Over Spring break, I went to Ghana on behalf of WomensTrust, a microfinance institution, to help fix their operations. Yet, I didn’t go as a white knight. I was not the savior for a poor, ignorant people, nor were the local people on the staff supplicants to my “developed world knowledge.” I was a partner, someone who had a few specialized skills that could help them and at the same time learn from them. I did not sweep in to grandly dictate to them how things should be. To do so would be to disregard the fact that they were intelligent human beings who knew the situation best—they were, after all, the ones living in it.

Although affording respect to these local people seems obvious, it has not traditionally been the way that Westerners have approached any type of “aid” when they visited upon Africa. The old model involved broad, context-less decisions made by detached overseers from the developed world sitting in temperature-controlled, wood-paneled rooms, sipping tea or coffee.

It was believed that just because something worked in the developed world, it would work anywhere. Pronouncements from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and their precursors created monoculture cash cropping, paradropped aid, and numerous other disastrous policies that numerous critics (including Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, who recently visited Dartmouth) charge as having done nothing to truly help African countries. If anything, this sort of “aid” held them back. These so-called solutions imposed “growth” from the outside without truly developing the foundation for a healthy economy.

But in recent years, the sentiments of the development community have radically shifted. Microfinance and other “sustainable” forms of aid have been embraced as a market solution to poverty. While sustainable aid is not an end-all solution, ever since Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank demonstrated that the poor could and would repay small loans, international aid has been eagerly embracing this new form of development.

But there is still something in this new attitude towards aid that does not address a fundamental criticism of the old regime. While microfinance attempts to spur economic development through loans, which in turn create small businesses and build those local economies that were lacking before, its administration is still largely unilateral. While the intended target of growth is now bottom-up, the policies themselves are still very much top-down.

There may be some local staff. There may even be some representation in the leadership of these institutions by (rich) local people. But essentially, they are still too many of the same people from the old aid regime, making decisions from the developed world that affect people thousands of miles away.

This isn’t to say that most microfinance organizations trying to help Africa have bad intentions. In fact, I’d be highly skeptical if someone tried to claim that they have done no good at all.

The problem, however, with unilateralism, making decisions on high without local context, is that you ignore valuable knowledge that only people who live there know. The rationale before, which still lingers, is that this knowledge is of limited use—the reason that these people are in the state they’re in is because all they have is this knowledge! Although not stated outright, many aid organizations start with the premise that they are helping the helpless and the ignorant. Part of why microfinance was originally slow to catch on was because aid organizations believed that the poor were uneducated and too “unsophisticated” to put loans to any good use.

A recent book called Portfolios of the Poor reveals the folly of that belief. The researchers who wrote the book followed the lives of various families in developing countries below the World Bank defined poverty line of $2 a day. These families recorded their financial transactions in financial diaries, which the authors then analyzed. With these diaries, the researchers discovered that contrary to popular belief, the finances of the poor are not simple at all. The financial life of below-poverty-line families is actually more complicated than the finances of many rich-world families.

Smoothing consumption and “forced savings” are concepts that we learn in economics classes, and use to some degree in our daily lives—but we do so without the urgency that those in the developing world have. For them, money received tomorrow might mean there isn’t anything to eat today—or until next growing season. For them, finance is a matter of having food on the table or not. It is, in some cases, a matter of life or death.

In the developed world, we can have the best intentions but still not know how to best help. Many microfinance institutions give loans only for “business development” purposes. It’s a rational thing to do, academically—after all, if the poor develop a business that can provide them with income, they’ll have the cash flow necessary to repay the loan and raise themselves up.

Food on the table or other types of “consumption loans” don’t necessarily pass this intellectual muster. But oftentimes, in reality, having enough to eat and thus enough strength to work—or being able to send one’s children in school, or being able to pay for transportation to work, or scores of other “consumption” purposes—would do more for generating cash flow and “raising them up” than buying space for a stand.

WomensTrust is a microfinance institution (MFI) run on the ground by locals who also contribute concretely to the strategic direction of the institution in collaboration with a U.S.-based board of directors. The ultimate goal is to eventually make WomensTrust an entirely Ghanaian institution, a project that led me there in order to help finish implementing a management information system (MIS)—something I had chosen during a project that I headed through SEEDS Consulting (Social Enterprise and Economic Development Society) at Dartmouth. Essentially, an MIS is the combination of the IT systems and human procedures that capture, track, and process information in an institution. In this case, the MIS needed to track active clients, loans outstanding, loans needing repaying etc.—basic information for financial institutions, no matter how big or small.
In accordance with the mission of WomensTrust, however, I did not go to Ghana to just arbitrarily remake their loan processes and change how they did things. Before I could do anything, I had to first learn, observe, and understand why they did what they did—and only then offer changes that I believed would best benefit them. I wasn’t arbitrarily telling the Ghanaian staff how to do its job, nor was I blindly surrendering to how things were currently run. I assessed their needs and offered recommendations, just as a consultant in the U.S. offers his or her recommendations to a company’s management team. I wasn’t dealing with children. I was dealing with people worthy of respect—equal partners at the table who were fully capable of both giving and taking criticism.

I sat with them. I asked questions. I observed. While on the surface their processes looked like an irrational mess, the reality was much more subtle and complicated—which I would have never discovered had I waltzed in and assumed that I knew everything that I needed to know. I learned that they used a seemingly inefficient and chaotic agglomeration of paper and Excel for rational reasons. For instance, when I asked why they gave paper booklets to their clients with a mess of stapled receipts instead of formal statements like a bank, I learned that otherwise floating bits of paper could easily get lost in people’s busy lives. In a rural village, one can hardly expect something like online banking. On top of that, many of their clients were illiterate and the simplicity of a receipt per transaction, although messy, could be understood far more easily than lines of text on a bank statement. At the same time, the system truly was messier and more chaotic than it had to be, even with these considerations. Thus, after I understood these factors, I engaged the staff to create a new system that would preserve these elements of understandability while improving internal tracking. Although this is a simplified example, it illustrates the two-way nature of the process.

