A little bit of good news for a Wednesday in November

some good news from yesterday's election results...

• Workers’ Rights (Ohio);
• Choice (Mississippi);
• Voting Rights (Maine);
• Marriage Equality (Iowa);
• Immigrant Civil Rights AND Government By the People (Arizona);
• Public Education (North Carolina)

there's still some voters left out there who aren't completely batshit insane...

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A truly uplifting experience - in AFGHANISTAN...!

i simply must share one of the most amazing, uplifting experiences of my professional career...

the number two senior manager in the very large afghanistan government organization in which i'm working came and sat down with our team this afternoon and proceeded to - very nicely, but most sincerely - lecture us on his views of leadership...

what he had to say was perhaps the most right-on profession of enlightened leadership principles i've ever heard from a person at his level... my jaw was literally on the floor as he went on for nearly a half hour... i ended up telling him that i had spent the vast majority of my career trying to get other senior managers i've worked with to subscribe to those principles and found that i was usually wasting my breath...

i simply never would have believed that i would hear such an intuitive, principled view of leadership so grandly articulated by any senior manager ANYWHERE, much less in AFGHANISTAN... who woulda thunk it...?

it's been a good day...!

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Just can't get it up

so much for a bait-and-switch headline...

basically, i just can't seem to get the energy to post on what seems to be the eternal bullshit that continues to go on literally everywhere... i am SO-O-O-OOO ready for good news and i'm not talkin' about fluffy bunny, cute puppy, little girl dancing good news, i'm talkin' 'bout the REAL GODDAM THING... you know, like bankers arrested and thrown in jail, war criminals indicted, a wholesale global turn to solar energy, ceasefires in all of our numerous goddam wars, you know, stuff like that...

what i've been posting on ever since i started this blog are bits and pieces of what i see as the larger pattern of what's been going on, not only in the u.s., but around the world, and i think i've done a pretty good job... i haven't done exhaustive research, to be sure, but, given my daily tour through myriad news sources coupled with my extensive travel and work in many other countries, i've managed to cobble together what i believe are many of the key pieces of the planetary puzzle - what's actually going on, who's involved and some pretty good guesses as to why... most of it, unfortunately, has been pretty grim...

quite frankly, i'm losing interest in digging up more things to be outraged about... yes, we're being taken to the cleaners by our global, super-rich elites, people solely interested in amassing staggering quantities of money and power without the least regard for how it's obtained or who has to suffer and die in the process... yes, the vast majority of people in the world are paying the price for their greed and, yes, our so-called leaders at the top of world governments are either themselves part of that super-rich elite class or, at minimum, their bought-and-paid for toadies... yep, i got the picture... all the rest is just details...

so, when can i look for the good stuff, the turn-around, the tipping point...? my friends, it's way, WAY overdue...

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Yeah, yeah, I know...

no posts since last tuesday monday, but i ain't seein' nothin' to smile about and i'm bloody sick and tired of putting up more doom and gloom... it gets real old, knowhutimean...?

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I'm outta here [UPDATE]

for those few who may be paying attention, you'll notice i haven't posted since last wednesday... i periodically lose motivation and/or momentum when i can no longer abide the dearth of good news... well, that's not entirely true... there's always good news when i bother to find it but it generally is good news on a micro, very personal scale... that doesn't make it any the less significant or valuable but, being the big-picture guy that i am, i'm looking for the BIG good news stories and those seem to be damn few and far between...

so, with the motivation and momentum problem, i'm now tossing in another reason for a lack of posting... this afternoon, my son and i are headed to london where we'll meet up with a london-based friend and colleague to spend a few days kicking around things like westminster abbey, the tower of london and other such tourist attractions... but the big deal starts on wednesday when the three of us fly to glasgow where my daughter and her roommate are flying in from the u.s.... there we pick up a car and set off to explore the outer hebrides islands of scotland for two weeks before swinging back inland through inverness and edinburgh... i visited the latter two cities many years ago and have very pleasant memories but i'm really pumped about the hebrides... something about the far northern latitudes, the long, long days and the spiritual quality of the air and the light i think will make it a most special time...

stay tuned for pics but pro'ly not very many posts...

p.s. the volcanic ash cloud spewing forth from iceland is currently causing transatlantic flight delays as planes are re-routed further north or south, adding as much as an hour to flight times... our route from san fran to london follows a far north route anyway so i'm not anticipating a problem at this point, but we'll see won't we...?



[UPDATE]

so much for "no problem"... the flight from san fran to london is on a 5-hour delay and that's on top of the 4-hour layover that was already built in to the original schedule... sigh... 9 hrs. sitting on our butts in san fran... guess we oughta consider taking the bart into town...

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No posts on Sunday, only one post yesterday and this is all I can manage today

i'm in one of those "good god, where's the GOOD news" funks... check out these headlines from raw story...

Study finds climate change already driving migration

Revealed: Bush insiders still distorting climate change debate

DEMOCRATS DROP PUBLIC OPTION

HRW: Brazil police murdered over 11,000 in six years

Obama lawyers defend Bush torture author

Defense firms got flu vaccine before schools, hospitals; Memo suggests Lockheed kept doses from rank-and-file

Kucinich: US tax dollars help fund Taliban attacks 'on our troops'

US Air Force confirms 'Beast of Kandahar' drone

Report: Iraq WMD claim came from cab driver

Another Fox flub conveniently hurts Dems

Fox host: Not subsidizing abortions means more poor babies

More in US believe in angels than man's global warming role

seewhutimean...? pretty grim, ain't it...?

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A dog story from Pakistan

this is the kind of thing that i'd like to see more of... it's human, touching, and brings a compassionate three-dimensionality to what is often seen as sadly one-dimensional, particularly from the perspective of this side of the world...

and, yes, it brought tears to my eyes...


Lost and found: Pamela Constable with Ahu and
some of the Pakistanis who helped her locate the
missing pet. (Courtesy Of The Author)

Ahu & Me: A Dog Is Lost, Hope Is Found In Pakistan

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

another take-away from this story (besides warm fuzzies), is that there are good-hearted, wonderful people everywhere, just as there are assholes and idiots everywhere...

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Let's hear it for a little fun in the midst of misery

god bless the children... i've seen children in kabul having fun no matter what the weather, no matter how abject their poverty and no matter how tough the security situation... a little skateboarding sounds like just the ticket...

from the la times...

A white van pulled up to a concrete fountain on a leafy side street in downtown Kabul, trailed by shrieking Afghan children.

"Ollie! Ollie!" they shouted, pounding on the vehicle.

Oliver Percovich, a lanky Australian in a black T-shirt, emerged from the van with a load of banged-up skateboards. The children grabbed the boards and raced off to skate in the cracked bowl of the dried-up fountain.

Skateboarding was unknown to Afghans until Percovich, who followed his social scientist girlfriend to Kabul, starting teaching local children to skate in early 2007. Two years later, their relationship is over and his girlfriend is back in Australia. But Percovich's "Skateistan" nonprofit club has become a magnet for children in Kabul, the capital.

In a country where girls are rigidly segregated from boys and rarely participate in sports, Skateistan has managed to bring boys and girls together. Dozens of children swarm across the fountain every day, sharing boards and showing off improvised skating moves.

Neighborhood kids rush the Skateistan van to grab a skateboard
for an afternoon session.


Skateboarders take over the streets of Kabul under
vigilant security.

again, i say, bless 'em... if i get the chance to get some of my own photos when i get back in september, i'll be sure to post them...

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Honesty is honored in - of all places - Argentina...!

this is the kind of good news i'd like to see a LOT more of, particularly in a place like argentina where, as the article mentions, corruption is a national epidemic...

It was a gesture which became instant headline in a country where corruption is considered a national plague.

Two public relations young fellows set up a website in his honour calling for gestures of gratitude for what is seen as an extraordinary act of honesty. Last weekend the sum was reached according to the site.

Santiago Gori, a taxi driver from the city of La Plata, 60 kilometres south of Buenos Aires found the money after driving an elderly couple. They only went a short distance but when he dropped them off, they left a bag in the back of his taxi.

A few days later he managed to locate his passengers again and he returned the bag. For Argentines used to corruption at all levels of society, this was an extraordinary story.

It is estimated 55.000 people visited the site and left hundreds of rewards and messages for Gori.

[...]

As happened a month ago when 100.000 people spontaneously took to the streets for the final farewell to former President Raul Alfonsin, the architect of the transition to democracy, “the Argentines again came out in mass to honour an honest man”, said Gori.

“Maybe it’s a new message for the political establishment when we are a month away from mid term elections”, added the publicist.

“If our politicians had 10% of Gori’s honesty, what a great country we could be”, said one of the contributors who invited the taxi driver out for lunch.

[...]

For his part, Mr Gori seemed a bit bemused. He said he only did what had to be done, and that he does not quite know what to do with all the things he has been offered.

[...]

Argentina rates 109 in the International Transparency 2008 list, while its neighbours Chile and Uruguay are placed in position 23, the least corrupt countries of Latinamerica.

corruption saps the energy right out of a society... it's a motivation killer because you know that, no matter what you do or how much you want to do the right thing, it won't matter because somebody is always there forking out cash to get ahead of you in line... it's pathetic... afghanistan is the same way... there's always somebody there with his hand out and, if you don't pay up, you can kiss whatever it is that you want to get done bye-bye...

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