When the phone rings at 3am.......

My latest Facebook status message:

"Jude is wondering if anyone's made the 3am phone call primary ad connection w/the VP announcement at 3am."
Jude Nagurney Camwell at 10:43am August 23

Could this text message at 3am to announce Biden as VP have been a final slam on the Clinton primary season ad...as if to say, "Here's your 3 am experience!" ?

Bush Learns Lesson About Reading Eyeballs

Created by Jude Nagurney Camwell

On the John Edwards Scandal

Seeing so many "concern trolls" coming out of the woodwork and sending personal messages to me about the political fallout from the John Edwards affair, you would've thought I was the one who had the affair....or that I'd known about it all along.

I was a strong supporter of Senator Edwards for our common stand on the many issues that were (and are) most important to me. The mistake some of you have made in suggesting that "you told me so" and that I was a "poor judge of character" is that you still don't understand why I supported Edwards in the first place. Perhaps you don't understand where I'm coming from because the media never gave him a fair shake. They wanted to talk about his perfect, unlined face and his big house. They're still digging in with their claws. Pathetic pieces of work, some of them are.

The cult of personality that the Presidential race has become in this nation is at a fever pitch. As in the days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the media has its collective shorts in a faux-moral uproar over a candidate having a marital affair.

Yes - I understand that, politically, Senator Edwards focused much of his Presidential platform on the moral failings of the past eight years, and so it's easy for some who see his mistake as a key moral personal failing to throw away the proverbial baby (who was a very bad baby) with the bathwater of his down-to-earth vision. It's all too easy to cast away the body of ideas he's been sharing with progressives but for the man's human weakness.

I worked directly with him and Elizabeth on some issues and I can tell you that I've never seen two more committed and politically courageous people. If Mrs.Edwards can find forgiveness, and I assume she did along time ago, then it would only be a sick preoccupation with sex that would cause me to turn away from soliciting their future support on the issues that make a real difference in our lives. I'm just not that hung up on others' personal affairs. I'll leave that to some of you cult-of-celebrity subscribers. To you, I say never fear...your gossip shows will be on once again tonight. You can get another fix in a few hours.

His affair, for me personally, has no bearing on the fact that what he was saying was true all along.

I feel tremendously sorry for the Edwards family right now.

But for those who are coming to me looking for me to step back from my positions because Senator Edwards made a tragic mistake which even the most suspicious of his detractors couldn't have known about or imagined, I think you'd best stop feeling so "sorry" for me and move along. There's nothing for you to see here except my constant positions on the issues that matter to all of us.

The primary ended when Senator Obama became the presumptive nominee. That was quite a while ago. If any of you care to keep Senator Obama apprised of our hopes that he'll get(and stay) on a Progressive path, do something productive rather than accost me....go to The Nation magazine and sign this letter.

Senator Edwards will hopefully be back to help out with the Half in Ten cause,and when he does, I'd encourage those who judged him based on the standards of the cult of personality rather than the trust that he meant what he said all along about ending poverty to join Half in Ten.


I want to share some of my very few comments at Daily Kos on the topic:

Rec'd curious personal notes from concern trolls (4+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
sockpuppet, Noisy Democrat, Triscula, carllaw

Amazing how they come out of the woodwork when something like this happens...as if any of us knew about the politically (and personally) tragic mistake made by Edwards. I take it with a grain of salt because, from a political standpoint, I moved on from the primary a long time ago and still hold to my belief in the social justice that Edwards strongly championed. He may not be able to carry the fight on strongly because of his glaringly poor judgment in his personal affairs and America's preoccupation with sex, but I sure as hell will be fighting myself. And I'd stand beside him in that fight any day..unashamed.

Very well-said, Don, I join your Half In Ten support (5+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
sockpuppet, TomP, planetclaire4, DixieDishrag, carllaw

It would be my deepest disappointment were Half in Ten to suffer.

John Edwards is a human being with human failings.

