Author: JH

Mike Daisey!

[Update 2012/01/14 Mike Daisey on This American Life!]

What a treat… stumbling upon a blazing, fully-formed force for consciousness.
With 16 shows behind him already I'm obviously coming to the party a little late
but what a find. Probably not since Bill Hicks have I found someone who so brilliantly
blends humor, insight, and activism. Go Mike!

How Theater Failed America

Full hour CSPAN interview around The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs
(wherein he describes going to China and speaking with workers from the Foxconn
factory where all our gadgets are made).

 

 

Why Did The FBI Stash Taliban 9-11 Phone Records?

Update Oct. 21, 2012: The Kiriakou Conundrum: To Plea Or Not To Plea

Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft

Update Oct. 1, 2012: John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money.

reluctant-spy-john-kiriakou.jpg
This is one of those stories that opens up so many rabbit holes you don't know where to start. And then, once you do start, it keeps getting worse and worse, until you're left feeling duped and useless, and reminded once again of the possibility that if there is such a thing as 'evil' it probably resides somewhere in Washington,

In 2002, with NY Port Authority Detective Tommy McHale, on loan to the FBI, CIA agent John Kiriakou raided the Taliban embassy located in Peshawar, Pakistan. The bloodless action resulted in two van loads of Taliban documents and equipment. A few days after the raid, Detective McHale called Kiriakou to let him know about an incredible find…

"You're never going to believe what I found!" It was a file folder with telephone bills in it. And the telephone bills were written in English. They were Pakistani issued telephone bills. And they documented 168 calls made, from the Taliban embassy to numbers inside the United States, and I mean all over the United States, Bethesda MD, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Kansas City, all over the country. And those call stopped abruptly on September the 10th, 2001, and then started up again slowly, on September the 16th.

So why were the numbers never investigated?
John Kiriakou, author of The Reluctant Spy, shares his story and his frustration in the following interview excerpt from C-SPAN's After Words.
(Click arrow to hear clip) John Kiriakou: Peshawar Taliban Embassy Raid
Link to full Video interview.

In the full interview Kiriakou describes his involvement in the arrest of Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou was instrumental in arranging for the medical care that kept Zubaydah alive. Kiriakou was earlier led to believe that Zabaydah, incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, began 'speaking' after one episode of waterboarding. It later came to be known that Zubaydah had been waterboarded   83 times in the month of August 2002 alone!
The interview includes details about Kirakou's recruitment, and his time as an anti-terrorism agent in Greece. Kiriakou is inteviewd by Frederick Hitz, who was the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1990 to 1998 and is the author of The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage.

How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?

Navajo Generating Station
Creative Commons License photo credit: brewbooks

How many of us have a clue about how much a kilowatt is. Check out Marshall Brain's article, "How much coal is required to run a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day for a year?"
You can also get the podcast from iTunes.

Suddenly… Human Trafficking

Update: 10/01/12 A powerful collection of modern day slavery photographs published in the Atlantic this week.   Photographed by Lisa Kristine. It turns out Lisa also has a Ted talk. Some things are so horrible you can hardly bring yourself to learn more about them. At the very least, we can make a donation. Free The Slaves!

Yesterday, driving in to work I listened to this talk and was surprised I didn't know more.

Then today on a show I like ThisWeekInTwitter,   guest Aaron Cohen, author of 'Slave Hunter' really got my dander up. Throwing the phrase 'the children' around like a Fox News anchor, calling Amsterdam a failure, and talking about the 'tools' (i.e. laws) he and like minded activists need in order to go in and shut down these slave trade operations. Another part of his argument that really rankled me was his statement that 'Craigslist receives a third of its earnings from sex postings', as though this was something Craigslist was doing. Why pick on Craigslist? Can we not assume that a large portion of any classified ad publisher's income derives from sex related ads? (Here's the recent NY Times article about Craigslist and sex related ads Aaron was probably thinking of). But just because I didn't like the way Aaron framed his argument didn't mean he doesn't have valid points. Certainly it made me realize I have a lot to learn.

