U.S. housing market: It's on

/Image via ibtimes.com

The housing market is surging. In reports released Tuesday, sales of new homes hit a four-and-a-half-year high in January and housing prices rose more than 6 percent in 2012.

And Ben Bernanke is on the housing market rebound bandwagon.

Health care good investment for the U.S. economy

The U.S. Administration for Children and Families is training thousands of low-income job candidates for health care careers. /Image via www.acf.hhs.gov


"Put simply, effective public health measures, including those aimed at improving health systems, have the potential to be economic engines."  - Harvard University School of Public Health

I'm a big believer in the potential of the U.S. health care industry to be a strength rather than weakness in the American economy:
- Health care accounts for more than 15 percent of U.S. economic activity.
- There's a population explosion of aging Baby Boomers driving demand for health care goods and services.
- Health care can be a vital part of a local economy, providing good jobs at communities across the country.

If you Google-search "health care good investment for the US economy," the top search results are overwhelmingly positive:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/879881-sleep-well-at-night-with-these-durable-health-care-reits

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/moneywatch/story/2012-07-21/asset-allocation-health-care-stocks/56373090/1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ward/investing-in-direct-care_b_2398928.html

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual-funds/articles/2011/06/16/6-investing-ideas-for-todays-slow-growth-economy

Here's one of the top YouTube search results for "health care good investment for the US economy"

Justice, and health care, for all

My wife, Jen, underwent abdominal surgery today to improve her quality of life and address a medical condition that posed a long-term threat to her life.

In case you haven't notice, there's a difference between right and wrong in Bullwork philosophy.

My family is fortunate. We have health insurance. We didn't have to choose between attempting to heal my wife's medical condition and bankruptcy.

The United States is one of the most prosperous and productive societies the world has ever known. Everyone should have affordable access to the kind of care that my wife received today.

Honest American C. Everett Koop dies at 96

C. Everett Koop, who told unpleasant truths about the AIDS epidemic and tobacco addiction in the 1980s while serving as U.S. surgeon general, died Monday at his New Hampshire home. /Image via pbs.org


Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was a rare Washington official: He didn't give a damn about politics and he wasn't afraid to tell the ugly truth about powerful interests.

USA Today, CNN, Reuters and other news outlets reported some of the flood of praise for Koop that followed his death today:

"As one of our country's greatest surgeons general, he effectively promoted health and the prevention of disease, thereby improving millions of lives in our nation and across the globe." - C. Everett Koop Institute

"Dr. Koop did more than take care of his individual patients -- he taught all of us about critical health issues that affect our larger society." - Dartmouth College President Carol L. Folt.

"Dr. Koop was not only a pioneering pediatric surgeon but also one of the most courageous and passionate public health advocates of the past century. He did not back down from deeply rooted health challenges or powerful interests that stood in the way of needed change. Instead, he fought, he educated, and he transformed lives for the better." - Wiley Souba, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College

"He saved countless lives through his leadership in confronting the public health crisis that came to be known as AIDS and standing up to powerful special interests like the tobacco companies." U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

U.S. housing market rebounding

/Image via michiganonthemove.com

 

There was more good news from the U.S. housing market last week, with the number of delinquent mortgages falling to a four-year low. Bloomberg reported home loan payments that were at least three months behind or in the foreclosure process fell to 6.7 percent of all mortgages in the third quarter of 2012.

It appears the housing market has not only bottomed out but also is moving strongly in a positive direction, which bodes well for the world's keystone economy.

Consumers drive the U.S. economy. The biggest investment most consumers have is a house. Until the housing market fully recovers from its 2008 meltdown, consumers are going to lack the level of confidence needed to open their wallets and start spending again.

In addition to the falling mortgage deliquencies, here are some other positive housing market signs from the past six months that Bloomberg reported:
- The percentage share of all mortgages in foreclosure decreased.
- Home sales prices rose.
- The number of distressed home sales fell. (Distressed home sales include so-called short sales, when homeowners are compelled to sell a house quickly in an attempt to liquidate assets and pay off lenders.)
- Rising home prices helped 1.9 million underwater homeowners get back to the point where their houses were worth more than what they owed on their mortgages.

For those Americans looking to time the housing market, its going to be tempting to make a move in 2013. Many home buyers can still take advantage of historically low house prices and low mortgage interest rates. Many homeowners who have been stuck in place with few potential buyers in the market finally have a glimmer of hope that they can sell their homes and move on.

Racism among 'open secrets' in U.S. medicine

/Image via www.rodp.org

When I blogged a week ago about a nurse's racial discrimination lawsuit against Hurley Medical Center in Michigan, my focus was on the outrageous behavior of a racist man and the hospital's enabling of that behavior.

This story is much bigger than one case. Patients, and family members of patients, picking and choosing caregivers based on race is a systemic problem in America.

Two of my closest family members have worked as caregivers in nursing homes. Both have been pressured to stay away from a patient because the patient or family members objected to having a person of color involved in caregiving.

