Shouldering the Burden

It's probably an understatement to say that Miss USA, Rachel Smith, had a rough night on Monday at the Miss Universe pageant held in Mexico.

Not only did the poor girl fall down hard on her bottom during the evening gown competition, but she was roundly booed all night long by the Mexican audience.

Despite the hosts' pleas during commercial breaks that the audience tone down the hostility toward Miss USA, the booing continued and nearly drowned out Smith's responses to the interview questions.

This was clearly not a personal attack against Smith (although I'm sure the 21-year-old from Tennessee was deeply hurt by the public taunts), rather it was an emotional response to Mexico's tense relations with the U.S., due largely to this country's broken immigration laws and the controversial new plan for reform.

Sadly for Smith and her family, it was her slender shoulders that were to bear the weight of the audience's wrath for her nation's government.

Despite the indignant reaction of the broadcast media ("How could the audience be so cruel?"), the treatment Smith got in Mexico is just the latest manifestation of the blazing anti-Americanism that has infected the world.

We should hardly be surprised.

But rather than reacting angrily and condemning the Mexican pageant audience, perhaps the media should take this opportunity to have a discussion about the rampant anti-Americanism that has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of allowing us to exist in a national bubble without much consideration of the rest of the world, the media should help us understand why we estadounidenses have become so hated - and more importantly, what we can do to regain the respect and admiration of the rest of the world.

Too Kind to Tancredo

Despite the impossible odds, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is wasting our time and reporters' ink with his hopeless run for the presidency. But as it turns out, Tancredo may understand there is more to running the country than giving the boot to 12 million undocumented immigrants and sealing the southern border with a 2,000-mile steel fence.

Over the weekend, Tancredo campaigned in Iowa and touched on school vouchers, healthcare and gasoline taxes between rants on the great peril of the Latin American immigrant invasion of the U.S. However, his rhetoric about how to tackle America’s other domestic quagmires is totally uninspired compared to the ferocity he reserves for the issue of illegal immigration. Karen Crummy, of The Denver Post, was with Tancredo in Iowa and quoted him regarding health care reform, considered a pressing need by many within the medical profession.

“Health care is an individual decision to a large extent. You need to stop looking at the government,” Tancredo said. “I will not propose any huge programs.”

Lucky for us (and especially for the millions of Americans that can’t afford health insurance under the present system), Crummy points out that Tancredo’s odds at becoming president are, at best, a million to one.

To me it is curious that Tancredo, who offers little in the way of fresh ideas on any issue, is considered a respectable voice in the immigration debate. Tancredo bills himself as a tireless advocate of tighter border security and tougher immigration laws, but his comments often reveal a baffling ignorance on the issue he has adopted as his own. For example, if Tancredo were to examine the statistics from Princeton's Mexican Migration Project, as many scholars have, he would find that the border security he lauds is largely responsible for the massive population of permanently settled undocumented immigrants present in all 50 states.

Before the IRCA immigration reform of 1986, MMP data showed that incoming migration from Mexico was set off by the outgoing migration of roughly equal numbers. The tightening of security along the border had an effect, but not the desired one. Rather than keeping people out, the increased security just prevented people from going home. The nature of the work performed by many Mexican migrants has traditionally been seasonal in nature, and in the past, most migrant workers would return home in between jobs in the U.S. But the IRCA reforms put a stop to that practice for most people. The border cross became too hazardous. So rather than risk not being able to get back into the U.S., migrants stayed and worked to bring their families north. Whereas undocumented immigrants were once mostly male and residents in a few southwestern states, the result over time has been a huge increase in settled populations of undocumented immigrants all over the nation.

A studied, nuanced view of the immigration issue is something Tancredo is simply not capable of. I believe at the root of his vehemently anti-immigration stance is a strong desire to keep America a predominantly white nation of European descendants. Xenophobia drips from Tancredo’s lips when he speaks, and unfortunately, it’s a stance that has earned him plenty of friends and admirers. Luckily, there aren’t nearly enough “Tancrazies” out there to give him even a snowball’s chance of getting elected president.

No Scandal Too Scandalous

After the embarrassing personal foibles of Clinton's final years in office, George Bush promised to restore honor and integrity to the executive branch. But seven years on, his administration has weathered and is presently embroiled in dozens upon dozens of scandals; although none of them seem damaging enough to change the course of this disastrous administration.

In early 2005, Salon.com compiled a list of 34 Republican scandals that began during the Bush administration's first term in office. In the twilight years of Bush's presidency, the scandals continue to pile up; yet the political consequences for Republicans have been relatively light.

The fictitious case made by the White House to invade Iraq will go down in history as this scandalous administration's most monumental screw up. Bush and his top officials lied to the American people, Congress, the UN and the world when they made their case for war with Saddam Hussein. In comparison, the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons and the conviction of Republicans on corruption and perjury charges pale. Stumbling on to the scene in Iraq opened the door for colossal new scandals like torture perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Just to name a few...

-World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is under pressure to resign after it was revealed he pulled strings to get his girlfriend a lucrative job at the State Department while remaining on the Bank's payroll.

-Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, was convicted on perjury and obstruction charges in connection with leaking the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has lost the confidence of scores of lawmakers for his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, who seem to have been sacked in order to make room for political sympathizers.

The Democrats have not gone after the White House Republicans with even a trace of the rabidity that characterized the Republican legislators' attacks on Clinton. For most of his presidency, Bush has enjoyed a partisan Congress that wouldn't dream of investigating thier cronies in the executive branch. Also, as Salon pointed out, without the "drumbeat of scandal" sustained by the right-wing news media - as we saw during the Clinton-Lewinski debacle - the Bush administration scandals, inexplicably, do not seem to be a defining feature of his reign. While Clinton's adultery was contemptible, his missteps seem utterly trivial compared to this president's slip-ups, which have conservatively cost tens of thousands of civilian lives.

Get that murderous psycho off the news!

I've come to expect little better from the television media, so I'm not surprised the news networks have endlessly broadcasted the photos, video and text that killer Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC Monday just before his final rampage in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech.

But I was EXTREMELY dismayed to see The Denver Post's front page with the killer's creepy photos and ranting quotes enlarged so no reader could possibly miss them. There is no clarification, closure or comfort to be gained by seeing those images and reading his rants. The photos and video don't show Cho as the troubled loner he really was, but rather, as the tough guy he wished he could be.


What kind of message does this send to the families of Cho's victims, and the families of Columbine victims for that matter? It tells them that the killer is calling the shots, and the story is about him, not his victims. Not only did he take the lives of 32 innocent people, he is now been elevated to celebrity status for doing so. When Cho sent those materials to NBC, he wanted to go down in infamy, and the media happily obliged.

So, what's the take home message for all the would-be shooters out there who are angry enough to contemplate taking their own lives? Why go out anonymously when you can blow away 32 people and be immortalized for it in the papers and on the news? As the hometown paper for the families and friends of the Columbine shooting victims, The Denver Post showed no regard for the duty of care the newspaper owes to those sensitive readers.

