UPDATE: HMF International Film/Media Festival & Conference

To All Friends and Colleagues of the HMF,

We have been asked to postpone the 2009 HMF International Film/Media Festival & Conference (HMF2009) by several important participants among the journalism, policy, documentary and narrative film, new media, and academic contingents until after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 7-18, 2009).

Over the last days, I have made the decision to do so, taking into consideration the tangential issues among climate change and humanitarian crisis, as well as these reflections within varying media.

With this postponement, the HMF Festival & Conference will thereby be able to subsequently incorporate some of the issues presented, also acting as an extension of some of those discussions, in addition to the issues which were to be presented exclusively at HMF2009.

As before, the HMF International Film/Media Festival & Conference (HMF2010), will seek to explore the Media's role in Humanitarian issues, histories, and crises. This includes, without limitation: refugee crises, medical relief, human rights, war, genocide, debt relief, cross-cultural and political conflict, other war crimes and international criminal tribunals, indigenous populations and conflicts within and without their communities, and humanitarian needs during natural disasters.

The basis for the HMF2010 is to stress that the Media--in all its forms--has the power to inform, reflect, and influence issues of international importance. The media's role does not and should not just illuminate the plights of human populations in crisis; it should also illuminate the underlying politics and spheres of influence involved in international crisis and conflict by governments, corporations, and other independent actors and stakeholders in which such crises are the inevitable result.

To better discuss the hard issues surrounding these ideas, HMF2010, the 2010 HMF International Film/Media Festival & Conference, will incorporate the following:

-- An international Media Conference, involving international journalism (web, print, photojournalism), international aid agencies, academics and voices in international policy, academia, the United Nations and its sections, new and social media, citizen journalists as reporting amidst the crises, and other stakeholders to discuss the uses of the media in international and humanitarian crises;

-- An international film/media Festival, showing critical television journalism segments, upcoming international films (short and long form--documentary and narrative), and web video segments, and depicting international and humanitarian issues and crises, with three international, high-profile red carpet premieres;

-- An art/photographic Exhibition which will include art and photography depicting humanitarian issues and crises, with an auction of these images to benefit the issues themselves.

Via panel discussions, conference sessions, and the media exhibitions--HMF2010 will also continue to address and examine the following, and particularly with the poignancy of such issues as have recently been illuminated by certain world events:

· The media’s role in humanitarian histories, events, issues and crises – past and present - examples of such coverage, including as a lesson for what should – or in certain select cases - should not be done;

· The role the media has played and perhaps should play in the work of the UN, NGO’s and other agencies to support populations in need and are affected by certain issues or crises, including issues surrounding critical information dissemination to crisis-affected populations;

· The future role of the media with the advent of new technologies; the possibilities inherent in the web, among other means of information and media dissemination; and how these new means can be utilized by those seeking to bring further attention to the public sphere regarding issues of international and humanitarian importance (example: Iran);

· The role of the artistic media (film, art, photography, music) in revealing the nuances of issues of international importance;

· The significance and/or complexities of “celebrity” involvement in such media and issues;

· The importance of new media, blogs, “iReports,” and "citizen" journalism, including during crisis situations;

· The conflicts inherent in journalism during crisis, existing amidst potential profit motives of for-profit corporate parents (of news agencies, networks, newspapers, magazines, etc.).

Also included will be special sidebars:

· Media surrounding the often-ignored plight of indigenous populations;

· Top humanitarian crises predicted for 2010-2011 and the active role the media should play.

For further information, or should you have any questions, please contact us at pr@humanitarianmedia.org. Further information, including new dates, will also be forthcoming via the HMF website, http://www.humanitarianmedia.org.

With warmest regards,

K.J. Wetherholt
Co-Founder / Board Chairman
The Humanitarian Media Foundation (HMF)

On the Subject of Censorship: BURN THIS BOOK

Cross-posted with The Environmentalist

by K.J. Wetherholt

Being a proponent of human rights and humanitarian subject matter of any kind, and in particular the reflections or influence of these tenets in the media--whether in literature, journalism, photojournalism, art, film, television, new and social media and beyond--these last weeks in Iran have been inordinately important, even despite the near-tabloid coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. Michael Jackson did touch many people, and for important reasons, and I by no means disparage that. But what I am concerned about is that other important issues are being ignored because of it.

Something that has been truly evident by anything I have written in past months has been the importance of certain freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and now, as evidenced by the events in Iran following their elections, freedom both of assembly and the importance of fair and free elections.

Those who saw the clip which has become viral of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian woman shot to death in the streets of Tehran for demonstrating against the election results, perhaps can feel the visceral sense of what it must have meant to be one of those demonstrators, feeling first-hand the heart of the adage we as Americans have come to take for granted: freedom isn't free. As those who have demonstrated are attesting, and something, again, which we may have forgotten, there are times when it demands struggle and sacrifice.

As Frederick Douglass once said from personal knowledge from once having been a slave and as an advocate of suffrage and human rights:

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

Nowhere has this been more evident in these past weeks in the news than in Iran, just one of many places around the world struggling for rights, again, which we truly have more often than not taken for granted. Sometimes it takes a situation like that in Iran to revive that sense of humanity in seeing others who are being subjected to violence, fear and tyranny by their own governments. We feel for their struggle. We are outraged by the limits placed on the press and on demonstrators. We are moved to tears by those whose pain is almost palpable. We are rebellious on their behalf by subverting the Iranian government's blocks on mobile and internet access however we can--offering international proxy server addresses or setting our own addresses to Tehran to overload their systems. Any subject at the moment that includes basic human freedoms is now at the forefront of discussion—provided we are not distracted, then, by the media, by something else.

What is also blatantly true is that the power of the media, including by virtue of mobile technology and social media, has never been more relevant, nor more demonstrated. We are now reminded of what it is we had forgotten in terms of basic human tenets, and as some--not all--are finding ironic--using the tools of the modern age to bring such issues back into focus.

However, even older forms of media are making sure that some of these issues remain strongly poignant.

