As I fretted last night about our upcoming trip to see the relatives, my possible lack of preparation (meaning gifts), and then, invariably. about the whole meaning of our wildly commercialized holiday season, I decided to take advantage of our recent winter storm here on the east coast, and headed to our local sledding hill.

It was the best idea I’ve had in weeks.

My wife and I didn’t realize it when we were buying our home in suburban Washington, D.C., but one of the major perks of this particular location is the middle school a few blocks down the road, and in particular the hill on its north side. The D.C. area is not known for snow, and even less so as our climate changes, but when we are lucky enough to get it, the middle school is transformed into one of the best sledding hills in the world.

The hill stretches a good 150 yards wide. Neatly bisected by a single line of stairs, the western half of the hill is a series of large earthen terraces, made to provide seating for the games in the soccer field beyond, while the eastern half is a long, smooth slope. On a good day after a snowfall, you will find literally hundreds of local residents sledding here. Even at midnight on a weeknight you will still find a couple dozen folks, usually teenagers, hitting the slope.

Conditions were excellent last night, dangerously so for a man of my age and injury history. The two feet of snow that had fallen a few days ago had been packed hard by a innumerable sled runs, and as a result of daily melting and refreezing, the surface was icy slick. All those runs had also created a series of mogels, or small hills on the side of the long slope, not unlike ripples of sand left by waves on the beach; each of them offered the inattentive or foolhardy a chance to go flying through the air.

Like my lunatic godson who wants to learn the skeleton, and who was recently seen going headfirst on his skateboard down a local street (he had to promise his mom he wouldn’t put the video on Facebook), I decided to go headfirst myself, as it seemed to offer at least a small margin (or was it an illusion?) of steering control as I raced down the hill. The night was crystal clear and not too cold, and as I lay at the bottom of the hill, laughing and catching my breath, I gazed upon a panorama of twinkling stars.

But the best thing about a good sled hill is the people, and as noted above you are never alone even if you come by yourself. It occurred to me that being on the sled hill is not unlike being in a community garden: everyone is happy, friendly, and wanting to share the experience. It wasn’t long before I was asking one of the teenagers if I could borrow their (obviously superior) sled, and it didn’t take long after that for a couple of them to convince me that the best way to go was with the two of them piled on top of me. We made it halfway down before spilling off the sides, yelping and shrieking as we did. They then tried to convince me to go over the jump some of them had built. I told them how much my chiropractor cost.

Run after run, and standing in groups at the top, it was wonderful to listen to the teenagers that evening. In other circumstances, these could well be what we older folks would call sullen or cynical youth. But on that sled hill they laugh and cavort like, well, like kids. For that matter so do the young adults. So do I.

There was nothing particularly Norman Rockwell about this tableau. Plenty of cell phones and Blackberries were in evidence, and plastic sleds had largely replaced the trusty Flexible Flyer. It was just a group of people having some simple fun.

And also, probably as a direct result, a profoundly good time. With no money, with little or no equipment (some sled on pieces of cardboard), people of all ages come together to enjoy themselves in nature, and for a time, it becomes as peaceful and as joyous as any scene of a bygone America Rockwell ever painted. It is such moments that can transform us, and it certainly transformed my surly demeanor. It reminded me of the powerful joy that can come from being with our fellow beings – and of what these holidays should be about. It was a wonderful blessing, and a great way to start my trip.

May we all be revitalized by similar blessings in the year ahead. With my best wishes for your holiday season, and the new year, Gordon

[The following commentary is featured in the December issue of the Silver Spring/Takoma Park Voice.]

The day after Thanksgiving saw a repetition of the strange ritual with which Americans celebrate the beginning of the holiday season: millions of us rush out to start buying things. Many even stand in line for stores opening as early as 3am, crashing through the entrance the second the doors are unlocked. At least no one was trampled to death this year.

As a youngster I had a much more benign view of the holiday season.  Of course I loved the presents, I even loved purchasing them for others with my limited allowance. I loved the twinkle of the lights, the smell of the trees, the wrapping paper, and the music.

But as a child, even a more-or-less secular one, what really moved me was the feeling of universal good will – the idea that during this one time of year, at least, we were actively encouraged to set aside our grievances and demonstrate our love for the people around us. The gifts represented that love.

Those gifts have taken on a different cast over the years. In addition to the increasing importance of their monetary value, they’ve also moved from being purely personal gestures to becoming an economic necessity. Last year and this one, especially, we are bombarded with messages that our national economy hinges to a large degree on how much we Americans spend between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. (“Black Friday” is so named because it’s the time many retailers start making their profit for the year, or go into the black.)

And for the second Christmas in a row, that outlook is not very good.

It wasn’t always like this. While it’s estimated that consumer spending currently accounts for about  70% of the U.S. economy, it wasn’t until shortly after World War II that consumerism became our national ritual and identity, and the engine of our economy.

This development was not an accident. Our government pushed increased consumption as the way to keep the economy perpetually growing and corporations happy. (And it still does – witness former President Bush’s advice after 9/11 that we all go shopping.) Industrial designers created the concepts of planned and perceived obsolescence, whereby we are convinced or compelled to regularly replace perfectly good stuff because it’s not as fast or big or cool-looking as the newer version, or because they’ve stopped making replacement parts for the older models. Advertising did their part by constantly telling us that we couldn’t be happy, or properly show our love for others, without buying more of everything.

So it has gone for the past half century. But there are some big, big problems with this economic model, and we are now bumping up against them. The ever accelerating rate of global resource depletion is one of them, and Americans are especially to blame: we comprise 5% of the world’s population, yet consume 30% of the world’s resources. (And it’s not just oil, but also forests, metals, clean water… you name it.)

