Came across a blog post today written by a gentleman about life in Oswiecim, Poland. It's a small town in southwestern Poland better known by its German translation: Auschwitz.

The author was commenting on how the locals were at an ice hockey game cheering on the Oswiecim team, something that people do when they go to sporting events.

Articles like this aren't uncommon. I seem to recall Ruth Ellen Gruber writing something earlier this year about life in Oswiecim, and I recall either earlier this year or late last year a photographer having his life-in-Oswiecim photos published in The Global Post.

I've been there twice, the first time in 2007, where I didn't have the chance to venture into the actual town; I had spent 6 hours at the actual Auschwitz complex, I and II. I went again in 2009 and made certain to spend time in the town. It's a quaint little town, nothing out of the ordinary. It was there before the Nazis, home to a majority Jewish population, and it's there now, no longer home to any Jewish population.

The fascination is understandable: when I went the first time, I was blown away at the houses built maybe 100 yards in front of the Birkenau gate. All post-war build up. The thought crossed my mind: I want to check these local people to make sure they are not blind, and/or, make sure they have read their history books. Why have you chosen to live here?

I was equally caught off guard at the young people walking through the brush, having to step over the train tracks that once brought Jews and others to this place 60 or so years ago for one simple purpose: to remove them from the planet. Life was carrying on normally, seemingly without a thought about where these people were and what had happened here only feet in front of them.

And therein lies the fascination. But life does go on. The locals didn't put the camp there, nor did they participate in the activities that occured inside the camp. They live in a town in Poland, where through no fault of their own, is synonymous with all the evils that man can do upon man.

Small victories count, so when I passed the foreign service officer exam, something a whole lot of people do, I felt good about it. Not ecstatic, the way I would feel if the whole thing actually came to fruition. The way I would feel if I were able to get past the Narratives and get past the Oral Assessment and learn that I've been selected. That day is a long way off, and may not even be seen.

Like so many, I am now working on the 6 short essays. I've completed 3 so far - it's not all that difficult. Only 200 words, so it's not like writing those 20 page papers I had to write for school. And, I think my real-life experience is plentiful enough to be able to pull examples out of and write about them in a step by step fashion.

It's the narratives where the qualifying panel cuts the majority of applicants out of the running. I don't have numbers, nor have I seen any, but it's quite obvious. The people who make it to the oral assessment stage have something a bit more special going on where they not only were able to achieve a passing score on the written exam, but they also have something in their background where they can write compelling examples of how they've used specific skills and also have a decent enough resume where the qualifying panel can see the qualities they look for in a FSO.

It's a long wait after I submit the narratives. I won't know until late January if I am in or out. But, I'm used to waiting. I waited for the Fulbright, and a fellowship, and another pseudo-fellowship, and for the VSO's decision, and I waited for the Peace Corps. I now wait for other things over and above the FSO application process as well. It's what I do, I wait.

He sits among the many, all those lost souls who lost their jobs the old-fashioned way, via a layoff when the economy contracted what is now three years ago. But he's different from them. He didn't get laid off, he left his job by choice to pursue work he deems more fulfilling, more engaging, more aligned with his values. Perhaps most importantly, work that is about people, not profits.

But the economy is working against his best efforts. He feels like he is wrapped in chains, stuck inside concrete walls that surround him, at least 20 feet in height. On the other side of those steep concrete walls is a moat, infested with sharks, piranha, and alligators. Past the moat resides a mine field; equipped with nothing to detect the mines, he wonders how he'll ever be able to find his way through. But no matter, after the mine field sits waiting an army of more than 10,000 men, armed with machine guns, tanks, mortars, grenades, and missiles. Finally, on the other side of that army, is the new career.

It's simple, he thinks to himself. All he has to do is break out of the chains, scale the 20 foot concrete walls, find his way through the man-eating beasts waiting in the water, navigate the unrelenting mine field, and finally, bob and weave his way through the barrage that will be unleashed upon him from the army that knows no defeat.

Once he does that, he'll have his new career.

On August 4, the Obama Adminsitration issued a press release calling for an Atrocity Prevention Board, where the president is calling upon the US to strengthen its ability to prevent mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. As the release makes clear, the directive establishes "a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies...to be responsive to early warning signs."

Clearly, such an initiative should be applauded, especially given the US track record vis-a-vis genocides and mass atrocities. I suspect that Samantha Power is having an influence on the president, given that her book, a well-written and researched playback of how the US has time and again turned its head during times of international crisis, is a must-read on the subject of US non-intervention. Situations like Bosnia and Rwanda are the obvious ones in recent history, but the calamity in Cambodia following on the heels of the Vietnam conflict is also top of mind, and one cannot neglect mentioning the Holocaust, when it was known by the West what Hitler had in store for European Jewry early enough for some action to be taken to prevent the number murdered to reach 6 million. It's known today that the intervention in Kosovo was done to prevent a possible genocide, as Milosevic was undoubtedly set to create a pure Greater Serbia, seeing to it that the Albanian population in the former autonomous province had to be eradicated.

This directive puts the wrongs committed by the US on the table in the past and seeks to create a new framework from which the US will operate under should there be, or perhaps when there will be, the next opportunity to prevent massive crimes against humanity. It adds two key elements to the discussion, the first ensures that the US "does not become a safe haven for human rights violators or those responsible for other atrocities....such as participants in genocide, torture, extra-judicial killings or certain violations of religious freedom." The second element acts as a deterrent for groups wishing to carry out a crime by shaming them before the actual act were to take place.

With regards to the first element, watching current events one will see that the US has been fairly proactive in deporting former Nazi soldiers, with the most notable one coming in 2009 when John Demjanjuk was sent to Germany and has since been convicted of killing some 28,000 Jews at Sobibor. And I believe the US has acted on Hutu Rwandans who have sought safe haven here, with one seemingly coming to mind who was living in Texas over the past 2 or 3 years. So this directive puts in place, at least in theory, a mechanism that keeps these people from entering the US in the first place after the crime was committed.

As for the second element, Power expresses outrage in her book in at least one chapter at the lack of shaming to come out of the US government in the past. This now aims to correct that and rightfully so.

Many Jewish organizations have come out and applauded the administration for the directive, not surprisingly given the history of the Jewish people.

But if there is a concern about all this, it goes back to the question of intervention. In the Power's book, if we were to take each situation and see to it that the US intervened militarily each time, the American people would, in my view, express outrage. The US is already seen as the world's policeman; it's not something to celebrate, especially at a time when state building at home is in dire need. Given that the military is already over-stretched, and the cost for military deployment has drained the US economy, stopping mass atrocities from happening militarily seems almost out of the question. Of course, there are non-military levers that can be pulled, shaming constituting one of those, that would leave the military out of it, but not necessarily stop the atrocities from occuring. One would hope that all diplomatic mechanisms would be pulled first before sending in the military, but an adventurous president is not necessarily a rare breed.

With all that said, Obama would like to see the Atrocities Prevention Board operational within 120 days. While the directive is no doubt a lofty and admirable goal, one hopes that the US can live up to the obligations it is setting out for itself. Establishing leadership in the world is a wonderful thing, but now the US has to make good on its promises. Only time will tell if it has the political will, and the American people have the stomach, for more interventions in far away places that may or may not directly impact the United States and its national security.

While it's clear that bin Laden and his ilk would like to inflict violent harm on the USA, one has to ask the question if he's achieved perhaps the second best form of harm done unto a population. That being economic harm, the type that leaves a country bankrupt, it's people at a loss as to how to maintain a prosperous standard of living. Certainly, if I did the research, I imagine I would find quotes where bin Laden and/or his people said one of their aims was to bleed America dry economically. By driving up the cost of security measures and taking advantage of America's predictable knee jerk reaction of revenge in the form of military action and expenditures, the terrorists are accomplishing everything they seemingly hoped they would accomplish without the actual violence.

The USA has driven itself into a debt crisis, brought on primarily through defense spending in the name of payback after what happened on Sept 11, 2001. America is a very different country 10 years later, with a crisis everywhere to be seen. Indeed, the word 'crisis' and/or the word 'broken' can be attached to so much of what is ailing the US today.

The government is broken; we are in a debt crisis; the foreclosure crisis continues; the jobs crisis sees no end in sight; the health care system is broken. These are the phrases that occupy headlines and can be found in many a journalist's articles these days.

So while the terrorists have not been able to find a seam to enact another deadly attack, they have perhaps achieved their second objective: they have brought America to its knees through poor, hyper-reactive policy making, leaving the country in economic ruin. The people are no longer in fear of an imminent attack. Indeed, that is now at least tertiary, for what is now the most pressing issue among Americans is how to achieve what they achieved during the Clinton years - prosperous lifestyles living in a country that was whole and at peace.

What I like most about traveling, especially to places that most Americans would never dream of visiting, is the opportunity to see and absorb the differences. It's one reason why I like to rent a car and travel out to the country side in many of the places I've been to - it allows you to see life through the eyes of the locals more so than simply visiting the largest city in a given country. In the same way that visiting New York City does not give a visitor a true impression of American life, visiting and staying in a country's top city is often limiting, not just from a sightseeing standpoint, but from a day-in-the-life standpoint.

So with that said, this being my last day in Kosovo, I've been reflecting on what I've seen and there's plenty of differences to write home about. Many of them are not so positive, but Kosovo is not a wealthy place and that can be seen in daily life. But that was also what I was signing up for - the opportunity to live in a developing country for some time, doing without the comforts we are familiar with in the US and in Western Europe. It's certainly not on the same scale as living in Africa, but it's not France or Norway either.

Observations include:

Smoking - This being my ninth Europe trip in seven years, I know that smoking tends to be more prevalent in European society. With that said, and after being warned before arriving here that "there's a lot of smoking," I don't think Western Europe measures up to the Balkans. The Skopje, Macedonia In Your Pocket Guide says that people in the Balkans are "born smoking." That sums it up well. In Kosovo, men (rarely women I've noticed), go from establishment to establishment with a carton of cigarettes trying to earn a living. It's a habit easy to start here, and even easier to sustain since a carton of cigs is as cheap as a can of soda. When you sit down to eat at a restaurant, the ash holder (is there a formal name for it?) is brought to you just as quickly as your drinks. Indoors, outdoors, in the car, while eating, while working, in the morning, in the evening, smoking is part of Kosovar daily life no different than brushing one's teeth or changing one's clothes.A je lodh? - This is Albanian for 'Are you tired?' a greeting that goes hand in hand with 'How are you?' You'll hear it in the same sentence as Qysh je (How are you) or by itself. To American ears, it's somewhat humorous and one of those cultural differences worth embracing.Dogs and cats - Kosovo isn't the first place I've seen stray dogs and cats wondering around looking for food. Poland seems to have a similar problem and I recall making a mental note of it the two times I've been to that country. There seems to be more in Kosovo, however, which seems logical. There's obviously a root cause for the problem, poverty and an overestimation of what it takes monetarily to care for a pet are my guesses, but without doing the research, I am only speculating.Poverty - In Kosovo, you'll sit outside at a restaurant and a girl perhaps 10 years old will approach you and give you a hug in the hopes of winning a few euro from you. This happened in our second week here to a classmate as we sat outside a restaurant. We had no idea what the intent was and we all thought it was cute until we finally figured it out. Other times, an elderly person, Roma or not, will approach, stand there with their hand held out hoping you'll give something. People ignore these beggars and they eventually go away empty-handed and continue on to the next outdoor establishment. In one case, a begger went from table to table and placed a piece of paper with writing on it on each one. I asked what it said, and was told that the person was asking for money. The establishment takes no action against these people asking for money, and because I can't remember the last time it happened to me in New York, my guess is this is something establishments in New York would never tolerate.Roads - From traveling in the former Soviet bloc, in places like Poland and Slovakia, I knew what to expect from the roads here. I figured they would be narrow, bumpy, two-lanes only with a lot of passing and slow-going sitting behind trucks and farm equipment. I was right and I was wrong. Somewhere in June, perhaps it was when I rented a car and drove to Albania, experiencing the driving first-hand, I declared out loud that the roads in this part of Europe are worse than up north. Part of the reason is that Kosovo is not flat; roads curve around quite a bit, making passing more difficult and the whole driving experience more draining. Searching Through Dumpsters - In Kosovo, and no doubt in other places around Europe, it's not only stray cats climbing around dumpsters, it's also teenaged Roma. They climb inside a dumpster looking for food or anything else they think is usable. I've seen this a few times and captured it once with a few photos.Dusty streets - It didn't take long for my new casual shoes, bought for the trip, to become old casual shoes. Walking in a developing country means getting a little dirty.The weather - The weather in Kosovo is fantastic. While reports of 100 degree heat were coming out of New York, Kosovo's hottest day never felt nearly as hot as what people in New York were dealing with this summer and will continue to deal with through August. Without the humidity, the heat feels completely different, more like California's heat. The evenings are usually pleasant where an air conditioner was never needed. It may be what I will miss most about spending the summer here, especially after I return to New York where I am certain the air conditioner will be on full blast.Overall, it's been a positive experience. Kosovo is an interesting place, not just because of its status in international relations terms, but for its culture, its history, and its future prospects as an independent nation. As it grows and builds up its tourism infrastructure, the word will get out and more people will visit, creating more economic opportunity for the Kosovar people.

