything cannibalizing everything. The New York Times editorialized the next day:

“Making Dr. King a Pitchman, Turning His Words Upside Down:

William Bernbach, a titan of Madison Avenue who died in 1982, said, “If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic.” The spinmeisters for Ram trucks must have taken Mr. Bernbach’s admonition to heart. With a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday that used as its soundtrack a sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years earlier to the day, they got the notice they wanted. Much of the reaction, though, amounted to a richly deserved thumbs-down.

The sermon was Dr. King’s “Drum Major Instinct” speech, given in Atlanta in 1968 two months before his assassination.

Everybody, he said, had this instinct — “a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first.” But it had to be harnessed, he said as he went on to equate greatness with service to others. Ostensibly, the Ram commercial was an appeal for people to serve. But who’s kidding whom? The goal was to sell trucks, with Dr. King’s voice as pitchman.

The sheer crassness led to instant condemnation on social media, including speculation about what might be next — maybe trotting out James Baldwin to hawk “The Firestone Next Time”? Critics were hardly mollified by word that Ram had the blessing of Intellectual Properties Management, the licenser of Dr. King’s estate. The estate has not always been his staunchest guardian against posthumous commercialization.

It might serve history a tad more faithfully to note other appeals that Dr. King made in that Feb. 4, 1968, sermon. For one thing, he was appalled by the way many people went into hock to buy vehicles they couldn’t possibly afford: “So often, haven’t you seen people making $5,000 a year and driving a car that cost 6,000? And they wonder why their ends never meet.”

While we’re at it, he also didn’t think highly of advertising gurus — “you know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion.” He continued: “They have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love, you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff.”

For that matter, Dr. King might well have been talking about a president a half-century in the future when he expounded on the need to rein in the drum major instinct, for otherwise it becomes “very dangerous” and “pernicious.”

“Have you ever heard people that, you know — and I’m sure you’ve met them — that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves?” he said. “And they just boast and boast and boast. And that’s the person who has not harnessed the drum major instinct.”

In the sermon’s finale, Dr. King said that he thought about his own death and funeral. It led to these ringing words: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

He did not ask to be a huckster for a line of trucks.”

He did, in this speech, say that the best aspects of socialism and capitalism needed to be combined, with the worst aspects discarded, to create real equality.

In The Guardian in London yesterday, Gary Younge addressed the same issue, tying together Dr. King’s themes with the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and other social issues regarding basic needs and basic rights for all–and the radical activism required for social change throughout history.

“Big business is hijacking our radical past. We must stop it:

Ram Trucks distorted a Martin Luther King sermon to sell its cars. This is how the establishment whitewashes history.

In 1966, shortly before Martin Luther King branded America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and insisted “capitalism forgets that life is social”, a Gallup poll showed two thirds of Americans viewed him unfavourably. In 1999, when Gallup asked Americans for the most admired figures of the 20th century, King came second to Mother Teresa. When his monument went up on the National Mall in Washington in 2011, 91% of Americans approved.

But when it comes to throwing its arms around a man it once loathed, American capitalism outdid itself last weekend, using a recording of a sermon King delivered about the value of service to sell Ram Trucks – “Built to Serve” – during the Superbowl.

Given that King was dead during the entire transition from being reviled to being revered, we should assume the journey owed less to what he did than to how others chose to remember him.

In the week when Britain celebrated the centenary of the act of parliament that granted the vote to some women, it is worth examining the manner in which radical history is misrepresented and radicals themselves are routinely coopted. With the militancy that made them both possible denied or distorted, their achievements are instead folded into the official narrative as though challenging the establishment was, in fact, the establishment’s idea all along. What was once considered dangerous and incendiary is repackaged as obvious and inevitable.

Referring to America’s conversion to marriage equality, veteran gay rights campaigner Madeline Davis told me: “People forget that this did not erupt wholly from the head of Zeus … Those of us who did work hard all over the country put in many days and many hours going through rejection.” Movements are reduced to individuals – Rosa Parks’ momentary act of defiance on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama is credited with forcing change, rather than the subsequent year-long transport boycott by the city’s black population.