Engaging the local staff in this way, I quickly found that even though they were “unsophisticated people from Africa” who in many cases had little to no formal education, they most certainly knew what they were doing and were more than capable of this type of dialogue. One staff member, for instance, had only a sixth grade education but a sharp enough intellect to immediately grasp the fundamentals of why such data tracking was necessary—and, I might add, point out some omissions that I had made. Many of these concepts are ones that I’ve had trouble explaining to Dartmouth graduate students. The point here goes beyond mere respect for or deference to local context—instead, it emphasizes the need to understand, in situations like these, that outsiders like me deal with rational human beings, not children or “underprivileged people” to be understood in the abstract. It is this type of feedback and response from both sides that makes institutions like WomensTrust a bottom-up solution to the unilateralism that has previously created developing-world dependence on the charity of the West.

Ultimately, exactly what I did was less important than the way I approached what I did. Dialogue, the philosophy that drives WomensTrust and intitutions like it, is the key to successful aid. Even now, after acknowledging the failures of past development efforts, we often make the mistake of underestimating those we are trying to help. The importance of dialogue is slowly catching on as microfinance and other more “economy-building” types of aid mature, and as we discover their flaws when practiced unilaterally. But beyond the practicalities of the situation and whatever economic and psychological incentives underlie it, understanding this principle is a matter of basic respect. We must recognize that thosewe are trying to help are not merely some alien “other”—they are people like us. Far from wallowing in ignorance, these people are making their way in logical, rational ways though constrained by various challenges inherent in impoverished nations. It is these challenges that we should work together in overcoming. But in doing so, we must remember basic respect for these people as people. To do otherwise is not only patronizing on our part—it is crippling our efforts to truly make an impact.

Science is not democratic. Science is not emotional. Gravity doesn’t care if everyone votes against it. Power won’t make itself perpetual for a while if Congress passes a stimulus. Poison ivy won’t stop that itch if you ask it nicely. The virus killing that child won’t stop no matter how hard and how tearfully his mother begs.

Truth is a difficult notion because no matter how “certain” the word sounds, our conception of it is supremely relative. Putting aside any “emotional” or “spiritual” truth, however, empirical truth—what science measures—cannot be swayed by human feeling or belief.

The world turns. Reality is. All science does is measure it. This seems obvious. But if it is, why does everyone try to change or ignore the science, believing that it will impact empirical truth?

Our society’s scientific plight seems to be a recent phenomenon. Many Americans laugh in the face of decades of climate change research. Nuclear skeptics still buy into some updated notion of the China Syndrome, according to which nuclear waste from a meltdown might burn a hole all the way to China. Evolution is widely thought to have “missing pieces,” despite the debate concluding nearly a century ago. And the media likes to shine on popular psychology, often to the detriment of clinical psychiatry.

We have virtually tossed out the careful, systematic study of the world that helped lead humankind away from superstition and into the modern era. It seems like just one generation ago that our scientists and engineers were the ones we looked up to—when they were the subject of a speech by President Kennedy and were our greatest bulwark against Communism. Now, Americans look up to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

But if we look deeper, we might find a startling and terrifying truth. It may have only been during the fight against Communism that Americans put real stock in their experts. In the late nineteenth century, it didn’t matter what anthropologists said or documented—America ignored its poor until Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives. The public was largely ignorant of the meat packing industry’s disgusting conditions before Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. More recently, in the 1960s, we ignored DDT as a potential threat until Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. What these cases all have in common was that they triggered a massive public reaction, one fueled by emotional resonance. The power of these statements was not in their meticulous documentation—it was in their appeal to primal gut reaction over logical data analysis.

Today, we have a vast apparatus of universities, research institutes, and public intellectuals. But no matter how much we invest in them, we can effectively relegate them to being a vestige of the Cold War era considering how they factor into the American consciousness.

Non-experts happily invent data or challenge scientific studies by merely claiming that it doesn’t “feel right” to them. Even in the public health sphere, we see phenomena like Jenny McCarthy—former Playboy Playmate and B-film actor—now being regarded as more trustworthy on a “cure” for autism than researchers and doctors who have studied the condition for most of their professional lives. When McCarthy calls for parents to avoid vaccinating their children because the standard package of vaccinations “causes autism,” thousands of parents listen—making her responsible for single-handedly reviving long-dead diseases like measles and mumps. When challenged with over twenty studies that disprove a link between autism and vaccination, she once claimed that her son is her science.

To the American public, it seems wrong and “undemocratic” to deny someone that argument. Cold numbers can’t replace warm, nice-sounding words, and the “tyranny of facts” almost seems to be something from an authoritarian nightmare. And so, we listen to those who spout on about science, about public policy, and about everything else that they have no knowledge of—and trust them more than those who we pay to be experts.

Maybe it isn’t so surprising that we only trusted our scientists in an era when we accepted many other authoritarian measures in order to battle totalitarianism.
This underlying culture is not something that Alexis de Toqueville, observer of 18th century America and now darling of the health care debate, wrote about. It isn’t something that we rhapsodize about when exalting American freedom.

But it is real, and part of the reason why we so fervently deny the reality that is climate change. It is part of the reason why we still don’t have nuclear plants while the rest of the world goes on. And it is a large part of why more and more of our brightest minds now go to Silicon Valley start-ups, mega-corporations, and Wall-Street instead of dreaming to be NASA scientists, civil engineers, or medical researchers.

Intellectual firepower only matters when you can use it to reach your goal—now money—without giving a damn about what others might think about your idea.
It is a dangerous trend for a country that arose largely because its spiritual originators in Europe were able to shake off irrationalism and religion, forces that acted as intellectual shackles on the people. A tyranny of facts overcame a tyranny of men.

