Only a glimpse

We "see through the glass darkly." We catch glimpses of truths we don't understand, things we think we remember but don't know how or why, and fleeting snatches of important thoughts that float away. It is only a glimpse, however.

Can you imagine? Lots of people are very interested in the idea of virtual worlds. I am mystified and a bit scared of what what seems to be there, because it is, in a way, too hard to hold on to such a reality. I see that through my own experiences, and through the eyes of others.

One of the ways I grab onto reality is to put things together in order to make sense of them. My very first blog "friend," Bucky named me the "queen of synthesis," and here I am, at it again. The following three items are about imagination and what it can do to stretch our concept of what is real and what is not.
Conceptual reality is a philosophical mystery to most of us. It is not imaginary. "cscs" at TPMCafe wrote, "Chances Are, We're Just A Simulation" (8/14/07). The post garnered 169 comments over a two-day period. I was not one of them. I was far too intimidated by the rarity of the atmospheric in the discussion. To quote the author,

Fascinating and thought-provoking piece in the Science section of the Times today, on the philosophy of reality. Oxford's Nick Bostrom has calculated the probability of our reality simply being a highly involved computer simulation, and, it turns out, the chances are actually pretty good.

. . . So, basically, we're going to either be extinct before we ever reach the "posthuman" stage; or that we will reach it, but not run simulations (which is extremely unlikely, as we already are, with, or example, the advent of the popular Sims video games); or, finally, the number of simulations that will be run with future computing power will vastly outnumber the biological "reality" version of life, so much that, statistically speaking, yes, we're probably living in a simulation right now.

I often write about the virtual world, the electronic blogosphere. It is seen as a community to those of us who read and write blogs. One of the members I regularly visit is Grant McCracken of This Blog Sits at . . . His post about his experience with virtual world congruence is the perfect illustration of one of these glimpses: It is titled, "Social networks and the virtual world," and I quote from it:

There were virtual worlds in the West before the advent on the Internet.

. . . The virtual worlds of the late 20th and 21st world are something else again. It is now routine to have someone we know from the blogging world or a role-playing game appear before us as flesh and blood. And when this happens it always seems to me like a scene from the movies in which a character moves from one dimension to the next, materializing as he goes.

. . . So today, I am going to meet a couple of people for lunch in Manhattan who are friends of a virtual friend. . .

Eventually, we'll learn to live in a new kind of social universe that consists of virtual and actual worlds living side by side. We'll learn to negotiate sudden transitions back and forth. I guess eventually, we will have a protocol for negotiating these very odd social situations, but for the moment it's all improv.

As we sleep the outside world remains, but our internal world is is being changed by our dreams. And we may not be as disconnected from the world outside as we imagined. Earlier this the New York Times' Benedict Carey wrote a fascinating story about an intriguing sleep study: "Study Uncovers Memory Aid: A Scent During Sleep." To quote,

Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied and, later, as they slept — improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent.

The new study, appearing today in the journal Science, is the first rigorous test of the effect of odor on human memory during sleep. The results, whether or not they can help students cram for tests, clarify the picture of what the sleeping brain does with newly learned material and help illuminate what it takes for this process to succeed.

Researchers have long known that sleep is crucial to laying down new memories, and studies in the 1980s and ’90s showed that exposing the sleeping brain to certain cues — the sound of clicking, for instance — could enhance the process. But it is only in recent years that scientists have begun to understand how this is possible.

Our imaginations grow through these expanding glimpses of reality. Through my words on this page I, Carol, am a simulation to you the reader. If you are a regular reader, I am also a blog "friend," a member of your virtual community. And we all are at the frontier of exciting new things to learn about who we are and what we are about, asleep and awake, virtual or actual.
My links:
Cross posted at The Reaction.
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is about my "Chinese sister"
Technorati tags: blogging computers and internet culture friends life personal thoughts philosophy

War is about weapons,

. . . and counting casualties (dead and wounded). It is about how the combatants point their weapons at each other, or kill each other, and not always why. War is about moving troops into and out of harm's way, and who is winning or losing. I have written poems about war. South by Southwest has many posts about war and the Middle East. As a retiree I think I know something about war(s), plural. Though I must admit I do not know how to fire a weapon, I understand it when the face and pertinent information of the latest U.S. military casualties silently conclude the Friday night PBS news program. But the following story has me completely stumped. I have no clue of what to make of it, how to think or feel about it.
It can speak for itself: The Yahoo! News headline reads, " Pentagon nixes ray gun weapon in Iraq." It was written Richard Lardner of the Associated Press on Aug 29, 2007. To quote,

. . . according to internal military correspondence obtained by The Associated Press, U.S. commanders were telling Washington that many civilian casualties could be avoided by using a new non-lethal weapon developed over the past decade.

Military leaders repeatedly and urgently requested — and were denied — the device, which uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up unruly crowds without firing a shot. It's a ray gun that neither kills nor maims, but the Pentagon has refused to deploy it out of concern that the weapon itself might be seen as a torture device.

Perched on a Humvee or a flatbed truck, the Active Denial System gives people hit by the invisible beam the sense that their skin is on fire. They move out of the way quickly and without injury.

. . . in August 2003, Richard Natonski, a Marine Corps brigadier general who had just returned from Iraq, filed an "urgent" request with officials in Washington for the energy-beam device. The device would minimize what Natonski described as the "CNN Effect" — the instantaneous relay of images depicting U.S. troops as aggressors.

The story goes on to chronicle the several-year history of the internal military battle over additional issues, such as safety and the cost deployment of these weapons.
Here is where I am clueless -

• Is the Active Denial System horrible or humane?
• Is a lethal weapon more appropriate in war than a non-lethal one?
• Is unintentionally killing innocent civilians better than being seen as a country that uses means that appear to be tortuous or aggressive against these civilians?
• Is it necessary for a non-lethal weapon to be proven completely safe before it use is approved?
• Is the cost of arming soldiers with these weapons one of the considerations?
• What on earth is the right thing to do here?

I am sure I have not thought of all the questions and certainly not the answers. What do you think?
My links: Cross posted at The Reaction.
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Making Good Mondays is about "earth, fire and water."
Technorati tags: iraq war military blog

NOLA revisited

Today is the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina coming ashore in New Orleans, Louisiana. I dreaded writing this post and have avoided it for days. Why is it so hard to write about this? I am safe and dry, having been in my current home for years. I have no painful memories of living in Louisiana, I personally know no one who is now a member of the New Orleans Diaspora, nor do I plan to visit New Orleans any time soon. I feel ashamed that I complain about this simple difficulty. And my shame is perhaps the collective shame of a nation associated with what happened to our neighbors in New Orleans. I feel as if I know some of the people personally because KERA, our PBS station, broadcast a powerful story at 8:00 PM last night, that is still with me this morning. (See link. For scheduled rebroadcast times, click on last night's 8:00 program box.) The title is,

"Still Waiting: Life After Katrina - The story of a large New Orleans family's struggle to return home in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Today the President visits NOLA again - Our current president (OCP) will be making his predictable in-person visit. OCP has visited before. People are not impressed, because he has said lots of things about this in the past, according to Free Republic. They remain skeptical with good reason. To quote,

YOU SAID: "Out of New Orleans is going to come that great city again."