Of course, the story is incredibly newsworthy and deserves thorough coverage, but for god's sake, direct readers to the website where they can read Cho's letter and see his angry photos, don't put it on the front page. This story should now be about the victims, not their murderer. By printing and broadcasting the killer's photos, videos and texts, the media has inadvertently validated Cho's heinous act and invited other sick and vengeful individuals to do the same. And for a newspaper like The Denver Post that knows for a fact people who have been directly affected by a similar shooting are among its readers, the editorial decision to put Cho on today's front page is incomprehensible.

Devastation at VT haunts Boulder

I wasn't nervous about going to the CU Boulder campus for class today, but I was certainly a bit more on guard after more than thirty people were murdered at Virginia Tech yesterday. Horrible acts often beget more horrible acts. Last September, 16-year-old Emily Keyes was killed at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., and days later, a madman killed five people at an Amish school in Pennsylvania.

Knowledge of the tragedy in Virginia added a layer of unease to an already tense day on the Boulder campus. The fanatical anti-abortion folks were out with their mural-sized pictures of bloody and dismembered fetuses in various stages of development. Then there was the student Republican club holding its annual "Affirmative Action Bakesale," which drew a crowd of about 100, sign-wielding counter protesters. The "Bakesale" featured a single, lonely bin of grocery store cookies, which were on sale for different prices depending on the buyers race. The idea is to protest the racial preference practices of affirmative action.

Too add to all this dramatic tension in the crisp air this morning, our professor was pulled from class suddenly because a student in one of her other classes had expressed admiration for the shooter in Blacksburg, Va., and added that he had fantasized about doing something similar. The professor called the police and spent the remainder of our class calling student witnesses and giving a police report. NPR reported that several other universities around the country had similar scares.

What happened yesterday is incomprehensible, even for a society as plagued by gun violence as this one. It's being called the worst shooting in modern U.S. history, and the blogosphere is exploding with posts about the event. The right-wingers say it's proof we need to relax our gun laws; after all, if other students had been armed, the shooter never would have been so "successful" in his rampage. Those on the left say the incident screams for tighter gun regulation, or at least a ban on assault weapons and automatic handguns.

What I don't want to see, but what I fear is inevitable, is an anti-Asian backlash in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. The shooter was a 23-year-old student, originally from South Korea named Seung-Hui Cho. He lived in a dorm; his roommates described him as a stoic, silent loner. Apparently, one of his English professors once tried to warn school officials about his frighteningly dark paper topics, but there wasn't much anyone could do unless he made a threat, they said.

No race or nationality has a monopoly on hate and brutality. The killer's race is pretty insignificant; what's more important is what we can do to make sure this never happens again. But surely, just as Muslim-Americans felt targeted in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks, so will Asian-Americans likely feel scrutinized and blamed for the horrific act of one sick individual.

Now we have our answer

My last post was titled Russia: free and safe? Well, we have a definitive answer today after a weekend of violent state repression of peaceful protests in Russia's two major cities. Russian riot police and soldiers beat and detained hundreds of anti-Kremlin protesters, who staged modest demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday and in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

Thousands of people gathered in Moscow and St. Petersburg for peaceful protest marches meant to express opposition to Putin and his cronies. Unfortunately, Putin struck back in a big way. Fewer than 2,000 protesters in Moscow were met by 9,000 soldiers and police, who prevented the demonstrators from marching to a central square. For 2,000 protesters in St. Petersburg, Putin called on a mere 1,500 police to stop them.

France24 reported that Russian police beat a man who lay motionless on the ground and bloodied the nose of a middle-aged woman.

If this weekend's actions on the part of the Russian authorities do not prove Putin is a tyrannical and anti-democratic, it is hard to imagine what will. I hope democratic nations the world over raise hell diplomatically over the Kremlin's shameless repression of peaceful opposition protesters.

Opposition in Russia is clearly not tolerated. Public criticism of Putin is almost never heard, and the state controls all the TV channels and most of the radio stations. In March 2008 there will be a national election to replace Putin, who is constitutionally term-limited. Despite Putin's brutality and dictatorial qualities, the Russian president remains popular, and whoever Putin endorses as his successor is practically a shoe-in.

Now I wonder what those CWA panelists think of the weekend's events. They were so damn chipper about how free and lovely Russia is; I'm curious if this will change their tune.

Russia: safe and free?

I’m pretty shy; and it’s rare I feel compelled to get up in front of a room of people to ask a question. But yesterday I attended a panel on Russia at the CWA and found myself desperate to challenge one of the panelists. Unfortunately, too many other people were similarly inspired, and I never got the chance. Jennifer Trelewicz didn’t come across as a thoughtful scholar or an objective expert, but more of a Russian nationalist, an emissary straight from the Kremlin hoping to convince us that Russia - contrary to everything we read in the American and Western European media – is really an orderly, free and wholly democratic country.

Trelewicz and her co-panelist, Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, spent their presentations trying to convince a skeptical audience that the Russian system of checks and balances tops that of the U.S. and that there are better laws, more stringent regulation, and that the enormous gap between the rich and the poor in Russia is filling up with a prosperous and contented middle class.

“We feel it is a very free country, a very free place to live,” Trelewicz said.

Her comment rung in my ears, for it seemed to contradict most all the news coming out of Russia recently. It’s none too free for homosexual people who wanted to hold a pride parade in Moscow but were scorned and laughed at by the city’s mayor. It’s also not free for journalists – every one of them who dared to speak the truth about Russia’s involvement in Chechnya has been murdered, most recently Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in the atrium of her Moscow apartment building last fall. President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on dissent in the broadcast media, causing alarm among defenders of the free press. In order to maintain an aura of democracy, Putin has largely left the print media alone, preferring to focus TV, which is probably more effective in reaching the masses.


Russia probably doesn’t seem like a very free place to people of color either. That country has a real problem with skinheads and anti-Semites who regularly attack immigrants and dark-skinned Russians, whose motto is “Russia for the Russians.” One particularly horrific example occurred in 2003 when over 40 foreign students died in a dormitory fire at a university in Moscow. Although no investigation was ever launched, arson is suspected as the cause of the fire. Before the fatal blaze, black and Asian students had been the subjects of violent racist attacks, perpetrated by skinheads – two of whom were chased out of the dormitory the night before it burned to the ground. And the stringent safety regulations the panelists boasted didn’t seem to help the 63 people who burned to death in their sleep last month when their retirement home in southern Russia caught fire. The 45 women who died in a fire at a hospital in Moscow last December also saw little benefit from the Russian regulations boasted about by Trelewicz.

So, I guess my question is, for whom is Russia free? When I was there for a few weeks on 2005, I found it to be a beautiful and complex nation, but one riddled with corruption (we were shaken down three times by the police), and serious social problems including rampant alcoholism, widespread poverty and a low standard of living for many people. It seemed to me the two panelists I mentioned gave the audience the broad strokes in bright colors, but their comments didn’t reflect the complexity of the Russia I experienced or the social turmoil in that country we read about in the news.

CWA: Corporate-owned Media

I love a panelist not afraid to insult his co-panelist’s employer. In a Tuesday panel entitled FOX in the Henhouse: Corporate-owned Media, that’s exactly what Jurek Martin, of the Financial Times, did when he slammed both the BBC World Service (TV) and CNN International for producing boring and repetitive newscasts that fail to adequately inform viewers about the day’s most important events. James Schiffman, chief copy editor at CNN International, took the criticism in stride, and his employer was quickly defended by the third panelist, Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune.

