Breaching boundaries -

A shrinking earth - As national borders become more and more permeable, the earth seems to be shrinking. There is good news and bad news in that. The bad news is that all this global change seems to be happening at an alarming rate. The good news is that countries about which we worry are able to change as they get new and better information. National borders are permeable to news. China's tightly censored information ministry is quite cognizant of climate change, for example. The latest news on energy saving measures that work has been able to get through the Chinese government. Making rapid adjustments produced this headline: "Air-con limits for China workers," from the BBC News (of 6/27/07). To quote from the story,

The government has decreed that they cannot use air conditioning to take the temperature below 26C (78.8F), the official Xinhua news agency reports.

Until recently, the Chinese solution to providing energy in buildings was simply to build more power stations.

Now they are building two a week and still cannot satisfy demand, so they are focusing on saving energy, too.

Borders penetrated - National borders do not always provide needed protections. Those of us who eat more fish as a way to good health have been forced to take a second look at our foreign food sources, namely China. There are times when border protections need to be enhanced. An article in the International Herald Tribune of 6/28/07, was headlined, "Farmed fish from China subject to scrutiny in U.S." To quote from it,

Imports of five species of farmed Chinese seafood will be detained until they can be shown free of potentially dangerous antibiotics, U.S. government health officials said Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration said it would detain the catfish, basa, shrimp, dace and eel after repeated testing has turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.

. . . Beyond the fish, federal regulators have warned consumers in recent weeks about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China.

Ideas sneak through borders - National borders have become more permeable to different political philosophies and ideas. China's government can no longer trust its great wall to maintain Communism in the face of migrating free-thinking philosophies from the decadent West. On 6/26/07, this headline intrigued LA Times readers: "Marx loses currency in new China." It leads a fascinating story by Michael Landsberg. Quoting just a bit from the article,

Teaching socialism is mandatory, but learning it is monotonous for today's students, who revere money more than Mao.

. . . Still, it isn't easy to find students who will expressly renounce Marxism.

It may be because they know that to succeed in China, it helps immensely to be a member of the ruling Communist Party. It may be because Marxism and Maoist philosophy are so deeply woven into the fabric of Chinese life that students take them for granted, the way some American students accept a constitutional democracy without thinking too deeply about the alternatives. It may be because they truly believe in Marxism, and see the current period as a necessary stage on the path to true communism.

Climate ignores man-made borders - No arbitrary national borders can ever protect the earth's environment. We are all in this "tiny lifeboat" together, according to Garret Hardin. One of the most fascinating sections of Landsberg's Los Angeles Times story is about teaching Chinese Junior High students about the earth's environment. Note that the curriculum, amazingly, was developed in part by British oil company, BP. To quote further from the above article,

. . . At the school, students are participating in a pilot program to learn the fundamentals of environmentalism, as part of a "values" class that used to contain a strong dose of Marxist ideology.

Tian Qing, a professor of environmental education at Beijing Normal University, said this was one of 30 schools in Beijing, and a larger number scattered around the country, using an environmental curriculum developed in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund and the British oil giant BP.

. . . Talking over tea at the Education Ministry's modern offices in central Beijing, education official Zhou laughed a bit about today's students.

"They don't believe in God or communism," he said. "They're practical. They only worship the money."

Border gates open - Even North Korea's inpenetrable borders can be breached. Halfway around the world, this so-called "enemy" country is showing a surprising capacity for change. In an amazing turnabout in recent months, this mistrustful nation has admitted nuclear inspectors from the IAEA. Today's headline, "IAEA team completes N Korea nuclear tour," is from London's Financial Times.

The inspectors’ visit will bolster hopes that Pyongyang will make good on its pledge to shut down the 5 megawatt reactor and reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, the source of the plutonium used for last year’s nuclear test.

Price at the border, fuel oil - It took the United States far too long to decide to talk to remote and faraway North Korea. But finally the world dragged us along towards a practical deal. The forces of diplomacy overtook the reactionary, rigid neocon forces that held sway over our current president's mistrustful view. Now we are in "trust and verify" mode. And this is the resulting headline, "North Korea to shut plutonium reactor in 3 weeks" from CNN.com. Quoting the story,

Story Highlights

• Agreement reached after surprise visit by U.S. envoy
• Reactor was to have been closed in April, but separate dispute stalled plan
• $25 million of frozen North Korean money has now been freed

. . . Christopher Hill -- the chief U.S. negotiator at international talks on North Korea's nuclear programs -- said they were looking at a three-week time frame for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor, when asked by reporters on his arrival at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

. . . North Korea is to ultimately get aid worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil and other political concessions when it disables the reactor.

Boundaries will constantly change - Because all this global change seems to be happening at such an alarming rate, I will be revisiting this subject once a week via the "Other Nations-Sat" label of the S/SW blog.

References:

1. Climate Change - BBC News


2. Environment - Reuters


3. ScientificAmerican.com


4. News from American Association for the Advancement of Science


5. Sierra Club - E.D. Carl Pope's blog "Taking the Initiative"

Technorati tags: current-events health and wellness news science climate changeforeign affairs

Good Faith "fractured"

Legislative immigration reform and legal school desegregation lost ground yesterday. And it is in part because leaders failed to act in good faith. Fridays at this blog are usually about the Bush administration. But today it would be a contradiction in terms to write a post about our current president (OCP) and "good faith." Despite his support for the immigration bill, I do not believe Mr. Bush deeply understands the idea. His two Supreme Court appointments reflect a series of conservative decisions that signal a reversion to previous times when minorities suffered hurtful discrimination.

What do the words "good faith" mean? Answers.com defines it as a noun [Used in banking, real estate, law]:

Compliance with standards of decency and honesty: bargained in good faith.

Wikipedia wants its editors to "assume good faith." They say,

Assuming good faith is about intentions, not actions. Well-meaning people make mistakes, and you should correct them when they do. You should not act like their mistake was deliberate.

"Good faith" as it applies to politics is a concept that has long fascinated me. "Acting in good faith - thoughts on advocacy" - 5/30/07 - was my most recent post on the subject. The phrase "in good faith" is one I used a total of 28 times in S/SW posts (17 in 2005, 8 in 2006, and only 3 in 2007). Why is my interest in good faith dropping? Is it because of too much news like yesterday's headlines? Is "good faith" no longer pertinent or needed? Is it now a "given?" Or is there less good faith out there about which to write? Am I becoming cynical, discouraged?

