Can I get you to Stand by Me?

Happy Holiday Season~

Take a few minutes for yourself, and enjoy this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM

Kentke

Infinite Possibilities in Each Moment

I'd love to know your comments and thoughts about the issues raised in the following article~
Kentke

Obama victory opens door to new black identity

By JESSE WASHINGTON

AP National Writer Jesse Washington,

WASHINGTON –

Shortly after leaving the voting booth, 70-year-old community activist Donald E. Robinson had a thought: "Why do I have to be listed as African-American? Why can't I just be American?"

The answer used to be simple: because a race-obsessed society made the decision for him. But after Barack Obama's mind-bending presidential victory, there are rumblings of change in the nature of black identity and the path to economic equality for black Americans.

Before Tuesday, black identity and community were largely rooted in the shared experience of the struggle — real or perceived — against a hostile white majority. Even as late as Election Day, many blacks still harbored deep doubts about whether whites would vote for Obama.

Obama's overwhelming triumph cast America in a different light. There was no sign of the "Bradley Effect," when whites mislead pollsters about their intent to vote for black candidates. Nationwide, Obama collected 44 percent of the white vote, more than John Kerry, Al Gore or even Bill Clinton, exit polls show.

In Ohio, domain of the fabled working-class white swing voter, where journalists unearthed multitudes of racist quotes during the campaign, 46 percent of white voters backed Obama's bid to become the first black president, more than the three previous Democratic candidates.

Obama did not define himself as a black candidate. So Robinson now feels free to define himself as something more than a black community activist.

"We've taken that next step. It's moving toward what we call universal brotherhood and sisterhood," Robinson said after voting for Obama in his northwest Washington, D.C., neighborhood. "We shouldn't be split and have all these divisions. That's why I say it's a bright day."

L. Douglas Wilder, the first black person to be elected governor of Virginia, shares Robinson's sense of American identity. "But I can tell you, when you say that, people take umbrage," Wilder said. "They believe that you are dissing them, putting blacks down. I don't have to tell you what I am, you can look at me and see that I'm not white. So what difference does it make?"

It took Obama's election, however, to make that idea real.

"It's immediately transformative," Wilder said. "It immediately changes the level of discussion. This thing is bigger than we thought it was. It's too big to get our arms around, and it grows exponentially each passing day. It sets us on a brand-new course."

Yet the past is a heavy burden to shed. U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a former civil rights activist who was jailed during the protest marches of the 1960s, said that Obama's election does move America toward a "more perfect union." But when it comes to self-definition, he believes the current state of that union leaves him no choice.

"We don't come into this world defining ourselves," Clyburn said. "I was born into a world that had defined limits for me. I had to sit on the back of the bus, I couldn't attend the nearby school. My wife had to walk 2 1/2 miles to school, walk past the white school to get to the school for blacks. She didn't define that role for herself. That role was imposed upon us."

Certainly racism did not disappear after Obama's white votes were counted. No one is claiming that black culture and pride and community are no longer valuable. Many also dismiss the idea of a "post-racial" America as long as blacks and other minorities are still disproportionately afflicted by disparities in income, education, health, incarceration and single parenthood.

But white groups that once faced discrimination, such as the Italians, Jews and Irish, have moved from the margins to the mainstream. America debated whether John F. Kennedy could become the first Catholic president; now that's a historical footnote.

So the prospect of a black population that is more of "America" than "black America" has profound implications — especially for the civil rights establishment that continues to battle for blacks who remain at the bottom. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, acknowledges that Obama's election does change the nature of his job, "but not in the way people might think."

The Urban League spent the last eight years trying to hold the Bush administration accountable on civil rights. Now Morial is hoping to cooperate with the government and apply his organization's expertise to issues like poverty, education and job training — which will help rebuild the entire American economy.

Morial noted that President Reagan had a base of aggressive and vocal advocacy groups to help push his agenda through Congress. "You can march against things, and you can march in support of things," he said. "If you're an executive trying to get things done, you need visible and vocal support."

Clyburn suggested that civil rights groups should adopt new tactics of working closely with the legislative branch, because Obama and the new Congress will be more receptive to their agenda: "We don't need to be on the streets raising hell."

"We've always used a variety of tactics," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "Legislation, litigation, sometimes demonstration, and the vote. And sometimes the consumer dollar."

When Jackson was breaking barriers in his presidential runs of 1984 and '88, it was the zenith of Reagan's "morning in America." Jackson's tactics were employed against a conservative establishment that used racially divisive issues such as welfare and crime to great advantage.

Now there's a new president, a new day, and new ideas built upon the old.
"My grandmother told me when I was 5, 'Boy, if they ask you what you are, just tell them that you're an American," said Benjamin Jealous, the 35-year-old president of the NAACP. "The reality is that our heritage, our culture, our families, our community have been extremely important to us. It's always been our right, and in many ways what we fought for, to be seen simply as Americans."

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Dear President Obama,

The essay I've included below- was written by Lenore Jean Daniels, Ph.D before the wonderful victory of the people, that placed you in the position of President of these United States. Though it is a long message, please read it, because it gives an outline of the type of nation we The People want. And indeed, the type of world that we are determined to Be a part of. It also speaks of the type of elected leaders we would be proud to follow, support and work with.

Everyone, nay every living thing has caught the idea, has received the impression that things can be better, and that some things are very wrong.

Yes, we all appreciate the good that we enjoy, no matter how little or grand that may be. But the evolution of human awareness and animal consciousness has reached the point where we are declaring that now is the time to 'Give up the good, in order to receive the greater'.

What I'm saying is that we don't want reform. We want change.

Fundamental change in the way we have been programmed to think about Life, Nature, Plants, Animals, Human Beings and the exchange of resources that cycle to nurture the Living Biosphere of Earth. We are One Life.