One lesson to be learned is that no one - regardless of who the candidate is - should be a true believer in a personality. No one should place a human being on a super-human pedestal. And no one should present themselves as a savior of any kind.

I saw many true believers flocking to Daily Kos during this primary season for another personality..Mr. Obama. Let's remember that he, too, is flesh and blood.

We must be cautious and remember it's the cause and not the figurehead in which we should place our undying faith.

My own true belief was in the causes that John and Elizabeth championed.

Thankfully, I have no regret in having been a constant and committed champion of those causes and will recognize and pay tribute to the viable candidates who champion them in the future.

As for Senator Edwards, I am disappointed, but at the same time I still believe that he was just as committed to ending poverty as you and I have been. I still am inextricably enjoined with him, in a social-justice sense, in that cause, regardless of his unbelievably bad judgment in his personal and political affairs. Social justice is a moral cause...and it's far more important to concentrate upon than the kind of hyperfocused and holier-than-thou moral judgment being passed on Edwards now.

Those who choose to blurt out their "fuck you-s" and "I hate you-s" are having knee-jerk reactions in their visions of what could have been and, thankfully, will never come to pass. Edwards could've been the POTUS nominee and have blown it for all of us. Understandable.

Those who excoriate the people who supported Edwards because of his causes are wrong in failing to see that they're only seeing through their own filters...many having shown that they, themselves, have been true believers in another candidate while almost robotically sinking their teeth into the political flesh of Hillary Clinton for so many months.

Many lessons to be learned here.....

My support for Half in Ten remains strong.

I hope others will join you, Don.



great comment! (3+ / 0-)

Recommended by:
sockpuppet, TomP, planetclaire4

the best comment I've read, and I think I've read a great deal, as someone who journeyed far and wide with the Edwards family..

by laurenc on Sun Aug 10, 2008 at 11:53:12 AM PDT

[ Parent | Reply to This | Recommend ]



Thank you, laurenc (0+ / 0-)

I've worked hard for John and Elizabeth myself on many issues that concerned all of us. It's a real heartbreak to see all of this happening..for them...for us...but it doesn't mean that our causes must suffer or that Senator Edwards' personal and political mistake is by any means a reflection on those who believed in those causes alongside the Edwardses. Take heart and know that I, for one, and many others here support everything you did for the Edwardses because you believed in doing the right thing....even if it turns out that decisions with politically tragic consequences were consciously made by the candidate himself. John always told us that his run was about us...and now it's up to us to bethe leaders he wanted us to be....to carry on and hope the healing will take place in the Edwards family and that they'll both be back to fight..healthy and healed.. asconcerned citizens by our side.

At Facebook: Harry Taylor for Congress 2008

"Sanctuary" by Deng Ming-Dao

"Golden light skims azure bay,
Dense air heavy with laurel.
Windless dusk smears to night,
Sonorous pool in a sheltered grove."

Though this world is turbulent, there are still days and places where we can be afforded some tranquility. When this happens, it is right to rest from the tribulations and striving of being in the world and to take advantage of what is offered.












Sometimes it will be the peaceful feeling of sunset, when the blazing sun becomes reconciled with the horizon and a sense of acceptance lingers in the air.













At other times it will be the chance encounter with a secret place - perhaps a grove of trees that promises a mysterious comfort.
















In such private places, we can often find peace. Such stillness can even be precious, as when we notice the deep voice of a stream which we were always too busy to hear before.










Indeed, sometimes we are so worn out by our daily activities that we forget to notice our need for recharging.










Renewal is a profound tonic.
With sanctuary and rest, we can prepare to go forth again.








- From Deng Ming-Dao's book "365 Tao, Daily Meditations"

photos byJude Nagurney Camwell
all rights reserved

Time Horizon...Lost Horizon

CBS War Correspondent Asks HuffPo for Fairness

CBS news correspondent Kimberly Dozier, author of the book "Breathing the Fire" which chronicles events and her experiences after having nearly been killed on Memorial Day in 2006 by an explosive device while reporting in Iraq, asked Arianna Huffington a question on Facebook yesterday. I'll let her comment and question stand on its own. I think it shows just how complicated, indeed, is the question of where the U.S. needs to go on Iraq. It goes far beyond anyone's given ideology, political posturing, and respective choice of Presidential candidate.