Products that are cheap enough for us to buy but still make a healthy profit for the corporations can also take a terrible toll of social injustice, whether it’s prison labor making our Christmas ornaments in China, sweat shops producing our apparel in Mexico (and so many other countries), or the thousands of Congolese children who drop out of school to mine coltan, a mineral used in the production of cell phones, DVDs, video games and computers – and one which has helped finance ongoing war in Africa.

And where does all this stuff go when we throw it away, which we must do in order to keep buying new stuff?  Where is “away,” exactly? Plastic, which comprises so much of what we buy (as well as the bags we put it in), is a perfect case in point. Originally designed to last forever, which it pretty much does, plastic has nonetheless become the quintessential “disposable” material, and much of what we discard ends up in the oceans. Researchers estimate that the “Great Garbage Patch,” collected by currents in the northern Pacific Ocean, is twice the size of Texas and growing – and it’s only one of five on the planet.  Worse still, our personal trash and pollution pales in comparison to the amount put out by industries producing our consumer goods.

(For an excellent synopsis of these issues, watch “The Story of Stuff” by local activist Annie Leonard.)

The point of all this is not to feel bad about the holidays, but to think about the consequences of what we buy – to buy from local stores, not chains, to buy items produced with clean energy, and without unjust or downright criminal labor practices.

And ultimately, to buy less. We need to realize that our spending during the holidays will not jump start the economy out of recession because the problem runs much deeper than that.  The economic model of consumerism – of making more so we can consume more so we can make more so we can consume more – is not sustainable, not for human beings and not for the planet we live on. In fact, it’s largely responsible for our current economic situation, and asking an increasingly jobless, debt-ridden population to supercharge their consumerism for the holidays will only drive us further into debt while creating few if any lasting jobs.

Of course reversing our economic paradigm of the past 60 years will not be easy.  Americans still love to shop, and public policies still favor building new homes over refurbishing existing ones, and building new roads for more cars over mass transit. But the tide is slowly turning toward sustainability and clean energy, toward stewardship and thrift.

We can give these positive trends a boost during the holidays by buying consciously, buying less, and remembering that the gifts we buy are only representations of the love, which is what we all really want for the holidays. And you don’t need to buy something in a mall to give someone your love.

So now it’s official. President Obama is going to escalate the war in Afghanistan. (Or as some are calling it, Vietghanistan.)

Given the rapid increase of U.S. troops in that nation (remember, Obama already sent more troops there this past spring), and the creeping withdrawal of troops from Iraq, our nation will now have more troops in those two countries combined than at any time during the Bush Administration. Yee ha.

Ironically, President Obama chose to announce this war escalation only a week before going to Norway to pick up his Peace Prize. One has to wonder if the Nobel Committee is having second thoughts.

This war escalation is, however, just one of a number of military, intelligence and foreign policy decisions in which the change promised by Barack Obama has turned out to be more of the same, following the terrible policies of his predecessor.

As has been noted previously in this space, President Obama is continuing the Bush policy of renditions (terrorism suspects being shipped to secret locations overseas for “interrogation”), as well as the Bush policy of indefinite detention without charges (it will just happen at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan now, instead of Guantanamo Bay).  And here is another you might have missed in the lead up to the Thanksgiving holiday last week: it was announced that President Obama will also, like President Bush, refuse to sign the International Treaty to Ban Landmines.

This baffling, appalling decision puts us at odds with most countries in the civilized world, including all our NATO allies. And it is yet another indication that on a number of crucial issues, the Pentagon seems to be calling the shots.

To watch (or read) Amy Goodman’s interview with Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch on Obama’s landmine decision, click here. (The video opens with a State Department spokesman who is delightfully confused, and embarrassingly unable to explain this decision.)

And for Jon Stewart’s mighty funny take on Obama’s new war strategy, including his channeling of George Bush and the speeches we would have all preferred to see, click here.

Keep your chin up!

[We have many things to be thankful for as we approach Thanksgiving, and one of them is that most of us in this country have never experienced the horror and utter devastation of war.  As President Obama deliberates sending yet more troops to Afghanistan, he would do well to listen to the citizens of that country - especially the women. They are quite clear on what war is doing to their homeland, and they've had enough. The following article is printed in the current November issue of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Voice.]

It’s often said that if women ran the world, there would be no war.

Until that happy day arrives, it would be helpful if current leaders at least listened to women before making decisions on war, but as President Obama continues his deliberations on troop deployments in Afghanistan, his war council is, predictably, dominated by men.

Women play an infinitely more significant role in a U.S peace movement that opposes this war, and every once in a while one of them breaks through the barricades to that inner circle, as when Jodie Evans, co-founder of the ubiquitous women’s anti-war group Code Pink, got into a recent fundraiser and was able to make her case directly, if briefly, to Mr. Obama.

But listening to women first and foremost means listening to those most affected by war. And who, during this prolonged debate over our strategy, is listening to the women of Afghanistan?

One group of Afghan women whose voice needs to be heard is the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. Founded in 1977, RAWA (www.rawa.org)  is both a humanitarian and a political organization, operating schools and mobile health care centers at the same time they fight for secular democracy in their country, which has meant fighting against the Soviet occupation, the Taliban, and now also the U.S. occupation. It is remarkable that an organization of secular women could survive so long in a country controlled by violent anti-woman Islamic fundamentalists – RAWA’s founder and many key activists have been killed -  and that alone should be reason enough to hear them out.

Zoya, a leader of RAWA, has been on a speaking tour of the U.S. coinciding with the 8 year anniversary of the war, and listening to her speak is a startling revelation.  The daily reality for most women in this desperately poor, war-torn nation is beyond what most of us can even imagine.  Scarce drinkable water, no electricity, and little food are compounded by a society where girls and women are still regularly beaten, raped and killed with impunity.

When asked what the U.S. and the world community can do to help, Zoya presents a clear-headed (if challenging) alternative to our current policy, one that includes disarmament of the fundamentalist groups, withdrawing support from the war criminals and drug lords who now sit in Afghanistan’s Parliament and positions of local power, and giving support – and funding – to local democratic organizations, or civil society.