Yesterday's SCOTUS news reinforced my discouragement. The nation is inevitably going back to a worse time, an almost Orwellian time. The Supreme Court decision on school desegregation "fractured a landmark," according to the Los Angeles Times. To quote (emphasis mine),

SAVING THE WORST for last, the Supreme Court ended its 2006-07 term Thursday by rebuking two school districts that had made good-faith efforts to realize the vision of the court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education — an America in which children of different races share the same classroom.

To add insult to injury, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s opinion — two sections of which had the support of only three other justices — invoked the Brown case in holding that officials in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle violated the Constitution by trying to achieve a modicum of racial balance in their schools. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens rightly described Roberts' reliance on Brown as "a cruel irony."

Thursday's decision could have been worse. By refusing to sign the most objectionable sections of Roberts' opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy prevented a majority of the court from endorsing the simplistic notion that using race to bring children together is just as unconstitutional as using race to keep them apart. Kennedy also made it clear that schools could promote racial integration indirectly, such as by deciding where to locate new schools.

Immigration bill defeated - I believe that part of what was behind the immigration reform bill's defeat is also thinly disguised racism. We can almost read it behind the conservative's words. Quoting from the New York Times story, for instance,

. . . The vote followed an outpouring of criticism from conservatives and others who decried it as a form of amnesty for lawbreakers.

. . . Opponents of the bill were elated. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said: “The American people won today. They care enough for their country to get mad and to fight for it. Americans made phone calls and sent letters, and convinced the Senate to stop this bill.”

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, a leading opponent of the bill, said that talk radio was “a big factor” in derailing the immigration bill.

. . . But Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chief Democratic architect of the bill, said that many senators had “voted their fears, not their hopes.”

Good faith appeals to the best in us, not the worst. Politicians should also listen to their constituents who look for the best in citizen capacity towards cooperation and tolerance. They should validate progress and work for improvements in the lives of those they represent. Yesterday was a big setback in the Good Faith corner of the world.

Links -

• Dogpile search on "in good faith"


• Sartre originates concept of "bad faith."


• "Bad faith" title link (above) - Answers.com
  

  The fraudulent deception of another person; the intentional or malicious refusal to perform some duty or contractual obligation.

• What does a politician of good faith look like? Slate Magazine's "The Real meaning of Obama's speech" is an example. To quote,
  
  

  In Good Faith -The real meaning of Barack Obama's speech on religion and politics. By Amy Sullivan. Posted Monday, July 3, 2006, at 5:02 PM ET

Technorait tags: bush current-events culture news news and politics politics

Congress and the war in the Middle East

(stories from Newsgator Online- see title link above)
What is Congress doing right now about the war in Iraq and related issues? Analysts see a growing number of Republicans beginning to listen to their own constituents' negative opinions. Republican legislators are no longer unquestioning of their President. In particular Senator Richard Lugar's change of heart seems to have caught the attention of lots of Congress watchers. CNN Politics has a a good analysis of what this might mean, headlined: "Senators' dissent over Iraq might trigger a different surge" (6/27/07) -

Story Highlights:
• Two notable Republican senators ask President Bush to change course on Iraq
• Analysts say prominent senators' opinions could sway others
• CNN/Opinion Research poll shows GOP support for war at all-time low
• Observers say to expect more defections as Iraq report, elections near
. . . Two respected senior GOP senators this week publicly asked the president to look for a way out of Iraq. One of them -- Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana -- is the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

. . . Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, is jumping straight to what he calls Plan "E" for "Exit."

. . . The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, are to issue a report in September on what impact Bush's surge of troops into the war is having. Analysts say that report will be pivotal on both the country's and Congress' outlook on the war.

. . . This week, Republican congressmen Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Frank Wolf of Virginia are calling to reconvene the ISG to review Iraq policy and offer new recommendations.

Congressional oversight is also in play this week. Democrats and perhaps many Repuublicans voting in the 2006 elections decried the failure of their Congress to conduct any oversight of the White House during and after the war in Iraq was started. Congress has been very busy holding hearings on a wide range of issues since the start of the year. And, fortunately, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings are looking in a bipartisan way at the one of the most vital issues facing the nation - that of illegal spying on American citizens. The Financial Times (6/28/07) reports that,

The probe is part of a growing range of congressional investigations against the Bush administration since the Democrats seized control of Capitol Hill in January, creating the impression of a White House under siege.

While Democrats are leading the push for information about the domestic surveillance programme, the three most senior Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee also voted in favour of issuing the subpoenas.

. . . The bipartisan nature of the investigation reflects unease in both parties about the Bush administration’s aggressive use of executive power and its heavy influence over the Justice Department.

Further subpoena info - Senator Leahy has been very focused on the issues surrounding domestic surveillance since news of the program's existence emerged last winter. (See my previous South by Southwest post [11/26/06] on the subject, "Spooks, spies - eyes and ears in the skies.") This very tough and effective Committee Chair's current efforts focus on the role of office of the Vice President and of the Justice Department. "Senate subpoenas WHouse documents in spying probe," Reuters reports (6/27/07). To quote,

A Senate chairman heading an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic spying program subpoenaed documents on Wednesday from the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the National Security Council and Justice Department.

Setting up a possible courtroom showdown, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy gave the administration until July 18 to turn over specified materials that the White House last week declared off limits and highly classified.

. . . Leahy's panel, on a bipartisan vote of 13-3, authorized the subpoenas last week in another attempt to determine the administration's legal justification for warrantless surveillance begun shortly after the September 11 attacks.

. . . Bush and Democrats are at odds over revisions he wants in the FISA law, and some lawmakers question if the administration has actually ceased warrantless surveillance.

Untruthful testimony? The White House has come under a great deal of fire from this Congress because of failures of the United States Department of Justice. There has been more smoke than fire, in my opinion, in the U.S. Attorney scandal. I believe that Congress wasted a great deal of effort with those hearings, though there is still potenial for further investigation into the Attorney General's lack of truthfulness in his committee testimony. In a current vein, Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard Durbin are "seeking a probe of a Bush judge," according to a (6/27/07) Reuters story.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on Wednesday sought a federal investigation into whether a White House lawyer turned appeals court judge testified truthfully to Congress about the Bush administration's detention policies for enemy combatants.