It's fairly obvious that the news network's front-line correspondents do not wish to be used for anyone's political purpose in this Presidential campaign season. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have used the Iraq war as a political tool and have treated the mainstream media..sometimes with success, disappointingly... as little more than their personal stenographers. It's happened for so long now...with far less success lately on the Bush administration's part .. that I think we've become perhaps too suspicious about the reporters who lay their own lives on the line every day to report what's actually happening on the ground.

Ms. Dozier asks the owner of the Huffington Post:

"Question for you -- I've been reporting that security is improved for Iraqis thanks to the surge in Iraq, but that US military commanders themselves say the situation is still 'reversible,' and that most everything else has failed to catch up, and could turn the situation south in an instant, like the government's failure to start integrating some 100,000 Sunni awakening fighters in Iraqi majority Shi'ite forces...(they've only integrated 10%, despite heavy US pressure, and the Americans are actually only aiming to integrate up to 30%...so what happens to the 70,000 other Sunni fighters?)...

If I report the success of one part, and ALL those other caveats...how does that get turned into "the mainstream media buys into the propaganda that taking out Saddam was the right thing at the right time?" I never reported that!

I've frequently been misquoted on my book tour on other subjects, so I'm a little over-sensitive about this one."

I know it's not a great analogy, but have you ever been the one person in a dysfunctional family situation who's held everything and everyone together...knowing all the while that once you backed away, all hell would break loose again because you were never, in reality, able to fix what was broken on your own?

Well, it sounds like that's the military in Iraq today.

Perhaps the reason the military - and the Surge- is the only part of the Iraq war being placed in focus by the major networks is because someone sitting behind a desk at corporate headquarters has been pressed into not telling the whole story...while our best war correspondents risk, and in the case of CBS' cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, lose their lives.

Community Organic Gardens Help Homeless

There's an interesting show on Mike Collins' Charlotte Talks/WFAE/90.7FM this morning on community-based organic gardening around the nation and bringing rainwater-harvesting systems to community gardens.

If you missed it, a link to an archived recording of the show is HERE. From the WFAE website:

A conversation about organic gardening, creative watering and local food. We'll be joined by Don Boekelheide of the Urban Ministry Center. The center has received a grant to install a cistern to help water the organic vegetable garden there. We'll talk about how that will aid in producing more local food and the many ways this garden helps the homeless, who also work the garden. Other experts join the panel to discuss general organic gardening tips.

Guests
Dan Boekelheide - Director, Urban Ministry Center Garden
Pam Ruch - Editor, Organic Gardening Magazine

What is organic gardening?

"If I were a dictator determined to control the national press, 'Organic Gardening' would be the first publication I'd squash, because it's the most subversive. I believe that organic gardeners are in the forefront of a serious effort to save the world by changing man's orientation to it, to move away from the collective, centrist, superindustrial state, toward a simpler, realer one-to-one relationship with the earth itself."

- from "The Whole Earth Catalog", 1969

Read a few pages about organic gardening from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma"


This post is dedicated to Ithaca's Ecovillage, who got a very honorable mention in the most recent edition of "Outside" magazine.
Magazine lauds Ithaca's reinvention/Area judged on its rich culture, natural beauty By Laura Brandt, Special to The Ithaca Journal July 9, 2008

Kucinich to Raise Bush Impeachment Again

Kucinich Bringing Back Impeachment This Week - Capitol BriefingSource: blog.washingtonpost

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has written:

"This Thursday evening I will bring a privileged resolution to the House with a single Article of Impeachment of President Bush for taking our nation and our troops to war based on lies. We owe it to our troops who even at this hour stand as sentinels of America because they love this country and will give their lives for it. What are we willing to do to match their valor and the valor of their successors? Are we at least willing to defend the Constitution from the comfort and security of our Washington, DC offices?"

