With the first round of historic elections in Iraq over we can now turn our eyes to the election of the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. On February 11th the Democrats will pick a leader to help steer their party boat. Candidates stumping include Texas Congressman Martin Frost (one of our guests this morning), former president of the New Democrat Network Simon Rosenberg, former Indiana Congressman and Sept. 11 commission member Tim Roemer, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb but the two front runners seem to be Donnie Fowler and Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.

While things across the country are still divided between blue and red, within the party things appear to be divided between blue and purple, just another sign party's existential mid-life crisis. Fowler, the son of the former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, is interested in opening the party up to “heart-land values.” Dean of course represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Dems have been looking a little flushed by showing a little red under their blue feathers. Senator Harry Reid the new Minority Leader is vocally pro-life, as is candidate Tim Roemer (but rumor has it he is dropping out of the race). Will they work out their differences and find common ground? Whatever happens on February 11th may make Valentines Day rather sore for some.

Posted by leboheme at 04:08 PM

On the BL tomorrow: a Spanish lesson from politician, sometime filmmaker, and all around impresario Nelson Dennis.

How much Spanish do you know? Can you understand the following words and phrases?

abogado

cocina

no se apoye contra la puerta

si ves algo, de algo

empleados tienen que lavarse las manos antes de regresar al trabajo

mojito

¿qué usted piensas? Diga nos!

feedback on mashups:

As a musician I angry when every idiot with a record gets called a DJ. But I have to say, Go Home Productions actually changed my mind with the 'Girl Wants to Say Goodbye to Rock and Roll".
-ML

This is an old technique and style used by street hip hop DJ's known as "blending" by DJS such as Grand Master Vic.
-917

I'm like this DJs attitude on using other artist work and renewing them.

One of the things I've always loved about the techno dance scene is the
optimism and innovation.
-OJ

I was in a band 6 years ago (The Hush) where we would perform live
mash ups, we did version on Wild Thing , mixed with Body and soul
mixed into one of our own tunes.
-DB

That Bowie/Pink mashup is genius.

Ditto for the Radiohead/Marvin Gaye.

However, as a former club DJ, I can tell you that the genesis of the mash up happened in the clubs. It took Pro-Tools to perfect it.

Better dancing through technology :-)
-KN

Posted by leboheme at 02:54 PM

This morning’s discussion on the subway problems just scraped the surface of another urban issue. Homelessness emerged as a topic in various news outlets and blogs in the wake of the fire at the downtown C-line station.

Listener comments are pasted below and here’s what the New York Times wrote in today's editorial (reg required):

The subway is also no place for the homeless, and it's a sign of the system's shaky state that hundreds of people have been allowed to live in its grapevine of tunnels and passageways. It is not safe for them and, as Sunday's fire makes clear, it is not safe for the millions who ride through those tunnels every single day. The city's police and homeless outreach programs need to be mobilized right away.

BL Show regular, Jeff Jarvis also weighs in today:

Rudy Guliani was the first politician in New York to have the guts to deal with this issue; other cities (I'm thinking of you, San Francisco) haven't.
And the real issue isn't homelessness. It's insanity. The laws in this country make it impossible to commit and help even the obvioulsy and often the dangerously insane.
I say that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is as much at fault as any politician, for it made the institution frightening and the people who run it bad guys.

Here are some listener comments. What do you think?

When did subway cars become homeless shelters mr. Bloomberg?
-FM

call me a bleeding heart, Brian, but how about the goddamn homeless...
-PW

I find it impossible to believe that MTA’s explanation for the fire…If the MTA story is a lie, it’s largely a harmless one. The public may get a quick blast of anti-homeless sentiment, but the homeless will quickly return to their usual level of unpopularity. But for those who seek the truth on principle, they might want to consider my MTA incompetence theory.
-SES

Who leads the inquiries in the fire the MTA ? Is there such a thing as the independent inquiry like for plane accidents?
-NF

I was involved with restoration of the WTC Path Station. The entire project took less than (2) years. Food for thought: the signal rooms at the Path Station have heavy doors with sturdy locks. The doors are tied into a security system which alerts PA police to tampering. The signal room itself has both a fire alarm and a fire suppression system. In the event of fire, the system releases a gas which smothers the fire and doesn't harm the equipt. So far I haven't heard a plausible explanation of either the incident or the projected time involved in making repairs.
-SH

Posted by leboheme at 03:18 PM

View image
Councilman Kendall Stewart

Posted by leboheme at 03:32 PM

Posted by leboheme at 03:30 PM

Here are some of our listener comments on Brian's interview with Jared Diamond.

