Bush's changing tune
By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  September 17, 2005

In a vacuum, Bush came across as sincere....

It will be miraculous for him to become the solution after four and a half years of throwing down thunderbolts at the poor, who are disproportionately African-American and Latino. This is after joining the side of white students to kill affirmative action at the University of Michigan in the 2003 Supreme Court case. This is after his Justice Department deleted half of a 168-page report that detailed the lack of promotion and disparate pay for African-American and female attorneys.

This is after a first term in which his Health and Human Services Department issued a report that originally was to highlight racial disparities in healthcare, except that the department deleted racial ''inequalities" and ''disparities" from its key findings.

The altered report went so far as to downplay the dramatic disparities in healthcare with ''Americans have exceptional quality of healthcare; but some socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and geographical differences exist." The original report was published after an outcry.

This is from the same president who now tells us, ''Let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

Quote of note:

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to disclose the invitations.

Yeah, and get some Black people that look like preachers while you're at it...

Bush to discuss O'Connor replacement
Officials say he plans summit with 4 senators
By David Espo, Associated Press  |  September 17, 2005

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has invited key lawmakers to a White House meeting next week to begin consultations on a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, officials said yesterday.

One who would guide a leader of men in the uses of life
Will warn him against the use of arms for conquest.
Weapons often turn upon the weilder,
An army's harvest is a waste of thorns,
Conscription of a multitude of men
Drains the next year dry.

A good general, daring to march, dares also to halt,
Will never press his triumph beyond need.

What he must do he does, but not for glory,
What he must do he does, but not for show,
What he must do he does, but not for self;

He has done it because it had to be done,
Not from a hot head.

Let life ripen then fall.

 

The good thing, from my perspective, is that everyone seems to be waiting for results before giving Bush credit for he miraculous turnaround.

I don't know how many people recognize that the plans to rebuild New Orleans will invoke the same institutional processes that created the race and class issues that have been exposed over the last few weeks. I suspect it's even fewer than the number of folks that were aware of the race and class issues pre-Katrina.

Me, I'm hoping people...okay, Black people...learn to stop pledging loyalty to promises instead of rewarding (or punishing) results.

Black people in particular...but it's a lesson everyone needs to learn. A lesson I'm not sure I know how to teach. Especially when so many people are high on really low grade opiate of the people. It's not your religion that's the problem, it's your church and your preachers. Never trust a multimillionaire that got rich from YOUR tithes while explaining how you have to accept your own lot to get into hebbin.

...except no President in my memory has ever even considered a plan to address the race and class issues right outside their door. 

Anyway...

Storm warning
By Robert Kuttner  |  September 17, 2005

ONE THING we learned from Hurricane Katrina is that America still has a lot of poor people, who are disproportionately black, and mostly invisible to the affluent and to the media. Behind the glitzy stage set of the quaint New Orleans tourist economy was a grindingly poor city.

Most poor people work for a living, just like most middle class people do. They are the people who the Rev. Jesse Jackson famously said ''take the early bus," and take care of other people's young children and aging parents, sometimes at cost to their own families.

Nothing like a threat to his job to motivate a politician... 

Quote of note:

The settlement announced yesterday represents a sharp departure from Mayor Thomas M. Menino's angry rhetoric at the time the Justice Department filed the suit in July, when he vowed to fight it in court. The mayor, who is seeking reelection in less than two months, sought yesterday to portray the terms of the agreement as positive steps for the city.

City agrees to accept elections monitoring
Pact ends plan to fight US suit
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff  |  September 16, 2005

La. Police Chief Defends Turning Back Evacuees
Associated Press
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A12

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 16 -- A suburban police chief is defending himself against accusations of racism for ordering the blockade of a bridge and turning back desperate hurricane victims.

Gretna, a town of 17,500 across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, was criticized after Police Chief Arthur Lawson Jr. ordered officers to block a bridge leading into the community, which is almost two-thirds white. New Orleans is two-thirds black.

Three days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Gretna officials learned that people trapped in downtown New Orleans were being told to cross the Crescent City Connection bridge.

Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid.
By Ken Silverstein and Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writers
September 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck.

And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
A documentary about segregation from the end of the Civil War to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement

• http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/rss/podcast.xml
  Listen to first-hand accounts by people who experienced, endured, and survived Jim Crow.

Tom Friedman is (justifiably) worried about the flat world again. The example this time is Singapore.

In talking about it, he mentions an mathematics education program or system or some such called HeyMath! which Singapore's schools use to pursue the goal of "nurturing every ounce of talent of every single citizen."

Lovely thought.

My characterization of HeyMath! is weak because I can't get to their website...a mention in the NY Times can get you "Slashdotted" even faster than a mention on Slashdot (though it is the kind of story they'd pick up...).

The longer it takes to spread the word, the further behid we fall. So to help defend America's intellectual leadership I preset...a British site...the Millennium Mathematics Project.

I don't want a logo. I don't want Windows 2000 (already have it anyway...and have moved on). I don't want a outdated copy of Office...I still have a couple of unused legal license laying around.

I delete messages with random words in the title unread...even unviewed.

I don't do business with businesses stupid enough to put my account number in the title of an email message. And I only read messages I "asked for" if I actually remember asking for it...or at least remember your name...

Any message sent URGENTly to MY FRIEND are shit-canned. 

Yes. In fact, I should link this one too...but I won't.

The Storm That Ate The GOP
Who will pity the soulless Republican Party now that Katrina is mauling their regime?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a vise?