We're ready to be creative once again. To exercise that innate impulse that is an expression of the Divine within us and come up with new ways of Being on the planet. Being, or even worse, playing dumb is finished. Your persona validates that activating and living from one's highest intelligence is The Way. It doesn't make one a geek, 'acting white' or a square. It makes one a winner.

So be ready for legions of Americans, that have been 'sitting' on their intelligence, to wake-up. We intend to start offering solutions, inventions, and new concepts, and celebrate that the era, where not enjoying reading books, nor being able to name the newspapers you read, were considered virtues, has finally come to an end. In this new day it's okay to think, and question again. Americans will join the rest of humanity, in becoming informed about other peoples, their cultures, contributions and histories.

For example capitalism....the last two months have revealed that we're probably in the throes of the implosion and death of that type of system. Of it's own nature, it's in a rapid state of decline as being a functional system for Life on the planet. That means for people, animals, natural resources, the air and water. Not only are the social inequities it produces utterly unacceptable, the resources and methods that such a system need to run are becoming increasingly unhealthy, more costly, and unattainable.

We don't want to exploit the Earth, animals or one another any more. So we've got to see what was good about that system, and then dream, vision and create new ways to share the bounty of Earth's fecundity and the products of our creative genius and ingenuity with one another.

Life,~ existence is meant to be more than these narrowly defined currents industrialized Western dominated civilization have imposed upon humanity. Your election is a part of the movement to restore wholeness to our planet.

The neurosis anger, paranoia and mental ailments we suffer are but our Soul's reaction to the enforcement of ways of Being that are against Nature. It's driven us crazy. We have hospitals filled with wards and cemeteries filled with people that died because they were poisoned by the chemicals and residues of societies' symbols of progress. Concepts that demand everything (be) faster, more color, artificial flavor, longer lasting, make it bigger, grow it bigger, make it run 24 hrs-7 days a week. Squeeze, cheat, rob the worker, to make the bottom line, the wealthy richer, the dividend higher, and the profit margins larger.

This isn't supposed to be my rant, because the author below uses the examples set by our heroines and heroes to state our prayers and wishes for this new day far better than I could. I guess, that just like so many millions of us, there's a lot pent up within me, that we've just had to 'suck it up and take it' for so long.....and now finally, as Sam Cooke sings, 'a change is gonna come....oh yes it is.'

loveu~
Kentke

In the Republic of poetry,

poets rent a helicopter

to bombard the national palace

with poems on bookmarks,

and everyone in the courtyard

rushes to grab a poem

fluttering from the sky,

blinded by weeping.

- Martin Espada “In the Republic of Poetry”

If Harriet Tubman were elected president of the United States, the Underground Railroad would become a modern-day institution in which the “wretched of the earth” here in the U.S. would be gathered together to rise from beneath the heels of their enslavers. These citizens would form local committees to review what is best in the U.S. Constitution as well as review the Iroquois Constitution and the Black Panther education and food distribution programs. Freedom would take on a new meaning and the word “reform” would be removed from the lexicon of all languages. “Economically poor,” “liberal,” democrat,” “republican,” “fundamental Christian,” and “conservative” would not represent anyone. And we would come up with a flag that would represent all the people and not be used to intimidate those of us who still do not feel welcomed.



If Ida B. Wells were president, any form of lynching would be banned, the death penalty would be outlawed, and the prison industrial complex would be dismantled. A freed and enlightened population would come to recognize the truly “innocent” and the “criminal.” A president who believes in justice would appoint a team led by Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal to review the cases of all political prisoners incarcerated in the United States and held by the United States in prisons around the world. Those incarcerated under unjust laws would be freed to learn to read and write by teaching the young to read and write. Both the teachers-students/students-teachers would represent a new institution of learners and doers for the larger community goal of freedom for all. Prison cells would be reserved for criminals like Karl Rove and his political and corporate cronies who perpetrated voters’ fraud against the people; the entire personnel at FEMA, Homeland Security, and the NSA, and corrupt local and state officials, and judges—haters of the people—who can’t be trusted to live among the people.



If Malcolm were president of these United States, his VP would be someone like Ghassan Kanafani and, if Kanafani were president, his VP would be someone like Malcolm. They would teach the people to remember. By remembering, the people would recall the value of their lives and recognize their own ability to strive for a community where the playing field is leveled and the hope for a truly new world order is something in which they contribute to each and everyday.



"Wherever you have organized crime, that type of crime cannot exist (sic) other than with the consent of the police, the knowledge of the police and the cooperation of the police," said Malcolm. Community counsels would replace the police force and the role community patrolling would work to eliminate what Malcolm called “organized crime.” Community counsels, accountable to the people, would submit to weekly town meetings.



Bailouts for the poor and working class who have been locked into a system of servitude to the rulers will dissolve the income gap between the rich and poor. The few would not have more homes than they can remember while others are losing their homes or have inadequate housing. Someone like Cesar Chavez would break the link between the Democratic Party Machine and the labor unions and establish the rights of workers to determine the conditions of their work environment and negotiate the value of their labor. A president of the people would appoint someone like Wangari Maathai, Secretary of the Environment, and she, in turn, would appoint thousands of African, Asian, Latin American, Caribbean, and Native American women and girls to grow corn not for the further production of fuel and profits for the rich but for hungry children who go to sleep hungry, even in the United States. Maathai would consult with James Hanson, and they would work with a team of to end the catastrophe of ignorance by working toward a more green-conscious world.



If someone like Ella Baker were president, all children would be proud of their heritage, and a little white girl would admire the texture of a little Black girl’s hair. Corporations wouldn’t have more rights than a Native American child, and places like Iraq would not be seen as a good business deal for the procuring of more oil.



