So the news is still full of bad stuff, but I detect a change in people’s reactions to the bad stuff, in that calls for transparency and accountability keep mounting.

Here are a few of the current stories that prop up hope that there is a substantive shift going on, and not just in this country.

Amrit Singh writes today on Huffington Post how the U.S. may soon face some measure of accountability for the secret “extraordinary rendition” program and torture undertaken post-9/11.  She tells a bit of the story of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen whom the CIA and Macedonian government detained and tortured. El Masri tried to obtain justice through the U.S. courts, but the government got his case dismissed by invoking “state secrets privilege.” El-Masri  has now taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights. While the U.S. is outside the jurisdiction of the ECHR, the court will need to determine Macedonia’s liability, and to do that, it will need to determine the role of the U.S. and form a judgment of the actions of the U.S.

On the same issue, the UK is launching a government inquiry into its role in rendition and torture. Many are hoping it will be done in such a way as to provide a model for how other governments should investigate their roles, as well.  All of that is good for transparency; I’ll hope the inquiries result in recommendations for, and actions to effect, accountability as well.  Otherwise in the UK, there’s been a coming clean about Bloody Sunday, that day in 1972 when British troops slaughtered 13 Northern Ireland demonstrators. A 12 year investigation determined that British soldiers were wholly to blame, and that determination has helped a lot of families heal some very old wounds.

The Roman Catholic Church, which has verbally made some progress in moving toward transparency and accountability in its multinational pedophile priest scandal, is also being challenged about financial transparency and accountability in Germany.  SpiegelOnline carries this report about enormous assets controlled by bishops, though just how much can’t be determined.  The bishops have no requirement to make full financial disclosure to the German government, nor do they even let the faithful in their own diocese know how much and what kinds of wealth they control.  And while there are clear indications that the amounts are, in most dioceses, quite large, and some of the bishops enjoy a lavish lifestyle, the rank and file of the church are going through major cutbacks.  So again, more of people calling for transparency and accountability.

The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill cataclysm: good heavens, where to start?  Fortunately, the news is full of stories demanding transparency and especially accountability within and from BP.  Even the numbers of right wing politicians who’ve sought to protect BP is dwindling, as the catastrophe grows ever larger.  With all the different articles out there I’ll restrain myself and link only to this one.

May turning of the tide toward transparency and accountability become a great sea change, even to becoming its own Age.  Coming soon: a report on efforts to achieve more transparency and accountability in Vermont.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

But there’s something I’m not yet seeing in the articles and analyses I’ve read so far, and it is a crucial point, so I offer it now as a retired psychologist who had the privilege of working with hundreds of sexual abuse survivors.

To date, every time a Vatican spokesman or other defender of the Pope opens his mouth, what comes out is a clear demonstration of how much they do not comprehend about the experience of sexual abuse; and, more to the point, how little they attend to what’s necessary for healing from sexual abuse.

Here’s a quote from Bishop Gerald Kicanas in Arizona, which concludes a Huffington Post story here, posted today.

“Cardinal Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was always receptive, ready to listen, to hear people’s concerns,”  said Kicanas. “Pope Benedict is the same man.”

That pretty well sums up all the comments I’ve seen offered in defense of Benedict: that he’s been attentive, and often, much more so than others in the Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, the same article that ends with the above quote also mentions his having headed up important changes in how the Church responds to cases of pedophile priests. So from the perspective of those who are speaking out in defense of the Pope, he is a shining star, a role model, of  responsible ecclesial attention to the problem of pedophile priests.

And that is why they may as well be from Mars: in their world, all they see is that they have a problem, and that they are doing things to address the problem responsibly. What they see is that they, and specifically Benedict as Cardinal Ratzinger, took action to deal with their problem of pedophile priests.

To their credit, their recognition that they do indeed have a problem of pedophile priests is an improvement over pretending there was no problem, or at least not much of a problem, with pedophile priests.  We can think of them, then, as having made the leap from, say, one of Jupiter’s moons to the nearer realm of Mars, but they’re still not seeing what’s true for the victims of pedophile priests here on the surface of planet Earth.

What absolutely floors me in this situation—and I’m referring to the whole  sex abuse scandal that’s been hanging around for decades, not just the newer revelations from Europe—is that the Church appears to have not taken the step of learning from sexual abuse survivors and their advocates what is necessary for healing from that horrendous trauma.

Bishop Kicanas spoke of how receptive Benedict XVI is to listening to anyone’s concerns.  Listening isn’t enough.