Individuals, meanwhile, are elevated to icons: Parks is sold as a demure seamstress, ignoring a life of activism in which she insisted on the right to use violence in self-defence. Or they are condemned to invisibility: Claudette Colvin was ejected from a bus nine months before Parks after also refusing to give up her seat, but her cause was dropped after she became pregnant at 15. Until recently, she was left out of the story altogether.

The suffragettes were reviled by the establishment. And for good reason. They smashed windows and started fires. They preferred jail to second-class citizenship. They went on hunger strikes. Some were communists. They did not just break the law – some flouted it ostentatiously. “To say I enjoyed making fires sounds rather awful,” said Lilian Lenton. “But it was really lovely to find that you’d been successful; that the thing really had burned down and you hadn’t got caught.”

Their challenge was not just against the political class, but the media that lent it legitimacy. In 1913 the Daily Express described suffragettes variously as “wild”, “fanatical”, “crazy” and “frenzied”. A year later the home secretary disparaged them as “foolish and mischievous”. Even those who supported suffrage would routinely condemn the means by which it was fought for. In 1905, when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were forcibly removed from a Liberal party meeting for heckling in favour of female suffrage, the Guardian condemned their behaviour as being “such as one was accustomed to attribute to women from the slums”.

It would be churlish not to celebrate the fact that once controversial and radical ideas, such as women’s suffrage or racial and gay liberation, have shifted from the margins to the mainstream. Even if we are not where we would want to be in terms of equality we are, thankfully, not where we were. But we should be wary of how these celebrations are conducted – who is given the floor, to what end and with what message – for two main reasons.

First, because before radical history can be embraced by the establishment it must be washed clean of whatever ideology made it effective. Radical change is most likely to come from below, be fiercely resisted by entrenched interests from above and achieved through confrontation. “If those who have do not give, those who haven’t must take,” argued the late anti-racist intellectual Ambalavaner Sivanandan. This is not a message those in power are keen to promote, lest their own interests be challenged.

In the case of the Ram Trucks ad, this whitewashing couldn’t have been more blatant. In another part of the sermon that was used, King literally tells the congregation not to be fooled into spending more money than necessary on cars by sharp advertisers. “These gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion,” he says, “have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying … In order to make your neighbours envious you must drive this type of car … And before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff.”

Second, because history does not stop because someone puts up a plaque. If we understand that what was radical yesterday could be accepted as common sense tomorrow, that might change how we act today. Knowing that some of our most cherished rights were won by often uncelebrated people facing great odds, unrelenting vilification and, at times, state repression, suggests that at least some of those being denigrated today will be celebrated one day. The means by which we might achieve progressive change may shift according to the context – but the need for it never goes away. And the stories we have been told about how things happened are intimately connected to the stories we tell ourselves.

“The belief that we have come from somewhere,” wrote the historian EH Carr, “is closely linked with the belief that we are going somewhere … our view of history reflects our view of society.”

Just as in other times and places in history, there was no King without Parks and so many other women. There was no vote for women in the US without Alice Paul following her mentor Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, leading the first protests at the White House, committing “treason” and willing to die on hunger strike–who then came close to the all-time lightning strikes twice with the Equal Rights Amendment, championed even by a Republican first lady in the 1970’s and which had it been ratified, as it nearly was, would have vastly changed the issues still plaguing women and all of us. For all the understandable reasons we don’t have the first woman US president right now, the fact that we never have, and the idea that sexism is not a part of the rotten core of the reason, is vacuous.

As we have said before, there is no greater document in history than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Principally authored and politically led to unanimous acceptance in a new United Nations by a woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, who in so doing, made good on the next step of what FDR had promised as the outcome in the war against fascism: Equality of peoples.

Another anniversary this year–70 years since the Declaration, from which so much good has flowed and so much has been thwarted–so far. The promise of the end of World War Two was in part prevented by the Cold War.

And then, also on the day this week of the centennial of the vote for women in the UK, the exact day in which the years and days from when the Berlin Wall was built, to when it fell, to today.