And Zoya is quite clear on one other point: get the U.S. troops out, now.

This last point is not universally held, even among women. Some U.S. women activists returning from a recent trip to Afghanistan caused a minor controversy in the movement by suggesting a U.S. withdrawal should be “responsible,” an ill-defined descriptive which means, if nothing else, slower. They are saying this because of the fear expressed to them, by some in Afghanistan, of the violence that might follow the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

This is completely understandable. Yet to Afghan women such as Zoya, it is not persuasive, and she rebuts these calls for a slower withdrawal with a bracing critique of U.S. failure in Afghanistan, one that should be familiar even to those who know little more than what the U.S. mainstream media tells us. As Zoya notes:

* The Taliban already controls or heavily influences about 80% of Afghanistan outside of Kabul. (Indeed, that’s why it’s not safe to travel outside the capital.)

* The U.S./NATO occupation has not demonstrated, in 8 years, that it can give Afghanistan any measure of security, and it’s insulting to Afghanis to insist they endure continued occupation in pursuit of this illusion. Zoya heavily sites continued U.S. and NATO bombings, general lawlessness and lack of any justice system, coupled with the utter corruption of the current government.

* The U.S. is already talking with Taliban leaders in hopes of reaching some deal  (even while our forces continue to arrest or kill their young foot soldiers in the name of the war on terror).

These last two points speak directly to the types of “leaders” we’ve been setting up to follow our occupation of Afghanistan, and it’s not a pretty picture. Afghan President Hamid Karzai just oversaw a clearly fraudulent election, yet will be rewarded with another term in office. Corruption is rampant (Afghanistan regularly scores at the top of global corruption measures), and Karzai’s own brother is widely known to be a leading figure in the country’s massive opium trade – as well as being on the CIA payroll, according to the NY Times.

The opposition doesn’t get any better. Abdulah Abdulah, the man who just declined to participate in the run-off election against Karzai, is the former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan during the post-Soviet rule of the Northern Alliance (1992-1994), a period so brutal it’s what Afghanis refer to as their civil war. In the eyes of RAWA and others the Northern Alliance are war criminals themselves – they simply shave their beards and wear Western clothes. And they hold major positions in the Karzai government, and in Parliament.

Zoya goes so far as to assert that the Northern Alliance is happy to keep their old enemies the Taliban around, since their presence guarantees continued funding and support from the U.S. government.

Of  course, the twisted logic of pitting violent local thugs against each other and fueling the conflict with weapons is hardly a new idea in U.S. foreign policy. It’s why we propped up a corrupt and unpopular South Vietnamese government in the 1960s, why we aided Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, and why we have supported Sunni tribal leaders (delightfully rebranded “The Awakening”)  with guns and cash during the current Iraq war. It’s also why our CIA supported Osama bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and why we supported the Northern Alliance when we attacked the Taliban.

Unfortunately, such an arrangement almost always works out badly for the people on the ground. Particularly women. And particularly in Afghanistan.

It’s so bad that, in Zoya’s opinion, a civil war wouldn’t be much worse.  And when pressed by a reporter, Zoya said she’d rather die in a civil war than in a U.S. bombing . At least she would know she died fighting against the corrupt, fundamentalist forces who oppose a moderate, secular democracy in Afghanistan – and not at the hands of an occupying army that supports many of those same forces.

The key to any positive change for Zoya is disarmament. Human rights, women’s rights and democracy will never grow let alone flourish in a country overrun by heavily armed fundamentalists. She would even tolerate the presence of U.S. forces for another year in her country if they would focus their efforts on disarmament and the prosecution of war criminals, but barring that, she wants them to get out, and now.

Because one thing Zoya and the women of RAWA know from experience is that more men with guns will not solve their problems in Afghanistan. And it doesn’t matter if they are Taliban, Northern Alliance, or 40,000 more U.S. troops.

Here’s a prayer that someone at the White House hears this wise counsel from the women of Afghanistan.

Is the House Health Care Bill Better Than Nothing?

Unless you investigate well-past the mainstream media, you can be forgiven for knowing very little if anything about what’s actually in the health care reform bill passed by the House of Representatives last weekend.

Is it “historic,” as Democratic House leaders say, or a “government takeover,” as Republicans and their teabagger allies allege? Or is it possibly neither – or something else all together?

While the post-vote debate this past week has been consumed almost entirely by the anti-choice Stupak amendment, an addition of massive significance that might sink the whole health care reform effort by itself, the more fundamental question remains: even if the amendment wasn’t there, does the House bill deserve our support? Meaning, will it actually do anything to improve our disastrously dysfunctional health care system?

It’s hard to get a more authoritative or respected opinion than that of Dr. Marcia Angel, senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.  As Dr. Angel points out in her article, “Is the House Health Care Bill Better Than Nothing?”:

* The “public option” in the bill is not really an “option” at all, but a program projected to cover only 6 million uninsured Americans.

* The House bill’s “individual mandate” forces every American to buy health insurance, thus delivering tens of millions of new and unwilling customers to the insurance industry. (Interestingly, former President Bill Clinton, who is now campaigning for this bill, considered the individual mandate an evil Republican idea when he was trying to get a health care bill passed in the 1990s.)

* The bill contains no cost control provisions, and would allow the insurance industry to raise premiums as it sees fit.

* The bill would pump billions of public taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the insurance industry, whether in the form of taxpayer subsidies to individuals to buy health insurance or the money that would be cut from Medicare and redirected to the private sector.

Even some of the best sounding provisions, such as the regulation outlawing denial of benefits due to “pre-existing conditions,” have potentially giant loopholes. If the bill does not specifically mandate that insurance companies cover all medically-approved treatment, do we really believe the companies won’t find some other excuse to deny coverage – or simply increase their premiums to cover the added expense?

