Stop Kony 2012
I love this campaign. I love its focus and specificity. I love that it goes after a merciless bully who uses children as a weapon, and twists religion to serve the evil. I spit on you, Lords Resistance Army.
Please, take twenty-something minutes to watch this, what young people all around the world are doing to stop a hideous abuse of children in Uganda.
April 20. Wooo HOOOO!
Bullying and Community
I found this on AOL/Huffpost Parenting: it contains a line – I italicized it – that I need to think about. In America, we tend to think of the individual over the community. For the most part, we don’t encourage our children to continue with an activity they don’t like ‘for the good of the group,’ we tend to take them out of the activity. I’ve lived in cultures where obligations to the group are much stronger, and I’ve always felt confined and constricted by the burden of those expectations, but it does make for a more peaceful situation when we consider the needs of others and the needs of the group.
Preventing Bullying Begins With Us
Richard Weissbourd and Stephanie M. Jones
On Feb. 29, Lady Gaga will launch a foundation dedicated to creating caring communities and stopping bullying. Hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard’s Berkman Center, Lady Gaga will be joined by Oprah and other celebrities. A powerful new film, “Bully,” will be widely released at the end of March, and many Americans in recent years have been galvanized by a blizzard of tragic bullying stories.
Yet too often in the past a problem plaguing children like bullying has received huge waves of public attention that simply never translates into any positive changes in kids’ lives. What will it take to capitalize on this attention? How can we curb this problem once and for all?
We can start by recognizing where the main solution lies. There is a tendency to simply blame bullying on “bad” kids or peer groups or destructive media. But bullying often has deep roots in parents’ attitudes and behavior, and stopping bullying begins with us.
How can parents prevent bullying? Parents in recent years have been flooded with articles and books that guide them in shielding, or “bully-proofing,” their own child. But just protecting our own kids won’t stop bullying, and this guidance reinforces the damaging tendency of many parents to just focus on their own children. The best way to prevent bullying — and many other forms of cruelty and harassment — is to encourage and enable children to care for and take responsibility for each other. Research indicates that bullying is greatly reduced in particular when children who witness bullying stand up for the victim. Bullying brings home to parents our fundamental moral responsibilities. How can we help our children widen their circle of concern and stand up for other children? How can we help our children build more just and caring communities?
Bullying, unlike more typically developmental teasing and hurtful remarks, is commonly defined as prolonged or frequent cruelty to others, often characterized by imbalances of power. This kind of cruelty can produce intense and often lasting feelings of shame in children, a sense that they are defective in some core way. About 30 percent of children are bullied each year on school property alone. Adults’ understandable reflex is to curb this kind of bullying by punishing perpetrators. Yet this strategy alone usually fails to stop bullying, and sometimes it backfires.
On the other hand, bystanders — especially a friend of the bully — tend to be far more effective. A bystander is present in 85 percent of bullying situations, and bystanders who intervene appear to prevail over half the time. Yet in the vast majority of cases bystanders elect not to intervene.
What can we do as parents to help our children stand up for others? Research suggests that parents bolster their children’s ability to act independently and to withstand disapproval when they respect their children’s capacity as independent thinkers from early ages and give them input into family decisions. All the things parents do to build in their children a sturdy sense of self make it easier for children to hold their ground against a powerful peer. As parents we strengthen the self, for example, when we praise appropriately, know and appreciate who our children are and maintain their trust and respect. Nurturing empathy in children from early ages certainly matters as well. That means in part helping children appreciate people who may not be on their radar, whether a bus driver, a custodian or a new child in class. It means helping children consider the perspectives of those they’re in conflict with as well as people who are different from them in customs or background or other characteristics.
While it’s vital that we convey high moral expectations and underscore the importance of sticking up for others, we also must listen carefully to our children and understand the complexity of their social worlds and ethical decisions. We as parents will be more real and valuable to children if we pay careful attention to their perceptions and experiences of bullying and discuss when and how to stand up for someone else. We need to talk to them about the complexities of balancing our needs with others and what consequences are worth and not worth bearing. We need to help them figure out how to challenge someone else constructively.
But perhaps most important, stemming bullying will require us to seriously examine our parenting priorities. As a good deal of research now indicates, we live in an era when many parents are intensely focused on their children’s self-esteem, happiness and achievements, not on how well they care for others. And in all sorts of subtle ways we can prioritize happiness over taking responsibility for others. Too many of us, for example, don’t push our children to fulfill obligations that might distress them. We let our children write off friends they find annoying, or fail to reach out to a friendless child on the playground, or quit a team or chorus without asking them to consider what it means for the group. How many of us simply tell our children that their classrooms, schools and neighborhoods are communities to which they have obligations?
Just as worrisome, many of us as parents are failing to model for our children a sense of responsibility for others. Over and over we have heard from teachers that many parents are occupied with their own child and care little about other children in the classroom. “It’s a dog fight,” one recently retired teacher says, driven out of the profession in part by his fatiguing battles with parents. “Parents are out of control. They’re always seeking an advantage for their own kid… they lobby for a gifted class or they want their kid to get extra attention… and they don’t care how they might be hurting other kids.” Some parents say they want kids with behavior problems immediately removed from the classroom because they believe their own child’s learning is compromised. But that message certainly doesn’t convey responsibility for others and the community. At least for some period of time, we as parents ought to encourage teachers to work with that child and ask our own child how she/he might support the struggling child.
It is, of course, a great deal easier and tidier for us as parents to simply wrap our attention around our own child or to periodically remind our child to respect others. But such bland reminders will never get us where we need to go. Our children’s moral development is deeply interwoven with our own. If we want our children to be fair, courageous and humane, we have to take a close, hard look at whether those values are priorities in our parenting, and whether we are living those values day to day.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
We couldn’t wait. We saw the earlier version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, you know, the one with Alec Guiness, and we couldn’t wait to see this new version, with Gary Oldman playing the Smiley role. He was awesome.
The LeCarre’ books featuring George Smiley are grim and grey, and the opening captures that exactly. The entire movie has a bureaucratic, institutional bleakness, with all the power plays, the petty snobberies, the jockeying for position that these bureaucracies seem to nurture. The only times in the movie when there is color and life is the annual bureau party, once done entirely in Russian, once in French.
The movie is faithful to the book, which I think I need to go back and read once again. It all seems so historical now.
One of the things we noticed was that the theatre was utterly quiet as the movie progressed. A lot of the action is in the mind, figuring things out, and trying not to get caught, so the suspense is of the subtle kind, not the car-crashing and jumping off buildings kind. It was as if the entire theatre were holding its breath; noticeable because of its rarity.
We were oddly jangled as we left the theatre, and over dinner we talked about how we never thought we would be obsolescent, but the Cold War has passed; the soldiers of today weren’t even alive when the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain parted and the cars flowed east. Life goes on.
There were several quotes, one that made us laugh was spies talking about recruiting other nationalities “You can hire an Arab but you can’t buy ’em.”
US Navy Rescues Iranian Fishermen from Somali Pirates
I love this story. I found it on AOL News / Huffington Post; it’s an Associated Press Story.:
WASHINGTON — The political tensions between the U.S. and Iran over transit in and around the Persian Gulf gave way Friday to photos of rescued Iranian fisherman happily wearing American Navy ball caps.
The fishermen were rescued by a U.S. Navy destroyer Thursday, more than 40 days after their boat was commandeered by suspected Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea. The rescue came just days after Tehran warned the U.S. to keep its warships out of the Persian Gulf – an irony not lost on U.S. officials who trumpeted the news on Friday.
“We think it’s very doubtful that the Iranians or the pirates were aware of recent events of the last couple days,” Rear Adm. Craig S. Faller, commander of the U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group involved in the rescue, told reporters by phone Friday. “Once we released them (the fishermen) today they went on their way very happily, I might add, waving to us wearing USS Kidd Navy ball caps.”
Faller, speaking from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Arabian Sea, said the fishermen, who had been living off the fish they could catch, expressed their thanks and are believed to be headed back to their homeport in Iran.
The rescue was carried out by American forces flying off the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd, after crew on the Iranian fishing vessel, the Al Molai, made it clear they were in trouble.
The USS Kidd, part of the Stennis carrier group, was sailing in the Arabian Sea, after leaving the Persian Gulf, when it came to the sailors’ aid. It was alerted to the hostage situation when the captain of the fishing boat spoke by radio to the Americans in Urdu – a Pakistani dialect that he hoped the pirates near him would not understand – and managed to convey that he needed help.
A U.S. Navy team helicoptered to the ship, boarded it without any resistance, and detained 15 suspected Somali pirates. They had been holding the 13-member Iranian crew hostage and were using the boat as a “mother ship” for pirating operations in the Persian Gulf.