All of us conscious at the time remember that day. One of those impossible to imagine days.

But the globalism that followed has been far more that of the extension of greed and power by the few over the many and the infection of wanting this by so many–than a one world of equality of peoples.

Timothy Garton Ash wrote a compelling long form opinion in The Guardian about the meaning of the fall of the wall on the 25th anniversary–and wondering about the next generation of change makers–the 89ers, who he defined as those born shortly before and after, that historic year:

“So where are the 89ers? It is not that this generation has been silent, interested only in private life, eyes and thumbs down on the screen of a smartphone, as grey-haired old 68ers sometimes moan. 89ers have camped out on the streets of cities from New York to Madrid, to demand back a future that the post-Wall world seemed first to promise, and then bankers and politicians to have stolen from them. …

But it is not yet clear what broader political vision this generation represents, how it will change Europe and whether it will appeal to a wider world. Indeed, if it is to succeed, this cannot just be a western generation, in the way the 39ers and 68ers largely were. As important, probably more so, are the 89ers in Beijing, Delhi and São Paolo.

I don’t know whether the 89ers will come together as a defining political generation, how they will act and – as important – how they will react when “stuff happens”, as stuff will. But one thing is clear: their action (or inaction) will determine how we read the Wall’s fall on its 50th anniversary. On them will depend the future of our past.”

As we said then, although the three plus years since have given many additional reasons to despair, we believe that enough of the 89ers and 68ers and everyone else will come through, after tragically more blood and horror imaginable, to barely save and change the world.

But believe is not know. That depends on overcoming not just the usual power structures and all the new insidious ones, but also the 75th wave of our own delusional narcissism that liberation means whatever we want instead of equality and responsibility for all.

And as a grandmother born in 1903 said, with all her subjugation by, collusion with and the beginning of liberation from, courageously very late in life, the constraints of sexism and all forms of exploitation: “The children come first.”

1.30.2018:

Today is the 136th anniversary of the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We have examined his unique positive role in the history of the US and the world often. And we have pulled no punches on his grievous failures.

But he is without question one of the three great US Presidents with Washington and Lincoln. And in the world we know today, with all its risks and opportunities, his role was and is unique.

He forged The Atlantic Charter and the United Nations post-war world in the fall of 1940 before the US was in the war and before most Americans wanted to be. He defined the anti-facsist struggle as one that must end in a world of “equality of peoples.” As noted before, he said this to Winston Churchill in a meeting attended by his son, Elliott, who reported it in his book “As He Saw It”. As also noted before, decades later, Elliott wrote the forward to a book on media and politics by one of the principals of World Campaign.

Five months before the D-Day landings at Normandy, FDR outlined to the American people what this new world would mean for them–and for the world–a second bill of rights. Basic needs for all must be a basic right, and are the basic requirement for a stable world of peace.

The irony, as they say, cannot be overstated, that on FDR’s birthday, President Trump gave his first State of the Union. The transcript is on the Forum and easily found online. To analyze it and all that has transpired since November 8, 2016, is not our intent here. A fair amount of that has been done by us, and more will be, in the context of the global realities we are in, as always.

FDR understood those global realities, and the need for an evolution of basic needs and rights fully when he delivered his famed State of the Union Message to Congress on January 11, 1944.

The full address can be read at the link at the bottom of the page on The Message of the Day at the FDR library. Much of it can be linked there and elsewhere in both viewing (it was filmed) and listening (as it was delivered on radio). You are in part seeing and listening to a man give the last part of his clearly ebbing life to accomplishing the great goals of defeating fascism and creating a just world of equality for all.

The conclusion of his State of the Union Message on January 11, 1944, on the need for an evolution of the bill of rights is excerpted here:

“It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill- clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self- evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis- recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights- for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do. Many of these problems are already before committees of the Congress in the form of proposed legislation. I shall from time to time communicate with the Congress with respect to these and further proposals. In the event that no adequate program of progress is evolved, I am certain that the Nation will be conscious of the fact.