Ramiz Bardosana had been living in Germany since 1991. His children were in school and he was a model citizen, never causing trouble for the German government or with the law. But he was there on Duldung status, temporary “Tolerated” permission to live in that country subject to renewal every three months. On April 12, 2011, he was forcibly returned to Kosovo.

“The police arrived at seven in the morning without advanced warning. I was given no time to collect my belongings; I didn’t even take my jacket. I was forcibly returned to Kosovo, given eighty euro on the plane, thirty for me, fifty for my daughter,” Mr. Bardosana told me as we sat on his front porch in Gjakovë, surrounded by his family.

To come in close contact with the Roma, Ashkalia and Egyptian (RAE) communities in Kosovo, to witness their living conditions and to hear their stories of desperation, is to remind us of what we are capable of doing to each other. Indeed, the human race continues to find ways to subjugate populations simply for being who they are.

I’ve been fortunate to meet with several members of the RAE communities during my brief time in Kosovo this summer and have learned first-hand the difficulties they face.

But it’s not just the adults who are suffering under the government of Kosovo’s Readmission Agreements, bilateral arrangements that regulate the repatriation process for those who have failed to achieve citizenship elsewhere in Europe. RAE children, born and socially integrated in Germany, fluent in the German language, have been forcibly returned only to encounter a fierce language barrier, social exclusion, and an end to their schooling.

“My daughter was in primary school, my son in the ninth grade. They both speak German. My son can understand some Albanian, but he can’t speak it,” said Mr. Bardosana when I asked about his children who have not been able to attend school in Kosovo.

Mr. Bardosana and his family live with his brother and his family, only one example of the crowded living conditions forcibly returned RAE must cope with in Kosovo. Many returnees sold their property to finance their emigration to places like Germany. To be forcibly returned to Kosovo means having to stay with a relative, an unsustainable proposition for many.

“We are six people living in a small house without a toilet. We have to heat bottles of water to wash ourselves,” said Shpëtim Boneshta, a Roma gentleman struggling in Gjakovë.

Were you all forcibly returned? I asked.

“No,” replies Mr. Boneshta, “my wife returned voluntarily because of a statement made by the former Roma member of Parliament. He said voluntary returns would receive benefits. It’s been more than two years and she has received nothing.”

In Pejë, Pastrit Radoviq, who like Mr. Bardosana was returned on April 12, 2011, suffers from paranoid psychosis, a condition diagnosed by a German doctor who prescribed medication. “The German police arrived at four in the morning on April 12 of this year. I received no warning letter. After arriving in Kosovo, I went to a doctor who wouldn’t treat me because he said my surname sounds Serbian. I can’t get the medication I need to manage this illness,” said Mr. Radoviq.

Many of those returned, unemployed with very little hope of finding work, are not receiving any social assistance from the government. In an interview with Etem Arifi, the Ashkali representative in Parliament, and Qazim Rahmani, political advisor in the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, I was told that a gathering of a board of directors within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, charged to reach a decision on social assistance requests for forcibly returned RAE, meets once every three months, denying a family in urgent need of assistance with the help they so desperately require to manage their day-to-day lives.

“We are a minority here. We are oppressed and left aside. The government of Kosovo does not give priority to RAE because they want to make the Kosovo state equal to Europe,” Mr. Rahmani said.

But Islam Caka, director of the Department of Asylum, Citizens and Migration and a member of the Board of Repatriation within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, disputes the claim that the board of directors meets once every three months.

“If the request is complete, the review of the file does not take much time. Board meetings can be held at any time and immediate actions can be taken,” Mr. Caka said.

There are some returning from Germany who are eligible to receive limited financial assistance, but it is not coming from the government of Kosovo. The URA 2 project, an arm of the German government, offers those returning from select regions of Germany pre-determined financial assistance once they arrive in Pristina.

“Everyone is eligible for social counseling no matter where they are returning from in Germany. Those who return voluntarily receive a little more assistance than those who are deported. Otherwise, there is a budget per person for those who are returned from four specific regions in Germany. Why only those regions is a political decision for which I am not able to speak to,” said Birgit Budde, residential adviser in the Pristina-based URA office.

With the advent of the Action Plan of the Republic of Kosovo for the Implementation of the Strategy for the Integration of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian Communities, 2009-2015, signed on March 2, 2010 by Prime Minister Thaqi, those in civil society who work to advance the interests of RAE communities are eager to see the words on paper become reality across Kosovo. But the field interviews with those who have been forcibly returned indicate a process rife with bureaucracy, little communication between ministries or between the ministries and municipalities, and little to no sustainable support, monetary or otherwise, from the government of Kosovo once URA assistance has been used in full.

“Kosovo does not have the funds to support returns,” says Shpresa Agushi, who runs her own NGO advocating for Roma rights, “Housing and unemployment are major issues and we are not seeing any big changes.”

Xhevahire Dervishi-Rexhepi is the municipal community officer in Ferizaj. When a returned member of the RAE community approaches her office for help, she is responsible for collecting the required documents from the individual so she can send a social assistance request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“I cannot send a request to the Ministry without all the required documents. I am committed to supporting the people who seek help, but without civil registration and legal documents such as birth certificates or documentation of land ownership, I can only hold the request until the individual provides full documentation,” Ms. Dervishi-Rexhepi said after we met with several Roma individuals whose requests for help have gone unanswered in Ferizaj.

When asked about the repatriation process as a whole, Mr. Caka stressed that while the government does face some challenges, he believes the Action Plan is being implemented successfully.

“Presently, the weakest link in the process is at the municipal level. We need to intervene there and make some improvements. With that said, we recognize that we are responsible for the citizens of Kosovo; we treat each citizen equally. The mechanism is in place to reintegrate these people quickly because we do not want a passive population,” Mr. Caka said.

As Mr. Caka rightfully pointed out, the government of Kosovo is the first and only government in Europe to put a plan in place to address the inclusion of RAE communities. It is significant given that the issues that RAE face in Europe are not new. Take for instance the Decade of RAE Inclusion, 2005-2015, a well-intentioned but under-funded initiative with close to a dozen countries participating. While not a signatory to the Decade, the government of Kosovo, armed with the determination to create a state where visions of prosperity and democracy are not just buzzwords but principles to live by, can seize this opportunity to become the model for how best to integrate its most vulnerable populations.

Indeed, the Action Plan’s goals and objectives are lofty and could be transformative if implemented and carried out carefully. Civil society commends the government of Kosovo for envisioning and drafting the Plan in the hopes of creating a fairer, all-inclusive society. With that said, despite Mr. Caka’s assertion that a mechanism is in place, my interviews suggest there are two gaping holes in the repatriation process that could be addressed immediately with only a small measure of political will and monetary expenditure.

First, upon landing in Kosovo, returnees should be handed a one-sheet in their native language; it should list all the civil registration and legal documents required by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to process a request for social assistance. This would mitigate, if not eliminate, any surprises in relation to the Ministry’s requirements, thereby expediting the request and getting it into the proper hands sooner.

Second, we call upon the Ministry of Internal Affairs to re-examine their current processes and allocate the necessary funds in order to implement a comprehensive, turn-key repatriation process, beginning from the moment the family lands at the airport. Each family or individual should be met by a knowledgeable representative who can provide guidance on the repatriation process, alert the family to the documents they will need to file for assistance, and who could make themselves available for additional consultation in the future should the family need additional assistance. The representative should also conduct field visits on a quarterly basis during the initial year the family is returned to Kosovo to determine their progress and make recommendations where applicable.

I am not naïve. I know Kosovo is dealing with many complex challenges, the issue of RAE communities only one of them. But I call on those who are in a position to make a positive difference to do just that. I urge you to take this opportunity to show the rest of Europe that the government and the people of Kosovo can bring about transformative change where everyone living within its borders, regardless of ethnicity, can contribute to the country’s growth and create opportunities to build their own individual prosperity.

As Ms. Agushi correctly sees it, “We are citizens of Kosovo. We should be seen first as Kosovars, not as Roma, Ashkali or Egyptian.”

In speaking with members of the RAE community in the field, the name URA (in Albanian means bridge) was mentioned numerous times. Those who are returned from Germany, either forcibly or voluntarily, and originate from four specific regions in Germany, are eligible for assistance from the Kosovo Returns Project (URA).

No surprise, the new director of URA here in Pristina was very kind. I haven't meant too many Germans are aren't wonderful people, at least on the surface. What was significant about the meeting was this sense that URA is indeed a helpful assistance organization for those returned, something that I wasn't so sure about after meeting with the struggling and suffering RAE individuals in the towns we went to in June.

Everyone who is returned receives emotional counseling, regardless of the region they originate from in Germany. But only those from four specific regions receive financial assistance, which is a per person budget, not per family, but per person in each family budget that is available until that budget is exhausted. Returnees from the federal states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Sachsen-Anhalt fall within the financial assistance bucket. Those who return voluntarily receive additional benefits, namely, assistance in starting up a business. Asked why only certain regions, the woman said it is a political decision and not something she can speak to directly.

One question I wanted to have answered was what seemed to be the ruthless way the German civil police approached the RAE at the moment they were deported. Reports of arriving at odd hours, giving the people no time to collect their belongings, etc, had me imagining scenes from world war II movies when the Gestapo yelled at Jews to raus! raus! schnell! when they were being deported. This is not the case apparently, as I was told that the RAE individuals all know what's coming. They are informed of their status in the country ahead of time, have an opportunity to leave before the actual deportation incident occurs, and, I was told that many RAE arrive at the airport in Kosovo with luggage bags, which if true, would indicate that they have some time to pack and bring their belongings with them to some degree.

I am not doubting the stories RAE individuals shared with me, but it is important to gain as many perspectives as possible to build context around the entire situation. For certain, the RAE families are living in extreme poverty with very little hope of improvement.

With regards to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the woman at URA did say that in her experience with them, they seem to believe that everything is moving along swimmingly with the Action Plan, something that she knows is simply not true because she, as well as some of her colleagues, have been out in the field and have seen first hand, like myself, that these people are living in squalor.

Therein lies a major point: the Ministry does not send people out to the field to check on returnees. They do not appear to have their finger on the proverbial pulse, and unfortunately, this is not an area I asked the gentleman about during my short visit with him at the Ministry. That should be an additional recommendation to be made to improve the process of 'reintegrating' RAE, if integration is even possible.

Having the Ministry of Internal Affairs accept an interview request about the plight of the RAE communities, I think, is a big deal. The organization I am working with said they had requested meetings with the MIA numerous times without much luck in securing an interview. I didn't approach the ministry from an NGO angle, however; I went at them as an American graduate student conducting research on RAE in Kosovo. That got me the interview, and today I had about 20 minutes with the director of the Department of Asylum, Citizens and Migration and a member of the Board of Repatriation.

Not surprisingly, the gentleman does not see the same picture as those who are working on it from a civil society level. I felt very fortunate that he was giving me his time, so I did not push the issues that I feel need pushing. I'm a guest here for a very limited time, so I chose to take what he said with a silent grain of salt rather than asking follow up questions to his assertions.

Some of the things he said reveal an indication that the government has its heart in the right place. For example, "we are responsible for the citizens of Kosova. Everyone is treated equally." It's a wonderful thing to say, but of course, this is not what's happening across the country to minorities, especially those in the RAE communities, who suffer discrimination across all facets of daily life on earth.

When I asked what he thought the MIA could do better, he gave what I think is a very honest answer. The weakest link in the process, in his view, is at the municipal level, an area where they would like to intervene and make some improvements. This is consistent with what I've heard elsewhere. Apparently, some municipal officers are not clear on how to prepare a social assistance request that would be sent to the MIA, so the requests do not get sent, or they get sent with incomplete information, dragging the process out even longer.

He also admitted, when I asked if he felt the country has the capacity to handle returns, that there are some problems the government has to face. He admits they can only give so much support, but also said the goal is not to have "a passive population." Meaning, he wants to get the children enrolled in school and the adults employed, rather than having them do what they are doing now, sitting at home all day, waiting for social assistance to sustain them. What is not clear then, is how they plan on doing that, even with their Action Plan.

Discrimination among the majority population remains a major obstacle, not just in Kosovo, but in Europe as a whole. In my view, there needs to be a major campaign put forth to educate the majority population about RAE. And with that, an incentive for hiring and enrolling, and with that, a zero-tolerance policy against anyone who discriminates against RAE in a way where the evidence of discrimination is clear, like school segregation, for instance.