As we watch our society wrestle with bigger and bigger problems, ignoring what the scientific process tells us, one has to wonder whether we will again fall under the spell of irrationalism, tightly controlled and disseminated by a self-interested elite holding onto power.

The more I watch Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and a host of other anti-rational, anti-fact public figures gain prominence, I cringe.

The more I see others who should know better emulate them in order to get results, like the Democratic Party has begun to do, the more I despair for this country.

Vagina Day, usually shortened to V-Day, embodies a world-wide movement to empower women with knowledge of their bodies, their sexuality, and the dignity and honor that comes with possessing both. Most importantly, V-Day lets people everywhere know that women don’t deserve to be raped, manipulated or abused. In other words: the beatings stop here.

Everyone is aware of the world’s sexist past. One thing most people don’t realize is that the feminist movements of the twentieth century haven’t obliterated sexism or violence against women. In Latin America, gang warfare between drug cartels has led to women being kidnapped and raped. Thailand enjoys a thriving sex trade of women and children. In the Muslim world, women who refuse to wear a veil or a full-body burqa may be subjected to “honor killings” performed by their male relatives. The Japanese government still has not issued an official apology to the thousands of “comfort women” who were abducted from China and Southeast Asia and were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II. Wherever or whenever war may be found, whether it be in Iraq, Bosnia, Vietnam, Darfur, or Nanking, women have been gang-raped, tortured, and killed. Most of the aforementioned atrocities were remedied after the fact, if they were remedied at all. These atrocities should have never occurred in the first place.

Vagina Day began as a play by Eve Ensler called the Vagina Monologues. The aim of these monologues, narrated by women of different ethnicities, cultures, ages, sexual orientations, and economic backgrounds, was to allow men and women to learn more about female sexuality so that it would be honored and respected. You would be surprised to know how little women know about their sex organs and their sexuality, even in the present day. Many women have never had an orgasm, even if they are sexually active. Some older women have never even seen their vaginas and probably would not be able to locate their clitoris if asked.

There is too much misunderstanding and mystery surrounding female sexuality. The wonders of female sexuality and sexual organs were deified by ancient cultures for their ability to create life. In ancient India, both male and female sexuality was understood and encouraged. The symbol for female sexuality, the yoni, held just as much, if not more importance, than the male sex symbol, the lingam.

However, the rise in power of patriarchal religious systems such as Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity throughout the centuries made a major switch from the earlier religions now collectively referred to as “pagan.” Male sexuality was deified while female sexuality was demonized, crushed and effectively silenced. The remnants of this systematic subjugation are still evident today. For example, why is male masturbation widely accepted and female masturbation hardly spoken of? Did you know that as late as the last century, young girls could have their clitoris medically removed if they masturbated too much? According to the Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the last clitoridectomy in the United States occurred in 1948 and was performed on a five year old girl. And you thought “female circumcision,” a.k.a. genital mutilation, only happened in Africa. Did a boy ever have his penis removed for masturbating too much?

The silence and the mystery surrounding female sexuality enable women to be misunderstood, abused and ignored. Many women are afraid of saying the word “vagina.” They use other words to describe “down there.” If women are too uncomfortable to even use the right word to describe their primary sexual organ, how can they voice their sexual desires? How can they defend themselves? Are any men afraid to say the word “penis?

“?The Vagina Monologues empower women to reclaim their bodies, their sex, and their vaginas. Women need to realize that their sex organs and their sexual pleasure don’t belong to their husbands, but to them. Women need to know how to be masters of their own sexual pleasure. They should see masturbation as a liberating force, not as something shameful. Did you know that the clitoris is the only organ in human anatomy whose purpose is solely for pleasure? With 8000 nerve fibers the clitoris has more nerve endings than anywhere else in the body including the mouth, lips, fingers and tongue. That is twice the number of penis. Twice! Can you believe that? Natalie Angier, author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, couldn’t believe it either. If men had such an organ, everyone would know about it. Why is there so little focus on women’s sexual fulfillment?

Right now, most of the world’s focus is on male sexual pleasure, from porn to pole dancers. The world must learn to see female sexuality on the same level as male sexuality. That way, the abuse of females physically, emotionally, psychologically, and sexually will not be excused. Many see masculinity as aggressive while femininity is recessive. This is only because female sexuality remains silent, unknown, mysterious, lost on the world and lost on women themselves. Women are then defenseless when it comes to protecting their displaced sexuality, a sexuality that has been used for centuries to prop up male sexuality. Vagina Day has helped women worldwide reclaim a sexuality that must be able to stand strong and alone on its own two feet.

I encourage women (and men) to read the Vagina Monologues or attend the public readings held on Vagina Days all over the globe. Money raised at these readings goes to providing workshops for women struggling with abuse or hoping to learn more about their sexuality. More importantly, the money also goes towards opening safe houses in places like Africa and India, where women fleeing abuse may have nowhere to turn.

The world is slowly being forced to realize that domestic abuse can’t be ignored. It can be found at all levels of society and doesn’t just go away. Even in a feminist society, domestic abuse and sexism still exist. Those who support Vagina Day are fighting for women who are being abused now, but they are also fighting to prevent women from being abused in the future. Hopefully men’s and women’s mindsets about female sexuality can be changed, and changed for the better.?

I thought Dennis Kucinich was going to be just about the best Democratic congressman I’d ever come across. He was straightforward, told the truth, said all the things I wanted to hear (different from the things most Americans/Democrats want to hear)…. until he started talking about aliens. I was beginning to forgive and forget, let him maintain the best congressman award in my mind, until I heard about Ann McLane Kuster.

Kuster, candidate for the Representative of New Hampshire’s 2nd district, came to speak to a packed Class of 1930 room at the College Democrats meeting last Monday. A quick pre-meeting browse on her website piqued my interest: it looks as though it were designed by whoever created barackobama.com, and she has the support of both EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Turns out she was an Obama delegate at the Denver DNC, and is pro-choice! (No, like she actually says she is pro-choice and doesn’t skirt around the issue with vague and contradictory statements) She is of course opposed to the Stupak amendment, advocates for a public insurance option, and if elected, would insist that the banks pay back the bailouts in full.