Our fighting men abroad- and their families at home- expect such a program and have the right to insist upon it. It is to their demands that this Government should pay heed rather than to the whining demands of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests while young Americans are dying.

The foreign policy that we have been following—the policy that guided us at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran—is based on the common sense principle which was best expressed by Benjamin Franklin on July 4, 1776: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

I have often said that there are no two fronts for America in this war. There is only one front. There is one line of unity which extends from the hearts of the people at home to the men of our attacking forces in our farthest outposts. When we speak of our total effort, we speak of the factory and the field, and the mine as well as of the battleground — we speak of the soldier and the civilian, the citizen and his Government.

Each and every one of us has a solemn obligation under God to serve this Nation in its most critical hour—to keep this Nation great — to make this Nation greater in a better world.”

1.23.2018:

We go back to the well today, for another extraordinary story in The New York Times about another history-changing moment.

President Trump and Pope Francis have absolutely nothing in common.

And yet they have absolutely everything in common as patriarchal masters of the universe who (along with too many others), as we write, need a moral and strategic lesson, on the most critical issue from which all else will flow, all will be judged, soon in history’s time, which was delivered today from a US circuit court judge in Michigan.

Her name is Rosemarie Aquilina. She is fast becoming a household name. She is presiding over the trial of the sexual abuser of hundreds of children. Some are young women now, some still children. She has given them the unprecedented venue to speak to the predator who raped and molested them.

All of them who want to. For as long as it takes.

As Judge Aquilina rightly noted, the world is watching.

We have never seen newscasts devote so much uninterrupted time to anything like this. Just girl after girl, woman after woman, unloading the unvarnished truth.

Sobbing and heaving are not optional.

These courageous tortured girls and young women, and the woman judge who has elevated them to a forum unlike anything we’ve seen before, have taken the next step in changing everything.

Tomorrow, Judge Aquilina will doubtless sentence a true monster, Larry Nasser, to die in a jail cell.

But more importantly, the judging and sentencing have just begun for Gymnastics USA, Michigan State University, The US Olympic Committee and many other individual and institutional enablers who made this abuse possible. And to everyone, from corporations to consumers who enable the use and abuse of young bodies for their dollars and entertainment pleasure without a thought to the cost, much less to the consequences to all coming faster by the moment.

Its the same story from every institution to every family with this curse, and the complicity of all of society.

The following article will be front page tomorrow and is already one of the most read:

“Victims in Larry Nassar Abuse Case Find a Fierce Advocate: The Judge”

By Scott Cacciola, Jan. 23 (24th on the front page print), 2018

LANSING, Mich. — Judge Rosemarie Aquilina listened on Monday morning as yet another gymnast, one of scores coming forward in her courtroom, took her turn excoriating Lawrence G. Nassar, a prominent doctor for U.S.A. Gymnastics who has pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes.

The young woman finished, and Judge Aquilina, who has now allowed nearly 140 girls and women, including several prominent Olympic gymnasts, to give statements against Dr. Nassar, leaned forward from the bench. She smiled at the gymnast, Bailey Lorencen, and delivered her own heartfelt statement in a manner and tone befitting a therapist.

“The military has not yet come up with fiber as strong as you,” Judge Aquilina told Ms. Lorencen, calling her a “heroine” and a “superhero.” She added: “Mattel ought to make toys so that little girls can look at you and say, ‘I want to be her.’ Thank you so much for being here, and for your strength.”

Belying the stone-faced image of dispassionate jurists, Judge Aquilina has emerged as an unusually fierce victims’ advocate in a sentencing hearing that has drawn national attention for the scope of Dr. Nassar’s abuse and for the role that institutions like

U.S.A. Gymnastics and Michigan State University played in employing him for decades.

Judge Aquilina’s vow to let every victim speak has also unexpectedly turned the hearing into a cathartic forum that has emboldened dozens of women who had remained silent to come forward with accounts of abuse by Dr. Nassar. Court officials initially had expected 88 young women to speak when the hearing began last week, but the number is expected to top 150 by the time these proceedings conclude, likely Wednesday morning.