To read Dr. Angel’s column “Is the House Health Care Bill Better Than Nothing?,” which includes here five point program for real reform, click here.

Some have protested Dr. Angel’s title, noting that under the bill 36 million more Americans (about 2/3 of the currently uninsured) would get some kind of insurance, and the bill would at least reduce the approximately 40,000 annual deaths which result from lack of insurance. Certainly that sounds “better than nothing.”

Yet at the same time, the bill would augment and enshrine the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry, which is in fact the single biggest problem in our health care system, and it would throw hundreds of billions more into a dysfunctional and fundamentally unsustainable system. More people would have insurance, but it will likely cost more and cover less.

Once again, those of us who care about universal health care are asked to make an excruciating choice to support this bill. (As opposed to the insurance companies, who make out like bandits either way.)

The argument for accepting this bill – and remember, it will only get weaker/worse as it makes its way through the Senate – is that you can take what you can get now, and then build on that in the future. Yet what examples are there of major government programs of social change being dramatically improved or expanded after passage, as opposed to being constantly attacked and whittled away?

And if the Democratic Party leadership is unwilling to fight for or even discuss a truly progressive health care system (single payer) – even at this moment when they control the White House and both houses of Congress with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate – what are the chances they are going to come back and try to do better the next time around?

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

These hardly sound like words to spark a social revolution. Yet when I went to hear food author Michael Pollan speak in Baltimore earlier this year, I was amazed to find the hall crammed with over 1,000 people (and a pretty damned healthy-looking thousand people at that). Apparently he’s been drawing even larger crowds all over the country.

Mr. Pollan laughed about his “rock star” status that night, and modestly redirected attention away from himself. There is no question he is a brilliant thinker and writer, and has done much to provoke and guide the current food revolution, but as he noted it’s really not about him, but rather about the millions of Americans who are taking matters into their own hands: growing their own food, seeking organic, sustainable and local food, and just generally refusing to eat what the corporate food system tries to shove down our throat every day.

There is no shortage of reasons for this new behavior, from regular and increasing incidents of salmonella and e-coli in our national food system, to concerns about organic and sustainable agriculture, a wish to support local farmers, or to confront the crisis of climate change (in which modern industrial agriculture plays a major role).

Perhaps the most intriguing reason Mr. Pollan presented that night is the idea that eating is “the proto-political act.” Noting that the universally understood signal for “no”  – shaking one’s head from side to side – starts when as toddlers we try to avoid having food we don’t want put in our mouth, Pollan theorized that choosing what we eat constitutes our earliest attempts to exert influence over the world around us. And hence, the method we return to most easily and naturally.

Whether you agree with that or not, there is no question that Americans are involved in a food revolution right now, increasingly growing their own food or seeking it from local, non-industry sources. And the “Eater’s Manifesto” outlined in his current book, In Defense of Food,  is Pollan’s answer to the questions he posed in his previous bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Millions of Americans, including this author, are taking his advice to heart.

Of course there is a lot of explanation behind this simple phrase, an entire book’s worth, in fact, so below please find the ultra-condensed, Cliff Notes explanation of the manifesto. (Bold headings are Pollan’s as are the direct quotes; the rest is closely paraphrased summation.)  Use it in good health! (And do, by all means, follow this up by reading Pollan’s most recent books, if you haven’t already. They are fantastic.)

The Eater’s Manifesto: Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly Plants

EAT FOOD: FOOD DEFINED

• Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. – Your great grandmother would not eat yogurt in a tube, for instance.  But since the food industry is actively trying to fool your senses, and could sometimes even fool your great grandmother, a slightly more detailed policy to capture imitation food is required – see below.
• Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting. – You can bet it’s not good for you.
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable,  c) more than five in number, or that include  d) high fructose corn syrup. – Such items are not real food, but manufactured products of an industry that has goals other than providing you the healthiest possible food.
• Avoid food products that make health claims. – “For a food product to make health claims on its package it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be a processed than a whole food….. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about health.”  Remember that until very recently food science considered trans-fat-rich margarine to be healthier than butter, but it turns out that it gives people heart attacks. Health claims have become so hopelessly corrupt that you will now find them on bags of chips, boxes of sugary breakfast cereal, and even ice cream.
• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. – Most supermarkets are laid out the same way, with processed foods dominating the center aisles and the fresh food – dairy, produce, meat and fish – lining the walls.  Sometimes these items are still only ostensibly fresh, however, so consider a more radical strategy…
• Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. – Go to farmers’ markets, do a CSA, visit the farm yourself.  The best food system is the one that puts you closest to the food production and producer.  Whenever possible, shake the hand that feeds you.  Wendell Berry famously wrote that “eating is an agricultural act,” which means that we are not simply consumers but co-creators of the system that feeds us.  Shopping this way may take more money and effort, but it’s ultimately the strongest action you can take to create a much healthier and more sustainable food system – as well as to provide you and your family the healthiest possible food.

