Obsidian Wings

Shhh...No One Knows I'm Blogging

You have to read this awesome publication (pdf file) put out by Reporters Without Borders helping folks set up anonymous weblogs and avoid censors in places where blogging can be dangerous to one's employment or even health. There's lots of info about how or why to blog, but a chapter titled "HOW TO BLOG ANONYMOUSLY" by Ethan Zuckerman (fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School), outlines the following 6 steps:

Pork: It's not just for dinner

I've got a couple of free moments on hand, and at the same time I saw this (via Glenn Reynolds):

Bloggers, too have latched onto this theme. A coalition of bloggers have launched a website called “porkbusters.” The site lists every member of the House and Senate by the name and has a column next to the name for “committed cuts,” or sacrifices. Currently, the only member of Congress listed with a “committed cut” is House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Many Republican members of Congress must be asking themselves, “Is Nancy Pelosi the best fiscal conservative this Congress has to offer?”

This is the sort of departure between what politicians say and what they do that's one of the many things that had me leave the Republican party in the first place.  Conservative politicians say they're about fiscal responsibility, but in reality they're just a different face of the political animal that buys votes using taxpayer dollars.  It's an addiction of sorts, methinks.  Kudos to Pelosi for at least making the pledge, for whatever reasons.

I looked at the portions of the highway bill that are going to Florida, and I know there's at least ten million dollars that don't belong there, without even looking into what each line item actually means.  It's likely that the inappropriate appropriations (heh) are actually several times that.  I think the state got over half a billion, so I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we got into nine-digit amounts of pork.

I'm still sick, and I'm still working my ass off when I'm not sleeping, but this was one of those funny-tragic things that I thought needed to be underlined, highlighted, and raised to a larger, bolded font.

Consider this an open thread. 

Update:

Diplomacy In Action!

--Sebastian

There is talk of the diplomatic breakthrough at the recent 6-party North Korean talks.  I suspect that this deal is indeed a diplomatic model for how the world intends to deal with Iran.  Unfortunately this is another example of the modern practice of diplomacy.  Diplomacy never fails--you just let expectations free-fall until whatever you actually got is a success.  What has North Korea agreed to?  It has agreed to abandon its nuclear programs and any nuclear weapons it might currently have.  Unfortunately North Korea has a long history of breaking such general agreements (NPT, North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the Agreed Framework).  What has it not agreed to?

It has not agreed to a verification method regarding the end of its plutonium bomb production.

It has not agreed to even admit that there ever was a uranium production program, and thus has not even hinted at verification to end it. 

It has not commited to a timeline for ending its programs and destroying its bombs.

It has not commited to disclose its current nuclear programs.

And in a preview of things to come, only one day after the landmark agreement, North Korea is saying (contrary to the understanding of the other five parties) that it is entitled to have the US build nuclear reactors for North Korea before North Korea is required to abandon its nuclear weapons and programs.  This would allow the programs to evade inspection for the better part of a decade--how many nukes can North Korea make and then hide in that time?  Given North Korea's history this seems more like a play for time than an attempt to negotiate.  However, this highlights the importance of six-party talks.  In previous bilateral talks, North Korea would lie about the agreements and it would be a he-said/she-said between North Korea and the United States.  That isn't possible now, as four of the other parties agree with the US interpretation.  (South Korea responds with a rather ridiculous statement): 

But South Korea's reaction was more muted, with a key minister saying the demand was to be expected and that it would not jeopardize Monday's deal.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said on a radio program the North's response to the agreement could be handled in diplomatic talks before a further round of negotiations, Reuters reports.

[emphasis mine]

I'm afraid that the papers are correct, this is what counts as a diplomatic success in non-proliferation talks:  empty promises which buy more time.  Iran is a quick study.  It took less than two days to learn the lesson offered by North Korea. 

Furthermore, in a move which has suspicious timing, the UN has agreed with North Korea to end food aid and replace it with development aid.  This has the practical effect of giving even more governmental control than was already present over the distribution of aid (see here for more details).

On a more theoretical level, I have seen a number of people speculate that the real problem with the NPT is not that it is virtually unenforceable if the international community isn't interested in putting force behind it, but rather that dictators are motivated to get nuclear weapons in order to counter-act the nuclear weapons which are currently held by the US, China, Russia, France and the UK.  The suggested prescription is nuclear disarmament by those powers.  Recent examples of this argument may be found here:

What is all this worth? Why doesn't the NPT work? I think it is primarily because the perpetuation of nuclear haves and have-nots. I think it is past time for the big 5 nuclear powers to get serious about drastic nuclear arms reductions. I'd even go so far as to say that the US military is so good at conventional warfare that it doesn't need nukes in the context of a nuclear- disarmed Russia and China. The problem here would be the perceived unequally of might diminishment. That is, Russia might balk saying, with great credibility, that without nukes, Russia becomes proportionately much weaker than either the US or China. But to my way of seeing it, if the big powers could get their act together and disarm, then it would be so much easier to disarm the lessor nuke weapons nations.