Not too long ago, I received a book to review from the HarperStudo imprint of HarperCollins, titled BURN THIS BOOK, edited by Toni Morrison and including such writers as John Updike, David Grossman, Francine Prose, Paul Auster, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, and Nadine Gordimer.

The book, which was published in conjunction with PEN American Center, is a collection inspired by a speech given by Morrison at the PEN International Festival dinner in 2008, in which she discussed the idea of censorship of writers and the price paid in certain part of the world when their voices are silenced. Every writer within the pages of BURN THIS BOOK has been subjected to censorship in one form or another, and each has had to bear the consequences--whether personal, professional, or in terms of being stymied from expressions that should always have been a natural right.

In going through my notes and the pages I had underlined several days ago, one sentence in Toni Morrison's introduction struck hard, and again, because of the current issues in Iran, seemed devastatingly relevant:

... the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.

Where freedom of the press and freedom of expression are blocked, you can be sure that further rights will soon be systematically obliterated. The press can either be a source of information or propaganda; often times, unfortunately, it is both. But when writers are not allowed to write truth in favor of the promulgation of state-sanctioned or state-dictated information, it can either be tolerated, or when tied to the future of a nation, as with Iran, it can become yet another factor in a deafening rallying cry which may change such a country irretrievably, and hopefully for the better--should the protester's vigilance maintain its intensity until leaders are either forced to listen or are overthrown. Revolution has happened before over such issues, as it did in our own country, and it can happen again in others. There's nothing wrong with Revolution when it's for the right reasons--even our own Founders kept it as an option built into the founding documents of our republic should our own country ever forget itself to the point of no return. This is indeed what we celebrated in the United States last weekend on July 4^th.

In BURN THIS BOOK, there are different ideas expressed in terms of a writer's expression--and I almost wish that the book had been separated between American and international writers. There would be a point to this, as became unfortunately clear, as there is a distinct demarcation between two factions in this work: the writers of North America, and specifically the United States, and the writers from other countries who are included in this collection. I was truly disappointed that with the exception of Morrison, the aforementioned American writers do not have the deep, existential fire of the others--but then I understood why; the others are ones for whom writing has been or could potentially be an inherent--and potentially lethal--exercise in rebellion, having come from areas of conflict, subjugation, and tyranny--where such ideas of censorship come with much higher stakes.

Sometimes, however, it takes another country’s struggle to remind us this simple and poignant reality. Such has been demonstrated by the events in Iran over these last couple of weeks, and most recently in China (thankfully still eking out some kind of presence in the media, though for many of us, not nearly enough). But devoid of such reminders, it seems our revolutionary fire is in a persistent state of appeased slumber. As a friend on Facebook wrote several days ago, quoting Franz Kafka: "You are free and that is why you are lost." Some would consider that the inherent argument for subjugation; instead, I see it as suggesting one is lost until he or she understands what it is we have in the first place. Without something to buck against, we do become apathetic enough sometimes to not know who we are.

In this sense, some of the American writers included in BURN THIS BOOK (which actually came to me in a package filled with promotional matches) might indeed have needed a reminder about the true spirit of what it was they were supposed to be writing about. This was to be a book about censorship. Instead, some of these writers seem as though they were approaching this as they would any writing assignment about writing; expounding upon the creative and personal aspects of being a writer--the inspiration and the literary personality which are indelible in one who in general has the audacity to write down his or her ideas amidst what might somehow be considered personal angst, and the universality of such angst among other writers, some of whom turn to the political.

Where I find this approach troubling in a book of this kind is when the supposed subject matter was ignored or treated with irreverence. Either that, or writing in general is seen as a function of general audacity, one borne of, again, the general rebellion of the "creative soul" amidst the clichéd teeming automaton hoards of Western society. And, it is apparent that these authors are speaking from a place of relative literary comfort. They may have had works banned in libraries or schools in the United States and elsewhere, but their trauma is more about wrangling with the Muse or about an inherent internal complexity than it is about issues of human survival and writing as a means of rebelling against any literal existential threat. And even amidst censorship in the United States, when it happens within our borders, we do rouse defiantly from our collective slumber and take it very seriously, leaping quickly to the defense of authors without question--even if we don't like the works under fire. We here in the United States, courtesy of the American Library Association, even have "Banned Books Week."

To exemplify this particular idea of the general personality of a writer, John Updike states in his bland selection, "Why Write?":

The artist's personality has an awkward ambivalence; he is a cave dweller who yet hopes to be pursued into his cave.

This is about the writer and self-consciousness over what he or she writes. Compare this to a passage from "Writing in the Dark" by David Grossman, as translated by Jessica Cohen, in describing the reality of "living in an extreme and violent state of political, military, and religious conflict" (and feeling like Kafka's mouse in "A Little Fable" in which the world is always growing smaller and more narrow).

The stakes are profoundly different:

... The constant--and very real--fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate.

This comes, Grossman writes, out of self-protection, "a diminished ability and willingness to empathize with all other people in pain."

Given a situation so frightening, so deceptive, and so complicated--both morally and practically--we feel it better not to think or know. Better to hand over the job of thinking and doing and setting moral standards to those who are surely 'in the know.' Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends--at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics.

This has been the argument of many suffering under oppression--and the boon of regimes which take advantage of this conflict and its inevitable effects upon its population, to clamp down and "liberate" people from the responsibility of independent thought that might lead to action. When in incredible pain, better to forget--better to "anesthetize" one's self to alleviate suffering, even if it comes at the cost of certain freedoms. To this, the oppressive government will say, "you don't need such freedoms when we will take care of you."

But as is being shown now in Iran among other places in the world where censorship is rampant, when "cloaked" from reality by the State, when that cloak is forcefully removed, and/or when truth is known or somehow suspected, and the population has hit a collective boiling point, the only reasonable reaction is anger, a feeling of betrayal, and a will toward combating the usual propaganda with the forceful imposition of truth--pushing and rebelling until the old system cannot function underneath a mass amount of pressure. Freedom is a human instinct. There is no being that if it knows it is enchained, will not somehow make every attempt to break free until he or she either is free, disheartened to the point of apathy, or dies.