Here’s the disconnect in a nutshell: from the perspective of the Vatican, they have listened and taken action to rectify their problem with pedophile priests.  But from the perspective of the victims, beyond a bit of listening they haven’t taken action toward effecting healing of the victims.

The Vatican does not show any awareness, in its public statements, that the problem crying for attention is, “What must we do to help these children of God to heal?” rather than, “What can we do to rid the Church of the scandal of pedophile priests?”

Jeff Israely‘s opinion piece posted on Time.com goes a step further than others I’ve read in calling for specific actions from the Vatican that would help the victims:

Rather than state another mea culpa for the sins of the abusers, the Pope must simply and publicly seek forgiveness for himself — and other bishops — for what we might call the sins of ignorance and denial and administrative malfeasance that some critics say border on the criminal.

I’ll note first that many critics say the malfeasance is criminal.  But to the point of Israely’s piece, public penitence and would be another major step forward toward giving victims what they need to heal.  But more is needed yet.  Here are some specific actions victims and survivors need to see in order to believe the Vatican “gets it,” that it puts their healing ahead of its concern over their scandal.

• As new cases arise, act quickly. Immediately provide counseling for the victim and his or her family; immediately report the case to law enforcement authorities; and immediately provide for the alleged perpetrator to have a thorough psychological evaluation.
• For pending cases, arrange for quick dispensation.  Draft canon lawyers from around the world, if necessary, to speed the church trials of priests known to be pedophiles. The case in Arizona, highlighted in the HuffPo piece here, screams to victims of clerical abuse that the Church doesn’t care about their healing.  There’s no excuse for letting a case drag out for years on top of years.
• Establish absolute transparency in dealing with pedophile priests.  Too often agencies dealing with any form of child abuse hide behind the confidentiality rightly accorded the victim to avoid their own actions being scrutinized.  What’s necessary is to have an open process making the Church’s actions visible, while maintaining the victim’s confidentiality.

The Church aims to be Christ to the world’s suffering people.  To do so it must do everything possible to emulate Jesus the Healer.  Many good people in the Church do their utmost to do just that.  It’s time for those in the Vatican to come down to Earth and do the same.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

One woman who is dedicated to that undoing is Dawn Smith. She was diagnosed with a treatable brain tumor for which Cigna has refused to pay. She’s been through nine denials over more than two years, and in the meantime Cigna has increased her premiums by more than 100%.

These are the kind of tactics that insurance companies have relied on for years to beat down the people whom they owe. And it’s generally pretty easy to get away with, because sick people generally don’t have a lot of resources–internal or external–to fight hard against the injustice of being denied coverage they’ve already paid for.

But every now and then a bureaucracy finds out that they’ve messed with the wrong person, and now it’s Cigna’s turn to find out they shouldn’t have messed with Dawn Smith. Here’s the video of Dawn’s story:

Word comes today that Dawn wants to travel from Georgia directly to Cigna’s headquarters in Philadelphia to confront Cigna’s CEO, H. Edward Hanway. She also wants to stop off in Washington, D.C. to talk with a few people in the Capitol along the way. There’s a fund raising drive underway to hire a nurse and an RV to get Dawn safely there and back. Go here to chip in.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

This is what profit-driven corporate bureaucracy does.  The Facing South article does not identify which company denied timely care to Sutton, but it really doesn’t matter.  They are for the most part cookie-cutter renditions of each other, operating by the mantra, “pay as little as late as possible.”

That is who controls health care in this country now–people who’d sooner let you die than pay their stockholders some fewer pennies dividends.  And the stockholders? I regret not having made note of a recent reference to stockholders in one company trying to effect policy change because the profit motive was overtaking the company’s moral obligations. The idea that stockholders have moral obligations with respect to the companies whose stock they own is not new.  Attention was paid to that issue during the Viet Nam war, and we need more attention paid to it in this present circumstance as well.

For now, however, please take a moment to honor the courage and life of Crystal Lee Sutton.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

In terms of bureaucratic inefficiencies and ineptitudes, this ranks low on the “potential damage to persons” scale, but keeping with my belief that our acceptance of such smaller incidences leads to acceptance of truly dangerous ones, this is worthy of report.

I’m not someone who needs all the latest electronic toys. Only once did I do a 30-day trial of an upper tier cell phone plan.  All the little extra charges made me faint, so I ditched that for a Tracfone.  I’ve been happy with Tracfone, too, until just recently.  I upgraded my phone to one that was advertised as having voice activated dialing (VAD), which is the only really safe way to dial and drive at the same time.

