My comfort zone lost its sense of peace –

As was alluded to in a recent comment from Erich, my house was burglarized a couple of weeks ago. I'd enjoyed one of those rare, delightfully spontaneous evenings; after a dance recital for my daughter, I ran into a date I hadn't seen in awhile who invited me to a club to listen to music. Said daughter and her sister were off to their dad's for the weekend, so I was free to stay out. We had a lovely time and I headed home around 11:15. As I turned my key in the front lock and opened the door, I saw movement. I looked up just in time to see a kid run out of my bedroom, glance back at me then run down the hall toward the kitchen, away from me. In that moment, I snapped. Instead of backing out the door to safety and calling 911, I barreled straight toward him, screaming at the top of my lungs. Screaming at him to get the $%#^ out of my house - him AND his com-padre, whom I heard running down the back stairs. They both ran out the back door, one crossing the alley and running between the houses, and one running down the alley. I screamed again, ran back to my car and raced around the block hoping to spot one or both of them. No luck. I was sobbing with rage; I could not believe this had happened - again. I called 911.

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The wide and deep dysfunction of inequality

Is social inequality merely something to be ashamed of, or does it bring ruin upon a society? I just finished reading a book review of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009). This book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett was reviewed in the April 30, 2009 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers). The reviewer was Michael Sargent, a developmental biologist. The Wilkinson/Pickett book explores the social consequences of income inequality.

Using statistics from reputable independent sources, they compare indices of health and social development in 23 of the world's richest nations and in the individual US states. Their striking conclusion is that the societies that do best for their citizens are those with the narrowest income differentials-such as Japan and the Nordic countries and the US state of New Hampshire. The most unequal-the United States as a whole, the United Kingdom and Portugal do worst. Many measures of the quality of life, including life expectancy, are correlated with the degree of economic equality in each country.

Here's the elephant in the political room: there is nothing in the Republican platform to address this damage being inflicted upon society. Quite the opposite: the Republican platform has continually stoke a wild unregulated capitalistic engine that disproportionately rewards some at the expense of others. What kind of damage is caused by this widespread disparity? You name it:

Problems such as mental illness, obesity, cardiovascular disease, unwillingness to engage with education, misuse of illegal and prescription drugs, teenage pregnancy, lack of social mobility and neglect of child welfare increase with greater inequality. Violence, from murder to the bullying of children in school follows the same pattern. These trends are tied up with the issues of trust: the authors chart a profound decline in trust and United States from the 1960s to the present, which matches rising inequality during the long Republican ascendancy.

The authors go so far as to suggest a local hardwired biological mechanism: neuroendocrinological stress. The perception that others are reveling in the good life at one's expense undermines self-esteem and releases the hormone cortisol which causes stress, accompanied by high blood pressure and high blood sugar levels. The cortisol overwhelms hormones, such as oxytocin, that are critical for trust-building. The damaging effect of long-term cortisol has been well-studied and established in other animals. In some experiments, monkeys that were chronically shoved to the bottom of a wide social hierarchy "are more inclined to self medicate with cocaine, if given the opportunity." This article give me yet more evidence that we would be often better off to relinquish much of our judgmentalism and to reconceptualize morality as an aspect of ecology.

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Jesse Ventura on torture

Jesse Ventura appeared on The View and spoke plain truth about torture, i.e., waterboarding is torture. If you can bear it, listen to Elisabeth Hasselbeck chattering away in support of torture (even though she claims that she is against torture). Ventura won't put up with Hasselbeck's inanity, and puts the blame squarely where it belongs, given that U.S. torture hasn't exactly been a recent revelation to anyone who gave a crap about it.

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More details about torture conducted by the U.S.

Details of the senseless torture committed by Americans continue to come out, but many details have been easily available for several years. Consider this 2006 article by Esquire, which I found at the Daily Dish. It is incredibly disturbing not only because of the behavior of the personnel, but because the information inexorably points to complicity by high-ranking officers and members of the Bush Administration.

[W]hen Church issued his report in March 2005, it found "no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse" and blamed all the trouble with torture on rogue soldiers.

That's when Fishback contacted Garlasco.

Bottom Line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody. This behavior violates the professional military ethic of "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do" and it violates the constitutional principle of a government accountable to the people.

MARC GARLASCO PUSHES the tape recorder across the table, a little closer to Jeff . . .

This is where one of the stories begins. It's one of many disturbing stories, they are increasingly coming out, and they are all pointing to systematic torture, not just a rogue soldier here or there. It's time for Congressional hearings and war crimes prosecutions. Shouldn't we move forward, though? Yes, we should. We should move forward through this unseemly American conduct, not around it. We need to understand how this could have happened, or else it will occur again at the whim of the military. If it isn't prosecuted, it will occur at the whim of state and local police. We need to look at this conduct up close, as difficult as it is. We need those who were responsible, especially high-ranking officials, to feel intense shame.

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A long-time admirer of Israel is disillusioned

In a U.K. Guardian article entitled, "The Paradox of Israel's Pursuit of Might," long-time admirer of Israel Max Hastings writes of his disillusionment regarding Israel's ambitions:

I was a correspondent there in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur war. It was an extraordinarily moving spectacle, to behold the people of Israel rallying to meet what they perceived as a threat to their national survival. One morning I stood on the Golan Heights and watched Israeli tanks duelling with the Syrians, amid pillars of smoke and flame . . . For someone like me, who enjoyed a love affair with Israel 40 years ago, it is heart-breaking to see the story come to such a pass. It is because so many of us so much want to see Israel prosper in security and peace that we share a sense of tragedy that 61 years after the state was born amid such lofty ideals, it should be led by such a man as Bibi Netanyahu, committed to policies which can yield nothing honourable or lasting.

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