More on Dan Rather: he's filed a $70 million wrongful dismissal suit against CBS, and "intent on vindicating his reputation, capable of financing an expensive legal challenge, and armed with the power of subpoena, Rather will charge his attorneys to interrogate news executives and perhaps administration officials under oath on a secret and sordid chapter of the Bush presidency." [Link]
Rather could have simply allowed the statute of limitations to run out, lived off his millions, and faded away. But the incident ate at him. On one level, the Bush National Guard story is about Bush and the National Guard. On another, of course, it is about Rather's reputation. But on yet another it is about CBS's overwhelming desire to please the Bush White House and censor itself. The White House campaign against Rather has been so successful that many in the national press corps behave as though in mouthing its talking points they are demonstrating their own independent thought.
"Rathergate" followup
Dan Rather's speaking out about his firing over the George Bush/National Guard memo. He's convinced that the memo was real, and that Bush was really getting special treatment during his National Guard days (if not AWOL). In case you forgot, anecdotal and other evidence suggesting that Bush had simply ditched his National Guard service and got away with it was widely discussed through his first term and migh've been a threat to his 2004 campaign. At the time of the dust-up over the memo,
Some thought that the memo, if a provable fake, might be Karl Rove's way of putting the story to rest: leak a bogus memo that could successfully be disputed, and by making a convincing argument that the memo was a fake, imply that the story's not true. That might've been a stretch (Occam's Razor etc.), and Rather's still convinced that the memo was genuine.
"I've learned a good deal since that time," said Rather. "It's reported that Sumner Redstone [president of Viacom] ... was described as being enraged that the news division, this story, had cost Viacom and CBS in Washington, and he wanted Dan Rather and everybody connected with it out."
"They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News," he said.
Rather said he still believes the 60 Minutes report was correct. "[CBS] sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain," he stated, "and in so doing I think they undermined a lot at CBS News."
"Nobody to this day has shown that these documents were fraudulent," continued Rather, referring to the disputed memos featured in the 60 Minutes story. "Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day." Rather added that he believed somebody with subpoena power could get to the bottom of the matter pretty quickly.
Surfing Gaza
The great surfing Doc Paskowitz has delivered fifteen surfboards to Gaza in Palestine. [Link]
His hope is that the new boards will inspire Gaza’s surfers to start manufacturing their own. “From a board comes a group of guys who ride,” he said. “From the group comes a business, then an industry, then a fantastic amount of money. I’m talking about billions, all from one board.”
That seems far-fetched for now. Since the militant group Hamas seized control of Gaza, the main commercial crossing has been closed and many local industries have collapsed.
One of the Palestinian surfers, Muhammad Jayab, described himself in the article Dr. Paskowitz had read as sympathetic to Hamas. That did not put Doc off. “To be able to go to your enemies and give them something that makes them happy is a most fulfilling adventure,” he said.
Bad mortgages
Borrowers are lured into mortgages they can't really afford, structured so that foreclosure is a likely outcome. This has stimulated the housing market in the short term, but what effect will it have in the longer term? [Link]
The boom in this industry has been extraordinary. “From 1994 to 2005, the subprime loan market grew from $35 billion to $665 billion,” the Center for Responsible Lending notes in a report entitled “Losing Ground: Foreclosures in the Subprime Market and Their Cost to Homeowners.”Sierra/Locke Joint Statement
But so has the bust. “We estimate that one-third of families who received a subprime loan in 2005 and 2006 will ultimately lose their homes,” the report predicts.
While opening up the possibility of homeownership to people with lesser means or spottier credit is something that progressives have advocated for a long time, the way the private sector has done this has been criminal. “Because the subprime market is designed to serve borrowers who have credit problems, one might expect the industry to offer subprime loan products that do not magnify the risk of loan failure,” the report says. “In fact, the opposite is true.”
Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke posted a joint statement about ... what should we call it, Sierragate? They don't seem to disagree. (If you don't know what this is about, check out my earlier posts on the subect, on March 27 and 31.
Advocates of Sturgeon's Law will appreciate the new, free Google TiSP service, where you're one flush away from a high-speed solution. [Link]
To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward.Support your local zoologist
David Pescovitz reports that Loren Coleman will have to take a break from his great cryptozoology blog, Cryptomundo, due to financial hardship. [Link] You can help by posting a donation or buying something at Cryptomundo.
A titanic findJames Cameron found Jesus - literally. [Link]
Casualties in IraqThe New York Times has created a visualization of casualties in Iraq. Above is a piece of it, but you should ch eck out the whole thing. It's big, but then so's the list of casualties. Here's the legend:
Some interesting bits about the NY Times in a rare interview with its publisher:
- There may be no paper version of the Times five years from now
- Print and online news desks at the Times have merged.
- "We have ... five people working in a special development unit whose only job is to initiate and develop things related to the electronic world - Internet, cellular, whatever comes."
- "We are curators, curators of news. People don't click onto the New York Times to read blogs. They want reliable news that they can trust."
Extropy Institute has set up a legal support fund for Keith Henson, who's been tracked down and arrested after several years as a fugitive. His story's unbelievable – and shocking, because it's true. His crime: joking about Scientology. [Link]
On Friday, Arizona police arrested a 64-year-old man — a fugitive since 2001 in a bizarre war that mixes free speech, copyright law, and the Church of Scientology.
Keith Henson’s journey began seven years ago while innocuously watching another critic mock the group on an internet newsgroup. In a gonzo discussion about procuring a “Tom Cruise missile,” they’d joked about working with “Secret Agent 99, wearing a stunning black leather biker outfit.” Other posters joined in the internet discussion, asking whether Tom Cruise missiles are affected by wind.”No way,” Keith joked. “Modern weapons are accurate to a matter of a few tens of yards.”
The police were informed of his “threatening” posts, and Henson was arrested.
Just say no to terror...
Bruce Schneier notes that we can defeat the terrorists by refusing to be terrorized. [Link]
Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.
It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.
But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.
Saddam's exit
Terry MCarthy at ABC News blogs an "uncut" account of Saddam's hanging. [Link]
There are five men in black face masks who are visible on the gallows platform around Saddam, acting as guards. As they guide him towards the trap door and put the noose over his head, they start chanting religious slogans with the names of Moqtada al Sadr (the head of the Mahdi army, accused of organizing death squads against Sunnis) and Baqr al Sadr (the father-in-law of Moqtada). Saddam, a Sunni, is outraged at this last-minute provocation, and tells them to “go to hell.” This is generally where the two TV stations cut the video, but on at least one occasion that we saw, Arabiya allowed the video to keep rolling: The cell phone camera is jerked down to the ground, as if the person holding it had to conceal the camera, then it is slowly raised up to Saddam again, and suddenly his body shoots down through the trapdoor. At this, the Arabiya anchor came on and made a scissors symbol with two fingers with a mischievous grin on his face, as if to say that they really shouldn’t have shown that, but so be it. A cynical voyeuristic ploy, nudge nudge wink wink...
NewsTrust
Thanks to Boing Boing for posting a pointer to a comparison of Digg and NewsTrust at Mercury News. I'm not a Digg fan, but NewsTrust is intriguing. – stories are rated on ten factors. Will I read it? Not sure. Newscloud is similar and even more interesting than NewsTrust, I think. It's a news-sharing community.
Rob LevinRob Levin, aka Lilo, was instigator and active proponent of the Peer-Directed Projects Center that runs the freenode IRC server that serves so many in the free software community. Rob passed away September 16th following a bicycle accident in Houston on the 12th. [Link]
More information in the discussions at Digg and Slashdot.
I never met him face to face but we had quite a few conversations at freenode. He had a powerful commitment to free and open source software, and it wasn't just talk. He was living it.
Make a donation to PDPC in his behalf.
This is intense!A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness. - Miller in "Repo Man"
Thought about this quote after seeing a couple of very similar articles about 9/11 conspiracy theories this week - from Michael Ventura and RU Sirius. Seems they were both having the same thought, dipping into a pervasive cosmic unconsciousness...
Ventura is skeptical of blogs because "they often fail to cite their sources, and there's no way to know if they've confirmed their facts." He's even more skeptical of the 9/11 consipiracy theories, especially the one that says it was an "inside job," that the U.S. government brought down the World Trade Center. I won't say the thought hasn't crossed my own mind – an analysis that asks who benefited most from the attack could point to the Bush Administration, who clearly took full advantage of the post 9/11 senes of national unity and fear of terrorism to further it's own agenda (as Keith Olbermann said earlier this week). However as one who's played (ironically, not seriously) with many conspiracy theories in the past, I've always had a skepticism similar to Ventura's:
The conspiracy usually outlined would require dozens of people to do lots of manual labor for a considerable time with no leak then and no leak since. Perfect secrecy accomplished by, say, a hundred people. As a journalist and student of history, to me that would be strangest of all.
In this week's article he goes on to make a good point:
Even if these conspiracy theorists are right, does it matter? Does it matter which cabal of murderous madmen was responsible? What matters more is that cabals of murderous madmen now set the world's agenda. It's easy to say that, one way or another, it's always been like that, and I would agree that there have always been cabals, and some have been powerful, but what has been more powerful by far is the counterpoint of momentum and inertia of the masses of us, throughout the ages, who want to live our own lives by our own lights and do the best we can. What's changed is that technology has given cabals vastly disproportionate power.....
RUSirius is skeptical of conspiracy theories anti-conspiracy theories... pretty much everybody. He reviews a book from Popular Mechanics called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts
It happens sometimes. People just explode . . . natural causes. - Agent Rogersz in "Repo Man."Ann Richards
The New York Times has an obit of Ann Richards. She was powerful, she had heart, and she was hilarious, and we could do with a bunch more like her, but no such luck &ndashl; we're cursed with anemic, gutless hacks on the one hand, and a bold set of thieves and liars on the other. I suppose we really lost Ann Richards a long time ago, when she didn't quite manage to beat George W. in that fateful gubernatorial election that set him on the path to the White House. I only wish she could have run again... and again.
Effective security vs "security theatre"Bruce Schneier says the measures implemented at airport security gates aren't making us any safer; they're just for show. [Link]
But only temporarily. Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-on items won't make us safer, either. It's not just that there are ways around the rules, it's that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.Who are those four guys and why are their horses glaring at me?
It's easy to defend against what terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people in front of airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.
Security measures that attempt to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.
When the Wall Street Journal starts talking Apocalypse, that's gotta be a bad sign.
A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.""The YouTube War"
In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.
Ana Marie Cox notes that, while the architects of the Iraq War and their boosters argue that media portrays the war as a downer whereas soldiers on the ground could tell you all the good things that are happening, you can see that's not the case by surfing through the videos they're sharing on sites like YouTube. [Link]
By that logic, putting cameras in the hands of those soldiers on the ground should provide enough celebration for an "Up with Iraq" musical.Collaborative news survey
There's music in a lot of the soldiers' videos, but precious little uplift. In "The War Tapes," one soldier/auteur complains frequently about the risks he and his comrades take to protect the property of the Halliburton subsidiary subcontracted to feed the troops: "Why the f--- am I sitting out here guarding a truck full of cheesecake?" he laments. After another guardsman supplies a Bush Administration-approved justification for their presence (freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people, stability in the Middle East), the cameraman asks, "tell me how you really feel." Deadpan, he continues: "After that happens, maybe we can buy everybody in the world a puppy."
Dan Gillmor reports a very interesing collaborative new survey conducted byh Hsing Wei from Harvard Univiersity's Kennedy School ov Government. Good data about why people participate. [Link]
A desire to share knowledge and area of expertise was the top motivator, conveyed by 78.3%. A particular dimension of sharing revealed in the “Other” response option was exposing a larger narrative and set of opinions. Another primary motivation for writing and/or editing was to further action or attention on an important issue, 40.5%. A good number, 29.7% stated they were “professionals with first-hand knowledge that can enhance public information about current issues.” Only a small percentage, 7.9%, mentioned any interest in pursuing journalism.Another Indonesian tsunami
Another tsunami struck Indonesia after a 7.7 quake. [Link to Reuters story] [Link to CNN story]
Just rec'd an update from Angelo Embuldeniya: 47 people dead and toll rising, Magnitude now at 7.7 (Revised by USGS). Island had no warning system. Pangandaran, a beach resort worst hit. Larger hotels remain standing but many of the smaller buildings along the coast were destroyed. 1 person dead and 19 missing at Puring Bay, 60 miles further east.
More updates being posted to http://blog.worldwidehelp.info
Train blasts in IndiaSeven bombs exploded in an attack on rush-hour commuter trains in Mumbai. [CNN coverage] The MumbaiHelp blog, originally created during last year's floods, will be coordinating assistance.
Watchers witness whale-whackingA group of 80 whale-watching tourists in Norway got an unwelcome dose of reality when they witnessed the a harpooning by whale hunters. Talk about conflicting realities – whale watchers vs whale hunters, and just as the protests against whaling in Norway were beginning to wan. [Link]
As if the shooting wasn't enough, the tourists were also treated to the sight of another whaling boat hauling one of their own dead whales up on deck.Yahoo and Human Rights (YHOO)
"It was a fantastic sight to see a whale swimming and breeching," Dieleman said. "On the way back to Andenes, though, we saw a dead whale on deck. The blood was running, it wasn’t a pretty sight.
"I know that's part of life, but I don't think we expected to see anything like that."
Rebecca MacKinnon explains why she no longer trusts Yahoo:
Yahoo! executives keep framing this issue as black and white: Either you're in there and do everything the Chinese authorities tell you without question, or you can't do business in China at all. That is false. Companies can and do make choices. You can engage in China and choose not to do certain kinds of business. Yahoo! has placed user e-mail data within legal jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China. Google and Microsoft have both chosen not to do so. Why did Yahoo! chose to do this? Either they weren't thinking through the consequences or they don't care.
Note that Rebecca, a former CNN Bureau Chief in Beijing, knows something about China.
Amnesty International has a "Take Action" page to facilitate a letter writing campaign.