So then I went back to Ted and found this…

About Amsterdam I found various articles discussing changes being made, like raising the age to 21 and requiring prostitutes to be licensed. Also this:

Anti-slavery campaigner and labour party city councillor Lodewijk Asscher already raised the issue in February. This week he submitted a detailed report , noting that between 50 and 90 per cent of all the prostitutes working in Amsterdam's inner-city were found to be working there against their will – coerced and forced by international criminal gangs.

These are such messy issues. You want to think that somewhere, drugs and prostitution are being handled intelligently and effectively. If not Amsterdam, where? I will try to follow-up on the Amsterdam situation. But in the meantime I obviously have a lot of reading to do around the issue of human trafficking. How can there be 27,000,000 people caught up in slavery and I hardly know the first thing about it?

In Lieu of Presents – Christmas Charity Gift Giving

[Update] Just finished Stones into Schools. I couldn't put it down once I got started. Fascinating, heart-wrenching and insightful. Afghanistan and Pakistan are complicated places! At least I have a clue now. When I think of what a dollar buys in terms of education over there it sickens me to think a single missile costing upwards of $800,000. On the other hand, I don't want anything to happen to the girls going to those schools. So yes, I want the troops to come home, but not if it means the Taliban (who emerge in the book as a true enemy) can march right back into Afghanistan. It was so encouraging to read about Colonel Christopher Kolenda reaching out to the elders of Afghanistan- building relationship! That seems to be the way things get done over there!

A few years ago our family stopped giving each other hard drives and boots and started donating to charity instead. It was Mom's idea. She just loved to give a goat (Oxfam Canada). I had just read Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson's story about building schools, mostly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That book is just so moving. So we donated to the non-profit he has set up to collect funds for more schools.

Greg has a new book, Stones into Schools which I just picked up (purchase from this link donates a percentage of the price to the Central Asia Institute, Greg's non-profit). I'm looking forward to reading it over the Christmas break.   We also chose the Central Asia Institute again this year because I have such a soft spot for educating girls, but also because it makes such a powerful positive impact.

In 2009…
CAI schools total 131
CAI built 29 new schools Afghanistan and
in Pakistan
CAI Students total enrollment is 58,000
CAI now has 36,000 female enrollment
CAI has a total of 17 vocational centers
CAI educated 19 higher education scholarship students.
CAI had teacher training & midwife training workshops
CAI's Greg Mortenson published 3 new bestseller books
CAI's Greg Mortenson spoke at 214 events nationally
CAI's program Pennies for Peace raised 150,000,000 cents
CAI's Pennies for Peace expanded from 280 to
4500 programs in schools, groups & libraries in 20 countries

Greg Mortenson C-Span interview with Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack. (audio) (video)

Direct donation link.

"You're Only As Young As The Last Time You Changed Your Mind" Whole Earth Discipline – Stewart Brand

Update 9/9/10 Finished it! A little dry for all the facts but a very important read for me. It's helped me realize my biases, and we can't afford biases. Stewart provides a summary at the end of his book I hope will serve to whet your appetite to read this important book.

Ecological balance is too important for sentiment. It requires science.
The health of natural infrastructure is too compromised for passivity, it requires engineering.
What we call natural and what we call human are inseparable. We live one life.

Stewart Brand's new book has a great accompanying website with a million cool links
and enough of the book to let you know you're going to love reading it. But just in case
you're not sure, check out the talk (and great questions afterwards) from The
Long Now Foundation. (Click arrow to listen, right click to download) Stewart Brand Rethinking Green

Are you a nuclear over reactor?

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Non-Profit Pharmaceuticals Non-Profit Business Models

This is a very inspiring talk on many levels. On the one hand Victoria and her organization are saving lives from diseases you and I have never even heard of. But the business model is non-profit. For a pharmaceutical company, that's truly world changing.

Simply put, Victoria Hale's organization has saved thousands of lives. Join the founder of OneWorld Health–the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the US–as she shares her vision of bringing an end to what she calls the "diseases of poverty."

Victoria is founder and CEO of the Institute for OneWorld Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company with a mission to develop affordable drugs to treat diseases that plague the world's poorest communities.The institute recently received approval for and brought to market its first drug, paromomycin, a low-cost antibiotic cure for visceral leishmaniasis, which afflicts approximately 1.5 million people worldwide, primarily in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sudan. Research to create paromomycin was largely funded by a grant of $10 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Treatments underway for malaria, diarrheal disease, and Chagas disease hold the potential to save the lives of millions more.