Someone like Paulo Freire would head a team with Jonathan Kozol and Marian Wright Edelman, and together they would work alongside the people to provide quality education for all children. Teachers would see their own child in every child under their tutelage. Every child would be a “special needs” child—handled with care and love. In addition, community sessions on this nation’s history of violence will be conducted to confront the U.S.’s penchant for systematic exclusion, humiliation, demoralization, and exploitation of those with racial, cultural, and religious differences.



If Father Ernesto Cardenal were president, there would be communities of Solentiname here everywhere in United States as part of a real free trade to share the beauty and wisdom of birds and deer that would not have to worry about someone like Hockey Mom with rifle in hand, hunting them down to add to her trophy wall.



If someone truly compassionate were running for president, millions would not die because of inadequate health care. People like Bill Gates would produce computers free to everyone. Bill and Linda would provide the salary for ethical scientists who would work to find the cure to cancer, and all those who suffer from aids, diabetes, and malaria would have the medication they need.



Multi-millionaire politicians would be replaced by men and women who truly love people and who respect the land. You could expect the president to eat a meal of beans and rice at your house. He or she would not ask for money. Campaign funds would be obsolete. Anyone could run for president and not have to amass a fortune in a true democracy. Those people who keep track of how much a presidential candidate raises would be out of work. They would be re-hired to track down truant young children and mark off each precious child that is returned to a classroom. You could vote on a Saturday, if you are Christian, and on Sunday, if you are Jewish, and your vote will count. And no—the Christian religion, in a true democracy, will be one, that is, equal, among many, and to believe in the Sun, again, will be no one’s business.



If Martin Luther King were president, funding for wars would cease. Troops would return home. A new institution to train and/or re-educate negotiators and mediators would recognize the importance of a culturally/globally literate neighbor-consultant in the world.



King George, Darth Vader, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and John Yu and the whole anti-people cabal would be rounded up, stripped of their illegally acquired wealth, and sent to work on behalf of the people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Columbia, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, working on the land to develop amble food sources, to build schools for adults and children alike, and to build hospitals and health care centers or all those they have mutilated or who have suffered from traumatic loss of family members. The people themselves will teach these people how to work and to value work that values the potential of people to live peacefully on Earth. Anyone who calls himself a “maverick” will be subject to the same rehabilitation program. In the evenings, these inmates of the people would have to listen to lectures provided by freed activist Aung San Suu Kyi—through a loud speaker.



Someone like a Lumumba and Evo Morales would conduct seminars for would-be-presidents across the global with no interference from the United States or the IMF because the President of the United States would call for the IMF to be dissolved and all debts cleared. Former monetary investors would invest funds in any classroom full of children until the money runs out. They would purchase new and updated textbooks, computers, art supplies and musical instruments (because art and music would return to the classroom). When their individual funds run dry, former investors would become teachers, teaching children to invest in humanity and the planet. They would have to make sure children read Wilfred Owens, Siegfried Sassoon, and Walt Whitman.



Former capitalist institutions serving war and conflict would have their profits confiscated and re-distributed to an effective, global poverty program. Corporations like AT and T and General Election would not be in the war business or nor could they employ slave labor. Former corporate CEOs would have to live among the people as activists—actively pursuing the goal of FREE trade among the peoples of the world. A child in need of one book would receive ten books! Solar energy would provide the heat that would never be shut off because former CEOs would not want to see his or her neighbor using a space heater. They could remain in business only if they offered their services free to the people because those who remain would real want to work on behalf of all the people.



And the news would look like the best of an Edward R. Marrow broadcast, with anchors of every racial hue and with news representing all the peoples of the world without bias to any one group of people or any ideology. To that end, the corporations would have to relinquish control of the media outlets and turn them over to the people, to responsible professional and citizen journalists.



If someone truly peaceful were running for the president of the United States, the Black man in Texas would still have his place of business. Another would not have been shot in the face for wearing an Obama t-shirt. And someone like Barack Obama can stand up and be a man and be Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Arab, Black, Latino, Native American, Asian and not have to apologize or explain.



Peace would mean living without hatred and prejudice toward others. Peace would mean thinking that everyone deserves to do more than survive. It would mean thinking how wrong it is to have any group of people profit and live because others are working to elevate them to a higher standard of living. It would mean rethinking the idea of work and the value of all labor. Peace would mean recognizing that America’s “land of opportunity” slogan is immoral and serves as a camouflage to exploit rather than allow human beings to explore their potential as human beings.



The new president would abolish the position of Secretary of Defense and appoint someone like Rosa Parks Secretary of Peace. And she, recognizing her own humanity among others, would sit and negotiate with heads of state and encourage them, in this new day, to end brute rule and the need to engage in mortal combat with their neighbors on the planet.



No one would say “nuculer” because the new president would smash the Black Box and then order the armed forces to dismantle all nuclear weapons. This would be bold leadership and welcoming to other heads of state who, lead by their citizens, agree to do the same.



The president would have to answer to the supreme leader—Pablo Neruda—declared supreme leader by a people truly enlightened in the wisdom of Confucius, Rumi, Jesus, Buddha, and filled with love for humanity and nature.

In the republic of poetry,

the guard at the airport

will not allow you to leave the country

until you declaim a poem for her

and she says Ah! Beautiful.

Those in fear of “spreading the wealth” will find that capitalism is out to lunch—permanently! If your god would hate this world order, and if you would feel slighted, indeed, impoverished, “spiritually” or otherwise, then perhaps your imagination has been too limited, flawed. Consider Rapture—soon rather than later. Go! Or consider space flights leaving from Houston for some other planet. (Please let Hockey Mom be first in line—whichever line!). Clear your bank account and fly off where you can have the economic system that makes you feel like a king or a queen among your peers. Exploit and kill elsewhere!