As a whole, he believes the Action Plan is successful so far, another statement that does not reflect what we saw out in the field. Changes for RAE communities is slow, continuing their isolation from the majority population, and continuing their cycle of poverty.

I spent an hour with the Ashkali member of Parliament, Etem Arifi yesterday to gain his perspective on the situation in Kosovo as relates to RAE communities. He was accompanied by Qazim Rahmani who serves as a political advisor in the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare here in Kosovo.

Their point of view, not surprisingly, is grim. They covered the Action Plan put in place to aid RAE communities integrate into greater Kosovar society ("a civil society creation that didn't go through the Assembly"), the institutions responsible for the deplorable conditions returned RAE are living in, the actual act of returning RAE individuals to Kosovo in the first place, the bureaucracy surrounding assistance due those returned from Germany and from elsewhere, and talked of their dismay over the lack of response and even respect from the Office of the Prime Minister.

They discussed one case where a returned individual submitted their request for social assistance to a municipal office, but those who must decide on this individual's eligibility meet once every three months. Both men expressed outrage at this and said they are trying to address the process by which individuals receive social assistance with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They are recommending that the board that assesses these cases meet once a month in order to deliver much-needed social assistance to returned individuals more urgently.

They also discussed what I have heard here several times now: that Kosovo is accepting forced returns from Germany simply in the interest of Kosovo, for the country wishes to be seen as an equal partner in Europe so it can expedite the recognition process stemming from its 2008 declaration of independance. The problem with that is that Kosovo does not currently have the capacity to handle forced returns, both in financial terms and in governmental structural terms. So returns are left with what I have seen over the past week in the field: lack of sustainable accomodation, lack of food security, lack of employment opportunities, lack of health care, and a lack of equal integration with others. Perhaps the strongest comment he made was that he sees RAE communities in Kosovo as "victims" of Kosovo's state-building initiatives: "They don't give priority to RAE, they want to make the Kosovo state equal to Europe."

With regard to Germany, they said they are trying to arrange a meeting with Angela Merkel in an effort to address the forced returns from that country, both in terms of the actual act of returning people, but also the way in which the act is carried out by the civil police there.

The men cited a recent UNICEF report that states from 2001-2010, 1,483 cases of forced returns have occured, where 85% of the children returned have not been able to attend school here. The obstacles are huge: language barrier, lack of integration in Kosovar society, and the "school ambience" is different in Kosovo versus what the children experienced in Germany. Children also suffer due to lack of available sports activity and culture, features they were able to experience in German society according to Mr. Rahmani.

Both men predicted that "Kosovo will get worse" for RAE communities. Without support, RAE communities will experience difficulties their whole life. "People will suffer always...without education, all doors are closed for that person."

Last week I visited several Roma, Ashkali, Egyptian (RAE) settlements in Kosovo, with an additional one scheduled for tomorrow. It goes without saying that the poverty, hopelessness, and perhaps most glaringly, the helplessness, that permeates these settlements is palpable. And to think that many of these communities are "settled," rather than in camps, which does exist just outside Prishtina in one known instance, is only more shocking; how much more severe is the problem elsewhere in Europe? We know from NGOs and the like that the problem is indeed severe, and perhaps most alarmingly, progress is slow, if there is any progress at all.

In two instances, the people we talked to didn't look any different from what people in NYC look like. The way they were dressed and the tone of their skin color would allow them to fit in on a Manhattan street, putting aside the obvious issue of language. But this is what I thought as I looked at them - they don't look any different from the melting pot that is NYC and here, they are pushed to the margins of society, with little hope for a better future.

I am seeing several areas where help can be offered based on the interviews granted. First and foremost, because we are meeting with people who were forcibly returned from Germany, and in one case, from Switzerland, I am discovering that the return process is entirely broken. Perhaps it was never whole in the first place. There is a clear opportunity to improve the process from when each returned individual/family gets off the plane in Prishtina. Some people get a little help from URA, but it appears to be inconsistent in terms of what is offered, if anything is offered at all.

Plus, it is clear that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) needs to play a more active role in aiding those who are forcibly returned. Many speak of need for accomodation, food assistance, and of course, employment. My hope is to arrange a meeting with URA and with the MIA to speak more about what each party does for these people once they land in Kosovo. But most importantly, if MIA is seen as the anchor for these returnees, we need to understand why it seems that they are not holding themselves to the 2009-2015 Action Plan put forth by the Kosovar government, if we are to believe what these people who we interview have said.

Another obvious area to improve forced returns is to make clear to them what documents they need to turn in to each Municipal Officer, officials in each municipality who are charged with sending in a request to the MIA to help these individuals make it once they return to Kosovo. I learned that, for example, in Ferizaj, that the Officer cannot submit requests because the person making the request cannot provide all the needed documents.

This is yet another problem, where if someone was born in Kosovo before the '99 conflict, their birth certificate probably no longer exists. If that is the case, then they cannot provide that to the officer, who then cannot submit a request for assistance to the MIA. I also learned that for those families who have a young child who was born in Germany, because the German police do not give more than 10 minutes for the family to leave their homes, nor do they provide a warning letter for fear the family might "escape," these people leave Germany without their children's birth certificates and other important documents.

Putting the difficulty of obtaining one's own documents aside, to mitigate the confusion for what each person must submit to the municipal officer, we believe a one-sheet should be produced and provided to each returnee once they land in Prishtina in the future. Minimally, they will have a document that provides them with some direction in terms of how to ask for help from the Kosovar government.

This all boils down to bureaucracy, of course. But perhaps what is so alarming is how the German civil police approach these people in Germany. They send no warning letter in most cases; they show up at odd hours, such as 4am or 5am, since at these times it is assumed everyone in the household is home; and, they enter the home and give the people 10 minutes to get their stuff and they take them to the airport. Sounds a lot like the Nazis from the Holocaust, where Jews were given no time to grab their belongings. Except, instead of going to the airport to be sent back to wherever they came from, they were sent to a ghetto or a concentration camp or a death camp. It's a shame to hear such things about Germany, a fine country and a fine people; a society that has gone out of its way to accept responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi regime.

There's still more information I would like to collect, first through a meeting with URA, then through a meeting with the MIA, something I'm told might be difficult to get, and, a hopeful meeting with the Roma member of Parliament, another meeting I'm told might be difficult to arrange, but there is no harm in trying. From there, I hope to create a proposal or two and hopefully have something published in a newspaper here. But first things first, I have to schedule the meetings.

I had my first opportunity to visit a Roma settlement today, this one in Mitrovica, the divided city where one side of the bridge is home to Albanians, while the other side is home to Serbs, with the bridge itself guarded by heavily armed men keeping watch.

This particular settlement is made up of Roma who for the past 10 years were 'housed' in camps where lead poisoning was a common problem. The Roma population was only recently moved to what are now more modern housing units (it's all relative, I realize).

The settlement now includes a Learning Center, implemented by the Roma and Ashkalia Documentation Centre (RADC), the NGO I am currently working with during my stay in Kosovo with funding contributed by Soros. The Learning Center is equipped with what could be considered modern classrooms, perhaps 4-6 of them, with modern furniture and several fully outfitted HP computers. Sitting in one of the classrooms, I can see drawings on the wall done by the children, with one of drawings saying "Enjoying English."

We had a meeting with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), which is asking the RADC to take over its educational activities it has been managing. There is currently close to 150 Roma children attending the Center, with another 50 or so to be included once the DRC completes it transfer of its educational activities over to the RADC. The children are taught by locals who don't necessarily have a diploma, although that is said to be changing slowly.

While I did not have my camera with me, as we walked the grounds I felt that even if I had one, it would be an injustice to take photos. Roma settlements are not tourist attractions; while they consist of sights I may never see living in the US (although I understand Native American reservations are in very bad shape), trying to capture their despair on camera amounts to poverty porn in my mind.

Next week, we have scheduled 4 visits to the field to interview several Roma families around the country for monitoring and evaluation purposes. I imagine it would be a prime opportunity to capture the situation in images, but it is something I will first ask permission for rather than assuming it's okay to snap pictures.

In Kosovo today, the Kosovo Center for Gender Studies hosted a conference on the forced repatriation of women Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. Forced returns, many of which are occuring from Germany recently, creates difficulties that are nearly unparalleled. Most RAE leave Kosovo for better opportunities elsewhere, selling their belongings to finance the move, only to find themselves forcefully moved later on. What's more, a UNICEF representative highlighted a very powerful point: those RAE children who were born in a place like Germany and spend some 12 years there only know Germany. They speak German, they think German, et al. To be forced to move to Kosovo, without any recourse, creates such hardship that the cycle of poverty becomes impossible to break.

The UNICEF gentleman also talked about the "revolving door" phenomenon, which is where a family will be forcefully moved to Kosovo, will find no opportunities to build a life because the government has failed to account for their arrival; the family will then move again to places like Serbia, Romania, or to another western European country to find opportunity only to find themselves in an endless cycle of forced relocation and perpetual poverty.

Many of those in attendance were from civil society and understandably were passionate about the topic. When s rep from the Ministry of Education presented, the discussion period took on a tone of heavy-handedness, as many in civil society expressed frustration over the ministry's policies and inability to meet the needs of Roma, Ashkali, Egyptian individuals, both those that live here and those that are forcefully returned. The ministry is taking steps to introduce Roma language teachers in an effort to integrate Roma children better into the education system. The UNICEF rep complemented Kosovo on those efforts, but warned that that will not solve the issues experienced by the RAE community in gaining an even-handed education in Kosovo, one that will propel young Roma to university levels and to a place where the cycle of poverty can cease.

On a related topic, it was a pleasure listening to people passionate about a topic that is about real life issues. The discussions were not based in theory - they were based in on-the-ground facts, backed up with data and anecdotes. To see these civil society workers express their outrage at the difficulties they experience everyday in their efforts to help these minority groups was wonderful. It was very different from sitting in a marketing conference, or, in my even younger days, sitting in music industry conferences, where the issues at hand were and are meaningless, and tend to be grounded in theory. It's refreshing to experience people discussing the welfare of other people, especially those who come from a different place.

I had the opportunity to meet with the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) today in Belgrade, Serbia. Since 1992, when it was founded, and when Yugoslavia was beginning to fall apart in what would be about a decade of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing culminating in NATO's mission in Kosovo, the HLC has been working to drive truth and reconciliation efforts. As I learned in my transitional justice class, truth and reconciliation is a core mechanism for post-conflict societies and a mechanism that has not been pursued formally by the parties involved in the conflict. The HLC has been on a much needed mission to change that with great successes.

For sure there's the ICTY, which like the Rwanda tribunal, was set up as a precursor to the ICC and continues to operate, as demonstrated by the recent arrest of Mladic. But what I have learned over the past day or so in Belgrade is that Serbia, the aggressor in the Yugoslav wars during the '90's, is not and has not done anything on a societal-wide basis to account for its actions during the wars with its neighbors. Prior to the meeting with HLC, I met with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, who confirmed that in today's Serbs schools, youngsters do not learn about Milsovic, Srebrenica, Kosovo, etc, a seemingly first step towards taking responsibility for one's tragic past. Unlike Germany, which is perhaps the model for how best to address a society's fractured past, Serbia does not see its past in a negative light. In fact, it believes it was in the right to carry out the conflict, that it did no wrong, and that all actions were justified. The political will to challenge this belief does not exist, and clearly, the people of Serbia do not believe there's any need to put pressure on their politicians to take a formal approach at addressing the country's recent past.

I asked the woman if the EU would use TJ as an additional condition for Serbia to achieve membership in the EU and she said that would not happen. With the arrest of Mladic, the question of whether or not the issues surrounding Kosovo would hamper Serbia's rise to EU membership seems unanswered at the present time. Outside of that, for the EU to accept other nations, it would seem logical that the EU would apply some pressure to instill in Serbia the need to recognize its past wrongs and strive to build an informed population about the need for tolerance of minorities. While Serbia will have to meet a number of requirements to achieve their goal of membership, if the West sees itelf as the carrier of all values and a home for the oppressed to seek shelter, then accepting a country into a framework brought about as a result of WWII would be acceptable under one condition: that the country in question embraces such values and open its doors to all, including Muslim, Roma, Jews, and others who originate from a different ethnic/racial/religious background.

I don't know if it's considered odd or not, but when I logged on to facebook this morning just before 9AM and saw the link a friend posted about the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the author of the Srebrenica genocide in 1995, I let out a small cheer, the kind most people let out when their favorite baseball team clinches the pennant. After 16 years on the run, hiding, like bin Laden, more or less in plain sight, this guy will finally face justice at the ICTY.

Like the capture of bin Laden or Hussein, or the recent decision about John Demjanjuk and others before them, now that Mladic will receive his punishment for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, one hopes it provides some comfort to the heirs of those Muslim males who were annihilated in Srebrenica on that July day 16 years ago, simply because they were Muslim.