The panelists lamented the consolidation of corporate-owned media, but all three, and especially the newspaper men, seemed more concerned about the economic pressures being put on the traditional news models. Jurek Martin cited an “appalling lack” of international coverage in American newspapers and fumed over the decision of some large newspapers to scale back, or cut entirely, their foreign news bureaus. James Schiffman agreed, saying that in the era of globalization of economies, cultures and societies, and at a time when America is at war in the Middle East, it is more important than ever for Americans to be informed about world events.

The panelists seemed resigned to the reality of corporate consolidation in media ownership. Yes, yes, it is certainly alarming that a handful of mega-rich corporations own our favorite newspapers and TV channels, decreasing the diversity of viewpoints presented and boxing out dissenting voices. But what can a couple seasoned journalists and a copy editor do about it? The men on the panel seemed less concerned about their news agency’s owner and more concerned about maintaining the objective newsgathering and presentation that they've valued throughout their careers. But how can we retain objectivity when news agencies are limited in what they can cover for fear of offending the corporate bosses? How can the public trust journalists who represent a media company that is ultimately just interested in ratings and the bottom line?

In reference to the growing number of opinionated pundits like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly with their own shows on news networks like FOX and CNN, Bruce Dold of the Tribune said something I found quite interesting. Dold commented that American might be headed back to a 19th century model of news. Back in those days, there were many newspapers, each with a distinct viewpoint, and it was up to the reader to sift through the opinion and find the fact - if there was any to be found. Once newspapers saw they could do better financially by attracting a broader audience, the concept of objective reporting took root. Dold believes we may be headed back in the direction of a fragmented media with each news outlet pushing its own agenda. The days of objective reporting in the front sections and subjective opinion on the editorial pages may be waning as more news outlets abandon objectivity in favor of advocacy and agenda-setting.

Conference on World Affairs kicks off in Boulder

I suppose the CWA started yesterday, but for me, the conference kicked off this morning. I always look forward to this event, organized by CU each spring. I see it as a nice gesture for a university that all too often cuts corners in its offerings of internationally-focused curricula and major programs.

The first panel discussion I attended was held in the Boulder High School auditorium and was filled, for the most part, with lethargic-looking teens, clutching their Spanish textbooks and squirming under the scrutinizing eye of their teachers, determined to keep the students in line for the duration of the panel.

The title of the presentation was Latin America: Political Forecast. But I found the discussion not to be a prediction for Latin America's political future, but more of an opportunity for scholars to express their pro-North American vision for the region.

First, Vicki Huddleston, former U.S. diplomat, told the crowd that despite the fact that Fidel Castro is still alive, he is no longer in control of Cuba's affairs, and his country is due for political change. Despite what we may read in the alternative press about Cuba's universal health care and education systems, we mustn't believe the country has a free or open system. Is that it? Huddleston's observations were hardly fresh or insightful. The one interesting thing she did say referred to the elevated, nearly mythical status that Che Guevara, and to a lesser extent, Fidel Castro, have assumed in the minds of young people. She cautioned the audience against revering Che or Fidel too much (just as any American government lackey would), but nevertheless acknowledged the importance of these two men in the hearts of millions of people throughout Latin America. Che and Fidel were and are David to the United States' Goliath, and if Fidel lives until January of 2009, he will have outlasted 10 American presidents.

Judith Morrison, of the Inter-American Foundation, spoke about Venezuela and Brazil. She says she is concerned, as anyone who values democratic process should be, about the political situation in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Chavez has greatly overstepped his constitutional boundaries by declaring himself able to rule by decree, Morrison said. She added that the declining condition of basic infrastructure in Venezuela is unacceptable given the country's oil revenue and high global fuel prices.

On the other hand, Morrison praised Brazil for that country's investment in research, development and infrastructure. Her comments, while much better informed to be sure, sounded a bit like the rhetoric we heard from President Bush on his recent visit to Latin America. Her criticism of Venezuela and praise for Brazil was the line toed by Bush when he met with regional leaders in March.

What Morrison and the other panel members failed to address are the sky-rocketing corn prices in Mexico, which have hit the poorest people the hardest. Is is really a good idea to use a staple food crop for fuel when poor people who depend on corn for sustenance can't afford to eat as a result? (Think Bush's conversations with Brazil's government about the production of corn for ethanol).

And in regard to Venezuela, I'm tired of all the blind Chavez-bashing that doesn't even consider the changes he has implemented to benefit the poorest of the Venezuelan people. I am not trying to defend Chavez in his quest for ultra-concentrated power, but I would like to point out that millions of Venezuelans have benefited from health care, education and other social programs Chavez has implemented as a part of his Bolivarian Revolution.

Judith Morrison did mention, and I fully agree with her, that the U.S. has neglected Latin America, and as a result, we are losing status and credibility among not only the region's leaders, but among the people as well. What happens in Latin America affects us in the United States and vice versa. We ignore the region to our peril, as we have seen in recent years with the sharp increase in the number of undocumented immigrants unsafely crossing the U.S. border in search of work. As one of the panelists stated, we must make Latin American countries economically viable, for that is the only way to help the Latin American people and ensure U.S. national security at our southern border.

Googlezon video

This is a cool video hypothesizing about the future of news and the Internet. The predictions are more than a little disconcerting for journalists.

We're ready already

When I read about the Ferry Building on Ellis Island that recently opened to the public after being closed in 1954, I was reminded of our nation’s pressing need to enact another comprehensive immigration reform.

Ellis Island is the centerpiece of U.S. immigration history, and while parts of the island were opened to the public in 1990, the rest has been off limits to the curious since the 1950s. The Ferry Building was many immigrant newcomers’ final stop before heading to the mainland to begin their lives in America. It has been described as the “happiest” place on the island. Ellis Island was millions of immigrants’ gateway to a new life, with as many as 5,000 newcomers being processed each day in the early 1900s. The Ferry Building was where immigrants hitched a ride to shore after passing the legal and health inspections.

More than 12 million immigrants were processed at Ellis Island, and today there are about that many undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. who can only dream of being legal residents. Our economy is obviously dependent on immigrant labor, yet the government doesn’t provide them with a legal avenue to enter the country. The result is our reality: a porous and dangerous border marked by ruthless smugglers and vigilante patrols, huge populations of settled illegal immigrants too fearful to make the trip home despite the seasonal nature of their work, and increasingly hateful rhetoric emanating from the mainstream press regarding the presence of undocumented immigrants.

We desperately need Congress to address this issue. President Bush, one year ago, put forward a sensible plan for reform that includes a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants. The Democratic takeover of the House and Senate was good news for those of us who support the president’s idea, but while some politicians have promised meaningful reform, absolutely nothing has been done about it.

Who knows how many more of the shuttered buildings of Ellis Island will be refurbished and opened to the public in the time it takes Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform. We’re still waiting…

Denver's dark underbelly

One of the most highly regarded newspapers in the country recently ran a story on Denver, but it wasn’t complimentary. The New York Times published a piece on the rash of unsolved gun crimes that have gripped Denver in recent months. The story was no doubt inspired by the shocking assault on a group of college students from Kansas, who were shot even after surrendering their wallets to muggers at a light rail station in the Five Points neighborhood near downtown. One of the students remains in the hospital in serious condition.