. . . On Tuesday, Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin asked Kavanaugh to explain apparent discrepancies between his testimony and reports that he participated in a 2002 White House meeting about the detainee policies.

We look to the September deadline - Congress is not on hold until General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker make their reports to the nation on the progress of the Iraq war in September. The Senate is right now attempting for the second time to pass immigration reform legislation, a very tough challenge. The next big effort to change the direction of the war will come up with pending legislative authorizations for war spending. The Washington Post had the story (on May 25) detailing plans for next steps. It seems that Congress will be facing the best chance for making an impact by cutting off funding for the war. To quote from the story,

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, announced that he will remove Iraq war funding from the 2008 Pentagon spending bill that is expected to reach the House floor in July. Instead, Murtha said he will bring up a separate Iraq funding bill in September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to deliver a key status report to Congress.

References:

1. Senator Luger's floor speech - transcript
2. Democrats.Senate.gov/- "Democratic Accomplishments in Face of Obstructionism"
3. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont - official web site
4. Senate Judiciary Committee - Subpoenaes - C-SPAN
5. USA.gov/ - Federal Legislative Branch

Cross-posted at The Reaction
Technorati tags: bush current-events war news news and politics politics congress democrats

The Generals, the Angler, and the Diplomat

Inspecting secrets - Most governmental agencies have Inspector Generals, whose job it is to do internal investigations of those same agencies. How well they do fulfill this responsibility depends, in some cases, on how they feel about the agency's right to keep bad things secret from the public. In other words the IG must have a sense of duty to his nation, rather than first loyalty to the head of the agency. My S/SW blog post of June 11 asks, "Does the Inspector General system work?" It got a lot of attention from readers, almost double the average number of daily site visits. Government agencies seemed particularly interested, and they are still making occasional visits to that post, as I noted last Friday. Obviously these people want to know what the public might know about their secrets. I do not claim to be a journalist, let alone an investigator. I leave that to others, whose work I highlight today. First a question.
Q & A - The question - What does the investigative reporting of Seymour Hersh, the Washington Post investigative series on Vice President Cheney and the new book "Statecraft," by Ambassador Dennis Ross have in common?

My answer - When certain secrets come out the country benefits:

Secrets in the past - It was important to learn, for example, what the consequences were to someone in the military chain of command who exposed the Abu Garaib prison scandal. The past of Abu Garaib still haunts us. The secret story has been a Seymour Hersh trademark and his invaluable gift to the nation. Please take the time to read this chilling Abu Garaib expose. His latest is in The New Yorker's "The General's Report" by Seymour M. Hersh June 25, 2007. To quote just a bit of it,

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

[quote] "Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse."

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

Secrecy in the present - It has important since this administration came to power to finally learn how Vice President Cheney has been operating - as the Secretive Veep. The Washington Post's new series this week is dynamite stuff, so much so that quite a bit of it has been quoted in the mainstream media. It was, thus, a familiar story to me. The series is called "Angler - The Cheney Vice Presidency" (6/24/07). To summarize the Post's excellent work,

Dick Cheney is the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president. This series examines Cheney's largely hidden and little-understood role in crafting policies for the War on Terror, the economy and the environment.

. . . Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before. This article begins a four-part series that explores his methods and impact, drawing on interviews with more than 200 men and women who worked for, with or in opposition to Cheney's office. Many of those interviewed recounted events that have not been made public until now, sharing notes,e-mails, personal calendars and other records of their interaction with Cheney and his senior staff. The vice president declined to be interviewed.

Two articles, today and tomorrow, recount Cheney's campaign to magnify presidential war-making authority, arguably his most important legacy. Articles to follow will describe a span of influence that extends far beyond his well-known interests in energy and national defense.

Secrecy in the future? In the future it will be important to rebuild the competence and stature of the executive branch of government. It is no secret that the 2000 and 2004 elections have been disastrous for U.S. foreign policy. After election next year, the new president will need the best help available to build an effective and competent diplomatic corps to clean up the inherited foreign policy mess left by this administration. Dennis Ross makes no secret of his goal for his new book, "Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World" He wants the next chief executive to have the benefit of his years and years of experience and insight into the art of effective diplomacy. Ross, in my opinion is one of the best. I highly recommend reading his book, or at least listen to him on C-SPAN or a short CBS Video. Remembering my bias in favor of Dennis Ross' wisdom, but in a spirit of fairness, I offer this link to a lengthy critique of Ross' work from Boston Professor Richard Landes.
To quote Booksite.com on "Statecraft,"

How did it come to pass that, not so long after 9/11 brought the free world to our side, U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles? In this thought-provoking book, the renowned peace negotiator Dennis Ross argues that the Bush administration’ s problems stem from its inability to use the tools of statecraft— diplomatic, economic, and military— to advance our interests.

Also in the future - On 6/20/07 - Carl Hulse at the New York Times wrote a piece on a Congressional request for GAO investigation of" law breaking following signing statements." Still fierce elder statesmen Senator Robert Byrd and Representative John Conyers are the ones pushing for this investigation.


Technorati tags: bush current affairs news news and politics politics cheney foreign relations

Right track-wrong track

U.K. on a new track - While listening on C-SPAN just now to new British PM, Gordon Brown, I was struck by one the phrases in his acceptance speech. He talked about "ending the poverty of aspirations" for people in the United Kingdom. (He had used that quote from Aneurin Bevin previously in a 2005 speech, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer). His words brought a sigh to my heart, because it seems that his diagnosis must also apply to our own nation, the United States of America.

A poverty of aspirations has infected too many of our elected leaders. And I believe the affliction is of the spirit, a poverty of spirit, brought on by our leaders succumbing to the aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. The violent assaults were directed toward a number of important symbols of American aspirations: the wealth of Wall Street, the military might of the Pentagon, and (as it was planned) the freedom symbolized by the U.S. Capitol. These leaders must have felt personally attacked, just like millions of Americans. The directions in which they have led the nation since then have been down, not up; with lowered, rather than elevated, expectations for us.

