Author: albert

From the New York Times:

“If our troops get actionable intelligence that agents are going to cause our troops or Iraqi citizens harm, they’re going to take whatever force protections that are necessary,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Agency.

But of course:

But Mr. Bush said any notion that the United States wants to widen its military campaign beyond the borders of Iraq “simply is not accurate.” The president and his top aides have said several times in recent weeks that there are no plans to pursue Iranian agents into Iran.

In Governor Bill Richardson‘s (I’m sure it will become weekly) email Tuesday afternoon, he asked:

How would you finish this sentence? The next President must be able to…

What would be on your list and why? There are plenty of issues and things we’d all like to see a President bring to the table and accomplish, but what must s/he be able to do?

You can let Bill know here and please do share with the rest of the pond below.

So I went to the National Constitution Center on Saturday the 11th for the impeachment panel I mentioned earlier. It was about what I expected: some for, some against and some good arguments for which I very much liked.

I got there a little late and sat down in the auditorium behind BooMan, Sally and Susie. There were about 75 other people in the second floor auditorium for the two part panel. First up were various people from various organizations/movements from around the way. First up to speak was Cindy Sheehan, I missed her speak. I’m both glad and sad I missed her. I’m glad because I truly can’t stand the sound of her voice. I’m sorry. But that grating voice. Eeeeeek. I love her call to action to pieces, but I’d rather see her at the head of a march/protest or read her thoughts than hear her speak.

I got there as former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens was speaking. She was on the House panel which voted to impeach Nixon back in the day. She said back then, it was a bipartisan movement and it ended up bringing the nation together, not split it apart. She noted how the investigation started in the Senate and that Republican Senator Howard Baker (TN) was the one who asked “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” – the question which brought Nixon down. She stressed how we don’t need an investigation started in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI-14); anyone can start an investigation leading to impeachment.

David Swanson of After Downing Street mentioned a petition drive for impeachment and a Human Rights and Impeachment Day for December 10.

Founder of Progressive Democrats of America Tim Carpenter took the podium. He mentioned that two of the three PDA supported candidates took their House seats: John Hall (NY-19) and Jerry McNerney (CA-11). He said that while Speaker of the House Pelosi (heh!) has taken impeachment off of the table, it is up to us to keep up the heat on the street. Let impeachment percolate up from the grassroots so that those in Congress must listen once it reaches their deaf ears. He called on us to contact our Congresswo/men and ask them to pursue impeachment and that they have a page with local PDA Congressional liaisons to help out.

Jodi Evans, co-founder of Code Pink Women for Peace. She wore her pink slip she was arrested in while protesting during RNC 2004 in NYC. Her group has been responsible for some pretty major actions in the past few years. They’re a pretty visible bunch always decked out in pink.

And then it was on to the bloggers! Here are Susie, Sally and Marty on the right side of the panel seated next to a gigantic Condi head.

And here are Rob Kall of Op Ed News and Susie. Rob said that he didn’t think impeachment would ever happen, but that we must push for it in order to force Bush and the rest of them out of office in shame like Nixon. He also called for President Pelosi.

At left is Dave Lindroff of This Can’t Be Happening – Lady and I saw him speak in August at Robin’s Books. His logic hit home the most for me. He basically said that we should impeach the President on principle. Even if it’s a month before the 2008 elections. Or one day before the 2008 elections. To show the rest of the world that America does not endorse what Bush and his administration have done in the past 6 years. To show the world and all future American presidents that future presidents will be held accountable for their actions and egregious offenses disregarding the Constitution. He said he came to blogging as a way to get his articles published when event the most left/progressive publications wouldn’t. And with today’s technology, he can see his popularity rise in real time. When a few of his articles make it onto the bigger sites, he can check his Amazon.com ranking rise and fall. He said that his ranking has been high recently after the election as he had a few election-related articles being passed around quite a bit lately.

Next to Dave is Chris Rabb of Afro-Netzien. He said that he was brought up in a household where he was told that life was unfair and it prepared him well for the rest of his life and that he can accept the OJs of the world who get off free as a result of being wealthy. He asked if impeachment was a means or an end. Ponder that.

And at right is Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen. She is a self professed semantics gorilla/guerrilla, big on the tech side of things. She said that there is a war going on online, a war on and about information and that is Google. She noted that 90% of her hits come straight from Google. She said that Google was the internet via the trust people give the search engine. Blogs, for one reason or another, have risen in ranking by Google to become a source in searches often times showing up well before mainstream media does and in that way reaches the eyes and minds of people searching for information on current events. She pointed to when Memory Hole published the photos of the American soldiers in caskets when there was a complete top-down media blackout. They got the images out there.

It was a good event and I’m glad I went and I’m glad there was a good crowd there as well.

After the panel, I walked down to take a look around the Arlington North event. I walked down and at the north end of the park, I walked by a family, tourists I presume. A little girl, about 8 or so I guesstimate, asked her dad after seeing the crowd and all the tombstones, “Are they praying for them?” The father turns to the girl and says, “No, they’re protesters.” I wanted to grab the girl by the hand and tell her her dad was full of shit. But I kept walking.