As part of its coverage of the Hurley Medical Center discrimination lawsuit, The Associated Press reported Friday that racial discrimination against caregivers is one of U.S. medicine's "open secrets." The AP reported the following:
- The American Medical Association's ethics code bars doctors from refusing to treat people based on race, gender and other criteria, but there are no specific policies for handling race-based requests from patients.
- In 2010, a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that the federal Civil Rights Act prohibits nursing homes from making staffing decisions for nursing assistants based on residents' racial preferences. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by a black nursing assistant who sued her employer for racial discrimination.
- In a federal lawsuit filed in 2005, three black employees of a hospital near Philadelphia claimed they were prevented from treating a pregnant white woman by her male partner, who was a member of a white supremacist group. The man used a racial slur when forbidding any care by any African-Americans. The complaint alleged supervisors honored the man's request. The case was settled confidentially before going to trial.
- A 2007 study examined how physicians respond to patients' requests to be assigned caregivers of the same gender, race or religion. The survey of emergency physicians found patients often make such requests, and they are routinely accommodated.

This form of discrimination shows how far America remains from anything approaching racial harmony.

Nurses and other medical caregivers not only help our loved ones at their greatest times of need but also provide difficult and unpleasant services even family members are reluctant to do. They literally wipe our loved ones' asses.

Racism remains so ingrained in American society that caregivers are turned away from suffering patients based on skin color. It's undeniable proof that racism is a persistent problem in U.S. culture.

Open letter to N.H. congressional delegation

On Dec. 7, 2012, N.H. Gov. Maggie Hassan, U.S. Rep. Ann Custer, U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen share the stage at St. Anselm's College. /New Hampshire Union Leader photo

Feb. 24, 2013

N.H. Congressional Delegation
Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C. 20002

Dear Senators and U.S. Representatives,

I was an extremely proud New Hampshire voter this fall, when the elections installed the nation's first-ever all-women congressional delegation. But I am extremely disappointed this winter, as Congress continues to fail its Constitutional obligations to steward the federal government’s finances.

The ongoing uncertainty over federal taxing and spending – set to be punctuated March 1 with the sequester’s automatic budget cuts – is bad for the country and bad government. After all the suffering millions of Americans and billions more around the world have endured since the Financial Collapse of 2008, fostering the U.S.  economic recovery must be a top priority in Washington.

I will not support any of you in the ballot box again unless all of you take an active and constructive role to help break the Capitol Hill gridlock over the federal budget. I urge all four of you to seek out common ground across party lines, to press yourselves and your congressional colleagues to put aside political expediency and put the interests of the country first, and to restore faith in the U.S. government’s ability to function effectively.

Congress is holding the federal government’s purse strings with paralyzed hands. Be part of the cure that gets those hands moving again.

Respectfully,

Chris Cheney
Concord, N.H.

Dear Congress: Cut the shit and cut a deal

/Image via www.inaugural.senate.gov
 

Only a couple factors are holding back the U.S. economy, and the leadership of the federal government is one of them. Given the suffering many Americans and billions around the globe have endured since the Financial Collapse of 2008, the performance of the Congress in particular is at best inept and at worst treasonous.

March 1 is the deadline for the latest Washington brinkmanship over the federal budget. Right now and probably for months to come, the ongoing uncertainty over federal taxing and spending is akin to adding a Red-White-and-Blue migrain on top of the world economy's European Debt Crisis headache.

The essence of the U.S. government is separation of powers. The Preamble to the Constitution is one sentence long, then Articles One, Two and Three lay out the powers of the Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. The Founding Fathers were a smart bunch: They clearly stated how the government was intended to work upfront and in no uncertain terms.

The branch of government responsible for setting the federal budget, which is a mess in desperate need of a cleaning, is Congress. There is not a single word in the Constitution giving the President powers related to the economy. In contrast, the first words in the section of the Constitution defining the powers of Congress say: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; to borrow money on the credit of the United States; to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States ..."

North Korea: Concentration camp horrors

This image was drawn by a North Korean who escaped the country with help from Life Funds for North Korean Refugees, a nongovernmental organization based in Tokyo. /Image via robpongi.blogspot.com


The growing tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program are playing out on the international stage, but unknown thousands are struggling in anonymity to survive in the Hermit Nation's concentration camps.

This week, as President Obama and Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, pledged to pursue tougher actions at the U.N. Security Council over North Korea's recent missile and nuclear bomb tests, two escapees from North Korean concentration camps shared their stories at a human rights conference in Geneva.

"People think the Holocaust is in the past, but it is still very much a reality. It is still going on in North Korea," Shin Dong Hyuk told The Japan Times in a story published Friday.

Shin was born in Camp 14, one of five known concentration camps in North Korea. The 30-year-old escaped from the camp seven years ago, when he and another prisoner made a dash to a high-voltage security fence. The other internee was electrocuted; Shin escaped to China by scrambling over the dead man's body.

The Times reported as many as 200,000 North Koreans are enduring torture and starvation in the camps. But no one outside of the isolated country knows the total number of prisoners for sure because the repeated attempts of human rights organizations to extract information about the camps from Pyongyang have been rebuffed or ignored.

Here are some excerpts from the Times report:

"While Shin’s comparison with Nazi concentration camps, where the majority of the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust were murdered, may seem extreme, another camp survivor, Chol Hwan Kang, agreed with the analogy.

"'Fundamentally, it is the same as Hitler’s Auschwitz,' Chol said, referring to one of the Nazi era’s most notorious death camps.