Judge Aquilina, 59, who has written crime novels and served 20 years in the Michigan Army National Guard, has offered encouragement, consolation and tissues. She has made no secret that she wants Dr. Nassar to spend the rest of his life suffering in prison.

And, in an extraordinary session streamed live on the internet over several days, she has opened her courtroom to any victim who wishes to speak, for however long she wishes to speak.

That goes for their coaches and parents, too.

“Leave your pain here,” Judge Aquilina told one young woman, “and go out and do your magnificent things.”

Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that although judges are often thought of as unbiased and impartial, it is important to remember that this is a sentencing hearing, not a trial. Dr. Nassar, who has already received a 60- year federal sentence for a child pornography conviction, pleaded guilty to several state sexual assault charges and will be sentenced after the “victim impact statements” are finished.

“At a sentencing, a judge can say and is encouraged to say just what she thinks,” Mr. Gillers said in a telephone interview. “What’s unusual here is that the number of victims who are willing to speak has given the judge more than 100 opportunities to do that.”

Sure enough, Judge Aquilina has punctuated each and every victim statement with some words of her own — a mix of praise, gratitude and support for the women who have come forward to address the court and, in many instances, Dr. Nassar himself, who has been a captive to it all from the witness box.

Occasionally he has teared up, but mostly he sits passively, staring down at papers in front of him.

On Tuesday, Judge Aquilina heard from nearly 30 more victims: sisters who said that Dr. Nassar had molested them; a former rower at Michigan State, who said she had received no response to two separate reports of abuse against Dr. Nassar; and several others who described the crippling effects of depression and mental illness they attributed to Dr. Nassar’s behavior.

“You are so strong and brave,” Judge Aquilina said.

Judge Aquilina’s unconventional approach has not elicited any discernible criticism, but she has generated attention. Not only has she opened the floodgates to emotional testimony in a very pronounced way, but she seems determined to lend her voice, shedding any pretense of judicial distance.

Several victims — and their parents — have thanked Judge Aquilina, including Doug Powell, whose daughter Kassie spoke out last week as one of Dr. Nassar’s many accusers.

“Judge Aquilina, I applaud you,” Mr. Powell said after his daughter addressed the court. “We applaud you. This room applauds you.”

The use of victim impact statements has generated debate in sentencing hearings before juries, as some scholars have questioned the tactic as an obvious emotional ploy meant to sway the panel for a tougher term.

But in this case, there is no jury and, between the federal sentence and the pending state one, the judge had previously indicated that Dr. Nassar, 54, would probably die in prison.

And so she has turned it into a rolling demand for accountability by the people who were supposed to protect the victims.

“The severe nature of the crime was compounded many times over by the failure of adults who knew or should have known that crimes were occurring to take action to protect the victims,” said Janice Nadler, a law professor at Northwestern University who has written about victim impact statements.

She added: “Permitting the victim impact statements of all individuals who Nassar abused is the government’s opportunity to counter Nassar’s message: to demonstrate to the victims that they matter, that their lives matter, that the state stands ready to impose the punishment that Nassar deserves.”

Judge Aquilina locally has a reputation for blunt talk and wearing cowboy boots under her robes.

A 2014 profile in the Washtenaw County Legal News said her nickname in the military was “Barracuda Aquilina” and reported her role in several high-profile cases, including a ruling in 2013 that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing violated the state Constitution. She sent a copy of her ruling to President Barack Obama.

“My message to Obama was: ‘Get ready to cough up some federal money. This is coming,’” she told the paper.

When Dr. Nassar sent Judge Aquilina a letter last week complaining about his emotional distress hearing the statements, she responded with a withering attack.

“Spending four or five days listening to them is significantly minor,” she said, “considering the hours of pleasure you had at their expense and ruining their lives.”

Judge Aquilina has repeatedly assured the women that she is listening to them and that “the whole world” is listening to them, too.

Ms. Lorencen, for example, arrived at Ingham County Circuit Court in Lansing, Mich., on Monday morning fully aware that dozens of other young women had come before her. It was the start of the fifth day in the sentencing hearing, but Ms. Lorencen, 22, wanted to be sure that her voice was still heard.

