More "good work" from Halliburton's baby boy:

The announcement comes the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States.

[...]

The Pentagon has said about 520 detainees from more than 40 countries are being held at the prison, without giving a precise figure.

Don't you just love the republicans' "smaller government"? They're so responsible! It makes me feel all gushy inside just thinking about our brave leaders defending freedom by handing out no-bid contracts to their favorite companies. And let's face it, there's nothing more patriotic and freedom-loving than expanding Gitmo. Bring 'em on! Now we've got enough beds for everyone!

And to conclude...

I don't know where to go from here, or how to feel. No one talks about WMD anymore. But I had friends that were killed in Iraq when we were there and the goal was to find the WMD. Now it is all that we wanted to remove Saddam. We were told we were going there to make the world safer, yet we know that Libya and Iran and North Korea are far more dangerous to world security. It troubles me that a president would do this. It troubles me more that the main stream media would ignore this story. After all that time they spent reporting on Michael Jackson and "The Runaway Bride."

"Cortez Style of Leadership." That pretty much sums it up.

Here's an email I got from my husband today. IEDs. Great.
How do you know who the enemy is when there is no "enemy army"? The whole thing is FUBAR and it worries the hell out of me.

Want to know why the Downing Street memos and minutes are so important? Read the entire transcript of Michael Smith's Live Chat on Washington Post. He articulates exactly why they're important and answers a number of good questions about whether they are "old news." We've got to follow this thing through all the way. It's too important not to. This month alone, forty-seven American soldiers have died, and many more have been wounded. Thousands have risked their lives over there; the least we can do is find out the truth about why they're there in the first place. The sooner we know how we got into this mess, the sooner we'll be able to come up with a viable plan to get out of it.

The media is finally waking up, however slowly.

I saw two excellent programs last night: the debut episode of Morgan Sperlock's "30 Days," and "Nightline."

"30 Days" is sort of a continuation of the documentary conceit Sperlock established in "Super Size Me" -- he does something for 30 days and reports on his experience. For the first episode, he and his girlfriend Alex move to Columbus, Ohio, one of the poorest cities in America, to live on minimum wage for a month. They take a modest nest egg with them (less than $200) and leave their credit cards behind in New York. What they discover along the way is how impossible it is to live on minimum wage.

The minimum wage, Sperlock tells us, was established in the 1930s to give a guarantee that if you work for a living you won't starve. Our current minimum wage is $5.15/hour, and it hasn't been raised since 1997. A day's wages, after taxes, is less than $50. As Sperlock shows us, it's actually not possible to live on minimum wage, which is why a number of activists, including Senator Ted Kennedy, have been trying to get the minimum wage raised with inflation, if nothing else. The deposit required at their slum apartment, the deposit required by the electric company (based, no doubt, on where they live), their lack of health insurance, and the cost of public transportation added up to Sperlock and Alex being in the red by the end of the month, even though they ate a vegan diet. There is a movement calling for a "living wage" instead of a minimum wage, but in our current political climate where "compassion" is a word used to buy votes and "life" is only in reference to those who have no capacity to voice their own opinions, there is little hope it will be established.

The show was powerful for a number of reasons. It not only showed the practical impossibilities of living on so little, it also showed the good works of people and organizations who are trying to make up for the negligence of our government and our larger society. They aren't always successful, because there just aren't enough services to go around. Sperlock and Alex get free furniture and dishware from the United Methodist Free Store, where everything is free, but when they go to a free health clinic, they are turned away because there are too many people there and not enough doctors. Sperlock talks about how he would have to miss at least one day of work to go to the free clinic, an impossiblity for many families who live paycheck to paycheck.

At the clinic and elsewhere, they interview people who are struggling to make ends meet, like an uninsured couple who both have diabetes, and a family of three who are homeless though the father works. To demonstrate how it is to live on next to nothing with children, Sperlock's neice and nephew come to stay with them for a weekend. Even in the short visit, we see how it is that much more difficult to support two more people on such a measly salary. Daycare, food, health care, how can a family afford any of it on $5.15/hour? The homeless family that they met at the clinic point out that our government's policies seem designed to tear families apart, an excellent point in light of Bush's "pro-family" presidency.