Just let some of us imagine a new and better world—without you!


If only we could elect someone like Harriet Tubman for president…

To my readers~
For your homework:
Look up every name you did not know in the essay.
Learn something about the qualities of this person's life, and their contribution to humanity.
Grade:
A bigger you, expanded possibilities.
You will be breathing in/ingraining a bit of these people's genius into your own consciousness. Watch for it's expression as your Life.


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels

The Whole World is Waiting!

You will love the images of this global response to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Click here to see our world coming together.....through the stand of ordinary people like you and me....calling a shift in human consciousness to arise. As we better understand our power, the world of our Hearts and dreams begins to take form.

Enjoy!

Kentke

http://blip.tv/file/1338283/

Something About Us~

Live this day in Love~

Everyday...but especially today, I bless you with continuous moments of harmony, giggles and joy...... that are only interrupted by your feeling the calmed center of your dignity being validated.

Please click on the link: Checking off the Bucket List: Obama Love story

Loveyou~
Kentke

Lots of things that interest me.....see anything for you? - TED Talks, this week

This week on TED.com, Jared Diamond tells the story of collapsing societies, while Rives tells us a short, bittersweet story in smileys. In a TEDTalks classic, blog godmother Mena Trott talks about her founding role in the social media revolution. Newton Aduaka shows clips from his film Ezra, about a child soldier, and the Inventables guys show off some amazing new stuff (imagine a mag-lev waterslide ...).

Jared Diamond: Why societies collapse
Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond (the author of Guns, Germs and Steel) talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it. Watch this talk >>

Rives: A 3-minute story of mixed emoticons
Rives -- star of the new Bravo special "Ironic Iconic America" -- tells a typographical fairy tale that's short and bittersweet. (And it might inspire you to get creative with your own email emoticons ... :) Watch this talk >>

Mena Trott: How blogs are building a friendlier world
The founding mother of the social media revolution, Movable Type's Mena Trott, talks about the early days of blogging, when she realized that giving regular people the power to share our lives online is the key to building a friendlier, more connected world. Watch this talk >>

Newton Aduaka: The story of Ezra, a child soldier
Filmmaker Newton Aduaka shows clips from his powerful, lyrical feature film "Ezra," about a child soldier in Sierra Leone. It's a story of Africa that has a universal meaning as a story of lost childhood. Watch this talk >>

Keith Schacht & Zach Kaplan: Products (and toys) from the future
The Inventables guys, Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht, demo some amazing new materials and how we might use them. Look for squishy magnets, odor-detecting ink, "dry" liquid and a very surprising 10-foot pole. Watch this talk >>

JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Become a free member of TED.com to join the discussion on our hundreds of Talks and Themes.

Some great discussion on Jared Diamond's talk "Why societies collapse":

Nancy Kiang starts with an unfortunately apt quote:
"When the short-term interests of the elites conflict with the long-term interests of society, and the elites insulate themselves from the consequences of failure."
Wow, he said that in 2003 and already predicted today's financial collapse!

Leonard Adams adds:
Very similar in content to theories about the rise and fall of corporations, as their landmarks as corporate offices etc. get built as a testimony shortly before their demise, or in the case of the Pentagon, are finished after the original intent and purpose.

Khaled Alsayyed writes:
Very interesting talk. Except the asteroid worries me a little more than Jared expresses. It seems life is of so much value, so rare to exist, that we try our best to sustain it. I wonder how we would act when we find life elsewhere. Provided humans exist to see that day.

And we're still discussing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow:

Jerry Kevorkian writes:
This is excellent. It's a zone that I've wondered into many times but never been able to clearly put to words. A very nice representation of a place we all want to be and miss once it is gone.

Join these conversations and more than 300 others by joining TED.com -- it's free!

FROM OUR SPONSOR

BMW presents: The art of performance

Some companies are patrons of the arts. Some are participants. TED and BMW are alike in their commitment to liveliest arts, both performing and plastic. See proof in these TEDTalks:

They Might Be Giants: Wake up! It's They Might Be Giants! >> The legendary guitar-accordion rock combo play their earliest-ever set, including "The Bird of the Bee of the Moth."
Ben Dunlap: A story of a passionate life >> The effortless, spine-tingling storyteller Ben Dunlap tells the tale of a man who lived without limits.
Lennart Green: Card magic >> Rumpled and avuncular, Lennart Green performs a set of card tricks you must see to (dis)believe.
Jill Sobule: "Manhattan in January" >> Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule plays a song about global warming (she performed it for Al Gore).

Redefining "performance art," BMW Art Cars are parked in museums around the world, including the Guggenheim and the Whitney, the Royal Academy of London and the Louvre. Since 1975, artists from throughout the world (including Warhol, Lichtenstein and Hockney) have made their own statement in the form of a BMW Art Car. Learn about artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and David Hockney and their contribution to the collection, which is displayed in the world’s premier museums and at BMW’s headquarters in Munich. Each piece is a vivid personal expression painted on an inspiring canvas, and is a colorful testimony to BMW’s belief that ideas are everything.

TEDTalks are brought to you with the support of:

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How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington

The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies

Comments ()

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian,
  • Tuesday October 28 2008
  • Article history

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

There have been exceptions over the past century - Franklin Roosevelt, JF Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived - but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said: "There you go again." His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD. But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of social Darwinism.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion.

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.

The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.

Obama has a lot to offer the US, but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.

monbiot.com

George Soros on Markets

Interviewed on Bill Moyers' Journal 10-10-08 on PBS~

I caught a bit of this interview, and loved what I heard. If you don't know who George Soros is, then click here: http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros but once you're finished with this blog, explore the OSI website, and then google his name.