“They were scared,” U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jennifer L. Ellinger, commander of the USS Kidd, said of the Iranians. “They pleaded with us to come over and board their vessel, invited us to come over. And we reassured them that we would be on our way.”
Amid escalating tensions with Tehran, the Obama administration reveled in delivering the news.
“This is an incredible story. This is a great story,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, explaining that the very same American ships the Islamic republic protested for recently traveling through the Strait of Hormuz were responsible for the Iranian vessel’s recovery.
“They were obviously very grateful to be rescued from these pirates,” Nuland said.
The episode occurred after a week of hostile rhetoric from Iranian leaders, including a statement by Iran’s Army chief that American vessels are no longer welcome in the Gulf. Iran also warned it could block the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that carries to market much of the oil pumped in the Middle East.
The Iranian threats, which were brushed aside by the Obama administration, were in response to strong economic sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear enrichment program. Last week, President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions targeting Iran’s Central Bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad.
According to Faller and Ellinger, the incident began Thursday morning when the Navy got a distress call from a Bahamian-flagged ship, and saw six individuals in a small boat next to it, throwing what appeared to be weapons into the water. They checked but found no evidence of piracy, so they released the small boat, but followed it by helicopter.
The small boat headed back to the Iranian-flagged ship, where U.S. Navy officials said it looked like there were both Middle Eastern and Somali on board.
The radio conversation with the Iranian captain made it clear his crew was under duress, so the USS Kidd launched a Navy search and seizure team. The suspected pirates hid on the ship, but the Iranian crew told the team where they were, Ellinger said, adding that the pirates surrendered quickly.
“The Al Molai had been taken over by pirates for roughly the last 40-45 days,” said Josh Schminsky, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service agent aboard the Kidd. “They were held hostage, with limited rations, and we believe were forced against their will to assist the pirates with other piracy operations.”
Schminsky said the Iranian boat’s captain thanked the U.S. for assistance. “He was afraid that without our help, they could have been there for months,” Schminsky said in a prepared release.
The U.S. team gave the crew food, water and medical care, and on Friday morning they moved the captured pirates to the Stennis. They will remain there while the U.S. considers options for prosecution and consults with other nations that have joined forces against piracy.
“Sadly, this is not a new thing,” Nuland told reporters, citing more than 1,000 pirates picked up at sea who are under prosecution in some 20 countries. “So this is always a question of where to send them and who will do the prosecution.”
Asked if the rescue mission could provide a chance for a thaw in relations with Iran, Nuland declined to comment. She said the Navy had made a “humanitarian gesture” to take the Iranians onboard, feed them and ensure they were in good health before setting them off. She said the U.S. and Iranian governments have had no direct contact over the incident.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Faller on Friday to congratulate him on the rescue, adding that, “When we get a distress signal, we’re going to respond. That’s the nature of what our country is all about.”
Harlan Coben: Long Lost
This totally light weight mystery was just right for a beach read. It was light on motivation, light on character description, light on substance – it was a very fluffy mystery.
Long lost love calls and says “come to Paris; I need you” and doltish hero heads off. Confusing plotting calls for some irrational police interaction, some unknown bogeymen, and a truly thin story line.
You can read it in about an hour, though, or stretched out between beach activities, it might be good for a weekend. Not only lightweight, but forgettable.
Contagion
As we rushed into the house, we both headed immediately to our bathrooms to wash our hands. Twice. And I also washed my face.
Contagion is a very intelligent movie. It is scary, but not in the Friday the 13th kind of scary, or in the Night of the Living Dead kind of scary, although come to think of it, there were some elements in common with the original Night of the Living Dead. No, what makes Contagion scary is that it could happen so easily.
I had no idea that we touch our faces, on the average, of three to five times a minute, more than 3,000 times a day, and that with every surface we touch, we transfer (germs) (bacteria) (things that could make you sick) close to an entry to your body, like your nostrils and your mouth. Once you start thinking about NOT touching your face, you become aware of how often you touch your own face, unaware. Like flipping hair out of your eyes, or covering your mouth when you laugh, or a million other things like that. You become aware of all the things you touch between the time you wash your hands and touch your food. You think about who may have touched your fork, and how well it was washed.
For me, the scariest part of the movie, beyond how quickly the virus mutated and spread, was how quickly civil society broke down when cities were quarantined, when people were concerned food was growing scarce, when people thought they had to fight for survival. The rules for avoiding spreading the virus were not to meet, not to touch, to stay apart. It’s hard to help one another when those rules are in play, but those rules make it easier for those without rules to attack and take what they can.