To the Class of 1930 room crowd, she said we “[have] two wars we never should have been in”— a more direct and honest statement from a politician than I have heard in a while. A second look at her website, however, left me a little confused. Her issue statement on Afghanistan maintains that we are at war with Al Qaeda, and seemed to form a strong link between our military presence in Afghanistan, and our security at home. I imagine (or hope, rather) the first to be a more honest comment, and the second a “necessary” statement required to gain the votes of Democrats.

While there seem to be a few contradictions, and a few statements obviously devoted to gaining support of moderate democrats on her webpage, she seems more genuinely liberal than any candidate I have seen in a while (since Kucinich, or Barack Obama). What she will do if elected, no one can tell. Despite this, hearing her speak made me willing to once again support a progressive candidate and hope that they will live up to their liberal values, and not let me down.

As Barack Obama continues to massage the “Recovery Act” in an attempt to bridge the disparate demands of Republicans and Democrats over health care, the economy, and the government, energy has once again gained his focus—albeit with a more pro-nuclear tone than before.

Lying somewhere between the low-carbon diets of the donkeys and the insatiable appetites of the elephants, nuclear power appeals to many as a panacea for our rampant energy crisis, especially when this panacea comes from the mouth of our Fearless Leader.

The carbon emissions generated by nuclear power are minimal, and with enough money we can construct power behemoths that will each survive for over forty years. Obama recently stated—to the uproarious applause of both Democrats and Republicans (but mostly Republicans)—that he plans to “triple loan guarantees required … to finance safe, clean nuclear facilities” in order to “revive the nuclear industry in the United States”. Sounds like a squeaky-clean plan, right?

Wrong. First of all, there is no such thing as “safe, clean nuclear power.” Although nuclear power is safe in the sense that it won’t have you choking on smog every time you walk past the local reactor, the fact remains that there is no existing long-term way to dispose of radioactive nuclear waste systematically. Even the fact that Barack Obama describes it as “safe” suggests an intrinsic fear of the poorly studied dangers of nuclear power: we don’t hear people saying that coal mining is “safe” because we assume that it will not precipitate an explosion or permit the construction of a nuclear warhead.

As of now, our methods of nuclear waste disposal are temporary solutions at best and economic and environmental catastrophes at worst. In order to find out exactly what these “solutions” for disposing of waste are, I went to Steele Hall to interview professor Anthony Faiia, professor of Isotopic Chemistry.

DFP: ““How do nuclear power plants normally dispose of waste?”

Professor Faiia: “After a Uranium fuel rod is spent, they will typically put it in a pool inside the power plant until it cools down a little. Then they will seal it in a cement or iron cask, which they then put outside on the premises of the plants… Some of those isotopes will last millions of years, some of them will last hundreds of thousands of years.”

DFP: “Is there any more centralized way of storing the radioactive waste that would be better?”

Professor Faiia: “The truth is that putting nuclear waste all in one place is not the best way to store it. There is too much risk concentrated in one area. People have suggested storing the waste in places like Yucca Mountain, or even sending it into space. But then there is the [problem of] transportation: what happens if the spacecraft full of Uranium 238 explodes before it reaches space, as a handful of spacecraft have in the past? And all those semi trailers making the pilgrimage to Yucca Mountain or wherever would have to drive on the same roads as many civilians.”

DFP: “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable driving next to an 18-wheeler full of radiation.”

Though there have been no additions to our 104 nuclear facilities in America in over thirty years, Obama’s proposal wants to increase this number to 106 with the construction of two new reactors in Georgia. It seems that political inertia has proven to be no obstacle for Obama’s “Recovery Act”.

Unfortunately for nuclear supporters, a group of anti-nuclear progressives has made itself known just across the river in Vermont. Last week, in the state’s Senate chamber, the long, storied life of one such nuclear reactor was cut short. Since Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant’s (VY) first day of operation in 1972, it has provided over a third of Vermont’s electrical power.

If that seems like a long time, it’s even longer when you consider the 70-year half-life of uranium, or the virtually infinite amount of time before it’s completely gone. For what it’s worth, it appears that our nation’s energy schema has taken two steps back and one important step forward.

In front of an audience of over 100 anti-nuclear citizens, who had been staying in hotels in the capitol over the course of the 3-day hearing, a vote of 26-4 overruled Vermont Yankee’s license to operate, effective in 2012. The event was covered in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, ABC, and even The Guardian in the UK. A public ruling to decommission a power plant has not taken place in the US in over 20 years, as such legislation is usually considered by members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

A loophole opened up in 2002 when VY accepted a contract according to which it deferred to the authority of the Public Service Board of Vermont (PSB) in exchange for an increase in power output by 20%. This loophole was further exploited when lobbyists helped to pass Act 160 in 2006, which stated that all nuclear power plants in Vermont needed a “certificate of public good” from the PSB in order to renew their licenses, making it even harder for VY to extend its operation.

And now, what appeared to Vermont Yankee as an understandable bargain seems to have derailed the future of the plant. Thanks to the incremental progress of so many anti-nuclear activists, a slew of once-futile testimonies against the plant made adequate ammunition to take down the giant in a battle akin to David and Goliath.

Citing a water tower collapse and a transformer fire in the last decade—and, more recently, evidence that Yankee not only denied the presence of underground drainage pipes, but also denied tests that found that these pipes had leaked traces of radioactive tritium into our very own Connecticut river—the lobbyists were able to corner Vermont Yankee defendants.

Despite the attempts of VY and Entergy (VY’s parent organization, whose slogan, ironically enough, is “the power of the people”) at corporate coercion, the chances of turning over the Vermont Legislature’s vote are slim.