"In this reality," Grossman writes:

…we author and poets write. In Israel and in Palestine, in Chechnya and in Sudan, in New York, and in the Congo. There are times ... after a few hours of writing, when I look up and think: Now, at this very moment, sits another author, whom I do not know, in Damascus or Tehran, in Kigali or Dublin, who, like me, is engaged in the strange, baseless, wonderful work of creation, within a reality that contains so much violence and alienation, indifference, and diminishment.

Further:

I have a distant ally who does not know me, and together we are weaving this shapeless web, which nonetheless has immense power to change a world and create a world, the power to give words to the mute and to bring about tikkun--"repair"--in the deepest, kabbalistic sense of the word.

Compare this sensibility of a man grappling with writing truth--with being a representative voice--trying to achieve something which in certain ways might seem wholly impossible when faced with the realities of his world--one which is marked by violence—with one for whom violence appears only on television or in a violent urban area with which such an author has little contact. For the former, the implications are enormous, as is his sense of responsibility. This is a hell of a lot different than grappling with the proverbial Muse that refuses to come out of his cave—the avatar of the writer him or herself—whose primary struggle is one of what the Romantic poets would have considered the solipsism, or “self-consciousness” that keeps a poet or artist from seeing the Sublime. Death is not the threat; writer’s block is, or the self-consciousness that comes from writing about what is primarily personal amidst the peace of his or her immediate outside world.

Let me be clear, however—I have great respect for anyone who grapples with the Muse, as well as with the personal—including when the personal is difficult, for various reasons, to express. That has been a struggle which has been documented throughout time and from many different traditions—literary, artistic religious, etc.. But there is a context for that struggle in which it makes perfect sense and it has its place. A book about the kind of censorship that can come with death if challenged makes the stakes inordinately higher. This is why, with all due respect for Toni Morrison as the editor of this book, and my love of much her work, work which has been challenged for its harrowing nature at times by critics as much as lauded for its truth, I wish she had kept in mind her own speech before the PEN International audience, choosing works here not for the notoriety of the writers, which it seems was true in some cases, but giving such space for a whole group of writers—perhaps some more unknown—whose rebel fire could further have been unleashed for all to see. That would have been a book that would have, if you’ll forgive me for continuing the metaphor, burned the proverbial house down.

Some may believe I’m being hard on many of the revered American writers in this book, but my purpose here is to demonstrate, again, that either works could have been chosen differently (and not just for their name value on the book cover), and/or to perhaps prod American writers to better hearken back to our own history and better remember where we came from, if only to re-ignite that particular revolutionary fire. That revolutionary fire is worth it, because, as some of these writers, primarily those from other parts of the world, suggest, it is the only thing that will provoke lasting change. And in this world, there is no question that change is needed.

Below are some passages, one from each essay, as an example of what can be found within the book in question. Again, some here are about censorship; others are not. In some, primarily those of the Americans, I had to actively seek the essay for a suitable passage, or at least one in the general realm of the proposed subject matter. In others, there was a wealth of passages from which to choose. Those are ones in which I could feel the passion and an almost palpable defiance which can only come from harrowing experience, and these voices were markedly different from the others. By virtue of what I have chosen, and even in the voice of the writer, what is passionate and what is perfunctory can perhaps be sensed. But as always, it is up to the individual reader to judge what he or she believes, and others may find charm and/or undoubted writing skill appropriate where I perhaps would have preferred something more deeply relevant.

From “Peril” – Toni Morrison (American), the speech given before the audience at the PEN International Festival dinner, and the inspiration for this book:

Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril. They are not stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media. Their methods include surveillance, censorship, arrest, even slaughter of those writers informing or disturbing the public.

From “Why Write?” – John Updike (American) answers his own question with a worthy examination of his personal reasons for writing, but which had little to do with censorship:

Pascal says, “When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within himself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.” The writer’s strength is not his own; he is a conduit who so positions himself that the world at his back flows through to the readers on the other side of the page. To keep this conduit scoured is his laborious task; to be, in the act of writing, anonymous, the end of his quest for fame.

From “Writing in the Dark” – David Grossman (Israeli) (translated by Jessica Cohen) is driven by the idea of expression during conflict toward the force of change, the result of the prevention of that expression, and the inherent value of liberty as a fundamental aspect of the human experience:

I can tell you about the void that slowly emerges between the individual and the violent, chaotic state that encompasses practically every aspect of his life. …This void does not remain empty. It quickly fills with apathy, cynicism, and above all despair—the despair that can fuel a distorted reality for many years, sometimes generations. The despair that one will never manage to change the situation, never redeem it. And the deepest despair of all—the despair of human beings, of what the distorted situation ultimately exposes in each of us.

From “Out from Under the Cloud of Unknowing” – Francine Prose (American) in a rather pithy essay written in the form of a rather irreverent list, rather than addressing censorship, juxtaposes the very general idea of the political with the role of the artistic:

Maybe that is the problem that politics has with art. It’s the problem of mystery, which politics (constructed in a narrow sense) doesn’t like, or perhaps, more accurately, doesn’t feel comfortable with. …The polemicist, or the theorist, or the strategist would have trouble with the stance that Chekhov indentified as basic for the artist. That is, the notion that writers must admit they understand nothing of life, that nothing in this world makes sense, so all a writer can do is try to describe it.

From “The Man, the Men at the Station” – Pico Iyer (British/Indian), writes his account as a tribute to one man whom Iyer met in Burma as an examination of the effect a totalitarian regime—one which favors censorship—has on those who live within its borders, as well as those who come to know those individuals affected:

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was on blacklist in Burma, perhaps because of writing about people like himself, suitably disguised. A colleague had seen my picture up at the airport, as a criminal to be arrested if he ever showed his face. The important thing was that we had contact at last, and a window, a tiny window, had opened again where before there had seemed no hope. …For all the derelictions and brutalities of this government, though, Maung-Maung is still waiting at the station, and we are the only freedom he knows. Without us—the stories we take to him, the stories we bring back from him—there wouldn’t be anything, except years and years of further struggle, and then nothing at all.

