Mike Daisey lied - but that doesn't mean overseas factories should be let off the hook.

The need for the press is crucial. The need for the press to have solid ethical grounds in critical.
But when the message we get from a story is clearly delivered as performance, a memoir, and even a fictionalized account, we give it permission to embellish and to editorialize. I loved Fela, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Serafina -- all theatrical depictions of historical events that educate and command sympathy. I understood these were fiction but also came to feel sympathy for history and the people involved. The thing is, there are degrees... and we need to remember not to let the underlying message get lost. Janet Cooke at the Washington Post got the Pulitzer Prize for a story about crack among children in the Washington D.C. ghetto... turned out she made it all up. Does that mean there were no crack problems among children and poverty in the Washington DC children? Of course, the problem would come to be worse then she ever made up. But she wrote it for the Washington Post and called it journalism.

When Mike Daisey went on This American Life and told his story about misconduct and mistreatment of workers at Chinese Foxconn facilities where iPhones and other popular tech products-- he lied to the producers and researchers about several facts. Bottom line: he is a creative writer. His biggest error was that he allowed his desire for success and good storytelling get in the way of the facts. In his interview Ira Glass asks Mike Daisey why he won't just call his report fiction -- Mike Daisey has a hard time answering this -- and I understand why. Daisey witnessed things that he found to be unacceptable. He says he felt that he had to tell the story when the news had stopped covering it. So it seems the big question remains... does Apple and other American companies using Foxconn look away at worker treatment and standards below American standards when no one is looking? I understand why This American Life as a journalistic entity is embarrassed that they let his embellishments go without checking and I think that their retraction and Mike Daisey's lets them off the hook. However, as journalists perhaps they should pursue the more important message -- there are a lot of lazy standards in American factories and many more oversees -- you just have to get in and look. People like their products and often don't want to know but I think if they did, they'd be appalled and demand change.

Having worked in a salmon cannery for a summer in Alaska in 1995 -- I know all too well that the standards are allowed to slip when the inspectors are gone. I never ate canned salmon again after that, in fact, I don't eat much canned food at all after I saw the way sanitation and safety practices slip when big payloads come in and workers get into the 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th hour of work. That was here in the US. So why in the world would we believe that just because Apple says they've self-inspected the factories and everything's on the up and up would anyone believe it. Let's ask the question -- why aren't the press covering factory conditions in China and anywhere else we're making American products for cheap? Is it a corporate lock-out? Is everyone satisfied by the idea that corporations can be self-policing? I surely am not.

Kony 2012 is an incredible use of social media to help people participate in the next action of global love for children

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest.

Joseph Kony is one of the world’s worst war criminals and I support the interhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnational effort to arrest him, disarm the lRa and bring the child soldiers home.

See this video to understand why and what you can do to help: http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc

#StopKony.

Wizard Kids Have A Wand Fight

http://wolfysong.vipblog.name/09/02/has-achieved.html

http://beerer97.meet-tweet.com/2008/01/wolfysong-are-associated-with-sleepless.html

First Day of School ..... Five Years from Now

Subject: FW: First Day of School ..... Five Years from Now --- On Tue, 1/20/09, kathy bond <kathyabond@hotmail.com> wrote:       Enjoy your day!       ______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ . Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. Check it out. Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Chat. Store. Share. Do more with mail. See how it works. -- There is no greater compliment than a referral to your family and friends. Please don't keep it a secret.

This is not what our mothers meant by having it all...

I don't understand Palin and the women who support her.

I don't understand women who are thrilled to have Palin as their representative. I don't understand women who are proud to be women and oppress other women. I don't understand human beings who stand up for human life and simultaneously endanger their future. I don't understand celebrating children and killing animals. Not for food or survival but only for sport. Palin took polar bears off the endangered species list and allowed for aerial hunting of wolves. I don't understand how Sarah Palin could say it was Bristol's choice and simultaneously oppress the choice of other young women. Palin oversaw an administration charging victims rape kits. Palin fired a librarian for refusing to ban books. What woman would support a woman that supports a war in the name of freedom and religious choices while choosing to handcuff women's rights and gay rights here at home. I don't understand.

Eve Ensler on Palin

My friend Lisa found this blog which was posted on huffingtonpost.com and sent it to me. I think its heartfelt, thoughtful, somewhat poetic and brilliant.   Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin.     Drill, Drill, Drill  I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one.  Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.   I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war. I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God." Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth. Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be. I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression. If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?         Eve Ensler     September 5, 2008

Palin's Town Gets Billed For Rape Kits, no kidding.