“I feel that many of the things I’m going to say are similar to what has already been said by 100 other victims,” Ms. Lorencen said as she read from prepared notes. “We know there are well over that many. But we cannot let that dilute the importance of each of our stories.”

Judge Aquilina had anticipated that the hearing would conclude after four days. But over the course of the proceedings, more women who have accused Dr. Nassar of abuse have come forward wanting to deliver their own statements. Many of them have said they felt empowered by what was happening at the court.

Judge Aquilina made it clear from the start that she would accommodate them all, welcoming each to her courtroom the same way.

“Thank you,” she says. “What would you like me to know?”

1.11.2018;

The new year has begun in full now.

And from two sides of the planet, the issue of our times, and all times until fully addressed, made headlines today.

First Pakistan. One of those places where most of the people in the world live but who might as well not exist to the those in the rich western world (or to the rich in their own world–all connected.) Of course to the small percent who control everything in the western world, the rest in their own world are barely visible. So of course all the more so with the rest of the planet.

So, for the zillionth time, this all ends badly. Its a mathematical equation of historical certainty played out again and again, but with the stakes now being planetary existence.

And for the zillionth time, without caring for the children, nothing else will ever happen, except deserved oblivion.

Pakistan was riveted today by one thing. The dead body of a raped and killed seven-year-old girl.

From Deutsche Welle in Bonn:

“Pakistan child rape and murder case ‘just tip of iceberg’ The rape and murder of Zainab Ansari, a seven-year-old Pakistani girl, have shocked the country. People demand justice for the girl’s family, but there isn’t much discussion on the issue of child protection in Pakistan.

In the eastern city of Kasur, people are protesting lack of progress in finding those responsible for the kidnapping, rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari. At least two people have died during violent clashes between police and protesters.

The country is in a state of shock, with social media flooded with messages of solidarity with Zainab’s family and anger at the provincial government of Punjab. Vigils and demonstrations are being held in all major Pakistani cities.

Zainab disappeared last week while returning from a Quranic studies class to her aunt’s house; her body was found in a pile of garbage on Tuesday near her home in Kasur in Pakistan’s Punjab province. She was the eighth child to have been found raped and murdered in Kasur over the past year, according to a police official anonymously quoted by AFP news agency.

“I have no information about any arrest in my daughter’s murder case,” Zainab’s father Amin Ansari told Tanvir Shahzad, DW’s correspondent in Lahore. “I demand that the government arrests the culprits and punish them so that other young girls don’t meet the same fate,” Ansari added.

“We are now afraid of letting our children leave the home,”

Ansari said in televised comments. “How was our child kidnapped from a busy market?”

In August 2015, Kasur came to the world’s attention via a child abuse and extortion scandal involving at least 280 children who were filmed while being sexually abused by a gang of men. The men then blackmailed the children’s parents by threatening to release the videos. The scandal sparked countrywide condemnation and anger against authorities.

On Thursday, the body of a 15-year-old girl, who was allegedly raped and murdered, was found in the city of Sargodha, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported.

After every incident of child abuse, the debate in Pakistan focuses on the government’s inefficiency to act against the perpetrators of the crime. What is missing from the discussion is the larger issue of child protection in Pakistan.

Child protection education

Maria Rashid, an Islamabad-based psychologist and rights activist, says there is “no one solution to the issue of child sexual abuse.”

“Any effective response [to the issue] has to be multipronged and must include interventions such as more effective and specific legislation around sexual abuse of minors. The implementation of laws is equally important. It involves resource allocation, sensitization and training of law enforcement agencies, health and legal officials, as well as child protection information for parents, schools and children themselves,” Rashid told DW.

“Children are vulnerable to sexual abuse all over the world. In Pakistan, the dynamics that make them vulnerable are two-fold: impunity for perpetrators, which is reflective of the overall weak and easily manipulated criminal justice system compounded by low priority given to crimes of this nature by authorities; taboos around issues related to sexuality and the tendency to confuse child protection information with sex education as a result of which children are vulnerable to sexual violence and predators,” Rashid underlined.

While cases of brutal murders and rapes of minors often catch people’s attention, domestic sexual abuse of children, which activists say is widespread in Pakistan, is generally a tabooed topic in the country.

“A larger number of survivors of child sexual abuse suffer in silence as they do not have the language to describe what is happening to them. Zainab’s case is just the tip of the iceberg,” Rashid said.”

Now to the editorial, today, In The New York Times. You can’t make this up–again, and again. Same day.

“Albany, Pass the Child Victims Act”

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. 11, 2018

If the #MeToo movement of the last few months has taught us anything, it’s that it is extremely painful and risky for victims of sexual harassment or assault — even those with power, money and connections — to speak out against their abusers. Now consider how much harder it must be for a child.

It should surprise no one that a vast majority of people who were sexually abused as children never report it. For those who do, it takes years, and often decades, to recognize what happened to them, realize it wasn’t their fault and tell someone. The trauma leads to higher rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, depression, suicide and other physical and psychological problems that cost millions or billions to treat — money that should be paid not by taxpayers, but by the offenders and the institutions that cover for them.

For these reasons, many states — including eight last year alone — have done the right thing and extended or eliminated statutes of limitations for the reporting of child sexual abuse. This has encouraged more victims to come forward and seek justice for abuse that was never properly addressed, if it was addressed at all.

New York, which has had no shortage of child sex-abuse scandals, should be on that list. In fact, it should be leading the nation on this issue. Instead it, along with Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Michigan, is one of the states with the least victim- friendly reporting laws in the country. New York requires most child sex-abuse victims to sue by the age of 23, 19 years before the average age at which such victims report their abuse.

Lawmakers have had the solution in their hands for more than a decade. The Child Victims Act would extend the statute of limitations to age 50 in civil cases, and to age 28 in criminal cases. It would also establish a one-year window in which anyone would be permitted to bring a lawsuit, even if the statute of limitations had already expired.

The bill enjoys widespread and bipartisan support in Albany — it passed the State Assembly once again in 2017, by a vote of 139 to 7 — and from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And yet it keeps failing to become law.

Why? The Senate majority leader, John Flanagan, a Republican, has refused to let the bill come to the floor for a vote. The bill’s opponents, which include the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jewish groups and the Boy Scouts of America, are concerned primarily with the one-year window, which they believe would cause a wave of claims that could drive churches, schools and hospitals into bankruptcy. That hasn’t happened in other states, even those that opened the window for longer. In Minnesota, which created a three-year window for a population a little more than a quarter of New York’s, just under 1,000 civil claims have been filed.

But even if it did, we should be less concerned with protecting the bank accounts of institutions that might harbor sexual predators, and more concerned with bringing justice to the victims — whether their abusers are clergy members, teachers or, as in a majority of cases, a family member.

The Child Victims Act should have passed on its merits long ago. Since it hasn’t, Mr. Cuomo needs to step up and demonstrate the leadership he has shown on many other divisive issues in recent years, like same-sex marriage. If Mr. Cuomo includes the bill’s provisions in the 2018-19 state budget, which he is scheduled to present on Tuesday, he will make it extremely tough for Mr. Flanagan and other Republican leaders to say no to protecting New York’s most vulnerable victims.”

We have had the privilege of being part of a movement to expand SOL reform, successfully. Its just a matter of time for the rest.

Mary L. Pulido, Executive Director, The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, wrote in The Huffington Post last month, in “Time for a #MeToo Movement for Child Sexual Abuse Victims “:

“Children are taught from a very early age to obey their parents and other adults in their life. This can include their parent’s boyfriends, girlfriends, their neighbors, teachers, coaches, priests, rabbis and family friends.

The fact is that in close to 90 percent of child sexual abuse cases, family members and trusted adults are the perpetrators. It’s not strangers that are molesting children, it is people that they know and trust. Imagine the confusion, anguish and fear that this breach of trust can cause for a child. This is a very complicated dynamic.