Quote of note (but it's ALL Quote of note):

So maybe it's time to stop with the savaging of poor Dubya. He is, after all, doing a simply beautiful job of kowtowing to his wealthiest supporters while slamming the poor and running the nation into a deep hole and creating the largest deficit in American history, all while his cronies in oil and industry and military supply and Big Energy gain immense and staggering wealth and pay less and less tax on it. This is what he was hired to do. This is why he is in office. Hell, the day after Katrina, Bush flew right by Louisiana and headed straight to San Diego to party with his Greatest Generation cronies. Reassure the masters, first and foremost, eh Shrub? Understood.

George W. Bush Still Rocks!
Stop criticizing! The rich man's CEO president is executing his job requirements perfectly
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 9, 2005

As the L.A. Times notes, last night's speech, though the words were about the Gulf Coast, was in truth barely about recovering from Katrina at all. It was about recovering from the political damage caused by his administration's ineptitude.

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH stepped to the podium in front of New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral on Thursday night, his topic was rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged region. But his goal clearly was to rescue his presidency, which Katrina's storm surge tattered as well.

There's no compelling evidence he succeeded. 

To his credit, Bush acknowledged the government's failure to respond effectively in the aftermath of the hurricane, and he accepted responsibility for the federal share of the problem. He also prodded local leaders to do a better job preparing for what clearly is their role — evacuating, securing and provisioning their cities in the event of a disaster or terrorist attack. Yet Bush's assertion that a challenge of this scale raises new questions about coordination between federal and local officials begs the question: What has the administration been doing in the four years since the 9/11 attacks, if not preparing the country for such a catastrophic event?

So I'm less than friendly this week. I am not a dispassionate man. More precisely, my execution is dispassionate but my decision process is not.

Between the images of Black people left to live or die neck deep in sewage, the denials of responsibility, the racist rants against the victims lowcrawling through the Republican blogosphere (I always hated that word, so I use it in this instance...you may never see it again in this space), it feels sometimes like my nerve endings have extended beyond my skin and available for direct activation.

I got some stuff on that still...PTCruiser shipped me a link to On Our Own by Darryl Pinckney in The New York Review of Books

Maybe Bush can't respond convincingly to the calamity because to do so would require thinking, along New Deal lines, of the kind of governmental agencies and radical programs that he is ideologically opposed to.

I just deleted a comment from a dick.

It said Kanye West is a "reverse PREJUDICE bastard" because he said "George Bush doesn't care about Black people."

Mr. West didn't say "White people suck" or anything like that. He said "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." Once again, the reflexive defense when ANY white person is accused of racism. Once again the accusation of racism applied to a Black person who has never said a nasty word about white people...only against one white person.

What happened to individuality? Why so strong a collective reaction when we all know the key to success is rugged individualism and personal responsibility?

 

Below the fold (to keep the load time of the home page reasonable) is a clip from CNN's analysis of Bush's speech.

Common outlook?

Yes, common...as in "damn near all."

Let me tell you about my trip to the bioethics lecture. It was going to be a separate post but here is as good a place as any to tell about it.

I get on the bus, sit and start reading a book. I have an empty seat beside me. White guy behind me does too.

Young Latino sister gets on the bus with one of those convertible car seat baby carriers and it's filled with baby. I give her my spot so she has some space. Guy right behind me moves over and offers me the aisle seat on his bench. Cool.

Toward the end of a 20 minute ride, white guy starts looking out the window and kinda reaching for the bell, so I shift to let him out. He says no, he's just looking to see if the bus he's transferring to is coming, maybe he doesn't have to ride all the way to the end (the two routes have considerable overlap as they approach the ferry). I check my  watch and say, no it looks like you're going to the ferry, the next one is ten minutes off (we're two-three minutes from the ferry, barring traffic lights). He smiles and says thanks.

Bush's speech will go over well with his constituency because they seem to just turn up the booty when he drops a platitude.

Talk alone never impresses me.

On CNN, David Gergen just said we've had four years of poverty going up in this country. That's the sort of thing you only admit when you can't deny it. I'm just not impressed when, after every excuse falls flat on the floor, you finally admit to what you couldn't escape.

And the fact is, we've seen this very administration respond very effectively to hurricanes that threatened the state his brother governs when his reelection was on the line.

Now, you want the military to have a big role domestically. But where are our troops? And the deadly question: where's all that money coming from? We gave away the surplus we should have had. By the end of a couple of years we'll have proof that you can just DO things and worry about the economic justification later, or we'll own so much to foreign governments we'll all get paid in Euros, Yuan and Yen.

Nice of you to give orders to do what you should have given orders to do long ago.

Now, if you fire very patronage hire and get people with knowledge and experience...

You'd have to quit. 

...is that he's lied so much in the past.

I hear glad-handed speech...and I remember all the things he's proposed in speeches that never happened.

I can't recall a single promise made by this administration that came out as promised. 

Just take a war speech and exchange every occurance of "Iraq" for "New Orleans."

'Excuse me Condi, can I go to the bathroom?'
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online

President Bush had a more pressing worry than terrorism or reforming the United Nations during a Security Counil meeting in New York yesterday - the leader of the world's only superpower wanted to go the loo.

At one point during the Council's debate on international security and UN reform, Mr Bush picked up a pencil and wrote a short note to Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State.

"I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible?" the note read.

The photograph, taken by a Reuters photographer, was widely reposted and discussed on the internet - including a piece on the influential Drudge Report under the title "Bush Needs to Go Potty".

You know the meaning of "justice"? According to Easton's Bible Dictionary:

Justice Is rendering to every one that which is his due. It has been distinguished from equity in this respect, that while justice means merely the doing what positive law demands, equity means the doing of what is fair and right in every separate case.

Is justice enough? Isn't equity what we're looking for?