I'll just say that besides being one of the world's wealthiest men, he's also been one of the biggest philanthropists for a very long time. He has been consistenly involved in trying to make this a better world, since 1979 when he provided funds to help Black students to attend the University of Capetown, in apartheid South Africa.

In other words, when it comes to global markets and finance, George Soros is someone that knows what he's talking about. See if you find, like I did, that you and Mr. Soros share similar attitudes and thoughts about some of today's institutions.

Saturday, October 11, 2008 03:00 PM

Bill Moyers talks with George Soros about the global capital meltdown, how he saw it coming, and what can be done now.

This is a fascinating, long form discussion between two smart people. It is a great example if using television to elucidiate ideas, discuss fact, ideas, opinions in an intelligent fashion.

Source:Bill Moyers JournalPBS,
October 10, 2008http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/watch.html


BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

You are not alone if you are worried about the financial melt down. So is my guest George Soros, one of the world's best known and successful investors, making billions in times of boom or bust. He's been warning for years of a financial melt down fueled by easy credit and sleepy regulation. Now he's out with this timely book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means."
In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I served three years on the board of George Soros' foundation, the Open Society Institute, dealing with such issues as a free press, the rule of law, and human rights. But I've had no involvement in his political activities and nothing to do, with his business interests unfortunately. It's good to see you.

GEORGE SOROS: Same here.

BILL MOYERS: Let's imagine for a moment that we're not in a New York studio but we are in Neely's Barbecue Stand in Marshall, Texas, my hometown, and we're surrounded by people I know, people who have lost half of their 401(k)s in the last three or four weeks, and what they want to know is does this financial meltdown represent the end of the American dream as they have known it.

GEORGE SOROS: No. No. I think it's got nothing to do with the American dream as such. There has been some kind of an ideological excess; namely, market fundamentalism for the last 25 or so years. And now that world is collapsing...

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean "market fundamentalism"?

GEORGE SOROS: It's that markets will correct themselves, that you should leave it to the markets, and there is no need for government intervention in financial affairs. Letting markets run rampant. And that doesn't work.
Markets have the ability to adjust and they're very flexible. There is this invisible hand. But it is also prone to be mistaken. In other words, markets instead are reflecting reality. They always look at reality with a bias. There is always a prevailing bias. I'll call it, you know, optimism/pessimism.
And sometimes those moods actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles. And this is what has happened now.
This current economic disaster is self-generated. It was generated by the market itself, by getting too cocky, using leverage too much, too much credit. And it got excessive.

BILL MOYERS: You used the word "disaster."

GEORGE SOROS: The financial system is teetering on the edge of disaster. Hopefully, it will not go over the brink because it very rarely does. It only did in the 1930s. Since then, whenever you had a financial crisis, you were able to resolve it. This is the most serious one since the 1930s, there hasn't been one as serious as this.
Unfortunately, the authorities are behind the curve. They are reacting to these crises as they emerge. One thing leads to another, one market after another gets into difficulty. And they react to it. And they don't quite understand what's hitting them. So they are not anticipating and not gaining control of the situation.

BILL MOYERS: This is what's interesting, why wouldn't the government be able to look at what you looked at and see what's coming?

GEORGE SOROS: Because actually they have been working on false premises. This sounds very strange, but there's been this development of, this belief of market fundamentalism. And particularly the idea that markets always revert to the mean and deviations from the mean occur in a random fashion. And you can calculate it.
And you will get a nice distribution and you can anticipate it. And based on that, you can manage your risk. And that actually was based on a false idea. This namely, the markets self-correcting because the market moods have a way of affecting the fundamentals the markets are supposed to reflect.
And there's always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists. For instance, take the simplest situation, namely housing.
Banks give you credit based on the value of the houses. But they don't seem to somehow understand that the value of the houses can be affected by the amount of credit they are willing to give. Now, we've developed these fabulous new ways of securitizing mortgages, which has made credit much more amply available.
And we've been able to calculate risk. And, therefore, we were willing to give more and more credit. And that has pushed up the value of the houses. Also, of course Greenspan kept interest rates too low, too long. And so you had very low interest rates, easy credit, and house prices have been appreciating at more than ten percent a year for a number of years. And the willingness to lend actually increased. There was an insatiable appetite for these new fangled securities.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. Nobody understood, really.

GEORGE SOROS: Which they didn't properly understand. And there was always a separation between the people who generated the mortgages and packaged them and sold them to you and the people who owned them. So nobody was paying attention to the quality of the mortgages because they didn't have an interest. They — all day collecting fees. And then there were other people holding the mortgages.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

GEORGE SOROS: And that was not factored into those instruments. The idea was that by distributing risk, you actually reduce risk. But by separating the principal from the agent, you actually greatly increase the risk. And that was not reflected. And the rating agencies didn't realize it. So they gave triple-A ratings. And then a few weeks later, those triple-A bonds became practically valueless. And that's what has happened.

BILL MOYERS: But how does the system become deranged like that? So separated from reality like an individual who goes insane because he or she is separated.

GEORGE SOROS: Well sometimes we get carried away. I mean, you know, let's say in the Middle Ages, people were religious. And so they had tremendous discussions about how many angels can dance on the eye of a needle. Now, if you believe that angels can dance then that's a legitimate question. And this is exactly what has happened here. You thought that you could slice and dice and engage in this kind of financial engineering. And it became very, very sophisticated and got carried away.

BILL MOYERS: What happened that we lost control?