WHAT HAPPENED: Before Katrina, New Orleans had 128 public schools, only 83 have reopened. Before Katrina, the city had 13 public libraries, today it has nine. Fewer than two-thirds of pre-storm hospital beds are available. Just 98 out of the 276 child-care facilities have reopened. Only 60 percent of its pre-Katrina population of 455,000 reside in New Orleans today.

Local musicians -- the city's heart and soul -- are barely making it. Once numbering 3,000, musicians have dropped to 1,800 -- with many begging to be paid minimum wage. So desperate, a few dozen took to the streets Sunday protesting the cut-throat wages.

What remains in parts of New Orleans is a ghost of what was. Many homes are still in disrepair and unoccupied, their front stoops leading to piles of splintered two-by-fours and dangling wires.

What we're asking, Mr. President: How can New Orleans achieve greatness, when so many residents can't go home?

The private sector will not by itself be able to save New Orleans, though they were there early and have stayed long. An upbeat LA Times story was atypical of most of the big newspapers' articles. It optimistically headlined, "Old city revels in a new spirit of innovation." And according to the Boston Globe, Citizens are still trying hard to make it better. The quote from the Boston Globe story is about the Gentilly neighborhood,

Two years after their city was nearly annihilated by a massive levee failure, the residents of this New Orleans neighborhood acknowledged that their surroundings still look pretty bad. But they also insisted that things slowly are getting better. Just 31 percent of Gentilly's 16,000 addresses were reoccupied or renovated as of March, according to a survey by a Dartmouth College professor. But another 57 percent finally were being fixed up.

Private citizens, not the government, deserved the credit, they said -- a source of grim humor among those laboring to mend the neighborhood.

"Of course, we should also thank [President] George Bush, [Governor] Kathleen Blanco, and [Mayor C.] Ray Nagin," resident Robert Counce said sarcastically as the meeting wrapped up.

The renaissance in America's most beleaguered city, such that it is, is a complex, dynamic, and messy affair. Progress lives alongside stagnation; hope alongside despair.

"Where's the money?" CNN asks the question. Congress appropriated billions for hurricane relief and rebuilding. USA Today says that the pace of rebuilding depends on who pays. Much of New Orleans still resembles an abandoned war zone. And thousands of people living in other parts of the nation are still waiting for help to come home. To quote CNN,

Domestic Marshall Plan

Nobody expected the private sector to rebuild New Orleans by itself. It was assumed the federal government would step up, especially given that the worst of the damage was caused not by the hurricane but by flooding attributed to shoddy levee construction and maintenance by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

What seemed to make the most sense was a kind of domestic Marshall Plan, or at least the appointment of a politician with disaster experience who would be as empowered as Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was when river flooding destroyed Greenville, Miss., in 1927.

What New Orleans got instead is Donald Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Powell's title is federal coordinator of Gulf Coast rebuilding. His role is to be President Bush's ambassador to the disaster-stricken region, meaning his job is to deflect the considerable flak local residents send the feds' way.

Unlike Hoover in the 1920s, Powell has no real power, only a bully pulpit and an ability to play referee when local governments have a beef.

Hat tip to Wounded Bird for planning to attend this meeting: Rising Tide 2 Conference August 24-26, 2007. But, like many of us, she is having a lot of trouble writing about this Katrina Anniversary thing: "It's what happened to New Orleans that I can't write about," she laments. Read further at her blog.
My links:
Cross posted at The Reaction.
Technorati tags: loss culture current affairs news news and politics politics nola hurricane katrina

Looking ahead to Congress in September

Members of the House and Senate, are out of town in August, Washington D.C. is hot and muggy, and July has come and gone. As my previous "Congress Tuesday" blog posts have noted, when the U.S. Congress returns to session, legislators will crave a period of success. But Public opinion about how Congress is doing is at another low point.
The blogosphere again has its opportunity to assist Congress to do a better job. But our task is increasingly difficult, given today's Senator Larry Craig headlines. Discouraged citizens tend to summarily dismiss politicians after such events, saying - "A pox on all your houses!" But - whether they watch the news or not - American's sense of well-being, of safety, or even of economic stability, is driven by one unyielding issue, the wars in the Middle East.
Much of the Congressional agenda on Iraq will be influenced by what Senators and Representatives learned during this few weeks away from the U.S. Capitol. Josephine Hearn, writing for Politico.com (8/25/07), feels that some of the lawmakers will shift their positions on what to do about the war, particularly after a visit to Iraq. To quote,

. . . perhaps it wasn’t a surprise when Rep. Brian Baird, a low-key Democrat from Washington State who has spent a career toiling away on local issues, suddenly came out in support of President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq.

. . . The waters are muddied for both parties. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a bigger fish than either Mahoney or Baird, urged the president on Thursday to begin pulling troops out of Iraq by Christmas.

. . . This August, the future of U.S. troops in Iraq is a topic very much in flux. Even as the chambers of Congress stand silent, a debate rages throughout the country. Lawmakers have heard it as they pad the streets of their hometowns, as they attend Rotary Club meetings and mingle with picnickers and paradegoers.

Democrats in Congress have a difficult task ahead. What can they do to repair public opinion? Many will refine their positions; others will forge stubbornly ahead - oblivious. And the public sees it as gridlock. Ed Kilgore at The Democratic Strategist tackled the question on 8/1/07, with "Unlocking the Grid." To quote from the piece,

One of the most contentious issues dividing political observers at present is how to interpret the partisan implications of the public's exceptionally sour mood, which extends to the Democratic-controlled Congress as well as the Bush administration.

The reigning theme among Beltway pundits is that Americans are sick of gridlock and partisanship in Washington, and blame both parties equally. There's a variant of this theme that's popular in some precincts on the Left: that the Democratic Congress's support is collapsing because it has been insufficiently confrontational towards Bush, particularly on Iraq; according to this analysis, cutting off funds for the war, or perhaps even moving towards impeachment of Bush and Cheney, is the only way to save Democrats from complicity with a hated status quo.

The other side of the argument has been carefully presented in the latest Democracy Corps strategy memo by Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and Anna Iparraguirre. . . the DCorps trio concludes that the partisan conflict in Washington is not eroding, and may actually be enhancing, a strong Democratic advantage going into 2008.