Here's the Associated Press version of the story.
USA Today reports it this way.

Is this supposed to win over feminists?

In fairness, turns out this picture is FAUX-tography -- Snopes.com verifies it. Its a good gaff, though and one wonders how much she would really protest the representation.

So this is our future Vice President.

Maybe if Cheney had been wearing a get up like this he'd have had better aim.

We know her daughter's having a shot gun wedding but the mother of the bride could wear something a little more Presidential.

Gloria Steinem took the words right out of my heart

In today's Los Angeles Times, Gloria Steinem's Opinion Editorial on Sarah Palin, "Palin: wrong woman, wrong message" is a must-read.

You butt out first!

I LOVE how the Republicans are pleading with the media to stay out of Governor Sarah Palin's personal business when her personal and political agenda is to be in the bedroom and gynological offices of women and stop choice. So her choice to parent special need children and support her daughters' teenage pregnancy (without explanation of sex education and middle class wages and incomes that couldn't support children) is not our business but stopping others from making parenting choices is hers?

We shouldn't question her role as a mother of 5 and a business woman but she and her followers can criticize and legally block parenting qualities of gay men and women and stop their marriages. Making a promise to appoint potentially 3 Supreme Court Justices to reverse Roe versus Wade puts court in the personal lives of millions of women.

Boy isn't that convenient!
Give me a break!

Palin's daughter -- a case against abstinence

The announcement today that the 17 year old daughter of John McCain's pick for VP Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska is a poster child for sex education and that the case for abstinence as we all know doesn't work.

I refuse to make a comment on her decision to keep the baby or the family's decision to keep the child. I also believe that Barack's political choice to keep children out of the picture is fine. But we lead by example, as Barack said in his speech. The Palin's living example of keeping children in the wake of difficulty begs a question the McCain campaign candidacy is not addressing. Sex education is more successful than the rhetoric of abstinence.

When women in Pittsburgh, in Detroit, etc. are faced with the same choices, who's providing the top health care, who is providing daycare while the below minimum wage parents must find money when their parents are unavailable emotionally, financially or physically to support the children?

Gov. Sarah Palin (AK) - Not a Howl but a Whimper

I know I haven't blogged in a long while. Tough. I'm shocked and inspired today to say something as I'm watching John McCain's announcement of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. This is a desperate move by McCain and it does him no favors.

Pundits are still being polite but I don't feel such restraint.

In her speech, Governor Sarah Palin pays tribute to Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks in the ceiling. Palin is pro-life. That's going to turn off many of the Hillary supporters.

Sarah Palin's role as a mother of five with a newborn in tow held in the background of her oldest daughter (with down syndrome) the pundits believe will gain the support of the soccer moms in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Perhaps, initially. But when the soccer moms in those state aren't getting the healthcare they need to take care of those children. When their husbands aren't earning minimum wage and learn that Sarah Palin voted against minimum wage increases that is not going to help. And there's got to be at least one other working mother like me who has far fewer than 5 children wondering what are those young children going to give up in care and attention with a mother running for Vice President aside from the unlimited assistance of nannies, tutors and healthcare that those moms in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania would only dream of.

Let's talk about her example as a mom. She is a 44 year old woman who is pro-life and gave birth to a down syndrome baby. We assume she had an amnio and made a conscience choice to have a child with down syndrome. It begs questions about access to resources. It begs questions about choice and access for women who are not married into corporate oil and wealth in this country. There's an every increasing crisis with families growing older having to go bankrupt in order to care for children who will never be able to be independent nor enough legacies of finances and good advice for Special Needs families the ability to leave estates to siblings. Many of those families struck with children with the ever increasing epidemic of autism in this country have nowhere to turn and no finances to provide the best resources for that child. And the public schools are way under qualified to handle it. That older sister holding her newborn down syndrome baby brother may have just been handed a legacy of care taking after her parents pass away. At least if her mother becomes vice president some resources may be left to handle that situation. She now has the ethical responsibility of providing not just a national discussion about Special Needs families and estate planning but what she will provide parents who are bankrupt due to healthcare costs if they have any at all and minimum wage parents in the same position.