"With whole families in North Korea thrown into camps together and starving to death, he said that the 'methods may be different, but the effect is the same.'

"Chol, now 43, was sent to Camp 15 with his whole family when he was 9 years old to repent for the suspected disloyalties of his grandfather. He spent 10 years there before his family was released and later managed to flee to China and later to South Korea — the same route taken by Shin." ...

"After meeting Shin and hearing his harrowing account in December, U.N. human rights Commissioner Navi Pillay called for an in-depth international inquiry into 'one of the worst, but least understood and reported, human rights situations in the world.'" ...

"Shin, who says his father and grandfather were sent to the camp because two of his uncles apparently defected to South Korea, said he was expected to spend his entire life in them under a system that calls for up to three generations of family members of an accused to also be punished.

"'The birth of a baby is a blessed thing in the outside world, but inside the camp, babies are born to be slaves like their parents. It’s an absolute scandal,' Shin said.

"Both Shin and Chol described life in the camp as defined by hunger and violence.

"'Daily I saw torture, and every day in the camp I saw people dying of malnutrition and starvation. I saw lots of friends die and I almost died myself of malnutrition,' Chol recalled.

"Shin still carries the scars of his experience on his body. Resting his right hand on the table in front of him, he revealed the missing tip of his middle finger, which he says was chopped off by a prison guard as punishment after he dropped a piece of machinery in a factory."

Hanford: America's festering Cold War wound

Back in the day, radioactive materials in boxes and 55-gallon drums are dumped in a trench at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richmond, Wash. /U.S. Department of Energy image

The revelation this week that at least six antiquated toxic waste storage tanks are leaking at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state is the latest environmental abomination at America's worst nuclear contamination site.

Tucked into a bend in the Columbia River, Hanford is home to the United States' first large-scale nuclear reactor, which was developed as part of the Manhattan Project to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to science ... a single grain of the radioactive material lodged in a human's lung can result in terminal cancer.

The original Hanford reactor was retired in 1968, but, like syphilis, the plutonium factory site is a gift that keeps on giving.

About 53 million gallons of variously toxic and radioactive waste, enough deadly brew to fill dozens of Olympic-sized swimming pools, are festering in 177 storage tanks at Hanford. Most of the tanks are single-lined and were designed with 20-year lifespans. USA Today reports that at least 1 million gallons of liquid waste material has already leaked from tanks at Hanford.

"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group, said this week. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."

In the late 1940s, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was sited in Richmond, Wash., because its relatively remote location was well-suited for the top secret facility and the nearby Columbia River provided a ready supply of water to cool nuclear reactors. /Image via nydailynews.com

'They knew there was nowhere safe to store this waste'

The environmental disaster playing out at Hanford first came to my attention about a dozen years ago, when I was working at the Boston Herald. One of the best benefits of working at the Herald was the "Giveaway Shelf," old filing cabinets that lined the entryway to the newsroom on top of which the books editor would periodically stack as many as 100 unwanted advanced copies of books that publishers had sent to the paper, hoping they would get favorable reviews.

One of the treasures I plucked from the "Giveaway Shelf" is Aftermath: The Remnants of War by Donovan Webster. Published in 1996, Aftermath examines the legacy of 20th century warfare, from the explosive ordnance still being plucked from the forests of France, to the bones of German and Russian soldiers that still rise from the ground around a city that was once called Stalingrad, to the glass-covered nuclear bomb test sites in the Nevada desert, to the carcinogenic jungles of Vietnam, to the abandoned mine fields of Kuwait.

As reported in Aftermath, Hanford is one of America's most toxic "national sacrifice zones," more than 2,000 square miles of territory sprinkled across the country that will be off-limits to the general public for thousands of years because of high radioactivity levels.

One of Webster's most interesting interview subjects was James Werner, who was at the time director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis. In 1995, Werner published the DOE's first comprehensive environmental report on U.S. nuclear weapons production sites. The key findings of Werner's report included the following:
- The United States had at least 10,500 radioactive sites that required stabilization and secure storage for an indeterminable future.
- There were no long-term storage facilities for U.S. nuclear weapons production waste and no plans to create long-term storage facilities.
- Even if the DOE refused to authorize the creation of more nuclear weapons-grade materials, maintenance of existing nuclear weapons production-related waste sites would cost taxpayers more than $230 billion through 2070.

"It's a quarter-trillion dollars," Werner told the Aftermath author. "When I told the President's Office of Management and Budget the figure, they looked at me like I had two heads. They said, 'On our books, only the national deficit is going to cost more.' And I said, 'Hey, don't shoot the messenger, the Cold War created the problem.'"

With no safe way to store radioactive waste, Aftermath describes unthinkable radioactive waste storage nightmares at DOE facilities such as the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where it was common practice in the 1950s and 1960s to dig long trenches and bury 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste.

"The engineers and scientists who were doing this, they knew what was happening," Werner said. "But they were protected by national security, so they didn't have to care. They knew there was nowhere safe to store this waste. So, for instance, they kept it liquified in big tanks at Hanford, with motorized stirrers to keep the liquid moving; that way, maybe it wouldn't get hot and explode."