August is ending and Congress is wrapping up its summer recess. I conclude this post with a couple of newsletter resources that I find helpful to staying in the news loop. Each time I open my e-mails I am left with a good sense of renewal of the fight to get Congress to do its job.
References:

1. Congress News - Available via regular e-mails from Politico.com
2. The Democratic Strategist - Managing Editor Ed Kilgore (and co-editors William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira) also will send the newsletter via periodic e-mails.

My links:
Cross posted at The Reaction.
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Making Good Mondays is about the late Grace Paley.
Technorati tags: current affairs iraq links news news and politics politics congress democrats

NASA's Endeavor

(Image: NASA)
NASA's shuttle, "Endeavor" lands for the first time in several years in this picture. The STS-118 mission was a big success, despite intermittent problems aloft. According to NASA,

“The mission has lots of angles,” Matt Abbott, lead shuttle flight director, said. “There’s a little bit of assembly; there’s some resupply; there’s some repairs. And there are some high-visibility education and public affairs events. It’s a little bit of everything.”

It was as much about the people as about the technology. Shuttle crew-118 members are an interesting lot with a variety of very rich backgrounds:

• Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan - "Barb" was the load master responsible for the 5000+ pounds of supplies brought up to the ISS, and an almost equal amount brought back to earth. She is a former teacher now a fully trained astronaut, "twenty-two years after first being selected as Christa McAuliffe’s backup in the Teacher in Space Project." She is an expert robotic arm operator, as well as the teacher interacting with earth-bound ham radio operators and students in classrooms. At age 55, Barb's thorough organization and hard work kept the cargo exchange ahead of schedule so that Endeavor was able to leave the station early enough to land ahead of a hurricane headed for the Gulf.
• Mission Specialist David Williams - Canada's veteran astronaut, "Dave" made his nation and fellow crew members proud as he expertly led and performed multiple equipment repair and installation space walks. Easy going and solid, Dave's articulate and wonderfully interesting commentary was the highlight of some of the communication from space to ground with the media. Williams is a physician trained in family practice and emergency medicine.
• Commander Scott Kelly - the very effective leader of this important mission was in charge of making sure his space walkers were properly prepared and supported before and after each space walk. Decisive, but laid back, "Scott" was responsible for the extremely good flexibility that this often changing mission demanded. As each new situation presented itself, he was always willing and able to get his crew to do whatever the ground decided it would take to be successful. He flew as the Pilot of NASA's 1999 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Kelly was trained as a Navy test pilot. He served for a time as director of NASA' operations group in Star City Russia.
• Mission Specialist Tracy Caldwell - "TC-" the PhD was trained in chemistry. TC was the choreographer of the space walks. Responsible for the "intra-vehicular activity," her IVA direction helped make the EVAs of the 4 space walks work like clockwork. Like many astronauts her early experiences helped to prepare her for working in space. Donning her first tool belt at age 15, Tracy's dad taught her to be an electrician in his business. Tall and fit, Caldwell was a college sprinter and long-jumper in track and field in California. Racking up many special honors and awards, she also worked with hazardous materials as a student there.
• Pilot Charles Hobaugh - "Scorch" is a Marine colonel and a graduate of the Naval Academy. Big and strong-jawed, with prominent ears "Scorch" seems popular with his crew mates. He was a robotic arm operator for the mission, teaming up with ISS Mission Specialist , Clay Anderson. He is very athletic and seems to be enthusiastic about flying for NASA, while coming across with a kind of quiet humility. Another test pilot, Scorch qualified in STOL (short take off and landing) aircraft, such as the Harrier, as well as many other types of aircraft. Charley's first NASA mission was STS-104 in 2001, which installed the Quest airlock.
• Mission Specialist Richard Mastracchio - the veteran. An electrical engineer and highly skilled computer geek, "Rick" "has logged over 588 hours in space, including 3 EVAs totaling 18 hours and 13 minutes." He served as the ascent/flight engineer for the second time and participated in 3 of the 4 space walks on this mission. On this mission, Rick showed himself to be the epitome of honor and ethical choice, in my opinion: He reported damage to one of his space suit gloves, then accepted the mandatory sitting out of the remainder of his EVA assignment in the airlock, while Clay Anderson finished his own and Rick's tasks. He deserves respect for his example of the exact kind of good faith behavior in astronauts for which they have been selected.
• Mission Specialist Alvin Drew - "B-Alvin" the rookie high achiever - knew he wanted to be an astronaut at age 5 1/2. One of only a handful of African-American astronauts, he was born and raised in Washington D.C. He has double major BS degrees in Astronautical Engineering and in Physics from the Air Force Academy, as well as double MS degrees in Aerospace Science and Strategic Studies in Political Science. His jobs on the mission included working with Barb Morgan on materials transfer, as well as doing some computer and equipment repairs. An Air Force Colonel with lots of combat hours, he is a test pilot qualified in both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft with over 3000 hours of time in 30 types of aircraft. Chosen as an astronaut in 2000, he was selected almost at the last minute (May 2007) for the STS-118 mission, when Clay Anderson went aboard the ISS to replace Suni Williams.

What is behind all this success? Kenneth Chang at the New York Times wrote a very good analysis of NASA's safety culture headlined, "Caution Over Shuttle Shows Shift at NASA." To quote,

Confronted with the same kind of problem that doomed the space shuttle Columbia, NASA officials, chastened by years of criticism and upheaval in the agency, took a markedly different approach during the current mission of the Endeavour, calling on an array of new tools and procedures to analyze and respond to the problem.

While the Columbia faced much more serious damage — a 6- to 10-inch hole punched in a wing that let in hot gases during re-entry — outside officials said that with the Endeavour, NASA had taken steps far more elaborate and methodical in concluding that the craft was still safe.

“The comparison is night and day,” said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who served on the investigation board that looked into the Columbia disaster. He said he thought NASA had handled the Endeavour situation perfectly.

Later - I will feature the ISS Expedition 15 crew members, Flight Engineer Clay Anderson, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov in a subsequent post. The post landing story is well covered in an article in HappyNews.com., headlined: "Astronauts Thank Engineers, Scientists."
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is about the late Grace Paley.
Technorati tags: best events news nasa astronauts space program

Gonzales Gone -

What is The Reaction of this Texan to the news that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is resigning. His resignation probably will not surprise many of us. It will certainly displease his friends and supporters on the Right, who have become far fewer, by the way. Over here on the Left we will be inordinately pleased but somewhat saddened that it was so long in coming. The Department of Justice, the Peoples' Law Firm, will take some time to recover from its heretofore amazingly inept and partisan leadership.

Many of us felt that Gonzales, having started as the Texas "mouthpiece" for OCP (our current president) since long before they moved to Washington, was only in office because he knew something about OCP that had never been revealed. Given attorney-client privilege, we will perhaps never know what nefarious thing OCP got away with all this time. I jest, because, in all fairness we should not smear by innuendo those who have already done and said enough to disgrace themselves right out in the open.


Reprise this - Actually I'll just reprint my (8/13/07) Karl Rove resignation post and just change the names. It is still my reaction. Except for this one thing. Gonzales did more harm because he ran a department that had more reaching influence over the daily lives of the people of the United States, than did Karl Rove's political machinations. This is what I wrote following Rove's resignation.

"Texan coming home. . . ". . . Depending on where you are along the political spectrum, this is either good news or bad news: political junkies woke up this morning and learned that [Attorney General Alberto Gonzales] Presidential Political Adviser Karl Rove will be gone from the White house soon. Life handed us Democrats a lemon, and now we can make lemonade. As a Texas Democrat I have bad memories of the Texan [Gonzales] Rove. I would just as soon he stay where he is living now.

. . . What do I think? It will be interesting to see who moves into the vacated office. In some ways OCP (our current president) has made better choices the second time around. Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Josh Bolton is probably a better chief of staff than his predecessor. Stephen Hadley is probably better at his job, than was Condoleezza Rice. Etc., etc. It would be a very good thing if the same thing happened in this case, but I am not holding my breath.

People might wonder who will be the next Attorney General. I sincerely hope that it is not Michael Chertoff. We have a pretty accurate resume to peruse by looking at his recent record heading the Department of Homeland Security and its lousy performance during Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is in the midst of its Second Happy Anniversary of the Hurricane, and it does not look too good for the taciturn Chertoff. I think the Democrats might put up a fight over that nomination. Actually this is probably a trial balloon that will go psssst! in a day or two. This is probably wishful thinking on my part. The Democrats might just cave on this one, too. I would then get to add that one to my growing list.
Cross posted at The Reaction.

Technorati tags: gonzales news news and politics politics

Blog subjects - #3 of Series

Blog subjects are as varied as books on the shelves of a library. This post, the third in a series on blogging, is about choosing subjects for writing, and maintaining one's quality and variety in blogs that get regular posts. I looked at what I have previously written on this as well as wisdom from another source.

What did I discover in the navel-lint? My goal today is to glean and share at least one important and unique idea from each of those previous posts. The following paragraphs list the subject, the date of the post, its title and quotes from the original post:
Quality political blogging - This post was a critique of (OCP's) our current president's 2007 State of the Union speech. For the post to work for the reader, who may already know the basic news story, I have to add something of value to it. These are my thoughts on 1-24-07 - SOTU "post mortem". To quote,

Opinion writing is what we bloggers do; we do not produce original "news." . . . I have no illusions that I can sway opinion. I do understand that readers might be interested in my particular "take" on current events. I often visit my "favorites" to see what they think about a current happening or issue.
. . . Readers will return to my site . . . only if they like the quality of my writing. Form, as well as substance, is important. . . I am drawn to an author's excellent use of the language, lack of errors, logical train of thought or argument, etc. And good posters pay attention to readability.

Variations on a theme - Using a theme is something that can add interest and fun to a piece of writing. It is fun to do and it can be fun to read. Such a theme came to me on 6-29-06 - Why do birds write? To quote a few of the variations,

It is early here because I am what is known as a "lark," rather than an "owl." I am at my best in the morning, and begin an intellectual decline around 4:00 in the afternoon. If I were an "owl" I would still be snoozing.
Writers/birds can be self-absorbed. We think about what we do and how we do it, because we hope someone will read what we write. . . Baby birds begin writing early, too. Larks and owls often begin serious writing as children. . . . The bloggosphere is like birdland to the uninitiated. To some we sound like a flock of grackles who have infested an inhospitable urban landscape. And the two political camps sometimes characterize their opponents as vermin birds, who should be netted, smoke-bombed or peppered with birdshot.
Why do birds sing? In a comment and e-mail to this blogger I spoke about why I blog. Here is what I said:

As for "lefty" blogs, there are several benefits, in my opinion:
We get our "prejudices" reinforced. It feels good to be validated.
In writing, I am able to clarify for myself what my real opinions are. The act of writing, for me, helps to resolve some of my ambivalence, as well as engender new thoughts and ideas. The "fuzzy mess" in my head gets a little untangled. Self-expression is good for the soul.
One of my readers likes the way I put disparate ideas together. He calls me "the queen of synthesizers." Compliments are nice.

When and where to publish? Hat tip to Maud Newton for a link to a great post about the value of writing at a blog. It is by "Oronte" at Inside Higher Ed. The post argues for giving standing to blogs as "published works."

My links:

My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is about Grace Paley.

Technorati tags: blogging daily personal writing

When is it the government's business?

Government officials around the world sometimes get into areas where they should not go. Invasions of privacy, including those of the U.S. government, are not always useful or even lawful. In Europe, where fact and reality must have its own standing, the U.S. government's views of EU realities are not always welcomed. And the Chinese government's intrusions into the private lives of its citizens is notorious.
Wholesale screening for ties to terrorists? The U.S. government made a mistake when it made it too hard for foreigners to get into the country after 9/11/01. The result was a very costly brain drain. The loss of the intellectual richness brought by foreign students to American academia and business is incalculable. And we may be about to make the same mistake in the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) arena as well. The burden of proof should not be on legitimate students or foreign aid workers. The government's over generalizations regarding potential threat can be very counterproductive. The International Herald Tribune (8/24/07) has the story: "Plan to screen aid groups for terror ties may be revised." To quote,

Critics fear the U.S. Agency for International Development proposal would violate charities' privacy and drive away beneficiaries.

A Bush administration proposal to screen foreign aid workers and recipients for possible ties to terrorists has drawn criticism from private and religious aid groups, but there were indications that it might be revised before being adopted, aid organizations and administration officials said.

Under the proposal, promulgated this month by the U.S. Agency for International Development, groups that receive its foreign aid money for the delivery of services to the poor would have to provide detailed information about their own personnel and possibly about others who benefit from the aid.

Over-generalized assumptions about all Muslims? This practice brought us the war in Iraq when there were no Iraqis on the airplanes crashing into the World Trade towers. It brought the sad episode of Homeland Security's wholesale questioning of American Muslims shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It brings the unfortunate ignorance of phrases such as "Islamo-fascists." And it continues to bring discrimination upon U.S. citizens who happen to be of the Muslim faith. And it does nothing to repair still strained US-EU relations. The Financial Times' Simon Kuper (8/23/07) wrote: "EU Muslims: seeking jihad or democracy?"

The politics of the EU’s 16m Muslims is a much-discussed topic. Some commentators, particularly in the US, portray these followers of Islam as a unified bloc, pushing European nations towards radical policies.

. . . Academics who study European Muslims argue, however, that in most countries few of them vote; they are not a cohesive voting bloc; and the overwhelming majority supports democracy and mainstream European parties – generally of the left. European Muslim parties exist, such as France’s Euro-Palestine List, and gain media attention but hardly any votes.

If politicians take the risk of terrorist attacks into account when they make foreign policy decisions, then several hundred would-be jihadis have more influence on European policies than do their 16m fellow European Muslims.

Government interferes in the business of the family - The U.S. conservative right-wing agenda has brought opposition to women's rights to control of their bodies, discrimination against gays and lesbians, and opposition to international assistance with birth control. This government in peoples' bedrooms is also one of the hallmarks of the Chinese government. The biggest example is their one child policy, undertaken to control the overgrowth of their population. But, as with many such policies regarding sexuality, it had unintended consequences.
BBC News (8/25/07) carried this story: "China to act on gender imbalance"

The Chinese government says it is drafting new laws to tackle the growing gender imbalance caused by the widespread abortion of female foetuses.

The practice is already banned, but new rules are expected to set out specific punishments for parents and doctors.

China's Family Planning Association (CFPC) has revealed the extent of the imbalance - in one city there are eight young boys for every five girls.

Experts fear the phenomenon could have unpredictable social consequences.

When is it the government's business? Beware when governmental officials claim that the threat of a potential danger outweighs the basic rights of the citizenry. My government is not protecting me by spying on me. Beware when the attacks of the 9/11/01 terrorists inside the United States become an excuse to wage "a global war on terror." Beware when our government goes it alone to war, dismissing generations of valuable international alliances. Not in my name do they deny basic human rights to suspects, covertly condone torture and extraordinary rendition, or disobey basic international law. The government does not have my permission to make war the be-all and end-all of the economy. The government's business is to be rational, smart, balanced, respectful and thoughtful in doing its business. We are not required to accept less even in so-called extraordinary times.
My links: My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Making Good Mondays is about the universe.
Technorati tags: current affairs culture family news news and politics politics eu china foreign aid foreign policy

Political prognostication presumptuous?

In the wake of a failed Bush administration, the 2008 election campaigns began immediately after the 2006 elections. To elect Democrats in 2008 is a big political goal that will use millions of dollars, gazillions of spoken words, and gallons and gallons of journalistic ink (electronically speaking, of course).

Why on earth would politicians want to subject themselves to such a high cost endeavor? What candidate tactics will be new to this election? What will the current administration and congress leave behind to govern?
What does current news or commentary foreshadow for 2009 and the beginning of a new era of governance? Today is Friday, August 24, 2007. It seems to me that we can presume at least three issues will continue to drive electoral politics: the war in Iraq, an increase in the influence of the blogosphere, and a rise in power at the centers of both political parties. To illustrate, I offer these items.
The war in Iraq - I have always been sorry that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo never got a chance to be President. This man has a capacity for speaking the truth, utilizing heart mind and spirit, and being wise. His words urging Democrats to find their vision are featured at the beginning of this piece. The Center for Media and Democracy post by John Stauber (8-20-07) was titled, "Iraq: The "Gift" That Keeps On Bleeding." The author examines current alliances within the Democratic party, how the 110th Congress is reacting to the war in Iraq, the Center's contributions to the YearlyKos conference, and what Iraq War Veterans Against the War are doing right now to make a difference. Stauber also plugs Mat Bai's popular new book, "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics." To quote what really caught my eye from the post,

Shortly after the November 2006 election . . . liberal legend Mario Cuomo analyze[d] the Democratic Party in the wake of its stunning electoral victories that had given Democrats control of the US Congress. Cuomo criticized the Democratic Party for lacking vision, big ideas and a winning political argument. His recipe for future Democratic victories was simple: "You seize the biggest idea you can, the biggest idea you can understand. And this is what moves elections."

Cuomo then dared to voice an inconvenient truth: "Now it's 2006 and we're all rejoicing. Why? Because of Iraq. A GIFT. A gift to the Democrats. A lot of whom voted for the war anyway." The former New York governor challenged his partisan audience, "If Iraq is not an issue, then what issues do we have to talk about? … Where does that leave you? It leaves you in the same position you were in in 2004 – without an issue. Because you have no big idea."

The story of Cuomo’s speech is from the concluding pages of Matt Bai's new book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. Bai writes, “An uncomfortable silence hung over the ballroom. No one had yet expressed the situation quite that crassly, although everyone knew it was an accurate accounting.”

Blogosphere journalism - The mainstream media can no longer hold an exclusive claim to professional journalism. The blogosphere has increasingly broken the news, kept important stories alive, and done significant investigative or analytical writing. Members of the mainstream media must now check the web the first thing after starting their shifts. Jay Rosen at PressThink compiled a list (augmented by comments) of the best examples of bloggers' significant valid journalistic coups of recent times. It makes one proud! Quoting just a bit,

A reading list, with different kinds of complications—some big, some small—to his tales of virtue and greatness in reporting and blogging.

. . . This is what I pulled together—draft version—as my list of somewhat representative, by no means definitive or even halfway-complete list of cases.

. . . March, 2007. Firedoglake at the Libby Trial. Popular lefty political blog provides the only blow by blow coverage of the trial by splitting the work among six contributors who bring big knowledge to bear for a committed-to-the-case readership; news media repy on the blog for its updates and analysis.

Congress center weighting - Centrists in both parties are becoming more influential in Congress. They have the votes to help one wing or another of either party to pass or block any bills introduced. Many presume that the congressional and presidential elections will be won by those who can garner enough votes from the centers of both parties to win majorities. Today's news items focus only the congress. However, it must be noted that members of the House and Senate are running for President while still serving.

• Republicans - Influential Senator John Warner made the headlines yesterday following his recent trip to Iraq. Faiz at Think Progress posted this yesterday: " Sen. Warner Calls On President Bush To Begin Iraq Withdrawal In September." To quote Warner,
  

  I say to the President, respectfully, pick whatever number you wish. You do not want to lose the momentum. But certainly, in the 160,000 plus — say 5,000 — could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year.

• Democrats - John Kraushaar, from Politico.com, wrote (8/24/07) about the clear split in the Democratic party between Liberals and recently elected Centrist legislators. "Liberal blogger targets ‘Bush Dog' Dems." To quote,

  A leading liberal blogger has declared political war against centrist Democrats – the latest move in an intensifying show of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Congress by the once-friendly blogosphere.
  