Only then could an arms negotiator in the US State Department really say "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them." Let's face it, unless we go there, it is actually irrational for Iran, North Korea, hell, even Japan and Taiwan not to have nukes.

and here (despite the title "A Modest Proposal" all indications are that John Quiggin is quite serious about the idea to disarm, he just believes it is politically unlikely):

Of course, nuclear disarmament was the subject of bitter dispute within Labour in the 1980s, and disarmaming now would seem to hand a retrospective win to the left. But, if you buy the standard rightwing line on this subject, the nuclear deterrent did its work the day the Soviet Union collapsed, unable to sustain the arms race. Why hang on to it now? The answer, as far as I can see, is the same as for France. With the bomb, Britain is still one of the Big Five. Without it, Britain stands in much the same position as Italy or (a more populous version of) Australia.

As long as France and Britain sustain, by example, the view that having nuclear weapons is critical to being a Great Power, governments everywhere will seek them, whether or not they actually provide any security.

A key mistake is made in both instances.  It is:  "But to my way of seeing it, if the big powers could get their act together and disarm, then it would be so much easier to disarm the lessor nuke weapons nations." and "As long as France and Britain sustain, by example, the view that having nuclear weapons is critical to being a Great Power, governments everywhere will seek them, whether or not they actually provide any security."

North Korea and Iran are not interested in obtaining nuclear weapons to counter the nuclear weapons of the Great Powers.  They are interested in obtaining nuclear weapons to counter the conventional might of the Great Powers.  The strategic advantage of obtaining nuclear weapons would not decrease if the US did not have nuclear weapons.  It would almost certainly increase, or at very best be exactly the same.  Countries attempt to gain nuclear weapons because they see a strategic advantage in obtaining them.  That strategic advantage would not vanish if the Great Powers disarmed their nuclear weapons.  And if they disarmed their conventional weapons, the strategic advantage of being able to engage in nuclear blackmail would increase. 

Heading for Higher Ground Open Thread

Lovely Rita, ain't so lovely and seems to be growing in her nastiness by the hour. [update: Steve Gregory reports Rita is now a Category 5]

The latest extended forecast from the National Hurricane Center predicted that Rita would likely make landfall Saturday somewhere on the Texas Gulf coast, but said it could instead hit Louisiana or northern Mexico.

Rarely do officials get a chance to redeem themselves as quickly as this one is coming. Let's hope local, state, and federal authorities don't "pull a Katrina."

Best wishes to all in the storm's path.

UPDATE: Constant reader CaseyL points us to this excellent grouping of weather blogs on Wunderground.com. As CaseyL notes:

Dr. Jeff Masters and Steve Gregory were on the money with Katrina. Their vivid, fact-stuffed reporting is informally credited with convincing a lot of people who might otherwise have stayed to get the hell out.

When they post updates, it's complete with the latest satellite images and modelings.

p>

Serious about Porn

I've admitted this before, so I'm not embarassed to bring it up again in this context: I've watched it. In fact, every night at 11:00 we used to turn it on. Until, well, it was replaced with something even more scandalous.

I'm talking, of course, about the re-runs of "Friends" that aired at 11:00 pm on the local WB Channel 11 every week night (it's been our way of letting our brains drain before turning off the lights in our house). Now, however, they're airing re-runs of "Sex in the City", but that's not my point....

I mention "Friends" because one of the long-running points of interest on that show for me was how open all the characters were about the fact that they understood the appeal of pornography, both the men and the women. I found it a bit scandalous at first (as I'm sure it was meant to be), but eventually figured if there was no public backlash that perhaps the nation is at the place where adults can enjoy a bit of "erotica" without being ashamed of it. In fact, with the right attitude, the appeal of porn can be seen as fun and humourous. (OK, so in my circle of friends it always has been, but we're talking about a sit-com that aired at 8:00 pm originally.)