There are interesting parallels between child sexual abuse and the current cases in the news. Most child sexual abuse perpetrators are master manipulators. They can often convince anyone, even at times professionals, that they do not have a problem. At times, the perpetrators are so convincing that parents may even doubt their own child. Perpetrators may also be very good at giving excuses, such as being intoxicated or claiming that the child “came on” to them.

Children who are sexually abused can experience a myriad of problems including depression, anxiety, anger and aggression, post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-esteem, dissociation, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and self- injurious behaviors.

Unaddressed, these symptoms can continue into adulthood, impacting their physical and mental health. Many adults who were molested as children have confided that they only wish that they had known who to go to, who to tell, to stop the abuse. Instead, shamed, afraid, and embarrassed, they suffered in silence until they were old enough to get away from the abuser–one woman told me that she did not disclose the abuse until after the perpetrator had died due to her fears. The obstacles to disclosure can be overwhelming. … Survivors of child sexual abuse, whatever their age, deserve the right to hold their perpetrators accountable. Bringing them to justice will also protect other children from this horrific abuse.”

In conclusion for now, let’s look into the deepest heart of this evil. Not looking is the first sin. Talking is rarely an option for a child. It’s certainly not an option for an infant or toddler.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in the UK works to end online child sexual abuse.

It’s of note that IWF is an initial partner in an action program of the United Nation’s effort with others to end child abuse–of half the children on earth–as they announced in 2016.

Ending this ultimate disgrace is a linchpin of the new sustainable development goals–the purpose of which is to, well, save the earth and all living things and bring basic needs and rights to all.

On Christmas Day, Metro in the UK, reported on a new study from IWF:

“Babies and toddlers suffer the most severe forms of child sexual abuse”

Babies and toddlers are more likely to suffer the most severe forms of child sex abuse than older children. A groundbreaking study of child abuse images has found a indirect correlation between the age of the victim and the severity of the image.

Children aged two and under are most likely to suffer abuse constituting a category A image – penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with an animal, or sadism. Research from the Internet Watch Foundation found that Category B images, which involve non-penetrative sexual activity, were steadier throughout different age groups. But indecent Category C images, which do not fall within categories A or B, were more common among 14 to 15-year-olds than the most severe Category A pictures.

This is attributed to self-generated images which are then posted online, the Internet Watch Foundation said. Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the organisation, said: ‘At the IWF, our analysts do what others can’t by finding images of real life child sexual abuse in order to have these images removed from the internet. Every time an image is shared and watched by another person the child suffers re-victimisation, and we know this can have a huge and long-lasting impact on a victim.

‘These shocking statistics speak for themselves – the worst abuse is suffered by the youngest. As everyone knows, babies are utterly defenceless. ‘We know these statistics will horrify and upset people but it’s important that people understand why we need to keep doing what we do.’ The study of more images between January 2014 and September 2017 found that 63% of sex abuse images showing children aged zero to two were Category A.

The figure dropped to 57% for three to six-year-olds, 36% for seven to 10-year-olds and 20% for 11 to 13-year-olds. Just 16% of images showing 14 to 16-year-olds were Category A, and the severe images made up just 7% of pictures involving 16 to 17- year-olds. In general, the likelihood of images being Category A increased with age, the watchdog said.

A spokesperson for the NSPCC said: ‘We must never forget that behind every child abuse image is a crime scene and behind each picture is a victim who has suffered a terrifying ordeal.”

How many churches on this same Christmas Day talked about this horror, or the imperative of protecting children in the most general ways, as the birth of a baby at the center of arguably the world’s single most influential religion was celebrated?

How much mainstream media did you see about this?

In fact, the IWF released this study in October, two months earlier.

Thanks to them and to others, the unthinkable will not be avoided successfully much longer.

For those of us who are victims/survivors, it can’t come too fast.

For those of us who are human with any heart, any conscience of any kind, it can’t come too fast.

We end, for now, with the beautiful innocent faces of the babies and toddlers. Countless millions.

Start your new year with this. Sit with this. Squirm in this. Be sick in every way with this, as long as it takes to make ongoing action to end it like breathing. And sit with the question as to what kind of species could do this?

What species should or could exist that becomes aware, unless it stops it?