The reviewer, Malcolm Gladwell, in the New Yorker raised the following with regards to the debate in Oregon on Measure 37 when looked at through the premises of "Collapse". Mr Gladwell writes: "One can imagine Diamond writing about the Measure 37 debate, and he wouldn't be very impressed by how seriously Oregonians wrestled with the problem of squaring their land-use rules with their values, because to him a society's environmental birthright is not best discussed in those terms. Rivers and streams and forests and soil are a biological resource. They are a tangible, finite thing, and societies collapse when they get so consumed with addressing the fine points of their history and culture and deeply held beliefs that they forget that the pastureland is shrinking and the forest cover is gone." S.B in Garrison

Apropos of the discussion with Prof. Diamond, there is an article in this morning's Times reporting the results of the study commissioned by the (Davos) World Economic Forum in which Columbia and Yale measured the environmental-sustainability policies and practices of 146 nations. Haiti and Iraq were near the bottom. The United States was ranked #45. S.M. in Norwalk

This issue has been recognized by the Noble Peace Prize awarded to Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai. Wangari Maathai was awarded for her struggle for democracy credited in part by her campaign against land grabbing and rapacious deforestation.

The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when resources and our resources become scarce, society fights and thus collapses over problems that are a result of poor environment policies (or lack of policies). L.F.

Posted by leboheme at 03:26 PM

Today listeners called in to respond to David Brooks' recent op-ed column about whether it wouldn't better for women to have children before focusing on their careers instead of having to take time off in the middle and perhaps miss out on having children entirely. And whether our social policies shouldn't work to make the children-first option more feasible. What do you think?

Here are some of the responses we received during the show:

It is important that women establish their independence economically early in life. It grants them options in who they marry, why them marry, how they share power in their relationships and what their options are if life throws them a curve. Knowing that you are capable of managing your own career and finances is more powerful for both you and your spouse. It also gives you the opportunity to prepare financially to be home with the family you want to raise. As for the remark that men could never consider this in their twenties...the gentleman was 100% correct about that. Corporate America shows no mercy for men who prioritize family first... A. C.

Clearly David Brooks has never dated a 'man' in his 20's! I can't imagine trying to marry and have children with one! -Patty in Manhattan

Nowadays, people don't work for one company or even in one profession for a lifetime. I know many people who work in one profession for 5-10 years and then switch to something else (sometimes something completely different). Perhaps women who are interested in more than one profession can have children between two of their "careers" -- K.

...[H]ow many relationships that start in the teens or early 20s actually last? Especially when you add kids to the mix! I think the idea means a generation of kids raised by immature single mothers. – GREAT! (NOT.) --Tom.

Why should women have to choose either/or here in the U.S.? For instance, in Norway, the father or mother gets 1 year off paid when the child is born. Many women here in the U.S. still fear losing their jobs if they get pregnant.

This is perfect for men! They marry a young, fertile wife, have a few kids together--then when the wife, older, possibly less attractive, and burdened with kids, goes back to work (and has less time for the family)--the husband can rationalize divorcing her and create another family with a new young, fertile wife. GREAT idea, David Brooks. --K. G.

I fully understand the complexities that cause women & couples to delay childbearing, but people should understand that the dream of having a child may not be attainable when they have gotten to a point in a career when it is actually feasible. We should all work to make younger childbearing less of an impediment to women's careers, and more affordable for younger couples.
--I. R.

Posted by leboheme at 02:08 PM

Four years ago author Kevin Baker spent inauguration day out on the streets of Washington DC in protest. This year he chose to come to the much warmer confines of our studio to talk about the second inauguration of George W. Bush.

Posted by leboheme at 03:18 PM

Here are some listener comments from our mail bag in reference to the Condoleezza Rice confrimation hearings.

chavez was elected. a referendum to remove him was defeated last year. the only thing the US government doesn't like about him is that he hasn't privatized the oil industry. D.B.

The problem is that walls are rigid, and letting reality in is essential to good decisions and personal growth. People like Biden and Boxer -- good, honest people -- need to criticize Condi Rice while winning her confidence and trust. This will take time, and voting against her won't help the process.R.T.

The Democrats are critical, yet still vote for the nominee (maybe not Kerry) ... I would respect the Republicans much more if they too would be critical (while not necessarily critisizing). Similarly, I would respect the Democrats more if they would vote in a manner consistent with their line of questioning.

In this regard I was very much impressed by Republican Lindsay Graham's (sp?) "grilling" of Attorney General nominee Gonzalez. C.P.

Posted by leboheme at 03:57 PM

Martin Luther King, Jr.s 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" inspired today's MLK Day commemorative call-in. Listeners were asked to call in with brief readings about other countries and responded with selections from Nelson Mandela to the I Ching, including Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (read in Arabic). Here is the text of Dr. King's speech in its entirety, from the BRC-News website.

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

Posted by leboheme at 01:07 PM

James Taranto takes issue with Nicholas Kristof's conclusions about America's, Cuba's and China's comparative infant mortality rates--though not with Kristof's facts.

Taranto notes that the 2002 jump in American infant mortality followed nearly fifty years of declining rates, and that the jump may be attributable (in part) to the complications that result when older women decide to have babies. No stats have yet been released for 2003 or 2004.

THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK ON INFANT MORTALITY
China: 25.28 deaths/1,000 live births
Cuba: 6.45 deaths/1,000 live births
United States: 6.63 deaths/1,000 live births

What's your take?

Posted by leboheme at 09:38 AM

As noted in the last entry, the "fact" that the United States is the only industrialized nation with "appreciable" poverty is harder to confirm, but appears to have some truth to it.

A correspondent notes that the 2004 CIA World factbook puts the USA at 12% living in poverty, a lower percentage than the UK's 17% but far more than Belgium's and South Korea's 4% or Austria's 3.9%. America is not exactly alone, but with jolly little company.

The UN Development Programme gives the United States the highest Human Poverty Index value among a selection of wealthy nations. It also puts the USA at place 8 in terms of overall development, which is measured not only by poverty and infant mortality, but also by factors like literacy, life expectancy, unemployment, and number of telephone lines.

Tell us what you think!

Posted by leboheme at 08:59 AM

True or false?

a) Beijing has lower infant mortality than New York

b) The USA is the only industrialized country with "appreciable" poverty

These two "facts" came up in our open-source open phones today.

Fact (a) is pretty easily confirmed. Our dear caller most likely got the information from a recent Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times. The New York City Department of Health confirmed the New York number for us--it was 6.5 per thousand in 2003 (the most recent year.)

The People's Daily offers a stat from 2001--5.05 per thousand. If Kristof's numbers are to believed, this rate is declining--the most recent rate is 4.6. In New York City, mortality in 2003 was up 8% from 2002.

Now...fact (b) is much harder to verify. We promise to make an early morning call to the UN's office of the Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva (they seem to follow such things). Does anybody have some kind of reliable, agreed-upon yardstick to measure this "fact" by?

And how about this question: why does everyone want to share unflattering facts about the United States?

Explain!

Posted by leboheme at 03:45 PM

I have a friend in Albany who is a minister who is paying for his kids
education by writing porno novels. I found out while helping him with a
computer problem.
-BD

I think many of us share the same secret as the caller who uses marijuana. I think that it is time for society to accept this fact and legalize it.
-FG

I do, in a sense, lead two lives, although most of my friends know my secret.

I'm married and still actively bisexual (known to my husband). I
keep it from most acquaintances and all of my work colleagues.

Generally, it's the piece of information whose disclosure will turn
an acquaintance into more of a friend.
-CH

Posted by leboheme at 04:04 PM

While we knew the Independent Review Panel would issue their CBS report sometime soon, we were surprised to have it occur during our show. Lucky for us we in the midst of putting together a media segment for the show anyway. However the 60 Minutes story blew most of our other media stories out of the water.

We had originally planned on focusing on the morning news of Rupert Murdoch consolidating power within the Fox empire, the network coverage over the Tsunami, the firing of 5 embedded reporters in Iraq and of course the Armstrong Williams scandal.

As it happened we were only able to touch upon Murdoch briefly. As a side note we have found out that a Fox blocker has been invented allowing the viewer to block the channel, in the same manner one would block an adult channel. But one wonders what would life be like without regular doses of The Simpsons.

Finally for those of you actually watching the network coverage of the Tsunami recovery will know that Dan Rather is reporting live from the region. After reading Jacque Steinberg from the New York Times one gets the feeling Rather rather be there than here- either to end his career on a high note, or just plain get out of Dodge.

To read the entire Independent Panel report please click here.
To read the official press release from CBS please click here.

Please note both of these documents are pdfs.

Posted by leboheme at 11:41 AM

Throughout our recently-concluded Recount Update series, we've been asking ourselves exactly what the purpose of re-examining the 2004 vote is.

On the one hand, there is widespread evidence of voting irrgularities in localities in Ohio and elsewhere, which are scarcely being covered by most media.