From “Notes on Literature and Engagement” – Russell Banks (American) does not address censorship except in passing, as shown below. Instead he addresses the conflict inherent in works which have, in the end, fostered change:

…one hopes for as long as human beings tell stories to themselves and one another, the novelist is at bottom committed to a life of opposition, of speaking truth to power, of challenging and overthrowing received wisdom and disregarding the official version of everything. This is why so many novelists have been censored, imprisoned, exiled, or even killed.

From “Talking to Strangers” – Paul Auster (American) writes about the general importance of storytelling itself:

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next. …human beings need stories. They need them almost as desperately as they need food, and however they might be presented—whether on a printed page or a television screen—it would be impossible to imagine life without them.

From “Freedom to Write” – Orhan Pamuk (Turkish) (Translated by Maureen Freely) writes about the personal importance of freedom of expression, in which he first remembers Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller coming to Istanbul to meet with writers and their families who had been imprisoned for what they had written, to better offer them support, and to bring their stories to the rest of the world :

…freedom of expression has its roots in pride and is, in essence, an expression of human dignity. I have personally known writers who have chosen to raise forbidden topics purely because they were forbidden. I think I am no different. Because when another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

From “Notes on Writing and the Nation” – Salman Rushdie (Indian/British), writes about nationalism and the novel, including both political censorship and nationalistic writers who ignore the truth and instead corrupt it:

When the imagination is given sight by passion, it sees darkness as well as light. To feel so ferociously is to feel contempt as well as pride, hatred as well as love. These proud contempts, this hating love, often earn the writer a nation’s wrath. The nation requires anthems, flags. The poet offers discord. Rags.

From “The Sudden Sharp Memory” – Ed Park (American) aptly chooses the structure of a psychiatric session transcript for his essay describing the reason I am the Cheese has been banned in certain communities:

“I mean it’s stupid, right? Of course it is. But it’s interesting how the book they chose to ban, I am the Cheese, is about forbidden knowledge. What gets covered up, distorted. What we pretend does not exist. Today I read that absence into those gaps between the different narrative sections, and into those silences that blossom in the interview transcripts. It’s like the censors had unconsciously found the perfect mirror to their censorship.”

From “Witness: The Inward Testimony” – Nadine Gormier (South African), in one of her customarily intellectual essay (with footnotes), begins with the effect of 9/11 and describes the importance of writer as witness, and, in certain cases, the self-censorship of events and truths witnessed but unspoken:

The duality of inwardness and the outside world: that is the one essential existential condition of the writer as witness. …I accept, from Proust, a signpost for writers in our context: “The march of thought in the solitary travail of artistic creation proceeds downwards, into the depths, in the only direction that is not closed to us, along which we are free to advance—towards the goal of truth.”

Described in the press release for the book as being “a book of essays that would explore the issue and impact of censorship on the world,” some of these essays were relevant to the proposed subject matter, others were not. Again, I just warmly wish more of the essays had the same relevance, depth and gravitas as the few.

But, like what Neda has become to many of the Iranian people, and others like her in many corners of the world, the basic human right of freedom of expression, as BURN THIS BOOK in its best moments suggests, certain human freedoms shall not die, no matter where they are subjugated, as long as there are those who believe in their power, and in the inherent rights of all, they shall remain alive, whether censored or not.

And, with the recent example of Iran, as in other parts of the world, it will take, as Frederick Douglass suggested, the expectation of struggle before change occurs. That expectation should not be something we or anyone else should be afraid of. For we have, as human beings in many instances, met that challenge with ultimate courage. And it is a courage that recognizes truths that go beyond the individual—it is truth which we recognize is a basic aspect of humanity itself. As long as we remember that, no matter how free or free we may not be, we are indeed not lost at all.

_______

K.J. Wetherholt is a former media executive and currently a writer, producer, and Co-Founder/Board Chairman of The Humanitarian Media Foundation (HMF). Her book, The Illumination A Novel of the Great War (2006) will be released in paperback next year and is currently being packaged as a feature film out of Europe for future production.

MediaStorm: Emmy Nominations

Warmest congratulations to friend Brian Storm and his team at MediaStorm for their Emmy Nominations... for Intended Consequences and Bearing Witness. They do extraordinary work, and it is a pleasure to be working with them.

The Modern Meaning of Memorial Day

Cross-posted with The Environmentalist.

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In the United States, since World War I, the national remembrance holiday in May, which was once known as “Decoration Day,” has been known as “Memorial Day.”

While many will be setting up their grills, weather-permitting, and fixing barbeque for friends and family alike, or gathering with friends at restaurants, or in whatever location, thankful for a long weekend and looking forward to the summer, numerous journalists will also be making commentary on what this day means. They will be talking about our soldiers, and whether one is for or against the two wars in which we are currently embroiled, they will be reminding us that those who have fought and died for us, our country, and our freedoms, should be foremost in our minds.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, for whether one is for war or against it, no one should take issue with our veterans themselves and only have inherent respect for an experience none could imagine unless in their shoes. My great-grandfather, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and WWI on the Western Front, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He is buried with others who have marked our country’s sacrifice in the midst of conflict.

But I would also like to make commentary on something that we should also be thinking about on this day. Let me amend that to say this day, and perhaps on every other, particularly for those of us who live in the West.

Earlier this month, on May 3rd, was World Press Freedom Day. It was a day that came and went to little fanfare. Even in this day when Iran is limiting or ceasing people’s access to Facebook during elections—where they should be able to communicate freely and exchange information about candidates—to the arrest and imprisonment of an Iranian-American journalist, Roxane Sabieri, who was accused of spying against Iran (who sang the American anthem to give herself strength during the ordeal), freedom of speech and freedom of the press have never been such important issues as they are now. Now, in this information age, this age of instant communication via varying means from SMS, email, Facebook and other social networking sites, IM, Skype, mobile phones and video conferencing, freedom of information has never been easier and more immediate. However, in most countries around the world, it is still limited.