Turns out the phone does not have VAD, as I started to suspect when all attempts to set it up led to dead-ends, and which was also attested to by this web page, first paragraph.  My email to Tracfone about the phone not having the advertised feature received a curt reply assuring me the phone does have the feature.  Next I called Tracfone support and spent over an hour talking with a couple of different tech people who finally were themselves stymied by their inability to set up VAD on the LG200C cell phone.  They told me they were going to “escalate” the matter and I would be hearing from someone.

That was four weeks ago, and I haven’t heard anything from anyone.  In the meantime, Tracfone continues to advertise the LG200C as having VAD.

I’m sending a follow-up email to Tracfone today.  I’ll hope to hear from them soon, and will updatge here whether or not I do.  I was happy with them for a long time, and hope I will be again.

08/02/2009 Update: The response so far from Tracfone ws not good.  The email sent to me this afternoon included the same old incorrect instructions that they’d sent before, and referring me to the same incorrect manual that they had before. However, all is not lost.  In my frustration I kept fiddling around with the phone, and figured out how to activate voice dialing. You can find the instructions here.  I’ll stick with Tracfone for now–their plan suits my needs more economically than others.  But their customer service has a lot of room for improvement.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

There are no dire consequences in the situation I learned about today, thank heaven.  But this kind of thing has the potential for serious harm.

I was catching up on the phone with a friend today who has recently changed jobs.  Part of that change has been her application to Catamount, especially since Cobra is absurdly expensive for her.  Early in the application process, she asked if she should send a particular document along with the rest of her application materials.  The answer was no, they’d just make note of the thing that the document relates to.

And you, my astute readers, have already gotten to the end of the story in your minds.  She’s now going through the application process again, this time including the document that they first said they didn’t need, but now say they do. If they had just taken the dang thing the first time around, she’d have had health insurance weeks ago. Luckily she didn’t need it–wasn’t hit by a car, didn’t even sprain an ankle, didn’t get swine flu.  Again, thank heaven, because any of those things, and many others, could have happened during the extra weeks she wasn’t covered.

All in all not a great humongous bureaucratic slip, because there were no dire results.  Let’s hope Catamount finds its way to minimizing the possibilities for dire consequences.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

When I first became aware of the matter was in a very brief report that didn’t go far beyond the part about an unauthorized company having done something it shouldn’t have done in making the book available.  I thought that had certainly put Amazon in an awkward position, and they probably could have handled it better.  Turns out there’s much more to consider, and thanks to The New York Time’s Brad Stone for doing the digging.  You can read his story in full here.

In brief, the situation involves important questions about information management and ownership, on the one hand, and copyrights, on the other.  When one buys a book and downloads it to Kindle, one doesn’t own it outright as when you buy a hard copy book.  The book is more leased to the Kindle owner, pretty much the way we buy software but don’t own it; rather, we own licenses to use the software.

In the case of Kindle ebooks, Amazon has complete control.  They can let you download the book to your machine for a fee, but they can also delete the book in a snap. As Stone reports,

A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.

The technology that gives Amazon so much control over whether you get to keep a book you’ve downloaded could also allow them to edit books, also without notice.  While many publishers, authors and copyright lawyers appreciate the greater control that reduces the likelihood of copyright violations, what’s at stake on the other side of the equation is the free flow of information.

The way Amazon controls Kindle content, Apple controls iPhone and iPod content, and other similar arrangements (e.g. TiVo, Audible), is rather much like, well, can you say “Big Brother?”

I’ve long had an ad for Kindle on this website, and I’m not pulling it yet.  As the NYT article reports, there are advantages to consumers in using Kindle.  But I’ll be keeping an eye on what changes Amazon may make in their policies, and I’ll dump the ad if no consumer-friendly changes are forthcoming.

How fitting that 1984 was the book to throw all these issues into sharp relief.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

I was, first and always, grateful that the bureaucracies in the hospital and rehab were well enough ordered that I had good care in both.  That was a major factor in my having the fastest recovery the folks at the rehab facility have seen in someone who had bilateral knee replacements.

Bureaucracies that serve their constituents—what a concept.

Beyond commenting on those two bureaucracies personally encountered recently, tempting though it is, I’ll refrain from saying things that are no doubt variations on a theme being much repeated on this date regarding the larger issues we in the U.S. are dealing with, and what we have to be happy about in greeting the New Year.  Instead, I’ll just wish one and all a most blessed, wonderful, productive 2009.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen