Darwin observed that conscience is what most distinguishes humans from other animals. If so, grief isn’t far behind. Realms of anguish are deeply personal -- yet prone to expropriation for public use, especially in this era of media hyper-spin. Narratives often thresh personal sorrow into political hay. More than ever, with grief marketed as a civic commodity, the personal is the politicized.

The politicizing of grief exploded in the wake of 9/11. When so much pain, rage and fear set the U.S. cauldron to boil, national leaders promised their alchemy would bring unalloyed security. The fool’s gold standard included degrading civil liberties and pursuing a global war effort that promised to be ceaseless. From the political outset, some of the dead and bereaved were vastly important, others insignificant. Such routine assumptions have remained implicit and intact.

The “war on terror” was built on two tiers of grief. Momentous and meaningless. Ours and theirs. The domestic politics of grief settled in for a very long haul, while perpetual war required the leaders of both major parties to keep affirming and reinforcing the two tiers of grief.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance.

"It is like the K.K.K. (Klu Klux Klan) in America during the period of the civil rights movement," said Myo Win, a Muslim activist based in Yangon, Myanmar, comparing recent deadly attacks by Buddhists in his Southeast Asian country with white U.S. mobs lynching blacks during the 1960s.

"We are really afraid," Myo Win said on May 9 addressing a Bangkok conference titled, "Violence in the Name of Buddhism."

In Myanmar, also known as Burma, the powerful military and its civilian government representatives refuse to accept 800,000 minority Muslims as citizens.

Myanmar insists they are illegal ethnic Bengali immigrants from impoverished Muslim-majority Bangladesh, who describe themselves as indigenous ethnic Rohingya in western Rakhine state.

"There is some kind of internally racist, Orientalist," propaganda voiced against "darker-skinned" Muslims by politicians and other

Maybe the problem is that rape is an extension of military culture. And it’s metastasizing, even as legislation to address it stays trapped in congressional subcommittee.

Scandals and outrage come and go, but rape is ever-present. In 2011, a Pentagon report estimated that 19,000 sexual assaults had occurred in the U.S. military, of which barely 3,000 were reported because of the stigma and risk involved in doing so. The “I own you” system of military justice traditionally turns on the victim far more than the accused. That year, in response to the shocking statistics, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would, among other things, remove the investigation of rape cases from the military chain of command, which has far more interest in ignoring the problem than prosecuting it.

Now a new Pentagon report is out, estimating that 26,000 cases of sexual assault occurred in the U.S. military in 2012, with, once again, just over 3,000 incidents reported. And Speier’s legislation has been sitting the whole time in the House Armed Services Committee, denied even a hearing.

Kabul--Since 2009, Voices for Creative Nonviolence has maintained a grim record we call the “The Afghan Atrocities Update” which gives the dates, locations, numbers and names of Afghan civilians killed by NATO forces. Even with details culled from news reports, these data can't help but merge into one large statistic, something about terrible pain that's worth caring about but that is happening very far away.

It’s one thing to chronicle sparse details about these U.S. led NATO attacks. It’s quite another to sit across from Afghan men as they try, having broken down in tears, to regain sufficient composure to finish telling us their stories. Last night, at a restaurant in Kabul, I and two friends from the Afghan Peace Volunteers met with five Pashtun men from Afghanistan’s northern and eastern provinces. The men had agreed to tell us about their experiences living in areas affected by regular drone attacks, aerial bombings and night raids. Each of them noted that they also fear Taliban threats and attacks. “What can we do,” they asked, “when both sides are targeting us?”

THE FIRST RESPONDER’S TALE

I don't like corporate monopolies but I needed to pay the rent, so I got a job at Time Warner Cable in the fall of 2012. My job title was Technical Support Representative. To a lesser degree, I was happy to be working for the company that produces Real Time with Bill Maher. Insight Cable Company was recently bought up by Time Warner Cable. The transition from Insight Cable to TIme Warner was happening gradually as I started working there. One thing myself, and many other employees, were concerned about was the number of people getting fired. It seemed like one employee would lose his or her job every two weeks. A co-worker approached me and told me she was interested in starting a union. She and I began talking to workers to see if they were interested in forming a union and we got a good response.