Raw Story has an article here.
And more here (Updated information)

The idea of impeaching President George W.Bush, as I know I don't have to tell too many of you, is a reasonable idea to which the mainstream, by design, has a nasty kind of allergy. Although many progressives see the reason behind it, most unfortunately (and always to my dismay), there are many who think they have to have the same "impeachment allergy" that pollutes the commerce-owing mainstream.....although when it was about Bill Clinton's sex life, the allergy was soothed by the medicine that ratings and dollars bring in with stories about sex. Sending troops wantonly into harm's way with lies and deliberate misleadings isn't sexy enough for the mainstream. Besides...much of the mainstream media fell for and into those lies and misleadings.

Our election-minded representatives won't act until citizens guide them..nearly force them to do so. The question is, will they? I believe that Dennis Kucinich has a truly great heart and, I'd imagine, a pretty clear conscience. There aren't enough great hearts and clear consciences in D.C. The mainstream media isn't in the business of guiding your conscience. They report the news that will fit the most profitable business model.

Think about that.
What will you do?

Bitstrip: Doing What She Can For Obama

Inspired by this post at showmeprogress.com

Right Is Wrong

Cool

COOL:

COOLER:

COOLEST:

NYT: GOP Responsible for Delay on AIDS

NYT Editorial, July 7: Republican Delay on AIDS

"A tiny group of Republican senators continues to block a vote on an important bill to increase American spending on AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the world. Their obstructionism has deprived President Bush of a legislative achievement that could help him spur other industrialized nations to contribute substantially more money as they meet to discuss global issues in Japan this week.

But better late than never. It remains important to blast through the legislative roadblock and bring this broadly supported bill to a vote on the Senate floor, where it is sure to prevail on the merits. [..]

[..] If necessary, Senate Democratic leaders should undertake the potentially time-consuming task of forcing the bill to a vote. "

_________________________

Nearly Three-quarters of World's HIV/Aids Cases are in Africa

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/allAfrica.com A cemetery in Lusaka, Zambia, is running out of graves because so many are dying of Aids. Some 40 million adults and children worldwide are living with HIV/Aids and 28.1m of them are in Africa. HIV/Aids is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. There were 3.4m new HIV infections in the region during 2001 and 2.3m Africans died of Aids in that period.

My Fourth of July Hope

I dedicate these excerpts from the poem "Boston" by the great Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) to all who still have the Spirit of '76 in their hearts...no matter where they live..regardless of their country of origin.

In the days before these States were united, a culmination of events stemming from the well-crafted expression of long-held feelings of inequality and civil discontent resulted in what's known today as The Boston Tea Party:

"Bad news from George on the English throne:
'You are thriving well,' said he;
'Now by these presents be it known,
You shall pay us a tax on tea;
'Tis very small,--no load at all,--
Honor enough that we send the call.' "

"Kings shook with fear, old empires crave
The secret force to find
Which fired the little State to save
The rights of all mankind.


But right is might through all the world;
Province to province faithful clung,
Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,
Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung."

The great thinkers and writers of the day inspired a web of communities and provinces to come together in common cause.

Today's "war-bolt" need not be facilitated by violence and the unnecessary shedding of innocent blood, but instead by the strong force of our greatest ideals; our greatest ideas; our common goals; our love for equality; our seeking fairness in trade and workers' rights; our respect for business conducted with social responsibility and a close eye on human rights; our caring for our fellow man and woman; ever pushing others up when they cry for freedom; ever-vigilant to keep our own hard-won freedoms secured.

We create the world in which we live each and every new day.

232 years ago, a small group of thinkers created this small imperfect miracle. She's not a miracle that will survive without our willing and loving participation.

If you're a U.S. citizen, remember what - and who - enabled us to be here today creating this new world. Rededicate your personal causes, whatever they may be, to the common cause of all men and women for the right to live their lives in harmony with one another...free of oppression...with equal opportunity...secure and cooperative in their own communities and in the world.

Right is might throughout the world.
Let it ring.
Happy 4th of July.


- Jude

Unity, N.H.

Photo credits: VertexofLife/Daily Kos.com/

On the Netroots, FISA, National Media, Obama

Chris Bowers of Open Left, in a post about the Netroots' collective complaint about Barack Obama's recent handling of FISA and the national media's opinion that speaking out will benefit the Progressives only if it doesn't result in any reduction of financial/volunteer efforts on his behalf:

".... being told to shut up and empty your wallet feels more like a mugging than a convincing fundraising ask. Campaigns are no more entitled to small donors and free volunteers than they are to voters. Rather, campaigns have to earn those volunteers and donors by inspiring people to give their time and money."

Reading Mr. Bowers' post, I have to ask myself, "Where is the imagination of the national media?" Aren't there ways to hold the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee accountable that won't result in his electoral defeat? With the sidelining of the 527 arm of MoveOn.org and other influential voices of the strongest progressives, someone's going to have to be free to speak their minds in a nation that has always prided itself in being the land of freedom of speech, freedom of will and spirit, freedom of gun-ownership, freedom of religion, freedom of this, freedom of that.....

I ask you, most realistically, what happens to the firm believers in "freedom of" when their leaders and the national media pundits who love (and are paid well) to talk themselves request that the believers just shut up?

Hillary and Obama: Unity

I spoke about Hillary Clinton's rise toward unity last March. Despite the mainstream media and blogosphere's hand-wringing for the past four months, I've felt that Hillary Clinton embraced the idea of unity all that time through small signals and gestures... despite her strong will to be top of ticket.

I think the idea came through in a big way today in Unity, N.H.

It's become increasingly obvious that this team of once-rivals should go with the momentum while the mo is the mo that it is.

I've been making this case for a long time at Daily Kos and have gotten the kind of reception you'd expect from people who were hoping passionately for an Obama nomination.But that time is good and gone and now it's time to realize that these two strong candidates not only get along just fine and appeal to disparate groups of voters, but that Bill Clinton is no threat (a fear-mongering talking point of the parrots of cable news), but is rather a very good politician to have on your side.

Adirondack Photos

Through the Pines






Sunset, Sabattis




Photos by Jude Nagurney Camwell

Creative Capitalism: A Conversation

Michael Kinsley: Help Me Write a Book
Source: Huffingtonpost.com
Tags: Bill Gates, Capitalism, Charity Organizations, Gates Foundation, Michael Kinsley, Philanthropy, Business News

Anyone interested is welcome to join in at http://www.creativecapitalismblog.com


Creative Capitalism: A Conversation:

"A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book -- a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development -- to be edited by us and published by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008. The book takes as its starting point a speech Bill Gates delivered this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In it, he said that many of the world's problems are too big for philanthropy--even on the scale of the Gates Foundation. And he said that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them.

This is the public blog of a private website where a group of invited economists have spent the past couple of weeks criticizing and debating those claims. Over the next couple of months we'll be posting much of that material here, in the hopes of eliciting public commentary."

What About Iraq?

In his NYT op-ed column on June 18th, Thomas Friedman writes:

"Iraq has become one of those subjects that so many people now come to with so much emotional scar tissue that it is very hard to have a sober discussion about the actual situation there today. So much is colored by how you feel about George Bush or whether you were for or against the war. As a result, what we do next in Iraq — how and why — is barely getting discussed in the presidential campaign."

According to a CNN report from late last month:

Notable progress" has been made in Iraq despite persistent problems, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at an international summit to promote peace in the violence-wracked country.

"If we were asked to use just one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word 'hope,' " Ban said at the Stockholm, Sweden, conference. "Iraq is stepping back from the abyss that we feared most."