This means a lot for Serbia, a place I'll be flying to in 5 days before heading down to Kosovo a few days later. Joining the EU is of high importance to Serbia, with the capture of Mladic representing a very big obstacle. With that out of the way, there remains one more fugitive on the loose, Goran Hadzic, and the very big question surrounding Kosovo. The latter issue is by far the more complicated one, where Serbia simply does not want to let what it calls its "cradle" to fall away to the Albanians.

Talks about the future of Kosovo almost mirror those that keep Israel-Palestine in the news: how do they split the land?

But Serbia is not being a very good sport about all this, as demonstrated by their reluctance to join President Obama in Warsaw this weekend, simply because Kosovo's president will be on hand. Romania will also not be attending, for it does not recognize Kosovo's independence for fear that it could set a precedent for Romania's large ethnic Hungarian population. But for Serbia, if you really want to join the EU, and you want Brussels to view you as a cooperative, modern, Western-leaning state with the values to match, doesn't treating your counterparts in Kosovo with a greater deal of respect play in your favor?

The Mladic arrest is long overdue, but so is solving what is a forgone conclusion. Kosovo is an independent state and should be recognized as such, home to an Albanian majority, but with Serb enclaves. The two parties must reach an agreement on how they can live side by side and work to join the rest of 21st century Europe where disagreements over land have largely become a thing of the past.

It was brought to my attention a couple of months ago a new make-shift school in Kosovo for Roma children. The school is run by Elizabeth Gowing, who's blog can be seen here. Elizabeth engages in lobbying efforts to change policy that forbids Romani children from attending the 'normal' schools where the majority population attends. This kind of segregation is not unique to Kosovo, as the Czech Republic is well known for putting Romani children in schools that are more appropriate for learning-challenged children. Roma children do not fall into that category, but are put there anyway in order to satisfy the xenophobic moods that permeate the halls of policy makers and the public alike.

A classmate of mine went back to Kosovo in March to continue research on her thesis and visited this school, returning with some photos of the kids taking part in a lesson. The building has no heat or electricity, so wearing coats indoors is the norm for these kids as they go about trying to learn something, so maybe, one day, they can break out of the cycle of poverty that is the norm for Roma throughout Europe.

As the blog explains further, some children have apparently lost there right to go to school because they missed the first two years when registration was open. Now, if they want to get in, they have to pass a test, which they can't pass without going to school. To run these classes, Gowing has calculated that it costs about 18 GBP to educate a child per month. All money is collected through donations, and the school is run by volunteers exclusively.

One would think that if the US can desegregate its society, bringing together Caucasians and African-Americans, then Europe can figure out a way to break out of its discriminatory ways and bring minorities and majorities together. It remains to be seen, after all it has been through with its genocides and campaigns to ethnically cleanse certain areas, if Europe, in this case the Balkans, can accomplish such a lofty goal.

In about a week I go to Kosovo to complete my MA in International Affairs, where I'll be working with the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society on Roma rights. The more formal name for their mission is the Government Implementation for Integration of Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian Communities.

I first became interested in Roma rights in 2008 when I was planning a trip to Slovakia. The guidebook mentioned Roma numerous times, and I am convinced I saw them as I drove through the countryside. In August 2009, Yahoo.com reported that Madonna was booed in Romania for calling out her fans over their discrimination of the Romani people. The clip can be viewed on youTube, where doesn't receive full support from her fans. Later in 2009, motivated by the Madonna clip and by my trip to Slovakia, I did a research paper on the issue for school, leveraging the ERRC and other European sources, specifically the OSCE.

Today I came across this article on romea.cz, about a Roma woman in Kosovo fighting for Roma rights. I've since tried to reach out to her through facebook in the hopes of meeting with her once I arrive in Pristina. My vision for what I would like to do in Kosovo is a big one. I'm a strategic thinker, someone who likes to make a big splash and see outcomes from my work. My hope is if she'll meet with me, she can provide some guidance on whether or not I can make happen what I would like to make happen there. It would be tough for sure, being there for only eight weeks, but I am going in determined abnd optimistic.

The plight of Europe's Roma population is one of great interest to me and something I can see working on as a career. Fighting to help people rise out of poverty, gain access to health care and education; and their right to live as people among people, is a noble cause. It's one I hope to be a part of as I make my way through the final six credits of this degree and hopefully begin a new, fulfilling career in the international affairs/social justice field.

Michael Moore is one of the most valuable voices in America, in my view. Some, especially on the right, like to call him controversial. I think it's an interesting dichotomy: America is said to welcome disagreement and dissent, but when someone from within criticizes the country, people lash out and label that person unpatriotic and other words not suitable to print here.

American society is a violent one when compared to other advanced nations. Moore's Bowling for Columbine showed that and backed it up with evidence, the way Moore backs up all his documentaries with evidence. And yet, Americans seem to have a difficult time confronting the wrongs in our society; they don't seem to like hearing the absolute truth, probably because they are uncomfortable with the truth. So when someone like Michael Moore or Samantha Power criticizes the American Way, they are labeled controversial, unpatriotic, and so on.

I agree with Michael Moore on almost everything. Is the American health care system not a serious problem? Has predatory capitalism not driven many Americans, and the country itself, into a serious hole? Did the government not lie the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq? Is America not a violent country compared to Canada and other advanced nations when you take into account all the numbers on gun ownership per capita and gun murders per capita?

With all that said, Michael published an article this past week about OBL, and his belief that OBL should have been captured and put on trial. It's not his point of view that I disagree with, although I do think putting OBL on trial would have been a circus we can all do without; it's his comparisons to the Nazis and the Japanese that bother me - they were put on trial, given their time in court, and put to death or in prison for their crimes. Using that logic, OBL should have been treated the same way.

Putting the Germans and the Japanese on trial, in my view, is entirely different than putting OBL on trial. First, the governments of Germany and Japan were legitimate governments. They were bad governments, but there are bad governments today; the US, one way or another, still manages to deal with bad governments, even Iran, done through the Swiss. OBL was a terrorist. The US does not negotiate with terrorists. But the US does negotiate with governments it doesn't like (I realize that can be argued. The Bush Admin chose to ignore governments it didn't like, using the 'silent treatment' as a form of punishment. That got the US nowhere).

So if the US treats terrorists different diplomatically, doesn't it stand to reason that the US should treat terrorists differently when faced with the dilemmna of kill or capture? It is here that I disagree with Moore - he's equating bad guys with bad guys, but terrorists are not considered just bad guys by the US, they are considered barbarians, not worthy of diplomacy, negotiation, or consideration. While the US should work within the frameworks of international law when dealing with terrorists (in other words, torture is wrong and useless no matter who the bad guy is), it also must function with some degree of ruthlessness as if it were at war. The attack on the US was an act of war (if it were a government doing the attacking on 9/11/01, you have Japan attacking Pearl Harbor as the precedent), so the response, killing OBL, was carried out viciously, as a means to save future lives (think: bombs dropped on Japan) from further attacks.

This latter point is another reason why drawing a parallel relationship between WWII and OBL doesn't work: dropping the bombs on Japan was done to save American lives, those troops who would have had to invade Tokyo to force a surrender, and to end the war once and for all. It accomplished both ends. Because OBL and his ilk are not a regime, killing him hasn't ended anything. While it may help to save lives in the near term, no doubt his buddies are continuing to find aways to attack the US without his presence, and sometime in the future, either here in the US or overseas, they will succeed at killing Americans. This 'war' is not over, because it's not a war between governments, there will be no surrender, no V-J/V-E Day. As such, the killing/capturing of OBL should not be viewed through the WWII lens. I respect Moore a great deal; we need his voice in a country that leaves people behind in favor of profits, but I do not agree with the comparison he has drawn on this topic.

Boxing up a lot of my school books and readings, looking at the dates on some of the materials, it really hits home. I am 90 days away, for the most part, from being done with my MA in International Affairs, a journey that started in January 2009, or perhaps more accurately, in September 2008 when I attended the information session.

So many images are clear in my mind from those early days. In fact, August 2008 is very clear in my mind - that was when Russia invaded Georgia. I can still see myself getting out of my car in New Rochelle, walking to the train station and having the newsreader's voice on 880 buzzing in my ears. He was quoting Condi Rice who had given a stern warning to the Russians over their "disproportionate" response to the Georgians. I remember thinking how nice it would be to do work that mattered, that was significant, that had meaning.

I had looked into international affairs in May 2008. I called CUNY's chairperson, who didn't return my call. I even remember the person who answered the phone asking me if I lived in New York, because that would have an impact on tuition costs. I recall typing 'international affairs careers' into google to see what it returned in an effort to get a sense of what the field was like. I dismissed it all, simply because the guy at CUNY didn't return my call. And then Russia/Georgia happens, and that changed everything. I began looking into the field a little more, found the information session at the New School on, I think, September 15, 2008. I walked out, excited, feeling this could be transformative.

Two and half years later here I sit. Amazed I've made it this far, sad that all this time has passed, exhausted at the hustle and bustle I have put myself through, and frightened at what lies ahead. It was different with the MBA: I was employed, and had just landed a new job, seeing my salary jump $25k overnight. Granted, I wasn't going to a great place and I wasn't genuinely excited about it. I was, however, relieved to be leaving PA and getting back to the NYC area.

This is a different feeling. More of sadness, worry, a sense of overwhelming. I have a lot more debt to deal with now, and I am a person who wants no debt at all. But I felt I had to make a change, so I did it, and the moment is getting closer, the days passing by in a blur.

I can't believe it's May, a month that seemed so far away. This has easily been the most difficult semester, ironically so, since this was the semester that I was not working full time. But because of the uncertainty, and because it is now here, 'it' being the need to actually make the transition, the weight on my shoulders is palpable, even unbearable.

I think back to 2009 - the Fulbright, the Polish, that summer, looking at other schools, wanting to get out of JetBlue without having to go to another job. Everything seemed so far in the future, and I had a well-paying, albeit very unsatisfying job. It's easier to say you are making a career change when you have to pass through 2 years before you actually have to put your talk into action. That's what I'm facing now.

Among my deepest fears? Having an international affairs degree and not working in an international setting. I have a music business degree, and I never really got to taste the music business. To do all this work, and spend all this money, to not be able to do what you imagined yourself doing, could be devastating. Now, as it turns out, not working in the music business was and continues to be a blessing. It's not a good place to be, and it deserves all it's gotten in its downfall over the past 15 years or so. But international affairs isn't going anywhere. Sure, organizations may merge, but the issues are out there and are not going away. The world is a complicated place.

Reflecting on these past 27 months, the memories are as bright as day. I still remember that first night, that first semester, reading Leviathan as I was doing my laundry, going to buy Marx in Forest Hills on a sunny day, keeping the receipt so I could return the book after, writing the paper on Yugoslavia, a paper I now know is not a good paper. Reading Polanyi, still in New Rochelle, overwhelmed at the volume of reading assigned each week. As I put these materials into boxes, I tell myself that now that the pressure to get these pages read is no longer, I should go back to read much of this material. Read it slowly, over time, the way I would read any book. Absorb it, enjoy it, reflect on what it is telling me. For having to read 200 pages in a weekend, which was often the case, one is more concerned with reading it, than understanding it. Imagined Communities comes to mind. No idea what that book is about. Some things I look at now and I can't remember if I read it or not. I did my best to read everything that was assigned; since I was paying for it, I felt the need to fulfill my obligations to myself. Except, this semester, the second half mostly, that has stopped. The burn out has set in, the anxiety, and the reality over the future, dominating my thoughts.

I stand on the precipice of being rejected for the fourth overseas adventure I applied for, adventures that I view as necessary to making this change, as a core component to transformation: Fulbright, VSO, JDC Goldman Fellowship, JDC Jewish Service Corps. I have rejected the Peace Corps, regretfully.

It saddens me deeply. All I know is sitting in a cubicle in corporate America. How I wish I didn't follow that course all these years since Berklee. But I knew no different, thinking my father knew best, and thinking I better make my father happy or else. I was more concerned with making my father happy than I was with making myself happy. But then again, that's what I thought you were supposed to do after college - go get a job. GO GET A JOB. My father's 4 favorite words, words I have heard nonstop since I turned 16 years old, perhaps when I turned 15 years old. Words I heard yet again 5 weeks ago, told instead of going to Kosovo, I should GO GET A JOB.

I am so envious of people who have spent time overseas. A year, two years, whatever it may be. What is it like? What kind of impact does it have on a person? I have no idea. And it appears that if I want to experience it, I have to pick myself up and go on my own, something not very easy to do. The right parts have to be in place. No one is going to send me, not the Fulbright people, not the VSO, not the JDC, so it appears if I get the email I think I am going to get on Monday.

Ninety days from now, I will be packing my bags in Kosovo after 8 weeks there, the longest I would have ever spent outside the US at one time. I will be readying to make the trip home, coming home to what? The need to find income, the need to defer student loans, the need to pound the pavement and actually make this career change happen, something that could take months, perhaps over a year. The need, sadly, depressingly, to go back to doing what I was doing just to survive.

I've been learning French this semester for several reasons, with work and career the primary concern. Spanish would be much easier to learn - I took three years of it in high school, and in New York, like many other places in the US, Spanish is heard and spoken widely, providing the learner with some immersion, certainly more immersion than one would find with many other languages, French included (although there is no shortage of French in New York either).

But I chose French not just for work, but also because of my obsession with Europe, living a fantasy of someday residing in France, Belgium or Switzerland. There's nothing really stopping me from going to either one of those places. The question becomes, how does one find work in a new country where one isn't a citizen? By work, I mean substantive work, not just teaching English, which many in Western Europe are learning from a young age anyway.

Comparing French to my year of Polish study, Polish is clearly easier to pronounce. Slavic languages are phonetic, so as long as a person knows how the letters sound, they never change no matter where they are in the word, unlike English, where non-native speakers can become frustrated when confronted with short and long vowels, and the letter c, which in a word like 'concern' sounds like a 'k' and an 's'. French on the other hand, is quite different, and without hearing the word pronounced the first time, a person can do quite well in embarrassing oneself. The silent letters, coupled with the nasal sounds combine to make the uninitiated look, well, uninitiated. Both languages are pleasant to the ear - Polish can be described as "flowery," while French just seems to flow from the tongue and when spoken fluently, might be one of the more prettier languages to listen to. French is also nice, in that one can see the relationship it has with English. I don't know which language came first - that would require doing some genealogy research on England and France to reach a conclusion.

Slavic languages, in the majority of cases, do not translate when given a simple look-over. Outside of words like mleka or woda (milk, water; ironically, in French, milk and water are not even close to the English translation), it's a completely different way of thinking, and where definite and indefinite articles do not exist.

I also now understand why Spanish and French are often mentioned in the same sentence. As romance languages, they are very much alike, and in my time learning French, when I look at Spanish words around New York, I see the similarities. One would assume that learning Spanish becomes easier once they grasp French and vice versa, just as learning Polish helps a person learn other Slavic languages. Stating the obvious, language families makes learning a bit easier and expedites the process of going from one language to another. The real challenge is immersion and becoming accustomed to hearing the words to bring about fluency.

I finished reading Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost this morning. Rarely has a book struck me the way this book did. Because the book is so close to home, which is to say, because I have tried to find information via travel to Poland, through JewishGen.org, etc, and have come up empty, I can relate to what the author was going through, why he was so interested in it, and why he took it so seriously. The difference, of course, is that the author accomplished largely what he set out to accomplish. He asked the questions early enough to learn all he could about his familial roots, and when he was old enough, he began making the trips around the world to find out the details about those who were lost.

He also had a great deal of luck; it's almost unbelievable, as one reads through the pages, to see how all the pieces came together. It was a serendipitous experience, being in the right place at the right time, one clue leading to another, a seemingly unimportant detail leading to a significant finding. Just when he thought he was done with his research, he would meet one more person who could give him information, and that person would send him to another, and another, and finally, he's in the house where two of his ancestors were found hiding during the war, setting foot in the hiding place itself. Later, we learn that he finds himself standing at the very spot where his ancestors where shot after they were discovered.

I confess to feeling a sense of envy as I read through the pages. The sense of accomplishment the author must have felt when he finished his four/five year tour, visiting numerous continents and elderly survivors who knew his ancestors from 60 years prior and could remember enough to provide enough information to paint a picture that brings those lost people back to a small degree.

I would absolutely love to find out what happened to my grandmother's sister. I doubt very much I will, and of course, with so many other things to worry about, it's difficult to dedicate the time to such an effort. It is, for all intents and purposes, the equivalent of searching for a needle in a proverbial haystack, especially since her sister probably, at least as far as she knows, was not in a camp, or on any deportation list that was kept by the perpetrators.

I can think of one other book that had an impact on me as profound as The Lost. And yet, the book is a work of fiction, not a real adventure capturing the lives of those in the present as they seek information about the lives of the past. The book is about Vietnam and it's call The Things They Carried. I first read the book when I was in high school, when I was captivated by the Vietnam war and when I was preparing an essay on PTSD, which at the time, was something new, whereas today, PTSD is widely accepted as an outcome of prolonged exposure to combat (among other things). I then read the book again in 2006, and it didn't bring about the same reaction I had to it when I was a teenager. I'm not sure why - while I remembered bits and pieces, especially the ending which is easily the most profound portion, I did not think reading it again after more than a decade would be like seeing a movie for the nth time, where the suspense is no longer there because the ending is known. With that said, I highly recommend it.

And so, my next step is send some names and birth dates via email to the Polish State Archives to see if I'll have any luck, once again, on finding something from the past.

After four or so years of seeing it in bookstores, I recently purchased Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost, a book about the author's quest to find out what happened to his relatives during the Holocaust. It's a little more than that, in that the author went back and researched his family tree going back to the 1800's. So he has a good handle on who was who and how all the pieces fit together. The missing piece, however, consists of the six who did not leave Poland (now Ukraine) before 1939, and who, like six million others, would come to regret that decision, assuming the decision was there for the taking.

The book has rekindled my own efforts at trying to find more about my grandmother's history in Poland, which, to this point, has resulted in the same results as those from the prior few years where I've tried to find information. I have learned where her parents are buried however, and went to Brooklyn to have a look. I also learned where three of her brothers are buried and I'll be going to New Jersey to view their monuments as well. If nothing else, my goal is to discover birth dates, and then try either through email or in person in the future, to go to the Polish State Archives to get birth certificates. The idea of going to the State Archives was taken from the book, where the author was successful in locating birth certificates; I figured I had to go to the town of Rozan and visit the municipal office there, which I did in 2009, coming away empty as I walked in without any birth dates, only names.

I also learned for certain that her hometown is Rozan, Poland, something I was starting to doubt. Her parents and brothers are buried in Rozan burial societies, which proves her memory is right. However, I am suspicious that she may not remember her original last name correctly, as when I type Brzoza in at online databases, the returns are never helpful.

Genealogy is one of those things that you really have to delve into early, for there will come a time when no one will be around to answer all the questions that need to be asked about the past. Mendelsohn was fortunate to start early, although he laments not starting early enough. He remembers, as so many of us do, being around old people as a youngster, people who would ultimately pass away, only to find out who they were later in life, discovering the wealth of familial information that was lost by not asking the questions when he had the opportunity. That's the problem, among many problems, with being young, I suppose. The answers are there in front of you, you just have to ask the question, but as a young person, you are more fascinated with toys, and maybe girls (if you're male), and sports, and everything else that surrounds one's world. Genealogy is not top of mind when a person is, say, 10 years old.

I remember in the 4th grade, Mr. Salka had us do a family tree. I remember my father on the phone with my grandmother, the one who passed away 10 years ago next month, asking questions. The assignment didn't push me to learn more, and I can't remember how far back or even what the family tree ultimately looked like once it was complete. What's worse, is that my parents never asked any questions either, which is strange to me; if you have a parent from, say, Poland, wouldn't you want to know something about her past? Or about the one sister that didn't leave Poland before 1939 and because of that, would never leave Poland and find herself among the six million?

It's unfortunate that I've let all this time pass, and that I let life and all the other things I was into get in the way of understanding the past. It's odd, I think, that I would only begin to be fascinated with this topic over the last eight to ten years, but then again, the seed that has brought this career change found its beginnings at the same time. It's been a holistic transformation, one which I find some difficulty in finding the absolute cause. My hope now is to find the birth dates of these few from Rozan, confirm their original last name, and then figure out how to approach the Polish State Archives to get birth certificates and anything else they may have available. I think others should do the same.

Ruth Ellen Gruber shares this video of last year's Jewish Culture Festival, held annually in the Kazimierz section of Krakow, the former Jewish Quarter. As she points out, the footage leans heavily on the music and doesn't cover many of the other activities that take place during the festival, such as workshops, exhibits, and performances.

Sadly, I have not been to the festival yet, and I can't go this June, as I'll be in Kosovo finishing my degree in International Affairs. It's a shame though, as it looks like an extraordinary event for anyone interested in European Jewry and the rich heritage found in places like Poland. It's also wonderful to see Poles involving themselves in Jewish culture; many of the Poles who attend, I assume, are young, and probably haven't met many Jews, unless of course they've traveled to places like New York or Israel. I might be speaking way out of turn - I like being wrong, though, as being wrong usually means you learn something new! And as I've said before, it's important I think for young Poles to understand and recognize the pivotal role their country played in the lives of the Jewish people and in the lives of the Polish people over the last 900 years or so as well. It's all very fascinating and worthwhile to explore.

20th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Poland from Jewish Culture Festival on Vimeo.

Shocking video from the earthquake in Japan. Something out of one of those Hollywood disaster movies we've grown accustomed to living in the U.S.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Changing topics, here is a great broadcast from msnbc.com's Richard Engel. Journalism is a great way to be a witness to history, and I often envy Engel for the assignments he covers, the access he is afforded as a member of the press, and his expertise in presenting the information. Broadcast journalism, I assume, has as much to do with what you look like as it does anything else. Print journalism not so much, of course; either way, it's a wonderful way to see the world, witness history, and be part of something significant and meaningful.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A fascinating interview came out of Israel today, where Ha'aretz interviewed Poland's Foreign Minister. Mr. Sikorski, who is married to a Jewish American woman who happens to also be a Pulitzer Prize winner and well-known journalist, speaks eloquently about Poland's past, its involvement in the Holocaust, and its history vis-a-vis the Jewish people. I love reading about high-level officials like this, for I feel it's enlightening to see how they view their country's past and how they interpret the events that brought Poland to its knees 70 years ago. While Mr. Sikorski does not acknowledge that, outside the years that comprised the Holocaust, Poland's relationship with its 3.5 million strong Jewish population wasn't always rose gardens, he poignantly makes clear that the Holocaust, and the death camps that live on Polish soil, were not the creation of the Polish state.

He states:The Polish state was too weak in 1939 to stand up to Nazi Germany. It was not able to defend all its citizens. Nazi Germany carried out the Holocaust on our soil - against our will, but in front of our eyes.

He goes on to speak about Poland's friendship with Israel:Poland and the Jewish people share a thousand-year history, and ever since we regained our independence, the state-to-state relations have also increased in importance. Both Israel and Poland live in interesting and at times dangerous neighborhoods, and so both take security matters with the utmost seriousness... We would like to upgrade Israel's relations with the EU. Today Israel already has privileged relations with the EU, which includes regular summits and regular high-level contacts, but we would like to see more.

Later on he speaks about Iran, and describes Poland's position:We do not feel threatened by Iran. We are not high on the ayatollah's list of targets. Our opposition to Iranian policy is based on the conception that theocracy is the last form of ideological dictatorship of the 21st century, after fascism and communism. This is why we also opposed the Durban II conference against racism, at which Iran intended to spread hatred and anti-Semitism. After all, our country does not lack for physical traces of what anti-Semitism can lead to.

In posting this, I realize what I wrote above is inaccurate, in that he does acknowledge anti-Semitism in Poland's history. He's certainly not direct with it, and he doesn't go into details by, for example, mentioning Kielce, or Jedwabne, or Radzilow; perhaps what is most important is that he recognizes that Polish-Jewish relations were a challenge at one time. But is that enough? Should we expect more? The author asks the Foreign Minister if modern Poland is now philo-Semitic, and his answer is fascinating:

The fact that a large portion of the world's Jews lived in Poland before the Holocaust needs to be taken into account. For generations, Poland absorbed Jews while they were expelled from other countries. The Holocaust that took place on our soil was conducted against our will by someone else. So what is happening now is simply that free Poland is returning to its natural self.

Certainly, there does seem to be a greater acceptance, (or might a better word be appreciation?) by Poles of their country's rich Jewish heritage. Rabbi Schudrich has been quoted as saying that many Poles would like to 'do something Jewish.' The annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow is attended mostly by Poles, and I know from my Fulbright affiliation with the Foundation for Preservation for Jewish Heritage in Poland, that teachers and young people are exploring the country's Jewish heritage together. It's wonderful to read about and even more fascinating to explore in person when visiting Poland. I simply can't get enough of this!

A fascinating interview came out of Israel today, where Ha'aretz interviewed Poland's Foreign Minister. Mr. Sikorski, who is married to a Jewish American woman who happens to also be a Pulitzer Prize winner and well-known journalist, speaks eloquently about Poland's past, its involvement in the Holocaust, and its history vis-a-vis the Jewish people. I love reading about high-level officials like this, for I feel it's enlightening to see how they view their country's past and how they interpret the events that brought Poland to its knees 70 years ago. While Mr. Sikorski does not acknowledge that, outside the years that comprised the Holocaust, Poland's relationship with its 3.5 million strong Jewish population wasn't always rose gardens, he poignantly makes clear that the Holocaust, and the death camps that live on Polish soil, were not the creation of the Polish state.

He states:

The Polish state was too weak in 1939 to stand up to Nazi Germany. It was not able to defend all its citizens. Nazi Germany carried out the Holocaust on our soil - against our will, but in front of our eyes.

He goes on to speak about Poland's friendship with Israel:

Poland and the Jewish people share a thousand-year history, and ever since we regained our independence, the state-to-state relations have also increased in importance. Both Israel and Poland live in interesting and at times dangerous neighborhoods, and so both take security matters with the utmost seriousness... We would like to upgrade Israel's relations with the EU. Today Israel already has privileged relations with the EU, which includes regular summits and regular high-level contacts, but we would like to see more.

Later on he speaks about Iran, and describes Poland's position:

We do not feel threatened by Iran. We are not high on the ayatollah's list of targets. Our opposition to Iranian policy is based on the conception that theocracy is the last form of ideological dictatorship of the 21st century, after fascism and communism. This is why we also opposed the Durban II conference against racism, at which Iran intended to spread hatred and anti-Semitism. After all, our country does not lack for physical traces of what anti-Semitism can lead to.

In posting this, I realize what I wrote above is inaccurate, in that he does acknowledge anti-Semitism in Poland's history. He's certainly not direct with it, and he doesn't go into details by, for example, mentioning Kielce, or Jedwabne, or Radzilow; perhaps what is most important is that he recognizes that Polish-Jewish relations were a challenge at one time. But is that enough? And, should we expect more? The author asks the Foreign Minister if modern Poland is now philo-Semitic, and his answer is fascinating:

The fact that a large portion of the world's Jews lived in Poland before the Holocaust needs to be taken into account. For generations, Poland absorbed Jews while they were expelled from other countries. The Holocaust that took place on our soil was conducted against our will by someone else. So what is happening now is simply that free Poland is returning to its natural self.

Certainly, there does seem to be a greater acceptance, (or might a better word be appreciation?) by Poles of their country's rich Jewish heritage. Rabbi Schudrich has been quoted as saying that many Poles would like to 'do something Jewish.' The annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow is attended mostly by Poles, and I know from my Fulbright affiliation with the Foundation for Preservation for Jewish Heritage in Poland, that teachers and young people are exploring the country's Jewish heritage together. It's wonderful to read about and even more fascinating to explore in person when visiting Poland. I simply can't get enough of this!

I recently rented the documentary Spark Among The Ashes, a well-done film about a boy from CT who goes to Krakow, Poland to have his bar mitzvah. In 1985. The year is just as important, in my view, as the premise itself; for in 1985, Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain at a time when most people saw no end in sight to the Cold War, or so the world thought. At the time, Poland was going through the solidarity movement and momentum was slowly beginning to shift; today we know the conclusion - the end of the Soviet Union and a democratic, free-market economy Poland that continues to thrive today.

The boy from CT, now 38 and interviewed for the documentary in 2007, found himself in Poland by coincidence. In 1985 there were perhaps 200 Polish Jews still living in Krakow, where one of them was asked by a visiting American Jewish group if there was anything that could be done to help their current situations living in communist Poland. The request wasn't for money, or food, or clothing; the request was to have the very first bar mitzvah in Krakow since pre-WWII. Word went back to the US, where a rabbi in Stamford, CT introduced the idea to a boy who was preparing for his bar mitzvah at the time. The family agreed and the stage was set, with the media catching on. This was a significant undertaking in a place that is largely considered a massive Jewish graveyard. One wonders if such things happen today in Poland, a question I was hoping to have answered with a Fulbright scholarship. Not to be, unfortunately.

Because of the media attention (it was on the front page of the NY Times), the situation was made more complicated as the boy's rabbi was a.) reform, and b.) a woman. An Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn read about the event and decided to intervene; he denied the female rabbi her right to officiate the event and set out for Poland on his own to intercept the ceremony. The documentary interviews both individuals (oddly, the Orthodox rabbi looks no different in 2007 as compared to 1985, even his English is about the same, which is to say not good), and recounts how the Orthodox gentleman would not allow the female rabbi to wear her tallis while on the bimah. They made a small scene as the boy began his Haftorah, and today, as then, the Orthodox rabbi remains convinced of his righteousness in keeping the moment aligned with Jewish traditions.

What's interesting about the interviews in 2007 was when one of the producers compared 1985 Kazimierz to the South Bronx. It is the second time I've heard that comparison, the first was last May when Rabbi Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, made the same comparison during a talk in New York on Polish-Jewish relations. Rabbi Schudrich, a native New Yorker, had visited Krakow in the '70s, when it was in a dilapidated state, apparently. Today's Krakow and Kazimierz quarter are the talk of everyone who visits Poland now. Just yesterday someone was telling me how they thought Krakow was so beautiful. It's fascinating to learn that the Krakow we see today is a recently upgraded version of what it looked like 25-30 years ago while it was still under Soviet control. So while the city was not destroyed like Warsaw or Breslau/Wroclaw during the war, it clearly was not a sight to see until the post-Communist era.

Another fascinating element from the interviews: the director notes that since his trip to Poland in 1985, he has done several other films about Polish Jewry, notably the excellent Hiding and Seeking. He talks about how Poland changed him, and I thought I was watching a mirror image of myself. I can't get enough of Poland. Visiting that country is a life-changing experience in my view. And while the change in my life has not been in terms of career success or monetary reward (yet?), it's the change in mindset, in focus, and in what I think I could be in the future that has made Poland so important in moving me away from business and finding new and more meaningful work in international affairs and perhaps World Jewry. I wonder: where will it all lead?

Received an email from the USHMM and within it was a link calling attention to Poland's newly elected president visit to the museum in December before he met with president Obama. The video is below and it's quite obvious that the museum administrative staff were very happy to have president Komorowski visit. It's significant for a number of reasons. First, in my view, it's important to see Polish officials of higher office acknowledge the rich Jewish history that is very much a part of Polish history. The former president, before he died in the plane crash last April, was the first, and I believe the only, president to visit Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw on Hanukkah to light the first candle. I do not know if the new president followed in president Kaczynski's footsteps, however, this past December. Second, that president Komorowski recognizes that the Holocaust, as the person in the video says, is very much a Polish story is important. With some 10% of the country's population Jewish in 1939, the loss of some 3 million citizens should be remembered, especially if it can play a role in alleviating hate. Further to this point, officials of higher office are in a very important position vis-a-vis setting an example for their citizens. Given the amount of anti-Semitism that was once very prevalent in Polish society, and exists to a degree today, someone of Komorowski's stature can have influence over those parts of society that continue to believe in aged-old stereotypes about the Jewish people. That is what was so admirable about Kaczynski visiting the synagogue. For Jewish Heritage travel, Poland is a fascinating place. Many of the buildings are still there, with many of them in ruins. So while the people who occupied those synagogues were taken from the earth in brutal fashion, memory remains, and it must be cherished.

Today's January 27, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day for those of us who choose to remember and who choose to think of the significance surrounding such a day. President Obama put out a press release on the day, as he did for other topics this morning, one of which was the murder of a gay Ugandan man, savagely beaten to death for speaking out on behalf of homosexuals in Uganda.

Perhaps most importantly, Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity to not just think about European Jewry and the horrors that would nearly wipe it out 60+ years ago, but the other genocides that have occurred since, especially when the words 'never again' have been uttered numerous times. Those two words ring hollow to the ears of those people in the world who strive to prevent mass murders from happening. They also ring hollow when you look at cases like Bosnia and Rwanda, where the UN was on the ground, charged to keep the peace. And yet, in both instances, systematic mass murder followed, and perhaps, if it wasn't for Bill Clinton and others, it may have happened again in Kosovo in 1999. The threat of genocide is here with us today, as it was 70 years ago.

On the topic of Uganda and the brutal murder, I do not know enough about the country nor am I a close enough follower of issues surrounding the LGBT community to comment on it intelligently. Suffice to say, I support their efforts to solidify the same rights that majority populations enjoy, including marriage. I know from watching Rachel Maddow's show last year that Uganda has a real problem vis-a-vis their LGBT communities and efforts need to be put forth to mitigate the inflammatory rhetoric spouted off by their politicians and others. A couple of articles on HuffPost, here and here, advocate cutting off aid to Uganda in response. Again, not being entirely informed, I hesitate to put forth an opinion; but clearly, if the U.S. is sending aid to Uganda used by organizations that perpetuate hateful rhetoric targeted at the LGBT community, it must re-evaluate what it is doing if not stop entirely. With that said, the U.S. has some work to do in its own backyard vis-a-vis extending equal rights to the LGBT community as well.

As far as I know, Tunisia, Egypt, and Albania have seen citizens taking to the streets protesting their present regimes. If there's anything to learn from this show of citizenry power, it's that the U.S. doesn't have to export democracy by force, nor should it in my view. Give an oppressive leader enough string, and they will eventually hang themselves. These nations, Belarus as well, somehow need to find what Poland found 30 years ago when Lech Walesa put forth what would become the Solidarity Movement. Eventually, democracy has the potential to take root, and with it, a free market economy.

And finally, tomorrow is Friday, January 28, one full year since I was rejected for a Fulbright to Poland. It does not seem like a year, for I remember the circumstances of the day prior, the day of and the weekend I was going into clearly. The email arrived at 5:24 pm. I received it after 7 pm. The next day, I had to be up at 3am to be at work for 4 to deal with changes JetBlue was making to its reservation system. The day prior, one year ago at this writing, I was in Polish class, beginning my second semester. I remember glazing over the first sentence of the email, the thank you for applying nicety, and getting to the second sentence, the one that started with the word "Unfortunately." I knew without reading the remainder what it was going to say. It bothers me to this day.

There are few people in this or any country who can say something and have it reverberate in a way that produces countless articles posted on a slew of websites. Sarah Palin, yet again, has accomplished this feat. This time it's not "death panels," or "refudiate," or "palling around with terrorists." This time, it's uttering the words "blood libel," a phrase that goes way back and is one of the old myths that characterizes the Jewish people in a highly negative light. It goes without saying that there is absolutely zero truth embedded in the phrase, the accusation that Jews take the blood from a young Christian and use it for Passover matzo. Zero truth. It's this phrase that is said to have led to the pogrom in Kielce, Poland in 1946. Poles killed their Jewish neighbors, neighbors who survived the Nazi onslaught.

I believe that Palin borrowed the phrase from the day prior, where the Wall Street Journal had used it in a headline, as did a couple of other right-wing commentators, one of which was apparently Andrew Breightbart (sp?). My guess is, neither Palin nor whoever wrote the speech for her bothered to look the phrase up and simply used it because of how it sounds, and because the combination of blood with libel, they thought, conveyed what it was that they were thinking, which in my view is, that Palin is being falsely accused for what happened in Arizona on Saturday. The problem is, "blood libel" is not a synonym for 'false accusation.' So it doesn't work the way, I think, the Palin people think it works. Furthermore, because I am assuming that Alaska is not home to many Jews, and knowing Palin is not well-traveled nor intellectually curious, my hunch is that neither she nor her handlers are familiar with the myth. So to her knowledge, using it was neither here nor there.

This brings me to the point of this posting. Historically, using words like "holocaust" outside the context of what happened during WWII is largely considered inappropriate. When Alan Grayson used the word in 2009 on the floor of the House to describe the U.S. health care system, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC asked him three times during her interview with him if he felt using that word was appropriate. He finally climbed down from it, although at the time, I didn't have an issue with it, and I don't recall seeing much fervor over it in the press. The word 'holocaust' was in existence long before Hitler. The term was only assigned to the destruction of European Jewry in the '70s, with President Carter leading the way. This information is documented on the U.S. Holocaust Museum's website. My point is, if using the word "holocaust" outside the WWII context is not appropriate given its sensitivities, then we need to look at all words and phrases that should not be used outside of their acceptable contexts, regardless of how much drama they add to the argument.

If nothing else, perhaps Palin's inept use of the term has educated a few people today, given all the attention the media is paying to it. Education, especially when it comes to minority suffering, is always a good thing. It helps to open up dialogue among the few and the many and allows the majority to better understand the minority and where they are coming from. Putting to sleep long-held stereotypes is helpful, and if it happens through accident and happenstance, so be it. My guess is, Palin learned something new today. Unfortunately, I don't think she'll be going away anytime soon.

I've been dreading this day since September 2001, when Band of Brothers first aired on HBO. The mini-series started its run on Sunday 9/9; I remember it simply because the next weekend, they did not air the 3rd episode due to the attacks of the 11th (the first two episodes aired the first night). Oddly, last night I was watching The Pacific, and thought to myself how it's going to be 10 years since Band of Brothers debuted. Where has the time gone?