I liked the music in the movie, too, very edgy.
Before I ever saw this movie, I heard an interview with the author on NPR. She was saying that when they came to her wanting to make this movie, she said “it cannot start in Africa. . . (there were a whole bunch of rules, which were hilarious because they were like every plot for a movie like this ever made) I knew I needed to see this movie, to see how it could be done and still be dramatic, and follow her rules.
There is one hilarious quote. A blogger in this movie gains enormous following. As he is tracking down one of the scientists for information, the scientist says to him:
Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation.
Excuse me, gotta go wash my hands again.
Terrorism at the Mall of America
I’ve been listening to a very painful report on National Public Radio, Under Suspicion at the Mall of America, a report about counter-terrorism measures being taken at the Mall of America, a huge mall, in Minnesota. One reason I’ve always wanted to go there is that I think I remember it having a huge, huge swim area, with lots of water slides and wave machines, and it just looked like a lot of fun. When I look at the mall map, I don’t see any pool area. You know malls – they change, and it’s been years. It was probably a liability issue.
So this is the ten year anniversary of 9/11, an event so awful most of us barely want to think about it. There are some things that just go so deep, you could get lost in the horror of it all. Officials are warning of the possibility of anniversary acts of terrorism, and Mall of America has always felt itself to be a vulnerable symbol, due to its name.
This is a lengthy report of “suspicious” incidents at Mall of America. They make me want to cry. You can read the report, but if you listen to the audio (you just click on the audio symbol) it is a richer, more detailed report. Listen – and weep.
Under Suspicion at the Mall of America
Below is an excerpt:
A Missing Cellphone
Yet look what happened when Najam Qureshi’s father came under suspicion at the Mall of America.
Najam Qureshi was born in Pakistan, but he’s been a U.S. citizen since he was a teenager. Today, he manages computer systems for a major company near Minneapolis. He and his family live on a pretty suburban street.
Najam Qureshi’s father came under suspicion at the Mall of America after leaving his cellphone in the food court.
In January 2007, an FBI agent showed up on his doorstep. It turned out that a few weeks before, Qureshi’s father had left his cellphone on a table in the Mall of America’s food court. When the mall’s counterterrorism unit saw the unattended phone, plus someone else’s cooler and stroller, guards cordoned off the area. Qureshi’s father wandered back, looking for his phone, and the RAM unit interrogated him and then reported him to the Bloomington police. In turn, the police reported the incident to the FBI. The documents we obtained show that the mall’s reports went to state and federal law enforcement, in roughly half the cases. The incident with Qureshi’s father led the FBI to want to question Qureshi himself, in his own home.
“He asked me if I knew anybody in Afghanistan. And that was kind of like, what?! And, then he asked me if I had any friends in Pakistan,” Qureshi says.
The FBI also asked him if he knew anybody that would try to hurt the U.S. government, according to Qureshi.
“My reaction in my mind, was, ‘How dare this guy in my house, come in and say this,’ ” he recalls.
But mall officials stand by their program of identifying suspicious people.
“You’re talking about a handful of people that are complaining, out of the 750 million plus that have been through these doors since 1992,” Bausch says. “And we apologize if it, you know, if it caused them any inconvenience, I mean we really do.”
“Unfortunately the world has changed,” says Bausch. “We assume you’d want your family and friends to be safe if they are in the building. And we simply noticed something that we didn’t think was right.”
A commander with the Bloomington police said these reports would be kept on file for decades. When Qureshi found out that the 11-page report reading “suspicious person” would be kept that long, his eyes filled with tears.
“It shattered an image of the U.S. that I had, fundamentally. I don’t know, especially when I saw some of these reports. It’s definitely bothersome, how small things can just, you know, trickle up that quickly, and all of a sudden you’re labeled. And once you’re labeled, you’re basically messed up, right?”
Warden Message 9-11 Anniversary
Travel Alert
U.S. Department of State
9-11 Anniversary
September 02, 2011
As we mark the 10th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
the Department of State informs U.S. citizens traveling and residing abroad of
the continued threat posed by al-Qa�ida and its affiliates. While we have not
identified any specific threats from al-Qa�ida affiliates and allies to attack
the United States or our interests on the 9/11 anniversary, U.S. citizens should
be aware that al-Qa�ida affiliates and allies have demonstrated the intent and
capability to carry out attacks against the United States and our interests
around the world. In the past, terrorist organizations have on occasion planned
their attacks to coincide with significant dates on the calendar. This
Worldwide Travel Alert supplements the July 26, 2011, Worldwide Caution, and
expires on January 2, 2012.
U.S. citizens traveling and residing abroad should enroll in the Smart Travelers
Enrollment Program (STEP) at the following website: https://travelregistration.state.gov.
U.S. citizens without internet access may enroll directly at the U.S. Embassy or
Consulate at their destination. By enrolling, U.S. citizens make it easier for
the Embassy to contact them in case of emergency.
Updated information on travel and security may be obtained from the Department
of State by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or,
for callers outside the United States and Canada, a regular toll line at
1-202-501-4444. For further information, please consult the Worldwide Caution
and other consular information, including Country Specific Information, for
specific countries. These products and the latest international travel
information for U.S. citizens are available on the Bureau of Consular Affairs
Internet website at http://travel.state.gov.
The U.S. Embassy is located at Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa Street, Block 6, Plot 14,
Bayan, Kuwait. If you are a U.S. citizen in need of emergency assistance in
Kuwait, you may reach the U.S. Embassy by calling +965-2259-1001 and requesting
the duty officer.
American citizens in Kuwait who would like to receive future Warden Messages
from the Embassy directly by e-mail may sign up for this service by sending an
e-mail to the following address: join-wardenmessagekuwait@mh.databack.com
This message may be accessed on the Embassy website, http://kuwait.usembassy.gov
Please note that the Consular Section is closed for U.S. and most local
holidays. The current holiday schedule for 2011 is posted on
http://kuwait.usembassy.gov/holidays.html.
Answered Prayer: Please Lord, Don’t Let it be a Muslim
In the aftermath of the horrific events in Norway, I was praying along with all my immigrant friends – “Please, Lord, don’t let it be a Muslim.” It wasn’t. Just another hater, this one has blue eyes and blonde hair and seems to be a Christian conservative. This one hates for his own reasons. It doesn’t matter much what those reasons are, does it, to the grieving families whose children were slaughtered, or the grieving nations whose peace is destroyed?
The 32-year-old Norwegian man who allegedly went on a shooting spree on the island of Utoya has been identified as Anders Behring Breivik, according to multiple reports.
The Daily Mail and Sky News were among those to report the suspect’s name. According to witnesses, the gunman was dressed as a police officer and gunned down young people as they ran for their lives at a youth camp.
Police said Friday evening that they’ve linked the youth camp shooting and Oslo bombing. Breivik is believed to have acted alone.
Norwegian TV2 reports that Breivik belongs to “right-wing circles” in Oslo. Swedish news site Expressen adds that he has been known to write to right-wing forums in Norway, is a self-described nationalist and has also written a number of posts critical of Islam.
A Twitter account for Breivik has surfaced, though it only has one post, this quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.” The tweet was posted on July 17.
On a Facebook account that Norwegian media outlets have attributed to Breivik, he describes himself as having Christian, conservative views. He says he enjoys hunting, the games World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, and lives in Oslo. He also lists political analysis and stock analysis as interests.
The Minority Prayer
I listen to National Public Radio in my car and in my project room. I finally figured out how to stream WUWF, my local station. Until today, unless I wanted to use my wind-up radio, I had to stream KUOW in Seattle, or NPR which I like because it has so much BBC.
I am really delighted to figure out how to stream WUWF, because it has a lot of local news and events I might miss streaming one of the other stations, and I also like hearing who the sponsors are, so I can tell them how much I enjoy National Public Radio.
So today I am listening to Talk of the Nations, a segment on Pakistani-Americans, and this particularly articulate young lawyer mentions ‘the Minority Prayer.
Do you know what that is? I didn’t. But I laughed when he explained it, because we have prayed it so often living overseas . . .
He was talking about when attending a Muslim-American Lawyers National meeting, and how the buzz spread that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, and how they all sent up a quick minority prayer – “Please, Lord, don’t let it be Pakistan where he was found” – and of course, it was Pakistan. He was very wry, and I enjoyed listening to what he had to say. At the same time, I was grinning. I cannot count the number of times we have heard rumors – in Germany, in Kuwait, in Qatar, in Tunisia, in Jordan – and prayed . . . “Please Lord, don’t let it be the USA who did this . . . ”
It’s very much an expat’s prayer.
If you want to listen to the interview yourself, you can find it here.
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