NOT TOO MUCH :  HOW TO EAT

• Pay more, eat less. – Even without the current American crisis of obesity, there is ample scientific evidence that eating less is healthier. Unfortunately, the cheaper foods in America tend to be the more processed, less nutritious and more fattening foods.  And because they are cheaper, we tend to eat more of them.  They are also more likely to be “convenience” or quickly prepared foods, which also causes us to eat more of them.  Better and healthier food tends to be more expensive because they are grown with more care, less intensively, and less commercially.  And they usually take longer to prepare, the “time cost” of food.  But as the French and other traditional food cultures have shown, you can have much greater “food experience” and pleasure with less food if you take longer to enjoy it, both preparing and eating it.
• Eat meals. – There was a time not long ago when there was a mild social taboo against snacking between meals, but most Americans today mark time each day with snacks.  One recent study also found that roughly a fifth of all American eating now takes place in cars, and the food industry talks about “eating occasions.”  Meals, conversely, are social occasions and a major way to avoid bad eating. At meals we socialize and civilize our children, teach manners, enjoy the art of conversation, determine portion size, model eating and drinking behavior, and enforce social norms about greed, gluttony and waste.
• Do all your eating at a table. – See above – and no, a desk is not a table.
• Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does. - ‘Nuf said.
• Try not to eat alone. – When we eat alone we often eat mindlessly, and eat more.  And once again, eating with others becomes a ritual of family, community and/or culture, and not simply an act of animal biology.
• Consult your gut. – Most of us use external visual cues, such as the size of a portion or the proximity of food, to tell us when to stop eating.  Alter the external cues by doing such things as serving smaller portions on smaller plates, but also cultivate your other senses and look for internal cues.  Does the third bite of this dessert taste nearly as good as the first? I could eat more but am I still hungry? It takes 20 minutes for the brain to get the message that the stomach is full, but many of us eat our food in less time than that – another advantage of an actual meal over an “eating occasion.”
• Eat slowly. – Slow in the sense of deliberate and knowledgeable eating as promoted by Slow Food, the Italian-born movement dedicated to the principle that “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life” – “a coherent protest against, and alternative to, not only the Western diet and way of eating, but also the whole ever-more-desperate Western way of life.”
• Cook, and if you can, plant a garden. – “To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our own sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap and easy, that food is a product of industry, not nature, that food is fuel, not a form of communion, with other people as well as other species – with nature.”

MOSTLY PLANTS: WHAT TO EAT

• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. – The benefits of a plant-based diet provide the only point of universal consensus among nutrition experts.  Vegetarians and near-vegetarians, or “flexitarians,” are less suspectible to Western diseases including heart disease, obesity and diabetes, are generally healthier, and live longer.  By eating a plant based diet you also consume fewer calories, which is good.  Meat is not necessary, but is also not necessarily a bad thing, and can be very nutritious.  However, eating vast quantities of meat – the average American consumes 200 pounds a year – from a highly industrialized food chain is not good for you.  “Thomas Jefferson probably had the right idea when he recommended using meat more as a flavor principle than as a main course, treating it as a ‘condiment for the vegetables.” Such vast quantities of meat are also not good for the planet: it has been determined that factory farm meat production is one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide.  It is also notoriously brutal in its treatment of animals.
• You are what what you eat eats too. – The industrial meat industry produces immense quantities of meat quickly by feeding animals energy-intensive grains such as corn, even though many of these animals, particularly cows, evolved to eat grass.  Large amounts of antibiotics are then used to treat the animals, which are perpetually sick as a result of the inappropriate diet. And beware marketing labels:  “free range” can mean only that there is a dirt lot that the chickens can roam in, and all cattle are “grass-fed” before they get to the feedlot. Look for terms such as “pastured,” and “grass-finished” or “100% grass fed.”
• If you have the space, buy a freezer. – Freezing food is a good way to eat well on a budget, since you can buy in bulk, whether it’s meat from a local producer or  local produce at the height of its season. Freezing also preserves the nutritional value of produce much better than canning.
• Eat like an omnivore. – “Biodiversity in the diet means more biodiversity in the fields;” the growth of monocultures and our dependence on a very limited number of plant and animal species – those most suitable for the industrial food system – is dangerously unstable. Plus the more species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. And don’t be fooled by the diversity of food products in a supermarket, since many of them are made from the same small handful of plants, principally corn and soy and wheat.
• Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. – “Organic” is a good starting point, but there are plenty of exceptional farmers and ranchers who for one reason or another are not certified organic – don’t overlook them. And remember that Oreos and high-fructose corn syrup are not health food, even if the ingredients going into them are organically grown. Ideally you want to look for food that is both organic and local, since food shipped from the other side of the country, in addition to consuming huge amounts of fossil fuel, can lose much of its nutritional value in route.
• Eat wild foods when you can. – Wild foods are usually much more nutritious than their cultivated brethren. However, there are simply not enough wild animals for us all to eating more of them, so keep this in mind and don’t overdo it.
• Be the kind of person who takes supplements. – While it’s probably a good idea to take a multivitamin-and-mineral pill after age fifty, studies show they don’t do much good for those of us younger than that.  However, people who take supplements are typically more health conscious and better educated. “So, to the extent that you can, be the kind of person who would take supplements, and then save your money.”
• Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese or the Indians or the Greeks. – People who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally much healthier than people eating a contemporary Western diet. Traditional diets developed over hundreds of years because they work, and keep the people who eat them healthy. This includes both the actual foods eaten and how they are eaten. For instance, the Asian practice of fermenting soybeans and eating soy in the form of curds, or tofu, makes a healthy diet from a plant that eaten almost any other way would make people ill.
• Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. – Soy is again an interesting case in point.  While the food industry is eager to process and sell the vast amounts of subsidized soy coming of American farms, it is very unclear whether products such as “soy protein isolate” or “soy isoflavones” are good or bad for you.
• Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet. – Reductionist science loves to break everything down to its components, but in the same way that foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts, dietary patterns are more then the sum of the foods that comprise them. Complicated interactions among nutrients and non-nutrient substances in the traditional diet cannot be teased apart, as much as scientists and the food industry would like to do it.
• Have a glass wine with dinner. [Editor’s note – my favorite advice at the very end!] – Traditional diets have understood the healthful benefits of alcohol for centuries, and there is now abundant scientific evidence demonstrating that those who drink moderately and regularly live longer and suffer considerably less heart disease than teetotalers.

As I reflect on Afghanistan, it’s incredible to realize that the first nonviolent action in Washington D.C. resisting this war, organized by myself and a few colleagues, was nearly eight years ago, on January 20, 2002. Think about it – children who were only  ten years old when the planes struck the World Trade Towers and Pentagon on 9/11 are now being suited up to fight in Afghanistan.

When will this madness end?

When will we ever hear a clear or valid mission for our troops, or learn the true number of Afghani civilians being killed, or see the pictures of the ongoing death and destruction on our TV screens? When will someone in charge remember why Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires,” and acknowledge that our military occupation has no more chance of succeeding than did those of the Soviet Union, Britain or Genghis Khan?

It’s only getting worse. This year has already become the deadliest for U.S. troops in our eight years there, and it’s only the end of September. President Obama’s newly appointed commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, has arrived in Washington to urgently request more troops be sent –  as the military always requests when a war isn’t going well.

For his part, the president is now said the be “re-evaluating” the strategy in Afghanistan, with no deadline set for  a decision on more troops. And yet, as the relentlessly pro-war Washington Post editorial page reminds us, it was only this past March 27 when Mr. Obama set forth what he called “a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan” that “marks the conclusion of a careful policy review,” and sent thousands more troops there as a result.

So do we need a new strategy every six months? Or could the President’s reticence have something to do with the fact that the American public suddenly seems awakened from its slumber, with a majority now opposing our open-ended occupation of Afghanistan?

And it’s more than just Afghanistan, of course, as Mr. Obama is spreading this war into neighboring Pakistan more and more everyday through the illegal and immoral use of unmanned Predator drones – cowardly attacks that, according to Congressional testimony by David Kilcullen, former adviser to General Petraeus, kill about  50 bystanders and/or innocent victims for each targeted “extremist.” Yet drone attacks have increased under the Obama Administration, and incredibly enough they plan to increase them still more, even as newspapers report a (wholly predictable) increase in anti-American sentiment sweeping Pakistan.

As the late, great author and humorist Molly Ivins once noted, it’s hard to convince people that you’re killing them for their own good.

It seemed only fitting that, in the middle of all this, I had the privilege to see The Actors’ Gang production of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Daniel Berrigan’s play about the burning of draft files in 1968, a nonviolent direct action which helped spark the anti-Vietnam war movement. It was immensely powerful to hear the testimonies of the nine activists (and remarkable to realize how much they were allowed to say in court) -  to hear their personal encounters with American militarism around the world, from South and Central America to Vietnam, that compelled them to act.

It also seemed somehow dated, even quaint. It is difficult for a contemporary audience, so numbed by daily sanitized reports of bombings, violence and war, to comprehend how anyone could be so moved as to risk imprisonment (which they all received) in an attempt to call attention to a moral outrage being perpetrated by their own government. Too many Americans today have come to accept the belief that they are powerless to effect anything important. That’s our loss – and humanity’s.

Because the opinion of a large number of Americans, even a majority, is important, but it’s not enough to stop a war. When Henry David Thoreau observed that “dissent without resistance is consent,” he might as well have been talking about public opinion polls. Majorities telling their opinions to pollsters means nothing. Physical actions, including nonviolent resistance, do mean something, as we can see in every successful social change movement in our nation’s history.

Those who want to act against endless war in Afghanistan and Pakistan have an ideal opportunity this coming Monday, October 5th, the eve of the war’s eighth anniversary. On that day a coalition of national groups, including the War Resisters League, Witness Against Torture, Veterans for Peace, Peace Action, Voice for Creative Nonviolence and my old friends and colleagues at the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, are organizing a direct nonviolent action at the White House, accompanied by local actions around the country.

The action is in opposition to eight years of a brutal and senseless war we are inflicting upon the Afghani (and now Pakistani) people, to our government’s continued occupation of Iraq, its continued use of indefinite detention (at Guantanamo and now Bagram prison in Afghanistan), and its unwillingness to seek accountability for torture.

For more information on the rally, march and nonviolent direct action, go to www.nogoodwar.org

Moral outrages and government crimes begun under the Bush Administration are now being continued by the Obama Administration, and our collective opinions will not be enough to stop them. Action, including nonviolent direct action, is required. It is time to start showing President Obama that we mean business, and bring these wars to an end – before yet another generation of children is sacrificed on their bloody altar. Join us on October 5th.

#          #          #

Gordon Clark is the former national director of Peace Action (1996 – 2001), the nation’s largest grassroots peace organization, and founder and former coordinator of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, formerly the Iraq Pledge of Resistance (2002-2007).

[The following article is featured in the September issue of the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Voice.]

August is supposed to be a “slow” news month, but the one that  just ended was a busy one indeed, and the news not particularly encouraging.

Perhaps my favorite item was the Federal Reserve’s prediction that we might be headed toward a “jobless recovery.” Excuse me, but what exactly is a “jobless recovery?”

Probably a lot like what we saw over the summer: the newly recovered big  banks raking in record, multi-billion dollar profits and paying out huge bonuses to themselves, while at the same time home foreclosures continued at a record pace, and the economy shed hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But September is a fresh start, in many ways just as important as New Year’s, maybe even more so. We come home from vacations, we re-engage in our work,  start new projects and our kids begin a new school year.  It is a time of hope and change, like all new beginnings should be.  And as we enter this crucially important season it’s important to consider: where are the hope and change we voted for last fall?

Bank bailouts and the crippled economy persist as major bummers, to be sure. And these realities are not unconnected to the economic advisers President Obama has surrounded himself with, high rollers who come from the banks themselves and who helped create the financial crisis in the first place. Not surprisingly, the prospects of re-regulating the banks, to prevent another such calamity from occurring, seem to be dwindling with each passing month.

Ending the war in Iraq was supposed to be another point of hope for us, but what’s going on there? A slow motion withdrawal from that country has been coupled with a massive expansion of forces in Afghanistan, which is quickly becoming Obama’s Vietnam.

Military spending is up. Unmanned Predator drone attacks are way up. Civilian and military deaths are up.  The Obama Administration announced last month it will continue the Bush era practice of renditions, or sending terror suspects to other countries for “interrogation.” They even continue to employ Blackwater, the infamous private fundamentalist paramilitary operation populated by former Bush friends and officials.

Okay – how about the all-important battle against climate change? After years of delay and denial in the Bush Administration, this is another issue on which many of us had high hopes.

And yet  the Democratic-controlled House – one in which two Maryland Representatives, Steny Hoyer and Chris Van Hollen, are top leaders –  produced a climate and energy bill so compromised and corrupted by big oil and coal interests that NASA climatologist James Hansen, one of the world leaders in calling for dramatic action to confront global warming, denounced it as a “disaster ” and “less than worthless.” Many are expecting it could get even worse in the Senate – if anything even passes this year at all.

On related environmental fronts, the mindless process of blowing off mountain tops to remove the coal underneath will continue relatively unabated under the Obama Administration, which also recently okayed the deal to build a tar sands pipeline from Canada – tar sands being the most environmentally destructive way yet discovered to produce oil. (And the possible final nail in our climate change coffin.)

And what, finally, of the health care debate?

On this issue, August was truly a month of bizarre and surreal spectacles -  town hall meetings that turned into shouting matches, with Medicare-recipients demanding that government stay out of their health care (??), while  gun-toting patriots kept vigil outside. (At events with the President, no less; remember how they used to arrest you at Bush events just for wearing an anti-war T-shirt?)

The contribution by members of Congress hasn’t been that much better. Republicans for the most part have been fear-mongering cheerleaders, escalating hysteria with the most inflammatory accusations in an attempt to destroy any reform, while Democrats, with a few bright exceptions (such as our own Donna Edwards), are playing their usual role in big policy debates – confused, spineless, and all over the map.

So much so, it turns out, that there are key Democrats in the Senate who probably want to see real health care reform defeated almost as much as Republicans. (Hint: they take millions of dollars from the insurance industry too.)

How it will all turn out this fall is anyone’s guess, but as August closed and September starts, Obama and much of the Democratic party leadership seems perfecly willing to give up on a strong public health insurance option – already a major compromise from a single payer system, and the only policy component that would prevent the whole reform effort from being yet another massive giveaway to corporations (hello – drug companies making $300 billion a year are being asked to contribute a mere $8 billion a year in “savings” to the effort?). And this is happening largely because President Obama started to back away from it in his own public speeches, referring to it as only a “sliver” of the reform agenda.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is the utter lack of fight evidenced by the President and many Democrats. You fight for what you truly believe in, but on the issues above, can you name anything – anything – they have been willing to go to the mat for? And they control Congress, for goodness sake!

The activist right-wingers are often accused of being out of touch with basic facts, and we’ve seen plenty of them. But right now it takes an equal disregard for the facts to argue that the Obama Administration and this Congress are pursuing anything remotely resembling a progressive agenda.

So where does that leave our hope? Where it has always been, probably – in our own hands. We cannot depend on this Administration to fight for what we want – on many issues it appears we have to fight against them. We cannot depend on this Democrat-controlled Congress to do it either.

Nope, if we want those things we truly hope for and believe in during these extraordinarily challenging times, we’re the ones who are going to have to fight for them. With the Obama White House, with our members of Congress, and, most importantly, in our own communities.

This is probably not the work most of us were thinking about as we start our fall. But look at it this way – it will keep us busy while we’re looking for jobs.

Like many who watched President Obama’s health care address Wednesday night, I experienced moments of exhilaration.

There was some moral fiber, conviction and even passion to many of his words, reminiscent of his speeches on the campaign trail. And who couldn’t love the fact that he actually, finally, lambasted some of his critics on the right? I mean, when’s the last time you heard any politician denounce a lie as a lie, a “flat out” lie no less?

Hopefully, however, those of us who were thrilled by his words before have learned to exercise a little caution when it comes to applauding his actual policies – think Afghanistan, mountain top coal removal, climate change and energy policy, Wall St. bailouts, etc..

Because when you look at the actual policy he was proposing in his primetime speech, the assessment of one NPR reporter rings singularly true: the left got the rhetoric, and the centrists got the substance. Which means, of course, that the country will get the shaft.

But before I get ahead of myself, here’ s a quick look at some elements in his speech, and the profound problems with them.

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” Official factcheckers are already debunking the math behind this dubious assertion, as has (previously) the Congressional Budget Office. Of course Obama is far from the first politician to sugar coat a financial reality, so part of me wants to give him a break. But wouldn’t it be better to actually fess up to the real costs involved, and make the forthright statement that spending money on health care for all Americans is worth it? Because if we start with this false premise, how much health care will we lose in the future when it becomes clear what the real costs are?

“…not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.” Following on the previous statement, Mr. Obama is telling us he will pay for most of his plan by wringing $500 billion in savings from Medicare in ten years – but only by cutting waste and fraud. Right. How often do politicians tell us this about cutting costs, and how often is it true? If I were a senior citizen, I think I’d have some real concerns about my Medicare right now.

“Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.” This is a good idea and a real attention grabber, with its strong progressive tone, but how much does it ultimately matter? Health insurance companies and drug makers have spent years figuring out how to bend or evade every conceivable rule applied to them, and if they get caught every once in a while and have to pay a fine, that’s just a cost of doing business for them. Did you know for instance that earlier this month pharmaceutical giant Pfizer reached a $2.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department – that’s $2.3 BILLION –  for unlawful prescription drug promotion? And that in so doing, Pfizer broke a record set only seven months before by fellow drug maker Eli Lilly & Company, whose settlement at that time was described by the Justice Department as the “largest individual corporate criminal fine” in U.S. history?

“Now is the season for action….Now is the time to deliver on health care.” … but… “We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange….this exchange will take effect in four years.” Excuse me, but if it’s so bloody important to pass health care reform NOW, why will a supposedly central chunk of said reform, an insurance exchange for individuals to buy insurance at (allegedly) reasonable prices, have to wait another four years? Am I the only one that finds the timing a little suspect – that we’ll have to wait until after the next Presidential election for this plan to take full effect?

Elections aside, this delay is a perfect example of the moral timidity if not outright bankruptcy of many Democratic proposals. They tell us, for instance, we should be deeply concerned that upwards of 20,000 Americans die each year for lack of health insurance – more than one every 30 minutes – but when it comes to solving the problem… um… could they have a few more years? Perhaps someone should erect a “death clock” on the Capitol grounds, like the deficit clock in New York city, except this one would tally the number of Americans dying from lack of health care while we wait for Congress to deal with the problem.

“I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service.” Really? And what might that service be – apart from funneling millions of dollars in campaign contributions to politicians and funding disinformation campaigns to kill any reform?

The various deceptions and policy problems above, while fairly damning, are typical of most politicians and are used on most issues. But at this point, President Obama is showing his true allegiances in this battle when he defends the hated (and rightfully so) insurance companies.

Let’s be very clear on this – health insurance companies do *not* provide any legitimate service in our health care. They perform no tests, no procedures, provide no health counseling. They never delivered a single baby or took a single temperature. All they do is stand between you and your doctor, make everyone’s life miserable when you try to get health care, and then take a big fat slice of your health care dollars for doing it. To quote a colleague, only in America would huge profits for a value-negative intermediary corporate process be considered as making any sense whatever.

And only if you’re one of the people making money from that deal, as Mr. Obama and the Democrats most decidedly are, every time they take another campaign contribution from those insurance companies.

And then, the clincher from the speech:

“An additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange…. by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers…. It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better.” However… “It is only one part of my plan… and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.”

So there you have it. President Obama finally gives a coherent, compelling explanation of why a public option is necessary – and then follows up by saying he’s not going to fight for it. Poof – you can consider it gone already.

Of course this is what he and his aides have been implying for some time now, and it’s just a logical follow up to his position of ruling a single payer plan off the table from the get go. And why not? Single payer is only the most proven, cost effective system for delivering  health care, one that is used in one form or another by every other industrialized country in the world, all of which surpass the U.S. in virtually every health statistic. Who would want that? Other than about 60% of the American public, that is? (And remarkable, isn’t it, how President Obama can call single payer “radical” even though it is supported by such large majorities of Americans.)

It may actually be good if this so-called public option dies, because it has already been so watered down in the health care bills coming out of the House that it might not achieve anything at all, other than giving public health insurance a bad name.

And on top of all that, the President and Congress want to mandate that everyone buy insurance, delivering us all, along with our money (whether paid individually or through a taxpayer-funded subsidy), to the tender mercies of the same private companies that helped create this massive problem to begin with. (And the president is using a faulty auto insurance analogy to support this. Sorry, but driving an auto is a privilege subject to all sorts of restrictions; health care is, or should be, a basic human right.) Not surprisingly, the individual mandate was the basic goal of the insurance industry all along, as it will force millions of new Americans to start giving them money.

As Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, whose detailed and delightfully expletive-ridden expose can be read here, sums it all up:

“First, they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The bill won’t make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing campaign to help the president get what he wants.”

Nothing President Obama said last night, however momentarily inspiring, changes any of this.

Mr. Obama ended his speech with an emotional appeal to what he called “fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” Regrettably, the plan he is offering does not support fundamental principles of social justice, and the only thing it says about the character of our country is that we still have a government thoroughly controlled by wealthy corporate interests.

If this plan passes it may take us a few years to figure that out. But we will figure it out, because this legislation will not fix our health care crisis. You can count on it.

[Check out the bottom of this email for a glimpse of a real progressive arguing for health care!]

The health care debate is raging in this country, and the welfare of millions, perhaps the entire nation, rides on the outcome.  And where, exactly, is Rep. Chris Van Hollen during all of this?

Did Mr. Van Hollen co-sponsor H.R. 676, the bill that calls for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system?

No.

Did he add his name to the letter House Democrats recently wrote to President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, demanding that a more modest public option be maintained in any final health care bill?

No.

Is he using the Congressional recess to hold town hall meetings, listening to the citizens of the 8th Congressional District or trying to rally public support for health care reform?

No.

This last absence is particularly galling, since one of the few items on his website referring to the health care debate, a press release dated August 1, notes that  “as we head into the August district work period [House] Members will be talking to their constituents and getting the message out that continuing the status quo is not an option.”

Well, maybe other House members, but not Chris Van Hollen.

Isn’t it interesting that when the going gets rough, when major issues are being hotly debated and we need leaders to stand up and pound the table with the truth, this self-proclaimed “progressive” member of Congress, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and part of the House Democratic leadership, just sort of melts into the background?

All the more interesting when his newly elected neighbor from Maryland’s 4th district, Rep. Donna Edwards, immediately signed on to H.R. 676, signed on to the House Democrats’  letter, and has made it clear that she will not vote for any bill that does not contain a public option.

Thank you, Rep. Edwards, for demonstrating what political leadership looks like.

I’d like to tell you all to call Mr. Van Hollen’s office and urge him to support (and vote for) single-payer or even a public option, but it’s not clear that he cares what his constituents think. Of course you might still want to make that call, but here’s an even better idea, if you’re as outraged by this as I am: why not write a short letter to one of the local papers – the Post, the Gazette, the Sentinel or any others – or even your neighborhood listservs and ask this simple question:

During this battle for  health care, where in the world is Chris Van Hollen?

Because some of us would sure like to know.

Yours in fighting for real health care,

Gordon Clark

p.s. – for an example of an actual progressive who knows how to argue for real health care reform and isn’t afraid to do it, check out this video of Rep. Anthony Weiner from a recent MSNBC show (at the bottom of the linked article). Why can’t we get someone like him to represent us?