Richard Winters, the leader of the 101st airborne, played brilliantly in the mini-series by Damian Lewis, passed away on Jan 2. He would have been 93 in a month.

I've named this blog juin61944 in honor of what men like Richard Winters accomplished all those years ago. It was arguably the most important day of the 20th century. 'The Great Crusade' is taken from Eisenhower's "Order of the Day" given to the men on June 5th, 1944. "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade." What a great line.

I remember taking the Band of Brothers guided tour in Normandy in 2005, surprised to be told by the tour guide that Damian Lewis is British. You'd never know it from his performance in the series, or his performance in the show Life that ran for two seasons on network TV. A great actor, and now, you can't see anyone else playing Dick Winters.

The men of WWII do not think of themselves as heroes. They were doing their jobs, whether they liked it or not. They joined, they went, they fought, those who made it through came home and lived quiet lives, many of them. I remember the advertisements for the series on the Metro-North trains, where the tag line was something similar to "ordinary men in extraordinary times." Indeed they were, and while it is predictable and entirely natural, it's sad to have to see them go.

Curahee

In hitting the career reset button, my hope is to publish and be more active in 'living life out loud'. Great advice from the blogger, and expert traveler, who gives us The Art of Non-Conformity. Currently, there's a great website called e-International Relations, which takes published works from students and faculty studying international affairs. I've submitted the below book review in the hopes that it will be posted. Since it's very much on topic of what interests me and what this little blog is about, I've included it here as well. A very good book, about a very familiar and iconic photograph.

“The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!”

BOOK REVIEWThe Boy: A Holocaust StoryBy Dan PoratIllustrated. 262 pages. MacMillan Publishing

The Boy: A Holocaust Story is a well-researched narrative that focuses specifically on one of the most familiar and iconic photographs from the Holocaust. Indeed, throughout modern history, photographs taken within the context of conflict have often captured the essence of “a picture is worth a thousand words.” They become etched in our psyche, recalled at a moment’s notice. Several of them can be recited from memory: the Marines at Iwo Jima; Vietnam’s Kim Phuc Phan Thi; the standoff at Tiananmen Square; the boy and the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto.

Written by Dan Porat, an associate professor of education at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, The Boy is not a memoir, nor is it to be considered a work of academic history. The book reads as a fast-paced suspense story, weaving together the historical backgrounds of the three Nazis who each played a role in the picture we see today: Jürgen Stroop, an ambitious SS Brigadeführer, assigned by Himmler to liquidate the ghetto; Franz Konrad, the man who took the picture and adjutant to Stroop; and Josef Blösche, the soldier standing behind the boy, looking directly at the camera.

Mr. Porat skillfully alternates between each of the three men beginning with pre-WWI Germany. He cites sources that provide the reader with insight into the lives of each, lives that can only be described as mediocre at best. Indeed, if the author’s work tells us anything about these men, it’s that they were not the inhumane murderers that they would ultimately become once the war and the genocide of European Jewry commenced. Further to the point, while both Stroop and Konrad would not re-enter civilian life after the war (they were executed in 1952), Blösche did, and quite successfully, marrying and fathering two children. After the Stasi discovered his whereabouts in East Germany, we are provided with letters written by his wife to the prosecutor, where she states “that after 17 years of marriage to my husband, I have now, as before, confidence and trust in him.” Blösche was put to death in 1967, never to read the final letter sent to him by his wife.

As the author changes scenes and parallel paths the lives of the three soldiers, he also integrates the story of Rivkah, a young Jewish woman active in the Łódź Jewish community who survives the war by securing false papers that would enable her to live and work among ‘Aryan’ Warsaw. Through the first half of the book, it is not clear to the reader how Rivkah’s story of survival intersects the picture of the boy, creating both tension and curiosity that, in hindsight, would be missing had it not been included. True, Rivkah’s tale of escape and elusion is not unusual when compared to other books written about the Holocaust. But what makes the Rivkah inclusion effective is how it wraps context around that very moment when the picture was taken.

As for the boy, the information shared is the information that is available from news clippings. What we do learn is how an individual in New York inadvertently arrived at the possibility that he might be the boy in the picture. To his credit, Dr. Tsvi Nussbaum did not emphatically state that he was the boy; he readily admitted doubt, helped along by critics who pointed out that the victims in the picture were wearing heavy clothing, indicating the picture was most likely taken in early Spring, countering Dr. Nussbaum’s assertion that the picture was taken in July. Sadly, we are left with a mystery that cannot be solved with any degree of certainty.

The Boy is a welcome addition to our understanding of what happened seven decades ago, for it differentiates itself by not simply telling stories of Nazi brutality. Dan Porat correctly believes that “to understand a historical event as presented in a photograph, narration is essential.” He achieves this through a careful mix of in-depth research and judicious imagination. To this last point, Mr. Porat’s use of imagination to round out the story “is disciplined.” He does “not speculate in the way a writer of historical fiction might. It is a controlled usage, aided by analytical tools and clearly circumscribed.”

While the author readily admits to his use of imagination, he makes clear that the facts are taken directly from verifiable sources, and in some instances accounts were corroborated with a second set of sources. In other words, deniers, whoever and wherever they may be, will once again be denied.

You really have to admire George Clooney for his work in calling attention to the crisis in Darfur. He just outdid himself with the recent news that, in coordination with several actors including the UN and Harvard, he'll be launching private satellites to watch for any kind of increasing conflict in the Sudan as the referendum approaches between the north and south.

The Satellite Sentinel Project will launch on Dec 30, with the website going live right about now. It's nice to have deep pockets, connections, and a brand name to make things happen! Clooney is spending $750,000 to launch the effort, which will monitor troop movements with the images being uploaded to the satsentinel.org website within 24 hours for all the world to see what may or may not be happening in the lead up to the vote for succession. How's that for revolutionizing genocide prevention?

Clooney makes a great point when he makes note of how one can imagine the impact if this were 1943 and we were able to detect through pictures what was happening at Auschwitz. No one would be able to say they didn't know, and the deniers would be denied after the fact. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? Kudos to George Clooney and his passion for the cause.

CNN is reporting, to no one's surprise, that Alexander Lukashenko has won the election there. President Lukashenko, dubbed "the last dictator of Europe" by Condi Rice, has been in power since 1994. No less than nine candidates ran against him, and when the exit polls returned the result, protests erupted in the streets of Minsk as everyone knows this election is not legit.

This past week, leading up to the election, Foreign Policy magazine ran a story about life in Belarus under the dictatorial regime. The eight or nine mini-bios in the article describe an authoritarianism that to most living in the twenty-first century, seems to more closely Hollywood films than anything that would be deemed modern on the European continent. To think that Belarus is more or less boundaried, certainly to its west, by thriving social democracies who long ago sought to rid themselves of anything not resembling a democratic society, makes the situation in Belarus even more astounding.

Very unfortunate news that Richard Holbrooke passed away today. In my genocide class earlier this year, we learned about the role he played in negotiating a peaceful resolution to the Yugoslav wars. And with the daily news originating out of AfPak, seeing his name is a common occurrence. Someone starting out in international affairs can only home to accomplish a quarter of what this man accomplished in a stellar career where he brought about real change and saved lives.

Read a lot of point of views today on how one should interpret the WL dump. Richard Haas at the CFR suggests the dump "confirms more than it informs." While I haven't gone through the documents in any great depth, the cable regarding Egyptian President Mubarak's pointed comments on Iran made for an interesting read, and as one article I saw earlier in the morning pointed out, he can't be too happy about seeing his words all over the internet given his concern for retaliation. The Saudi's concern over Pakistan's leadership and it's efforts to close off terrorism ("when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body") only shines more light on the difficulties the U.S. is facing re: AfPak, and Israel's take on Iran, while not new, is an intriguing read, especially to those of us who support Israel.

Posted early this evening is an article at Slate.com calling for Secretary Clinton to quit given her role in directing the diplomats spying on diplomats finding. Another article there suggests that the leak will damage transparency going forward. A similar take on government transparency and the fall-out from the leaks was also discussed at HuffPost. The author makes a great point (paraphrasing): whistle-blowing is all about spreading the truth, not to simply hear the sound. In saying this, he argues that WL, in this case, is not engaging in truth-telling the way it did with the last dump re: the two wars, but rather compromising the trust and confidence required between nations to carry out the business of international relations. A pros/cons take can also be found on HuffPost, where the author comments on how well diplomats write, their intelligence, and their humor. But he also stresses the downsides, which are similar to the earlier posts here. And finally, a strong article from foreignpolicy.com argues that Assange is simply anti-american and wants to destroy U.S. foreign policy. But more powerfully, he argues that the dump has not shown the U.S. to be a belligerent party in total as Assange continuously lets on and seemingly wants to expose, but rather places diplomats, friends, and partners in precarious positions and will result in the erosion of the quality of diplomatic reporting and discussion.

Journalists around the world are clamoring to get their hands on today's Wikileaks release, that of a multitude of cables and documents sent from within the U.S. diplomacy infrastructure, et al. A lot is going to be written in the coming days, as much as has already been written by those newspapers that had advanced copies of the released documents. Personally, I am split between feeling that the U.S. government, our government, deserves this, and the feeling of incredible embarrassment - embarrassment over being an American, born to a country whose institutions are so vast and wide that the government cannot protect its own documents, both from within and from without. I am also embarrassed for what these documents say about the country's allies. While much of it can be pegged as high-level gossip, it is a shame that such 'gossip' would ever see the light of day. How do foreign governments view the U.S. now? We should all be embarrassed.

On the other side of the coin, as one journalist from the Guardian puts it, it's not the media's job to protect the powerful from embarrassment. In fact, it's the other way around, it's the media's job to draw attention to government to avoid government overstepping its bounds. Had this occurred in the run-up to the Iraq war, perhaps there wouldn't be an Iraq war. Which brings me to the next point which is perhaps the most important: Much of this, if not all, is the cascading affect from the Bush administration, in my view.

Had the Bush administration taken great care in its response to the Sept 11th attacks rather than using the attacks as justification for war in Iraq, there wouldn't be a need for a Wikileaks. The controversies over Iraq and Afghanistan continue to haunt the U.S. despite Obama's best efforts to reset the discourse. Even he is now on the wrong side of history given his dedication to the mission in Afghanistan at the great expense of badly needed nation-building at home. Perhaps it is entirely appropriate that a government that lied its country - and several of its allies - into war would suffer this kind of humiliation. Let it be a lesson - the same way the September 11th attacks were a lesson - that no matter how mighty your military is, no matter how sound your economy is, no matter how much power you believe you have, hubris, and the misadventures it fosters, rarely wins in the end.

Chilling amateur film from occupied Krakow - unrelated to the 16mm Postcards exhibit. You can clearly see the armbands on the sleeves - especially in the below frame.

Through Ruth Ellen Gruber's excellent and informative blog, I discovered this amazing exhibit taking place right under my nose in NYC at the Center for Jewish History. 16MM Postcards brings to life 1930's Poland, in not just the still pictures we are so used to seeing, but in home movies shot by those who were there. Sadly, there is no sound. Imagine how much more we could have learned about these people and their circumstances at the time had the ability to record a home movie in sound existed back then.

The exhibit shows Polish Jews who came to the U.S. returning to visit their relatives still living in Poland. The website text points out a significant development: those who left Poland and have lived in America for some time have a very different look about them. They look 'American' when placed next to their poorer still-living-in-Poland relatives. How they dress, how they carry themselves is familiar to us here in 2010. The move to America and the assimilation to follow has had its impact on them and how they present themselves to the world. It's a fascinating look at how life in America can change a person.

What's also so powerful about these movies is that those still living in Poland would have no idea what's approaching on the horizon. These people would all be gone in another 10 years or so from when these movies were filmed.

Two very interesting reports came out of Germany over the last week or two. The first of which is the new exhibit at the German Historical Museum in Berlin about Hitler. The report has been in numerous places, this link being from Time.com, while someone else gave me an article from the New York Times, and I think I first read about it on msnbc.com. The exhibit, which is only running until February, much to my chagrin because there is no possible way for me to go over by then, examines the conditions that enabled Hitler, rather than Hitler himself. As noted in the Time article, the exhibit looks at the German people and their desire for a savior to rescue them from the desperate economic conditions and the politically unstable environment that was the Weimar Republic at the time.These forces combined to convince people that Hitler was the right leader for the country and the only person who could pull them out of their doldrums.

The second interesting finding reported on was how the German Foreign Ministry, once thought to be resistant to the Nazi regime, was indeed working in collaboration with the regime. The article discusses how the Foreign Ministry was never fully investigated until 2005, when the process was put in place to look into what roll the institution played in the Holocaust. The findings show cooperation with the Nazi genocide throughout, with evidence that some 573 of the ministry's 700 top officials had ties to the Nazi party. The article closes out by stating that Germany may make the final report, over 800 pages, required reading by all incoming German diplomats. One has to wonder what other secrets have not yet been discovered throughout Germany's government institutions as relates to the Holocaust and the plans to overtake all of Europe 6+ decades ago.