  Matt Stoller, who blogs at the well-trafficked OpenLeft.com, has compiled a list of 38 House “Blue Dog” Democrats who have voted with Republicans on key legislation, and called on the activist community to put pressure on them – and perhaps challenge them in primaries – if they fail to shape up.

Predicting or trying to influence the outcome of the 2008 election will keep all of us political news junkies well occupied for the next year and a half. The way I will make my choice among the Democratic presidential hopefuls will be to ascertain who could be the best guardian of America's Constitution. Pure and simple. How will you choose?

Here are some additional blogging references:

1. Project for Excellence in Journalism: "Understanding news in the information age"
2. Public Knowledge - "a Washington DC based advocacy group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture."
3. Happy News.com - "Real news. Compelling stories. Always Positive"
4. Texas Weekly-"Texas government, Texas politics"

My links:
Cross posted at The Reaction.
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is "universal."
Technorati tags: articles blogging current affairs news and politics politics journalism

Middle East Report Card

??? -
Does the Bush administration deserve an apple for doing a good job in the Middle East, or is it worthy of a lemon for failure? A majority of the American people would choose the lemon, according to the most recent public opinion polls. And the missteps were not just in Iraq.

Afghanistan - "The Good War Gone Bad." It started as an apple and morphed into a lemon. The blog Informed Comment Global Affairs - is Juan Cole's group blog. One of its authors, Middle East specialist Barnett Rubin, points out that the policy in Afghanistan was wrong almost from the beginning of the administration's invasion. With a flawed and poorly planned policy and poor implementation the results are predictable. A few weeks ago I saved this post illustrating my point: "New York Times on Failure in Afghanistan" by Barnett R. Rubin (8/12/07). To quote,

In today's New York Times, reporters David Rohde and David Sanger published a retrospective overview of how the Bush administration has failed in Afghanistan. While the article contains no revelations to those following the issue closely, some parts of the account have not appeared in print in such a prominent place before. The article provides a comprehensive overview of how, in the words of the NYT's headline, "The 'Good War' Went Bad."

More about Afghanistan - a different metaphor. Barnett Rubin did his promised follow-ups later. Titled, "WSJ vs. NYT: is the Afghan glass half empty or half full?" (8/14/07); and "Wherein One Pessoptimist Meets Another" (8/20/07), Barnett's work is an outstanding analysis of the actual truth about Afghanistan. The first of these two is a very well-reasoned argument against a Wall Street Journal article by a neocon acquaintance published just after the NYT piece. The "Pessoptimist" piece is an interesting profile of an Afghan woman's experience of going home to Afghanistan, to find the situation much worse than when she originally fled her native land for America.

Invading Iraq became the grand distraction from Afghanistan. After ignoring the vast reservoir of good will from many potential ally nations towards the U.S. after the 9/11/01 attacks, and letting Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, the US. invented reasons to attack Iraq. What huge regrets remain for us who knew that decision was wrong from the beginning. No apple for this worst administration ever, as Keith Olberman would say.

We are in a land of lemons, I mean lemmings. Those mistakes and failures haunt us today in the diminution of U.S. institutions. The mainstream media was co-opted in many ways in the process. Congress became completely ineffectual as a co-equal branch of government. The Supreme Court lurched to the right. And Bush administration attacks on the Constitution have made us less, rather than more safe. The U.S. became an aggressor nation for the first time in my memory, and the torture of other human beings became an authorized U.S. practice. Worse, people in the helping professions have been there to participate.


APA: the American Psychological Association - Now psychology, one of the sister professions of my own (social work), has also become co-opted, refusing to ban the practice. They deserve a lemon for this failure. The story comes fromDaily Kos' Valtin, who posted "Edge of the Precipice: APA Meets the Devil's Details" (8/18/07). To quote,

APA . . . debate between anti-torture forces and the military is one-sided. Not because anti-torture activists aren't getting their say, but because of the tremendous weight of the U.S. government, and the psychological reality that conformity to power is a tremendously strong motivator. In addition, it's believed that the pro-government, pro-military forces already have the majority on the Council. It's not clear that the old moratorium resolution, or a new amendment crafted by Neil Altman and others that attempts to sneak a moratorium of sorts into the new resolution, will even be allowed to come to a vote.

Altman's amendment calls for psychologists only to work in health care roles, not as advisers to interrogation or conditions of detention. I still find this unacceptable, but it may be the most anti-torture forces can hope for at this point... if there's any reason left to hope at all.

After tomorrow, we'll know if my pessimism was merited.

And the Kossack's pessimism was merited. The APA did cave! Yahoo! News (8/20/07) reported, "US psychologists scrap interrogation ban." And the justification is awful. This is sour lemonade. To quote,

The nation's largest group of psychologists scrapped a measure Sunday that would have prohibited members from assisting interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers.

The American Psychological Association's policy-making council voted against a proposal to ban psychologists from taking part in any interrogations at U.S. military prisons "in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights."

Instead, the group approved a resolution that reaffirmed the association's opposition to torture and restricted members from taking part in interrogations that involved any of more than a dozen specific practices, including sleep deprivation and forced nakedness. Violators could be expelled and lose their state licenses to practice.

Critics of the proposed ban who spoke before the vote at the 148,000-member organization's annual meeting said the presence of psychologists would help insure interrogators did not abuse prisoners.

We need apples to be in ascendancy. These are times still too sour for my taste. I am counting the days until a change of administrations, until there is at least a chance to give the teacher an apple for a job well done.


Technorati tags: current affairs news news and politics politics middle east afghanistan psychology

Activism - Power through Words and Feet

Activism exercises power through what is written or spoken. The words chosen are crucial to making a difference. Change happens when activists speak out powerfully enough about what actions need to be taken. Except for the war in Iraq, few Bush administration initiatives have raised more furor than the recent late night Congressional amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Journalists may or may not see themselves as activists. The mainstream press is beginning to be more active in general against the current administration, perhaps taking their cue from the example of the New York Times. That newspaper originally broke the story about the existence of a warrant-less wiretapping program involving American citizens in the fall of 2006. Though I must say that even the Times held that story for a very long time. It has sometimes erred and occasionally blunted its investigative journalism over the years of the Bush administration. But they were more successful than most at keeping us informed. And they have done it again with Risen and Lichtblau's NYT story 8/18/07 , which I featured in one of my recent posts, "More on FISA" at South by Southwest. The NYT article revealed what the opposition to the amended FISA law has been doing following the bill becoming law.
Bloggers often see ourselves as activists. Increasingly the mainstream media find out what readers may be interested in by reading the blogs. Additionally, more and more bloggers work as investigative journalists who actually find and report original news items. At the very least the blogosphere is often responsible for keeping an issue alive in order to mobilize the action necessary to force change. Today I am featuring a links list of significant blogs on the subject of - FISA - who else is watching? :

• Scarecrow at Firedoglake "More Duplicity in the FISA Stampede"
• emptywheel at The Next Hurrah "Electronic Surveillance"
• The Anonymous Liberal (8/9/07, but with interesting updates) "A Major Loophole in the New FISA Legislation?" Author is an attorney.
• Marty Lederman at Balkanization (8/17/07) "Now, this is interesting," and (8/12/07) "The Mysteries of New FISA Section 105" A site for a number of academics
• Glenn Greenwald usually writes at Salon.com. From Crooks and Liars, however we get a chance to hear him speak:
  Glenn Greenwald on CSPAN: FISA , By: John Amato on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
• Crooks and Liars: category "NSA Wiretapping" - all stories on the subject

Back to the war in Iraq, we cannot imagine a much more powerful statement than one made by six soldiers who fought in Iraq, writing their truth on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. Soldiers acting as activists penned "The War as We Saw It" (on 8/19/07). Note that these military men would probably bristle at being called activists. To quote from their very courageous editorial,

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

[authors] Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Activists will be on their feet taking action at the local level during Congress' August recess. Very often utilizing the blogosphere for news and information, supportive voices and new ideas, they will be contacting or visiting their Senators and House members. Activists are organizing and attending protests, and advocating for a change in the direction Congress is taking regarding the Iraq war. The story, "Anti-war activists think global, act local" is from Politico.com (7/30/07). To quote,

Thwarted so far in Congress from forcing an end to the war in Iraq, anti-war activists are mobilizing to pressure members back home.

. . . Lawmakers will spend a month at home with voters in August, a prime opportunity for anti-war groups to influence them. Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.) met recently with representatives from the National League of Cities and the Center for American Progress to talk about local efforts, he said.

"It's the grass roots and the public taking hold of the issue. The push has to come from the bottom up," he said.

Activists cannot operate in a vacuum. It takes all kinds of actions to make a difference. Things as simple as taking the time to comment on a blog post, keeping up with the latest news, watching C-SPAN, noticing when influential members of the mainstream media let lies go unchallenged, doing an internet search when you don't understand something, talking politics to friends and family, or offering support to a burned out blogger - all are small acts of involvement of words and feet in the fight.
Cross posted at The Reaction.

Blogging How-to's: #2 of Series

What did I discover in the navel-lint as I looked back at my blog over time? A number of my posts were about blogging itself. My goal today is to glean and share at least one important and unique idea from each of those posts. The following paragraphs list the subject, the date of the previous post, its title and quotes from the original post:
Everything you wanted to know about creativity - "3-18-07 - "c" is for create. A quote,

First is the idea - Each time I decide the point of the post or choose a theme. I decide how to begin and end my argument, and what ideas or thoughts reinforce my reasons for writing about a particular subject. Editing toward a powerful lead and for a logical order of ideas is crucial.

Technorati tips - I am convinced that tagging helps me to get many more readers. Technorati is a widely used method for that. It is worth the effort to do it with all your posts, in addition to any labels you might also use. Each is different; both help get notice. On 10-26-06 I wrote - Tagging popular blog subjects. To quote,

How to include Technorati tags - Here's how I do it. It may not be the easiest but it works for me:

1. Using the "Edit HTML" form of my Blogger composer, I copy and past the following piece of code from my MS Word "boilerplate" document* - Technorati tags: [tagname] (switch to "Edit Html" tab to see the actual code)


2. Into the two [tagname] areas I insert the tag word in place of [tagname]. Thus the final "Tags:" HTML code might look like this: blogging weblog


3. Thus, in "Compose" mode, your Tag lines will have hotlinks that look like this: blogging weblog (switch to "Edit Html" tab to see the actual code)

Tips and tricks - This post contains several easy methods for how to do such things as using two browsers to read and edit at the same time, copy and paste URL addresses for links, avoid destructive little free programs that mess up your computer, effective "searches," avoiding losing a big block of unpublished copy, using news aggregators, and implanting good writing habits. On 3-11-06 I posted Life's lessons online.
One of my favorite bloggers, Grant McCracken, wrote something recently that surely applies to the blogosphere as a network. It is from his website, This Blog sits at the . . .from which I quote,

Each of us is a network. A messy, crowded, cloudy network. We are some rough, disorganized but not entirely unconnected composite of our experiences, relationships, interests and outlooks. We are diverse, complex and multiple.

. . . The issue here is how networks manage the great clouds of information they need to sustain themselves and to grow. It certainly makes since to "shadow" or to "ghost" other networks, to choose what they choose, to exchange what we've got. These cloudy selves are going too large to be sustained by their owners' efforts only. It is going to have to be a collaborative exercise. We are going to have to pool our resources. We are going to have to put our head's together. We are going to end up with some out of body, out of mind, out of network, cross dependencies that put at risk our conventional ideas of the discrete, free standing, independent, liberty seeking individual. Right?

I hope for each of my fellow bloggers a wealth of ideas, a clever turn of phrase, and inspirationl words for readers. Good writing is the key; there is no substitute for it.

NYT: More on FISA

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - Today James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times, thank goodness, are still looking at the law under FISA as recently pushed through and amended by Congress. Democratic leaders opposed the legislation, but did not successfully block it, out of fear that they would be criticized as being soft on terrorism. Many of the members may not have realized what they were doing, said Congressional aides. The NYT reports that Congressional Democrats have been meeting with the administration to raise their concerns that the legislation is "overly broad and troubling," and "and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought." The very vocal complaints also spoke to "the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are 'clearly erroneous' or not." To quote further from their very informative (8/19/07) article,

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

. . . Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States. These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

. . . Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

One of the most significant new revelations of the article concerns what the administration spokespersons asserted regarding the law which gives the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales the power to set up the new procedures and approve the way surveillance is conducted. To further quote the reporters on this crucial aspect of the issue - the position of the administration about what they will do or not do under the new FISA law,

. . . Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence, said the concerns raised by Congressional officials about the wide scope of the new legislation were “speculative.” But she declined to discuss specific aspects of how the legislation would be enacted.

. . . The legislation “restores FISA to its original and appropriate focus — protecting the privacy of Americans,” said Brian Roehrkasse, Justice Department spokesman. “The act makes clear that we do not need a court order to target for foreign intelligence collection persons located outside the United States, but it also retains FISA’s fundamental requirement of court orders when the target is in the United States.”

. . . At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

. . . Asked whether the administration considered the new legislation legally binding, Ms. Vines, the national intelligence office spokeswoman, said: “We’re going to follow the law and carry it out as it’s been passed.”. . . Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.