Bob Walker, director of the Sustainable Energy Resource Group (SERG), reiterated in a phone interview with the DFP that “the Senate’s decision was not dependent on the economics of the situation so much as the issue of trust, or a lack thereof, in Vermont Yankee.”

Other activist groups are not so confident. One of the main groups responsible for the long-standing battle against VY is the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG). In order to look deeper into the fears and ambitions of the activists, I interviewed James Moore, the Director of the Clean Energy Program at VPIRG.

DFP: “Will you be expecting any amount of “corporate coercion” on the part of Vermont Yankee and Entergy to reverse the Senate’s decision?”

J.M.: “Yes, absolutely. The main problem that we’re facing is that we have a [senate] election in November. [In order to renew its contract], Entergy needs permission from the state legislature, and the concern is that they could try to buy votes in the next legislature and overturn what has been accomplished.”

DFP: “What can we do to prevent that from happening?”

J.M.: “Well, we can work to make sure that the people who vote for legislators are educated. If we can expose what is going on enough, I am sure the voters will support closure [of VY].”

DFP: “I heard the figure for decommissioning VY is over $1 billion. Why is it that decommissioning costs so much?”

J.M.: “Well, in that billion-dollar number there are two things. The first is cleaning up the building, getting rid of contamination, digging up foundations, etc. The second part is keeping the radioactive waste on the premises until the federal government comes in and takes it away. That could be decades, since we have no standardized solution for getting rid of that waste in this country.”

DFP: “But Vermont’s annual budget is only about $1 billion, and the state is already in debt. Who is going to pay that cost?”

J.M.: “That is actually a highly debated question. When Entergy bought VY in 2002, it promised to be responsible for the full decommissioning of the plant, and all the clean-up costs. Now they are trying to go back on their promise by deferring the cost to their limited-liability subsidiaries, which presumably would not pay the full price. We don’t want the big parent corporation in Louisiana to take all the profits and then walk away from the liability.”

Although Vermont Yankee has its fair share of problems, it is neither the oldest nor the most decrepit of the 104 nuclear reactors in our country. There is a rising trend of similar management and infrastructure problems in nuclear power plants in the US: 27 of them are still currently leaking radioactive waste.

Even if these leaks have not yet been connected to any widespread health concerns, as is the case with VY, this is no proof that nuclear power is safe. The effects of radiation are long term and sometimes unknown for decades, as was the case after Russia’s Chernobyl incident.

Nor does this take into account the latent potential for weaponizing nuclear material at any nuclear plant. In addition, we must remember that uranium is by no means an unlimited or cheap resource.

In the face of such daunting odds, the success of progressives in Vermont should serve as a model for energy legislation in all states. On our side of the Connecticut River, for example, is Seabrook Nuclear power plant.

Although Seabrook is one of the newest plants in the country, New Hampshire may look to what is happening in Vermont and decide that as Seabrook gets older, New Hampshire must be sure to have a voice in its fate.

Hopefully, President Obama will hear the cries of Vermonters and begin to change his energy policies. There is simply no getting around it: nuclear power is dangerous, unsafe, and an unsustainable long-term energy source.

If Barack Obama must continue to build new plants, we progressives need to make sure to resist by shutting down old plants, exposing corporations like Entergy for their lies, and looking for alternative sources of energy.

Warning: the details of the sexual violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo given in this article are disturbing.

“Yes, it’s difficult to hear about,” said playwright and activist Eve Ensler in an interview with The Women’s Media Center, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear.” The 2009 V-DAY spotlight is not a story of Valentine’s Day love. It addresses the prevalent rape of women by armed groups in an Eastern Congo conflict that has been supposedly “over” since’99.Most people prefer to avoid hearing tales about thousands of women being gang raped, developing fistula, contracting HIV, or having gun barrels and sticks shoved into their vaginas. But these aren’t just tales: they are the true stories of real women. In order to put a stop to practices that have now become commonplace, we must listen and take action.

The’99 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement officially ended a conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that involved several African nations, a conflict that developed as an outgrowth of the mid-1990s Rwandan genocide. However, foreign troops remain in the Congo today, as do numerous armed groups representing different foreign and domestic interests, as well as ethnic groups. The unending conflict has displaced over two million civilians, caused the deaths of another 2.5 million and the rape of over 200,000 women and girls—taking only the years 1998-2001 under consideration.

Even these horrifying numbers don’t accurately represent the conflict’s true devastation: estimating the true number of women, girls, and boys raped and sexually assaulted is nearly impossible. For fear of being stigmatized or ostracized, victims keep silent about their attacks and refuse to seek medical treatment.

Sexual violence against women and girls has been committed by every armed group in the Eastern Congo, opportunistic bandits, and even a few U.N. troops. Survivors who have sought medical treatment and support tell similar stories: Many were attacked while working in the fields, or kidnapped in looting raids on their villages. Many were subjected to rape more than once, and by multiple men.

Twenty-year-old Generose N., from Kabare told Human Rights Watch her story:
I was on the road from Kalonge to Mudaka. I had money that my fiance gave me to buy a wedding dress. A soldier attacked me on the road. He said things in Kinyarwanda. [Later she said he was Hutu]. He took me away to a place in the forest where there were three other soldiers. They roughed me up. This was August 8 [2001] and they kept me until August 25 and each one of them raped me every day.

This is a far too common story: 3,500 incidents of rape were reported in North and South Kivu (in Eastern Congo) during the first six months of 2008 alone. Fifty percent of the survivors were under the age of five. In the aftermath of the rape, survivors are stigmatized by their community, rejected by their loved ones, and often become pregnant, contract HIV, or develop fistulas. Fistulas are ruptures that appear between the vagina, bladder, and/or rectum, which cause extreme pain and frequently interfere with women’s ability to control her urination and defecation. They can be repaired with a costly surgery—but few women have the ability to travel to a hospital, while underfunded medical centers are already overwhelmed by the treatment of the small percentage of rape victims who do come to them.

Even though rape has unfortunately often been utilized a tool of war, the figures reported in the DRC are of an unprecedented magnitude. Armed groups have used rape to disable community and thereby win and maintain control over territories they claim. After violent rape, many survivors are unable to give birth, and they are often turned away by their fiances and husbands; this, in addition to mass looting and killing, disrupts individual families and whole communities.

I wish I could end this article on a positive note, but I’m afraid that is virtually impossible. Perhaps hope can be found in the increasing numbers of Congolese women now telling their stories to the world in hopes of preventing these acts from reoccurring. More hope might be found in the arrest of Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, accused of war crimes by numerous human rights groups, in Rwanda earlier this year. His arrest could possibly lead to the punishment of more perpetrators of sexual violence.

A real solution to the crisis must involve the leadership and participation of many nations and the U.N. to demobilize armed groups, achieve a peace settlement, punish war crime offenders, and prevent rape. Hopefully, the awareness raised by the international V-Day spotlight will inspire a renewed effort to stop sexual violence in the Eastern Congo and to end the persistent and devastating conflict.

Once again, angry people are challenging the constitutionality of the federal “Hate Crimes Act.” This time it’s three Michigan ministers and the Michigan chapter president of the American Family Association who allege that the act threatens their right of free speech and religion—essentially, their right to viciously condemn homosexuality.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs “have a deeply held religious belief that the Bible is the unalterable and divinely inspired Word of God.” So, the only reason they’re preaching hate is because the Bible, the “ultimate authority,” says so.
But there’s a catch: you can’t pick and choose where the Bible has authority. By stating that the Bible is the “ultimate authority for both belief and behavior,” these ministers assert that they live their lives in accordance with this claim. However, these men do not live what they preach; they do not obey all explicit rules commanded in the Bible.

Logically, it is possible to use the laws of Leviticus, which condone the killing of homosexuals, to justify anti-gay bigotry. Leviticus 20:13 clearly states: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

But what else does the Bible tell us to do? Don’t touch a woman on her period: “When a woman has a discharge of blood which is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening” (Leviticus 15: 19). Grow yourself a Beard: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads” (Leviticus 19:27). Stone all psychics, wizards, and the like to death: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:27). Kill all adulterers: “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10)… And so on.

Obviously, these three anti-gay pastors and Michigan AFA president do not unequivocally follow literal biblical rules, or we’d see them with foot long beards and multiple arrests for stoning adulterers. Therefore, these men cannot claim that “the Bible is the ultimate authority for [their] beliefs and behavior,” because like other religious practitioners, they pick and choose holy verses to suit their own moral purposes.

The three pastors and Michigan chapter president of AFA allege that the sole reason for their bigotry against homosexuals is their faith in the authority of Bible verses. They would like for us to believe that their deeply held religious convictions are the ultimate cause for their antipathy towards gays, which would absolve themselves of all responsibility. But quoting the Bible does not excuse them of the public ministry of hate.

Let’s not forget that many Christians choose to live their lives according to the biblical verses of love, such as: “With justice you shall judge your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:15) and “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). These commands are as authoritative and distinct as those found anywhere else in the Bible, and contrast explicitly with homosexual intolerance stated in other parts of the book.

It is important to realize that people use different biblical passages to justify a multitude of actions, precisely because the passages cover such a wide range of interests. Deeply held religious convictions are used only to explain and justify human actions, whether they are actions of love, or denouncements of hate.

If I choose to hate, it’s not hard to cherry-pick Leviticus 20:13 as my defense. Conversely, if I want to love, it is just as easy to cite Leviticus 19:18. Therefore, we find that religious convictions are not the cause of human love or hate, but rather the results of human agency and will. The choice originates not from an abstracted external source, but rather from within each individual. Anti-gay bigots will do well to remember this distinction.

Just as one chooses to not stone witches, disobedient children, and atheists to death, one also chooses to either love his neighbor or condemn him. If you decide to condemn homosexuals, you cannot simply cite the Bible as the originating authority for your beliefs. After all, it’s not the “ultimate authority” of the Bible that influences homosexual intolerance, but the perverse appeal of hate itself.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called a bunch of liberal activists “retarded” for running ads against Democrats who opposed progressive aspects of healthcare, and the Wall Street Journal of all places, spilled the beans. Now Sarah Palin is upset because her son has Down Syndrome and she wants Rahm Emanuel fired—just this once, I agree with her.

Not because “retarded” disparages mentally handicapped people—he wasn’t talking about mentally handicapped people—rather he should lose his job because he’s an idiot for alienating his own political base.

What Emanuel probably meant to say is that it isn’t prudent to upset senators who are needed to pass healthcare reform. While true, the progressive political ads were actually pretty smart. What is not smart, however, is to upset the people who vote for you.

When you do that, you tend to lose office. That’s what Rahm Emanuel seems to not understand. He’s fixated on moving pieces around in the Senate. His thought process must be: “How can I get Senator X to do Y when he is beholden to Special Interests A, B, C, D, E…etc.?” Great. But politicians are ultimately beholden to the people who vote, or would vote for them. Piss off the people, they don’t vote for you, and you lose office.

Within the Democratic Party itself, “liberals” outnumber “centrists” by a wide margin. “Liberals” also tend to vote more heavily in primaries. So if a Democratic senator seriously upsets the “liberals” that’s a problem.

Liberals can mobilize against the aforementioned senator, and knock him out in the primary. And what is the only real goal of any good politician? To stay in power. The threat of losing power will have a greater impact on a senator than any sort of cajoling would. Senators do what lobbyists tell them to because lobbyists give them money that they need to win elections.

If liberals can present a bigger threat than a lack of campaign donations, then senators will tow the liberal line rather than the lobbyist line.

So why are the liberals “retarded?” The liberals want their agenda items to pass. By mobilizing their base they can easily unseat whatever Democratic legislator they want.

Why shouldn’t they run ads scaring the hell out “centrist” democrats, so as to encourage them to tow the liberal line? That’s the line they want. Would centrists otherwise do what the liberals want them to? Of course not—that’s why liberals are upset in the first place. Centrists are not liberal enough for the people who vote for them. Rahm Emanuel is playing stupid politics.

The “people” vote in elections. They may be susceptible to advertisements, paid for by lobbyists—but they aren’t lemmings. You ignore their concerns and interests and they destroy you. That is the way it works in a democracy.

Does Rahm Emanuel get that? Does he think that by “pandering” to the “liberal base” he’ll lose the “moderates”? The moderates also wanted a public health insurance option and who was he pandering to then? The crazy minority who didn’t want the public health insurance option? No. He’s pandering to craven, self-interested senators who would fold in a second if they thought they’d lose power by rejecting their base.

People who could fire Rahm should be asking themselves: why do people hate the healthcare bill now? Why did more than 60% of Americans support a public health insurance option and only 30% or so support the present bill? Could it be that Americans don’t like corrupt, back handed deals with craven special interests without any visible, overt benefit to themselves? No! No!

Actually, yes. Yes! Yes! That’s the reason. The bill now exudes sleaze and most Americans don’t like that. Americans want their government to do something for them, or not do anything at all. It’s either, “a bill that helps me and seems on the level,” or, “no deal.” And in this instance, the people have chosen the latter option.

People who could fire Rahm should also be asking themselves: why, in a New York-CBS Poll yesterday did only 8% of Americans want their congressperson re-elected. Why did 79% of Americans think special interests controlled the United States Congress? Because of people like Rahm Emanuel, who work within a broken, corrupt system, but have no intention of fixing it.

Does President Obama want to be perceived the same way the Congress is perceived? Does he want an 8% approval rating?

What Rahm says is, “Great, let them hate me, let me be the bad guy, they still love the president after all.”

Assuming, anyway, that they still do love him. But even if they do, it may be because they still feel the President has their best intentions in mind. What happens in a year, when he still hasn’t done what they want him to do—when he’s still beholden to special interests and when he still seems too weak to do most things he promised to do? What happens then? Will people still love him? Will people go out and vote for him in droves?

The Obama Administration should get the message: Get rid of Rahm Emanuel.

Yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow.

Yesterday.

Replace him with some guy like Howard Dean.

Howard Dean won an enormous number of seats in 2006 as head of the DNC. They should get rid of Geithner too while they’re at it. He’s not evil but he is stupid (despite his education).

The economy did collapse under his watch. Why employ a stupid person when you can hire a smart guy like Joe Stiglitz? Not to mention people hate Geithner as much as (if not more than) they hate Rahm.

Congress, the Beltway, has lost touch with reality, and although Rahm Emanuel may be in touch with the Beltway, that won’t do his party a whole lot of good when election time comes. Did President Obama ever want to stick up to the special interests? Did he think he could both be a conciliator and an agent of change?

I can see how one might say: “Look, Rahm is evil, but he’s a necessary evil,” but Democrats are already losing seats on Rahm Emanuel’s watch, and the primary hasn’t even happened yet. Why does Obama keep him? Does Obama like him? Does Obama want lobbyist money for the next president election? Remember who raised his money the first time around? Individual donors—people who are pissed off at Rahm Emanuel-tactics and will be less inclined to give next time unless they change.

Rahm needs to go. It’s not only good politics. It’s just smart.

American TV news is famously factious. In this country we have preserved the individual’s right to trust any, all or none of the many domestic, “serious” TV news channels like Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, among others. This gaggle of non-government-funded news reporting affirms, to a degree, our Americanness often at the cost of accuracy and of candid, level-headed discussion of world events.
Having backed away from the forefront of international news reporting, today’s America has no unbiased, singularly multi-voiced channel for world news, and we are left then to listen around for one. Seek and ye shall find…

Cue the Al Jazeera news channel, which emerged in Qatar a year after a successful generational coup in 1995.  Al Jazeera first descended from BBC’s Saudi station, which was dropped when the Saudis attempted to censor the news. It was then picked up as the first ever 24-hour Arabic news channel by the recently self-appointed Emir of Qatar.

The BBC’s influence is clearly apparent in the tone and aesthetic of Al Jazeera’s shows and website. It is bold and objective—much of the time an Al Jazeera report will opine in one direction and rapidly follow up with a dissenting report from a fresh, foreign perspective. This honest and objective presentation of world events, commonly called “contextual objectivity,” has so far earned the network international acclaim and made Al Jazreera English, its newest network, America’s best new chance at a grown-up domestic media scene.

Al Jazeera is not without some bias. While devoted to “contextual objectivity,” it is unafraid to take a clear stance on a regionally significant issues. When Al Jazeera Lebanon warmly welcomed home (from prison) anti-Israeli terrorist Samir Kuntar in July 2008, the network was forced to admit to having violated its own ethics. The station responsible for airing the story threw a party in honor of his release, part of a 2008 Isreal-Hezbollah prisoner exchange. Israel took the station’s behavior personally, promising to boycott Al Jazeera, a move which later prompted a formal apology from Al Jazeera’s general director. It was not until last spring that the Israeli government sanctioned Al Jazeera—but the sanctions were temporary, a response to Qatar’s having shut down its Israeli trade office (itself a move made in response to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip).

According to a March 2009 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, this Qatari-Israeli conflict climaxed in a summit after which Hamad bin Jassim, the Qatari foreign minister, declared that the two nations, “which had formerly enjoyed a working relationship,” would “be cutting ties.” Tensions with Israel, stemming largely from Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza, also contributed to enduring American mistrust of Al Jazeera English, a newer network contingent founded in 2006. Now, Al Jazeera is poised to change the world of news media.

Contrary to the American-Israeli perception, the Al Jazeera network is not anti-Semitic. The news itself, the unaltered truth of what’s going on, cannot discriminate even if it wants to. Only a tilted presentation may steer facts into anti-Semitic territory. And such a tilt, remarkably, has no place in the game with Al Jazeera English, which recently made its way to Canadian cable thanks largely to the exuberant efforts of former Canadian Broadcasting Company executive Tony Burman. Canadian Jewish media leaders are reportedly planning to protest AJE’s introduction, in expectation of its perceived anti-Semiticism. As Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B’nai Brith Canada, has argued, “the introduction of an English-language Al Jazeera into Canadian homes can only provide yet another outlet for vicious anti-Israel propaganda.” Yet North Americans should welcome this kind of controversy. It is exactly because of Al Jazeera’s devotedly unbiased presentation of world news—both sides of Gaza, for example—that this network is so controversial. The most boat-rocking opinions are hoisted to the forefront of the network’s programming, where they belong.

Take Al Jazeera’s coverage of Iran, for example. A recent online headline, referring to Secretary Clinton’s call on Iran to reconsider its nuclear programming, had three video links below: one an Al Jazeera interview with John Kerry; another, the Iranian view of a nuclear standoff with Mashaie arguing that “there is nothing illegal about 20% enrichment;” and another, an explanation of Iranian political gridlock since the 31-year-old revolution. Al Jazeera’s thorough reporting style offers many views of an issue, each set prominently and credibly against the others. Al Jazeera has the journalistic gumption, the influence, and the reputation for fairness to put together such a story.

  But the U.S. has a complicated relationship with the network. Before 2001, America’s stance on the already burgeoning Al Jazeera was that of a disinterested older brother, proud of its perceptible progress but unconcerned with its potential. Then the Osama tapes made a splash: after September 11, Al Jazeera released videos of Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, pleased with themselves, celebrating and defending the attacks they had orchestrated.  The American government accused Al Jazeera of propagating terror, but when the network responded that its only intention was to make known as much true information as possible, many American news stations nationally rebroadcast the tapes.

Still, in October of 2001, Colin Powell—who particularly disapproved of Al Jazeera—recommended that the Emir of Qatar disband the station entirely. Tension grew when an American missile destroyed Al Jazeera’s Kabul headquarters in November of 2001. One of the network’s cameramen was detained, uncharged, at Guantanamo Bay for more than six years, during which time he was asked repeatedly whether Al Jazeera was a front for al-Qaeda. Most recently, a 2008 US election broadcast on Al Jazeera English, including an interview with a Sarah Palin supporter who claimed that Obama “regards white people as trash,” blew up on YouTube. And again, Colin Powell accused Al Jazeera as being anti-American, arguing at the time that “those kinds of images going out on Al Jazeera are killing us.” He apparently does not understand the idea of contextual objectivity.

Truly democratic reporting is distasteful to the United States—for decades, it has deemed itself the premier promoter of democracy unto the lesser world.  We are slow to change here in the U.S., and it is no surprise that Canada would pick up Al Jazeera English before us. But the network’s popularity has escalated as of late. Eventually, we can guess, it will make its way into American homes. Although many Americans still think of Al Jazeera as “Terror TV,” there’s hope for progress—so listen up. Al Jazeera has reached our shores despite years’ resistance, and it is a-knockin’ on the front door. Al Jazeera English is waiting, with all the characteristic persistence of the truth, to be received into America’s living rooms.

Diversity has been coming up a lot lately. The First Year Forum held a talk on race at Dartmouth recently. A week ago Beta had a student panel called “Branded” on the stereotypes that limit the Dartmouth experience, and my floor had a meeting about floor diversity. And of course, it’s Black History month. It seems like the discussion of diversity is everywhere and everyone has a unique opinion. But just what is diversity, and when have we achieved it?

The celebration of diversity is hailed as an emblem of progress in the realm of race relations. But when looked at closely, it’s not very progressive, or at least it’s not the most progressive option.

Diversity today sometimes boils down to pointing out that there is a white, black, and person of Asian descent in a room without bloodshed, so yeah us! However, while pointing out diversity points out that race relations have taken a turn for the better, it only continues to draw attention to race instead of transcending it. Real diversity, which exists in the hearts of the people, does not need to be noted—it simply exists.

In A Paler Shade of White, Eric Arnesen writes that “the very solidarity of language, of clear cut and well-understood categories and definitions of who was black and who was white, has given way to the widely accepted notion that race is not a biological category or a trans-historically fixed phenomenon, but is itself, socially constructed.”

Now if this is true, which I believe it is, then pointing out diversity of race is also a construct. It is excitement over a particular point in history where race is no longer taken as a natural indication to certain proclivities, and people of different races can exist in peace and harmony, but the troublesome notion of race still exists.

This age of diversity is not the end-all of racial history, but simply a happier period of it. Now we should focus on progress and trying to move beyond this period of celebrated diversity. The fact that diversity is held up as the ideal that institutions must be pushed to attain reveals that diversity does not address the real root of the problem: continuing to use race as a social category.

Also, the fact that diversity is applauded and pointed out shows that we are still far from diversity being the norm. Diversity is all well and good, but it is annoying to draw attention to it with such glee as if we’re being exceptionally good for exhibiting it. This means that diversity is not yet accepted as a common good.

Morgan Freeman’s views on Black History Month correlate to this celebratory stance on diversity. In a 60 Minutes interview in 2005, he said, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” As Freeman rightly points out there is no “white history month,” for it is commemorated all year long. Freeman goes on to say to the interviewer, “I am going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” because the labels of “white” and “black” merely bring attention to and reinforce race (or racism). Pointing out race or diversity of race does not do anything to de-construct the divides of race.

I’m not advocating silence on race or the cessation of the social and academic dialogue on race; we still need these things for progress. But we should understand that a diversity of labels is not true diversity. We should understand that it is possible to move towards being a society that doesn’t need to draw attention to race, a society that doesn’t need to feel good about diversity, because lack of diversity is no longer a problem.