I stumbled upon the below video that's about 3 weeks old on GlobalPost.com. The reporter gets into the Roma 'deportations' from France and covers much of the same ground the articles written by other reporters have covered. The difference here is the coverage straight from Roma living quarters, where one can see the absolute squalor that these people face everyday.

A representative from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recently took a trip to Sudan to look into South Sudan and its January 2011 referendum for independence from the north. As noted in the caption under the first photo, the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the two decade long civil war between the north and south stipulates that the vote on independence be held. The pictures here were taken in the last month or so.

All eyes will be on Sudan in early January to see how the vote turns out and most importantly, to see to what extent violence will break out leading up to and following the referendum.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently published their findings from the work they've been doing in the DRC. After the discovery of mass graves found in 2005, a formal effort was put forth to determine to what extent atrocities were committed. In this case, the study covers 1993-2003, with their findings found here.

The Office also published recommendations to the Congolese government to pursue several mechanisms that make up the transitional justice framework, an exciting field that empowers societies to find peace and reconciliation in relation to a legacy of abuses and human rights violations. The recommendations can be read in this document and suggests that the DRC pursue prosecutions, truth-telling, reparations for victims and institutional reforms.

The Office also reported on neighboring countries and estimates that some eight national armies and twenty-one irregular armed groups took part in conflict during the 10 year period of study. Much of this was triggered by the influx of 1.2 million Hutu refugees from Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. Widespread attacks against Hutu occurred, with what looks like genocidal intent. The report goes on to say that countries such as Rwanda should be held responsible for human rights violations committed by their army.

Each country named has provided a written rebuttal, with Rwanda stating that the findings are "unacceptable", and claiming that the Office is "rewriting history". It's a 30 page document and worth a read. It was also read elsewhere on the internet that Kagame threatened to pull Rwandan troops out of Sudan if the report was released. I cannot find that source through googling, but its clear from the rebuttal that Kagame's government is not ready to assume any responsibility for what happened in the DRC in the mid 1990s.

The month of September brought with it a series of disturbing articles coming out of France. President Sarkozy, playing to the extreme right, has taken on the task to deport Roma, in the past known as "Gypsies", back to Romania. This article from earlier in the week on Huffington Post, compares Sarkozy's actions to Vichy France, where during WWII, the Vichy government deported gypsies and Jews to the death camps as they partook in the Nazi ideology. Even more current, is this article about how the EU is taking France to court over the expulsions, although they stop short of saying France is discriminating against Roma for "lack of proof."

An EU Justice Commissioner likened the expulsions to war-time deportations, which Sarkozy called a "disgusting" assertion. The Justice would later apologize for her hyperbolic remarks, but clearly, the analogy isn't too far off.

I wrote a paper about human security for a class, targeting Europe's Roma community given their plight. Human security is a fairly new concept in international affairs, anchored in the thought that "everyone should enjoy freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom to live in dignity." Using this proclamation as a framework, it's clear that the Romani people do not enjoy human security. Far from it.

Expulsions are nothing new to Roma; Italy has done similar, forcefully evicting them and tearing down what little means of housing they have to live under. The leading NGO in Europe that deals with the issue of discrimination against Roma is the ERRC, the European Roma Rights Centre, which is following the situation in France closely, and monitors all instances of inhuman treatment perpetrated by the people and the government's of Europe.

Currently, Europe is in the 5th year of it's Decade of Inclusion campaign, an effort to integrate Roma into society among the majority population. From my research done last fall on this, I learned through the Open Society Institute that the campaign has not gone well. First there's the issue of Roma not wishing to integrate, for obvious reasons, and then you have the issue of the majority population not wanting Roma to be integrated, for discriminatory reasons. So you have a stalemate, and a situation that is not improving.

During my research I also found an example where for Slovakia, if it were to put it's Roma population to work in meaningful employment, the country would see its GDP increase several percentage points. It's a stunning case study that underscores the cost of discrimination. With that said, once the change to a free market system went into place in 1990 across the former Soviet republics, the Romani people had a difficult time keeping what little employment they had under the Soviet system, which was made up of rudimentary work requiring rudimentary skills. A free market economy requires more in the way of skills and education, something Roma lack very badly. As a result, unemployment among Roma all over Europe is rampant, requiring them to find other ways to get food, clothes and other necessary items needed to live. This then perpetuates the trope that Roma are nothing but thieves, something that Sarkozy has eluded too in his comments to justify the expulsions.

Plainly put, the Romani people need what the Jewish people finally received in 1948 - a homeland they can call their own. Their roots are in India, but the difference between Roma finding a home and the Jews finding a home post-WWII boils down to the U.S. Had the U.S. and Truman not pushed for a Jewish state, there might not be an Israel today. So the question becomes, who with a sizable influence, with support from the U.N., can find some way to create for the Romani people, their own homeland, whether it be in India or elsewhere?

Otherwise, how does the cycle of discrimination end?

The HuffingtonPost is my default website when I open a browser. It's a great news aggregator with a left-leaning agenda, so it agrees with me and vice-versa.

I am somewhat shocked to read this article, an interview in The Atlantic with Castro where he calls out Iran and speaks softly about the Jewish people. He actually says that Iran should be more understanding of the Jewish people given their long history of persecution. That feels like a big statement to me, something that other world leaders should probably be saying as well.

Seems like old age has had an impact on Castro. He now views the Cuban Missile Crisis through a completely different lens. He's quoted as saying he no longer thinks it was worth it.

So, can we finally normalize US-Cuban relations?

I think it was Saturday afternoon when I decided to turn to the peacecorps.gov website, for no real reason. I was bored and thinking of sites to visit. Scrolling down, I stopped suddenly at the press release about Tom Maresco and what was an apparent killing during a robbery attempt.

I went to cnn.com and to msnbc.com, two of the news sites I visit regularly and neither had anything about it. It was Sunday morning when cnn.com had a spot in the top left and then on Monday, a video interview with Tom Maresco's father from Florida.

These sorts of things shouldn't be happening to volunteers. But what can anyone do?

In my genocide class last semester, we learned about the debate between scholars that questioned whether or nor the Holocaust should be viewed as a single, unique event, held out separately from discussions surrounding genocide in general, versus having one single term, i.e., genocide, to encompass all genocides, including the Holocaust.

This article on Jerusalem Post, written by the world's number one Nazi hunter, underscores the scholarly opinion that the Holocaust be considered a unique memory, not to be intertwined with other atrocities committed against the European people, specifically by the Soviets.

The Prague Declaration would recognize those crimes committed by the Soviets as holding the same status as those committed by the Nazis. The article states that the "Prague Declaration...promotes a historically false parity or equivalency between crimes by communists and those of the Nazis..."

Taking it a step further, scholar Yehuda Bauer is quoted in the article as saying: "There is ground for deep concern about repeated attempts to equate the Nazi regime's genocidal policies, with the Holocaust at their center, with other murderous or oppressive actions, an equation that not only trivializes and relativizes the genocide of the Jews... but is a mendacious revision of recent world history.”

And finally this quote by Zuroff sums it up well: "By seeking equivalency with Holocaust crimes, however, it becomes clear that among its primary motivations is to help the countries of Eastern Europe deny, relativize and/or minimize their sins of collaboration with the Nazis in Holocaust crimes and change their status and image from that of perpetrator nations to nations of victims."

The difficulty, in my view, of considering the Holocaust as a unique and separate event from other genocides is the propensity for each group that has fallen prey to genocide to move quickly and submit their own claims of victimhood. Whether it be the Tutsis of Rwanda, the Armenians, the Bosnian Muslims, or those who suffered under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or others such as Native Americans.

If the Holocaust were to stand on its own, it's not too difficult to see why. There are even institutions named as such where the words 'Holocaust' and 'Genocide' are both in the title. Take for example Clark University. One can argue that the Holocaust is held as a singular event for not just the number of people murdered, but for the means by which they were murdered and the structures and organizations that were put in place that enabled those committing the murder to carry out their tasks. The Holocaust is, one can argue without disrespecting the victims of other genocides, unsurpassed, both prior to WWII and since in its scale and technology.

Its a worthwhile debate and one which E. Zuroff essentially alludes to in the JPost article.

I've learned through mistakes and disappointments that you can never believe the hype about something. For every good story, there is a bad one. For every person who had a good experience, there is someone who has had a bad experience.

Over the past two days, I've come across such disturbing news about the Peace Corps, it's taken the wind out of my sails. The first instance of bad news was this blog written by a volunteer in Guatemala. Tarantulas on the walls, up to 16 people in the homestay house, Spanish language training in a community that speaks only a Mayan dialect. The list goes on. After 7 months, this person decided to cut the cord and is back in the U.S., and in the process, exposed some very serious issues that I find very concerning.

Death Due to Illness in Morocco

One of the comments posted to the above volunteer's blog has to do with the death of a volunteer this past November in Morocco, a death due to illness. This is the report, and it is disturbing. In his book The Insider's Guide to the Peace Corps, the author cites RPCV's and their lackluster opinions of PC medical services in-country. The death of this 23 year old woman in Morocco speaks volumes to this point.

Foreign Policy Magazine - 2008

The former Country Director of Cameroon writes this article. It's easy to speculate why a former employee of the agency would speak up like this - maybe he was fired, or maybe his conscience got to him. Either way, it's pretty close to whistleblower status.

Violence Against Volunteers

Think there's little risk to joining the PC? Think again. Here's an article, written in what seems like the early '00's, there's no date on it, that states the dangers that volunteers face while serving. Some 21 or so volunteers have been murdered while in-service, and other deaths have occurred through accidents. But putting deaths aside, this article makes very clear that volunteers are not as safe as the PC would make you believe. To the PC's credit, they do make this information available, or someone does, on peacecorpswiki.org. So perhaps I am overblowing this finding.

Lack of Transparency

Secrecy is the PC's MO apparently. This posting makes transparent the medical guidelines PC uses to defer or reject applicants. The kicker is, these had to be attained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The author, a RPCV applying for reenlistment 40 years or so after his initial service, offered the PC to post these guidelines, but they refused. Everything needs to be a secret. What's alarming is that the PC could be using outdated guidelines. The guidelines posted here are from 1993. That, and their absolute refusal to post this information for all eyes to see, says something.

Always do your homework. After reading this information, I have started looking into other options. Because you can never believe the hype. If I learn about the bad things, and I feel I can handle the bad things because perhaps they aren't all that bad, then I'm comfortable. But these articles reveal some real issues. And it's very sad. Is this an agency that really treats its volunteers as numbers, not as people? Something to really think about. I think my decision to move forward will depend largely on the nomination. Knowing full well that the nomination could change down the road.

In reality, no situation will be perfect. There will always be something behind the curtain, a devil always in the proverbial details. But the question becomes, how severe are those devils and how numerous are they?

The Great Crusade isn't just about gaining acceptance into the Peace Corps. It's the totality of what makes up the effort to make a career change, one from the doldrums of business to one where the topics discussed are so thought-provoking and inspirational, it depresses me to think just how much longer I have before 'change' can occur.

Today I attended an event at the Kosciuszko Foundation on the Upper East Side about Jan Karski, given that 2010 is the anniversary of his passing. Announced during the panel was a four year commemoration project currently in the works which will honor the heroics of this man during the war. The four year span covers the 10th anniversary of his death whereas 2014 covers the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Under the auspices of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the program will entail cooperation between the museum, corporate partners, VIPs such as Bill Clinton, who was a student of Karski's at Georgetown University, and most importantly, an educational component. The latter piece is perhaps the most critical given the dearth of common knowledge out there about who Karski was and what he attempted to accomplish, both among the American public and among the Polish people.

One of the panelists and author of this book, Laurel Leff, discussed at length America's lackluster response to the Holocaust as it was unfolding, both at the government level as well as in the media. Leff's book investigates how the NY Times consistently buried the story of the Holocaust well within the paper, like on page 36 for instance, rather than giving it the coverage it needed to drive outrage and action.

During the Q&A session, I asked if the program would include a formal volunteer program and was told that while the program is still in its infancy, volunteers would be welcome. Helping to get the word out about Karski and what he stood for, in a world where mass atrocities against minorities are more common than not, is a worthwhile venture.

I was also shocked to hear that in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, one of the largest Polish neighborhoods in the country, there remains a healthy level of anti-Semitism among the Poles living there. This was only one person saying this, so I'll take it with some grain of salt, but suffice it to say, it would be absolutely unforgivable for Poles to come to a city with a large Jewish population and continue to carry with them whatever it is that they think is wrong with the Jewish people. But like I said, it's one person, and it's not like there's anything in the news that suggests tension between Poles and Jews living together in Brooklyn.