It is sad because U.S. leaders need not have become permanently terrorized in spirit. It evidently left their aspirations for the American people poverty stricken, lacking in imagination and capacity. The current administration has been consistently reactive, militarily myopic, poor at planning or executing, and lacking in any rich vision for a good future for us and our descendants. They seem to be stuck on war as the only answer, mistrustful of most of the rest of America, and severely "broke" when it comes to wisdom or good ideas. Because of limited vision - at times blindness - these leaders no longer enjoy the confidence of their own people. Recent polls numbers are unambiguously negative towards the people they elected over and over.

A new track in 2008 - We are in the process of deciding who will replace the current afflicted Bush administration in 2008. On C-SPAN I am listening to a campaign speech by John Edwards. It is filled with aspirational language, vision and hope for a better America than the one he now calls "the two Americas." Barack Obama is now talking about "taking our government back," standing in his shirtsleeves in the midst of a crowd. His speeches draw big throngs because of his visionary language, his hopefulness and his richness of optimistic spirit. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has an outstanding record of leadership, and is leading the charge right now to bring the troops home from Iraq. Hillary Clinton is strengthening her lead in the polls, according to her strategist Mark Penn. And it is not entirely due to her ability to fund-raise. Her issues list includes, "Strengthening the Middle Class," "Restoring America's Standing in the World," and "Strengthening Our Democracy."

On the right track - My Democratic presidential choices are so very rich in aspirations. I would be absolutely comfortable having any one of them in the Oval Office. They all lift my spirits, because I have once again remembered that America will indeed have a better future. I just know it!

Technorati tags: bush current affairs news news and politics politics democrat gordon brown united kingdom

Middle East Cliff Notes

(Washington Post map from the earlier Israeli withdrawal period)

Many Americans are confused by the complexity of the politics of the Middle East. We have difficulty in remembering the geography of the region. We mix up the leaders with unpronouncable names in our minds, forgetting who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys," and seeing no gradations in between. We cannot distinguish between the myriad of movements and political parties, some that even cross national borders. We resort to stereotypical thinking such as the routine overgeneralization, "all those Muslims over there."
The West's involvement in the current crisis - The United States has routinely supported Israel. For instance, following the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the visit of Israel's Prime minister Ohlmert earlier in the week, the Bush administration and Israel threw their support behind Palestinian Fatah President Abbas, excluding Hamas. The Mideast Quartet is set to meet next week regarding the current situation, according to Haaretz, who also reports that Tony Blair may become the Quartet's new special envoy to the Middle East.
The following recent event is another good illustration of what prompted today's post. From the summary it is difficult to sort out the "who/what/where/when" of what actually happened. It is from today's Yahoo! News (Full Coverage: Mideast Conflict):

"Israel seizes top Hamas leader"
Israeli troops seized a top Hamas militant in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Israeli military and Palestinian security sources said.

Links to the Basics - Today's post provides a set of tools that will be useful to unravel confusion by providing a set of basic resource links to which readers can periodically return.
Philosophies that compete -

• Israel vs. Palestinian: BBC News "Special Reports - Israel and the Palestinians."


• Inside Palestine: From the BBC News: "Palestinian rivals: Fatah & Hamas"


• Secular - "Turkey - Secular or NonSecular?" About.com-Islam


• Islamist - "Islam vs. Islamist" from TheWeekBehind.


• Hezbolah - Hezbolah.net "Information and resources on the Islamic group"

Players:

• Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) - President of Palestine - governing from the West Bank city of Ramallah.


• Salam Fayyad - Prime Minister & Finance Minister of Abbas' emergency Palestinian government in the West Bank: more technocrats than Fatah party members.


• Ehud Olhmert - Prime Minister of Israel


• Ismael Haniya - ex-Palestinian Prime Minister in recent Unity Government of Abbas


• Khaled Mashaal - exiled Hamas leader who has lived in Jordan and Syria


• Hosni Mubarek - Egyptian Prime Minister attempts to mediate between the parties (PA-Fatah, Jordan, Israel)

Reference web sites: Items 1 and 2, compares versions of the same story, "Haniya calls for fresh Hamas-Fattah talks." Item 3 is from the BBC: "Country Profiles:"

1. Aljazeera.net - Doha, Qatar


2. Haaretz.com - Israel


3. BBC.News - "Country profiles - Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries and territories, and background on key institutions."

Past S/SW posts:

1. "Strong 'Community' - elusive Middle East goal;"


2. "Then and Now in the Middle East;"


3. "Page 2 stories about the U.S. and a few of its friends."

Technorati tags: information current affairs news news and politics middle east

Friday's Bush Day

Reading the news about our current president (OCP) is almost always a downer for me. There is a part of me that would rather just ignore him. It is that "magical thinking" immature part that believes ignoring will make his power less pervasive in my life.
Repeated revelations in the news of abuse of power is always unsettling. News about how vulnerable American citizens' civil liberties have become under the administration of OCP should be disquieting to all of us who care anything about our freedom and our country.
Look at some of today's little gems on national intelligence from just one news site, the current Washington Post:

• "Senators Question CIA Nominee on Torture," by Karen DeYoung (6/20/07). To quote,
  

  Senators used the rare open hearing of the Select Committee on Intelligence, held to consider Rizzo's confirmation as CIA general counsel, as an opportunity to air concerns about the long-secret CIA detention and interrogation program.
  
  [Senator] . . . Rockefeller's follow-up, asking about how the president will interpret the relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions in relation to CIA activities, elicited the longest response of the day. "Okay," Rizzo said, launching an explanation of the difference between "grave" and "non-grave" offenses under the conventions.
  
  [Senator] . . . Levin later asked for the record to reflect "a statement of the president in December 2005 that we do not render to countries that torture, a statement made in public . . . in contrast to Mr. Rizzo's statement that he could not answer that question in public."



• "Ashcroft Tells of Surveillance Disputes," by Paul Kane (6/22/07). To quote,
  
  

  Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft told the House intelligence committee yesterday about disputes in the Bush administration over aspects of its domestic surveillance program, which peaked in the March 2004 visit to his hospital bedside by White House officials seeking his change of heart.
  
  House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) said the two-hour closed-door hearing covered Ashcroft's "whole tenure as attorney general." The hearing, Reyes said, examined how the administration viewed the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions requiring a special court to issue warrants for domestic eavesdropping.

Be careful what you wish for - Today is not Friday the 13th, but the 22nd, so it is not superstition that is causing my disquiet. In addition to the news, I learned a few days ago that (on Jun 18 2007 5:41:29 pm) a web search was done by the Army Information Systems Command at the Pentagon on the words "stuart bowen iraq." The URL of my South by Southwest IG blog post came up Number One in that Google search, and they clicked on it. I hope I did not say anything that could bring on the black vans.
Keeping courage and regaining optimism in the presence of such awareness is an every day challenge. I remind myself that Mr. Bush's power to influence is diminishing; his poll numbers are at an all-time low, according to a recent MSNBC/Newsweek study. What power remains, however, is the reservoir of election-bestowed authority that only the passage of a year and some months of time will remove.
Mixed blessings - The following two items must go under the heading of "good news/bad news." One is an essay on political optimism, something I am lacking; the other is a long awaited CIA declassification. Links and quotes follow:

• Good for Hayden - "CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry," by Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus (6/22/07). To quote,
  
  

  The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
  
  The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.
  
  "Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.



• Music to my eyes - Politico.com (6/20/07)"Reclaiming the mantle of optimism," by Bernard L Schwartz, investor and a trustee at the Third Way. Quoting from his persuasive arguments,
  
  

  With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose "bridge to the 21st century" evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America's economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism.
  
  The 2008 Democratic presidential candidates would be wise to note that unwarranted negativism is dangerous and badly underestimates the strengths of the American people to adapt to and prosper with change.
  
  As America turns its eyes toward electing the next president, Democrats need to reclaim their heritage as the party of investment and optimism. By doing so, they will shed the label of "tax and spend" and replace it with "invest and grow." This is good policy and good politics.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. President - The rest of Friday is mine! And so is my weekend, and maybe even next week.
Technorati tags: bush united states current affairs news news and politics politics national intelligence

Strong "Community" - elusive Middle East goal

Cross-border conflicts continue to be the stuff of Middle East headlines this week. Violence and angry words, mixed messages from our current president (OCP), splits within Congress, and Iraqis becoming more and more factionalized, all characterize today's reality.
The world is favoring more and more fences, it seems, between members of groups. Rather than finding the common ground enabling them to tolerate the existence of the other at minimum, they split into smaller and smaller units of trust. They have no knowledge of how to be in community, in the best sense of the word. The news in the following stories causes me to think that far too many people desire to apart from each other.
Poor leadership in recent years has made the Middle East situation much worse. The leadership community of George W. Bush, Mahmoud Abbas, Khaled Mashaal, Ehud Olhmert, Fuad Signiora, Nuri al-Malaki and Moqtada al-Sadr are collectively among the weakest of leaders. Lacking in diplomatic or visionary skills, these men rely on military or covert operations, or terrorism, at worst to wield power. They fail to deal with terrorism in smart and effective ways. And they fail to anticipate the unintended consequences of over-reliance on "democracy" and free elections to cure the region's problems. In short, none of these leaders seem capable of "being in community."
Cross-border attack - There is a vacuum of diplomatic leadership and involvement in Lebanon on the part of the U.S. government. From Aljazeera.net comes this inevitable headline: "Rockets from Lebanon hit Israel" (6/17/07) To quote,

Katyusha rockets have been fired into northern Israel from Lebanon in the first cross-border attack since last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah.

. . . Israel responded with five artillery shells into southern Lebanon, Lebanese security forces said, but an Israeli army spokesman denied the shelling was aimed at Lebanese territory, calling the exercise "artillery calibration fire" using empty shells fired into Israeli territory.

. . . Fuad Siniora, Lebanon's prime minister, said the attack had "political goals" and was aimed at destabilising Lebanon by casting doubts about the ability of the army and the UN peacekeeping force in South Lebanon to protect the border zone.

. . . An international peacekeeping force was deployed after the war to prevent further rocket attacks. About 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon and they have been affected in recent weeks by fighting between Lebanese troops and armed Palestinian groups.

No mediation to be given - In the understatement of the year regarding lack of U.S. attention to the mid-east region, The Financial Times headlined, "US, Israel promise support for Abbas"(6/19/07). To quote,

It was not the job of the US president to mediate between Israel and Syria, Mr Olmert quoted Mr Bush as saying. “He has got many other things to do,” the Israeli prime minister said at a joint press conference.

"First Muslim Rep. mends global fences" is the headline from Politico.com (6/19/07). The only Muslim in the U.S. congress has modeled a conciliatory spirit and working hard to solve problems. Our current president could take a lesson from his style. To quote,

With a few short words, Rep. Keith Ellison had just stunned a joint session of Congress.

Last March, Jordan's King Abdullah II had concluded his address in the House chambers with the traditional Arabic salutation, "as-salaam 'aleikum," which means, "Peace be unto you."

Ellison, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota and the first Muslim in Congress, instinctively replied, "wa 'aleikum as-salaam" -- "And to you be peace."

. . . A self-proclaimed "bleeding-heart liberal," Ellison says he wants to make a name for himself not just as a Muslim, but by pushing for better health care, reducing poverty, ending the war in Iraq -- and tackling predatory lending practices.

No reconciliation - Aljazeera.net headlined, "Abbas rules out talks with Hamas" (6/20/07). The United States abandoned peace efforts between Israel and Palestine when the current administration came into power. This story is the tragic result. To quote,

The Palestinian president has ruled out talks with the Hamas movement which he accused of trying to assassinate him and of carrying out a coup in the Gaza Strip.

. . . Abbas said Hamas replaced the "national project" with "its project of darkness", attacking the symbols of government in Gaza, including the house of the late leader Yasser Arafat.

It was Abbas's toughest speech since he fired the Hamas-led cabinet and replaced it with his own team of Fatah supporters and experts over the weekend.

[Abbas continued] . . . "It's a fight between the national project and this small kingdom they want to establish in Gaza, the kingdom of Gaza, between those who are using assassination and killing to achieve their goals, and those who are using the rules of law."

Egypt provides leadership - Once again the vacuum left by the U.S. lack of diplomatic effort in the Middle East is apparent. From Israel's Haaretz.com "Egypt to host Olmert-Abbas summit next week" (6/21/07) To quote,

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has invited Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II to attend a summit in Egypt early next week, a senior aide to Abbas said Thursday.

The meeting will focus on bolstering Abbas and opening diplomatic channels between Abbas and Olmert, following the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip last week and the establishment of an emergency government in Ramallah over the weekend.

. . . Olmert reached an understanding with United States President George W. Bush during his visit to Washington on Tuesday that it is necessary to support Abbas, a senior political source in Jerusalem said Wednesday.

Shiites fight - Bogged down in an increasingly factionalized Iraq, the current administration seems incapable of taking in the implications of this reality. From the New York Times came this very sad headline, "Shiite Rivalries Slash at a Once Calm Iraqi City " (6/21/07), from which I quote,

The Shiite heartland of southern Iraq has generally been an oasis of calm in contrast to Baghdad and the central part of the country, but now violence is convulsing this city. Shiites are killing and kidnapping other Shiites, the police force is made up of competing militias and the inner city is a web of impoverished streets where idealized portraits of young men, killed in recent gun battles with Iraqi and American troops, hang from signposts above empty lots.

Technorati tags: bush current-events usa iraq news news and politics politics middle east leadership

Treasures

(Image: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/)

Thousands of us are members of blog "communities." We enjoy the group experience, sometimes for a little while, sometimes for long periods. We treasure, I think, those associations. We join together because we like to belong, to participate, to contribute, to add to the group's efforts to make a difference.

Recently I was invited to join a group of "Co-bloggers" at The Reaction - by Michael J.W. Stickings. Occasionally I post a single piece there. Most of the time I "cross-post" what I have written for South by Southwest.

I have had a bit of a challenge to adapt to a format that is unique to Michael's publishing style. For example, he prefers to bold our blog titles; I started out by italicizing publication titles. His way is probably the correct convention. My posts are probably a bit wordy for what is generally the norm for the other co-bloggers. But Michael does not complain, he only instructs and encourages.

Head Honchos - In addition to our blog editor, Michael J.W. Stickings, (a Canadian government policy advisor), and Creature (the assistant editor; he's from New York), let me introduce you to the other "Reactors:"

• Capt. Fogg - sails out of Florida, wears a slicker.


• Edward Copeland - media buff in communications, he looks like a Welsh Corgi, for some reason. I have a Corgi, too!


• Grace - Canadian. She, as I did, loved the movie "Dr. Strangelove."


• J. Kingston Pierce - Seattle crime-fiction writer who looks like a typewriter.


• James Stickings - U.K. (probably related to the boss).


• Jeffaclitus - educator, International Man of Mystery (looks like one) - U.S.


• Libby Spencer - Maine; political, 3 blogs, one re War on Drugs.


• The (liberal)Girl Next Door - Seattle activist, writer & "political junkie."


• Mustang Bobby - (Cramer) works in education, prolific blogger. Lives in Miami, Florida.


• Vivek Krishnamurthy - blogger who works in Canadian gov't, wine and cheese authority, classical music buff, studied law.

The best way to get to know this group is through their posts. On June 17, Capt. Fogg had "A sinking feeling;" and currently three of us are "all over" the war in Iraq.

1. "Painless, endless war," by Creature


2. "Another year without success in Iraq," by Carol Gee


3. "Surge sinks into the quagmire," by Libby Spencer

Technorati tags: blog blogging weblog writing group blog

Another year without success in Iraq

It is really hard to want success for the opposition. It may be a little easier for me, however, because I am not an athlete nor a warrior. The best outcome in my opinion, is often not win/lose but win/win.

But it is really hard to visualize a successful outcome for the United States invasion of Iraq, now deemed the world's Number Two Failed State. Millions of us have struggled for a long time with this terrible dilemma.

What to do about "the opposition?" I asked in my blog last year. In mid June 2006 I posted "Who does not want success?" (to which I linked today's post title). I spoke about Senator Joe Biden's view - representing what I called "the loyal opposition at home." I want to quote a bit of what I was thinking back then:

[Biden] . . . "hoped that President Bush can have success in Iraq." It would be crazy to want this misguided war to utterly fail. It is not disloyal to the Democratic Party to have a nonpartisan approach to foreign affairs, as does the good senator, for the most part. People of good will want success for the Iraqi people most of all.
In an interview . . . the Senator, like so many of us, made it clear that he does not wish to see the U.S. effort fail in Iraq.

Iraqis oppose each other - I also spoke a year ago about "the loyal opposition in Iraq." In 2007 they are in what seems like a full civil war. I quote from my post again:

In order to feel any loyalty to the nation of Iraq, members of minorities, must have some share of the available power and resources.
. . . [Biden]was not calling for a true partition, but for more autonomy and oil revenue sharing for each region. I may not agree with Senator Biden's proposal, but his point is well taken. Just as in the United States, religious or ethnic differences can separate the people of a nation. Poverty and lack of the basic necessities of food, shelter and safety can separate people here or in the Muslim world.

"Sharing power with the opposition," was the heading of the conclusion of last year's post. I quote it in full:

The Iraqi constitution is very new. It is yet to be modified to the satisfaction of all the people living in Iraq, so that power can be shared equitably by all. The U.S. constitution is very old, much modified, and also still vulnerable. If we are not very careful, the executive branch will have far too much power, and the original framers' careful separation of powers doctrine will be in shambles.
Loyal oppositions in both countries want their national administrations to be successful, but not too successful at gathering power only unto themselves. Utterly partisan leaders cannot have it both ways. There are terrible trade-offs with power grabs. In Iraq lots of people are dying. In the United States, lots of people have opted out of the political process in disgust. Will the 2006 election turnout be as equally disheartening as the other recent ones?

The war in Iraq will never be successful as visualized by our current president (OCP) - The incursion was a mistake from the beginning. But the Democrats won the election in 2006! Surely we cannot be disheartened. But we are, because members of Congress have not acted on their election success. They have ceded power to the opposition. So what is the answer now?

There was never a merely military answer for Iraq. The military is a great institution when it sticks with what it does best, defend the United States against enemy attack. Iraq never attacked the U.S. We attacked Iraq - Mistake Number One. But we cannot undo that now.

Iraq has its own answers, which it will discover or not. The U.S. military was never designed to facilitate such processes. (OCP) Bush definitely eschewed "nation building" during his campaign for president. And now that Iraq must rebuild politically from within its own opposed forces, we have kept the military in charge of supporting their efforts, rather than the State Department. That is Mistake Number Two. And we can and must undo that now.

Congress has the answer. Will they find it? The Executive branch of government does not represent the American people. It has not served us, but itself. Nor has Congress, who actually does represent us, has yet to answer as it must. Congress has to withdraw financial support from the military in Iraq, and increase support for diplomatic efforts to help Iraq succeed, if Iraq decides it wants to succeed. Democratic Congressional leaders are making Mistake Number Three. Democrats must not leave the leading to their loyal opponents, the Republicans. These leaders can and must undo their mistake soon.

Technorati tags: current affairs iraq news news and politics politics opinion bush congress

Good news out of Texas

Sometimes it is hard to find any good news on Mondays - you have to work hard at it. Today's labor of optimism is centered in three arenas in my home state of Texas: space, energy and law enforcement. Why those topics?
NASA's space headquarters is in Houston, where the space program's main control rooms are located. And two of the astronauts are from Texas, Mission Specialists, James Reilly II and Danny Olivas. NASA Houston is where the action will be today. If the Russian computers on the ISS are functioning correctly, the shuttle Atlantis' crew will undock Tuesday and head back to earth for another nail biting dead-stick landing. This positive headline caught my eye, "Life on space station gets back to normal." It is from today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To quote from the story,

Restoration of a failed computer system returned life to a regular rhythm on the international space station Sunday, as two astronauts completed the fourth spacewalk since the shuttle Atlantis docked with the outpost a week ago.

"We're slowly moving back into a normal mode of operations," station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin radioed Mission Control in Moscow.

The "normal mode" included the last spacewalk of the mission, a previously unscheduled fourth trip outside the space station that finished up tasks originally scheduled for Friday's third spacewalk. Astronauts on the third spacewalk had the unplanned job of repairing a thermal blanket, which had peeled back near Atlantis' tail during the June 8 launch.

The nearly 6 1/2 -hour spacewalk ended with astronauts Patrick Forrester and Steve Swanson completing nearly all of their tasks.

EARTHtimes.org is an interesting website I recently discovered. It is (naturally) green and "earthy" looking, and very rich with all you might want to know about almost everything. The following two Texas articles come from their web pages.
Cost prohibitive energy - This story comes under the heading of "good news/bad news." Headlined, "Texas company halts coal gasifying plant," from EarthTimes.org, the story is another example of taking the easier road to clean energy, rather that the right road. Natural gas and coal are a fossil fuels and non-renewable. So far coal gasification is not yet a clean nor an affordable process. And government is not helping very much. Quoting from the article,

Plans for a coal gasification plant in Texas have been canceled due to high technology costs.

Tondu Corp. a Houston-based company, planned to build the plant in Corpus Christi but announced Thursday it was too expensive. Instead, a natural gas plant, between 125 and 150 megawatts, will be built with the option of implementing integrated gasification combine cycle technology, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The cost of the coal gasification technology put a $1.5 billion price tag on the plant compared with $500 million for the natural gas plant. The coal gasification developers won't provide performance guarantees, one of the major price drivers, said Joe Tondu, chief executive officer of Tondu.

Relatively free energy - This story is all good news. The research was done at my alma mater, UTA. Wind is a free and renewable energy resource. And, after I get my Orange Mobile Wind Charger, I will not need to worry any more about being marooned with a dead cell phone.The headline,"Mobile phone charger powered by wind," is again from EarthTimes.org, from which I quote,

Bristol-based Orange UK is showing its Orange Mobile Wind Charger, a new phone charger that is powered by wind energy.

The portable phone charger is the recent result of research done with Shashank Priya, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. Orange UK lauds it as the solution for summer music festival attendees and campers who live in tents for days at a time.

Texas Law Enforcement gets it right - During my professional years I worked with many women and men who had been hurt by sex offenders, perpetrators of crimes that can leave behind horrific psychological scars. I have so far been able to muster little sympathy for these offenders. I am always relieved when the law is able to make it safer for those most vulnerable among us. We can cheer this recent headline:"Texas authorities arrest 7 former MySpace members" from Reuters. To quote from the story,

Texas police arrested seven convicted sex offenders after MySpace handed over identity details about the former members of the Internet social network, the Texas attorney general's office said on Thursday.

The seven, whose profiles on MySpace had already been removed under an internal program to weed out sex offenders prowling the News Corp.-owned site, were arrested for breaking parole or probation rules.

The arrests, which occurred over a two-week period, come after authorities in several states asked MySpace to hand over information on convicted sex offenders.

Hope you have a good news week! Technorati Tags: current affairs myspace news texas energy

Spacey Women

Astronaut "Sunny" Williams set a new record this week, (quoting from NASA's website story):

. . . for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed Shannon Lucid’s mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996.

Commander, USN, Sunita Williams has proven to be an amazing asset to the space program. She is a very talented woman who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987. She was a naval diving officer and a helicopter test pilot, She received her Master's in Engineering Management in 1995. She is bright, flexible, a great communicator and workmate for whatever crew of which she has been a part. She has worked in Moscow with the Russian Space Agency. And Williams has lived underwater in the NASA Aquarius habitat for nine days. She just loves to fly, to fly the Robotic arms of the shuttle and the ISS, and she ran in the Boston Marathon while in space. The astronaut also likes to space "walk." Suni estalished a world record for females with four space walks totaling 29+ hours of EVA. She graduated high school in Massachusetts and is married to Michael J. Williams.

Further info - headlined, "Shuttle Astronaut Sets New Record, Crew Works at ISS," in an article by Tariq Malik, Staff Writer, that was posted on 16 June 2007, at Space.com. To quote,

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams set a new spaceflight record early Saturday as she and her Atlantis shuttle crewmates continue their mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

At precisely 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT), Williams took the all-time title for the longest spaceflight by a female astronaut as she passed the 188-day, four-hour mark in Earth orbit.

"This has been my home. I love living up here," Williams told CBS News earlier this week, adding that the station is great place to work, even if unfinished. "Hopefully, over the past six months, a lot of people have joined me and been able to see that."

Williams' spaceflight surpassed that of fellow NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid, who spent just over 188 days in orbit during a 1996 mission to Russia's Mir Space Station. By coincidence, Williams set the new record on the 44th anniversary of the launch of the first female spaceflyer Valentina Tereshkova, a cosmonaut launched by the former Soviet Union in 1963.