On World Press Freedom Day, Freedom House released its assessment of world press freedom and found that it was on the decline. The current economic crisis has only caused further endangerment to media sustainability, not just here in the West, but to the developing world. And unlike in the West, and particularly in the United States, it is there, in the developing world, that such freedom is more consciously precious, because, indeed, it is often more rare.

As reported on CNN.com in its reporting of Freedom House’s findings, this marked the "seventh straight year" of deterioration, even in such countries as were once deemed "free," now only to be considered "partly free" because of political pressures and the yoke of governments which do not want their citizens to know what is happening both within and without their borders. To know, as a recent CIMA/NED report also stated, that only 20% of the world’s countries have any recognizable freedom of the press, is something that most would respond to with a certain degree of disbelief. We are so used to the freedoms we have that sometimes it shocks us the extent to which others do not have them.

On this Memorial Day weekend, here are two ways in which we can truly commemorate this holiday outside of spending time with friends and family. We can appreciate our veterans, for whom this holiday is supposed to be a celebration, and we can also celebrate the freedoms former generations have fought for, from the Founders of the United States on. I’d like to suggest that this isn’t “hokey” or idealistic. It’s necessary.

We, more than anyone in the world, could perhaps be seen as taking our freedoms for granted. We’d rather be cynics and talk about how we as Americans are hated by many around the world, and how many problems that has caused. The election of Obama may have changed public opinion among many Americans—and the world—to a certain extent, but still, some, rather than withstand criticism, will still often mitigate any pride over our nationality, as though to beat others to the punch, while lambasting those fellow Americans whom we consider responsible for our mistakes before others do in the international sphere. We can’t pretend to be who we once were, some say—or perhaps never were, if we think about only the abuses and never those aspects of which we should be proud.

We do need to recognize our mistakes. But to insert some context, there has been no civilization, no nation, no group among humanity—with few if any exceptions--which has not perpetrated some atrocity, some war, some moment in history about which it could beat itself to a pulp if it chose to. That is not the point, and truly, that is, unfortunately, far too easy an exercise. We have made ourselves a massive target in the public sphere, and not just based on the natural tendencies toward picking at hegemony. In terms of mistakes, we sure as hell have made them, sometimes on a grand scale. But lest we forget, the point is in recognizing mistakes, but also embracing what is true and good as its natural counter when the time comes to do it. That includes holidays such as Memorial Day, when we should be remembering the best of who we are, as embodied in those who have been willing to lay their lives on the line for the freedoms we often do take for granted, even now, amidst the two wars we’re currently fighting.

In the case of our own country, the ideals which the Founders—as flawed as the Founders may have been personally in certain respects—still deserve absolute respect for having created something never before seen—the implementation of ideals during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, when Natural Law reigned supreme in human philosophy. And the ideals about which they argued, debated, and ultimately fought a Revolutionary War, and about which wars have been fought wars since, are ones of which we should be proud. This is true moreso because 80% of the rest of the world to this day does not have similar freedoms.

On April 4, 2009, I did a posting on the RdS/HMF blog about George Orwell's 1984. This is a book that is often taught in high school here in the United States, but in this post-Cold War age, sometimes the reasons for teaching it are less pronounced than they were when the Soviet Union still existed. (For anyone who was not live during or who does not remember the Cold War, and its relevance to 1984, see the film, The Lives of Others).

Among many of my friends who are teachers, they teach it in terms of the Dystopian novel—as it indeed is. When I taught, I had a whole Dystopian Unit, which included novels, essays, psychological tracts, journalism, and film—everything from 1984 to the graphic novel and film of V for Vendetta. The themes have continued to prove inordinately important, and moreso in this information age, when information is inherently ubiquitous, but as we have seen from recent events internationally (China, Sri Lanka, Sudan, etc.), still subject to propaganda.

As with much literature of any merit, its messages are told, like many of our best films, through the story of others. Such stories teach students that it’s usually the force in power that will try to convince everyone else that they are actually in or striving toward a utopia—which is their surreptitious psychological means of maintaining control--consigning everyone else, often by force, to the dystopian reality to which it appears only a few are awake. Those who are apparently awake usually form some kind of resistance or rebellion to awaken others to a previously unseen reality. Many others may be awake as well, but they’re not willing to risk torture, murder, imprisonment or other subjugation to stand before that dystopian power and challenge it. They must wait for others who have the courage of their convictions—and are willing to risk torture and death—to free them, should their plight for freedom succeed.

In preparing to write the RdS post, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I was watching the trailer for Michael Radford's film version of 1984, filmed in and around London during the very time period in which the novel originally took place. The control of media, wars fought about which the truth might never be known, terrorism being used to control the public and act as an excuse to limit rights and freedom of expression--"thought police" and those who commit "thought crime" when not bending to party line.

What becomes true as things swing more and more to the extreme ends of the spectrum, is that the higher the stakes get, the more issues are seen as black and white, right and wrong, to the detriment of dissent. Control is seen as a necessary means of mitigating whatever potential damage might come from someone actually having his or her own thought--and acting on it. It might not be good for the masses. It might prove to be subversive. Heaven forbid there be such a thing as freedom, for in 1984, "Big Brother" loves you, and only wants to protect you--not just from others, but from yourself. For that protection, one must therefore believe that 2+2=5. And one must believe that with all his or her heart. And one must not question when the clock also strikes "13."

Remember, from 1984, those famous slogans:

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

In other countries, including in the remaining 80% of the world, including where violence is being perpetrated, any such questioning of the status quo, instead of debate and a subsequent vote, would come with instant arrest, and perhaps loss of life. There are places right now in the world, where "Big Brother" is a despotic government which will subjugate a population, rape and murder anyone who objects, or in the cases of cultural and ethnic violence, rape and murder any human being who has committed the objectionable act of even being alive. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are laughable pipe dreams. Basic human survival is at issue among millions—if not billions—of people. And those slogans from 1984, which we as Americans would inherently consider ridiculous, may as well actually be the slogans used by various regimes whose brutality is just simply the beginning of a true reign of terror.