I ran into Mr. Paul Lang and we talked for about an hour. It was great to catch up with him after the madness of the campaign. 3.5%. Good god. That’s all he lost by. With no help from the higher ups in the Democratic establishment statewide. Fuckers. They need more Paul Langs who are ready, willing and able to put their lives on hold for public service. But they turned their backs on him and patted the back of his Republican opponent because they had deals worth millions to uphold. It was great to see Paul and catch up. I hope he’s sleeping 12 hours a day for a couple weeks, he’s earned it.

My sincerest congratulations to a person I am proud to call a friend of mine Paul Lang who ran in PA-06 in Bucks County for State Senate against incumbent Tommy Tomlinson.

Paul received 41,896 votes which, unfortunately, was 46.5% to Tomlinson’s 48,146/53.5%. But Paul did this on his own on his own terms without the help of big time PA Dems the Hoagiemeister Ed Rendell and Philly kingmaker Sen. Vince Fumo. They stayed out of the race to curry political favor in case the powerful longtime incumbent Tomlinson won.

I got emails from him with updates and voicemails in between events during his busy schedule. He was always upbeat even when bad news came down the pipe relating to Harrisburg. He had to have been tired with such a crazy schedule, but I knew he was pounding the pavement day in and day out mashing hands with a smile on his face. At 29, just a few years my senior, he’s a role model and a person I know will stay involved in this nasty political game one way or another; he wants to do good.

I know that there are tons of people just like Paul all around the country. People who ran for the first time for one reason or another. People who have been involved in politics for years and some newbies. These are the people, our peers, who will be the decision makers of tomorrow. Some of them were fortunate and won, others lost, but an initial loss cannot mean the end. I remain optimistic because of people like Paul and the others around the country like Paul whom I know must exist.

Now to scrounge up a few bucks and get his ass downtown so I can buy his ass a beer, he’s earned it.

One more thing: Photo by me. I took Paul’s engagement photos last year and also some shots for usage during the campaign. I don’t think he ended up using this shot, but I really like it.

First off, I’m sorry for my lack of involvement in the Boomunity, but I was incredibly busy at work making up for time I was taking off to go on job interviews, but it all paid off and I now have a wonderful new job working for an awesome local non-profit here in Philly. But even with the craziness at the old job and the first few days at the new job, I couldn’t be kept at bay from commenting on the circus which is Meet the Press with a dash of insanity and clowniness provided by Sen. Man on Dog and the son of the former governor of Pennsylvania…

Is Tim Russert even part of “The Media” anymore? I’m not sure this should be categorized as such, but what the hell.

I’ve been busy lately and I’ll be getting busier, but that didn’t prevent me from watching the Casey-Santorum debate on Meet the Press on Sunday. Being busy did prevent me from posting ahead of time and watching it during it’s initial 10.30a airing, but I caught it at 10p and didn’t forget to do so. I hope others did too. Not to have learned anything or to have seen either candidate show themselves as valiant representatives of this state of Pennsylvania. Rather, to see the shit that is left over in the political system today. Representing the two sides [and of course, there are ONLY two sides to any debate] we had on the Right, Sen. Man on Dog who is so fucking crazy I don’t know where to begin, but as our governor, the Hoagiemeister himself proclaimed, that fucker delivers for PA like a motherfucker. And on the Right-of-Center, we had PA Treasurer Junior Casey who is so boring, I was eager to have him stop yapping so that Man on Dog could say something completely batshit crazy again. Now, onto my version of a recap and yes, a whole shitload of cursing will follow, this politics shit ain’t for the feint of heart nor ear. The full transcript is available here.

Bob Casey

Rick Santorum

PA Senate

Meet the Press

First off, let me describe the scene. There was Mr. Potato Head [Russert] sitting there with so much orange-red faux-tan makeup that he looked like he was about to explode. His Peter Griffin head popping out of his shirt which was fastened with a green and blue diagonally striped tie. Junior was seated furthest from the camera with a new haircut, short all over, with a light blue, weak, tie. Man on Dog looked like he’s let his hair grow out a bit, not as put together as normal, with a blood red tie.

The forty-five minutes of slapstick comedy started off with a very simple question from Mr. Potato Head to Junior: If you had known then what you know now, would you have supported the invasion of Iraq. It took about two minutes of muffled and bumbling stammering for Junior to not come up with a simple “Yes” or “No” to the answer. Stop trying to give some convoluted response to a simple fucking question. If I had my own television show, I’d need a shitload of insurance and a disclaimer that by coming onto my show, you put yourself in physical danger if you didn’t answer a direct question with a direct and clear cut answer. I would’ve slugged Junior four seconds into his response. His answer should’ve been “Fuck no Mr. Potato Head.” After the stammering he eventually said that if he had known then what he knew now [why the unnecessary repeating the question? It was like the old trick to buy yourself time while thinking of a lie] that he would not have supported the invasion of Iraq. He also added that he thought Rumsfeld should be replaced. The full bumbling:

MR. CASEY: Tim, on the war in Iraq, if, if, if a lot of Americans knew now—if they knew then what they know now, they would, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn’t have been fought based upon the misleading of this administration.

Here’s what I think has to happen in Iraq today.

MR. RUSSERT: So you would not vote for it today.

MR. RUSSERT: But in ’05 you said you’d vote for it. Would you today in ’06 vote for it?

MR. CASEY: Based upon the evidence that was presented then, yes, which I think has been—was misleading, and I think it was faulty. The intelligence was faulty.

MR. RUSSERT: But today, today is no. Today you would vote no.

MR. CASEY: Today—if we knew then what we know now, sure. I think there wouldn’t have been a vote and I think people would have changed.

What a way to start off a debate on national television. For what is supposed to be the highest priority Senate race for the Dems and the Repugs. The Dems have no message. Chroist.

I think Man on Dog mentioned something about how much of a pussy Junior was. Either that or something about him once losing a tongue ring while kissing so much ass down in the Beltway.

Potato Head moved on to the increasing sectarian violence in Iraq. Man on Dog went on and on about how Iran is behind it all and that they’re the ones stoking the sectarian fire in Iraq. He said that Iran is at the heart of the problem of the entire Middle East. He said that Iran, today, has more influence in Iraq than when Saddam Hussein was in power – did he just admit that Iraq is better off with Saddam Hussein in power?!?

Potato Head turns to Junior and reads aloud all the crazy stupid things he’s said about the war. I’ll give Junior this much, he’s come a ways since the primary on Iraq, but not close to far enough. Maybe he was hardheaded before, now, he’s just plain stupid. He’s got no plan and he’s not in favor of a timeline of any sort. Man on Dog wants to drop clusterbombs of heathenish dog-fucking gay people who have been irradiated with depleted uranium on the entire Middle East.

Potato Head moved on to the crazy talk by Man on Dog recently that they had found WMD in Iraq to confuse the stupid American public further. They had found old WMD, no new ones. Man on Dog agreed that there were no new WMD in Iraq – the main [secondary, after the one about how Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks] reason for rolling into Iraq. The real reasons lie closer to BushCo running on sweet crude and that they tried to kill his daddy. Man on Dog kept on harping about how Iraq was this big threat to America and that we just had to invade while agreeing with BushCo that Iraq had “nothing to do with September 11th.”

Junior started talking about how he’d be a truly independent voice in Washington. Blech. The true independent who turns away money from Dan Savage but takes, with no hesitation, money from groups like these. Really nice. Not to say that Man on Dog is better. That idiot is just as stupidly hypocritical with his K St project involvement.

Then came the balanced budget and Social Security talk. How to balance the budget Potato Head asked. Fiscal responsibility, fiscal discipline, estate tax, repeal tax cut for top 1% and continued economic growth were Junior’s plans. Potato Head pressed for a list of programs Junior would cut to make it happen. Junior had no answer and rabid Man on Dog jumped on him for evading the question and accused him of dodging questions for the entire campaign [he has, but so has Man on Dog].

Potato Head read a quote from a paper during the Congressional campaign for Man on dog from twelve years ago about how he firmly believed that the age of eligibility for Social Security should be pushed back to at least 70 and that he’d try to push for a higher age, but didn’t think it would pass on the floor. Man on Dog noted that in the dozen years he’s served in Congress [in the House and Senate] that he had never introduced such a bill because he thinks there are better ways to solve the crisis [he still believes there’s a fucking crisis!]:

I think there’s a third option now that I have been an advocate for which my opponent opposes, and that’s personal retirement accounts. I have a three-step concrete approach to dealing with Social Security. Number one, pass the Social Security Guarantee Act, which I’m the author of, which says that if you’re born before 1950, your benefits cannot be changed and your cost of living increases are guaranteed. Number two, stop the raid introduced by Jim DeMint which says take the surplus that’s coming in right now and actually put it into individual accounts so people have ownership of this surplus instead of the money being taken and raided to pay for, for current government expenditures. So number two is to stop the raid, give people their own personal accounts that, that will actually be there to pay for them down the road. And number three, give younger workers the opportunity to have personal retirement accounts. Those personal retirement accounts will grow faster and produce more than what the government, “investment in Social Security,” thus making up the difference between the two.

So my question to Mr. Casey is, if you’re not for personal retirement accounts, which he says he’s not, how much are you going to raise their taxes? Or how much are you going to cut benefits to fix the Social Security problem?

And be specific.

Junior countered with some bumbling stuff, but he did manage to get in that there was no Social Security crisis. The only thing that just about all Dems can agree on, that there is no fucking crisis, and Junior could barely annunciate the words.

After the commercial break, Potato Head brought up the recent FDA decision to allow Plan B to be over the counter (OTC) for girls over 18. Man on Dog said that he was against it and that it could cause abortions. I’ll note here that while Asprin is supposed to relieve headaches and stuff, it can burn a hole through your liver stomach and also just plain kill you without warning. Junior said that he was in favor of the decision and said that OTC emergency contraceptives prevent unintended [he said “unwanted”] pregnancies. Now that’s good and all, but what happens if ECPs don’t work? Junior leaves the woman with no choice and wants to overturn Roe v Wade. Man on Dog would probably want to burn the woman at the stake regardless of, well, anything.

The final back and forth was about the issue of residency for Man on Dog over in Penn Hills. Man on Dog ran on the platform, back in 1990, that his opponent didn’t live in the district. He defended himself by saying that he did in fact own the house, pays taxes on the house and stays in the house spends approximately a month out of the year in the house. Yes, Man on Dog technically owns a house, but he lives in VA.

Junior had the final word and parted with his standby that Man on Dog votes 98% with Bush. Junior said very early on, or was it his smarmy Smar who said it, that this campaign wasn’t gonna be about issues [because there isn’t enough disagreement to make it so]. He wants this race to be about Man on Dog and his ass licking of BushCo. He may just pull it off. Man on Dog is that much of a fuckwad. But it’s sixty-four days before the election now and Junior is sinking like a hunk of lead. We’ll see what the pollsters say in the next couple of days after this national television appearance. Junior could’ve taken it to Man on Dog, but he’s chosen to just coast and not do anything. This is not the race to coast. But blame Ed Rendell, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Peter Buttonweiser for the predicament Democrats in PA have right now.

Who else caught the insanity on the re-airs? Judging by this post many didn’t catch [or comment] before the 10p re-air. I’m gonna be out on the job for most of Labor Day, but I’ll check in as soon as I can on the thread and the rest of the site. I miss the gang.

I went to see an incredible documentary last night titled: The War Tapes. A friend of mine, and everywhere activist, [and one of the people in BooMan’s meeting with Warner yesterday] Alex was involved with the film and managed to get a print down to Philly for a special screening. And as an added treat, he brought one of the film’s main characters and cameramen, Staff Sergeant Zack Bazzi, to the screening for a Q&A session afterwards. All the proceeds from the screening went to the Lt. Paul Rieckhoff headed Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America [IAVA] fund.

The film has been getting glowing reviews [The Nation, SF Chronicle, NYT], it took first prize at the Tribeca Film Festival for best documentary and I can’t say enough about it myself. Director Deborah Scranton was given the chance to be embedded with the New Hampshire national guard, but chose not to. Instead, she asked if she could give cameras to the guardsmen themselves and have them shoot what they saw and send the tapes back to the U.S. periodically. The film was primarily shot by 10 NH national guardsmen who were stationed in Iraq in 2004-2005. Some 500 hours of digital video was shot on the provided camcorders in Iraq with an additional 200 hours of footage of the families they left behind and additional scenes upon their return home.

The film is in no way a pro-war/anti-war nor a pro-Bush/anti-Bush film. It is a film that is raw and unpolished. It shows the mundane periods of time in between mortar attacks and the sometimes surprised, sometimes eerily calm reactions during the attacks. It shows the frantic nature of a check of a seemingly abandoned house turning into a firefight with the tat-tat-tat-tat of AK-47s and the thud of 50 caliber Humvee-mounted returning fire. The camera jostling from side to side, everything a blur, but the sound coming through crystal clear.

The film has been rolling out nationwide and opens where I am, Philly, to the general public on Friday. Check out the schedule for the film coming to a theater near you. If it isn’t, I’m sure it will come out on DVD very soon available for purchase or rental.

I’ll leave it to the pros for all out reviews of the film, they’re everywhere and I’ve pointed to three above. Below the fold, I’ve transcribed/paraphrased as best I could the Q&A session which followed the film. It was a treat to have Staff Sergeant Zack Bazzi, a Lebanese-born, Arabic-fluent, my-age, NH National Guardsman with us for a Q&A session immediately after the film. He is incredibly articulate and a self-admitted political junkie who subscribes to The Nation, but puts his personal politics aside to fight in this war.

The War Tapes

Film

Documentary

War

Iraq

Q: What are the reasons an intelligent person to enlist in the Army these days with all the evidence that this war is wrong?
A: I was probably just an easy target as I enlisted at 18. People have all kinds of different reasons for enlisting whether it be financial, educational or to be able to travel all over the world. Being in the Army is the best job in the country right now with the best camaraderie. It’s an incredible melting pot of race, geographical location, politics – or lack thereof. Some do it for the educational benefits, some for the veteran’s benefits afterwards. One group which does not enlist are the trust fund kids, they definitely don’t, that socio-economic class is missing.

Q: What is your reaction and the reaction of the soldiers there in regards to Halliburton’s war profiteering?
A: I’m not mad at them. I have bigger things to worry about like the soldiers I’m responsible for [as a sergeant]. The Army cannot expand right at the time of war to take on all the duties of catering, laundry, transport… The use of private contractors, KBR among them, is useful and necessary. And they’re getting killed too, it’s no free ride.

Q: Having Arabic as your native language, after speaking with the Iraqis, what is their view of us?
A: First off, don’t ever believe anything people from the administration or Generals say, it’s PR spin. Those people cannot possibly know how the Iraqis feel. Iraq is not a country as we understand the word. Iraq is three nations: the Kurds in the north, Shi’a in the south and Sunnis in the middle. They are all a tribal people and while they may dislike and even hate each other, they value the notion of revenge even more. The adage of “Me and my cousin vs. the enemy, but me and my brother vs. my cousin” holds true here.

Q: What do you think about the notion of calling what’s going on there now a Civil War?
A: It’s a low-grade Civil War going on over there right now. There is still a minimal level of governmental functioning there. But if we were to pull out overnight, it would evolve into an all out Civil War.

Q: What do you think of the Iraqi Constitution?
A: [I didn’t catch the beginning of his response] …Sunnis have nothing and are fighting for a more centralized government. The oil is north and south with nothing worth anything in the Sunni’s mid-Iraq area. With a centralized government and a proper revenue sharing plan, the Sunnis would be happy.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish through this documentary?
A: Realistically, to shatter the myth of the monolithic soldier. That all soldiers are different and diverse and representative of the general American population. We’re not all some stereotype.

Q: How did you handle the camera while in the middle of all that hectic action?
A: Sergeant Pink, who is a skilled carpenter [his actual profession], helped to construct a makeshift camera mount for the dashboard of the Humvee allowing me to mount the camera before we left the safety of the base. Only when we were in relatively safe areas did I shoot with the camera in my hand.

Q: Compare the possible carnage in Iraq following a troop withdrawal with what actually happened in Vietnam.
A: Vietnam was a much simpler war with all Vietnamese being Vietnamese, one race, one ethnicity. In Iraq, you have the Kurds, Shi’a and Sunni with long standing histories between them all; that alone complicates things a lot. If we were to withdraw, Turkey, the only Muslim nation member of the U.N. and U.S. ally, would immediately invade the Kurdish land in the north; Iran would invade the Shi’a south. The end result would be like Somalia with military fiefdoms taking root.

Q: There is so much money being poured into wars overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan while education programs here in America are not properly funded [rambled on without really asking a question…]
A: I’m not going to get into the political rights and wrongs – everyone is entitled to their opinion. Bill O’Reilly’s opinion is no more valid than Michael Moore’s – each has the right, as an American – to voice their opinion as they see fit and each American has their own valid points to make.

Q: Was there anything left on the cutting room floor or didn’t even make it to the editing room as a result of military censorship?
A: As far as I know, the only tape [out of ~500 hours of footage from Iraq] to not get clearance to be in the film was one where Sergeant Pink takes his camera onto the battlefield after a firefight with several Iraqis and proceeds to yell [presumably racial slurs] at the corpses. We were lucky in that the tapes did not have to go through the Department of Defense. The tapes were simply all sent back to the NH National Guard offices and were cleared by their internal PR office. If the DoD were the ones giving the okay, there would’ve been much more footage lost. We were lucky in that it was the NH National Guard’s PR office which had the final word.

I don’t recall seeing a post up here on Booman about the Army Corps of Engineers report titled: Performance Evaluation of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System [.pdf] when it was released back in June, but if it has previously been discussed, let me address it again now a week shy of the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

John Biguenet, a novelist and New Orleans native, has been blogging on and off for the NY Times for the last year about New Orleans post-Katrina. Unfortunately, it’s behind the Times Select paywall, but I have access to it and I’ll quote a few passages from his most recent post from yesterday which discusses how many or most of the things most people have heard about New Orleans since Katrina hit is just plain wrong [except, surprise surprise, what we’ve all heard about FEMA and their inadequacies]. And it also pointed to the Army Corps report referenced above.

Hurricane Katrina

US Army Corps of Engineers

Levee

I don’t have the time nor resources right now to fact check his stuff, but considering the tone of the post, I’ll take it on faith that they’re accurate.

You may also think that poor, black New Orleanians constituted the majority of victims killed by the Corps’ incompetence. In fact, white and black, rich and poor, New Orleanians shared equally in the suffering and death. The last published tally I saw showed that whites and blacks died in roughly the same proportion. If that is accurate, given that the population of the city in the last census was only 28-percent white, white New Orleanians died in proportionately higher numbers.

I found that shocking.

And he laid into the Army Corps of Engineers using their own report, which is quite cut and dry and to the facts, as the damning evidence.

After the flooding, New Orleanians were roundly criticized by Congressional leaders for choosing to live in an area below sea level. In fact, only parts of New Orleans are below sea level. My house, for example, is a foot above sea level, and it still received four feet of floodwater. We were hardly as foolish as Americans living in earthquake zones like San Francisco and Anchorage are. After all, we had assurances from the Corps of Engineers that we would be safe in a hurricane of Katrina’s strength. If we were foolish, it was in believing our government.

And now to that report. The failure and inadequacies were astounding. I’ve only read through the Executive Summary [aren’t they great?], but it paints a broad picture for what follows in the 68 page report. The ‘Overarching Findings’ starts off with this volley:

The System did not perform as a system: the hurricane protection in New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana was a system in name only. Flood protection systems are an example of a
series system–if a single levee or floodwall fails, the entire area is impacted. It is important that
all components have a common capability based on the character of the hazard they face. Such systems also need redundancy, an ability for a second tier of protection to help compensate for the failure of the first tier. Pumping may be the sole example of some form of redundancy; however, the pumping stations are not designed to operate in major hurricane conditions… Redundancy was simply not included.

Ouch. It’s some pretty sharp language the Corps is using in looking at their own failures, the kind of honesty sorely lacking in this administration’s handling of, well, everything. I didn’t see a single signer of this report from the White House – I wonder how much pull the White House used to squash this report.

On the design of the levees:

The storm exceeded design criteria, but the performance was less than the design intent: sections of the hurricane protection system were in many ways overwhelmed by the conditions created by Hurricane Katrina… This devastation, however, was aided by the presence of incomplete protection, lower than authorized structures, and levee sections with erodible
materials. While overtopping and extensive flooding from Katrina were inevitable, a complete system at authorized elevations would have reduced the losses incurred.

It seems as if the Army Corps were a little overzealous in what they built in 1965, as if nothing Mother Nature could throw at them could be strong enough. So overconfident that they didn’t account for adequate redundancies and the design of the pumping mechanism as their sole inadequate redundancy screwed things up even more.

The duration of flooding could have been reduced if the pumping capability had been able to continue, but the pumping systems were not designed to operate in severe hurricane conditions.

I remember the reports of the pumps going offline, one by one, those that had not already been completely washed over in the initial flooding. Poor planning.

But what’s a story about the failures leading up to the unnecessary tragedies after the hurricane without mentioning an anecdote about Brownie’s FEMA. From Biguenet’s post:

So there’s a great deal about what happened in New Orleans that is widely misunderstood. On the other hand, what you think you know about FEMA is probably right. A few months ago at a neighborhood property owners association meeting, called to discuss the future of our area, a doctor who lives near me described how he had used his small fishing boat to rescue those stranded during the flooding. One evening, he found a group of people huddled on a rooftop, and he started ferrying them to dry ground. On the way back for a second load, he passed a boat with men wearing FEMA T-shirts. He shouted for them to follow him to pick up the remaining family members. The men refused, explaining that it was after 5 p.m. and they weren’t authorized for overtime.

Good god. When I was interning at Vibe magazine for three summers from 1998-200, my for-pay hours were capped at 44 hours per week. That didn’t stop me putting in an extra 10 hours a week because I had shit to do for a measly music magazine. I wasn’t part of an organization which was supposed to be out there saving lives. It’s one thing to be working 12-hour shifts and not being able to keep going due to exhaustion. Calling it a day at 5p because you’re not going to get paid? Holy shit. And for FEMA to not be organized enough to have constant rolling shifts so there were no gaps in rescue operations? Chroist.

If you or a friend has HBO, Spike Lee’s 4-hour documentary When the Levees Broke airs tonight and tomorrow in two parts as well as on the 29th in full on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

There’s an article in today’s evil librul rag the Washington Post about the trials and tribulations of the infamous and much maligned FBI computer systems upgrade which never was; vaporware for the agency protecting our homeland. The failed upgrades, which have cost taxpayers some $600M in the last five years, have lead to nothing. It’s scary to know what the FBI was working with and currently is working with to fight crime here in America. From the article…

The FBI wanted its agents to work in a largely paperless environment, able to search files, pull up photos and scan for information at their own PCs. The old system was based on fusty mainframe technology, with a text-only “green screen” that had to be searched by keywords and could not store or display graphics, photos or scanned copies of reports.

What’s more, most employees had no PCs. They relied instead on shared computers for access to the Internet and e-mail. A type of memo called an electronic communication had to be printed out on paper and signed by a supervisor before it was sent. Uploading a single document took 12 steps.

Most employees had no PCs, now that is just insane. And shared terminals just to access the internet and e-mail?! Uploading documents to the system taking 12 steps?! Was it drunk? At a time when high-end processing behemoths can be purchased for a few hundred bucks, coupled with the purchasing power of an agency the size and power of the FBI, you’d think that they could spring for a CPU for each employee who needed one. And has the FBI never heard of drag-and-drop? I think it took two hours for me to teach my in their 60s parents how to do certain functions having to do with email, certainly the best and brightest this country has to offer can figure a way to upload a .pdf quicker than a 12 step program.

I was familiar with some of the things brought up in this article as I’ve read several articles dealing with this bungled non-upgrade through the last few years, I’m a wannabe techie at heart, but seeing it all in one pretty well put together article at once, ugh.

FBI

Virtual Case File

The problems continued to hamper the bureau after the attacks as well: To transmit photographs of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers and other suspects to field offices, headquarters had to fax copies or send compact discs by mail, because the system would not allow them to e-mail a photo securely.

Can you imagine this? What could the actual conversations between the White House, the FBI and FBI field offices all over the country and the world have been during all this:

White House: We have the names and photographs of all 19 9/11 hijackers.

FBI: Whoa! Awesome! Email them to me. Oh wait. Never mind. Errrr… Errr…. FedEx them to me!

[the next day]

FBI agent1: I got them! Can I use your computer to open up these very important documents?

FBI agent2: Sorry, I’m in the middle of something here, try the other side of the floor.

FBI agen1: Hey can I use your computer to open up these very important documents?

FBI agent3: Sure thing. Oh wait, is that one of them fan-cay CD-ROMs? Never seen one of those before. All I got is a 5.25″ floppy drive. Each disk holds 1.2MB!

FBI agent1: [punches self in the face]

Now, of course that isn’t what actually happened, but can you imagine the calamity it would cause if you couldn’t securely email things as simple as digital photos and have to find a terminal to open said terminals once they made it, via hand delivery, to you? So, the FBI went about trying to upgrade their system. The same system where they couldn’t do a two-word search, like, say “Osama+bin+Laden” oh wait, that’s three words, forget that too. That same search via Google turns up 28M hits. Yes, most are probably useless, but jeez, it took 0.09 seconds to come up with that result.

So the FBI hired Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to do the $170M job. And after many months, in 2003, it was finally ready to be looked at by Zalmai Azmi, then an advisor to Director Robert Mueller and currently the technology chief of the FBI. And it was bad. Azmi had Aerospace Corp. have a look at it and see if it could be saved.

After the disappointing preview of VCF in late 2003 by Azmi, who was then an adviser to Mueller tasked with reviewing the system, the FBI scrambled to rescue the project. The Aerospace Corp., a federally funded research-and-development firm in El Segundo, Calif., was hired for $2 million in June 2004 to review the program and come up with a “corrective action plan.”

The conclusion: SAIC had so badly bungled the project that it should be abandoned.

In a 318-page report, completed in January 2005 and obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act, Aerospace said the SAIC software was incomplete, inadequate and so poorly designed that it would be essentially unusable under real-world conditions. Even in rudimentary tests, the system did not comply with basic requirements, the report said. It did not include network-management or archiving systems — a failing that would put crucial law enforcement and national security data at risk, according to the report.

“From the documents that define the system at the highest level, down through the software design and into the source code itself, Aerospace discovered evidence of incompleteness, lack of follow-through, failure to optimize and missing documentation,” the report said.

I can still hear the echo of the jaws hitting the plush red-leather topped tables within executive offices inside the Hoover Building in downtown D.C. If you listen closely, you can hear them too.

So where in the hell does that leave the FBI now? Well, with new computers [yay!] but no new system. With the death of Trilogy [the name of the SAIC system], the FBI commissioned Lockheed Martin Corp. to create a new system by 2009. The new system, Sentinel, will cost $425M.

2009. That’s two full election cycles of false terror alerts.

When I first read about the diverted plane earlier today and read the list of “terrorist” items a passenger had: a screwdriver, matches, Vaseline and a note referencing al-Qaeda, I let out a laugh. Maybe if we weren’t all acting out a sick version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, I would’ve been worried, but I just wasn’t. Can you blame me? And now, a whole new story is hitting the presses. Via AP:

The federal official for Boston’s Logan International Airport said there was no indication of terrorism and denied reports that the passenger aboard United Flight 923 had a screw driver and a note referring to al-Qaida.

Gov. Mitt Romney said the 59-year-old woman was from Vermont and became so claustrophobic and upset that she needed to be restrained. The FBI in Boston said the woman, a U.S. citizen, was detained for allegedly interfering with a flight crew and was being questioned.

And to be clear, those reports were made by Boston Logan International Airport spokesperson Phil Orlandella, not some anonymous source of Faux News.

Two F-15s were scrambled to escort the plane, originally headed from London to Washington, to Boston. Those are the kinds of F-15s that can be ordered to shoot down passenger aircraft famously referenced during the aftermath of 9/11. They could’ve been ordered, by an itchy trigger finger Prez or Veep to shoot this plane down over a case of claustrophobia, an anxiety disorder a large segment of the worldwide population experiences.

Airplane

Claustrophobia

Terrorism

Boy Who Cried Wolf

From the more recent AP story:

“I don’t know what she had on board with her, but we have been told she did not have a screw driver, she did not have any liquids such as Vaseline, and any notebook she may have had, it did not contain an al-Qaida reference,” [George] Naccara [security director for the Transportation Security Administration for Massachusetts’ airports] said. He said he had no information about matches.

Now how in the hell does a story like that get started? I’d say fear. We live in a society now that runs on fear. Fear fuels the economy. Fear fuels the war. Fear fuels the GOP’s goals for election cycles. And now the Dems are using fear as a tactic in the latest DSCC ad campaign as noted in this Man Eegee diary.