Watching the show, I was reminded of the Class Matters series the New York Times has been running this month, in particular this article about the "hyper-rich" and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. My friend Margarita, who is from Cuernavaca, talks often about the "Colombiazacion" of Mexico, how her country is being taken over by drug cartels (this article in today's Post talks about this). Sadly, I think we are undergoing a "Mexicanization" here in the US. Our minimum wage is nearly as unlivable as Mexico's and with Bush's tax cuts we are further establishing a monied artistocracy, therefore putting to rest our longstanding myth of the American meritocracy. The kinds of health issues, mental and otherwise, that come from abject poverty; the wholesale abandonment of entire communities; the esablishment of castes impossible to breach; all of this makes our country weaker, not stronger.

Sadly, our government looks to the poor to provide most of the sacrifice in war time, too. As Bob Herbert points out in his column today, the military makes a point of recruiting in poorer public high schools, thereby putting a heavier burden on families who are already challenged. They don't recruit as often at private, elite schools. They assume that the kids won't join when they have other options.

My husband, like so many other soldiers, joined the military for money and discipline right out of high school. He served as an active duty Marine before joining the Army national guard. He was the first person in his family to go to college and he paid for it himself. In many ways, he was no different than the public school kids the recruiters go after today, except that when he joined the test requirements were more strict and you had to have a high school deploma. Now you only need a ninth grade education (with a promise to get your GED within your first years of service) and your test scores can be exceptionally low. (I wonder when we will have to redefine what a "volunteer" army is when some of the soldiers join out of economic necessity and so many others are kept in beyond their contracts.)

Interestingly, Ted Koppel's show last night was somewhat related to Sperlock's. Koppel talked about child labor and exploitation worldwide through interviews with the makers of Stolen Childhoods, a documentary, and footage from the film. The go to Kenya and see nine year old picking coffee beans all day. The children are exposed to pesticides that cause horrible health problems, including debilitating skin diseases where the pesticides have touched them and respiratory problems. They also go to the United States, where Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) points out that there are no child labor laws governing argriculture, and as a result thousands of kids (nine, ten, twelve years old) work the fields handpicking our radishes, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, etc., and like their Kenyan brothers and sisters are exposed to harmful pesticides every day and are denied education.

I've never seen Ted Koppel so passionate about a topic. Beautifully, he and the filmmakers tell us what we can do to help the situation. As the world's most gluttonous consumers, we can make a huge difference simply by shopping smarter and more compassionately. This means buying only fair trade coffee (and other items, for that matter) and organic produce. It's that simple!

A couple of years ago on Broken Windows I wrote about why I eat organics, talking about my experience in Baja, Mexico and their tomato pickers. You can read it here. (BTW, the LA Times "Wal-mart" articles I point to in that post were written by my step-sister, Nancy Cleeland. She won the Pulitzer and the Polk for them. Isn't that cool?!) We have an incredible amount of power because we consume so much; it's time we start using our power wisely. Frankly, most americans can afford to pay a little bit more for their groceries. Not everyone can, of course, but the rest of us can and should. If we buy organics the price will naturally come down, making them more accessible to everyone. Organics are better for everyone, from the picker to the consumer, and clearly are better for the environment too. There are other ways to "shop smart," like being aware of who made what you buy and what conditions they had to work under, and also questioning whether or not the price you pay for something is actually "fair." Most of the prices in Wal-Mart and Target and other large discounters are too low. They aren't actually fair because too many people have suffered for us to get that low price.

Sperlock's show, while it didn't give particular actions we can take, showed what's possible with some generosity and kind spirit. I was so impressed with the "Free Store" idea. Imagine if there was one in every community. What a gift to so many families! I've taken buckets of clothes and household goods to resale shops over the years (not to Salvation Army anymore -- not only am I opposed to the whole idea of an "army" of "salvation," they also received an outrageous endowment worth billiions of dollars from Ray Kroc's widow. They don't need my stuff.). How wonderful it would be if my stuff, which I give away for nothing, was then given away for nothing to people in my own community. I'm going to explore this idea here in Chicago and see where it leads. I don't know of any free stores here, but perhaps there are a couple already. That doesn't mean we don't need another...

I think we can stop the "Mexicanization" of America if we are conscious of our actions and fight for social justice, which includes a living wage. One of the lessons of zen is that "our actions are our only true possessions." It's never too late to start acting more responsibly, is it?

Hey y'all

There's a live chat on Washington Post with the London Times journalist who's been covering the Downing Street Memo story, Michael Smith. Check it out.