Russian Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova launched on June 16, 1963
(image: Ria Novosti)

"The story of women in Space" can be found in this Russian News and Information Agency story written by Yury Zaitsev (3/13/07). Quoting from the "opinion and analysis" piece,

March 12, 1962 is the official date of the establishment of a women's group in the first division of cosmonauts. Five people were selected from more than a thousand applicants: engineer Irina Solovyova, mathematician and programmer Valentina Ponomaryova, textile worker Valentina Tereshkova, teacher Zhanna Yerkina and shorthand secretary Tatyana Kuznetsova.

[after training] . . . The women's group was officially introduced to general designer Sergei Korolyov after the final examination for basic space training. Korolyov asked each one to tell her story. Then he wanted to know what made them seek a space career. Towards the end he grew gloomy and later, speaking to a small circle of people, expressed his dissatisfaction with the group's composition. In his view, none of the group members had much to do with space and rockets.

. . . On June 16, 1963, two of the women - Tereshkova and Solovyova - arrived at the launch pad clad in spacesuits. When Solovyova had first donned her suit, its sealing in the neck area broke and the spacesuit had to be changed quickly for Ponomaryova's one. If Tereshkova's suit had ruptured, there would have been no replacement because of the difference in the women's heights, and then Irina Solovyova might have become the world's first woman in space.

[concluding paragraph] . . . When the women's team had been disbanded, only Tereshkova had stayed on with the cosmonauts' detachment. She remained there until 1997 (on a purely formal basis) and retired with the rank of Major-General. Since then, no women have been enlisted. Eight women were recruited by Energia and the Institute of Medical and Biological Studies for orbital flights, but only two of them - Svetlana Savitskaya, the marshal's daughter, and Yelena Kondakova, the wife of Valery Ryumin, a cosmonaut and deputy CEO of Energia - were lucky enough to go aloft. The last woman in Energia's team of cosmonauts was Nadezhda Kuzhelnaya. She had no high-placed relatives and, though considered a top-notch specialist, never made it into space.

References: Sunita Williams at Wikipedia; and Valentina Tereshkova from the Encyclopedia Britannica online, from which I quote,

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova Soviet cosmonaut, the first woman to travel into space. On June 16, 1963, she was launched in the spacecraft Vostok 6, which completed 48 orbits in 71 hours. In space at the same time was Valery F. Bykovsky, who had been launched two days earlier in Vostok 5; both landed on June 19.

Previous South by Southwest posts about "spacey women" - I count myself as one of them:

1. Texas Women & Claims to Fame


2. More about Leadership and Women's Roles


3. Women are Good Communicators


4. STS - Still Holding

Technorati tags: women current affairs news science technology space nasa russia

Peaceful use of space?

STS - 117 Atlantis is on a mission. We hope to finish the International Space Station by 2010. Most missions in space is peaceful. At least all of the NASA efforts with which we are acquainted, we assume to be so. This mission has not been without problems, however, which is the hallmark of working with the aging equipment in our incredibly complex and underfunded space program. There was a bit of good news from orbit yesterday, reported in this BBC News headline: "Repairs ease space mission woes." Quoting from the article,

Problems dogging a mission to the International Space Station have been eased following a space walk and a computer reboot.

. . . Russian cosmonauts have now successfully rebooted vital ISS computer systems that had crashed.

. . . Despite the delays, managers are confident they will be able to complete the ISS before the shuttles' 2010 retirement date.

Nasa plans to fly 15 more missions to the station to deliver large components, spare parts and other supplies. In addition, one final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope is planned for September 2008.

Transmission of mission information happens in a wide variety of standard ways - via regular news, C-SPAN, the NASA TV channel, Space.com, etc. This story is about the most unusual transmission yet detected. It is from a recent International Herald Tribune piece headlined, "Baby monitor in Illinois picks up live video from NASA mission." To quote,

A mother of two in this suburb of Chicago does not have to turn on the news for an update on NASA's space mission. She just flips on her baby monitor.

. . . "It's not coming straight from the shuttle," NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said. "People here think this is very interesting and you don't hear of it often — if at all."

. . . Meilinger silenced disbelieving co-workers by bringing in a video of the monitor to show her class on Tuesday, her students' last day of school. At home, 3-month-old Jack and 2-year-old Rachel do not quite understand what their parents are watching. "I've been addicted to it and keep waiting to see what's next," Meilinger said.

Today's post explores whether the uses of space remain peaceful. So far, so good. Like this mom, I am a "space junkie," addicted to all the news I can find about space. I, too, keep waiting to see what's next, so that I can make sense of it all. An old blogger friend, Bucky, who writes a Brown Bag Blog, once dubbed me the "queen of synthesis." South by Southwest is linked in his "sandwich" list. The concluding two news items (one about Russia and one about the U.S.) are the bologna in the Peaceful Space sandwich.

UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Space - Things may not always be what they seem. The next news item brings into question whether the Russian space program is entirely peaceful. It is an ironic story from the BBC News headlined, "Free 'spy', Russia tells Austria." The conclusion about the truth of it is up to you. To quote,

Moscow has demanded the release of a Russian space agency official who was arrested in Salzburg, Austria, this week on suspicion of spying.

The Russian was suspected of receiving sensitive information from an Austrian military officer, who was also arrested, Austrian officials said. Russia said he had diplomatic immunity because he was attending a UN meeting in Vienna at the time of his arrest.

. . . The man was a member of the Russian delegation to the 50th session of the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Russia's space agency said.

Missiles are just like rockets - propelled by stuff that burns very hot and shoots very high. The propellant fires off a population destroying bomb, a space shuttle, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, or the world's Hubble telescope into space. Somehow the following does not seem to qualify as a peaceful use of space. In this I agree with the Russians. The recent story is in the BBC News, and unhappily headlines, "US confirms missile shield plans." To quote,

The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has confirmed the US will go ahead with plans to install parts of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe. He said Washington viewed a Russian offer to use a base in Azerbaijan as an additional capability not a substitute. The US says the shield is necessary to protect against any missile attacks from "rogue states". Russia recently threatened to target missiles against Europe if the US went ahead with the shield.

. . . Nato has now ordered plans to be drawn up for a possible short-range missile defence system for Europe's southern flank. Russia has said the American plan is a threat to its own security and a challenge to its influence in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia might aim its own missiles at Europe, but then offered the use of a former Soviet base in Azerbaijan for the US system instead of Poland and the Czech Republic.

Technorati tags: articles current affairs news science technology space russia nasa foreign policy