The authors do not name the Democrats meeting with the White House about the amended FISA law. We would not be surprised if none of the misguided Senators or House Members who voted to approve the bill came to complain about it to the administration. They would leave that fight to those losing Democrats whose votes did not prevail that late Saturday night. It is now too late for the "yes"voters to read and understand the legislation they passed. My general understanding is that one reads and understands before casting a vote.
Yes, I am still so mad at those on THE YES LIST, (corrected) I can hardly resist continuing to complain. My planned forgiveness remains incomplete, not that it matters in the least, of course.
Cross posted at The Reaction.
Technorati tags: [tagname]

Is Mother Nature on the rampage?

(NASA Images: Peru earthquake map;
AIRS Weather Snapshot: Hurricane Dean August 16, 2007)

Natural disasters that have already occurred or are in the making are making headlines around the globe today. Peru was hit by a devastating earthquake, hurricanes named Flossie and Dean popped up in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and there is major flooding in South Asia, China and North Korea. In every case we see the contrast between advanced space age technology vs. people's powerlessness in the face of their own environmental shortsightedness or poverty, combined with nature's ability to change the course of human events.
Peru quake leaves victims in areas without water - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration map shows the remote areas in Peru hit by the quake, but it cannot show the seismic event's devastation to a country with large impoverished areas void of modern infrastructure. Yahoo! News has full coverage of the Peru quake. The New York Times headlined, "Toll Climbs in Peru; Areas Lack Water and Power."
Today is the end of World Water Week, ironically. With our Texas city to the south, Houston, still soggy from recent tropical storm generated floods, there is definitely too much water to handle. Weather events around the world this week seem perfectly timed to make the points of concerned scientists meeting this week in Sweden. In this case it is not nature alone that impacts the weather. Global climate change has been caused in part by human action. The Raw Story headlined, "World Water Wee to focus on climate change, biofuels." To quote from the story about the big meeting,

. . . with 2,500 international experts expected to attend.

The theme of the annual event's 17th edition will be "Progress and Prospects on Water: Striving for Sustainability in a Changing World."

Organiser Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) noted that water was playing a key role in global warming.

Waters in the Gulf of Mexico may soon be disturbed by Hurricane Dean. Already the potentially dangerous hurricane has disturbed the course of NASA's current mission in space, about to come to a close. Today's NASA astronaut space walk is being shortened as a result of the threat posed by Hurricane Dean, according to Tariq Malik at Space.com. To quote,

Two astronauts will step outside the International Space Station (ISS) Saturday on what will likely be a shortened spacewalk as NASA casts a wary eye toward Hurricane Dean.

. . . Endeavour's STS-118 crew is scheduled to return to Earth Wednesday, but the looming threat of Hurricane Dean to NASA's shuttle and ISS Mission Control centers at JSC prompted the agency to work towards a possible Tuesday landing. The space agency is hoping to preserve the option of landing Endeavour early in case the hurricane forces the evacuation of Mission Control, which would then require NASA to transfer shuttle operations to a backup site at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A different series of sesmic events have caused casualties and left miners trapped. This time in the northern hemisphere, the tremors probably came as a result of humans mining for coal under a now-shaky Utah mountain. According to the New York Times, "Utah Mine Rescuers Halt Search After 3 Deaths."
Mother Nature ironically joined the two stories into a potential coal mine tragedy at a flooded mine in China. Dubai's Aljazeera.net carried the headline,"Floods trap coal miners in China" (8/18/07). Quoting from the story,

More than 170 coal miners have been trapped underground in eastern China after heavy rains brought floods to the area.

The official Xinhua news agency said 584 miners were rescued after Friday's accident at Xintai in Shandong province, but attempts to reach the remaining 172 were being hampered by heavy rain.

. . . Poor safety standards make Chinese coal mines among the most dangerous in the world. About 1,800 coal miners died in accidents during the first half of 2007.

Earlier this month, 69 coal miners were rescued in the central province of Henan after being trapped underground for three days by flooding caused by heavy rain.

Very vulnerable people lost their lives in Peru and also in North Korea. The latter story is also about too much water. North Koreans are vulnerable to actual famine and starvation. Floods there have devastated the country's already limited food supplies. The flood waters may also derail what could have been a rare and very valuable summit meeting between North and South Korean leaders. Aljazeera.net has the story headline, "Floods postpone August Korea summit," from which I quote,

North Korea has asked that a planned summit with South Korea be delayed, citing recent floods that have devastated the country.

. . . It would be only the second time that the leaders of the divided Koreas have held a summit.

. . . South Korea has offered an emergency aid package of more than $7m to the North after days of flooding wrought havoc across large parts of the country, sparking fears that existing food shortages might worsen. The North says the floods have left at least 80 people dead, many more missing, and about 300,000 others homeless.

. . . An estimated 23 million people or 10 per cent of North Korea's population were killed in a famine in the second half of the 1990s, partly blamed on flood damage to farmland.

Natural disasters can produce breathtaking losses of human life and heart breaking instances of widespread human misery. A related story about the Korean floods from Russia's RIA Novosti today published other statistics,

In a sign of the magnitude of the disaster, the normally secretive North Korean regime has been uncharacteristically forthcoming in describing the extent of the damage.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that rains in some areas along the Taedong River were the heaviest in the country's history, and said that about 11 percent of its rice and corn fields had been destroyed at the height of the growing season.

KCNA said that about 200,000-300,000 people were now homeless, although international aid officials believe the number is probably far higher.

Statistics are often very hard to come by in natural disasters. In one such example the story is about widespread floods now occurring in India and neighboring nations. From a BBC story comes this South Asia flood statistic: "The number [estimate] of those killed varies widely from 500 to 3,000."
Disaster death toll statistics never put a human face with the numbers. In order to relate to just a few of the actual thousands of people caught up in the current disasters on the ground, I conclude with a link to this great article from the BBC News titled, "Aid worker diary: Indian floods" (August 10-16, 2007). To quote just a bit,

Devastating monsoon rains have submerged thousands of villages in northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
In India, as flood waters recede, aid agencies, non-governmental organisations and governments are stepping up their efforts to help the thousands who have lost homes, livestock and livelihoods.

Ian Bray, from Oxfam, has kept a diary of his experiences:

. . . Villagers surround us desperate to tell us their story. It's pandemonium as everybody wants to speak. A chair is brought from somewhere for me to sit down. The vast majority of this village are Dalit - so-called Untouchables. All are landless and all are without a job now. The floods have taken away their chance of working on the land - not their land, someone else's land - and the flood has come at the worse possible time for them.

Link: OneWorld.net
Cross posted at The Reaction.
Technorati tags: current affairs culture events news thoughts floods coal mine quake peru china india korea