Experience? She has been a mayor of a city of Wasilla, AK - 9,000 people. Governor of Alaska (672,000) less than the population of Cleveland. I've spent 6 months living in Alaska. This is not a state that has the same issues of big cities. Its a beautiful tough place with a population personality that resembles the rugged frontiersman of the western expansion of the lower 48 during the gold rush. So hunting and gun toting means something else there. But doesn't prepare a person for the inner-city, racial, socio-economic issues of downtown LA and New York City. They are completely different cultures from Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit.

Some pundit on MSNBC applauded her for being the first time we've had a choice of someone with energy corporate experience from an energy rich state. Then what was Cheney and Haliburton. Please. The population of Alaska living off the pipeline and choosing someone who supports furthering the greed through ANWAR is like praising a heroin addict for being agile with an injection needle.

Lets talk plainly. McCain turned 72 today and had 2 battles with cancer. Is this woman ready to run the country? This is not a woman with experience up to handling major executive, economic and foreign relations.

McCain's choice in Sarah Palin shows desperation to diffuse the energy and momentum behind Obama and the powerful position he and Joe Biden have laid out. The sense of community responsibility. The Palin position is more denial that they believe America's not broken, so why fix it. Any Hillary supporters swayed by this are putting personalities over principals.

Thank you Gloria

Gloria Steinem outlined EXACTLY the sentiments I didn't have the data or eloquence to express. Please read her opinion in the New York Times, "Women Are Never Front-Runners" about how the gender political barrier is and always has runner deeper than the racial barriers in the United States.

Steinem writes this piece and informs you at the end that she is supporting Hillary and why. Although I haven't made a final political primary decision I must say that she reinforces my consideration as an American woman that if all the things are equal (and that remains to be judged) women in this country should have an obligation that NOT voting for Hillary because one might figure this country won't vote in a woman might be the deciding factor to vote for her. Because as an American woman, to not vote for a woman, any woman, based on the concept that she might not beat a man makes it a self-fullfilling prophecy.

That said, I'm still so pissed she supported Iraq for so long.

Mysogeny alive and well in the Presidential campaign

From the beginning I've been concerned that most Americans left alone in the privacy of their own voting booths would not vote for either a black man or a woman of any color. I have been very concerned about choosing not just the best Democrat candidate but the one who can beat any and all Republican candidates. I was hesitant to vote for Hillary because I was concerned that she coulnd't entice those potential swing voters who already have the bitter taste in their mouths from hteKen Starr/ Rush Limbaugh ancient history.

Last week upon the Pakistan assasination I decided that maybe it was more important that I vote for Hillary to not make my fear of mysogeny in the American voter a self-fulfilled proficy . I must say today I'm shocked and saddened by the news media perpetuation of asking America to judge a female candidate with a separate and different playbook.

Americans want a President who cleans her closets? One who cries when asked about her uphill battle? All pundits saying, "Well she's tired but now voters can see her human side but it may be too little too late." When a man makes the same comments its not even a point of discussion. The most recent example they can muster up is Muskie? That's silly.

When Hillary asks other candidates talk about their records and their experience, according to one female MSNBC pundit, she was "yelling at them" during the New Hampshire debate. A comment that casts a light on Hillary like an emotional nagging mom. Lest we forget when John Kerry's wife made some sassy statements about a lobbyist she was called brash and harsh. Remember the McCain discussion group when a woman asked McCain, "How will we beat the bitch?" Bill Moyers Journal interview of Kathleen Hall Jamieson and her perspective about that and what it means for the way Americans talk and think about women in power. Do women in America worry about their own ability to be powerful? I am sure that Oprah's support of Obama is fully and 100% a result of his principals but I wonder what it meant that she didn't support Hillary when her demographic is mostly white women.

Of course, Americans wanted a President that they'd like to have a beer with and look what it got them.

Educating preschool children about violence and nature and spiriuality

How did you deal with questions of violence (as in animals attacking other animals) and meat coming from animals, etc.

We eat so little meat in our house (maybe once a week - poultry or fish). Several months ago my husband took our now 3 1/2 year old son to the famous La Brea tar pits where there is a museum full of fossils of animals that have been stuck in the tar ... prehistoric animals among others. He saw a still shot he saw as part of a movie in the La Brea Tar Pits of a saber tooth tiger attacking a horse that got stuck in the mud? We've been trying to answer his questions with simplicity and yet sensitively about these subjects but they're really looping in his mind.

In nature violent things happen and it directly contradicts all that we tell him about violence at home. A few weeks ago on our annual family trip to Yosemite National Park, he saw a diarama of an Native American carrying a deer kill over his shoulders and our son has been OBSESSING about it. Moreover, he doesn't know about death so when we explained that the 'indian' (his words from school.... sigh) ate the deer he was repelled and then he had all kinds of questions about the if the deer was "sad when they were biting on him?" and where was the deers mommy and daddy? Ethan then asked.... are you ready for this one.... WHY ARE THE INDIANS BAD TO THE EARTH????

And so mommy on the spot improvises a parable about how the Native American people lived in a place where they could grow food in the summer and gather herbs and fruit but when winter time came there was no more food so they asked Mother Earth to send them some food to feed their children. Mother Earth sent them the deer and they were so grateful to have food for their whole village with this one deer that they wasted nothing... they used the fur for clothes, the antlers for flutes, the hooves for cups, etc.

He asked again if the deer was sad when they were 'biting on him' which I realized later was a response also to having seen the saber tooth tiger on the horse's back in the tar pit... finally I told him that the deer went to a deep sleep so that it wouldn't hurt and he was happy to know that he could feed the children. He's now back to the wild cat and since he doesn't understand extinct (though we've tried to explain past and present) he's confused.

I don't have clear answers but I am aware that I'm trying to give him the simplicity of very difficult concepts that many people never come to peacefully. For hundreds and hundreds of years humankind has considered these issues and tried to make themselves comfortable with these concepts let alone put them into bite sized concepts for a small mind.

Obama's lack of baggage may help him sail through security

The following letter to the editor was written by my good friend and colleague Stan Froelich.

Inexperience may be advantage for Obama From Stan Froelich

(Regarding John Fortier’s column, “The secret Obama meeting,” Feb. 28.)

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2007
THE HILL

Hey, John, be careful what you think you want;
you may get it.
The inexperienced Obama is truly inexperienced.
JFK, who was also woefully inexperienced, represented a hunger
against the generation of Eisenhower/Nixon and the 1950s to a
new generation of politics that Nixon underestimated
badly. That was Nixon’s election to win, fairly easily — then television
killed him politically.

Republicans want to face Clinton with
all her baggage, but Obama represents an
enigma wrapped in a puzzle they can’t
figure out. Other than his inexperience,
there’s nothing on him. No record, no
nothing. If this country elected Bush with
no international experience and certainly
no real interest beyond Texas, then
Obama may become the Republican
nominee’s worse nightmare. A whole
year is a long time in American politics
and America will get tired of Clinton, and
Rudy, too. And Obama is new and fresh,
and a year or two won’t make him old
news as the world finds out about him.
Something else that’s very important,
too: Republican evangelicals will be destroyed
politically if Rudy gets the nomination.
Then Rudy won’t need them and
they will become irrelevant to a man
whose social values they don’t share.
Rudy is his own man. That’s what most
people hated about him when he was
mayor. It’s also what makes him an attractive
presidential candidate.
As president, Rudy could appoint as
many [judicial] conservatives as he
wants, but they will be more like Justice
Kennedy or Justice Souter. If Rudy gets
elected there’s a good chance that evangelicals
will be in the political wilderness
for eight years.
Again: Watch out, evangelical conservatives;
be careful of what you think is conservative.
Rudy will discard you like an
old shoe.
- New York City

Original article can be found here

I'm training for the June 3rd San Diego marathon and in the spirit of today's LA Marathon I'm putting it out there that I'm on the path. . . literally.

This past weekend we trained up some nasty hills in Simi Valley -- miles 2-4 were straight up hill. . . we had a mile to catch our breath and then sent us up another hill. . . it was a butt burner to say the least...

More than that it started a conversation with myself, an epiphany and then a decision... it goes something like this, "I have done harder things than this. Of course, those were bigger risks in my head not my body. My body is more than just a life support system for my head/ my brain." It was then that I decided that I owed it to myself and my family to stop letting my brain put limits on the capacity of my body. Then an image of someone passing me on this hill in a wheelchair. I can do this, I just decided it. I decided that I owe myself, my loving husband and my beautiful son a long life, an active life and the kind of spirit that knows I can clear that hill. And with that, I got my ass to the top of the hill and ran down and around til I made it to the finish -- 8 miles!

Please consider supporting me:
Here's my page: http://www.active.com/donate/tntgla/AliSimard