Quote of note:

One of Mr. Bush's prominent African-American supporters called the White House to say he was aghast at the images from the president's first trip to the region, on Sept. 2, when Mr. Bush stood next to Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama, both white Republicans, and praised them for a job well done. Mr. Bush did not go into the heart of New Orleans to meet with black victims.

"I said, 'Grab some black people who look like they might be preachers,' " said the supporter, who asked not to be named because he did not want to be identified as criticizing the White House. [P6: I swear, I wish I knew who his sell-out ass is.] Three days later, on Mr. Bush's next trip to the region, the president appeared in Baton Rouge at the side of T. D. Jakes, the conservative African-American television evangelist and the founder of a 30,000-member megachurch in southwest Dallas.

The very definition of sell-out.

Last week, the White House continued its political recovery effort among African-Americans through its network of conservative black preachers like Bishop Jakes. Many of them have received millions of dollars for their churches through Mr. Bush's initiative to support religious-based social services - a factor, Republicans say, in Mr. Bush's small increase in support among black voters, from 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004.

Gulf Coast Isn't the Only Thing Left in Tatters; Bush's Status With Blacks Takes Hit
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

This is fucking pathetic.

"It's even hard for me to repeat because I can't imagine anybody that would make such an asinine statement," Barton said. "It was stated that 'We will take these yellow buses and go pick up these yard apes.' My God, how bad can bad get?

But, because she's not experiencing racism:

 When asked if she meant the comment as a racial slur, she said: "Heavens, no."

College administrator loses job after remark about evacuees
Associated Press

GREENVILLE, S.C. - A Greenville Technical College administrator who called Hurricane Katrina evacuees "yard apes" during a staff meeting is out of a job.

Fall 2005 Conversations Lecture Series

Friday, September 23, 2005 at 4:00pm

Ms. Yaba Blay and Ms. Kaila Adia Story, Doctoral Candidates in African-American Studies-Temple University

“Performing Venus~From Hottentot to Video Vixen: The Historical Legacy of Black Female Body Commodification”
Free & Open to the Public

Lecturer Bios

Kaila Adia Story (M.A., Temple University; B.A. Women’s Studies DePaul University) is a doctoral student in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University. Her research interest include but are not limited to Black Feminist, Africana Womanist, and African Feminist theories, Black women and Body Image, Black gendered and sexual identities, and Black gender socialization. Her dissertation research investigates Black women and the unique and combined influences of socialized explicit and implicit aesthetic racial preferences and internalization of the “thick”/”full” figured beauty standards as a basis for understanding body image and body image satisfaction. As well as looking investigating how Black women’s gendered and sexual identities have been constructed for them historically, from the “Hottentot Venus” to the current image of the “Video Vixen”. Kaila has also taught undergraduate courses in Introduction to Black Women’s Studies, The Black Women, Mass Media and the Black Community, and Gay & Lesbian Lives.

At the risk of angering a whole bag of people

“In 2004, the average game buyer was 37 years old and the average game player was 30,” Lowenstein said.

...it's a pretty sad point. But a point nonetheless.

Video Game Industry to Sue Michigan’s Governor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                           

Contact Dan Hewitt
202-223-2400
dhewitt@theESA.com

This is me, as a Lego figure. You can be a Lego figure too.

The parish that feds overlooked
Canadian Mounties reached St. Bernard before U.S. troops
- Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 15, 2005

St. Bernard Parish, La. -- For five days, the world forgot about St. Bernard Parish.

Just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans and only a 15-minute drive from Bourbon Street, the parish received no U.S. government assistance for almost a week after Hurricane Katrina struck.

The 6,000 residents stranded in its mix of marshland, oil refineries, blighted houses and sprawling new subdivisions were left to fend for themselves, including 34 people who died in a nursing home here.

Bush Plans Speech; Death Toll Rises
Aides say his address tonight will announce rebuilding efforts with a strong role for the private sector. Katrina fatalities reach 710.
By Lianne Hart and Janet Hook, Times Staff Writers

BATON ROUGE, La. — As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina climbed to 710 on Wednesday, White House aides said President Bush's address to the nation tonight would call for reconstructing the Gulf Coast using conservative blueprints and private-sector initiatives.

In preparing for his speech to be delivered from New Orleans, the president consulted widely with Republican leaders and conservative thinkers.

Never happen, though

These eager would-be buyers may be drawing their inspiration from Lower Manhattan, which proved a bonanza for those smart enough to buy condos there immediately after the Sept. 11 attack.

This one too:

"If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I'd be getting the calls and e-mails I'm getting, I would have thought he was ready for the psychiatric ward."

Messages from those wanting to buy houses — whether intact or flooded — and commercial properties are outrunning those who want to sell by a factor of 20, said Sterbcow, who has set up temporary quarters in his firm's Baton Rouge office.

"We're pressing everyone into service just to answer the phones," he said. 

Speculators Rushing In as the Water Recedes
Would-be home buyers are betting New Orleans will be a boomtown. And many of the city's poorest residents could end up being forced out.
By David Streitfeld
Times Staff Writer
September 15, 2005

If Kinsley is responsible for paying David Gerlernter for his rants, I got no sympathy for his ass what-so-ever.

Editor of Opinion Pages Resigns at The Los Angeles Times
By STEPHANIE SAUL

Michael Kinsley, the editorial and opinion editor of The Los Angeles Times, left the newspaper yesterday on what he described as a bitter note after a controversial year in which he experimented with a section normally known for its stodginess.

Mr. Kinsley, a nationally known columnist and former co-host of "Crossfire," a CNN show that is now defunct, said he would begin writing a column for The Washington Post, and would take up other duties that have yet to be determined.

Quote of note:

 The Pennsylvania bill represents an odious attempt by lawmakers to undo a state court ruling overturning a law that required newly released prisoners to wait five years before getting the right to vote. Republican lawmakers who disliked the court ruling liked it even less when community activists in Democratic parts of the state began to inform ex-felons that they now had the right to return to the polls. Legislators are also trying to direct public attention away from a hugely unpopular pay raise that they voted for themselves earlier this year. That makes the attack on voting rights all the more reprehensible.

Playing Games With Voting Rights

Jeneane at ALLIED

When we were done with our shift that afternoon, my co-volunteer friend and I took 14-year-old Shane from the shelter to my pool so he could hang out, relax, swim. His mom is still looking for her twin boys that were with their father when she and Shane left New Orleans. She was glad Shane could get out of the shelter and do something fun. He was allowed to be out until 10:00. My friend asked him when he wanted to get back. He said, "Is 9:59 okay?"

He jumped off the diving boards like a pro and said he couldn't remember the last time he'd been swimming. Then corrected himself: "Oh right, it was before the storm."

That is the a/b switch playing in the minds of the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been interrupted with a trauma so immense it's hardly describable. There is 'before the storm' and 'after the storm.' The first part of their lives and the rest of their lives.

The only thing I know for sure is that I have new folks to add to my prayers. And I have.

Left Behind
by Joel Kotkin & David Friedman
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 09.14.05

President Bush's inept response to the Katrina disaster has called into question whether his brand of conservatism is capable of responding to national emergencies--and rightly so. From the administration's pre-hurricane reluctance to fund infrastructure upgrades to its appointment of political cronies to crucial federal agencies, the last few weeks have showcased the American political right at its very worst.

But if Katrina has laid bare the shortcomings of Bush-style conservatism, it has also exposed problems with contemporary urban liberalism. During the years preceding the hurricane, New Orleans indulged many of the worst tendencies of urban liberal politics--and on the day Katrina made landfall, it was the poorest residents of the city who paid the price. Which is why it can be said that Katrina exposed the failures of not one, but two, political philosophies: a national conservatism unconcerned about urban centers; and an urban liberalism unconcerned about the daily realities of the majority of urban dwellers. The media has largely focused on the former failure. But the latter failure is no less real.

I'm finding the poll results fascinating. And I know that will mean nothing when someone stumbles across it later...

Another thing. Really cute children who should know your age is an integral multiple of theirs get annoyed when you don't react to their posing and flashing booty in front of you. Especially when the multiple is three...

Bunch of high school kids are coming home from football practice, selling wolf tickets..."you think you can get by me? I'ma as Coach to let me cover you..." Start talking about who's faster. The biggest kid (I'd have to hit him with a stick, know what I'm saying?) tells how one who isn't on the bus had a rep for being fast when he was really quick...but this year he did speed up. Says he cut so much time off his forty yard dash he's doing in negative one. Don't ask me why I enjoyed the fact that they all appreciated the mathematical metaphor.

I'm heading out to my bioethics lecture...you may leave absurd comments secure in the knowledge that they won't be refuted for a couple of hours.

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth
September 14, 2005 | Issue 41•37

HOUSTON—On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."

Here's the admission of responsibility by your president. In particular:

One thing for certain; having been down there three times and have seen how hard people are working, I'm not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives. Those Coast Guard kids pulling people out of the -- out of the floods are -- did heroic work. The first responders on the ground, whether they be state folks or local folks, did everything they could. There's a lot of people that are -- have done a lot of hard work to save lives.

And so I want to know what went right and what went wrong to address those. But I also want people in America to understand how hard people are working to save lives down there in not only New Orleans, but surrounding parishes and along the Gulf Coast.

Good. I'm going someplace I got no business being at...a lecture on bioethics.

And I want to finish up When Affirmative Action was White by tomorrow so I can write up a review by Friday...I got answers to a couple of questions that were asked.

And I do want to put together what I've picked up from the hearing. It's coming too fast and goes on too long to do a good analysis on the fly...for instance, just now, Sen. Leahy is going into the death penalty and Roberts gave a kind of...obnoxious answer to the question "If a death row prisoner can prove his innocence, has he no constitutional right to appeal?"

His answer, btw, was that the problem isn't innocence, it's whether he has the right to just demand a new trial after the whole process has been gone through.

Anyway, yeah, I think I've got some interesting stuff. 

The good Senator's anti-abortion position is interesting. He says that since death is defined as the cessation of heart and brain activity, life should be defined as the presence of heart and brain activity.

He then points out that heart activity begins 14 days after conception.

That means he can have no objection to abortions up to two weeks after conception. Which kills any possible objection to the morning after pill. And since that's hella easier than an abortion, a reasonably priced non-prescription morning after pill would pretty much eliminate abortions.

He's not questioning Roberts at all. He's ranting about abortion.

And he's proud Kansas is "the home of Brown vs. Board of Education."

I had to steal it. 

Thank you to And We Shall March 

If you can find a story on the Katrina aftermath today that does NOT include Dubya's mea culpa, let me know.

Folks ought to have no trouble getting credit now, right? 

Quote of note:

Like much else surrounding Katrina, the financial aftermath is a story of haves and have-nots.

Helen Salazar-Realini, a financial planner in Miami, said most of those who left the Gulf Coast early will be fine. Insurance, after a deductible that can run several thousand dollars, will cover their homes and cars and living expenses while they are uprooted.

Renters will be in far worse shape, she said. They may have lacked insurance to cover their belongings and have difficulty recovering security deposits.

Hurricane victims pile up credit card debt
By David Koenig, AP Business Writer  |  September 14, 2005

And I SO want to file this under Politics...alas, I cannot...

Quote of note: 

Holyoke told Novak that he had over $100,000 in cash in a safe deposit box, repeatedly telling Novak that the money was drug proceeds, according to an affidavit filed by Lauren Youngquist, a special agent with the criminal investigation unit of the Internal Revenue Service. Novak allegedly told Holyoke that he would take approximately $60,000 of the money as a legal fee and offered to "clean" or "cleanse" the remainder of the cash, the affidavit said.

GOP official accused of money-laundering for legal client
By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer  |  September 13, 2005

via Seeing the Forest we find this hopeful sign that the truth will out.

Quote of note:

''As a researcher, I base what I say on evidence and there was no evidence for a lot of what was being reported," says Kathleen Tierney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center there. ''I don't think I've ever seen such an egregious example of victim blaming as I have in this disaster."

Up for grabs
Sociologists question how much looting and mayhem really took place in New Orleans
By Christopher Shea  |  September 11, 2005

There's a bunch of stuff in this article that just not apparent from the headline.

Owners charged in 34 deaths at La. nursing home
Failure to evacuate for Katrina alleged
By Christopher Rowland and Keith O'Brien, Globe Correspondent  |  September 14, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana's attorney general charged two nursing home operators with multiple counts of negligent homicide yesterday in the deaths of 34 elderly patients who died during Hurricane Katrina. The operators of the facility in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish ignored a mandatory evacuation order as the storm approached, and turned down the offer of buses to evacuate its residents, authorities said.

Man, there's this post on Alternet that has 448 comments as of this writing. I wish I could read them all. I wish EVERYONE could read them all.

White People's Burden
By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2005.

It's time for white Americans to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, they are the problem.

...Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.

So many heads exploded it's going to take a week to clean my keyboard. 

Will He Shut Up Already
by oldman

...A colloquial definition of madness is to try the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

The madness here is the assumption by conservatives that by siding with those who profess goals that sound sympathetic to conservative interests but whose actions have proven again and again unable to deliver results that somehow this will advance conservative interests.

George Will's op-ed is a paroxysm of anger and despair. Anger because his exasperation is not really with Landrieu, the Democrats, or even unwed urban black mothers who are all the ostensible targets of his harsh rhetoric but that everything he has ever worked to support in conservatism is crumbling and rotting from within. Despair because he attacks the weak and the victimized here for their all too human weaknesses and flaws, rather than holding responsible and culpable the corruption and failure within conservative ranks that has actually brought about these failures.

Sen.: Justice Roberts, do you have any opinions?

Roberts: Well, we sent you a couple thousand pages...(laughter)

Sen: No, no, I mean personal opinions. Do you have any?

Roberts: Of course...

Sen: And are any of those opinions on subjects that may come before you on the bench? I'm not asking you what the opinions, or even the subjects are. I just want to know if you have them.

Roberts: Yes, of course. But I have to remain independant, fair minded, blahblah...

Sen: Yes, I'm sure. Do you think you could rule fairly on the issues on which you have opinions?

Remember this?

A new Republican organization has its official startup on August 15th.

I have little expectation of anything new.

MISSION:  The mission of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) is to be a resource for the black community on Republican ideals and support the principles of the Republican Party.

GOAL:  The goal of the Association is to increase the number of black Americans who vote for Republicans and are active in the Republican Party.

OBJECTIVES:  The objectives of the Association are to provide networking opportunities and resources for black Republicans nationwide.

Well, it didn't work out that well...

Quote of note:

What we forget is that some people in some communities see themselves as under water pretty much all the time.

Our rules -- deal fairly with one another, avoid violence, obey the law -- don't always make sense to them because the rules don't always make their lives more livable. And yet we think they should go on following our rules because it makes our lives more livable.

Our Rules vs. The Poor
By William Raspberry
Monday, September 12, 2005; Page A19

The Duke University class I teach on family and community had no trouble with the New Orleans "looters" who smashed store windows for food and clothing. They had done their reading, so they understood that an important element of what makes a community work is the willingness of people to abide by agreed-upon rules.

This, from the Washington Post:

He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: Graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.

He said this on This Week on ABC Sunday as well...Newt Gingrich was pitching in, Zakaria was nodding like some bobblehead doll.

But here's the thing. We can't all be wealthy. We can't even all be middle class. We depend on sub-market rate labor. It's supported by the tax code in various places. Look into waitstaff salaries...they have to report a fraction of their salary over and above their their salary as tips they are assumed to have received, and employers can take those assumed tips into account as salary as well. Illegal immigrants probably have a lower unemployment rate than the general population.

The Supreme court has three tiers of equal protection.

Race is last. It gets less equal protection than gender. I assume the third level is white men and corporations.

This is a wonderful example of how definitions are inherently less clear than indications.

Transcripts!! Transcripts!!

Between Spector's set-up and both the questions and answers between Senator Kennedy and Justice Roberts, it will be an interesting analysis.

Why I'm not all hype: 

Non-Hispanic whites became a minority of the city's overall population in the 1980's, but still made up a majority of voting-age citizens, registered voters and, according to exit polls and other surveys, New Yorkers who actually turned out on Election Day. It is estimated that non-Hispanic whites were 52 percent of the electorate in the 2001 mayoral race and 51 percent of the city's voters in last year's presidential election.

New York's Ever-Changing Electorate: Next, the White Minority
By SAM ROBERTS

Today's Democratic primary is the prelude to a potentially revolutionary turning point in New York City's traditional tribal politics: In November, for the first time, non-Hispanic whites are projected to constitute a minority of the voters in a mayoral general election.

American Envoy Says Syria Assists Training of Terrorists
By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - The United States ambassador to Iraq lashed out at Syria on Monday, saying that its government continued to allow terrorists to operate training camps within Syria that have sent hundreds of insurgents into Iraq.

"Our patience is running out," said the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad.

While other administration officials made similar accusations early this year, the focus of American attention to Syria in recent months has been its occupation ofLebanon. Over the summer, Syria said that it had cracked down on insurgents operating within its territory.

Christopher Cooper, J.D., Ph.D. & Attorney at Law
Director, Saint Xavier University Center for Conflict Resolution

KATRINA AFTERMATH, RACE & ACADEMICS
COPYRIGHT © 2005   

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has meticulously showed the racial divide between blacks and whites in the United States. Ours is a country in which scientific poll after poll show that black American people say they experience racism routinely at the hands of many (not all) white American people; but many white people overwhelmingly assert that racism is a phenomenon of the past. In other words, Hurricane Katrina forces people who have long denied that there is great race-based interpersonal conflict between whites and blacks in the United States to accept that such a phenomenon is real. As a black man I write this essay with frustration. My frustration, directed at the field of Criminology & Criminal Justice of which I am a part.

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Except relief and reconstruction never seem to work like that. When I was in Sri Lanka six months after the tsunami, many survivors told me that the reconstruction was victimizing them all over again. A council of the country's most prominent businesspeople had been put in charge of the process, and they were handing the coast over to tourist developers at a frantic pace. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor fishing people were still stuck in sweltering inland camps, patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and entirely dependent on relief agencies for food and water. They called reconstruction "the second tsunami."

Let the People Rebuild New Orleans
Naomi Klein

Exiles from a city and from a nation
Cornel West
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer

It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.

What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.

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The people who died during Katrina and its aftermath are, two weeks later, still largely unidentified and unknown. No one can say yet how many perished, who they were, how and when they died. Communications and recovery problems -- and a heavy cloak of secrecy -- have compounded the mystery. Officials have been told not to pass on any information. For now, and for the indefinite future, the victims of Katrina remain the dead without a roster.

For Many Casualties, No Who, How or When
By Sue Anne Pressley and Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A01

I guessed they were signalling the helicopters. I was right...and if you can get through this really disturbing video, you'll see. I actually stopped about half way though.

I've had the thought they didn't pick up the bodies in the hopes they's be washed away. Not only will we never know how many died, we'll never know how many are missing.

Came via email:
 
LOUISIANA NAACP PRESIDENT
CALLS FOR EVACUEES TO TAKE CONTROL
OF THEIR OWN DESTINY AND FORM

"SHELTER COMMITTEES" Ernest L. Johnson, President of the Louisiana NAACP called today for Katrina evacuees in shelters to take control of their own destinies by forming SHELTER COMMITTEES.

"Each SHELTER COMMITTEE should elect a Chairperson and a Secretary and begin holding meetings, organizing, and working as a team for better treatment," Johnson said. "In unity there is strength."

Johnson called for each committee to begin writing down the name, telephone number, and next of kin of every shelter resident.  

This contact information must be put into the FEMA database for evacuees to receive financial assistance.

Bloggers Stand in Solidarity with NAACP Shelter Committees

9/12/2005 11:39:00 AM

---

To: National Desk

Contact: Bob Brigham, 415-265-2226 (cell)

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Ernest L. Johnson, president of the Louisiana NAACP called today for Katrina evacuees in shelters to take control of their own destinies by forming shelter committees.

In response, Internet bloggers have begun writing about the effort to spread the word and stand in solidarity with the NAACP.

"We have a team of bloggers who traveled to Louisiana," said Bob Brigham of http://www.SwingStateProject.com. "Having bloggers on the ground allows us to immediately scale up and catapult good ideas."

I skipped today's opening statements in Justice Roberts' confirmation hearings. I'll start checking it in detail tomorrow when the real questioning begins. It ought to be interesting.

I did see The Newshour's report on the hearing. Justice Roberts is working a baseball metaphor...he says a judge is like an umpire and shouldn't pitch or bat.

Thing is, an umpire shouldn't sell out to the gambling syndicates.

Violent clashes erupt in Belfast
 
Several police have been injured and a civilian shot during loyalist rioting over the re-routing of a controversial Orange Order parade in Belfast.

Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde said officers were attacked with explosives and shot at.

He said the Orange Order must bear "substantial responsibility" for the rioting over the Whiterock parade.

The clashes continued into early Sunday morning, and disturbances broke out in several towns in County Antrim.

Police said cars were hijacked and roads blocked in Ballyclare, Glengormley, Rathcoole, Larne and Carrickfergus.

DUP leader Ian Paisley blamed the Parades Commission for not reviewing the route that barred it from a nationalist area.

The parade was re-routed to avoid the mainly nationalist Springfield Road area.

After a request by unionists on Friday, the Parades Commission reviewed its ruling on the route, but decided not to change it.

"The commission treated elected representatives with contempt by its refusal to even call us to put our case," said Mr Paisley.

Quote of note:

Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, helped to set up its hazardous waste programme. After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency Response. He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe."

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005

Quote of note:

Reyes said yesterday that she was summoned to a superior's office Tuesday and told that the office was upset about the Post article. "I didn't even know an article had been written," she said. Reyes said she explained what had happened and later was called back to the supervisor's office and told she was fired. "I was in complete shock," she said. "I said, 'Well, why?' They said I violated the press policy."

While she didn't know she was talking to a reporter, Reyes said, the press policy doesn't bar her from speaking with the media.

"The policy allows us to talk to members of the media," she said. "The policy says if it's a controversial issue or a special issue, it needs to be forwarded on to someone else. Just talking to the media doesn't violate it, as I read it. . . . Karl Rove didn't come up. It wasn't something you could classify as controversial."

Texas Fires Lawyer After Story on Rove
Talking to Post Reporter Called Violation
By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 10, 2005; A09

Medicaid cuts could target drug costs
By Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org Staff Writer    

The pharmaceutical industry could shoulder almost half of the $10 billion in anticipated cuts to Medicaid, if Congress heeds the advice of a panel charged with finding ways to rein in spending on the joint federal-state program.

The Republican-led Congress is trying to decide by Oct. 1 how to trim the $330 billion Medicaid program, whose rising costs are a growing budget burden for states as well as the federal government.

Among the top proposals under consideration is a plan from a commission led by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt that would achieve $6.3 billion of $11 billion in proposed cuts by changing how Medicaid purchases medicine. Both moves are supported by the nation’s governors.

Mark Anthony Neal at NewBlackMan has a roundup of blogs, articles, stuff like that, about the implications of Hurricane Katrina, written by Black academics.

After Katrina, a crisis of loss
Pulled by both the past and the future, many hurricane victims must hold onto their most basic possession of all: their sense of self.
By Susan Brink, Times Staff Writer

...Their home, books, clothing, the piano he played — all gone. And then there was something else: his doctoral dissertation, untouched for years, which was sitting on the living room bookshelf.

"I know it's absolutely useless in the greater world, but I put many years of my life into that book. It's gone," he says. "We may have lost everything. It's heartbreaking."

In some ways, all the hurricane victims are about to begin a parallel odyssey. They have all left their community, and life as they knew it will never be the same. They all are suffering through a crisis of loss as they glance in the rearview mirror, and a crisis of overload as they stare ahead through the windshield, says Rubén G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at UC Irvine.

Even their ability to return when they want to is beyond their control, says Rumbaut, who himself fled Cuba in 1960. "They're strangers in a strange place, trying to figure out which arrow to follow."

Americans have suffered through disasters — California earthquakes, Midwestern floods and previous Gulf Coast hurricanes — but the displacement of virtually everyone from a major U.S. city is unprecedented. As the victims begin their recovery and resettlement, they are in uncharted emotional territory. They've lost many of the things that help hold a human life together. They've lost basic necessities like homes, cars, beds, refrigerators. They've lost the institutions that anchor them: jobs, churches, schools, neighborhoods. They've lost personal treasures: the toolbox passed down from a grandfather, the plaster handprint of a 5-year-old. Worst of all, some have lost family members and friends.

"We'll find out what it does to people. This is something the country has not experienced before," says C. Scott Saunders, director of the UCLA Trauma Psychiatry Service.

"A sense of reality and personal identity is directly linked to the people and familiar objects around you," says Dr. Robert L. Pyles, a Boston psychoanalyst. "If those are lost, people come under enormous stress."

Much of the NY Times disappears behind a financial firewall next Monday. News, reviews and editorials will still be available...op-eds and such, not so much.

I remember when the NYT issued linkrot protection via RSS. I don't know if you noticed, but links from RSS feeds (and Google, btw) didn't expiring the way links from the web site did. I don't know if suddenly all the old links will break now or not.

On the other hand, the archives look fat, juicy and ready for picking. I like the idea of being able to go back as far as 1851. Do you have any idea how many misrepresentations of history can be dismembered with such a resource? 

TimesSelect is a new service from The New York Times providing exclusive online access to Op-Ed columnists, The Archive, Web tools and more. Click each heading to learn more.

Make the card free, unconditionally, forever, by law.

The cards are sold in 58 locations, in a state with 159 counties.

Make them readily available, across the state. Run it like that for two-three years before the law takes effect.

There's no racial terminology here, but it's no coincidence that Black folks are the most affected population.

Anyway...

Georgia's New Poll Tax

In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia is still charging people to vote, this time with a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses - a group that is disproportionately poor, black and elderly - to pay $20 or more for a state ID card. Georgia went ahead with this even though there is not a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The law is a national disgrace.

We're going to have to drop the "United" part and just call ourselves "S.A." 

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Establishing such companies requires only filing some simple paperwork with the Nevada secretary of state. California firms can then shift their income to the shell corporation, even though no business is transacted in Nevada and all operations and executives remain in California.

State officials say the law is clear: Money earned in California is taxable in California. Authorities are only a few weeks into their investigation but have already turned up enough activity for the tax board to launch a dozen audits.  

Tax-Averse Firms Cross a State Line
California businesses are incorporating in Nevada, where there is no income tax. State officials call it fraud and vow a crackdown.
By Evan Halper, Times Staff Writer

Via Slashdot I got The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security.

I've tried to keep this light-hearted, but my message is serious. Computer security is a field that has fallen far too deeply in love with the whizzbang-of-the-week and has forsaken common sense. Your job, as a security practitioner, is to question - if not outright challenge - the conventional wisdom and the status quo. After all, if the conventional wisdom was working, the rate of systems being compromised would be going down, wouldn't it?

It verges on brilliace because it states the obvious so clearly. The first idea, Default Permit, is seriously at the root of all...I repeat, ALL...Internet security issues. The second, Enumerating Badness, is interesting because Corporate America (a.k.a. Microsoft) has tried to address it, and all the geeks in the world called it an attempt to hide the truth.

Simple. They stay on the edge. Podcasts? Nah. VODcasts...downloadable video shows.

Thought I'd start the day with something mellow, you know? 

The Dalai Lama wants the victims  to show compassion? Just tell them to lift their chin and pass the straight razor, why don't you?

God, what an ass.

Dalai Lama urges victims for compassion
JOHN MILLER
Associated Press

HAILEY, Idaho - The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, urged victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina on Sunday to turn their tragedies into something that makes them stronger.