Yet Iraqis continue to suffer from terrorism, sectarian violence and criminality, he said, and "essential services are still sorely lacking.

Forced displacement and human-rights violations remain problems, particularly for women and minorities, he said, but the level of violence has declined from that of 2006 and part of 2007.

"There is new hope that the people and government of Iraq are overcoming daunting challenges and working together to rebuild their country after years of war, neglect and dictatorship," Ban said.

Confusing leadership in the United States has been a problem since the war began. American citizens were asked to sacrifice nothing. Life went on in this nation as if nothing was happening of any great significance on foreign soil. Public protests and critics of the Bush administration's rush to war were either ignored or buried in the back pages of American newspapers. There was enough guilt to go around. Factors involving mainstream media, certain bloggers willing to sacrifice truth and reality to score cheap political points, extreme partisanship and fear-mongering in the halls of Washington, D.C, the discouraging rubber-stamps and roadblocks from so many Republican Senators and House Representatives...each played a part in the emotional scarring that Mr. Friedman, whose own judgment disappointed me many times over the past few years, now humbly talks about.

None of it was a U.S. soldier's doing nor was any mistake a soldier's fault.

There has been a disturbing lack of leadership at the very top - from those in the U.S. Executive branch who were charged with solemn responcibilities to the American people and who failed miserably. For these past five excruciating years during which our soldiers have sacrificed life and limb in Iraq, the Bush administration - often adamantly - failed at every step to reasonably explain to the American public what victory might look like when it was achieved. Seeing them making excuses and moving the "victory" goalposts at every convenient political juncture for the sake of empowering one political party is, for me, unforgivable.

Why did the Bush administration take the American public for fools?
Didn't they realize that you can only fool the people for so long?

Bottom line, Mr. Friedman is right.

It's high time Americans got a glimpse of the reality on the ground in Iraq and it's high time our leaders trusted and respected the intelligence of each and every American and start talking about Iraq in a way that intelligent people can actually understand. President Bush has appealed to the pariotism in each of us in a disrespectful manner in that he's asked us citizens to take too much on faith alone. This isn't a church. It's a nation of people who, from the time of our nation's founding, has existed on the basis of each soul having an opportunity to make crucial and informed choices. As Robert McClure, Senior Associate Dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University said in 2001 about being an intelligent patriot:

"If democratic citizenship involves both rights and responsibilities, then patriotism is found on the responsibility side of the equation. Patriotism is a citizen’s duty—a debt owed—to the larger community, ….not an individual prerogative reserved for personal use. In a democracy, patriotism is part of our responsibility to protect and defend one another, because — if for no other reason than the most self-interested of reasons — it is the national community that bestows and protects our individual rights."

In my own activism, I've acted because I owe a debt to the soldiers who've taken and followed the command of their Commander-in-Chief on faith and in loyalty to the larger American community and the U.S. Constitution. A quote was on my blog's sidebar from the time the Iraq war began: "This blog, out of love and respect for our citizens who serve in the armed forces, supports the brave men and women who do their duty for this nation. This blog does not support the current policies of G.W. Bush. May Providence grant us all the wisdom to know the difference. "



AP photo from March, 2004 - Yes, that's our President George Bush mockingly looking for WMD under his desk. The old joke has gone rancid. He doesn't seem to know it yet.

Iraq is more than just a mess that our poor and deceptive leaders got us into. And it certainly isn't a joke.

I was floored to learn, thanks to Dan Froomkin, that, even after being criticized for other times he's done it, President Bush still considers the absence of WMD in Iraq as some kind of a joke:

"...in an interview [today] with Ned Temko of Britain's Observer, [President] Bush actually joked that he was "still looking" for the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were the main reason he gave to the public for going to war.

I believe that Barack Obama and John McCain are going to have to talk about the gains achieved because of the surge in Iraq. I want to hear no political posturing from either side because, after shock and awe in 2003, there was a four-year blunder of historic proportions and Obama's claim to having been against the war from Day One, although noble in its own light of judgment, doesn't really matter anymore, to be quite honest. We are where we are. John McCain should take no great pride in having championed this war, voting with the Republicans for the four years for which his party can only claim a wrong course of action in U.S. Foreign policy. Fast-forward to "the surge" and some gains can be claimed...but for how long? Is maintaining the few gains achieved in the past eight months considered to be what victory looks like as we amble toward an end game (still with no time-frames in legislation)? Are those gains enough? We know, from experience, that whenever we've left a city like Mosul or Basra or Fallujah, we've left a vacuum for militia groups and oil smugglers to fill. If we pull our soldiers out one brigade at a time, how long will it take for the vacuum caused by their leaving to be filled with those who would cause the Iraq government to lose a grip on their fragile situation?

How long do we keep this up?

I am expecting to see a meaningful and respectful debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. Anything less will surely disappoint.

Muhammad Yunus Gives Commencement Speech at MIT

"Poverty is not created by the poor. It is created by the system.

Poverty is an artificial imposition on people.

Once you fall outside the system, it works against you.

It makes it very difficult to return to the system.

How do we change this?
Where do we begin?"


- Professor Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, speaking at the 2008 MIT commencement ceremony.

In his best-selling book, "Banker to the Poor", Nobel Peace Prize-winner Professor Muhammad Yunus talks about the role of business in promoting social reform. He was head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong when he began to feel that the words included in his teachings seemed empty when he saw people in his nation of Bangladesh starving all around him. He consciously decided to take time away from teaching, launching an action research project while living among rural villagers. Taking all he'd learned about the way they lived and understanding how the existing economic/power structure held them back and kept them from being able to meet their basic needs, Professor Yunus created innovative business model that blended the power of the free markets with a humane, egalitarian set of ideas that helped alleviate poverty, inequality, and other social problems...particularly among women in his country. He designed a credit delivery system to provide banking services targeted to specifically benefit the rural poor. Starting his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Professor Yunus wished to show that a goal of prosperity and lasting peace can't be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is the means by which Profeesor Yunus has proven, through his great caring, economic expertise, and ingenuity, that not only does microlending help once-destitute people rise to be able to feed their families and succeed in building better communities, but also that development from the grassroots up will serve to advance democracy and human rights.

He recently told a group of graduating students at MIT that the choices those grads make about their careers will decide the fate of mankind, even though they are not actually aware of it. He asked them, rather than simply committing themselves to being creative when thinking about their future careers, that the students decide be a socially conscious creative generation.

An Excerpt from the Commencement speech:

[...] Your generation can bring a breakthrough in changing the course of the world. You can be the socially-conscious creative generation that the world is waiting for. You can bring your creativity to design brilliant social businesses to overcome poverty, disease, environmental degradation, food crisis, depletion of non-renewable resources, etc. Each one of you is capable of changing the world. To make a start all that each one of you has to do is to design a business plan for a social business. Each prototype of a social business can be a cute little business. But if it works out, the whole world can be changed by replicating it in thousands of locations.

Prototype development is the key. In designing a prototype all we need is a socially-oriented creative mind. That could be each one of you. No matter what you do in your life, make it a point to design or be involved with at least one social business to address one problem that depresses you the most. If you have the design and the money, go ahead and put it into action. [...]

The Commencement speech can be seen here [MIT.edu]

You can read the transcript of the speech at: Commencement address by Muhammad Yunus, "Each of you has the power to change the world"

Yunus draws record numbers at MIT commencement [Indepedent Bangladesh]

Yunus tells MIT grads they can 'change the world' [MIT News]..

_____________________



Intel, Nobel Laureate to Bridge Tech, Finance Divides [Andrew Burger, E-Commerce Times]..

Professor Muhammad Yunus and The Green Children to Open First Grameen Eye Hospital in Bangladesh on May 12, 2008



A Google interview video featuring Professor Yunus from January, 2008: