The Agonist blogs

Where God and the Devil Wheel Like Vultures: Report from El Paso

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:29:30 -0800

Tom Russell nails it on the head. Worth a read to summarize the current Wild West.

I’ll watch it all go down from Ardovino’s Desert Crossing, the great bar and restaurant which sits up near Mt. Cristo Rey, overlooking the lights of El Paso. (Okay, there are a few good bars here.)Trains roll cross the mountain at happy hour and border patrol trucks chase illegals through these desperate, yucca-choked rocks and rills. Over yonder the ugly black border wall snakes across the sandy hills. The wall is our knee-jerk attempt to intimidate Mexican illegals who want to do the dirty work we shun. But this is still the old west, amigo. Those class equations have always been such. The Chinese built the railroads with a shotgun at their head, and their opium was always available in the back of the chop suey joints and whore houses. The “greasers” and “chinks” did the dirty work; and those red devil Apaches raided our horse camps until we sent Geronimo down to Florida to chill out. We’re getting it under control, ain’t we? It’s the coked-up, Manifest Destiny politics of Methland.

Where God and the Devil Wheel Like Vultures: Report from El Paso

Fork whets Pasadena's artistic appetite

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:34:45 -0800

The 18-foot-tall utensil was stealthily erected as a birthday present. Now the city is considering keeping it as a piece of street art.

Los Angeles Times, By Nicole Santa Cruz, November 7

Pasadena has a fork in the road. And it's 18 feet tall.

Where south St. John and south Pasadena avenues divide, there's a towering wooden silver fork in the traffic median. The utensil has a black steel skeleton and is rooted in 2 1/2 feet of concrete.

The art was originally intended as a surprise for Bob Stane of Altadena, who celebrated his 75th birthday Oct. 29. But Caltrans, which owns the median, and Pasadena, which maintains the land, are deciding whether to keep it up for a while as an impromptu piece of street art.

"It was just the best birthday present I've ever had," said Stane, who owns the Coffee Gallery Backstage, a coffeehouse and showroom in Altadena, with the fork's artist, Ken Marshall. "It was the only time I've ever been surprised for my birthday."

The fork was finished about 9:50 a.m. on Halloween after friends worked to erect it clad in fake Caltrans uniforms and hard hats. Friends surprised Stane 10 minutes later with the utensil and chocolate cake.

[...]

"To my knowledge, there hasn't ever been a mystery piece of public art just popping up in the city," said DeWolfe, who has been with the city for 20 years.

A Betrayal Is A Betrayal

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:50 -0800

There is simply no excuse for this:

By now you’ve probably heard about the Stupack amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance offered on the exchanges set up by the health care reform bill to cover abortion services. It is being allowed to the floor by the leadership, and indications are that there may be enough votes for it to pass. If it were to remain in the final bill, it would strip practical access to insurance from millions of women, a number which would increase when the exchanges open to businesses.

This is such a huge betrayal of Democratic ideals and values I know not what to say. It's also, as Ian notes, a betrayal that will burden women of child-bearing age disproportionately. Is this what the Democrats in Congress have become?

It's regressive and backwards in every way.

UPDATE:
Healthcare passes 220 Yeas, 215 Nays

Stupak Amendment Passes; 64 Dems Ask for Primary Opponents

"The Neocon dream of Turko-Israeli regional military-economic cooperation sphere is now in tatters"

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:40:36 -0800

My friend Chuck Spinney writes in from Turkey this morning riffing off a recent op-ed in the Times. I can't quibble with what either of them have to say. Chuck says:

As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion.

It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.

The attached op-ed by Patrick Seale is a good summary that brings clarity to much of what is going on with Turkey's foreign policy and is well worth reading.

But there is more. Not mentioned are Turkey's bilateral overtures to Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, and the various Turkic countries in great swath of Central Asia (including the Uighurs in NW China), as well as a bewildering variety of multilateral environmental and economic initiatives in the Black Sea region (involving Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Greece, and Turkey). On a personal level, when talking to individual Turks, I have sensed occasionally some faint echoes of a revival of the kinship links which once connected the cosmopolitan inhabitants around the Black Sea littoral (Turks marrying Ukranians and Russians, Turkish Tatars reconnecting with distant relatives in the Crimea or Kuban, Turkish Las east of Trabzon connecting to Georgians, etc.)

Much of this dynamism is definitely due to the proactive leadership of Prime Minister Edogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu in the sense described by Seale, but part of the impetus, I think, also comes from Turkey being sucked willy-nilly into the power vacuum that arose suddenly with collapse of the Soviet Union, and then was deepened more recently by the escalation of US bungling in the Middle East and Central Asia (especially wrt Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan,and Syria). The interplay of chance and necessity is now shaping unfolding events in an unpredictable way.

What this political/social evolution means for the Greater Middle East as well as relationships among Turkey, the EU, and the US is unknowable at this point in time, but we may be witnessing the beginning of what may turn out to be one of the most important geopolitical realignments of the 21st Century.

One this is clear, however: The Neocon dream of Turko-Israeli regional military-economic cooperation sphere is now in tatters. How Israel adapts to these changes and how Israel attempts to use its pernicious lobbying influence in the US to shape our response to these changes is likely to be one the great strategic headaches for President Obama and his successors for the foreseeable future.

Here's a link to the Times op-ed.

Afganistan Debacle

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:31:12 -0800

From the Guardian

"The dimensions of the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan are becoming bigger and more daunting by the day. Once-staunch defenders of the "good war" are starting to break ranks. "

"Flanked by two vice-presidents, including a notorious warlord that Mr Karzai accepted as a running mate, Mr Karzai vowed yesterday to tackle corruption. This was rather like a cat promising abstinence on the subject of mice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/04/afghanistan-political-failure-kim-howells

Emprire building and occupation are such messy tasks. If Gibbon were alive he could have writted the Decline and Fall of the British, French, Portugese, and American Empires in my lifetime.

Will the US as a continential empire survive its collapse? I thinj it could not, I live in the wet, in CA. There is little east of Nevada (Las Vegas) that is of interest, and little that we buy that comes from the east. Taxes flow east, money better used at home.

We have little need for a dozen aircraft carriers, foreign advertures, for our needs are more fundamental. Water.

Italians outraged as European court rules against crucifixes

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:27:47 -0800

After a European court rules against crucifixes in Italian schoolrooms, Italians from across the political spectrum decry an assault on the country's Roman Catholic identity.

Christian Science Monitor, By Nick Squires, November 3

Rome - Italians reacted with outrage on Tuesday after a European court ruled that displaying crucifixes in the country's schools violated the principle of secular education.

Italy's education minister condemned the judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the Christian cross was a symbol of the country's Roman Catholic religion and cultural identity.

Mariastella Gelmini, a member of the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, argued that "no one, and certainly not an ideological European court, will succeed in erasing our identity," said

Other ministers said they were appalled by the ruling, calling it "absurd," "shameful" and "offensive."

In The Year 2525

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:07:07 -0800

I Confess, I Read The Times

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:45:52 -0800

But, then, you-all suspected that, with my links to Times articles.
This week, Gail Collins has written two columns that lead me to believe that she has reached the "sometimes you just have to laugh" stage. I'll sample each one and give links.
after the break...

The first is "Hark! The Voters Speak!", published November 4, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05collins.html

In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going.
Also, we have heard a lot about the fact that Corzine’s campaign made sport of his rather chunky opponent, Chris Christie. It was not until Wednesday morning that it became obvious that Christie’s victory was actually an outcry by average, pudgy Americans against a president who has to continuously battle against a tendency to lose weight.

The second is "Weekend Sports Lineup", published November 6, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/opinion/07collins.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1257602925-LPyNxS6WUtiMLGLdlqiODw

Here we are at the big Health Care Bill Weekend! ...
Meanwhile, there’s nothing but confidence and serenity among the right-wing tea-party types. They cannot get over the triumph in upstate New York, where thanks to their really extraordinary efforts, a completely safe Republican seat went to the Democrats. Think how far their movement has come! Only a few months ago, they barely had the power to disrupt a town meeting. And soon they will be able to destroy anything in their path, including their own party, like conservative locusts.

