May
6
Why We Ignore Toture Podcast
May 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Mike ended up as solo babbler today. The subject was torture.
He had a choice Saturday between the Boston civic summit, which was certain to be lots of idealized talk and the seminar/panel Torture and the American Psyche: Blurring the Boundaries Between Healers and Interrogators.
The panel was at the First Parish (UU) Church in Brookline. However, the roughly dozen co-sponsors were largely mental health and physicians associations. The 150 or so attendants seemed to be mostly psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists.
Disclaimer: Mike attends that church and knows the social-action committee folk, as well as goes to coffee hour and church meetings in the hall where the seminar occurred.
The panel included Stephen Soldz Ph.D., a local psychoanalyst, social activist and professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Leonard Rubenstein J.D., president of Physicians for Human Rights, David Sloan-Rossiter Ph.D., co-chair of the Curriculum Committee at Boston Institute for Psychotherapy and the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Eric Fair a former interrogator in Iraq who has been telling his story and calling for reform. The photo is of Fair.
The short of the seminar included:
- This is not the first time, we as a nation have tortured and have overridden our Constitution and its amendments (think WWII interment camps, Cold War and Red Scare periods). When a lot is perceived to be at stake humanity and our values lose.
- Despite the evidence that coerced information is worthless, too many in the chain of command have convinced themselves it is a regrettable necessity. It is not.
- Psychologists have been key in devising and training on the worst, most effective ways of torturing captives.
- The American Psychological Association is the only professional organization in any of the health fields that does not absolutely forbid its members from participating in torture.
- Left without clear directives and discipline, our soldiers who otherwise act heroically, Fair said, “will wield that same violence in the most irresponsible of ways, to the shameof the very cause they swore to defend.”
- The current Administration may need to go away before a new President stops the anti-American, anti-liberty acts against us and others.
Related Links:
- Eric Fair’s Washington Post op-ed, An Iraq Interrogator’s Nightmare.
- Articles on mental-health professionals’ involvement in torture.
- Rubenstein’s Physicians for Human Rights.
- Soldz’ personal site with numerous links.
- Conference on Terror, Torture and Security — page down for Torture as a conflict point between competing theologies.
- APA’s seemingly strong anti-torture resolution, and the GITMO Army colonel’s we’ll-keep-it-up reaction.
- Bush cabinet approving and micromanaging torture techniques.
Mike will post more on the panel in the next few days at Marry in Massachusetts.
Apr
29
News and Noise Podcast
April 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Ryan and Mike railed and ranted (and offered a bit of hope) on dead-tree newspapers. They are irritated at the poor and shrinking local coverage, sloppy reportage, and bottom-line orientation of owners.
The stereotype of the newer generations reading less and being more online oriented seems true. (See the 2-year-old Pew Online News report.) Yet the real problems have been with newspapers themselves.
We discussed the related issues and how we see netroots, other blogging, and finally newspapers beginning to get it, but not this week, month, or even year. Citizens’ journalism is working where its limited trials are simmering, but those are not ready for massive roll-outs. Meanwhile, publicly traded newspapers are slashing when they should be expanding their offerings.
They also seem to have lost the public-service aspect that has always characterized print journalism. Ryan figures that this will remain or return only where newspapers have local owners. Mike adds that they never have offered high profit margins like some industries, and that investors who want that need to look elsewhere.
Yet, there’s lots of room for news management to expand their offerings and get new revenue sources. They need to show courage and innovation that some European owners have for over a decade.
Related Links
About a year and one half ago, Pew Research sat a punch of professionals and academics down to discuss Can the ‘Dead Tree’ Newspaper Survive? The resulting roundtable was not unanimous, but did conclude that the general answer is yes, but not as they are now. The experts touched on how they got themselves into the current mess and what they see for the mid-term and longer. Mike also promised a link to the Marry in Massachusetts post on how ethnic newspapers here are sharing resources to compensate for their small staffs and necessarily limited geographic and topic coverage.
Apr
22
Beyond Pennsylvania
April 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We dove into the results of this weekend’s BlogLeft gathering in Lowell. Ryan and Lynne took the initiative to present a proposal for ramping up a netroots drive. We agreed to work together as bloggers for some progressive goals. Definitely to be continued.
Ryan and Mike both expressed impatience with getting a nominee is place to start the general Presidential campaign. Obama has it and it’s past time to get it on. Unless Clinton won Pennsylvania by a huge margin of 30% to 40%, she’s done. He needs to get to the business of bringing in a Democratic and Progressive administration.
Posts of the Week
Larry Womack calls tomorrow D-Day for superdelegates. Over at Huffington Post, he concludes they’ll know enough after the Pennsylvania vote to clear up this mess.
So which is the more plausible path to the White House? Clinton’s better chance in the king maker states, or Obama’s shot at putting new ones into play? Or will the turnout advantage hold, making the party virtually unstoppable regardless of the nominee? If it all seems a bit much for you to sort out, imagine how hard it must be for Democratic Party officials, whose inability to identify a winner must be chromosomal.
The decision they come to — or their choice to dodge it — should become apparent between Pennsylvania and Indiana. If they believe that Clinton’s elector-rich wins outweigh Obama’s delegate-rich wins, this will be the time to speak up. If they do, Obama is officially in trouble. If they don’t, Clinton is almost certainly fighting a losing battle.
Apr
15
Chang-Diaz Loaded for 2nd Suffolk
April 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Sonia Chang-Diaz joined us today and was unflappable across a range of soft and hard questions. She’s running against long-term State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, after narrowly losing to her as an unknown two years ago in a sticker campaign.
She grew up in a do-gooder family, with a social worker for a mom and an astronaut for a dad. Both parents set the example by volunteering in the community. She continues the pattern.
Today was also the launch of her enhanced campaign website. She is even more of a progressive than the left-leaning incumbent. She knows a pivotal question is whether voters will be willing to trade in one liberal for a better, fresher one.
This one, a former Lynn and Boston public school teacher, has a high interest in education funding. See her site’s issues pages for details on health are, violence, housing and others. As she travels the district and knocks on doors, she’ll be adding more detail to her issues.
She told us that she’s surprised at the effort campaigning was two years ago, even causing her to lose her voice several times. She’s been helped by family. Her mother pounds the street and she expects her former-astronaut dad to do some campaigning.
She says that the integrity issue is still strong and she finds a lot of support, even among voters who normally don’t bother going to the polls as a result.
Apr
15
Sonia Talks Second Suffolk Today
April 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Showtime in Second Suffolk and showtime on today’s podcast. For our weekly festival of sound, we bring on Sonia Chang-Diaz to kick around strategy, integrity, progressive goals, race and culture.
This is a cross-post from Marry in Massachusetts.
Two years ago, she came damned close to unseating long-term State Senator Dianne Wilkerson. It was a bizarre race with sticker campaigns — the incumbent also had to use stickers because she didn’t bother to get the 300 signatures to be on the ballot — as well as a confusingly similarly named Republican on the ballot, Samiyah Diaz. Wilkerson was under clouds of personal, tax and campaign finance irregularities. Yet, she eeked a victory apparently based on past service and promises of getting her act together.
Sonia joins us at 2:30 p.m. today, Tuesday, 4/15. You can grab the stream then or pick up the archive anytime afterward.
Voters seldom will have such a clear choice between candidates when the platforms are not the big issue. Both take progressive stances on gangs, education, health-care, homelessness and other big concerns for the diverse district. As one might expect, Wilkerson hasn’t bothered to update her website, which has a list of legislation she has co-sponsored but no platform. Chang-Diaz put her neck out with strong positions. What she needs to add are some specific proposals and goals.
The demographics are very important here. The district includes heavily Black, Latino and Asian-American sections. Two years ago, the predominately Black areas seemed to have swung the primary for Wilkerson.
We don’t have a left vs. right wing fight here. Listen in to see how Chang-Diaz intends to differentiate herself and build on her high profile after her first run.
Apr
8
Deval, Make It Work
April 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Lynne got to play our intrepid reporter this week. She reprised her Left In Lowell interview-like-object with Gov. Deval Patrick last week when he was in her fair burgh. She had gotten 30 minutes with him, addressing local and commonwealth issues.
We teed off from those topics to cover bond issues, other funding possibilities, and how Patrick and get big progressive projects moving.
Posts of the Week
Lynne cited a Treehugger post on how an Italian city dumped their gassy mowers for fluffy ones. Industrial Turin is working on rehabbing its image from a polluted factory town. Sheep now maintain the grass.
Mike was amused by the always out there howling latina. She can’t forgive Obama for eclipsing her candidate and supports Clinton even if it will mean trying to game the superdelegates and tell the voters to take a hike. Two in this vein include 1) praising Sen. Jim Webb for saying the supers should vote regardless of their states’ voters choice, and 2) quoting a Vivian J. Paige email with the convoluted reasoning that “the superdelegates are not rubber-stamps for the public vote. To say otherwise is to ignore the reason why they exist.”
Apr
1
New England Marriage Equality Culture
April 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We started by indulging Mike, who attended a same-sex marriage symposium on Friday at Roger Williams University. It had a speaker and two expert panels on the culture of SSM in New England. That gave us a chance to wander about GLBT and more general civil rights.
We plugged the April 19th BlogLeft netroots gathering in Lowell. We are anticipating spurring our governor and lieutenant governor to return to grassroots/netroots.
Posts of the Week
Over at the Pennsylvania flavor of Daily Kos, creweeny reports that voters, particularly Dems are registering like ants on sugar there. Reports are of 200,000 new Dem registrants in the past 10 weeks and 75,000 since March 24th alone. Raw numbers appear in this spreadsheet. creweeny also notes, “45,977 changed to Democrats while 1,808 changed to Republicans, and 33,000 new Democrats registered.” Dem registrants are up in areas leaning for each Obama and Clinton.
Mar
25
Grassroots Fertilizer
March 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Grassroots podcast
Ryan and Lynne host today’s LeftAhead, while we give Mike a break for Jury Duty (the slacker!). Today’s topic is grassroots political organizing in Massachusetts and the Governor’s role in it (or present lack thereof. The casino bill was a complete drag on his grassroots army, but now that it’s over, will we see a return to the Governor who ran on people “checking back in?” With casinos dead, if not buried, can we finally begin afresh with an issue-based movement on something like Green Energy? Lynne and Ryan hope so, but perhaps are resigned to the fact that it may be the people - without their governor - heading off this movement.
Also, as a reminder, April 19, at 1pm, is the blogger’s conference in Lowell. There’s a $10 cover, but that includes lots of good food and soda/water/etc. There’s going to be some prepared discussion centering around grassroots/netroots movement building in Massachusetts, but most of the day will be to catch up with old blogger friends, and meet new ones. Anyone’s welcome. If you’d like to learn more about the event, please email Ryan at adams*dot*ryan*p*at*gmail*dot*com, or lynne*at*left*in*lowell*dot*com, just deleting the asterisks and replacing the dot and at with . and @ (trying to avoid spam).
…or go wild and live in this century. Scroll to the March 11th post and click the logo.
Mar
18
Who’s Got the Cash?
March 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Ace reporter in the field, Ryan Adams plops it down in the State House for the contentious casinos hearing. He calls in with truth and knowledge — another in our occasional series of remote reporting.
Posts of the Week
Mike was surprised to find the usually rambling Katha Pollitt being spot on about John McCain for November. In a blog in The Nation, she writes on McCain May Be Old, but He’s Still a Threat. She contends that much of America may see him as a “familiar, indeed family, character.” As such, the election may come down to “Obama v. McCain could be change/youth/black/exciting/internationalist against experience/maturity/white/steady/superpatriot.” Dems will have to hustle against such a jovial winger. “We’ve been patting ourselves on the back a lot for having a black and a woman vying for top spot on the ticket of one of the two major parties. November will tell us whether or not we have really come all that far.” jeu casino onlinegagner au casino en ligne,gagner au casino,methode pour gagner au casinoenquete eurobarre casino on netblack jack mocasino slot machineroulette anglaise règles du jeux,roulette anglaise,la roulette anglaisecasino games 2007jeu baccarat en ligneblack jack regolecasino jeux en franceeuro vip casinocasino jeux d argentbonus de casino sans depotcasino virtuel,casino en line,online casinowww produits casino frcasino poker en lignejeux baccarat gratuitesjeux casino poker gratuites ,jeux casino gratuit,telecharger jeux de casino gratuitesblog casino en lignecasino gratuites demojack black king kongcasino jeux argentinternet casinowww jeux casino comhttp www casinojeux gratuitsjeux gratuitesjeu pcregles du poker texas holdspielbank,spiel bank,realistische spielbankholdem poker softwarepoker game downloadenpoker net downloaddeutsche online pokerdraw poker spielregelntexas holdem kostenlos downloadspiele bankstrep poker on linegioco carteno deposit bonus pokertornei di poker gratisomaha holdgioco poker texanotavolo multigicotori pokerstrategie texas holdemstreap pokerstrip poker pcgiochi da pokerpoker texas holdem on linestrategie poker
Mar
17
Tomorrow’s LeftAhead: a live report
March 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Among tomorrow’s several topics on LeftAhead, Ryan will be at the Gardner Auditorium for a live report on the hearing which will help decide the fate of whether casinos are littered all around Massachusetts, or not. Ryan is decidedly hoping for a “not,” but make sure to tune in starting at 2:30 to learn how the day is going.
Live stream at 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays.
All Podcasts Archive