Seeing the world as it is, including our own country, it is pretty apparent we do not live in a utopia. We even point out on a regular basis how far we are from it. But we here in the States also scream bloody murder should any of our rights be impeded. The Patriot Act caused endless debate—as it should have—and the rights of any who are subjugated are written about or covered by the media to the nth degree, even when we’re tired of hearing about it. Any conflict is inherently a story covered from every imaginable angle—and cynicism, as much as we may hate it at times, does have its uses—it assures that we aren’t swallowing whatever b.s. is being forced upon us by some faction in the government. There is always someone who will chortle, whether pundit or American citizen, who will shake his or her head after reading the paper or hearing something blatantly absurd on CNN, Fox News, or one of the other networks, and with typical impertinence toward “the system,” and ask, “Are you kidding?”

But in remembering the other 80 % of the world, we do take that right even to be impertinent for granted. We forget that such impertinence to whatever system in other parts of the world may be a death sentence.

And we need to remember something else. Whether we realize it or not, and however unpopular we are in certain parts of the world, there are those who still look to us as the ideal of human freedom. They look at our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, which even some of our own citizens have never read, and can talk about the Founders place in the Enlightenment and their use of Natural Law in the language of these documents. They even talk about the difficulties the Founders had grappling with these ideals during the difficulties of their time—including holding the natural rights of humanity aloft, while nearly tearing themselves apart over the issues of slavery. But they tout, sometimes more than we do, the fact that our Founders challenged themselves and future generations as a first step toward bridging the chasms between such philosophy—such higher ideals—and politics, in which those ideals were either subverted or upheld in practice. They did something with those ideals, and a new country was built in the wake of that willingness to create something that had never been known before, and based on ideals that would, perhaps, have otherwise only existed in the ether.

For those who do not have our freedoms, there is often the fragility of hope, and where it exists, the necessity of it to live another day, and the necessity to fight for its very protection. For those who have no hope, a single light shone in the darkness allows for even a single moment of belief, and the recognition that despite all the horrors of this increasingly complex world, any among the subjugated is inherently human, and there are others who give a damn about that very humanity, and the right not just to exist, but to live with that humanity intact, including rights which are—and should always be—inherent as human beings. And whether we realize it or not, they look to us, seeing where we started as a nation-state, what values we continue to uphold, and what we were willing to fight for. For we do need to realize, that when the time comes, there are things worth fighting for.

It is my hope that we will never forget, even when it is unpopular to recognize in casting a look askance at war—whatever war—which others fought for our right to be who we are. They fought for our right to disagree—to dissent—and to define ourselves, however we might, as human beings and as a nation. Even those areas in which we have not perfected our own freedoms, we at least have the ability to fight for them, knowing, in critical moments, woe betide the force that would ultimately keep us from them. At heart, we are the Americans everyone who believes in us believes us to be, for our history, and are forebears, however flawed, are a part of us whether we choose to recognize them or not.

So, as I eat my share of Memorial Day barbeque, I will be thinking about the following: my great-grandfather, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and WWI, buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and about my father, who was a veteran of Korea. I will be wearing a red poppy, and reading both “In Flanders Fields” and Siegfried Sasson’s poem, “Aftermath.” And as importantly, I’ll be damned proud to have been born in a country that while imperfect, still allows for views different from mine—and yours, whoever you may be reading this—thanking my father, great-grandfather, and others who put their lives on the line so that I might truly be one of the fortunate to know such freedoms—and hope and work toward the freedoms of others.

Again, this is not idealism. This is saying thank you.

For Iran

As mentioned in a previous note among friends on Facebook, making an analogy to John Donne's poem, "Death Be Not Proud" (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=216419670499), I am going to do the same here, with a Dylan Thomas poem that immediately came to mind upon watching coverage on CNN of today's veritable massacre in Iran.

And here in the United States, what trumped such coverage? Damned South Carolina governor Mark Sanford being unable to keep his fly zipped.

Not only that, but watching ABC World News Tonight, little coverage--vapid coverage of other subjects in comparison--and as making a note to an FB friend, we--we Americans of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--we of a nation founded and built on the idea of Enlightenment and Natural Law which recognizes the inherent rights of all human beings in terms of the most basic, inherent freedoms--are now in our ADHD tendencies of the modern age, starting to turn away from Iran's quest for freedom to satisfy our more base desires for gossip.

Unacceptable. It is unfortunate that we do not remember who we are until we are reminded by the blood, terror, and fear of others as they launch their own rebellion for freedoms we have summarily taken for granted.

This reference to this poem, and copying it below, is for the news agencies, for the continued attention of the American people, and for the Iranians themselves, including those who have died in these last two weeks for a cause we should believe in more than most. I pray that they will not stop what is necessary vigilance in a quest for the rights which should always have been theirs.

Many different interpretations can be suggested for what is copied below, perhaps one of the most famous of Dylan Thomas's poems, but the one I choose at this moment has to do with keeping the torch aloft for all who rebel against the malevolent forces of today's tyrannical regimes which feel no compunction in keeping their citizens in fear--which unfortunately exist in more places of the world than are covered by the press. No one under such subjugation should be forgotten. They instead must dissent and rebel as they can by virtue of unsupported courage, praying that at some point the world will notice them.

We have noticed Iran. Now let us continue covering them and use it as inspiration to uphold such values anywhere they are threatened.

With that in mind, for Iran, and for others under similar threat:


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Review: "Our World at War" - VII/ICRC Opening in NYC - 401 Projects

On May 8th, I attended "Our World at War," which was a photo exhibition and presentation by VII, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and 401 Projects.

The photography was by renowned war photographers such as Jim Nachtwey, Christopher Morris, Franco Pagetti, Ron Haviv, and Antonin Kratchovil, depicting war-torn areas of Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, Afghanistan, Colombia, the Philippines, the Caucasus region and the DRC. Speaking that night, to a hushed crowd, were photographers Ron Haviv and Franco Pagetti, Alberto Cairo from the ICRC in Afghanistan, all moderated by CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

This was a vastly different event than I had been to for a while. I was truly warmed that most everyone there was there for the right reasons; those attending were required to RSVP from invitations, and were either connected to the speakers, to VII, the ICRC, or 401 Projects, where the event was held, or were interested parties either from among the public or from other NGO's or the UN, who truly gave a damn about the subject matter. Even though the venue was hot, and there were vast quantities of people, everyone still quieted immediately when the presentation and dialogue among the featured guests took place, hushing others who were too loud or only there to drink or be seen. The presentation was also filmed and simulcast via flatscreen in another part of the space where people had gathered, as the main room with the exhibition itself was packed to capacity.