"All I know is just what I read in the newspapers." - Will Rogers

Foreign Contributions and the Supreme's Overdue Decision on Campaign Funding

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:05:16 -0800

The Supreme Court of the United States will soon announce a major decision on our lightly controlled system of campaign funding. Will it retain some limitations on corporate influence or will the court blow the lid off and cause a perpetual flood of unrestricted corporate contributions?

An additional outcome may surprise and shock the public.

If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court's decision, foreign nationals, corporations, and governments with partial ownership of U.S. corporations will, in effect, end up contributing to and influencing U.S. candidates in federal elections.

The Supreme Court surprised many when it agreed to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that enforced key sections of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold) -- Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

In January 2008, the Federal District Court, District of Columbia upheld an FEC action that barred Citizens United, a right wing nonprofit corporation, from airing an extended attack on Hillary Clinton called Hillary: The Movie. Citizens United is headed by David Bossie, a well known political enemy of the Clintons. Citizens' lead counsel, Ted Olsen, is an alumnus of the infamous 1990's Clinton bashing Arkansas Project.

The lower court found The Movie violated provisions of McCain-Feingold since some funding for the movie came from the general treasury of Citizens United, rather than a segregated account for political action, e.g., a Political Action Committee (PAC). The Movie had the sole purpose of convincing viewers that Clinton was unfit for office, making it an example of electioneering communications -- the overriding purpose of which are to advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. And The Movie was planned for broadcast both 30 days prior to Democratic primaries and 60 days prior to the general election (had Clinton won the nomination), blackout periods for electioneering communications.

In its appeal, Citizens argued that broadcast restrictions in McCain-Feingold should be overturned to allow unrestricted electioneering communications funded directly from corporate treasuries.

But the appeal also served as a vehicle for lifting virtually any ban on corporate giving. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that corporate funding of campaigns from general funds could be restricted. The heart of the decision is found here:

"they (the Michigan laws) are justified by a compelling state interest: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption in the political arena by reducing the threat that huge corporate treasuries, which are amassed with the aid of favorable state laws and have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas, will be used to influence unfairly election outcomes. Justice Marshall, Austin v. Mich. Chamber of Comm., 1990

Lead counsel for Citizens United, Ted Olsen, argued that "Austin was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He counters with another case that claimed,"First Amendment’s protection against governmental abridgment of free expression cannot properly be made to depend on a person’s financial ability to engage in public discussion.” Ted Olsen, Merits Brief, p. 30, Sept. 9

This challenge to the Austin decision is the true threat within the Trojan horse argument over broadcast restrictions on political hit pieces. The goal of this appeal is nothing less than the legal treatment of corporations as the equal of individual citizens and lesser groups in the political process resulting in an even greater advantage for corporations to control elections.

"We are the World"

During oral arguments before the court, Olson argued that McCain-Feingold unlawfully restricts the First Amendment rights of U.S. corporations. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had this exchange with Olson:

MR. OLSON: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context, New York Times v. Sullivan, Rose Jean v. Associated Press, and over and over again, is that corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include --

MR. OLSON: Now, Justice --

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include today's mega-corporations, where many of the investors may be foreign individuals or entities?

MR. OLSON: The Court in the past has made no distinction based upon the nature of the entity that might own a share of a corporation.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Own many shares?

MR. OLSON: Pardon?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Nowadays there are foreign interests, even foreign governments that own not one share but a goodly number of shares.

Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, Oral Arguments, pp. 4, 5, Sept. 9, 2009

Justice Ginsburg created a poison pill by putting on notice any Supreme Court majority that overturns the lower court decision: your actions will allow foreign funding for U.S. campaigns. Any foreign entity could simply exercise an existing or newly acquired ownership position in a U.S. corporation to demand services from that corporation's latest wholly owned candidate.

The current bans on direct corporate contributions and contributions from foreign entities would become meaningless. The influence of the "corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth" obtained through the control of puppet politicians would submit all of us to the vicissitudes of balance sheets and the salary and bonus demands of board chairmen all over the world (to an even greater degree than we now experience).

Supremes Green Light Foreign Money in U.S. Elections! How well will that fly with citizens in the current political climate? Does the Supreme Court even care?

Class of 2000 Reunion

Two alumni of the Bush effort to stop the Florida 2000 recount, freeze in place various voting rights violations, and prevent any real judicial review of a flawed election are reunited in this case. Chief Justice Roberts was recognized for his contributions to election chaos as then Florida Governor Jeb Bush's legal advisor. His contributions were less than helpful. Ted Olson represented George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case that stopped the recount. He also served as a key strategist for George W. Bush's Florida 2000 recount efforts.

How coincidental that Chief Justice Roberts reached out to his Bush campaign 2000 alumnus Olson by agreeing to hear a case that surprised many when it was selected for the Supreme Court docket.

How ironic that the case presents the opportunity to bring corporate funding into U.S. politics in a way that would end any pretences of democracy as we know it. History waited just nine years to repeat itself.

END

N.B. Wouldn't a reasonable person conclude that Fox News violates the McCain-Feingold Act on a regular basis? Link

This article may be reproduced in part or in whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

Sabbath eve, November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:05:27 -0800

Sean Paul Kelly asked a number of Agonist readers to predict what the world would look like in 30 years. I am hesitant to comply. For me, to predict events in the future is to prophesy. To prophesy incorrectly makes one a false prophet. So I am very cautious with even the simplest statements regarding the future.

I rarely say I will do anything tomorrow without adding, good Lord willing, as a qualifier.

To be honest, I have had mental images, glimpses if you will, of events I think may be part of this country’s future and they are quite scary. I don’t know if these images are divinely inspired or just creations of my own mind.

Thoughts I’ve had are disjointed and full of gaps, like looking through a key hole that remains blocked most of the time.

I interact routinely with people that claim insight into our future or who see things the rest of us don’t, hear voices the rest of us can’t. Many of these people are deemed crazy by the majority, as I am sure were prophets and seers of old. I am influenced by what they say, think and do.

I read prophetic writings almost complusively and have only recently read a book that altered the way I understand history and therefore our future: The fourth turning, by Strauss and Howe.

Before I start, a disclaimer: I am not predicting the future or offering much in the way of anything original here. Instead, I am interpreting what others have prophesied after trying to reconcile their predictions to the world in which I live. This is a narrow glimpse: it’d take a library full of books to consider all possibilities that have coursed through my head since the late 1970’s when I began studying this subject in earnest (and believe it or not, this has been an ongoing concern of mine since that time). I will provide very little in the way of detail, because to put it simply, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Stauss and Howe will tell you that history repeats itself, or comes near doing so in patterns resembling seasons of a year. Each season lasts roughly twenty years (some more, some less) and four seasons complete a saeculum.

The firt season, always following a period of crisis, is called the high, and corresponds with the spring of a year. Those born into this time are referred to as Prophets. In this particular saeculum, that’d be boomers, of which I am part (born 1943 – 1960. I’m doing this from memory as I gave the book to my dad after reading it and no longer have a copy.)

The second season is called the awakening; those born into this period are referred to as Nomads. Current nomads are Gen – Xers (born 1961 – 1981). This season corresponds with summer.

The third period is the unraveling. People born in the fall season are referred to as part of the Hero generation. This because they will become young adults during the fourth and last season – the crisis or winter season. Children born during the crisis are referred to as Artists. Today’s heroes are called Millenials. We’ve yet to come up with a name for the next crops of artists, the majority of which probably have not been born. For what it’s worth, my dad is part of the previous generation of artists, referred to as the Silent generation (born 1923 – 1942).

It took a book or several of them for Strauss and Howe to describe the patterns that define our history so I won’t rewrite what they suggest. Read the book. Suffice it to say that I am convinced. Seasonal patterns presented are similar to those an individual human goes through: birth, young adulthood, maturation, decline, and of course ultimately death (and rebirth, if you will). If you live a full life expectancy you will likely die in a time similar to that in which you are born.

Each crisis period since the founding of this country and for centuries before dating back to the Roman Empire and even before ended in a major war. The last three crisis periods here in the United States culminated respectively with the Revoltionary war, the Civil War, and World War II. In each case, the hero generation bore the brunt of fighting those wars. Notice that each of these occurred 80 years apart and came near the end of a twenty year economic, spiritual and moral collapse. Also note that each successive war was larger and more destructive in nature than the last. (Also notice that the stock market collapsed in 1929 and were are now living in 2009, eighties years later.) We just recently entered a period of crisis.

Here’s where I depart from Strauss and Howe’s predictions. I see these repetitive cycles like a harmonic vibration of sorts. Each wave of movement back and forth progressively gets larger and more powerful. Have you ever seen video of wind whipping a suspension bridge back and forth, up and down? If you have, you know at some point the structure fails and flies to pieces.

And that is what happens to empires as well. They survive a number of cycles but at some point a crisis period becomes so severe that they are broken to pieces, relegated to history. So not only are there saeculums, but also larger groups of saeculums, or epochs *probably not the word Strauss and Howe would use* that define history and denote the end and the beginning of a new era.

I don’t know if America, or the world at large survives the current crisis period in a form that would be recognizable to someone born antyime during the last century. Of course, each generation of prophets along the way asked the same questions and considered the same possibilities. Can we, will we survive this turbulent time?

Just because we survived three previous periods of crisis, doesn’t mean we survive the next.

Never before have > 6 billion people inhabited the earth. Not even close. So you can’t say that just because humans have never before affected the climate, we aren’t doing so now. In less than 100 years we have consumed half the known supply of extractable oil from the earth, oil that probably took millions of years to form. We’ve cut down trees, paved over swamps, ripped open land and allowed topsoil to erode. Balls of tar and plastic float in our oceans; coral reefs die, ice caps melt, species disappear.

Never before have we been so dependant on machinery, most of which is powered directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. Never before has such a large percentage of our population been so far removed from the land that feeds them. Never before has a single farmer fed some many others.

Naseem Taleb says the larger and more complex a system, the more redundancies that are built into that system, the less likely the system is to fail. But… When it does fail, (and it will), the greater the consequences of that failure.

Pride comes before destruction. The more you tell me how we can or won’t fail, the more I am convinced we must. We (not just the US, but modern man as a whole) built something approximating the tower of babel. It must be destroyed in order to save the planet.

There are some, the most evil among us, Malthusians also, but of a much more radical strain than I, that see the same things I see and decide they will engineer the collapse to the favor of their own based on race, religion, region, class, gender etc. They say, if it’s them or us, it’s going to be them and then they proceed to make it happen. Bush, Cheney, Gore and even your boy Obama are counted among them. Worse than these lie ahead.

It’s not that there aren’t non-violent fixes out there, it’s that they won’t be employed.

It will not be geologic constraints of peak oil that seals our fate, nor will climate change get us, although either of these in time presents grave threats. It will be the anticipation of these events and the reactions of those in power that bring about the worst disasters this world has seen.

Plans for the destruction of others will backfire. We will fall victim to devices of our own construction. We are entering a time of great upheaval: wars, famine, disease and natural disasters unparalleled in the history of this planet are soon to come if I don't miss my guess.

I’d say more, but it’d take a book. More than a book. And I don't have the time or space to do that here.

But take heart. The old must pass away so the new can rise. If something isn’t done to destroy civilization as we now practice it, the planet will be destroyed. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.

You see, in the end, I am an optimist.

My guess: Thirty years from now, the United States of America will have collapsed. The world’s population will number less than 2 billion. I don’t expect to be one of them. But you never know.

And the planet will begin to heal itself.

Five Books

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:33:31 -0800

If you knew you were going to stranded on a deserted island for a full year with no cable, iPod, DVD/Blue Ray or any other assorted form of entertainment and only had room for five books, which five books would it be?

Me? The Histories of Herodotus, The Divine Comedy by Dante, the complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Poems of Yeats and East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

You?

The hounds of heaven

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:32:16 -0800

F*k u and other Austrian idioms from California

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:14:53 -0800

... examining the King James translation of the Bible for coded messages with letters spaced at equal intervals in the code turns up such messages as "get lost," "go to hell," "you loser" and "I hate you."

Warning: The link above leads to a Republican propaganda newspaper called WSJ.

"You Can't Pick Your Side in a Race Riot"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:09:05 -0800

The title of the post is a quote from an inmate who survived the infamous Santa Fe Prison Riot in 1980. The sentiment is obvious, when the worst, most atavistic tribal impulses of human beings take over, people can't make rational choices about which side to take, and often don't even have the choice of remaining neutral.