GEORGE SOROS: There was a failure of regulations because they couldn't understand these new instruments. But they said, "Oh, well, the banks have very good risk management techniques. So we leave it to them to calculate their own risks."
And, you see, it wasn't only in the housing market. There were all kinds of other financial instruments. So there was not just one bubble. I describe in my book there is the housing bubble. But this housing bubble, when that burst, it was only the detonator that exploded the bigger bubble, the super bubble.
Which is this 25 years of constant credit expansion using greater and greater leverage. The amount of credit in the economy has been growing at, I don't know, I don't know the exact figure, but maybe at least twice as fast as the economy itself. I think it's more like three.
And now, suddenly, you have a contraction of credit. And it's a sudden thing. And it's a period of great wealth destruction. And that's how these poor people in Texas suddenly find that their 401(k) is worthless.

BILL MOYERS: So as we talk, Secretary Paulson and the government seem to be coming around to what you've been advocating and that is taking taxpayer money, public capital, and injecting it directly into the banks — in effect, nationalizing some of these banks. Why do you think that will work when everything else has failed?

GEORGE SOROS: Well unfortunately because they are delaying it, it may not work so well because there's a certain dynamism. And they're always behind the curve. So there are many things that they're doing now if they had done several months ago, it would have turned things around.

BILL MOYERS: That's a very gloomy assessment. You're saying that everything they're doing is coming too late? How does that ultimately play out?

GEORGE SOROS: Unfortunately, that is the case. I'm quite distressed about it. I hope that you know, eventually they'll catch up.
We are determined to put the money in, not to allow the financial system to collapse. And that's the lesson we learned in the 1930s. It's an important lesson. But because we are behind the curve, the amounts get bigger and bigger. If we understood it earlier, we could have brought it to a halt perhaps sooner. But they've got still a number of things to do. And this idea, you see, of just buying noxious instruments of you know, off the balance sheet of the banks was a non-starter.

BILL MOYERS: But that was the idea.

GEORGE SOROS: But it was the wrong idea.

BILL MOYERS: But this is disturbing, George. If everything we're doing keeps accelerating the downward negative feedback and isn't working, are you suggesting, can one insinuate from what you say that we're heading for 1930?

GEORGE SOROS: Hopefully not. But we are heading for undoubtedly very difficult times. This is the end of an era. And this is a fact.

BILL MOYERS: End of an era?

GEORGE SOROS: At the end of an era.

BILL MOYERS: Capitalism as we have known it?

GEORGE SOROS: No. No, no, no. Hopefully, capitalism will survive. But the sort of period where America could actually, for instance, run ever increasing current account deficits. We could consume, at the end, six and a half percent more than we are producing. That has come to an end.

BILL MOYERS: So what do we do now?

GEORGE SOROS: We are probably at the height of the financial crisis. I think it can't get much worse. I think it could get a bit worse yet. But then you have the fallout in the real economy.

BILL MOYERS: We're in a downward spiral.

GEORGE SOROS: We are in a downward spiral.

BILL MOYERS: How long will it go on?

GEORGE SOROS: Look the one thing that my theory says is that you can't predict the future because the future depends on how you react to it. So if we do the right things then things will not — will be less painful. If you do the wrong things, they'll be more painful. Now, so far we've been doing the wrong things. I very much hope that we'll have a different government in a few months and they'll be doing the right things.

BILL MOYERS: Well, don't be shy. What do you think the new government should do?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, first of all you have to prevent housing crisis from overshooting on the downside the way they overshot on the upside. You can't arrest the decline, but you can definitely slow it down by minimizing the number of foreclosures and readjusting the mortgages to reflect the ability of people to pay. So you have to renegotiate mortgages rather than foreclose.
And you provide the government guarantee. But the loss has to be taken by those who hold the mortgages, not by the taxpayer.

BILL MOYERS: You mean the homeowner doesn't take the loss. The lender.

GEORGE SOROS: The homeowner needs to get relief so that he pays less because he can't afford to pay. And the value of the mortgage should not exceed the value of the house. Right now you already have 10 million homes where you have negative equity. And before you are over, it will be more than 20 million.

BILL MOYERS: But, you're talking about taking action three months from now, whether it's a McCain administration or an Obama administration. What happens in these next three months? And I'm serious about that.

GEORGE SOROS: I am very worried about it. And I hope that they will have a new secretary of treasury, somebody else.

BILL MOYERS: Sooner than later?

GEORGE SOROS: I...

BILL MOYERS: You don't think...

GEORGE SOROS: It would be very helpful if...

BILL MOYERS: You don't think Paulson's up to it?

GEORGE SOROS: Unfortunately, I have a negative view of his performance.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

GEORGE SOROS: Because he represents the very kind of financial engineering that has gotten us into the trouble. And this buying off the noxious things was a...

BILL MOYERS: Buying the bad assets, that was his...

GEORGE SOROS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: First idea.

GEORGE SOROS: Yeah, and before that, he wanted to create a super SIV, special investment vehicle, to take care of the other special investment vehicles. That didn't fly. And they are now within a week recognizing that they have to change and inject money into the banks to make up for the whole in the equity because those banks lost money. And they can't make it up by taking their assets off their hands. You have to recognize the losses and replenish the equity.

BILL MOYERS: Is that what you would do with the bailout money now? Right now?

GEORGE SOROS: Yes, yes, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You would put it where?

GEORGE SOROS: Into the capital of the bank so that the capital equity can sustain at least 12 times the amount of lending. So that's an obvious thing. And every economist agrees with this.
You see, what is needed now the bank examiners know how those banks stand. And they can say how much capital they need. And they could then raise that capital from the private market. Or they could turn to this new organization and get the money from there. That would dilute the shareholders. It would hurt the shareholders.

BILL MOYERS: Of the bank?

GEORGE SOROS: Of the banks. Which I think Paulson wanted to avoid. He didn't want to go there. But it has to be done. But then, the shareholders could be offered the right to provide the new capital. If they provide the new capital then there's no dilution. And the rights could be traded. So if they don't have the money, other people could, the private sector could put in the money. And if the private sector is not willing to do it then the government does it.