When Darrent Williams, the Denver Bronco, was shot and killed through the window of his limousine a few months ago, the media spotlight again turned to Denver’s problem with gangs and guns. While the Williams murder commanded more attention than others, police have been fighting a burgeoning movement of gang violence that has claimed many lives, including several key witnesses who were slated to testify against gang members.

Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, both 22, were shot dead in June 2005 just before Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify in a murder trial. Two men have been convicted in the murders of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe and may face the death penalty. In another case of witness killing, Kalonniann Clark, 28, was murdered in front of her home last December after she refused to withdraw her name from the witness list in the attempted murder trial of suspected gang member Brian Kenneth Hicks, 27. Hicks tried to kill Clark herself in June 2005, and she was considered the prime witness for the prosecution.

The killing of witnesses poses a grave threat to our judicial system. If people are scared to testify, prosecutors won’t be able to build strong cases against gang members, who are notoriously hard to convict as it is.

Denver needs to save its reputation and quality of life by pumping more resources into combating gang activity and steering young people away from the lure of street life. Children who are at-risk of becoming involved in gangs should be our priority; public schools and state agencies must do everything possible to encourage these kids to seek education and employment by offering after-school and extra curricular activities, summer programs, academic tutoring and personal counseling.

The last thing we need

It's bad enough U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., keeps getting elected to Congress, embarrassing our state with his outrageously ignorant and racist comments, but the thought of Tancredo as president, or even as the Republican nominee, is truly terrifying.

Tancredo announced his presidential bid this morning on a radio talk show in Des Moines, Iowa. His candidacy will focus almost entirely on immigration issues. But what else would we expect from "Tancrazy?" His hatred for immigrants permeates every political move he makes.

Tancredo is the number one anti-illegal immigration crusader in Congress. He is the promoter of some of the most irrational immigration policy measures and the author of some of the most asinine comments ever heard on the subject.

Tancredo vehemently opposes any immigration reform plan that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented workers currently residing in the U.S. He strongly supports building a 2,000-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, despite plenty of research indicating tighter border security only encourages permanent settlement in the U.S. by immigrants who would otherwise opt to return home to Mexico. This is a perfect example of how shallow Tancredo's understanding is of the only issue he concerns himself with.

Let's take a moment to recall some of Tancredo's most shining public statements. There was the time he suggested bombing the Muslim holy city of Mecca in response to terrorist attacks. Oh, and the time he compared Miami to a Third World country, prompting outrage among citizens and admonishment from Governor Jeb Bush. And no one can forget Tancredo's criticism of the memorial plans for flight 93, which crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, in Pennsylvania. Tancredo balked at the Interior Department's plan to create a memorial in the shape of a crescent.

"The appropriateness of the design has been questioned by many people because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam...It has raised questions in some circles about whether the design, if constructed, will in fact make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers rather than the victims..." Tancredo wrote in a letter to the Department of Interior. (Read the whole letter here).

Thankfully, in a pool of well-rounded Republican candidates, Tancredo probably doesn't have a snowball's chance of securing the nomination. Thank goodness, for he would surely be the worst president ever; his legacy would be to replace our tolerance with bigotry, and our hope with fear and suspicion.

Supreme Court debates Bong Hits 4 Jesus

When Joseph Frederick stood across the street from his Juneau, Alaska, high school displaying a 14-foot banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," the principal responded by suspending him. He appealed, and the case got all the way to the high court this week.

By all reports, the justices had a lively debate about whether the banner constitutes a pro-drug message. If they decide Frederick's banner was indeed advocating drug use, the Court will likely side with the principal. But Frederick has contended from the beginning that his message is a valid expression of his First Amendment rights, and his lawyer is trying to keep the case about free speech rather than drugs.

Kenneth Starr, the attorney arguing the side of the high school principal, told the justices "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" is a blatantly pro-drug message, and it is perfectly appropriate for school officials to curtail such kinds of student speech. Starr and the Bush administration have asked the Court to consider making a broad ruling to give public schools authority to limit any student speech with which they disagree.

Luckily, the justices didn't like that idea much. It doesn't seem right that young people should have to check their speech rights at the door of their schools. Controlling speech that advocates drugs is one thing, but schools should mirror democratic societies and allow students to explore and exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.

The court is expected to return a decision in the Frederick case by July.

Unhappy Anniversary

Last weekend in this country, protesters in cities across the nation took to the streets to protest the war.

Here's an audio clip from one of the speakers at the Denver protest last Saturday and a few phtots. The turnout was modest (I'd say about 300-400 people), but those who did attend were encouraged by the considerable support they received from passers-by and motorists.

The fifth year of the war in Iraq begins this week, and the occasion was marked, not surprisingly, by scattered violence throughout the country.

Four years after he delivered a cocksure speech announcing the American invasion of Iraq, President Bush has toned down his rhetoric on the subject.

It appears the on-going sectarian violence there, the Democrats' mounting campaign against the war, 3,200 dead American soldiers, and a disapproving American public are finally forcing Bush to revise his talking points and abandon his favorite catch phrases. For example, NPR noted that he no longer uses the word "victory" when referring to American involvement in Iraq.

To be sure, on this fourth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, there is scant little to celebrate for the Bush administration, but more importantly, for the Iraqi people, many of whom continue to live in constant fear of violence and without basic services like running water and electricity. The most conservative Iraqi death toll estimate is in the tens of thousands, while the real number is probably in the hundreds of thousands.

The suffering of the Iraqi people since the American invasion has hardened Iraqi public opinion and turned many against the coalition forces. To coincide with the war's anniversary, an Iraqi public opinion poll was released this week, and the survey clearly documents the deteriorating image of American forces through Iraqi eyes.

Of the 5,000 people surveyed, more than a quarter believes live under Saddam Hussein was better than life now. More than half of the respondents believes the security situation in Iraq would improve if the American forces left. Nearly a quarter of respondents believes the purpose of the American "surge" is merely a front to enable the U.S. to attack other countries in the Middle East.

The poll was based on in-person interviews conducted last month with randomly selected Iraqis in all 18 of the country's provinces. It was paid for by a London market research firm, Opinion Research Business.

Another poll commissioned by media groups painted a similarly gloomy picture of life in Iraq. This one found only 39 percent of respondents felt life was "going well," down from 71 percent in November 2005.

The media group poll found only 18 percent of people trust the U.S. troops, and more than half the respondents thinks it is "acceptable" to inflict violence on American forces.

Happy Anniversary.

Russia: nice for tourists, deadly for journalists

Russia has a lead role in global economic affairs, as evidenced by its chairmanship of the G8 group of industrialized nations. Yet the state of Russian democracy is much weaker than its economic power. The Kremlin has a choke hold on broadcast news and aims to up the controls on print and internet journalism. Russia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a reporter, in fact, 13 journalists have been murdered since President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000.

The shooting death of prominent investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building in October 2006, caused a renewed international outcry and sparked demands for Putin to address the issue of journalist safety. Initially, Putin downplayed the importance of Politkovsyaka's work, who had traveled dozens of times to war-torn Chechnya and reported on Russian government abuses there. Last month Putin finally acknowledged the need to protect journalists and vowed to do more to end the execution of opposition writers and commentators.

"The issue of journalist persecution is one of the most pressing. And we realize our degree of responsibility in this...We will do everything to protect the press corps," Putin said in a press conference last month at the Kremlin.

But Putin's promises are likely to be little consolation to most journalists, who don't trust the Russian leader as far as they can throw him.

Just before the July 2006 G8 Summit kicked off in Saint Petersburg, the Russian parliament approved a bill that expands the definition of "extremism" to include media criticism of government figures. Despite loud objections from press freedom and human rights groups, Putin signed the measure into law. And this is just one manifestation of Putin's crackdown on dissent. Months before the G8 Summit, Putin signed a law restricting the activities of NGOs operating in Russia; the legislation tightens the reins on financing, registration and operational activities for NGOs within the Russian Federation.

So even if concrete measures are taken to protect Russian journalists, it might be an empty gesture, for by that time the Russian government will have legislated away any notion of a free press

Read more about the state of the press in Russia on the Committee to Protect Journalists website.

NPR recently did a great series about modern Russia under Putin - listen to it here

The crossfertilization of hate

Last week NPR ran a story about how hard-core hate groups like the KKK are experiencing a resurgence of energy and membership through the issue of illegal immigration. Racist and nationalist groups are rallying around the issue and amping up the extreme rhetoric on illegal immigration. The propaganda we hear blames undocumented immigrants for all of society's problems. While there are legitimate strains on schools and hospitals as a result of illegal immigration, there is simply no rational basis on which to blame immigrants for rising crime rates, unemployment and disease.

According to NPR's report, there has been a 40 percent rise in the number of documented hate groups in the U.S. since 2000. And more than 250 anti-illegal immigration groups have formed in the past two years, representing nothing less than an explosion in anti-immigrant sentiment among the American public.

But what is even scarier than the resurgence of the KKK, is the fact that extreme and irrational rhetoric on illegal immigration has been cropping up in the mainstream media since the immigrant-rights marches of last spring. A jaw-dropping example of this was recently when pundit Lou Dobbs spent time on his CNN program outlining the extremist theory that Mexicans are trying to reconquer the American Southwest through immigration. Dobbs, a real anti-illegal immigration crusader, showed a map of the region of the supposed reconquest credited to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an unabashedly racist organization. Here's an excerpt from their statement of principles on the website:

"We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime." -Council of Conservative Citizens

Extreme anti-immigration groups often sum up their hateful and misguided campaigns with a simple question: "Do we want to keep America as it is, or do we want it transformed into a third world country?" For people who claim to be sufficiently informed on the issue of immigration to speak publicly, the ignorance of this rationale boggles the mind.

The flow of migrants from Latin America to the United States used to be circular, and the flow of migrants out of the U.S. to their home countries almost completely offset the flow of migrants into the U.S. However, the beefed-up border security that came with the passage of the Immigration and Reform and Control Act of 1986 utterly failed in its mission to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. The IRCA-mandated border security made it too difficult and costly for migrants to cross the border multiple times in a year as they had in the past due to the seasonal nature of their work in the U.S. As a result, the circular nature of male labor migration was replaced by the permanent settlement of migrants and an influx of undocumented family members seeking to reunite with their migrant relative. Border security tactics have largely backfired, and we never hear this point of view on the news. Mexican migration to the United States was once limited to a few states with populations of temporary migrant laborers, but now all states are home to significant, permanently settled undocumented immigrant populations, and the U.S. government has only itself to blame.

Reference: Durand, Jorge and Massey, Douglas S., Eds. 2004. Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project. New York: Russell Sage Foundation

The Mediterranean Coast south of Barcelona

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Naomi Wolf in Boulder

Activist and feminist Naomi Wolf spoke in Boulder Tuesday night to an overflow audience in the student center on campus. Hundreds of women and a handful of men listened to the bestselling author explain the oppressive, profit-driven consortium that operates to hold women down – something Wolf has famously termed “The Beauty Myth.”

Wolf began her talk by pushing away the podium and strolling casually up and down the stage to admire the crowd gathered before her. Being from San Francisco, Wolf said she felt at home in a progressive town like Boulder. As she put it, “Boulder is one of those places where change happens.”

This is obviously a very familiar shtick for Wolf. It’s clear she has given the same talk many times before. And while she is an engaging speaker, her lecture lacks freshness and nuance. Wolf published her book, “The Beauty Myth,” in 1991, and it doesn’t appear she has updated her lecture since. As an audience member pointed out on Tuesday, Wolf ignores the growing myth of masculine beauty (strength, toned body, buffness) that oppresses men and makes them feel ugly and inadequate.

In order to frame her argument, Wolf outlined the tremendous gains made by women in the last 15 years. Sexual harassment laws with real teeth have been passed; women were elected in record numbers to national government; violations of the human rights of women were brought into the spotlight, including female genital mutilation and honor killings.

“It was as if the feminist fairy godmother had waved her magic speculum and given us everything on our feminist wish list,” Wolf said.

Because of the great advances in women’s rights and since women of all ages represent 53% of the world’s population, modern women should be more confident, determined and powerful than ever before, Wolf said. But there are psychological constructs blocking the way of women seeking to realize their full potential, and this is what Wolf calls the Beauty Myth.

Women are bombarded in fashion magazines and on TV with images of the feminine physical ideal, which is thin, young, large-breasted and usually blond and Caucasian. Because this pornographic ideal is constantly presented as the only desirably, sexy body out there, women’s self-esteem is tied up in how they compare.

Wolf points out that the feminine ideal has not always looked the way she does now. Wolf argues the look has to do with three powerful industries that are the primary advertisers (money talks) on TV and in fashion magazines. The average fashion model weights 30% less than the average American woman, and the feminine ideal is that skinny because the $300 billion-dollar-per-year dieting industry insists on it. Wolf maintains women wouldn’t buy dieting products – which are almost entirely ineffective - if they were comfortable with their curves. Only when women are bombarded by images of gaunt waifs do they begin to question their own bodies. And when the questioning starts, the pocket books open up to the dieting industry. The dieting industry – using their advertising dollars as weapons – insist the networks and magazines show only skinny women.

The second racket operating to maintain the Beauty Myth is the cosmetics industry. Women spend billions on anti-aging creams, which are proven ineffectual, Wolf said, but since young, wrinkle-free women are the only ones on TV and in print, normal women feel compelled to try and stave off the normal signs of aging. Again, Wolf maintains that if we saw women of all ages on TV, we’d be comfortable with getting old and therefore, we wouldn’t spend money on worthless creams. (Wolf mentioned she isn’t opposed to the use of cosmetics - she uses them herself - but she uses only sheep lanolin on her skin)!

The third part of the Beauty Myth is the cosmetic surgery industry. Since most of the bodies we see in the media are skinny and enlarged with artificial breasts, if women don’t look like that, they don’t feel sexy or desirable. (By the way, someone should check this out, but Wolf said 100% of the Victoria’s Secret models have breast implants). So to sum up, the dieting, cosmetics and plastic surgery industries cooperate to keep the feminine ideal unrealistically skinny, wrinkle-free and buxom so that normal women will feel compelled to spend their money on the industries’ products.

To make matters worse, young men are often introduced to pornography (and thus the same pornographic, feminine ideal) at a young age – many years before they have their first sexual encounter with an actual human being. The result, Wolf said, is that men have a hard time relating to real women because they’ve spent so many years relating to a fantasy woman in magazines and videos.

But in surveys, men always choose a curvier, more voluptuous body type over skinniness, so for Wolf this is proof the ideal comes from the industries mentioned above and not from real men’s expectations. She concluded her lecture by saying that the ideal serves to hold women back and prevents them from building the confidence they need to achieve their goals.

I have no doubt Wolf’s arguments are strong and sound, but I think there are other processes at work that she ignores – like the power of peer groups and the cumulative causation of eating disorders and body image problems. My favorite part of the lecture came at the end when Wolf was describing the importance of the subcutaneous fat layer. According to her, a person’s libido is regulated there.

“There’s a reason women have curves,” Wolf said excitedly. “So they can be orgasmic; So go and eat that donut for your sex life!”

"Why I Hate Blacks" column rightfully lambasted

The story only got muted coverage in the mainstream national press, but for those who caught it, it was hard to believe. Kenneth Eng, a regular contributor to the San Francisco weekly newspaper, AsianWeek, who calls himself an “Asian supremacist,” penned a ranting column entitled “Why I Hate Blacks,” and inexplicably, the editors allowed it to run. Not surprisingly, the column provoked anger and outrage not only among African-Americans but also from the very community of Asian-Americans the newspaper claims to represent.

The Feb. 23 column was taken down from AsianWeek’s website and replaced by a lengthy apology for offense caused by its publication. But the managing editors initially refused to comment in the press about their role in allowing the opinion piece to run.

Finally in a Feb. 28 news conference, editor at large Ted Fang apologized publicly and announced the decision to fire the columnist, Eng. “The failing of our editorial process in allowing this piece to go forward was an insensitive and callous mistake that should never have been made by our publication,” Fang said.

Are you convinced? I’m not sure that I am. That’s a hell of a mistake for the paper that calls itself “The Voice of Asian America.”

I hope the advertisers will “punish” the paper for its stupidity (it’s distributed free so people can’t cancel their subscriptions in protest) by cancelling ads. It’s hard to respect a publication that allows hate and ignorance to parade as legitimate opinion. I think the credibility of the paper is irreversibly damaged, and rightfully so.

The story of Mayor Jim West

Jim West was a conservative Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., caught living a double life by journalists at the local newspaper. West was discovered to have an online identity which he used to chat with young gay men on a site called Gay.com.

Articles in the Spokane Spokesman-Review outed West for his sexually explicit chatting and accused him of abusing his power by offering internships to men he met on the site. The paper also accused West of molesting two young boys in the 1970s and 80s when West was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader. West refused to step down after the scandal broke, and eventually he was recalled in a popular vote. West died of complications from colon cancer last summer.

Frontline did an excellent piece on the Jim West sex scandal; watch it online here.

The Frontline report highlights some of the ethical issues raised by the reporting techniques employed by The Spokesman-Review in its efforts to uncover West's secrets. Journalists from the paper posed as young men in online chat rooms and tried to lure West into disclosing his identity.

In this digital age there are countless ways to gather information and as a result, there's a greatly increased potential for invasions of privacy. While West's actions were surely hypocritical - he had sponsored several anti-gay bills in his political career - the local paper's efforts to out him smack of entrapment and violation of privacy. The Frontline report does a great job of capturing all sides of this complex ethical case.

The James Frey controversy: a year later

James Frey's second appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, January 2006

It’s been over a year since author James Frey appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, tail between his legs, and admitted to fudging many of the details in his bestselling memoir of addiction and rehabilitation “A Million Little Pieces.” I watched Winfrey berate Frey for lying to her and to the millions of people who bought his book after she included it in her monthly book club, and I read angry reactions to Frey’s admissions from other authors and journalists. Frey lied about his own experience, and the furor over it still baffles me in light of the catastrophic lies we hear about on the news that affect millions of people around the world.

On Jan. 8, 2006, The Smoking Gun website revealed discrepancies between Frey’s actual run-ins with the law and the account in his book. Frey appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live to discuss the allegations and defend himself. Winfrey called in and spoke on air in Frey’s defense, “The underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me,” she said. “And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read the book.”

But a couple of weeks later Winfrey recanted her support of Frey and apologized to her audience for defending him and giving them the impression that truth was unimportant to her. The talk show host summoned all of her moral authority and scolded Frey and his publisher, Nan Talese for an hour. But it seemed Winfrey was more concerned with damage control and buffing her own image than she was with showing Frey the error of his ways or inciting a fact-checking revolution at the publishing houses.

The controversy was overblown, and the lies Frey told in his memoir are insignificant compared to the lies the American public is told by its government. Frank Rich of The New York Times called lies such as those in Frey’s book “harmless diversion.” The trails of deceit and doublespeak crisscrossing the political landscape concern him much more. Rich observed, “It’s as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.”

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s connection to Osama bin Laden and 9-11, secret prisons and the use of torture, the indictment of powerful politicians and botching the Hurricane Katrina situation before, during and after the storm are some examples of recent governmental deceit and/or incompetence. Sure these failings were closely covered, but the outcry over Frey’s mendacity begs the question why we even bother with such paltry untruths when lies are being told at the highest levels resulting in the deaths of thousands around the globe?

I think the message of Frey’s work is still meaningful to people even if it is not entirely factual. I didn’t personally enjoy “A Million Little Pieces”; it was too graphic and repetitive, but I believe people can be enlightened, validated and encouraged by fictional writing, perhaps even if it is labeled nonfiction. Take the example of Rigoberta Menchú’s biography, which documented the repression and murder of Guatemalan peasants during that country’s 36-year civil war. After being confronted, Menchú admitted to lying about some details in her book. The injustices and atrocities she details in her book didn’t happen to her family as she wrote, but tens of thousands of people in Guatemala did suffer in the horrific ways she described. For me and for many people, the power of her message remained intact even after her lies were exposed. “I, Rigoberta Menchú” succeeded in opening eyes around the world to a bloody and unequal struggle of the very weak against the brutally strong even if it was not purely biographical. I think people who identified with Frey’s narrative in “A Million Little Pieces” probably feel the same way. People struggling with drug and alcohol addiction may be greatly helped by Frey’s story, and for them, its fabrications are utterly irrelevant.

So what was Frey’s punishment for duping millions? Well, his book is was on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks, and for months bookstores around the country couldn’t keep it on the shelves. “A Million Little Pieces” sold over 4.5 million copies, and sales of Frey’s second book, “My Friend Leonard”, which picks up where MLP leaves off, benefited greatly from the controversy. So after being humiliated on TV and getting slammed by fellow writers, Frey is crying his way to the bank to cash his enormous checks.

"Natural" disasters in the news

If it seems like we hear more about major natural disasters than we used to, that’s because earthquakes, floods, fires and hurricanes have increased in frequency and severity in recent decades. But terming these weather events “natural” is misleading as it obscures the role of humans in causing the disasters.

According to an article on the UN’s website penned by former secretary general Kofi Annan, there were three times as many major natural disasters in the 1990s as in the 1960s, and the overwhelming majority of victims are residents of the Third World. Annan, and many others, point out that poverty forces people to live in dangerous areas – on flood plains, unstable hillsides, and in earthquake-prone zones. Unsafe buildings exacerbate the risks. What’s more, logging and imprudent agricultural practices can reduce the soil’s ability to absorb water, increasing erosion and flood risk.

You don’t have to go too far back in time to get a sense of the massive number of lives lost every year due to natural disasters. The 2005 earthquake in Pakistan killed some 40,000 souls only months after a massive quake in the Indian Ocean caused a tsunami that killed 229,866 people. Hurricane Katrina killed over 1,000 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, and several years earlier in 1998, hurricanes Mitch and George took 13,000 lives in Central America.

Although all these events were big stories in the international press, media critics complain the press selectively covers disasters in the developing world. Many deadly weather-related events there are never reported at all in the major Western media outlets. In his study called Disasters, Relief and the Media, Jonathan Benthall writes that the major news organizations’ recognition of a foreign disaster is “a prerequisite for the marshalling of external relief and reconstructive effort.”

Not only are disasters in the developing world underreported, writes Jaap van Ginneken in his book Understanding Global News, but labeling them “natural” dupes the public. He calls it “a highly ideological operation, which shifts the blame to the weather gods and away from anyone who might be in a position to do anything about the situation.” After all, it's necessity, not choice, that drives poor people to settle on unstable hills and in flood plains. The only solution to make people safer is to raise and enforce development and land use standards.

The media’s treatment of “natural” disasters is a good example of how the press prefers to report on events and not on long processes. Every event has root causes and an extensive background. It is the responsibility of good journalists to report disasters in all their complexity. The public should understand these so-called natural phenomena are actually the consequences of interactions between natural hazards, underdevelopment, and above all, poverty.

Read Kofi Annan's full article here.

Is it because he's Bosnian?

Bosnian children (a NATO photo)

The latest violent expression of our national gun culture occurred last week when Sulejman Talovic, 18, entered the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City and started shooting. Before the police killed him, Talovic managed to shoot five people dead and injure four more.

Since deadly shooting rampages are far from uncommon in this country, it’s upsetting to me that the media didn’t take latest opportunity to probe deeper into the ghastly phenomenon and address some of the cultural questions about the role of violence in our society and the debate over gun control. Instead, the majority of the coverage centered on the gunman and specifically, his Bosnian Muslim heritage.

An article in The New York Times highlighted the Bosnian ambassador’s trip to Utah. Ambassador Bisera Turkovic met with the mayor of Salt Lake City and members of the Bosnian-American community there. Through tears, she felt the need to assure the people of Utah that Bosnians are peaceful people who are horrified by the mall-goers suffering. For suffering is something Bosnians are all too familiar with.

Perhaps the ambassador saw the trip as necessary damage control, considering the barrage of angry phone calls and emails pouring into the offices of Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson and other city officials. These people hold the Bosnian community in Utah and Muslims in general responsible for the horrendous incident. Mayor Anderson called theses conclusions “outrageous,” perhaps because this type of rampage has become a perverse pastime in this country.

It’s a real shame that instead of taking the occasion of another public shooting spree to come together and take an introspective look at the underlying causes of gun violence, we get caught up in the urge to blame someone, which pushes us further apart. This time we blame the shooter’s crime on his foreignness, his culture and his religion.

But the reality is that Sulejman Talovic was a furious young man with a violent past (he had threatened people at knifepoint twice) and access to guns, that’s it. The fact that he’s a Muslim, or a Bosnian, or an immigrant or whatever, likely has nothing to do with his act of horrific violence. Talovic, like so many other shooters that America can claim as native sons, was full of hate and had a desire to destroy. He lost respect for human life, and his rampage that killed five innocent people was nothing more than a twisted attempt to feel powerful.

As journalists and as a society we are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking ourselves how Talovic’s “otherness” factored into his crime, we should turn the cameras around and try to discover what poison exists in our culture that drives so many people to vent their frustration by murdering innocent people.

ICE raids, radio pundits and me: part I

After a 15-hour day reporting on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, I was grateful to be on the road, headed home. Anxious to temporarily forget the sad stories of abandoned children and frantic wives left behind, I scanned the radio waves for diversion.

But the Dec. 12 roundups of illegal workers at Swift plants in six states were the talk of the airways.

A particularly callous and xenophobic host on 850 KOA, known as Gunny Bob, had also turned his attention to the topic. He read an excerpt from a statement issued by an immigrant-rights group that condemned the feds for carrying out the raids without regard for “family values.”

Gunny Bob could not contain his disgust and incredulity.

“Values? What values?” he bellowed. “The breaking into my country value? The stealing my identity value?”

After 10 seconds of listening to Gunny Bob, I understood his politics on illegal immigration. No poor migrant driven by financial desperation to cross hundreds of miles of mean terrain wrought with natural and human hazards would earn his sympathy. As with most “news” pundits, Gunny is good at twisting facts and quotes to promote his own viewpoints.

Those of us with an understanding of the immigrants’ plight and a balanced view on immigration policy knew what the immigrant-rights group meant by its statement. Hundreds of children were left behind without one or both of their parents, and left with no source of income, mothers and wives faced homelessness.

ICE raids, radio pundits and me: part II

Of the 260 workers detained at the plant in Greeley, many were immediately deported, and 18 were charged with identity crimes. I was there the morning the first 10 made their initial appearance in court. They entered shackled at the wrists and ankles.

I sat next to the father of one young woman from Peru. He told me that in order to get a job, his daughter had purchased a birth certificate and social security card from a woman selling her own identity. It surprised people to learn that in large immigrant communities like Greeley, there’s a vibrant trade in identity documents, and many American citizens with Hispanic surnames are cashing in.

(Read The Denver Post's coverage of the raids here).

I acknowledge that undocumented immigrants break laws by entering and working in this country, but I also recognize that they are driven to do so by desperate circumstances that are well beyond their control. Contrary to what Gunny Bob and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo would have us think, illegal immigrants do not come here to take advantage of our social services or to commit crimes. They come to work and to send money home.

That’s why for me it’s so sad when ICE swoops down and breaks up humble families just scraping by. It looks to me like a shameless attack on the most vulnerable people in our society. And let us not forget that the management of Swift has not been served with a single indictment in connection with the December raids, which makes the whole thing look even more like a below-the-belt onslaught on the little guy.

So it’s outrageous for me to hear people like Gunny Bob and Tancredo spout off about how we need to round up and deport all 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. We have a very real problem with immigration and a system that is kaput and barely functioning. Lawmakers need to tackle comprehensive reform now, but the ideas of right-wing xenophobes like Gunny and Tancredo do not advance the dialogue in any constructive way.

The other world forum

Graffiti in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

The annual World Social Forum just wrapped up in Nairobi, Kenya a couple of weeks ago. Not surprisingly, most TV cameras were pointed in a different direction, towards another global forum: the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The timing is no coincidence.

The World Social Forum is a meeting of anti-globalization groups and movements from around the world that oppose neo liberal economic policy and support alternative systems that respect the human rights of all the world’s citizens.

The World Social Forum is the other side of the coin that exposes the dark underbelly of rapidly-expanding global capitalism that the Davos event celebrates.