On the other hand, few nonpartisan observers believe these irrgularities add up to much, either in terms of the total vote tally or in terms of an orchestrated plot.

Today Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) decided it did matter. By being the sole Senator to voice an objection to the certification of the 2004 vote, the Senator held up the tally by two hours and forced a debate on the subject.

Congress to Certify Bush Win Amid Protests Over Vote

What do you think? Was Boxer right to make her objection? Can this kind of symbolic act make any real difference? Should Democrats just get over it?

Email us!

Posted by leboheme at 03:11 PM

Today's installment of our Recount Update Series will hear from Green Party Presidential candidate, David Cobb.

In the meantime, read the relevant letters from Congressman John Conyers:

Dec 20 letter on Conyers’ request for support to object the Ohio electoral college (addressed to Senator Barbara Boxer)

Dec 2 letter

Dec 14 letter

All Congressional letters from the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee

Email us your response

Read the letter Michael Moore entitled "Just One Senator" on his site today.

Hear past segments in the series.

By the way, today's temporary call-in number is 212-227-7606

Dear Senator Boxer,

As you know, on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress, commencing at 1:00 P.M. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law. I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election.

3 U.S.C. 715 provides when the results from each of the states are announced, that "the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any." Any objection must be presented in writing and "signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received."1. The objection must "state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof."2 When an objection has been properly made in writing and endorsed by a member of each body the Senate withdraws from the House chamber, and each body meets separately to consider the objection.
"No votes . . . from any other State shall be acted upon until the [pending] objection . . . [is] finally disposed of."3 U.S.C. 717 limits debate on the objections in each body to two hours, during which time no member may speak more than once and not for more than five minutes. Both the Senate and the House must separately agree to the objection; otherwise, the challenged vote or votes are counted.

Historically, there appears to be three general grounds for objecting to the counting of electoral votes. The language of 3 U.S.C. 715 suggests that objection may be made on the grounds that (1) a vote was not "regularly given" by the challenged elector(s); and/or (2) the elector(s) was not "lawfully certified" under state law; or (3) two slates of electors have been presented to Congress from the same State.

Since the Electoral Count Act of 1887, no objection meeting the requirements of the Act have been made against an entire slate of state electors.5 In the 2000 election several Members of the House of Representatives attempted to challenge the electoral votes from the State of Florida. However, no Senator joined in the objection, and therefore, the objection was not "received." In addition, there was no determination whether the objection constituted an appropriate basis under the 1887 Act. How ever, if a State - in this case Ohio - has not followed its own procedures and met its obligation to conduct a free and fair election, a valid objection -if endorsed by at least one Senator and a Member of the House of Representatives- should be debated by each body separately until "disposed of".

Please contact me at 225-5126 to appraise me of your thoughts on this important matter. If your staff has questions, that may be forwar ded to Perry Apelbaum or Ted Kalo of my Judiciary Committee staff at 225-6504.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Posted by leboheme at 10:45 AM

January 6, 1855 is considered the "birthday" of one of the world's most famous literary detectives, Sherlock Holmes. Later this week, members of the invitation-only Baker Street Irregulars will converge on New York (a city Holmes never visited) to celebrate his birthday.

In a recent New Yorker article, David Grann explains the major split in Holmes aficionados. Doyleans are fans of Homes' creator, an Edinburgher who wanted to be famous for his historial novels. Sherlockians like to believe that Holmes and Watson were real. They resent Doyle for having "killed" Holmes, even though he later "resurrected" him.

Confused? Join us Wednesday, when Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop, explains the magic of the pipe-smoking detective who still has a head-lock on the popular imagination, even after all these years.

Posted by leboheme at 03:48 PM

It's a question Colin Powell had to address on Meet the Press yesterday. Why had the American contribution to tsunami relief started at just $15 million and then leapt up to $350 million? Was the US really "stingy", a word the UN's Jan Egeland had used to describe rich nations' giving habits. Is the $40 million (albeit mostly from private donations) to be spent on the President's inauguration later this month an excessive amount?

Some listeners have called to suggest that oil-rich Arab nations are reluctant to help their fellow Muslims in places like Indonesia (and hypocritically so.) Professor Juan Cole disputes this on his blog ("Middle Eastern Contributions to Tsunamic Relief in Context").

Not sure what you think? CNN has an up-to-the-minute tally of tsunami relief contributions from around the world.

The LA Times, like Jeffrey Sachs on WNYC today, suggests that America's foreign aid budget is much smaller than most people believe, and far less than they wish it to be.

What's your take?

Posted by leboheme at 02:56 PM