BILL MOYERS: The assumption of everything you say is that the government is going to be a big player now in the economy and in the financial markets. But what assurance do we have that the government will do a better job?

GEORGE SOROS: We don't. Right now they are doing a bad job. So you want to use the government as little as possible. The government should play a smaller role. In that sense, people who believe in markets, I believe in markets. I just want them to function properly. To the extent you can use the market, you should use the market.
Governments are also human. They're also bound to be wrong. Moreover, they are bureaucratic. So they are slow and they are subject to political influence. So you want to use them as little as possible. But to not to use them, see, assumes that markets are perfect. And that is a false belief.

BILL MOYERS: Has the whole global system become so complex with such gargantuan forces interlocked with each other, driving it forward, that it doesn't know how to obey Adam Smith's natural laws?

GEORGE SOROS: No, I think our ability to govern ourselves doesn't keep pace with our ability to exercise power over nature, control over nature. So we are very complicated civilization. And we could actually destroy our civilization because of our inability to govern ourselves.

BILL MOYERS: Would this all be happening if we still had a strong sense of the social compact? I mean, our social safety net has been greatly reduced. The people have a real sense that the gods of capital have left little space for anyone else. People at the top don't have much empathy for people at the bottom.

GEORGE SOROS: There is a common interest. And this belief that everybody pursuing his self-interests will maximize the common interests or will take care of the common interests is a false idea. It's a suitable idea for those who are rich, who are successful, who are powerful. It suits them to justify you know, enjoying the fruits without paying taxes. The idea of paying taxes is an absolute no-no, right?

BILL MOYERS: Unpatriotic.

GEORGE SOROS: Unpatriotic. So, yes, you must have, in my opinion, you need, for instance, a tax on carbon emissions. But that is unacceptable politically. So we are going to have cap and trade. And the trading will have all kinds of loopholes and misuse of the regulations and all kinds of ways of making money without actually dealing with the problem that it's designed to cure. So that's how the political process distorts things.

BILL MOYERS: So let's think about those people down at Neely's Barbecue going home tonight having heard you. What they've heard you say is the system is really disfunctioning right now. It's out of control. Nobody's in charge. They've heard you express your own worry that in the next three months it could get much, much worse.
And they've heard you say that you don't see much good news immediately on the horizon. So let's leave them something to think about as they go home. Let them go home and say, "Mr. Soros said here are three things we can do, simply." One?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, deal with the mortgage problem. Reduce foreclosures. Recapitalize the banks. And then work on a better world order where we work together to resolve problems that confront humanity like global warming. And I think that dealing with global warming will require a lot of investment.
You see, for the last 25 years the world economy, the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he's been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It's finished. It's run out of — can't continue. You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.

BILL MOYERS: Putting more money in, building infrastructure, converting to green technology.

GEORGE SOROS: Instead of consuming, building an electricity grid, saving on energy, rewiring the houses, adjusting your lifestyle where energy has got to cost more until it you introduce those new things. So it will be painful. But at least we will survive and not cook.

BILL MOYERS: You're talking about this being the end of an era and needing to create a whole new paradigm for the economic model of the country, of the world, right?

GEORGE SOROS: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: One of the British newspapers this morning had a headline, "Welcome to Socialism." It's not going that way, is it?

GEORGE SOROS: Well, you know, it's very interesting. Actually, these market fundamentalists are making the same mistake as Marx did. You see, socialism would have worked very well if the rulers had the interests of the people really at heart. But they were pursuing their self-interests. Now, in the housing market, the people who originated the houses earned the fee.
And the people who then owned the mortgages their interests were not actually looked after by the agents that were selling them the mortgages. So you have a, what is called an agent principle problem in socialism. And you have the same agent principle problem in this free market fundamentalism.

BILL MOYERS: The agent is concerned only with his own interests.

GEORGE SOROS: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: Not with...

GEORGE SOROS: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: The interest of...

GEORGE SOROS: Of the people who they're supposed to represent.

BILL MOYERS: But in both socialism and capitalism, you get the rhetoric of empathy for people.

GEORGE SOROS: And it's a false ideology. Both Marxism and market fundamentalism are false ideologies.

BILL MOYERS: Is there an ideology that...

GEORGE SOROS: Is not false?

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

GEORGE SOROS: I think the only one is the one that I'm proposing; namely, the recognition that all our ideas, all our human constructs have a flaw in it. And perfection is not attainable. And we must engage in critical thinking and correct our mistakes.

BILL MOYERS: And that's one...

GEORGE SOROS: That's my ideology. As a child, I experienced Fascism, the Nazi occupation and then Communism, two false ideologies. And I learned that both of those ideologies are false. And now I was shocked when I found that even in a democracy people can be misled to the extent that we've been misled in the last few years.

BILL MOYERS: The book is "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means". George Soros, thank you for being with me.

GEORGE SOROS: Pleasure.

Kentke

George Soros Bio - http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros

The source of the program transcript is from a blog called Market Fundamentalism and the Madness of Crowds JOURNAL Blog - I am Not familiar with the blog's content beyond this transcript.
October 10, 2008 12:45 PMhttp://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2008/10/market_fundamentalism_and_the.html

Comics, Campaigns, Crisis

CBS News anchor Katie Couric interviews Republican Presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, Wednesday, Sept. 24 in New York. The interview aired on that evening's CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.

I am not a fan of late night talk shows, and will only tune in just to catch the segment with a guest I want to hear or see.

I did see Wanda Sykes on Jay Leno this week, and she was her usual candid and very funny persona. She looked great too, radiating a beauty that seemed to arise from comfort in being herself, along with attention to health and fitness.

Her public persona is a good role model: Integrity, humor, and ease with oneself that creates a wholesome persona whereby her natural beauty can shine forth.