In terms of the speakers, Christiane Amanpour easily exemplified why she is so well-respected as a journalist and as a speaker--she was warm, effective, efficient, and to the point in her introduction and in her questions, getting quickly to the heart of the matter among each of the guests and finding a common thread through their experiences in bringing home the subject matter to the vast swath of attendees--the difficulty of wars around the would which are not well-covered enough by journalists, or alternately, issues which should be covered in current wars in which were currently embroiled, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but are not. Her perspective was immediately close to my own heart, as who among my friends anywhere, including via the HMF or even on Facebook, have not heard me angrily making editorial commentary on the same themes. Amanpour was polite and warmly gracious, spending time after the presentation mingling with the attendees, greeting friends and colleagues as she fielded questions and took pictures, speaking with people about their connections to others in the room and their interests in the subject matter.

Equally important were comments made by the guests--photographers Ron Haviv and Franco Pagetti, whose images, as with those of the other photographers not there in person, were extraordinary. This was truly a situation in which VII made sure to show images which were most evocative, as this was truly a distinguished crowd, and the effect was well worth it. This was indeed the kind of crowd for whom these issues may be known, as many of them were in or associated with organizations in the field. However, the combination of the images, the speakers, and the crowd all being there specifically to show earnest support of the issues being depicted made all the difference. I have been to far too many openings where there is that smarmy air of self-congratulation among hosts and certain organizations for being "supportive" of causes because of the social standing it provides -- and it smacks of amateur hour solipsism. This, instead, was created by professionals for professionals, and those who are entering this world for the first time and would benefit from feeling the air of true professional discourse as well as consciousness raising by those who are in the trenches. I remember turning to the friend who had come with me as we walked in the door, and instantly seeing the images, nodding to him and saying, "This is the real thing."

Also truly warming were comments by Alberto Cairo, whom I also had the chance to speak with downstairs after the presentation. He spoke with the earnest power of someone who started working with the ICRC because he went to Afghanistan, and being a doctor and seeing what was happening among the people, found he couldn't leave. I mentioned to him a former experience I had at a different opening, one of many, in which people were there to socialize and be seen rather than to honor the work of people for whom the greatest respect should be given--including by their peers, letting him know his appearance there and speaking about his experience made all the difference--that people warmly connect to those whose authority comes from being in the field and talking from that place of true and earnest unequivocal knowledge. More than that, his words had affected me, too, not just because of the HMF, but as a human being. He took my hand, squeezing it hard, then placing his hand to his chest and, voice quiet, thanking me. "That means more to me than you know," he said emotionally, "to hear that. We're in the field, and you don't know if people will want to listen to what you have to say. Sometimes it's too difficult to get it across--or for others to hear." I nodded, equally affected, smiling gently, feeling the silent connection of two people--among many that night--who were affected by the same, if not similar, emotions.

Amanpour, in honoring Cairo, Haviv and Pagetti, also importantly, and similarly, made comments about the merits of true journalism and aid work--that which is in the trenches and has the authority to make commentary as opposed to the kind of "pajama" punditry among those who make commentary without experience in the field. She, as did they, also made pointed comments about the lack of media attention to areas of conflict in which such attention is necessary, not only as humanitarian stories, but as proof of what is going on in the world among political factions whose conflicts will not inevitably remain within their borders. More than that, certain atrocities committed by these powers will be met with disbelief, even though the proof is right there in front of those who have the power to change certain dynamics, or put certain pressure on certain parties. They will not believe it for themselves unless they see it firsthand--and sometimes the power of images--not just words--is the only way to get the message across. Until then, hundreds, thousands, and perhaps millions of people can be affected.

(I was reminded of what Samantha Power, in her book, A Problem from Hell, writes on that very subject: it is easier not to believe the effects of these conflicts. People don't want to believe such horrors exist, not even when you try to show them proof. It is too uncomfortable to believe it is something humanity is capable of, and the implications of involvement, once accepting these realities, is a subject few want to broach.)

In this particular event, it might be said that those speaking were preaching to the choir; but I did not get that sense. My sense was that events such as this, done for the right reasons, and done well, affirm for attendees the reasons why they are doing what they're doing in the first place. It gives certain among a rare group additional energy to continue, knowing that there are others like them, others also involved in the same world, who have had similar experiences, who are walking forward with similar courage and conviction, even amidst the obvious difficulties. There is almost the sense of jaded, wry humor in certain moments--the unspoken chortle about the difficulties of presenting such realities to a public who often would rather not know what is happening in the world. But those there still walk forward, heart exposed to the air like Alberto Cairo, because at heart, and despite those difficulties, the unthinkable thing would be not to dig in and try to do something about it.

In all a wonderful experience, and I am warmly looking forward to others, those hopefully with a similar sense of earnest and powerful professional intention to speak truth among those who are willing to hear it.

World Press Freedom Day - May 3rd / 1984: Redux

I am going to do something here I rarely do, which is to repeat a post in less than a month. However, this day, May 3rd, World Press Freedom Day, is something I feel quite strongly about, with my warm hope being that others will as well. It is not so much for the ones instituting it as it is the idea it represents--one which is essential we remember as freedoms across the board are lessened by fears--whether political, social, cultural, or economic.

Once again, Freedom House released its assessment of world press freedom and found that it was on the decline. The current economic crisis has only caused further endangerment to media sustainability, not just here in the West, but to the developing world. It is there that such freedom is more consciously precious, because, indeed, it is often more rare.

As reported on CNN.com, this marked the "seventh straight year" of deterioration, even in such countries as were once deemed "free," now only to be considered "partly free" because of political pressures and the yoke of governments which do not want their citizens to know what is happening both within and without their borders.

This cannot stand.

I am repeating below the post I did on April 4, 2009, about George Orwell's 1984. It is best that we learn from the dangers such prescience can perhaps afford us. For we do not want to experience it so wholly ourselves, nor would we want others to know of its horrors, for in some parts of the world, we must remember, this already in some form has come to pass.

To quote another film, one of my favorites, which some shall remember should they have seen it, "For it is the doom of men that they forget."

George Orwell's 1984

...April 4th was mentioned in George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984. This was the say that Winston Smith writes, secretly, in his journal, and still with the free will of a man even who knows he is being watched, the significance of the freedom to say that 2+2=4.

Dystopian film, literature and art of whatever kind, I still deem to be inordinately important. It is what shows what is possible when we forget what it means to be human--and the natural rights we have as human beings--which organizations like the UN, NGO's and even a free press should be screaming about at the top of their lungs at every turn, lest we forget. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I was watching the trailer for Michael Radford's film version of 1984, filmed in and around London during the very time period in which the novel originally took place. The control of media, wars fought about which the truth might never be known, terrorism being used to control the public and act as an excuse to limit rights and freedom of expression--"thought police" and those who commit "thought crime" when not bending to party line. The higher the stakes get, the more issues are seen as black and white, right and wrong, to the detriment of dissent. Control is seen as a necessary means of mitigating whatever potential damage might come from someone actually having his or her own thought--and acting on it. It might not be good for the masses. It might prove to be subversive.

Heaven forbid there be such a thing as freedom, for "Big Brother" loves you, and only wants to protect you--not just from others, but from yourself. For that protection, one must therefore believe that 2+2=5. And one must believe that with all his or her heart. And one must not question when the clock also strikes "13."

In thinking about the exhibition and reception, another irritation was the sense that we are allowed to see these images and have this discourse. In other countries, including where violence is being perpetrated, any such images would come with instant arrest, and perhaps even mean loss of life. Among those attendees yesterday evening, were they thinking about the fact that they were standing, drinking and socializing, not looking at photographs that in other parts of the world would be for all intents and purposes illegal? Where "Big Brother" is a despotic government which will subjugate a population, rape and murder anyone who objects, or in the cases of cultural and ethnic violence, rape and murder any human being who has committed the objectionable act of even being alive?

Here what we consider the normal act of living life is forced onto its head, where 2+2 does not equal 4...it equals whatever the government says it does. We remember that before the Iron Curtain fell--the reason for me having reviewed such films as The Lives of Others. In the interests of escapism, we are all to happy to forget that all is not well with the world.

My greatest hope is that our media will continue to tell whatever truths are necessary to either warn of danger or to affect the minds and souls of those who recognize but sometimes forget the fragility of hope, the necessity of it, and the necessity for its very protection. For those who have no hope, a single light shone in the darkness allows for even a single moment of belief, and the recognition that despite all the horrors of this increasingly complex world, he or she is truly human, and there are others who give a damn about that very humanity, and the right for him or her not just to exist, but to live with that humanity intact. And from that moment, another light can be seen--and shine all the more brightly--if more and more are willing to recognize its existence and fight for it.

It is here that resistance is necessary. As is dissent when any threat of dystopia subversively creeps in, evoking fear, using that fear to gain even a modicum of control. For its interests are in itself and its own existence--not those under its rule. Remember, from 1984, those famous slogans:

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Can we not see in many places in the geo-political South (or, to others not in IR, again, the Third World), where these slogans would seem to be the reality and not its opposite. Or even among some of our own political parties, which like the Ouroboros, is not a symbol of the infinite cycle of death and rebirth, but the system feeding upon itself until nothing else exists, and its own power is absolute.

Again, in the end, in such regimes, there is nothing but the state and its self-perpetuation. To quote Pink Floyd, as I don't often do but sure as hell will do here, we are all "just another brick in the wall." The wall is the state, made up of automatons whose service is to the State for its continued existence. THX-1138, V for Vendetta, among other films, demonstrate the use of power, mind control, media control, and the subjugation of any positive human impulse, including the natural will toward freedom, in such cases to quell resistance. You thwart human instinct and higher human thought so that you cease in many ways to be human. You are taught that the dystopia is actually Utopia, because you are protected and cared for. The individual no longer exists. It is the hero of the dystopia who realizes that he or she is not in Utopia at all, but in a malevolent world in which everyone seems to be in a collective trance.

Does anyone remember the comments in such episodes of Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda, in which, for instance, perpetrators commented as though they were in some kind of trance--taken over by evil, as though they were watching themselves from the outside looking in, seeing the violence and murder they were committing, as though separated from it? The murdering masses were brainwashed into believing there was "us" and "other." Other was dangerous. It was responsible for all ills and all evils. Therefore it was justified in being eradicated, whatever the means, including murder. The same argument was used by Nazis in WWII. And it has been used by every government or every group exerting power in which separating an individual from his or her humanity is the first step toward control, and ultimately, destruction.

Why else is it important for those of us in the media, and in international media policy--a relatively new and unrecognized area of IR discourse--to remind people that this is a powerful subject which can be used either for good or for evil. To subjugate or to bring out the best in humanity by reminding us what it means to be human. We need to tell the truth even when it hurts, but we must also inspire the best aspects of humanity, or else fracture that fragile demarcation between too much information and not enough. We must always walk that line, pushing boundaries, but for the most human of reasons--not to control, but to ask essential questions. In any state, any individual, any aspect of the microcosm or the macrocosm, to ask questions is a means of true power. For only in asking questions do we learn what is happening in the world, and giving a damn about whatever answers come, even if they are hard to hear. Control is controlling the ability to ask such questions. To discourage it. To discourage the dissent that comes from it. And dissent is a natural human right which many, to this day, do not have. It is the right to ask what the truth is, and then decide for ourselves what we believe, and what action is necessary. For truth without action is half the equation, and it lacks courage. The only reason to tell the truth is to act on it. That in itself can be a subversive act.

And in that context, my last word warmly is: Thank God for the subversive, when actions based on those truths remind us who we truly are, for better or worse, as human beings. It is the only way change is indeed possible.