Because of the logistical nightmare of organizing an international protest at the World Economic Forum, and in order to divert at least some media attention, WSF organizers planned their conference to coincide with the capitalist soiree in Davos.

The first WSF ever was put together by Brazilian organizations and held in Porto Alegre in 2001. The event has inspired the formation of local and regional social forums. The first U.S. social forum will meet in Atlanta in June.

After the WSF wraps up, there are no triumphant declarations of consensus or concrete plans of action announced to the media. That’s because the WSF is meant as a process for activists to coordinate global campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies and inform each other about movements from around the world and the issues.

This year in Kenya, about 40 residents of a Nairobi slum overran the food courts at a few upscale hotels at the WSF. The people swarmed the tables and grabbed what they could before being chased out.

Some of the topics discussed this year were the IMF (“Shrink it or Sink it Campaign”), south-south cooperation, strategies on resisting the power of transnational corporations and fair debt arbitration. Other presentations focused on the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and children, HIV-AIDS and the effects of diaspora remittances on development.
Check out the WSF website here

Chá-vision: all Chávez, all the time

Looking for middle ground: a telephone booth in Barcelona

President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, began a new six-year term in office last week and took the opportunity to announce huge changes intended to usher in what he calls a "new era" of "21st century socialism.”

In an outdoor session that resembled a political rally, Venezuelan lawmakers voted to give Chávez wide powers to rule the country by decree. Now el mandatario has the authority to reform Venezuela into what he hopes will be a prosperous, socialist example for the rest of Latin America.

The problem is Chavez' vision for Venezuela involves concentrating all the power in his own hands. And if he can swing it, Chavez plans to change the constitution regarding presidential term limits so he can rule Venezuela indefinitely.

Venezuelans and U.S. observers alike are used to Chávez’ fiery rhetoric. But even to those who secretly enjoyed hearing the Latin American leader refer to Bush as the devil at the United Nations, saw last week’s events as a lurch toward authoritarian rule.

Chávez announced plans to nationalize the telecommunications and electricity industries, place new taxes on the rich and increase state control over the oil industry. From the beginning, Chavez proclaimed his reforms are in the interest of Venezuela's poor. He argues that nationalization and other economic shake ups will ultimately serve to redistribute the wealth and close the rich-poor gap.

The proposed, populist measures surely pleased many in Venezuela, but the privately-owned newspapers in Caracas registered disgust by featuring damning editorials and condemnation of Chávez from foreign leaders.

Before Chávez' latest proclamations, he announced he would not renew the broadcasting license for RCTV, an opposition-run channel that supported the coup against him in 2002. Without the license, the station will be off the air by June.

Although Chávez’ promises often run way ahead of reality, he is taking decisive steps in an unsettling direction.

While his socialist promises may excite the people of Venezuela with visions of social-welfare programs, if foreign capital flies from the country provoking economic hardship - and the press is stifled in its opposition - the trade off may prove too costly.

A word on ethics

In considering the traditional philosophical frameworks used to understand ethics, utilitarianism is a good foundation for a news organization's ethical code. Simply put, the utilitarian view of ethical decision making is to opt for the greatest good for the greatest number. The consequences of the act are important in deciding whether or not it is ethical, and no one’s well-being is valued more than anyone else’s. Utilitarianism is a flexible philosophy that may allow journalists to justify shadowy writing and reporting techniques if that's the only way to get the truth for a story the public needs to hear. One problem is that it's difficult to foresee all the ramifications of an act, and journalists cannot make a habit of deceiving their sources.

Immanuel Kant’s ethical principles, on the other hand, may be too restrictive as the backbone of a newsroom's ethical code. Kant would have us act as if the principle underlying our actions would become universal law. So journalists could never justify lying or invading someone’s privacy to get the truth.

There should be some ethical middle ground. While journalists need freedom to gather information, deceptive reporting techniques should not exceed what the law permits and should only be used if the information cannot be obtained by other reasonable means.

Why journalism?

Journalism is being expanded and redefined with the rise of citizen journalists, bloggers and the 24-hour news cycle. So it may be somewhat surprising that most news gatherers still agree on the purpose of their profession: to provide people with the information they need to be free and autonomous, to make sound decisions, and to order the world around them. As the Supreme Court reminded us when it supported the right of The New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, the press’ duty is to the people, not the powers that be. Most journalists take this duty very seriously and wince when people accuse them of being corporate lackeys just trying to make a buck for their employer.

The news media should be bull dogs constantly nipping at the heels of public figures, forcing them to justify their actions and be accountable to the public. As a keystone institution of free and democratic societies, the free press should tirelessly seek to give the powerless a voice in the public debate. But with the trend of consolidation of media ownership in the hands of a few mega-rich corporations, the independence of news organizations has been called into question.

Why do we crave news?

Red Square, Moscow, Russia

It’s called the Awareness Instinct, or Situational Sense Making. Whatever you call it, people crave news. They want to know what’s going on so they can plan, prepare and prevent. Knowledge gives us security; we know what to expect, and we can plan a response. If something happens, if a question is raised, we can seek information and assuage our uncertainty.

But in the digital age, not everyone has equal access to information. Thinking beyond the widely accessible sources of information like radio reports and newspapers, we have to consider who can access the wider information net and who cannot.

For many of us, the information found on the Internet is a vital part of our daily lives. It would be hard to imagine our jobs without the quick, convenient and vast reserves of information just a click away. However, most people around the world, and a surprising number in this country, do not have access to the Internet.

The innovation has spread unevenly across the globe. Perhaps one day installing general Internet connections in this country will be the new rural electrification movement, but for now some of us are information-rich while others remain information-poor.

The power of the media

Millennium Park, Chicago

Why do so many people harbor such resentment against the press?

If asked, a press-hater might respond that TV and newspapers forage for human suffering so that the mega-rich parent companies will profit. Another might add that the media occlude discussion on issues of real importance while only reporting information the government and the influential corporate interests deem acceptable.

While both these criticisms have value, a community without a functioning free press modeled on the First Amendment is nowhere any of us would want to live. The press is a fundamentally important check on the power and ego of public figures and officials. Any newspaper worth its salt understands that its loyalty must be to the readers. So every decision to publish or not to publish must take into account the public's right to know and the importance of wide open, robust debate in a democratic society.

Journalists have a hard job. Not only is life riddled with deadline pressure, the daily news cycle requires the news person to be on-call like a doctor, but for a fraction of the salary. The consolation is that journalists have incredible power. Writers of all kinds, but perhaps especially daily news writers, are in a position to shape the national discussion about important issues. Writers create culture, shape the public perception and dictate societal priorities.

The power of the press is not lost on those who wish to monopolize power in society. That's why every authoritarian regime moves quickly to restrict the media. (Check out the Cuban News Agency to see government censorship of the press in action, and conversely, check out the El Universal newspaper in Venezuela that staunchly opposes Hugo Chavez).

So as journalists, we must take our jobs dead seriously. At every opportunity we should ensure that our loyalty is to our readers. As teachers for the masses, journalists get a lot of flack, but we are in a unique position to impact the way the public feels about important issues. Perhaps it is precisely this power of the press that underlies the ever-present public distrust of the media. We have a responsibility to use the power wisely.