"Fear Factor": Lemann on O'ReillyEverything you wanted to know about Bill O'Reilly, but were afraid to ask - via Nicholas Lemann at The New Yorker. Actually an appreciation – who knew that Lemann was an O'Reilly fan, despite their obvious ideological differences? [Link]
The connection between the scourge of child sex abuse and liberals whom O'Reilly doesn't like – a long list that includes George Clooney, Hillary Clinton, Paul Krugman, and Alec Baldwin – may not be obvious, but, to O'Reilly's way of thinking, both are part of a national climate of permissiveness and relativism. This is manifested in the unprovable, but no doubt painful, loss of the norms that O'Reilly and his audience remember growing up with. The implied connection, anyway, gives O'Reilly a good pretext for the odd but compelling mixture of subjects on "The O'Reilly Factor," with foreign policy one minute, a lurid (one might even say titillating) sex crime the next, and the Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof's latest unfair attack on O'Reilly the next. (O'Reilly is feuding with Kristof, who has assembled from readers' pledges a notional fund to send O'Reilly on a reporting trip to Darfur. O'Reilly recently parried by saying that the Times "continues to ignore the child predator situation here in the U.S.A.") It would be useless to accuse O'Reilly of trafficking in cultural symbols and not substance, because to him cultural symbols are substance. Like every artist, he has created a territory that is distinctively his, and under anyone else's supervision would not cohere.Sun's good deed for the day
Sun Microsystems is going to help Cameron Sinclair realize his TED Prize wish for
a means to allow architects, funders, non-governmental organizations and communities to collaborate on generating and implementing innovative housing solutions globally. Sun answered by offering to provide an online platform that will facilitate collaboration and sharing of designs and will use advanced technology to simulate geographic/seismic, political/cultural and financial ramifications of designs. Sun and Sinclair will gather additional support from the technology, entertainment and design industries represented at the TED conference.[Link] Buddhism and the cartoon controversy
Tricycle blog explores the Buddhist perspective on the Muslim/cartoon controversy, noting that Buddhists also lapse into violent breaks with peaceful tradition.
As it turns out, today saw the issuance of a death threat from not only a Muslim leader, but a respected Buddhist one too. Venerable Ellawala Medhananda, an elder Buddhist monk and Sri Lankan politician, today stated that it would be better off if someone (i.e. the Sri Lankan army) killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tiger rebels who are fighting for a separate state in northern Sri Lanka. His statement puts him in such fine company as Southern Baptist Pat Robertson, who last year called for the CIA to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Will Ven. Medhananda suffer legal or political consequences for his incitement, or even widespread public condemnation? Not likely. Just as the anti-cartoon Muslim mobs are as much about terrifically complex political and social issues as about religious ideals, the politicization of the Sri Lankan Sangha and the battling Buddhist monk-politicians are an outgrowth of interlocked problems of ethnicity, power, and post-colonial situations in south Asia. Buddhism, like Islam, becomes another weapon in the struggle against "others;" it becomes a site of expression for rage as well as forgiveness, hatred as well as hope, righteous "self-defense" as well as peace. It both forms cherished self-identities and proclaims the absence of self; it creates nations and breaks individuals of their obsessions with external references. Did we expect otherwise?Who you gonna call?
Here's one for the GhostBusters: a glob of tarry slime is ingesting parts of Los Angeles. [Link]
Restore StonehengeFrom the Guardian Unlimited , an eloquent argument for the restoration of Stonehenge.
I cannot see the point of Stonehenge in its present form. It is a monument to the cult of the picturesque ruin. Even for neo-ancients, the aura of crumbling, overgrown antiquity was lost when the stones were twisted, propped up and rearranged by the Ministry of Works and the site turned into a municipal rockery over the course of the 20th century. The remains have been thoroughly surveyed by excellent archaeologists and their findings have been published. The stones are disappointingly small, coming alive only at solstice and through the filtered lenses of coffee-table books. Avebury's stones are more evocative and the great Rudston monolith in Yorkshire more imposing.Yahoo responds
Stonehenge is a place of pagan worship and as such should be handed to those for whom it means something, the druids and astronomical clock-watchers. They should be given a lottery grant and told to put the stones back in working order. The henge's essence is the astronomical alignment of its circles and avenues. It needs to be complete. We do not leave sundials out of line or watches without escapements or grandfather clocks without chimes. There is no difficulty in this. The missing sarsens came from Marlborough Down and the missing bluestones from Pembroke's Preseli Hills. Reconstructed, Stonehenge could make sense again, other than just to archaeologists.
My last post, about Yahoo's supposed decision to give up on search market dominance, drew a quick response from Qi Lu and Eckart Walther at Yahoo Search, noting "conjecture and confusion" about "Yahoo's commitment to being the world's best search engine." Great point - the CFO's comment didn't say Yahoo had given up on being the best, but that "it's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search." Best and first aren't necessarily the same. Meanwhile Caterina Fake, now a Yahoo insider, posts about her irritation with bloggers who, she says, took the Decker quote out of context... accusing them of "piling on." I didn't read what others were saying, personally, but I can see where people might've read "abandonment of search" into the quote... but that's clearly not what Susan Decker was saying.
Its Q4 earnings report describes what Yahoo's up to:
First, we are expanding our content match services through the Yahoo Publishers Network to take advantage of the growing number of small publishers on the web. We plan to add new features to beta over the coming quarters including search and enhanced ad targeting. We believe the service will ultimately position Yahoo as one of the preferred advertising partners for small and medium-sized publishers.
Second, we are focused on improving RPS to better matching in relevance algorithms. While our matching initiatives will largely benefit coverage, were also focused on improving tools to drive higher relevance and click through.
And third, we are increasing the number of easy-to-use tools for advertisers and publishers, so they can buy more keywords, touch more creative and add more listings faster.
Meanwhile, to Caterina's point about bloggers and media getting it wrong, I think the bloggers were following media on this one (headline: "Yahoo! gives up quest for search dominance"), and her real beef should be with Bloomberg, and not with bloggers like Steve Rubel.
Washington Post: No CommentsThe Washington Post turned comments off at the post.blog. According to Exec Editor Jim Brady, the comments included too many personal attacks. More than the Post could handle... though I wonder if they were trying to use existing staff to moderate? High-volume comment areas, like forums, generally need skilled moderators, or at least experienced monitors (monitors, unlike moderators, do little to drive conversation but remove posts that include trolls or personal attacks). It's economically difficult, though, for a newspaper to staff up with 24/7 moderators, who generally get $30/hour or more for their work. Hopefully the Post will find a solution; the interactivity is vital. [Link]
The Chronicle on the Statesman's BlogsThe Austin Chronicle has a good piece by Kevin Brass about the Statesman's blog experiments, with a quote from yours truly. [Link]
Newspapers want to maintain a level of control in a format that thrives on a lack of controls, says Jon Lebkowsky, an active member of the local blog community. "The editor filter has value in the journalism context, but the lack of those filters is valuable for blogs," Lebkowsky said. To attract dedicated bloggers, he says, newspapers would have to alter their fundamental mindset, "to change their sense of what journalism is." If they can't let go, "it's not really blogging. It's just a newspaper using a different content management tool."State of the World 2006
While the idea of "citizen journalism" is a quaint idea for college professors to bat around over lattes at Starbucks, the best bloggers the ones drawing interest and audiences tend to be, at the very least, semiprofessionals, laser-focused on a particular industry, company, or community, not soccer moms with a zest for writing newsy diaries. Bloggers like DailyKos, Wonkette, Gawker, and even the slimy Matt Drudge provide a daily blizzard of insider information and tips, serving as repositories for gossip and buzz as much as hard news analysis.
Once again, I'm leading a State of the World discussion with Bruce Sterling on the WELL. Bruce has just finished a year-long gig as Visionary in Residence at Art Center College of Design, and is in Austin for the holidays before setting out for Belgrade and other parts of the world.
India and China are tremendous stories. Even big pieces of Eastern Europe are getting onto the EU carousel. America's being run by corrupt Lysenkoist morons, but, debilitating as that may be for us Yankees, it also means that the remaining 94 percent of the planet has some chance at the limelight. Hey, South Korea could have been full of cloning superstars -- if they could just get over their endemic Asian urge to cook the books.
The USA right now is the buried shadow of the Confederate States of America. You can watch GONE WITH THE WIND, and it's the secret textbook of the Bush Administration. The South lost that war for a reason. The South didn't have it in them to be a major power, because they were bold, gallant, devout, crooked, dumb and full of unexamined anxieties.
The thing is, though: when a culture is "gone with the wind," it's never utterly and entirely gone. You can't make things go away by distributing them into the wind. It's just... up in the atmosphere. The emissions of the past form a smog. A breathable compost. You can't throw the past away and start over with a Year Zero. There is no "away." Tomorrow is this place, at a different time.Cuba and the Kennedy AssassinationNew theory of the Cuban assassination, based on new evidence. A documentary called Rendezvous with Death says Kennedy's "assassin was directed and paid by Cuba." [Link]
Veteran US official Alexander Haig told the film-maker that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, believed Cuba was to blame and feared a pronounced swing to the right if the truth were known that would keep the Democrats out of power for a long time.Koko
According to Mr Haig - a US military adviser at the time and later a secretary of state - "he [Johnson] said 'we must simply not allow the American people to believe Fidel Castro could have killed our president'.
"He [Johnson] was convinced Castro killed Kennedy and he took it to his grave."Getting spam after spam about Koko Petroleum? The Koko folks say they have nothing to do with it.
The appropriate regulatory bodies as well as our legal counsel have been requested to take steps to prevent the Spam emails.CNN on Wikipedia and the wicked Internet
There are no undisclosed material facts in regard to the company.
Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Technical complications which may arise could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above.CNN's web site has an article about John Seigenthaler's issues with a Wikipedia article's inaccurate statements. The article notes that the false statement was removed and a registration requirement added for posting new articles (though I didn't think that was new). [Link to the article]
According to the article, "The episode demonstrates the lack of accountability that often comes with articles posted by anonymous people over the Internet....Unlike content included in magazines, books and other traditional media, online material can be submitted by just about anyone, often without having to volunteer any identifying information." Ha! CNN's reporter managed to slip in a bit of FUD about the wicked Internet, where anything goes. In one sentence, anonymity is the problem; in the next sentence, it's the lack of editorial authority, the supposed vetting of articles in "traditional media," without regard to anonymity.
I could go on for hours about that one... the implicaiton that "traditional media" is more trustworthy. Think about Fox News, or Judith Miller. Journalists have a code of ethics and a methodology that I respect (I did time in journalism school, so I know how it's supposed to work). However years of experience have taught me that "traditonal" sources are often unreliable. It's better to get your information from many, often conflicting, sources, as you can find online.
What's really funny about this CNN article, though, is that it has no byline. It's anonymous.
Inside the BowlInside the Bowl is a New Orleans blog started by Steve Seebol and Elizabeth Kahn, who've just returned to New Orleans. It's the first specifically post-Katrina blog I've seen, and I think it's going to be a powerful force for the reconstruction of the spirit as well as the physical infrastructure of the city.
....Many older people who evacuated could not deal with the stress. They left, but in many cases their health problems were more then they could handle. These deaths are not in the official death total, which is really just a body count. These people died in Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge or lord knows where. They might have passed away anyway, but the storm didn’t make it easier.Transorbital Lobotomy
One of those who died, while evacuated, was my friend and father-in-law Fred Kahn. Fred had been sick for awhile. But when faced with the arduous task of leaving the city that he was born in, he rose to the occasion with oxygen tank at hand got in the car and left for the 7 hour trip to his daughter’s house in New Iberia, LA. We were all staying there for the first 3 weeks, and it was painful to watch Fred’s energy wane and his concentration falter. He knew there was a storm and that the world was no longer the way he remembered it, but he wasn’t sure what was going on directly around him. Fred was in exile 2 months slowly losing ground before he slumped over while watching a football game and left us. It makes me very sad that he had to endure so much hardship at the end of his life. He was a sweet and decent man. We miss him.Transorbital lobotomy is pretty strange: the guy performing the procedure inserts an instrument similar to an icepick above the patient's eyeball through the orbit of the eye, then into the frontal lobes of the brain, then moves the "icepick" back and forth, disabling the frontal lobes. A psychiatrist named Walter Freeman used this procedure on 2500 patients with mixed results. NPR just featured a radio piece by Howard Dully, Freeman's youngest patient (victim?), now 56 years old. I heard the NPR piece, then checked out additional material at NPR's web site. Dully's story is fascinating and touching, a biographical account of his search for himself. This is a great story; if I was in film, I would be working up the "My Lobotomy" script.
Warren Easton in ExileHere's something that takes the thinking behind the Katrina PeopleFinder Project and others like it to the next level: Warren Easton in Exile, a site that tracks everybody from the Warren Easton Fundamental High School of New Orleans. They're scattered over several states... and the site maps 'em with Google. There's also photos, blog items, polls, etc. Via Nancy White.
MurrowXeni's posted some background on Edward R. Murrow and the film Good Night and Good Luck,, which I found via Wendy Seltzer. I'm old enough to remember watching Murrow, though I didn't quite know what was a stake at the time... I figured it out over the years, though, and had the deepest respect for his work and his courage. Studying and thinking about Murrow as I flirted with a career in journalism helped make me a civil libertarian and free speech advocate; not sure where we would be today if he hadn't stepped up, along with John Henry Faulk. We've seen fundamental rights threatened in the US over the past few years; studying the McCarthy era can remind us how bad it can get, and studying Murrow's work can remind us how to take a stand when basic rights are challenged.
PlaNetwork Austin: Katrina ResponseLast night I spoke at a PlaNetwork event at City Hall in Austin, which was about the response to Katrina. First speaker was Austin's CIO, Pete Collins, talking about Austin's IT Incident Preparedness Group. Pete said they essentially had to build a cityw ithin a city within 20 hours when they set up the local evacuee center. Some of the lessons learned:
There was a sense that the Red Cross was ill-prepared for Katrina; someone who'd been involved in the response noted that RC focused more readily and effectively on raising funds than on actual relief efforts.
- They needed a boundariless prequalified IT pool representing key skill sets.
- In an emergency response situation, it's important to get to operational mode as quickly as possible.
- There's more pure labor than you would expect in moving and setting up PCs.
- Focus on communication - very helpful to have phones so that people can let others know where they are, that they're okay.
- We need to be better prepared overall or "we might not be able to do this again, especially in a situation that's far worse.
Gary Chapman showed the Austin Helping New Orleans web site he'd set up with help from volunteers. The site, based on pMachine's Expression Engine. His focus was on aggregating information for people who were confused about what was going on and how they could help. Gary said there had also been work on an online volunteer database for Austin, not finished in time for the Katrina effort, but it'll be there in the future.
I talked about my work with the Katrina PeopleFinder Project and its sister project, ShelterFinder. Check out this pdf from my presentation. I've blogged about PeopleFinder here, at Smart Mobs, and at WorldChanging.
Indian blogger resigns, but it ain't over til it's over...India's corner of the blogosphere is buzzing over a controversy that began when the webzine Jam published a critical piece, "The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims,". The article suggests that India Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) uses false advertising to attract students. IIPM visited Jam, then initiated legal action. Amit Varma at India Uncut describes what happened next:
A number of blogs sprung up overnight defending IIPM and defaming Rashmi and Gaurav Sabnis, a popular Indian blogger who had linked to Rashmi's article and added some facts of his own. Ludicrous rumours were spread about Aaj Tak, the news channel, having done a sting operation and having caught Amity, a rival of IIPM, giving money to Rashmi to do the story. Rashmi posted on the matter, and filthy comments were left on that post – you can read them for yourself and see the class of the people who left them. Also, Gaurav received a hilarious legal notice, which he reproduced on his blog – it was hilarious at the time, that is.Yesterday Guarav posted that he'd resigned "in view of some really bizarre threats that were apparently made by IIPM to IBM." Specifically, the Dean of IIPM wrote IBM "saying that the IIPM Students Union had decided that if my blog posts were not deleted, then they would gather all the Thinkpads they had been given by the institute, and burn them in front of the IBM office in Delhi. Yes, that's right. Burn laptops!" Guarav writes that the decision to resign was his alone, driven by his respect for IBM and his commitment to free speech.
Then it got serious. IIPM happens to be a client of IBM, Gaurav's employer, having purchased a huge bunch of laptops from them. (In fact, they are a company with serious money clout, and are one of the biggest advertisers in India.) So what would you expect them to do? Well, Gaurav relates that on his post on the subject. It's bizarre and worrying stuff – read it.
I'll sum it up for you: to save his employer from a dharam sankat, Gaurav found himself faced with two courses of action – to delete his posts and apologise; or to resign from the company. What choice would he make? Isn't the practical thing to do obvious?
Via Dina Mehta, who forwarded me this link to a post at Indian Writing. There's also a summary post by Neha Viswanathan at Global Voices. Disaster relief via databaseThe Red Cross has deployed its Family News Network for the South Asian Quake region. Similar to the PeopleFinder project set up following Hurricane Katrina, though we don't think the Red Cross has adopted an open format like PFIF (the PeopleFinder Interchange Format). Global Voices has a summary of online community responses to the quake, and a longer summary of the generally ignored problem of flooding caused by Hurricane Stan in Central America. ("Current events are making me tense," as Larry Monroe usedta say.)
It's gotta be a real nightmare to lose people, and have no way of knowing whether they're alive, injured, or dead. These database projects for tracking people down need more development, and we need ways to provide access on or close to the scene so that searches will yield meaningful results. And it has to be more than a volunteer effort. The Red Cross is probably the right organization to be putting the databases together, but distribution of a common format that many can use to gather data that feeds into the central authoritative search respository is crucial, and I don't think the Red Cross has that as one of their priorities. I know there are PeopleFinder volunteers still mindful of that goal.
We're going to talk about the high tech Katrina relief efforts at Austin's first PlaNetwork meeting this week, October 13th, at City Hall. Gary Chapman and I will be talking about efforts we were involved with. It's an evening meeting; I'll post details here asap.
South Asian Quake Help BlogThe same group who created the Tsunamihelp blog as well as the hurricane help wikis have created a South Asia Quake Help blog. (Thanks to Dina Mehta for this info.) The death toll from the quake is mounting, nearing 20,000. There's also a Pakistan Quake 2005 blog.
Good morning!?After attempting a day off on Thursday and playing catchup on Friday, I'm spending Saturday at a business conference sponsored by TiE Austin. Meanwhile this morning there's news of a devastating earthquake in Pakistan, magnitude 7.6, and less than an hour ago the latest aftershock was a 6.3. The earthquake map shows 43 earthquakes in the vicinity of Asia over the last week, and 162 quakes worldwide, many around mag 5. Meanwhile in Texas the news is all about conflict: the notorious Texas vs Oklahoma football game, first and foremost, and for those who ignore football, there's always Tom DeLay vs Ronnie Earle.
Update: The earthquake killed more than 18,000 people.
The casualty toll from the 7.6-magnitude tremor rose sharply Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from the wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief army spokesman, told Pakistan's Geo TV network early Sunday that more than 18,000 had been killed _ 17,000 of them in Pakistani Kashmir, where the quake was centered. Some 41,000 people were injured, he said.East Coast media try to find blogging's pulse.Short on time, so this is a quick one... but I just got these links to posts about a meeting of bloggers with mainstream media (via Jay Rosen). The links are to Jay's comments, David Weinberger's, Jeff Jarvis', and something from the Business Week blog. So this meeting was mainstream media talking to mainstream media people who've become bloggers, and it was all folks from the east coast. Looks like an interesting discussion, but I can't help but note the ivory tower aspect. I think MSM and, to some extent, east coast bloggers still believe, however subconsciously, that nothing's "real" unless it emerges from the first thirteen... This may well be where blogs make a difference, by bringing so many others into conversations that were traditionally restricted to the east coast or east and west coasts, and restricted to writers and pundits who could publish via mainstream media. (Note that I understand the objections to that term "mainstream media," but I don't know what to offer in its place.)
The briefest summary was Weinberger's:
The MSM were not univocal in their reaction to the Web and blogs. That's appropriate and it's progress. There are still some who think they "get" blogs because they're using blogs as stringers. But others are genuinely uncertain about the future of mainstream news, which is (imo) also appropriate. They're facing the possiblity of genuine discontinuity.Able Danger and Constitutional rights
There's a lot of experimentation on all sides here. Appropriate.
No one knows what the business model(s) will be. Appropriate.
The bloggers didn't have to spend half the morning explaining that most bloggers aren't journalists, that bloggers are in conversation, etc. Progress.
There were still elements of hostility and misunderstanding, especially around the question of accuracy. But there is definitely progress...In April 2000, a data mining and analysis project within the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) was shut down because it had "evolved into an abuse of Constitutional Rights." Recently Anthony Shaffer has said that the project, called Able Danger, uncovered data linking Mohamed Atta to Al Qaeda. William Arkin in the Washington Post suggests that the it's arguable whether Able Danger produced meaningful data (few who were involved share Shaffer's memory of data about Atta), but it's not arguable that the project, as William Dugan, Pentagon chief of intelligence oversight, said, "evolved, through mission creep, lack of clear rules, and the lack of meaningful oversight, into an abuse of … Constitutional rights…,"
Shaffer and others use words like "out-of-the-box" and "entrepreneurial" to describe the LIWA intelligence collection. The buzz words suggest, of course, that other intelligence efforts were in-the-box and boring, that only the LIWA and other compartmented workers were motivated and insightful enough to take chances, that if the lawyers and the bureaucrats and the Clintonistas and the other villains had just gotten out of the way, there would have been no 9/11. If only…(Via Politech) Alan Atkisson: More on a New New Orleans
But in 2000, the problem was also a pretty simple one: An off-the-books intelligence effort once again abused the "force protection" justification to collect information on Americans. Military commanders, mindful of the law and regulations, shut down the operation.My Worldchanging colleague Alan Atkisson's "Dreaming New Orleans" post inspired a piece in Business Week as " one of the most ambitious post-Katrina blueprints." He's posted a follow-up:
What is not yet clear is how to invest that money in such a way that the New New Orleans is indeed both wonderful and sustainable, in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of its most loyal inhabitants.Alan follows with an issues list, and descriptions of a half dozen scenarios for New Orleans' future. Superdome "violence": manifestation of fear under pressure
The pressures to rebuild quickly are great, and quick decisions, especially about long-lived infrastructure, are often not the most strategic. What can one do to influence the process constructively, now, while the key decisions are still in the process of formation?Rumors of violence, including rape and murder, at the New Orleans Superdome were evidently without basis, more likely a manifestation of fear + imagination under intense pressure. nola.com reports on investigations that yielded only six bodies, four dead from natural causes, plus a suicide and an overdose.
That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.DHS - the (cough cough) series!
"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."Xeni at boingboing.net is having a field day here and here with Joseph Medawar's proposed television fantasy D.H.S. - The Series, quoting a BBC article saying that Medawar has been charged with bilking investors, taking money for series development and spending it on himself. Medawar claimed he had President Bush's backing. I found an NPR Interview by Brooke Gladstone with Medwar and his co-producer, Alison Heruth-Waterbury (also a series co-star) from March 2004:
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now you'll remember that the creation of the Homeland Security Department was not without its share of debate, and one year later there continues to be real questions raised about its overall effectiveness. Are you at all concerned that the unvarnished heroes of the plotlines in your shows will eclipse the very legitimate real life concerns about the DHS?The highest elective office
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY: You know what, DHS is, you know, from our point of view, is very strong for us in the U.S. We need it. Is it perfected to where we want it to be? I think there's always room for improvement in every area. But it's not a show about promoting the government. It's about educating--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But don't you think the education value is somewhat impaired if you don't show any of the warts?
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY:Yes, of course those need to be displayed and shown, so you can learn from 'em. I cannot judge, and I wouldn't even want to say publicly where I feel their weak areas are, because there's very few people that are there, I believe, for the wrong reason. Now whether they are right or wrong, again, is a perception. But they have to believe in what they're doing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know, it's not inconsistent to recognize the heroism of participants in an agency and yet raise questions about the efficiency of an agency. The trailer that you posted on your website, if it's any indication of the overall flavor of your series -- we see an almost invariably effective endeavor, and the power of fiction might lead viewers to think that that is the way the Homeland Security Department operates when in fact there are some very real problems that if the public were aware of they might help to address.
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY: We have every intention of bringing those things to the air. You've merely seen a two to three minute trailer, and you don't have our story line and, you know, that is changing every day.Malaysians have a very democratic approach to space travel: they're electing their first astronaut. We could do that in the U.S., too – know anybody you'd like to send into space? [Link]
Picayune returns after the ... hurricane? or flood?New Orleans' Times-Picayune "is expanding the number of pages and the number of copies it is printing as residents return and businesses reopen in the metro New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina." [Link] Today's front-page news: citizens learn that their insurance coverage may not provide the coverage they expected. [Link]
Carol Hess and her husband, Bobby, have paid $364 a year for their flood policy. And State Farm adjuster Steve Evans said his week that the Hesses will be able to recover a maximum of $155,800 for damage to their Eden Isles home and its contents under the policy. If the adjuster had blamed the damage on the hurricane, the Hesses could have gotten as much as $277,918, according to their homeowners' policy, which cost $1,640 annually.Sunday
The news blew them both away.
"My house is demolished and you're telling me it was a flood," complained Bobby Hess, 58, a retired air-conditioning mechanic. "But water didn't pick up this roof and dump it in my back yard. This furniture didn't come by water. It was pushed here by the wind. It makes no sense to me. I am totally disgusted with the whole thing."Much of the time I would have spent blogging the last few days I've committed to the Katrina PeopleFinder project supporting the data entry process. When I see what other people are doing, I realize that I'm being selfish, doing too little by comparison. I'm not taking people in or going to the sites where evacuees are staying. I haven't even donated any money yet, though I intend to.
I've been thinking a lot about what's happened in the wake of Katrina, though, and I'm trying to write a longer piece for WorldChanging.com with some thoughts about government, volunteers, and a world where disasters may become commonplace events due to climate change and possibly other stuff &ndash terrorist attacks, atomic bombs, earth's magnetic field or lack thereof...
I may never finish that piece, but here are some random notes from today's media.
Barack Obama, talking to George Stephanopoulos on This Week about the limited and late Federal response response to Katrina, said passive indifference is as bad as active neglect. He said that the current administration has excellent responses when it come to PR, but detachment when it comes to goveringing.
Later, Fareed Zakaria noted a 30-year de-funding and shrinking of government in the USA, and a growing supposition that the government doesn't have and shouldn't have solutions. Newt Gingrich then said that it was never the attention to make government impotent; rather, we should h ave a small but energetic and effective government.
I like what Fareed said to George Will: You need people taking pride in the execution and delivery of government...
Biz on the InterwebEbay is thinking to buy Skype, and Vint Cerf has joined Google. Consolidation. Web 2.0. Wheeee!
Katrina PeopleFinder UpdateI posted an update on the Katrina PeopleFinder Project at SmartMobs.com. There's also a press release on the project at Network Centric Advocacy.
Free medicine for Katrina evacueesPfizer is giving Katrina victims emergency supplies of medicine. (Thanks, Britt!)
Data, data, everywhere....Data entry for the PeopleFinder project was suspended temporarily tonight to try to get a better, more understandable data entry interface. Because the project is so distributed people are having to step up and make decisions and try not to reinvent the wheel. You can search all records here, though I've suggested we need a more focused search that is name only in addition to the broader search of all data. Meanwhile Rebecca posted an appreciation of the volunteers and their accomplishment. Jon Garfunkel says the Red Cross database is better; Ethan and I say that's an apples and oranges comparison. My comment was held as spam; I finally got it to post by removing my url. Couldn't figure that one out at the end of a long day....
Data entry should be back tonight at some point, but I'll be sleeping and trying not to dream about all this.
Oh, yeah, and let 'em eat cake, too!Evacuees from New Orleans, who've lost everything and been displaced after a nightmare storm and a week abandoned in the ruined city should perk up. According to Barbara Bush, this scenario is working very well for them.
In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston."Dithering and incompetence
Then she added: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."Katrina has exposed the "dithering and incompetence" of current U.S. government, according to Matt Wells, writing for BBC.
Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation.Meanwhile Keith Olbermann has a great op-ed about the very real lack of leadership Katrina has exposed.
Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash.For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been – as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be – whether or not I voted for this President – he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government – our government – "New Orleans."Michael who?
For him, it is a shame – in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself – it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.I wouldn't bet on Michael Brown's future at FEMA. Even the folks on the right are calling for his dismissal, and many very angry blog posts are popping up.
This is completely and utterly outrageous. If the director of FEMA really thought on Saturday and Sunday that Katrina would, if it followed the predicted path, be a "typical hurricane situation," and that "the water would drain away fairly quickly," then he should be fired on the spot for being ignorant and incompetent to the point that he has no business working as a low-level functionary at FEMA, let alone as its director. And if he didn't really think that, but is just saying it in order to spin the political fallout from the hurricane, then he should be fired on the spot for being a dirty, filthy, stinking liar.Katrina PeopleFinder Project
Either way, Michael Brown must go. This man has no business running FEMA, especially not at a time like this. My God.
Unbelievable.A distributed group from within the tech community is working on a project to gather unstructured data from various missing and found persons lists in a large structured database that'll be more useful in tracking Katrina survivors who are spreading in many directions from Louisiana and Mississippi. Ethan Zuckerman posts about the project here and here. David Geilhufe of Social Source Foundation is leading the charge, along; other organizations involved are Salesforce.com and CivicSpace. Ethan's been taking responsibility for chunking data sources and adding them to the KatrinaHelp wiki's PeopleFinderVolunteer page. I've been coordinating data entry. If you want to help, all the info you need is on the volunteer page. It's a daunting project, but I just heard we've entered 15,200 records in less than 24 hours!
"Katrina scenario did not exist"More Spin, mixed with a bit of historical revisionism: Michael Chertoff of Homeland Security simply denies that anyone had predicted a storm like Katrina and its impact on New Orleans. He says it was "breathtaking in its surprise," which is similar to Bush's statement that no one expected the levees would break.
When I was just a tad, I heard over and over how the evil Soviets would revise "history" regularly to fit the politics du jour, and this was considered a great sin and an indictment of communisim. Seems to be de rigueur for 21st century USA, however.
The good news is that CNN is calling bullshit on Chertoff.
New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.The Battle of New Orleans
"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.
Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.
In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city.
Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.The Army is referring to citizens of New Orleans as "insurgents," a very weird choice of words reported by Xeni at boingboing.net.
Foxes freak outA bit of weirdness on the Fox Network tonight... Geraldo Rivera appeared to be in tears over conditions at the Convention Center in New Orleans, and Shepard Smith just outside the Center was also clearly angry – both mortified at government inaction, and the fact that people in the Convention Center were not permitted to leave. Back at Fox HQ Sean Hannity, clearly uncomfortable with the intensity of emotion in these reports, focused elsewhere. Some time later another reporter was interviewing a black woman who'd just arrived in Houston, and who started dissing GW Bush, at which point the sound and then the image faded. I can imagine it's hard to be Fox covering New Orleans right now...
UPDATE: I was checking to see where Fox was with all this, and caught Bill O'Reilly, who had some interesting thoughts. He says the people who are stuck and suffering in New Orleans right now have only themselves to blame, because they chose not to leave. He says the mess in New Orleans is the fault of Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin, who weren't up to it. The guys who really know what they're doing, the Feds, waited a bit too long to step in make it happen. He then explains that the real problem is that too many people depend on government! This from the "no-spin zone."
Taking the President to taskI got a private email yesterday from someone who said "I'm amazed that the liberals have taken the President to task for not doing something to stop the hurricane," and I replied that it's not a liberal/conservative thing at all. And it wasn't about stopping the hurricane, it's about what's happened since. From Salon:
Of course, it's unfair to blame the president for an act of nature like Katrina. And yet it's irrefutable that this administration's backward policies and politics made this disaster worse than it had to be, and its belated response will do nothing to address the problems that have suddenly been flushed out into the open. The death toll from Katrina is likely to be higher than 9/11, but most of its victims will be black and poor, and I doubt we'll wage a war on poverty and neglect to match the war on terror launched after al-Qaida struck -- and if we did, I doubt it would be any more effective. The president, who continued his vacation while Katrina raged, just the way he kept reading "My Pet Goat" on 9/11, is headed for the Gulf on Friday. I'd like him to bring some answers, but I don't expect him to.Bruce Sterling: "New Orleans has become an awesome Y2K survivalist dystopia"
What I'd really like is to see him head today for the Superdome, bring his dad, and Bill Clinton, and John Kerry and Howard Dean -- any Democrat or Republican who cares, really –- and go to work, feeding and comforting the refugees and finding out what they need. Then I'd like to see them put people to work, rebuilding the amazing historic city we've apparently lost.Bruce Sterling on New Orleans after Katrina:
I wonder how many of these "unprecedented" eventsCommunications technology for New Orleans
the American public is going to take before they get
it about climate change. And what then? It's going
to be interesting to live in a society where climate change
and energy are the major everyday topics. "Nine-eleven."
We lost a couple of buildings then. This is an
entire city.Florida's Freedom4Wireless is sending a team to build ad hoc wireless networks in New Orleans so that emergency workers can use voice over IP to communicate. MIT Technology Review reports this development, and the possibility that WiMax and mesh networking might be used to build emergency data networks.
Motorola put its mesh networking technology into place in Florida last year after Hurricane Charley. It was used to monitor staging areas that were vulnerable to looting. Rather than positioning a dozen police cruisers around a parking lot filled with food and water, public safety officials positioned mesh-network-connected video cameras around the lot. The cameras fed a video stream to a police crew in a single cruiser, thereby freeing up other officers for more pressing concerns.Heard in today's newsVarious news reports have been running in the background today, and a few bits stood out for me, such as Mike Brown of FEMA telling Paula Zahn on CNN that FEMA had no idea the New Orleans Convention Center was housing thousands of refugees who'd been without food or drink for 100 hours - they'd just found out this afternoon. Said Brown, "Those people have suddenly appeared." When asked why help is so slow in coming, he he said that the American people just has to understand how bad it is in New Orleans. Especially when you haven't planned and your flood control budget's been cut by 44% to fund a certain war (I said that, not Brown). A National Guardsman who'd been in Iraq said he'd rather be there than New Orleans, where there's "mass chaos." No one seems to be in control.
You might expect George W. Bush to provide some leadership. He was quoted today saying that nobody would've expected the levees to break. I know he doesn't like to read newspapers or dry factual stuff, but he could've asked my wife, who knew enough about it to've been talking for several years now about the danger of just this occurrence.
I halfway expect to see an aircraft carrier parked somewhere in the middle of New Orleans so that Bush can fly in and declare the disaster over.
Okay, that was a cheap shot, but I can't help but think that, under someone else's watch, we'd see more organization than chaos and an orderly evacuation already under way.
Katrina update #2boing boing has been publishing a lot of useful info about Katrina. Meanwhile New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered police to stop rescue operations so they can protect private property from looters. That doesn't strike me as the right priority, but looters were evidently armed and potentially violent.
George Bush was on the scene, taking a break from his long vacation for a flyover in Air Force One. Bush released some of the emergency oil reserves and the EPA announced a temporary waiver of pollution standards covering gasoline and diesel fuels, ostensibly to ramp up production.
Katrina update
NASA satellite photos show the New Orleans flood (with a "before" shot for comparison). The disaster just gets worse - a minute ago CNN was reporting a fire in the French Quarter, and there's "a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and still no clear sense of the death toll, though the mayor of New Orleans speculates that thousands may be dead. [Link]
CJR should apologize for this one...
- Link to Earth Observatory Images
- Link to Missing Persons Board
- Katrina Help Wiki
- Donate to the Red Cross
Gal Beckerman in CJR Daily accused CNN of overdramatizing the impact of Katrina on New Orleans, portraying Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert from Louisiana State University, as a crackpot for describing potential problems with fire ants and toxic chemicals in the flood waters. Asks Beckerman, "Where do they find these guys? And why?"
In fact, van Heerden appears increasingly more credible as New Orleans floodwaters spread, and I have to wonder on what basis Beckerman trivializes van Heerden's comments. There's no reference to other experts refuting van Heerden, the unschooled evaluation of van Heerden's comments are Beckerman's own. Where does CJR find these guys?
KatrinaMore on Terrorists and the Internet
While we're sitting cool and comfortable at Nancy White's house in Seattle, Hurricane Katrina is blasting Louisiana and Mississippi – I'm watching insane reporters on television reporting from within the blast, and feeling a little relieved that the storm surge hasn't breached the levees. Last night I posted about the oncoming storm at WorldChanging.com, wondering how we can mitigate the impact of an ongoing series of cat 4 and 5 hurricanes driven by global climate change... I often wonder how many more major storms will strike Florida before the residents head for the hills... but I digress. The focus now is on New Orleans; Xeni's got a great summary post at boingboing, with updates. She points to the New Orleans Metroblog, where updates are posted from the scene. Word at the moment is that New Orleans has seen the worst of Katrina, but Mississippi's still slammed.
The threat of terrorists spreading information online may be overstated by those who assume that the information is accurate and useable, when that might not be the case. Kyle Johnson sent me a short bit from Secrecy News in response to Terrorists and the Internet:
"Among other things, al Qaeda and its offshoots are building a massive and dynamic online library of training materials," the Post reported, and offered sample documents from this library on its own web site.Terrorists and the Internet
But contrary to the Post story line, the cited library materials suggest a startling lack of technical competence. Unfortunately, the Post did not critically examine the materials that it presented.Not long ago, CNN's Miles O'Brien tossed off a comment implying that where Al Qaeda is concerned, the Internet may be the problem. Today the Washington post is running a longer piece (requires free registration) that says
al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.According to the article, "the Web's shapeless disregard for national boundaries and ethnic markers fits exactly with bin Laden's original vision for al Qaeda," and that the Internet is increasingly used tactically, "especially for training new adherents," quoting Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a group that monitors and tracks the jihadist Internet sites.We should be attentive to the story between the lines here: if people use the Internet to do terrible things, what should we do? That question's come up more than once since access to the Internet started spreading in the early '90s, often from people and organizations who, on the scale balancing openness and freedom with social control, put their thumb heavily on the social control side, The world would be so much simpler and safer if we had more restrictions, they think, though there's never been much evidence to suggest that this is the case.
Consider a substitution: if people use free speech to do terrible things, what should we do? This suggests the slippery slope we're on when we talk about restricting the Internet. As Mike Godwin used to say, often, in the freedom/control discussions... the best response to "bad" speech is more speech. If we're concerned that young Muslims will join the jihad because of something they read online, perhaps we should support wiser, nonviolent Muslims in their attempts to dialog with potential terrorists in their midst.
Whatever the case, we should get ready for the next attempt to regulate speech on the Internet, an inevitable response to this idea of web-based jihad.
Terrorist Attack in LondonThis is all over the news, and I don't know what I can add here, but I feel compelled to report this morning's explosions in London, three blasts in the subway and one in a double decker bus, all at during rush hour. Something called "Secret Organization group of al-Qaeda of Jihad in Europe" claimed responsibility for the bombings.
Update: Europhobia blog has good coverage of the attack.
Update: Wikipedia coverage (includes hotline numbers).
Update: Xeni at boingboing has posted a summary of coverage with quite a few good links.
Samantha Smoot on the Beirut BlastSamantha Smoot, former Executive Director of Texas Freedom Network now working on a project in Lebanon, sent this email yesterday – reprinted with permission. Sam didn't see, but felt, the Beirut explosion that killed Prime Minister Hariri.
First, I'm okay. The NDI office is tucked away in apartment building in a central but obscure neighborhood, far from anything that would ever look like a target. (And unmarked, to boot.) We're at least a couple of miles from the Phoenicia Hotel where the bomb went off.
But close enough to feel the bomb as much as hear it. Firecrackers go off here all the time, and it's not uncommon to hear gunshots, because everybody still has a gun from the war and people like to shoot them. So today, one of my coworkers thought there must be a nearby demolition site imploding a building, and another speculated that this was an Israeli plane breaking the sound barrier. Then we started getting calls.
It took a while to realize the magnitude of what has happenedthe size of the bomb and the fact that it had hit its intended target. The political implications are still rolling in like waves.
Amidst rumors of looting and street closures, we shut the office early. My coworker Lila and I walked home together because we had heard that our neighborhood was closed off. (Mr. Hariri's home and office are nearby, and his body is at a hospital a block from my house.)
The city's shopkeepers closed up in the early afternoon. I realized on the walk home just how many shops have metal doors that slide over their storefront. The others have metal grill work that covers their windows. Everything looked looter-proof to me. Later, I realized I was missing the point.
Lila and I stopped at a fruit stand and saw our first pictures of what was happening. Our office has no television. Hell may be one crisis after another with no television to watch them on. These pictures were shocking. So much of Beirut is pitted from sniper fire that this gaping hole in the ground looks like it will swallow the city. The other violence seems to have been more human in scale.
A couple of blocks before home, Lila and I crossed Hamra Street barely a block before a protest of angry, grieving men made its way past us, then retraced our route backwards. Hamra Street, a bustling shopping district, was dead quiet.
Of course, I couldn't stand sitting at home alone watching television (never have I wanted to understand Arabic so badly!) So I decided to walk down to the bomb site and see for myself what this was. (Sorry, Mom.)
Empty streets. Then I started noticing neat little piles of broken glass on the street. It wasn't until maybe the fourth one that I realized that Beirut was already cleaning upand that this bomb had blown out residential windows 10 blocks away.
Closer, the glass was not yet swept into neat piles. It was everywhere. Store fronts, restaurant windows, office windows, car windows, small business, big banksall gave in to the gust. Finally I realized why the metal coverings for the storefrontsbecause here, glass is going to get broken.
Lots of people at the site, very somber.
I'm attaching a couple of photographsthe St. George Hotel, old and not even open, with the beautiful pink peaks of Mt. Lebanon in the background. The Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel, probably Beirut's finest, is a block away from the site. But every one of its windows, and those of two adjacent hotels, was blown out by the blast. I wish I could send images of the people and the disbelief and shock on their faces.
I'm back home, safe and in for the night. And trying to understand what this means for this country. Rafik Hariri was the muscle and the energy and the money behind Beirut's postwar redevelopment, and thus symbolized the country's hope for peace and prosperity. He was extremely wealthy and very, very well protected. There is a sense that 'if they could get him, they can get anyone they want.' 'They' being Syria, of course.
About two weeks ago, the political rhetoric managed to surge even beyond its usual level of hyperbole and heat. A couple of government officials commented, 'they'll see what we can do' and 'we going to play tough now'. This, and I think the bomb today, are in response to the fact that Lebanon has, for the first time since its civil was, a critical mass of opposition political leaders calling for Syria's ouster. Hariri was the most important member of that group. Because of that, because of his sweeping economic presence in the city, and because of his popularity as a symbol of hope, they could not have chosen a better target if their aim was to destabilize the country.