This unfortunate reality of the human condition greatly complicates the internal politics of a polyglot nation like the U.S.

It's been that way since the American Revolution. Certain ethnic/socio-political groups remained more loyal to the Crown and many were driven out of the country at the end of the war. I'm familiar with this because my father's family were tories who migrated from New York to New Brunswick after the Revolution.

My home state of Texas infamously oppressed the Tejanos who played leading roles in the Texas Revolution once independence from Mexico had been achieved.

German-Americans famously suffered the brunt of an angry populace during WWI, from Wikipedia:

The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One man was hanged in Illinois, apparently for no other reason than that he was of German descent. The killers were found not guilty of the crime and the hanging was called an act of patriotism by a jury. A Minnesota minister was tarred and feathered when he was overheard praying in German with a dying woman. Some Germans during this time "Americanized" their names (e.g. Schmidt to Smith, Müller to Miller) and limited their use of the German language in public places. Newspapers also printed blacklists of names of Germans, including their addresses, headlined as German Enemy Aliens.

During WWII, Japanese-Americans had it even worse, being interned in concentration camps.

It shouldn't be surprising that our current ~~wars to export freedom and Democracy~~ state of war with two Muslim countries is putting yet another subset of Americans in a very awkward spot. And when one individual snaps, rather than being seen as an example of aberrant individual psychology or criminal evil, the jingo-artists among us seize on this to make the situation even worse.

From TPM:

One conservative writer is already declaring -- without citing any evidence -- that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter who killed 13 at Fort Hood yesterday, was acting at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood.

and from Raw Story:

In the wake of a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by a military psychiatrist of Middle Eastern lineage, the hosts at Fox News have begun suggesting that all Muslims in the military should be treated as potential threats.

"Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers -- anybody enlisted?" Fox's Brian Kilmeade asked Geraldo Rivera on Friday morning. "Because if I'm going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me."

I hope we can pull out of this downward spiral before it gets stupider and more deadly.

Some excerpts from an interview with a local newspaper editor near Fort Hood in the full entry. She takes a much more measured and responsible approach than the national media.

From Boing Boing's interview with Amanda Kim Stairrett, the military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald.

Besides the families, people really want to know more about the alleged shooter himself. What are you seeing in this coverage?
AKS: A lot of the news organizations are very much wanting to push his religion. Him being Muslim and the impact of that on the incident itself. We don't have anything with that confirmed yet, so I've been really hesitant to say that that played a big part in the incident. We did had a reporter who was at the shooter's off-Post apartment and talked to neighbors. They said he was outspoken about being Muslim and had a lot of pride in his faith. But right now, I've stayed away from saying whether that played a hand in the shooting. I don't know if it's a big problem that people are speculating. I think it's first instinct. But I don't know why new organizations are so prominently featuring surveillance footage of him in a convenience store in traditional clothing. They're building this background in case it turns out that his religion did come into this. But we just don't know right now. And we're not willing to go that route with our reporting at this time.

What's your take on the speculation that's running rampant on TV news with this incident, in general? How does that compare to the actual facts that you know?
AKS: It's been interesting. Very early after the incident yesterday, I was pretty amazed to stand by and listen to, mostly, TV reporters go on air and speculate and report on rumors they'd heard. Whereas, our newspaper is right next to Fort Hood. We have a close relationship and it's always been our policy where we find that it's best to wait for correct information rather than to speculate. Because there's a large family population that isn't necessarily on Post, and don't know what's going on. It's a dangerous situation to get those people worried and worked up for reasons that maybe aren't correct. It's been really frustrating to see all the speculation. I've even been avoiding watching the TV coverage too closely, because I don't want the speculation to accidentally influence what I write.

Ukraine has a problem ...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:41:16 -0800

The death toll in Ukraine is rapidly rising. In a country of 45 million people more than 60 people have died in a week because of some respiratory illness which could be mutated swine flu. Worse still, the epidemic area covers only a small fraction of Ukraine.

No Ukrainian laboratory is capable of testing for the presence of swine flu