I also received an email with a video clip of Chris Rock on Letterman. Here's the link, because his appearance was also definately worth catching.
http://www.popeater.com/movies/article/chris-rock-bill-clinton-hillary-lost/184732?icid=100214839x1210220373x1200609800

Dave Letterman had also scheduled candidate McCain for an appearance this week, but McCain cancelled to fly to Washington to 'help with this crisis'. (help?!?)

Why did he ever do that? Letterman had a lot of fun with that decision. And it sure made me laugh.

Republican presidential nominee Arizona Senator John McCain steps away from the lectern after speaking on the financial crisis at a hotel in New York City. Barack Obama surged into a lead of six or more points in two new national polls released Wednesday, as survey data revealed fresh signs that the financial crisis was hurting his foe McCain.(AFP/Mandel Ngan)

Ah....is it just me,...... or is his body language looking like he's running away from the podium? And I hope you don't miss the expression on his face.

Any way....Enjoy!

Kentke

Letterman unloads on McCain for not showing up

NEW YORK - "Late Show" host David Letterman treated John McCain's decision to cancel an appearance on his talk show more like a stupid human trick than the act of a statesman.

The Republican presidential candidate said he was halting his campaign activities Wednesday, citing the need to deal with the nation's financial crisis, and called Letterman to drop out of the show's late-night lineup. On the air Wednesday night, Letterman assailed McCain's rationale and, with prickly humor, questioned whether the nominee — now trailing in some polls — was in trouble.

"This doesn't smell right," Letterman said. "This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil."

McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace said Thursday that the campaign "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."

"We deeply regret offending Mr. Letterman, but our candidate's priority at this moment is to focus on this crisis," Wallace said on NBC's "Today" show.

Letterman called McCain "a true American hero" but told his viewers: "This is not the John McCain I know, by God. It makes me believe something is going haywire with the campaign."
Instead of suspending a campaign, Letterman said, a presidential candidate should go to Washington to deal with a crisis and let his running mate shoulder the burdens of politicking.

"That's what you do. You don't quit. ... Or is that really a good thing to do?" Letterman said, a reference to McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. "What's the problem? Where is she? Why isn't she doing that?" he asked.

Letterman later asked: "Are we suspending it because there's an economic crisis or because the poll numbers are sliding?"

Making matters worse for McCain, his replacement was MSNBC's "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, a constant critic of the Arizona senator.

McCain told the CBS show that he was immediately flying back to Washington, Letterman told his audience. Then Letterman showed a TV feed of McCain being made-up for an appearance on news anchor Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News."

"Doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman said. "This just gets uglier and uglier."

As McCain spoke to Couric, Letterman shouted at the feed: "Hey, John, I've got a question. Do you need a ride to the airport?"

Letterman later said: "We're told now that the senator has concluded his interview with Katie Couric and he's now on Rachael Ray's show making veal piccata. ... What are you going to do?"
___
CBS is a division of CBS Corp.

Holocaust scholars urge prosecution of Sudan's al-Bashir

Sep 15, 3:40 PM (ET)


By ARTHUR MAX
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP)


Holocaust scholars appealed Monday to the International Criminal Court prosecutor to pursue his indictment of Sudan's president on charges of genocide in Darfur.

The 130 scholars signed a letter to chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo urging him to resist pressure to drop the case against Omar al-Bashir. They warned against putting politics ahead of justice, and said al-Bashir's prosecution would "deter future atrocities."

Phone calls to officials in the Sudanese capital Khartoum went unanswered Monday evening, probably because of the traditional iftar evening meal to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Al-Bashir, who is the first sitting head of state to face genocide charges, has in the past dismissed the ICC prosecutor's allegations against him as politically motivated and aimed at destabilizing his government.

The appeal from the scholars came as Moreno-Ocampo published an expanded version of his charges against al-Bashir, accusing him of employing all the tools of state in an attempt to eliminate three rebellious tribes in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Up to 300,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million chased from their homes since the conflict in Darfur began in early 2003.

The judges at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, have not yet responded to Moreno-Ocampo's request in July to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.

The Arab League and the African Union have sought a United Nations resolution to suspend the indictment against the veteran Sudanese leader. Russia and China, two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have indicated they would support such a move.

But it was the Security Council that first asked Moreno-Ocampo to launch an investigation into Darfur war crimes.

Even some humanitarian organizations have voiced concern that an arrest warrant could provoke a backlash that would worsen the plight of the people of Darfur.

"During the years of the Nazi genocide, too, there were those who put politics ahead of justice," said the statement, organized by the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

After World War II, when 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, the U.S. and British governments sought to prosecute only a few war criminals so as not to jeopardize postwar relations with Germany, the scholars said.

"They were wrong then, and those who are seeking to protect Omar al-Bashir are wrong now," said the letter.

"The governments that are trying to protect al-Bashir should be ashamed of themselves," Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, said in a statement.

The signatories included Holocaust experts in the United States, Germany, Israel, England, Russia, Australia and Canada. Medoff said many of the signers rarely participate in public protests.

Sudan's government has rejected the genocide charges. It has said the Darfur troubles result from a tribal conflict over the sparse resources in the desert region, and denied any government involvement.

Last month al-Bashir threatened in an interview with pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV to expel Darfur peacekeepers if the international court formally seeks his arrest.

U.S. actress and Darfur campaigner Mia Farrow also called for persistence in the case against al-Bashir, referring to "a new frenzy of savage attacks upon civilians." She said a suspension of the indictment "seems criminally inappropriate. For every day that al-Bashir is in power, more people are sure to perish."

The court has issued arrest warrants for another senior Sudanese official and a commander of the government-allied janjaweed militia. Sudan has refused to arrest them and said it would not cooperate with the court.