This 1994 photograph shows radioactive sludge stored at Hanford in Tank T-111, which is reportedly leaking as much as 300 gallons of material per year. The tank, which holds nearly a half million gallons of sludge, was put into service in 1945. /U.S. Department of Energy image

We've been here before 

State and federal officials are saying it will take years for the latest radioactive leaks from Hanford's storage tanks to reach the Columbia River. But don't be fooled by this bullshit taken verbatim from a page in the public relations crisis-management textbook:

• Radioactive liquids from earlier leaking storage tanks have already reached the river.
• It may take years for the most recent leaked toxic sludge to reach the river, but these materials will continue to be radioactive for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.
• The Columbia is one of the longest rivers in the United States, and the river basin is rich in agricultural and fishery resources.
• Hundreds of thousands of people live near the river's edge downstream of the Hanford site, which is only 200 miles away from Portland, Ore., where the Columbia spills into the Pacific Ocean.

Newt was right: Develop a colony on the Moon

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan take NASA's lunar rover for a spin on Dec. 11, 1972. /NASA image

 

Space exploration offers many benefits to humanity, mainly in the form of driving forward technological advancement. The best example of space exploration spurring technological innovation is NASA's Apollo Moon missions, which not only developed many valuable commercial products such as portable television cameras but also provided a critically important market for the first generation of computer chips.

But it's hard to understand the stubborn determination among many space exploration enthusiasts for sending manned missions to Mars. Humanity has unfinished business on the Moon, literally. Developing mineral resources and energy production on the Moon has the potential to generate economic activity valued at trillions of dollars.

The announcement this week that multimillionaire space tourist Dennis Tito is planning a privately funded manned fly-by of Mars is the latest misguided, and probably ill-fated, proposal to send humans to the Red Planet. Tito is expected to provide details about this so-called "Mission for America" during a Feb. 27 press conference.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, a nonprofit group Tito created, provided a rough outline of the Mars shot on Wednesday:
- The mission would launch in 2018 and last 501 days
- Existing technology would be used, specifically the SpaceX Dragon capsule, which would be thrust toward Mars at the tip of a powerful rocket SpaceX has under development
- The journey would be a no-frills ride for the two-member crew, which would be expected to live on survivalist rations and clean up with sponge baths for a year and a half

Tito's foundation provided the following justification for the daring mission: "This 'Mission for America' will generate new knowledge, experience and momentum for the next great era of space exploration. It is intended to encourage all Americans to believe again, in doing the hard things that make our nation great, while inspiring youth through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and motivation."

While I admire Tito's noble aspirations, establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon could accomplish the same goals and probably make life better on our home planet. Simply put, generating inspiration from space exploration is very nice, but generating inspiration and cash from human activity in space would be even better.

Several proposals have been made in recent years to return humans to the Moon and put them to work. Here's a sampling:
- During his 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich announced a plan to establish a colony on the Moon by 2020. While the Georgia Republican's proposal drew widespread criticism over its grandiose goals and Made-in-America focus, Forbes magazine hailed the potential for scientific advancement and economic development.
- In 2009, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin called on the United States to lead an international effort to return humans to the Moon: "In a new global effort to use the Moon to establish a global space consortium with a lunar surface facility as its epicenter, America can gain new leadership, international respect, and technological progress by collaborating with emerging space powers, not merely competing with them."
- In 2006, NASA released a document listing nearly 200 scientific and commercial projects that could be established on the Moon or in lunar orbit, including Earth and solar observation posts, human health experiments, power generation, communications systems and mining operations.
-

Any colonization of the Moon would require exploitation of lunar resources such as ice and minerals. NASA's recent GRAIL mission should provide insight into the lunar subsurface.

Old-school American wisdom about parenting

/Image via snugglybum.co.za

At the risk of offending parents who think minor children are their "best friends" or ruffling feathers among so-called experts who think parents should kiss a misbehaving child's ass and discuss the "triggers" behind anti-social behaviors, here's what legendary American journalist and social commentator Paul Harvey had to say about parenting:

"We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better.

"I'd really like for them to know about hand-me-down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meatloaf sandwiches. I really would.

"I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated.

"I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen.

"It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep.

"I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.

"I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother/sister. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him.

"When you want to see a movie and your little brother/sister wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him/her.

"I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.

"On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as uncool as your mom.

"If you want a slingshot, I hope your dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one.

"I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books.

"When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head.

"I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a boy/girl, and when you talk back to your mother that you learn what Ivory soap tastes like.

"May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove, and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.

"I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you dope or a joint, I hope you realize he is not your friend.

"I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your grandma/grandpa and go fishing with your uncle.

"May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the holidays.

"I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Hanukah/Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand.

"These things I wish for you — tough times and disappointment, hard work, and happiness. To me, it's the only way to appreciate life."

Americans raising the Weakest Generation

/Image via flickr

 

Before today, I have never written anything for public consumption wishing it was wrong. I sincerely hope my apprehension about the current crop of young Americans is just the latest example of one generation looking askance at the next.

But I've long believed one of the greatest responsibilities in life is bearing witness to the world around me. And what I've seen and heard in my communities over the past 20 years, including my own extended family, is alarming.

I'd bet my house you've seen or heard most of the following in your community or extended family:
- Parents describing their minor children as their best friends.
- Parents routinely providing drugs or alcohol to their minor children.
- A teacher reporting unacceptable student behavior to a parent, who then charges into the school to verbally abuse or physically assault the teacher.
- Parents giving more than $500 to a child to go shopping for holiday gifts.
- Children verbally or physically abusing parents.
- Parents and children complaining that students have too much homework.
- Parents allowing able-bodied children to linger in their household for years after graduating high school or college, without requiring their offspring to get a job or otherwise take responsibility for their own livelihoods.
- Children "shopping" in unlocked cars for wallets, spare change, GPS devices or anything else of value.
- Children with $700 per week illegal drug habits.
- An adult child who would rather collect unemployment and live at a mom and dad's house than get a job.
- A school that would rather allow a child to spin out of control into teen pregnancy, drug addiction or a life of violence than run the risk of a parental lawsuit or having to place the child in an expensive out-of-district educational facility.

As one of my best friends would say, that's just the tip of the piley.

If you haven't already dismissed me as a caveman longing for a return to the "Leave it to Beaver" heyday of American culture, as someone who doesn't appreciate the difficulty of raising children in the modern world, believe me, I get it.

More often than not, my generation was raised in two-parent homes. Today, a quarter of all children are raised in a single-parent household, with mothers bearing the bulk of the burden.

More often than not, my generation went home after school, played in the yard or neighborhood for a little while, had a good dinner, did homework, watched some TV, then went to bed. Today, children come home from school and want to stay affixed to their smartphones or computers, usually taunting one another on Facebook or playing violent video games.

More often than not, my generation knew there was no way to avoid parental discipline. Today, when a child clashes with a parent at home, the minor can bug out to a friend's house, where there's either no parent present or an overly permissive parent allows the wayward child to hang out to avoid making waves.

The Americans who survived the Great Depression and World War II then helped establish the United States as a military, economic and cultural superpower in the 1950s and 1960s have been celebrated as the country's Greatest Generation.

The current generation of young Americans appears destined to be the Weakest Generation. I hope they prove me wrong.

PBS telling truths about gun violence in America

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, a troubled 20-year-old armed with an assault rifle, shot and killed 27 people including 20 first-graders. This horrific massacre has sparked a heated debate about gun violence in America. /Image via AP


With all due respect to Big Bird, the crown jewel of America's Public Broadcasting System is journalism.

This week, PBS is airing After Newtown, a series of special reports on gun laws, mental illness and school security. After watching two of the Frontline special reports last night, I urge all of my fellow Americans and anyone overseas who is interested in the U.S. gun culture to watch these television programs. There is also a wealth of information available online at the link above.

PBS is providing a dispassionate, in-depth and highly professional examination of the key issues surrounding gun violence in America. It's free and literally available at your fingertips.

It's extremely hard to find this kind of unbiased information on the polarizing issue of gun violence anywhere else. I implore my fellow citizens: view this valuable information, educate yourself about aspects of the issues that are unfamiliar to you, draw your own conclusions, then contact your elected officials at all levels to help make sure effective measures are taken to rein in a problem that is killing and maiming thousands of Americans every year.

Hope, dread and rape in Congo

Refugees from North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, arrive in Uganda in 2012. /UNHCR image


With a United Nations-brokered peace deal set to be signed this weekend to improve the security situation in eastern Congo, simmering violence in the southern part of the country is threatening to derail a surge of mining activity that is critically important to one of the most underdeveloped nations on Earth.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and about a dozen leaders of African nations and organizations are expected to sign a peace agreement that includes creation of a U.N.-commanded military force. The so-called intervention brigade significantly deepens the peacekeeping role of the international organization because U.N. troops will have authority to use deadly force against the M23 rebels who have been clashing with government troops in eastern Congo for nearly a year.

The peace pact had been set for final approval last month, but the three countries expected to supply the most troops for the intervention brigade (South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique) apparently balked over the issue of who would control the new military force. Diplomats said the trio opposed having the existing U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, in charge of the intervention brigade because of its checkered record in supporting the Congolese government's effort to stave off the M23 rebels. Those differences have been papered over and the intervention brigade will be commanded through MONUSCO.

'Triangle of Death' in Katanga

While hope springs in eastern Congo, Mai Mai rebels in the southern part of the country have stepped up attacks against civilians and soldiers loyal to President Joseph Kabila.

The Katanga region has been a hotbed of Congo's mining industry since the country's colonial period under Belgian rule. Copper production in Katanga has increased steadily since a peace accord was signed in 2003, helping to fuel an increase in Congo's copper exports from 20,000 tons a decade ago to 600,000 tons last year, according to Congolese officials.

Katanga, which is about the size of Spain, has a long secessionist history, and the Mai Mai rebels appear to be trying to take advantage of growing discontent with the central government. The Mai Mai have been linked to massacres, rape and cannabalism in the northern part of Katanga, which has been dubbed the "Triangle of Death."

Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the few aid organizations operating in the Triangle of Death, is reporting the Mai Mai are expanding their area of operation. "The Mai Mai are coming out of their normal zone within the triangle," Pascal Duchemin, an MSF official working in Katanga's provincial capital, recently told the Reuters news service. "Since December, we've seen an intensification of clashes with the army."

While officials in the country's national capital, Kinshasa, are putting a brave face on efforts to turn back the Mai Mai offensive, Katanga leaders are less optimistic. Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, president of the provincial assembly, told Reuters the spike in violence poses a threat to investment in the region's mining industry. "Yes, there's a risk," he said. "Money doesn't like noise. While there's the sound of tanks and boots, money will not come in."

Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. /Image via csmonitor.com

Healing Congolese rape survivors

Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his colleagues have treated about 30,000 rape survivors over the past dozen years. The 2008 U.N. Human Rights Prize recipient and 2009 African of the Year shared his story with the BBC this week.

Here is an excerpt of the interview with this amazing healer of broken bodies and souls:

"When war broke out, 35 patients in my hospital in Lemera in Eastern DR Congo were killed in their beds.

"I fled to Bukavu, 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north, and started a hospital made from tents. I built a maternity ward with an operating theatre. In 1998, everything was destroyed again. So, I started all over again in 1999.

"It was that year that our first rape victim was brought into the hospital. After being raped, bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs.

"I thought that was a barbaric act of war, but the real shock came three months later. Forty-five women came to us with the same story, they were all saying: 'People came into my village and raped me, tortured me.'

"Other women came to us with burns. They said that after they had been raped, chemicals had been poured on their genitals.

"I started to ask myself what was going on. These weren't just violent acts of war, but part of a strategy. You had situations where multiple people were raped at the same time, publicly -- a whole village might be raped during the night. In doing this, they hurt not just the victims but the whole community, which they force to watch.

"The result of this strategy is that people are forced to flee their villages, abandon their fields, their resources, everything. It's very effective.

"We have a staged system of care for victims. Before I undertake a big operation, we start with a psychological examination. I need to know if they have enough resilience to withstand surgery.

"Then we move to the next stage, which might consist of an operation or just medical care. And the following stage is socio-economic care -- most of these patients arrive with nothing, no clothes even.

"We have to feed them, we have to take care of them. After we discharge them, they will be vulnerable again if they're not able to sustain their own lives. So we have to assist them on socio-economical level -- for example through helping women develop new skills and putting girls back in school.

"The fourth stage is to assist them on a legal level. Often the patients know who their assailants were and we have lawyers who help them bring their cases to court.

"In 2011, we witnessed a fall in the number of cases. We thought perhaps we were approaching the end of the terrible situation for women in the Congo. But since last year, when the war resumed, cases have increased again. It's a phenomenon which is linked entirely to the war situation.

"The conflict in DR Congo is not between groups of religious fanatics. Nor is it a conflict between states. This is a conflict caused by economic interests -- and it is being waged by destroying Congolese women."

NASA's Mars rover triumph for American ingenuity

On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a series of images that were combined back on Earth to create a self-portrait of the car-sized robotic vehicle. The mosaic image above shows Curiosity at a location in Mars' Gale Crater that NASA dubbed "Rocknest," where the rover scooped its first samples of Martian soil. Four scoop marks can be seen in front of the rover, which dug a fifth hole after taking pictures of itself. /NASA image


Reports of the death of American technological prowess have been greatly exaggerated.

After successfully executing the most complicated robotic landing on another planet in August, NASA's latest Mars mission is literally on a roll, with the Curiosity rover collecting a treasure trove of scientific information on the Red Planet. Curiosity has been transmitting stunning images of the Martian surface back to Earth for months, and the rover successfully completed a critically important first use of the drill at the end of its robotic arm about 10 days ago.

The images shown in this blog post show the potential for the Curiosity mission to revolutionize our understanding of the geologic history of Mars. And the rover appears to be on the right track to achieving the mission's grandest goal: determining whether life has ever existed on the Martian surface.

This mosaic image captured with Curiosity's Mast Camera shows a panoramic view of the Martian surface looking east from "Rocknest." The image has been "white-balanced" to show what the rocks and soils would look like on Earth. /NASA image

On Dec. 7, 2012, Curiosity's Mast Camera captured this image of an outcrop NASA dubbed "Shaler." Scientists believe the layered rock was formed through a geological process called cross-bedding, which occurs on Earth with running water. The presence of liquid water is widely considered as one of the key conditions necessary for life forms to thrive. /NASA image

At an outcrop in an area NASA dubbed "Sheepbed," Curiosity's Mast Camera snapped this image of veiny rock on Dec. 13, 2012. Scientists believe the white veins in the rock are composed of calcium sulfate. On Earth, similar calcium sulfate deposits are formed when liquid water penetrates and circulates through rock fractures. /NASA image

Curiosity reaches 'biggest milestone' since landing

The Curiosity rover has drilled its first holes in Martian rock. The shallow hole on the right was a test run for the drill at the end of the rover's robotic arm. Instruments onboard Curiosity have analyzed the rock powder collected from the deeper hole, and NASA scientists are working to interpret that data. /NASA image


NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars passed the last major test of its equipment about a week ago, using the drill on its robotic arm for the first time.

In a prepared statement released Feb. 9, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, hailed deployment of the drill as a key achievement. "The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," he said. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August."

After drilling a shallow test hole, Curiosity bored about 2.5 inches into a rock called "John Klein," which was named in honor of a rover team member who died in 2011. Rock powder collected during the drilling has been analyzed with sensors onboard NASA's six-wheeled robotic geologist, and scientists are working to interpret that data. The car-sized rover is trying to determine whether the Gale Crater on Mars ever had conditions suitable for sustaining life, including clues in Martian rocks that would indicate the presence of liquid water millions of years ago.

Rock powder Curiosity collects is analyzed with the rover's Chemical and Mineralogy instrument as well as its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.

The CheMin instrument uses X-ray technology to produce data that is transmitted back to Earth for detailed analysis. It can take upto 10 hours for the instrument to process a sample.

The SAM instrument has three devices that analyze rock powder at the molecular level: a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a tunable laser spectrometer. The quadrupole mass spectrometer and gas chromatograph are designed to detect organic compounds that could be the building blocks for Martian life. The tunable laser spectrometer is designed to analyze Martian carbon dioxide and to detect traces of methane. Many life forms on Earth produce carbon dioxide and methane.

Lord Monckton: Right-wing extremist poster boy

Lord Christopher Monckton upped his radical fringe credentials this week with his full-throated endorsement of the Rise Up Australia party. /Image via abc.net.au


What do global warming deniers, Obama birthers and Australian racists all have in common? Lord Christopher Monckton, third viscount of Brenchley.

This week, Monckton became the most prominent supporter of Rise Up Australia, a new national political party Down Under devoted to opposing Muslim immigration in Australia and rolling back the country's multicultural policies. At an event launching Rise Up Australia, Monckton said, "It is not for me as a Brit to endorse any Australian political party, ... but I'm going to anyway."

In December 2012, the ex-journalist and adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was thrown out of the United Nations-sponsored climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, after he impersonated a member of the Burmese delegation. Drawing heckling from the other delegates, Monckton told the assembly: "In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all. If we were to take action, the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptation measures later. So my recommendation is that we should initiate a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track."

The viscount of Brenchley was not only expelled from the Doha conference but also banned for life from attending future U.N. climate change talks.

And here's what Monckton had to say in March 2012 about the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate posted on the White House website: "It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated. Sheriff (Joe) Arpaio of Arizona has had a team on this for six months. And he has now gone public and said there’s something very desperately wrong with this and of course nobody is saying anything because the entire electorate has been fooled."

Here are some historical facts to consider: racism is a scourge on humanity that has fueled the slaughter of millions, the vast majority of the world's scientists have concluded not only that the Earth's atmosphere is warming but also that carbon dioxide from human activity is to blame, and Donald Trump is the only other prominent person on the planet who believes Obama was born in Kenya.

Political party preaches racism Down Under-style

Conservative Christian Danny Nalliah launched the Rise Up Australia party this week in Australia. /Image via heraldsun.com.au


This week, an Australian pastor of Sri Lankan decent launched the Rise Up Australia party to run candidates in upcoming national elections. Planks of the party's platform include limiting Muslim immigration in Australia and turning back the clock on the country's multicultural policies.

Here's some quotes from Rise Up Australia's leader, Danny Nalliah, a supposed man of God:

"Tolerance has gone too much and the Rise Up Australia party is committed to keeping Australia Australian.”

Rise Up Australia ''cannot be tarnished with the racist brush because I'm a black fellow.''

“I think God created Chinese fried rice, and I love pizza … but please do not come and tell me that Sharia law should be introduced in Australia. You go back to where you came from.”

“One of the greatest pushes for multiculturalism comes from Muslim people. David Cameron is the perfect example of someone who has said ‘multiculturalism has failed.’ There are Sharia courts starting all over the U.K. If multiculturalism has been ineffective in Europe, why implement a failure in Australia?”

“I remember I read a speech by John F. Kennedy where he said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ I asked myself how and what I can do for my adopted country of Australia. The whole country is losing rights at the cost of tolerance. There is only so much you can tolerate.”

As a devoted student of history, I'm familiar with many of JFK's speeches. Here's a couple excerpts from one of my favorites, a nationally televised speech Kennedy delivered in 1963:

"I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

"Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.

"It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accomodations, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

"It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

"The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the Nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed. ...

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

"The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

"One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free."

View from the mountaintop remains clouded

A nurse at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., has sued the hospital, alleging she was reassigned because of the color of her skin. /Image via rad.msufame.msu.edu


Newsflash: When a white supremacist tells you to do something that's blatantly racist, you shouldn't need a lawyer to tell you it's wrong.

As CNN reported today, a lawsuit against Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., bears two of the hallmarks of racism in America: ingrained hatred and ignorance.

First the ingrained hatred: A man whose premature baby was being treated at Hurley Medical Center saw a black nurse attending to his child. He asked to see the nurse's supervisor and requested that no black nurses work with his baby. While making this request to the supervisor, the man flashed a tatoo with a "swastika of some kind."

Now the ignorance: The father's request went up the Hurley Medical Center chain of command and was granted. The black nurse's supervisor called her at home and told the woman she was being reassigned because the preemie's father didn't want black care givers working with his child. A note was placed prominently on the child's medical chart: "Please, no African-American nurses to care for ... baby per dad's request."

Hurley Medical Center's lawyer found out about the case, objected and the decision of hospital officials was reversed.

You would think this kind of event would be impossible more than 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the last speech before his assassination. In that address, the civil rights legend said, "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!"

King led America to the mountaintop, but for far too many of us the promised land is still miles away.

Meteorite blast over Russia injures about 1,200

A meteorite explodes over the Ural Mountains in Russia this morning. /Image via newsinfo.inquirer.net


This shot across Earth's bow left a mark.

Russian officials are reporting a meteorite explosion over the Ural Mountains today has injured about 1,200 people, most suffering cut wounds from windows shattered in the blast. While far smaller that the mid-air meteorite explosion linked to the Tunguska Event in 1908, today's celestial event damaged at least 300 buildings, including the collapse of a metal factory's roof.

The meteorite that exploded this morning, which is estimated to have weighed 10 tons when it entered the Earth's atmosphere, literally shook the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural Mountains. The Russian Interior Ministry reported that about 1,200 people were injured, including more than 200 children.

Dramatic video of the meteorite explosion was captured on the dash cameras of several Russian motorists. Dash cameras are used widely in Russia because citizens fear encounters with corrupt police officers.

Embrace the healing power of love

Loving Comfort Dogs brought a measure of peace to Newtown, Conn., after 20 first-graders were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School. /Image via AP


Everybody loves a train wreck: Our eyes are irresistibly drawn to violence and suffering; and the grander the catastrophe, the better the ratings. But take a moment with what's left of this Valentine's Day to reflect on how love has brought healing or at least solice to someone you care deeply about.

In our household, one of our cats has been living with terminal cancer for about two years. Chop Chop's heart is too weak to risk medical intervention. She has continued to thrive on nothing more than our love and a steady diet of Fancy Feast, which is the only food she'll eat on a consistent basis.

Still don't believe? Here's what some pretty smart people have to say about the transformative power of love:

Mahatma Ghandi: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it -- always.”

Martin Luther King Jr.: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Albert Einstein: “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

Bob Marley: "You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Jesus: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth... Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Lao Tzu: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

Robert Heinlein: “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

J.K. Rowling: “You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.”

Mother Teresa: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

John Lennon: “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

Plato: “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

Bertrand Russell: “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

Victor Hugo: “What Is love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

Eleanor Roosevelt: “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”

Oscar Wilde: “Who, being loved, is poor?"

Sophocles: “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” 

Feb. 15 asteroid flyby should be global wakeup call

In June 1908, scientists believe an asteroid exploded in the Earth's atmosphere several miles above a remote area of Siberia, leveling an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square-mile area. /Image via webodysseum.com


When it comes to celestial objects striking the Earth, size definitely matters.

While the miles-wide asteroid that struck the planet 60 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs gets all the headlines, scientists believe smaller chunks of ice and rock are capable of leveling entire metropolitan areas. Earth likely will be spared an explosive encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14 tomorrow, but the planet apparently wasn't so lucky in 1908.

In what is widely known as the Tunguska Event, an asteroid or comet about the size of 2012 DA14, which is about as big as a cruise ship, entered the Earth's atmosphere on June 30, 1908, then exploded several miles above a remote area of Siberia. Millions of trees were flattened in the blast zone, which spanned an 830 square-mile area. The explosion, estimated to be more than 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, knocked people from their feet as far as 40 miles away.

Given the potential for such collisions to wreak cataclysmic destruction, you would think governments around the world would consider these so-called Near Earth Objects a top priority. “It’s like Mother Nature sending a warning shot across our bow,” Don Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of 2012 DA14 in The Washington Post last week.

It's easy to argue not enough is being done to track Near Earth Objects and to develop technology to alter their course if necessary to protect Earth. Scientists believe they have discovered 95 percent of Near Earth Objects capable of wiping out most terrestial life on the planet. But Near Earth Objects the size of 2012 DA14 are a different story.

"Saying we’re only going to find the civilization-killers is a (sub-par) threshold,” former U.S. astronaut Ed Lu told The Washington Post. “We can do better than that.”

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about 150 feet wide and is estimated to weigh more than a cruise ship. On Feb. 15, the asteroid is expected to pass 17,000 miles from Earth. Many communications satellites orbit the planet at an altitude of 22,000 miles. /NASA image

China enabling North Korean nuclear ambitions

North Korea tests a three-stage rocket in December 2012. The launch drew international condemnation because it is widely viewed as an attempt to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. /Image via AP


Only China can peacefully compel the North Koreans to drop their quest for a nuclear weapons arsenal but that's unlikely to happen.

From the Chinese government's perspective, maintaining the status quo is clearly in its interest compared to the alternatives:
- With the Obama administration seeking to bolster the U.S. military, diplomatic and economic presence in Asia, China probably won't do anything significant to undercut its North Korean ally.
- Any effort to force North Korea to scuttle its nuclear weapons program bears a high risk of armed conflict, which would surely be frowned upon in Beijing. No country wants to see a war break out on its doorstep, particularly a conflict in which other nations are calling the shots.
- Tightening of U.N. sanctions against North Korea could destabilize Kim Jong-un's regime, and Beijing has long feared the consequences of a North Korean government collapse, including a flood of refugees pouring over the Yalu River into China.

If China won't stop North Korea from becoming a fully fledged member of the Nuclear Club, who will?