However, according to the FBI, porn is no laughing matter. In response to the jokes circulating among agents who've been asked to leave their posts in fighting terrorism to join the fight against obscenity (for example, "Things I Don't Want On My Résumé, Volume Four." "I already gave at home." and "Honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves."), more stodgy folks at the Bureau have noted that they are not amused:

At the FBI's field office, spokeswoman Debra Weierman expressed disappointment that some of her colleagues find grist for humor in the new campaign. "The adult obscenity squad . . . stems from an attorney general mandate, funded by Congress," she said. "The personnel assigned to this initiative take the responsibility of this assignment very seriously and are dedicated to the success of this program."

Of course, the true scandal was summed up perfectly by one agent:

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Clearly the FBI has more than one responsibility, and there are elements within the world of pornography that most definitely need to be stopped, but these renewed efforts seem remarkably misguided when there are allegedly terrorist cells amongst us plotting as we speak.

The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.

Who needs situation comedies when we have the Federal govenment to make us laugh, eh?

About Those Buses...

by hilzoy

I swear: you can't make this stuff up. Via dKos, this story:

"Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said. (...)

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error. (...)

"I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said. "Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first concern until I realized that they were not there."

Meanwhile, the state continued to send school buses into the affected areas.

One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one point that the state could stop sending school buses because the agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the commercial buses that still weren't there.

Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.

"She said, 'I'll be damned. You keep loading the wagons on the school buses,'" Kleinpeter said.

Kleinpeter said he now wonders if FEMA temporarily halted its buses because the agency thought helicopters would work better."

Brown told Blanco not to use school buses, which were in Louisiana, because they were not air-conditioned?? FEMA thought that they were going to evacuate tens of thousands of people using helicopters??

Reality: it's the new parody.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere...

by hilzoy

North Korea has agreed, in principle, to give up its nuclear program:

"The United States, North Korea and four other nations participating in nuclear negotiations in Beijing signed a draft accord in which Pyongyang promised to abandon efforts to produce nuclear weapons and re-admit international inspectors to its nuclear facilities. Foreign powers said they would provide aid, diplomatic assurances and security guarantees and consider North Korea's demands for a light-water nuclear reactor.

The agreement is a preliminary one that would require future rounds of negotiations to flesh out, as it does not address a number of issues, like timing and implementation, that are likely to prove highly contentious. China announced that the six nations participating in the talks would reconvene in November to continue ironing out the details."

However, North Korea has just demanded a light-water reactor in exchange for a deal.

As far as I can tell, if this agreement works out (which seems to be a big 'if'), it would mean that after five years of stalemate, during which North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons, we are going to return to something a lot like the agreed framework. I rather liked the agreed framework, not because I thought it was a magic solution that would enforce itself, but because it was the least dreadful of a set of bad alternatives. I just wish we hadn't taken that little detour during which North Korea became a nuclear power.

Still More Incompetence

by hilzoy

Via BOPNews, this story from the Advocate:

"In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.

"I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn't be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave.""

Sigh.

Good Samaritan laws provide immunity from suits for anything short of gross negligence to doctors helping people for free in an emergency. Louisiana has such a law. Moreover, most canons of medical ethics prohibit doctors from leaving a patient they are caring for without ensuring that someone else is prepared to take over for them. So not only was the official immoral, he was not informed on the relevant laws, and unwilling to listen to someone who was, even though it made the difference between getting medical care to people who needed it and leaving them to die.

So, one might ask, why wasn't that official better informed? I assume that he was briefed by someone about what to do, what laws applied, and so forth. If he wasn't, he certainly should have been. Apparently, whoever told him about the need to register with FEMA and such things either was misinformed about the relevant laws or failed to tell the people on the ground what they were. Here's what this meant in practice:

"Gerhart said the scene they confronted at the airport was one of "hundreds of people lying on the ground, many soaked in their own urine and feces, some coding (dying) before our eyes." FEMA workers initially seemed glad for help and asked Gerhart to work inside the terminal and Perlmutter to work out on the tarmac. They were told only a single obstetrician had been on call at the site for the past 24 hours.

Then, the Coast Guard official informed the group that he could not credential them or guarantee tort coverage and that they should return to Baton Rouge. "That shocked me, that those would be his concerns in a time of emergency," Gerhart said. Transported back to Baton Rouge, Perlmutter's frustrated group went to state health officials who finally got them certified -- a simple process that took only a few seconds. "I found numerous other doctors in Baton Rouge waiting to be assigned and others who were sent away, and there was no shortage of need," he said."

People probably died as a result.

Fareed Zakaria recently wrote:

"Today's Republicans believe in pork, but they don't believe in government. So we have the largest government in history but one that is weak and dysfunctional. Public spending is a cynical game of buying votes or campaign contributions, an utterly corrupt process run by lobbyists and special interests with no concern for the national interest. So we shovel out billions on "Homeland Security" to stave off nonexistent threats to Wisconsin, Wyoming and Montana while New York and Los Angeles remain unprotected. We mismanage crises with a crazy-quilt patchwork of federal, local and state authorities—and sing paeans to federalism to explain our incompetence. We denounce sensible leadership and pragmatism because they mean compromise and loss of ideological purity."

When we elect people who have such disdain for the ordinary functions of government that they put unqualified friends of friends of friends in positions of responsibility that should be reserved for experienced professionals, the predictable result is that good people leave government service; those who don't have any other options remain; and eventually you get ignorant officials needlessly ordering doctors to stop administering chest compression to dying patients. We, as a nation, need to get serious about our responsibilities as citizens, and one of them is: to make basic competence and the recognition of its value in others a minimal prerequisite for holding public office.

*** Update: I don't think I was particularly clear about what I was claiming in this post. I think that the actions of the Coast Guard official are probably attributable to poor training, and that that training specifically included a mistake an experienced emergency manager would be unlikely to make. I also think that FEMA has lost a lot of experienced people during the Bush administration, and is demoralized. And I think that when you have a demoralized agency that has lost a lot of good people, this is the type of mistake you get. I do not know of a specific causal connection between this particular mistake and the state of FEMA, and I should have been a lot clearer about that; thanks to slarrow and kenB for making me realize that.

James Booker Open Thread

by hilzoy

One of the things I did while I was feeling flattened was to listen to some of the music on Jeanne d'Arc's New Orleans music list. Some I knew, but I hadn't heard of James Booker before. (No doubt the rest of you have, being cool and hip and all.) He had what sounds like a horrible life -- piano prodigy, heroin, prison, mental institution, paranoia, early death -- in the course of which he made some really, really wonderful music. I put some up here; I'll take it off in a few days, as usual. But you should really listen to it. What's up there is really good, if you like blues/ragtime-y music, but it's not his best, just some songs from the one album I did not buy from the iTunes Music Store, and thus the one I don't have to tell you my password to let you listen to. This album is made from tapes of him playing a piano bar in New Orleans, near the end of his life, when (I gather) he was as likely to pass out at the piano as to play.

I also put up two songs by one of my relatives, who's a folksinger. In my dreams I play guitar like he does.

FEMA: The Incompetence Continues

by hilzoy

Last weekend, it seemed as though every major news organization put out a story attempting to explain what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina. This weekend, the theme is the continuing screwups by FEMA. (NYT, WaPo, CNN, LATimes.) From the New York Times story:

"Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.

Federal officials are often unable to give local governments permission to proceed with fundamental tasks to get their towns running again. Most areas in the region still lack federal help centers, the one-stop shopping sites for residents in need of aid for their homes or families. Officials say that they are uncertain whether they can meet the president's goal of providing housing for 100,000 people who are now in shelters by the middle of next month. (...)

The president of St. Tammany Parish, Kevin Davis, is praying that it does not rain in his sweltering corner of Louisiana, because three weeks after the storm severely damaged his drainage system, FEMA has yet to give him approval to even start the repairs. Up north in the poor parish of Washington, residents are sleeping in houses that were chopped in half by oak trees. The promised wave of government inspectors have not shown up to assist them.

James McGehee, the mayor of Bogalusa, a small Louisiana city near the Mississippi border, could barely contain his rage in an interview on Thursday. "Today is 18 days past the storm, and FEMA has not even put a location for people who are displaced," he said. "They are walking around the damn streets. The system's broke." (...)

In Tangipahoa Parish, the parish president, Gordon Burgess, said he called FEMA officials daily to ask when they would arrive to assist residents with housing. Mr. Burgess said the federal workers say, " 'I'll get to you next week,' and then the next week and then you'd never hear from them again."

Indeed, almost every local leader interviewed - even those sympathetic to FEMA's plight - complained that they could not get FEMA to approve their contracts with workers, tell them when they would be opening help centers or answer basic questions. Often, they say, the FEMA worker on the ground, eager to help, has to go up the chain of command before taking action, which can take days.

"People on the ground are wonderful but the problem is getting the 'yes,' " said Mr. Davis of St Tammany parish, who has a contractor ready to clean his drainage system of the same trees FEMA allowed him to take off his streets, and to repair parts of the sewage system. "I'm saying, 'Wait a minute, you pick up debris on the road but not the drainage?' If it rains, I've got real problems. I just need someone to tell me make the public bids and I could rebuild our parish in no time.""