From PopTech (video too) or (right click to download or click the arrow to) listen

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Junk Mail Calendars From Conservation Groups? Conservation FAIL

Not something I'd normally write about in here, but this is ridiculous! In the last week I received two unsolicited calendars from conservation groups!

Your Free Nature Conservancy Calendar 2010
Your Free National Parks Conservation Association 2010 Calendar

Does sending bulk junk mail calendars send the wrong message?
I think so. I'm going to keep a list of the free calendars I receive (and throw away) here, just to remind me NEVER to support these clueless conservation groups.

Let's add Carl Pope and the Sierra Club for this Free U.S. Wall Map.
And a bulky full-color guilt trip of a reminder letter from The Nature Conservancy that I still haven't donated to them for the calendar I didn't want or ask for.

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Juan Enriquez – The stars and stripes forever?

From PopTech.org

The stars and stripes forever? Futurist and author Juan Enriquez isn't sure of that.
He cites a long history of borders, countries and flags that have changed, and warns
the United States isn't immune.


Mp3 QTmov
This is a great talk and there are many more on the PopTech site. Juan mentions this MapsOfWar
movie–fascinating. More on the MapsOfWar.com site.

Dance With Chance – Making Luck Work For You

dancewithchance

In a nutshell, Dance with Chance is all about knowing what you can and cannot predict and, therefore, what you can and cannot control.

Think about it. Every day human beings make decisions. Some are important: should you invest your life savings in the stock market? Others are trivial: should you take an umbrella today? But in both these cases you have no control. The stock market will go up or down, it will rain or it won't"¦ and there's nothing you can do about it.

The problem comes when people seek to gain control by making predictions. By consulting an investment expert or a weather forecast, they think they can control the value of their investments or avoid getting wet.

But this is just an illusion. An illusion that psychologists call "˜the illusion of control'.

In many areas of life – the stock market and the weather are just two examples – accurate prediction just isn't possible. There is always uncertainty about the future in most areas of our lives. Throw in some emotions, such as greed, fear and hope, and human beings' predictions get even less accurate. So what are we to do?

Fortunately, Dance with Chance comes up with plenty of positive suggestions. Most importantly, it uncovers a "˜paradox of control' that's the antidote to the "˜illusion of control'. By knowing when to give up control, we can actually gain more control over many aspects of our lives than we had in the first place.

Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work for You

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Healthcare X PRIZE Releases Initial Design Guidelines

Personally I'm a little skeptical about a Healthcare X Prize that is sponsored by Wellpoint, (does it not follow that a giant for-profit healthcare provider would primarily be motivated to discover ways to become more profitable?) but after watching the Peter Diamandis "Why design a Healthcare X PRIZE?" video I'm at least convinced that the experiment could provide some very valuable information.
The idea is to pick five teams that will compete in providing healthcare to test groups of 10,000 people each over a period of three years. The 'winner' will have garnered the best quality-of-life score from their group. Let's hope at least that there will be a Single-Payer team in the competition. Certainly the Healthcare X Prize provides an arena in which advocates of Single-Payer can show their stuff.

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Single-Payer National Health Insurance

I've been through the death of two close relatives through the Canadian medical system. In both cases the illnesses were complicated. In both cases my relatives were treated expertly, without concern for expense–or profit– but with dignity and the loving care that befits all of us. All this talk currently about reforming the U.S. Health Care system, without Single-Payer Health Insurance even on the table?!! Could it be the 4 health care company lobbyists for each Congressperson in Washington? We need to get organized around this. A good place to start is Physicians For A National Health Plan.
I recommend listening to Ian Masters interview with PHNP's Dr. David Himmelstein–on President Obama's failure to include the proven success of the single-payer health care model among the possible solutions being considered for national heathcare reform. Dr. Himmelstein is co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a universal, single-payer national health program, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The author of numerous studies and books, he is recognized as a national leader in the movement for universal health care. Dr. Himmelstein's interview is second of three interviews on this episode of Background Briefing.

Get it?

Update 061609
From LA Times:

…The documents show, for instance, that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

WellPoint's Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said.

Update 062709
From Rhonda Hackett of Castle Rock, a clinical psychologist. DenverPost.com, Debunking Canadian health care myths

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