This administration has done absolutely nothing to improve the situations at airports since 9/11. If anything, they’ve clogged things up even more. Added more red tape to an already messy and imperfect process. No fly lists people can’t see nor get off of once on. Improper search techniques providing little to no privacy in compromising situations. New expensive equipment x-ray machines which do not detect explosives when shoes are passed through them, but shoes are still required to be taken off and run through them.

Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes was talking about the process of removing one’s shoes on her show yesterday. She was remarking on how the shoe search reveals nothing and is merely a way for people to be placed in perpetual fear. Passengers are asked to take off their shoes and are subsequently lead to think about why the hell they have to take off their shoes. They invariably think of the one “shoe bomber” idiot and go “Oh yeah, terrorism” and move along, in a constant state of fear.

How do we break the cycle? How do we stop living in perpetual fear? When will we understand when a person is claustrophobic, stuck on an airplane without the amenities of one’s iPod, laptop, book, bottle of Gatorade, hand sanitizer, earphones that haven’t been in someone else’s waxy ears, what-have-you, and not trying to bring down a plane with a screwdriver, matches, Vaseline and a note referencing al-Qaeda which were non-existant in the first place!

Aaaarg!!!

I was forwarded this special section to the L.A. Times last week by my friend Liz. It’s a wonderful five-part series on how our oceans are being altered each and every day. It took me an afternoon to read through it all, but it’s well worth it. In this time where environmentalism is becoming almost fad like and very vogue with the widespread success of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth [and if you haven’t seen that yet, what is your major malfunction!] how can the issue be pushed more the the forefront while being taken as deadly serious as it needs to be taken?

The oceans were once thought by scientists to be so vast and so quickly healing that any damage we humans could possibly do would be repaired with no consequence. But looking closer, we’ve all learned otherwise. Our oceans are reverting back to the primordial ooze from whence life as we know it first blossomed. The notion of seeing what our oceans looked like when life as we know it first started to sprout may sound romantic, but it’s a nasty place. A nasty place where many, if not most, marine organisms of today cannot survive.

Environment

Ocean

Cyanobacteria

Part one is an article titled A Primeval Tide of Toxins and discusses a 2.7 million-year-old cyanobacteria causing problems all the way up the food chain from plankton to humans. This ancient cyanobacteria is thriving in the oceans now as they did 2.7 billion years ago in an acidic primordial ooze.

The ancient seas contained large areas with little or no oxygen — anoxic and hypoxic zones that could never have supported sea life as we know it. It was a time when bacteria and jellyfish ruled.

Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, has spent most of her career peering into waters that resemble those of the distant past.

On research dives off the Louisiana coast, she has seen cottony white bacteria coating the seafloor. The sulfurous smell of rotten eggs, from a gas produced by the microbes, has seeped into her mask. The bottom is littered with the ghostly silhouettes of dead crabs, sea stars and other animals.

The cause of death is decaying algae. Fed by millions of tons of fertilizer, human and animal waste, and other farm runoff racing down the Mississippi River, tiny marine plants run riot, die and drift to the bottom. Bacteria then take over. In the process of breaking down the plant matter, they suck the oxygen out of seawater, leaving little or none for fish or other marine life.

Part two is an article titled Sentinels Under Attack about how large marine animals [sea lions, seals, whales of all sizes, dolphins, sea turtles] all succumb to similar fates as they eat the ancient toxic algae. The toxicity builds up through the food chain, just as mercury does. We should all be accustomed to the warning labels on all forms of fish products now with mercury levels becoming a thing we now live with. Little amounts of mercury are present in the tiniest things in the oceans. Those plankton are eaten by larger predators and those predators are eaten by bigger fish up the food chain. And then those larger fish end up on our dinner plate or aluminum can in the pantry; same thing happens with the toxic algae.

As [scientists] watch the oceans disgorge more dead and dying creatures, scientists have come to a disquieting realization: The proliferation of algae, bacteria and other microbes is making the oceans less hospitable to advanced forms of life — those animals most like humans.

“Marine mammals share our waters, eat some of the food we eat and get some of the same diseases we get,” said Paul Sandifer, chief scientist for the Oceans and Human Health Initiative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If environmental conditions are not good for these sentinels of the sea, you can believe it won’t be good for us either,” Sandifer said. “What we allow to flow into the sea will come back to bite us. You can bet on it.”

Parts three through five are just as informative and just as jarring as the first two. The basic notion of these articles is to show how drastically and quickly our oceans are changing and for the worse [for us more contemporary flora and fauna]. The vast bodies of water we never thought could really be harmed by human action because of their resiliecy are dying and we’re quickening the pace with our waste washing straight into them from our inland rivers. We’re causing these cyanobacteria to flourish and cause problems for marine predators up the food chain as the toxic levels compound just as mercury does, toxic fumes stretching several miles inland from beaches causing repertory problems in humans, plastics constantly washing around the oceans and not biodegrading… But it’s all stuff we need to know and it’s all part of a good informative read. The series doesn’t really tell us how we can help reduce waste and fight the toxic blooms. Any experts or well-read citizens of the BMT community have suggestions?