"Your sadness, your anger will not solve the problem," the 70-year old monk told a crowd of about 10,000. "More sadness, more frustration only brings more suffering for yourself."

The Dalai Lama's speech came on the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he also touched on the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The question. 

The answer:

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.

Old-line families plot the future
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal

NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.

Quote of note:

"Am I the only person out here with dreadlocks?"

Uprooted and Scattered Far From the Familiar
By TIMOTHY EGAN

BLUFFDALE, Utah, Sept. 9 - Carrying the scraps of their lives in plastic trash bags, citizens of the drowned city of New Orleans landed in a strange new place a week ago and wondered where they were. The land was brown, and nearly everyone they saw was white.

"I'm still not sure where I am - what do they call this, the upper West or something?" said Shelvin Cooter, 30, one of 583 people relocated from New Orleans to a National Guard camp here on a sagebrush plateau south of Salt Lake City, 1,410 miles from home.

Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals
Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:03 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Quote of note:

One of the ideas making the rounds among commentators since 8/29 is that the hurricane may lead Americans to expect more from their government, which is really the only entity that can respond to a disaster of such magnitude. If this is true, it has profound implications not just for the war in Iraq (it's the size of the force that matters, at least as much as speed and smarts) but for domestic policy and politics.

But it is at least possible that 8/29 could have the opposite effect, causing people to give up on their government. That's what many along the Gulf Coast did, after all, when they realized no help was forthcoming; in one case, ham-radio operators guided helicopter pilots to hospital rooftops to rescue doctors and patients. And Americans donated record amounts to charities and relief groups that were seen as more nimble and efficient than the government.

9/11 and 8/29

IF 9/11 SHOWED HOW MUCH the world had changed, then 8/29 showed how much it hadn't. Four years ago, when terrorists crashed jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, history was cleaved in half — the era before 9/11 and after. Will 8/29, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast, prove to be a similar demarcation line?

This, fron GlobalSecurity.org, is an example of why I will never read just the one thing I'm looking for when I find the one thing I'm looking for online.

Restore New Orleans, Bulldoze Peoria
by Will Morgan
September 1, 2005

House Speaker Dennis Hastert's comment yesterday that much of New Orleans ought to be "bulldozed" rather than rebuilt on its below sea-level site exposes some of the ambivalence Americans have always felt towards the city of New Orleans. From the time of its acquisition it was not an "American" city. It was neither Ango-Saxon nor Protestant or White. Life in the place was basically Meditterrean and European, with long working pauses in the hot days and leisurely meals. Its politics were familial rather than democratic, its religion an almagam of Caribbrean cults and Catholcism. Its wealthest citizens were all of mixed races, Spanish and French, African and Creole, American Indian and Caribbean. But there was money to be made. The strategic importance of governing the trade at the mouth of Mississippi River outweighed all of the cultural differences between the Puritan Americans and the more relaxed attitudes of the natives of the Delta City. These differences persisted as the Americans arrived and began to build their great homes in the uptown section of town. Many Americans were seduced by the charm of this foreign culture, but others resisted, especially did they resist the notion, abroad in the city since its founding, that all races could live easily together and intermarry as they pleased. The pride and even arrogance of Louisiana Creoles was legendary. They believed themselves every bit the equal of the Americans and refused to cow-tow to any notion of "American Superiority". After Reconstruction the Americans came down even harder and passed laws which forced the segregation of the Creoles, who were thenceforth to be considered as no different from blacks. It is impossible to describe what a fissure this created in people who felt themselves to be culturally "superior" in every way to both the Americans and to the descendants of African slaves.  Pioneers and early Americans knew this much about New Orleans: Those women were beautiful and the sex they offered was wonderful, but it would never fly to have this openly admitted and spoken of back home in Tennessee... so all in all, one was obliged to treat New Orleans as some kind of chip of Paris that had somehow dislodged into the Seine and had drifted across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean, attaching itself to the underbelly of North America. The near fanatical pride of the Creoles  in the face of the American attempt to treat them no different than negroes seared these people's heart and soul. Indirectly it led to creation of jazz because music became one of the few careers open to those who had always cultivated music in their own homes as the essence of their 'Europeanization'. Yet the forced association of Creoles and Blacks also contributed to jazz since it had the ironic effect of causing the Creoles to listen more closely to early blues, to understand blues scales, to feel the power of the indivdual voice and the powerful rhythmic and dance inheritance of West Africa. Even so it was clear that no one was ever going to be able to bend the will of the Creole mongrels.

Quote of note:

It says "this will be particularly difficult with nonstate (non-government) actors who employ or attempt to gain use of WMD. Here, deterrence may be directed at states that support their efforts as well as the terrorist organization itself. 

U.S. Envisions Using Nukes on Terrorists
3:02 AM PDT, September 11, 2005

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon planning document being updated to reflect the doctrine of pre-emption declared by President Bush in 2002 envisions the use of nuclear weapons to deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies.

The "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," which was last updated 10 years ago, makes clear that "the decision to employ nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the president."

But it says that in a changing environment "terrorists or regional states armed with WMD will likely test U.S. security commitments to its allies and friends."

"In response, the U.S. needs a range of capabilities to assure friend and foe alike of its resolve," says the 69-page document dated March 15. [P6: the final draft is now a 124 page pdf]

Quote of note:

"The government now is so inefficient at controlling the situation that the security situation has deteriorated, and so the political situation has deteriorated," said a senior government official who took part in the negotiations on the constitution.

"They have to get security under control, otherwise it's not going to matter what we do here," he said, speaking from an office in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq
A wave of Sunni Muslim and Shiite assassinations raises the specter of sectarian warfare.
By Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer