Blogcritics

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Weekly BlogScan: Flu Shots and Fears

DrPat — Sun, 6 Nov 2005 17:00:39 EST

Someone I love is ailing right now. Each year, my spouse declines the opportunity to get a flu shot, because "it always gives you the flu." And since my better half is rarely ill, perhaps this is the right approach. I, on the other hand, get a flu shot every year about this time, and though I often get sick in the winter, it's not flu—can't be, you see, since I got a flu shot!Who should get a flu shot? According to the Official Google Blog (powered by Blogger, of course!) and Google staff doctor Taraneh Ravazi, M.D., the answer is: Generally, those wanting to reduce their chance of getting sick. It's especially recommended for... People aged 50 and older... Women who are or will be pregnant during the flu season... Adults and children 6 months and older with chronic heart, or lung conditions including asthma, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, or weakened immune system such as with HIV or with medications, and any kind of brain or spinal cord disorders... Children 6 months to 18 years who are on long-term aspirin therapy... All children 6-23 months of age... All the contacts of people in these high-risk groups. Anyone notice that the last category is the kitchen-sink option? The good doctor provides a Flu Clinic Locator to find where you might be able to get a shot. By the way, he offers this argument for my spouse's objection: "A flu shot, made from an inactivated vaccine... contrary to popular belief cannot give you the flu." But is this the vaccine that will prevent illness of the avian flu (H5N1) variety? Likely not. The shot that works (to some degree) against human H5N1 infection is Tamilflu, a post-infection treatment (for flu you've already come down with). The vaccines being distributed at your local flu shot clinic are likely to be Fluzone and Fluarix instead. Luckily for humans, it's actually quite hard to catch avian flu—it hasn't quite made the jump to human-to-human transmission. Yet.Flu infections run in cycles, according to the theory of rhythmicity of antigenic shift. The annual flu cycle is likely due to a combination of mutation rates, incubation times (how long it takes before an infected person begins shedding the virus), and seasonal variations in climate.... The influenza virus also has a cycle that spans tens of years. This occurs when it undergoes "antigenic shift."... For instance, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 claimed over 20 million lives worldwide. These pandemics recur about every 10 to 30 years. The longer cycle is probably due to the low probability of having two different strains transfer genetic material to create a pathogenic virus and of having this new virus jump the species barrier back into humans. We're concerned about avian flu, not because it is now threatening us, but because it satisfies two conditions for a potential pandemic: a highly mobile vector (migratory birds), and a viral similarity to the cause of several global flu pandemics. ("Both the 1957-58 and 1968-69 pandemics were caused by viruses containing a combination of genes from a human influenza virus and an avian influenza virus. The 1918-19 pandemic virus appears to have an avian origin.")Mariane Szeto takes a more personal look at flu vaccines in Diary of a Diabetty, pointing out that being sick can raise your blood sugars. She counsels other diabetics not to gamble with flu, but to plan strategically for the ways in which flu will impact their lives. Make sure that you consult your doctor for a "sick day plan." This may include checking your blood sugars more frequently, checking for ketones in your urine, or weighing yourself to monitor for excessive weight loss (sometimes an indicator for high blood sugars)... Don't wait! Get your flu shot as soon as possible because being sick is just no fun. If you're fond of the eco-thriller of the Outbreak or Hot Zone variety, I recommend the trenchant future-blog of the Avian Flu Pandemic of 2006 published on the Nature Website. "Sally O'Reilly's Blog" was actually written by Nature senior reporter Declan Butler, and it's a scary read. 2 February 2006 The virus spreads Today, I was at a press conference at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. A guy from the CDC pointed to a giant screen, a map of the world dotted with red pixels. He said that they'd reckoned the virus might hit in two or more waves up to eight months apart, as in past epidemics. They'd hoped the first pandemic strain of H5N1 might be poorly contagious, and come back again with a vengeance after it had picked up more infectivity. By that time we might have had a vaccine. That was just a hunch, though. And it was wrong... Look at that map! With the huge increase in passengers travelling by air, it's already lodged in 38 cities around the globe. The outline of Asia is barely visible beneath the swarm of red pixels.SCIAM Observations gives us the editors' take on articles that appear in Scientific American. In a recent post, "Don't Fear the (Bird) Reaper?," John Rennie, the magazine's editor-in-chief, takes issue with the down-play of avian flu dangers because the strain is currently only fatal to 2 to 3 percent of those infected. [W]e don't need H5N1 to be highly and quickly lethal. We only need it to be highly transmissible, which is advantageous in evolutionary terms. The 1918 virus, for example, had a case-fatality estimated to be "only" two or three percent, but when you have infected a significant portion of the world's population (immunologically naive to H5N1), 2% is quite a lot of dead people. Thus if there is a 40% infection rate (perhaps comparable to 1918), we would have 2.4 billion infections, very few (percentage-wise) fatal. But a 2% case-fatality rate (no one's idea of super lethality) is still 50 million deaths... In addition, influenza is infectious before symptoms (and hence incapacitation) occur, unlike SARS or Ebola. Orent likes to say that the reason wild ducks are only mildly affected is that dead ducks don't fly. But infectious people do fly—on airplanes.Dr. Joseph Mercola, however, cries fowl on the whole idea of a Bird Flu pandemic. In "Avian Flu Epidemic Scare is a Hoax" he argues that the media and government are conspiring to "scare you into taking the flu vaccine... Dr. Henry Miller, former director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, seeks to frighten the US public by telling us that the avian flu virus can jump from birds to humans and produce a fatal illness in 50% of those infected." Dr. Mercola has his own brand of Lydia Pinkham's to peddle, though, so I'll take his advice with a grain of salt—and a flu shot.

DrPat is the blog signature used by an old coot who hoards books, dances Argentine Tango, cooks a mean venison chili, and is happy to be along for the sag while my spouse does a marathon bicycle ride. All that is in my spare time -- and my work life is classified...

Weekly BlogScan: Lost in Translation

DrPat — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:31:26 EDT

I began my BlogScans nearly a year ago, with the chance discovery that many blog-posts centered on a "wandering" theme. I feel as if I've come full circle to discover that many more contain a complaint that someone or some idea is "lost in translation."This was triggered, perhaps, by a reasonably clever Blogcritics.org post examining how The Simpsons might survive translation to suit the Arab world. (They don't.) And Homer's translation to a sober, wise patriach in a series bereft of beer, bacon, Bart's backtalk, and Lisa's self-conscious feminism is a parallel for other such losses in international and trans-Web communication.For a 180-degree twist on this concept, I read John "Vampire Slayer" Blyler's complaint on JB's Circuit that his studies of vampire bloggers and dead kittens had been taken out of context. I never knew that dead kittens were a trick to trace vampire bloggers (parasitic denizens of the cyberworld that suck original ideas out of the blogs of others). But The Bay Area Is Talking had the rest of the story. Just Google the phrase "Bloggers kill kittens" and you'll find ample evidence of the propagation of an absurd idea through the Web.But that isn't so much lost in translation as stolen. For a look at an absurd idea both lost in translation and propagated freely, check out respectful of otters, where they repair a fractured news item purported to be from ZDF News (a highly-respected Dutch news program). Did President Bush visit a specially-built food-supply depot in New Orleans after Katrina, only to have it torn down after he left? No, the bloggers conclude; the initial translator missed a segue from the story about the Presidential visit to one city with news about different day's visit to a completely different state. Saddam called Yehzidi faith Satanism According to Michael Yon: Online Magazine, the Yehzidi, a little-known, reclusive Kurdish tribe, had their religious beliefs mistranslated as devil worship by Saddam Hussein. Some believe Yezidism is over 5,000 years old... Some tenets of Yezidism are readily understandable to westerners: Yezidis worship one God... They recognize and respect both Jesus and Mohammed, but as men of faith, not prophets. Where the doctrine starts to become hazy is when the angels appear... [W]hen this seventh Angel, most beloved of God, fell from grace, he was the most powerful angel in Heaven and on Earth. He rose as the Archangel Malak Ta'us... [T]he name, Malak Ta'us, literally means, "King of Peacocks."Saddam Hussein's hatred for Yezidis and Kurds was matched only by his desire to eradicate every last one of them from Iraq. Even though most Kurds are actually Sunni Muslims, as is the now imprisoned dictator, his hatred for them remained unabated, and was relentless. Hussein knew that a collision of religious beliefs carved fault lines between the Yezidis and the Kurds who surround them. He used his common point of reference with the Kurds to sharpen their divide from the Yezidis, by calling them "Devil Worshippers." But just because the Yezidis don't have a Satan figure in their holy book, doesn't mean they can't spot a devil when they see one. Together with the Kurds, they resisted Hussein's will. Today, while the real peacock sits in jail, the unvanquished Yezidis are rebuilding their homeland.On Always On, Bernard Moon writes about a blogosphere lost in translation. Is the Web's lightning-fast transmission of ideas actually barred by lousy translation software? His thoughts range from French outrage over Google making libraries available online, to the real need to communicate with people who speak from another cultural and linguistic stance. That, in turn, led me to think about other topics and issues from around the globe that people not only want but need to read about from the perspectives of the people who are on the ground experiencing them. What are Iraqis saying about the situation in their country? What would the people of Rwanda have written to make us understand the horrors that took place there? ... Other than what people like Mohammed and Omar from the Iraq the Model blog—who are writing in English—have to say, we're missing out on these voices because we don't understand their language.Sometimes, losing something in translation is worthwhile, says Hack A Day [beta]. He recommends using the lossy translator of Babelfish, for example, to make it easier to create texts for steganography. The quote is as it appears on the blog. There are a couple disadvantages to this method of steg: the low bitrate and the fact that you have to transmit the source and the translated text. There are also some attacks to expose this method. If the same sentence appears twice in a text and is translated two different ways it would set off a red flag. Also if the machine mistakes are inconsistent: using the word "foots" in one place and "feets" in the other. If someone developed a large statistical model of all MT systems it would be easy to see that the steg doesn't fit the mold, but the steg could also use this model to make sure it fits (an arms race).The blogger at DealLawyers.com is another who wants to work the system to bring sense back out of what has been lost in translation in trans-cultural business deals. "A good agreement cannot fix a bad relationship, but a good relationship can fix a bad agreement... So relax and do what Asian and European dealmakers have been doing for centuries: wine, dine, and (then) sign... then wine and dine some more."Riding Sun points out that dead-tree media also seem willing to use translation losses to provide deniability while making a point. He cites a Japanese headline on a Newsweek cover in February that proclaims "America Is Dead." Neither this article, nor its cover illustration, an American flag tossed into a garbage can, made it into the issue published in the US. That featured Hilary Swank, Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio instead, under the title, "Oscar Confidential." It's one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a "dead", "rotting" country overseas. But it's quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won't it tell us? ... If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you're ashamed to run in America probably shouldn't be used in other countries, either. Finally, lost in translation celebrates the sheer joy of losing it. Check out the Babelizer, which guarantees jabberwocky for your efforts. I plugged in "And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?" with "Include Chinese, Japanese, and Korean" turned on—and out came: And you have gone old hour these feet more retimber the English mountain? Extreme calm of it! (Babelized version of "That's so cool!")

Weekly BlogScan: Karl Rove

DrPat — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:54:22 EDT

Depending on your point of view, Karl Rove is either a sinister kingmaker-puppeteer behind every policy move President Bush makes, or he is simply a brilliant consultant, one of many in George W. Bush's coterie of advisors. Both views concede that this man is a power in the White House.Either way, I think you would be hard-pressed to find another modern "consultant" to a President with the quite the amount of press coverage Rove has garnered. Who filled Rove's position in the Clinton White House? Who was LBJ's advisor? Nixon's? Kennedy's? Even in the administration of George W. Bush's father, there is no figure with a comparable prominence in the public eye. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.... Avowed Republicans are not immune to accusations of being swayed by the ophidian eye of Rove. RadioBlogger captured this Beltway Boys discussion of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, in which Hugh Hewitt announced: Yesterday, Karl Rove made the argument to me that she has sat for three years in the judicial selection committee, vetting judges with [President Bush], with the vice president, with the then-White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, with John Ashcroft, making comments, making arguments, helping select, or you know, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. And it is impossible not to know someone's judicial philosophy after three years of such a process. I find that very persuasive.(Following this, on his own blog Hugh Hewitt noted that "an anonymous tipster to Ed Whelan asserts that I have been misled by Karl Rove" on the issue of Harriet Miers.)And The Rude Pundit, "proudly lowering the level of political discourse," states that Rove's persuasive powers were also enlisted to quiet James Dobson's opposition to Miers. ...it's quite something else to assure people that a nominee's Jesus-lovin' will absolutely have an impact on his or her decision-making. But that's exactly what Karl Rove did for James "Behold My Stereotypically Creepily Effeminate Voice" Dobson, head of Focus on the Family and, apparently, someone who has so much access to the White House that he must be hand-jobbed into complacency by a much-distracted Rove. Karl Rove, high-profile consultant. [Wikipedia] At fishbowlDC, meanwhile, they're keeping a light shining on the supposed involvement of Rove in the Plame outing. Floating in the bowl is this reference to Karl Rove Neocondoms: "If you passed by DC Superior Court yesterday and thought you saw three seven-foot-tall condoms, you didn't imagine it." The costumed condoms were there to confront Karl Rove, returning to testify before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's Grand Jury inquiry into the Plame affair. Unfortunately, the blogger notes, "Rove entered the courthouse through a side entrance" and never saw the demonstrators.Not to be outdone, No More Mister Nice Guy links the Miers nomination with the Plame grand jury, asserting that Miers was only named because Rove is on the outs with his boss. I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a number of recent White House presidential events—events that he has ALWAYS attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from [the] presidential press conference to promote Harriet Miers.... My source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already trying to distance him from the president.At his eponymous blog, David Corn turned the Plame/Miers speculation around, wondering if Miers' insider information about Rove and Plame might be a factor in her confirmation. I did think that it would be interesting to see Miers questioned at her confirmation hearings by senators regarding the leak case. Was she a party to any discussions in the White House about the leak, about the White House's reaction to the leak (in which it issued false denials that Rove was not involved in it), about what legal strategy the White House, Bush, Rove and/or others should adopt?And according to Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's Bloggermann, Rove's troubles with the Plame investigation are also the cause of bomb threats in New York City. I referred to the latest terror threat—the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system—in terms of its timing. President Bush's speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation. I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences—a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event"—a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.These are recent events—but Rove has been a lightning-rod for commenters from the left and right much longer than that. On LibertyPost.org last February, it was noted that Dan Rather's embarrassment at reporting forged Texas Air National Guard documents damaging to the President had been blamed on Rove. Spokespersons for CBS News, which aired a report based on the phony documents, and the White House could not be reached for comment on [Democrat Congressman Maurice] Hinchey's theory, which he gave during a forum on Social Security in Ithaca... Hinchey blamed Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, for concocting the plan to release phony documents to the media... "They've had a very, very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media and the way it's handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather... They set up those false papers," Hinchey said.Oh, sure, responds Right Wing News, it's all Rove. It was all part of Karl Rove's eeeevvviiillll plan! ... Did you know that Rove sabotaged the engines of Paul Wellstone's plane, founded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and got Jayson Blair hired at the New York Times? It was all Rove! When it rains on the day of a peace march? It's Rove using his secret CIA weather machine! When a Democrat misplaces his car keys? That's because Rove's magical leprechauns move them around! Ever lost a sock in the dryer? Somehow, someway, it's Rove's fault, Rove, Rove, ROVE!!!Even further back, Thomas M. Spencer predicted on History News Network (HNN) in November 2003 that "If White House political guru Karl Rove gets his way, ...the 2004 election will turn not on Iraq or the dubious glories of the Bush economy but on liberal judges, partial-birth abortion, and gay marriage." IMAO ("Unfair Unbalanced Unmedicated") addresses the accusation that "Republican Talking Points" come by FAX from Karl Rove. (Apparently, because he "likes to personally sign the main copies as a sort of verification." The sample memo is signed "Satan.") In this revealing post, blogger Frank J. tells us he will: receive a fax at 6AM every day (including weekends) of the Republican Talking Points. I don't share it with the other IMAO bloggers, and instead just browbeat them into saying what I want... I get ones specifically tailored for bloggers. I assume politicians, pundits, radio talk show hosts, and FOX News get different talking points... You'll notice how IMAudiO [podcast] has less political content than the blog due to the lack of talking points. I am hopeful there will be talking points for podcasts soon...So there we have it. Karl Rove may be the anti-Christ (he was born on Christmas Day in 1950), or simply the strongest cog in the engine of the Bush White House. Either way, he's a power to reckon with—as P.J. Comix puts it in the DUmmie FUnnies, he's a Perfect Rovian Storm.

Weekly BlogScan: H5N1 and Avian Flu Fears

DrPat — Sat, 8 Oct 2005 21:19:00 EDT

Avian flu, bird flu, H5N1 flu virus: these are all hot-words creeping up in the public attention right now. This is not unusual for the fall months, the time of year when we prepare to combat the latest variant of influenza virus to come down the pike (or to jump the Pacific from Asia). It is unusual this year, with so much else going on to claim our attention. Recently, these background fears were brought to the forefront with the announcement by Gina Kolata in a New York Times Health article that research had revealed the source of the 1918 flu pandemic (in which 50 million people died): an avian infection that had jumped to directly to humans. RatcliffeBlog cites a Wall Street Journal article about this revelation, published in Nature: The findings by Dr. Taubenberger and his team of researchers... follow a nine-year effort to decode the 1918 strain by sequencing its eight genes. The research concluded that the pandemic flu outbreak was most likely caused by an avian virus. The scientists also discovered 10 mutations that distinguish the 1918 virus from avian bugs, suggesting changes that the virus made to adapt to a human host, they said. They also noted that some of those mutations are also present in the currently circulating H5N1 virus, suggesting it could make the jump to humans in a similarly rapid and alarming way. Web-journalism guru Crawford Killian also writes H5N1, a blog devoted to news about this flu variant and its dangers. He says, "I suspect we're not very far from the 1918 faith in holy medals as ways to stave off disease." In a meta-commentary on his Writing for the Web blog, Killian notes, ABC News ran a segment on Primetime about avian flu. I'd even found an item on the Web about it, and posted the news. But I had no idea that the program would trigger a remarkable spike in my traffic. From routine traffic of 550 hits per 24 hours, H5N1 was suddenly logging four or five times that. Eventually I realized what was happening, and saw traffic peak, a day or so later, at a little over 6000 hits/24 hours... This was clearly due to viewers of one program, who promptly booted their computers, Googled "h5n1," and found my site as #2 out of close to two million pages. At Effect Measure, the Editors sign themselves "Revere." (Paul Revere was a member of the first local Board of Health in the United States, in Boston, 1799.) They note that attention to bird flu has ratcheted up in the media. Without Hurricane Katrina we'd probably be in the Persistent Vegetative State that characterized the previous five years of the Bush Administration regarding any threats not part of the Global War on Terrorism message. But despite the new attention, it is doubtful whether either the Administration or Congress will make much difference. The Senate has appropriated almost $4 billion in new bird flu funds... Most of it, however, is for a big Tamiflu buy, not the wisest use, especially when the US is so far down the client list it won't get the new supply for some time. Spence at Future Health Solutions reports that thousands of turkeys in NW Turkey have been destroyed due to suspicions of their harboring the H5N1 flu variant. Bulgaria will watch migratory bird flocks to detect possible transmission of flu to domestic birds. And Romania has ...identified three cases of birds killed by the Asia-originated deadly flu strain. London has confirmed the probes Romania urgently sent for research. The first cases were discovered in the Danube delta a crossroad of the migratory routes of wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany. H5N1 virus causes avian flu in humansAccording to the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer, though, India sees no cause for alarm over an avian flu epidemic. "So far there has been no human-to-human transmission of the virus."At Bayosphere, blogger Dan Gilmore isn't so sanguine. He blames the Bush administration for failing to get in line for supplies of flu vaccine sooner, and says, Here's what a more competent and less ideological administration would do. It would say there's an emergency, and launch an emergency effort to get American pharmaceutical companies will make this drug, paying a royalty to Roche. And if Roche balked, we'd do what developing nations are doing in the case of hyper-expensive AIDS drugs: Make them anyway. Meanwhile, we'd be embarking on a crash vaccine program, one designed so we were not dependent on the same drug industry that left the US without nearly enough flu shots last year...The Freedom Rider seems more worried about a military response to a flu epidemic in the US than he is about the disease itself. "In case of a bird flu outbreak, President Bush says that he would have to call in the troops, here on US soil, to keep us all safe. Somehow the thought doesn't make me feel any safer." Don't worry, chandrasutra tells us—according to experts, "information is key to fighting flu pandemics." The post cites a number of excellent resources in the battle, including the WHO Avian flu site, and a BBC Avian Flu Q&A.And at Junkyard Blog, B. Preston notes that the Democrats' plan to create the "next great genocidal smear campaign... will shamelessly use the coming bird flu threat to orchestrate it." Preston points out that the Bush Administration has spent a year building a plan to deal with a pandemic, and notes Bush literally can't win with them--especially when the failures in New Orleans had "Democrat" written all over them. The closer to failure the Democrats actually are, the more they blame Bush for it. [Avian] flu has been nagging at the edges since 1997. Last time I checked, that means the Clintonistas had a few years to start working on the problem. Did they? Did they? The threat may be real, or it may be an inflated concern like the 1976 Swine Flu fiasco, when more people died from the vaccine for the flu than from the disease itself. H5N1 could be the next "Great Pandemic." Or it could be only another political football to justify spending our money and curtailing our freedoms.

Weekly Blogscan: Able Danger and the Gorelick Wall

DrPat — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:40:25 EDT

There's a balloon floating in Washington lately, wafted in and out of view by hot air from bloggers and other new media. Is the name on that balloon Judith Miller? Tom Delay? Even Karl Rove?No, it's Able Danger.Able Danger was the code-name for a Pentagon data-mining surveillance project set up in the 1990s to track Al Qaeda activity worldwide. The project is reported to have identified Al Queda operatives in the US—including Muhammad Atta and three other of the 9/11 hijackers—prior to September 11, 2001. The backstory on Able Danger comes from Flopping Aces blogger Curt, who wrote in mid-August that what "really sticks out to me is the timeline with Sandy Berger's burglary of Archive documents." But the blogger's piece was titled " The Gorelick Wall & Sandy Berger," indicating hw is also concerned over 9/11 commission-member Jamie Gorelick's "wall of separation" between FBI, CIA, and Pentagon intelligence efforts. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), a champion of integrated intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies, wrote to the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission late Wednesday, telling them that their staff had received two briefings on the military intelligence unit—once in October 2003 and again in July 2004. Weldon said he was upset by suggestions earlier Wednesday by 9/11 panel members that it had been not been given critical information on Able Danger's capabilities and findings.Austin Bay Blog commented on the "Gorelick Wall" with thoughts about why such a separation was appropriate for its time, saying a wall between military and Federal agencies and the police has a definite civil purpose, and noting that the wall has been lowered in the past when the US was at war. Until 9/11 America did not consider the terrorists' attacks as war. Washington treated the terrorists as criminals. That was the strategic error, no matter what you think of Clinton or Bush... If Jamie Gorelick wasn't the weakest commission member, she was the most compromised. Gorelick should have recused herself from participation on the 9/11 Commission—because she did "raise the wall" during the Clinton Administration. Had she done that she would have enhanced her reputation. But she didn't. A "multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues," The Counterterrorism Blog, cites a number of writings on the subject of Able Danger, but leads the list with this intro written by Bill West, who served in what was then the Clinton Administration's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). If the news about the DoD intelligence is true, that infamous intelligence "wall" truly did create a huge missed opportunity... The INS Headquarters National Security Unit (NSU), which was created in the late 1990s in spite of considerable obstacles generated by the INS High Command... tried to post a liaison officer to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) specifically to tap into DoD intelligence on counter-terrorism matters. The NSU Director at the time approved it and DIA bought off on the plan... but INS senior management above the NSU Director nixed it so it never happened... If we had gotten that DoD Intel about Atta and crew in 2000/early 2001, lead information about al-Qaeda operatives in our backyard in south Florida, it's virtually certain that between Miami INS and Miami FBI, we would have worked up a plan and found a way to take those thugs into custody.Guest-blogger Joseph Cannon wrote in mid-August on The Brad Blog about learning the identity of Weldon's whistle-blower Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. Cannon's approach is evident from the opening of his essay: The right continues to make disturbing use of the Able Danger story—which holds that a secretive DIA unit had identified [Al Queda operative Mohammed] Atta well before 9/11.Rush Limbaugh and a number of right-leaning newspapers have continued to spread the lie, first published in NewsMax, that Jamie Gorelick of the Clinton Justice Department somehow forced the DIA to refrain from sharing the unit's discoveries. John Podhoretz at National Review has also given respectful attention to this tale, although he has steered clear of the NewsMax spin.Later in that month, we learned the names of two more people involved in Able Danger. Navy Captain Scott Philpott confirmed Lt. Col. Shaffer's claims, as did J.D. Smith, a civilian contractor who worked on Able Danger. "I am absolutely positive that he [Atta] was on our chart among other pictures and ties that we were doing mainly based upon [terror] cells in New York City," Smith said. He explained the project in an interview posted on FoxNews.com: Smith said data was gathered from a variety of sources, including about 30 or 40 individuals. He said they all had strong Middle Eastern connections and were paid for their information. Smith said Able Danger's photo of Atta was obtained from overseas.A "mostly Political weblog" on Slate, kausfiles, includes blogger Mickey Kaus' speculations on the Able Danger phenomenon from August. Kaus thinks the blogosphere is zeroing in on the real reason Able Danger's report was rejected by the 9/11 inquiry. Kaus cites two other bloggers in his revelation: J.D. Smith [one of the Abel Danger whistle-blowers] also said that Able Danger had gotten Atta's name by linking him to Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheikh implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing... It turns out, as blogger A.J. Strata discovered, that there are links—whether accurate or inaccurate... in the public domain between Rahman and a doctor, Magdy El-Amir... who has a brother named Mohamed El-Amir who has apparently been linked by Dateline—again, perhaps erroneously—to some intrigue or other. Mohammed El-Amir... Wasn't that the same name used by Mohammed Atta at the beginning [of] 2000?... It was just a different Mohamed El-Amir.... Why do I feel that through the power of the blogosphere we are asymptotically approaching the truth? Did DoD know Atta was Al Queda in 2000?The "two Attas theory" is crisply debunked by Chris Regan of JunkYard Blog as ridiculous. He writes that this ...seems to fall into the category of the rush to deny or explain away the Able Danger story. The world's most critical data mining surveillance program should be able to distinguish between two identically-named people far better than any other method known to man. They would have flagged many unique indicators in order to profile personal preferences... Plus there's the Atta photo that was mentioned. Nobody else in the world looks like the 9/11 Mohammed Atta. He's a guy you could pick out of a lineup with his identical twin after seeing him only once in passing. He would be the evil twin of course.On September 21st, according to NewsMax.com, the Pentagon ordered members of the Able Danger group not to testify about their findings at an open Senate hearing. This prompted Michelle Malkin to recall two-year-old statements from the 9/11 commission, saying that "It seems like just yesterday the 9/11 Commission was demanding access to every 9/11-related document, no matter how sensitive." She cites a Common Dreams Newscenter report dated October 25, 2003: "Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the [9/11] commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.William M. Arkin wrote quite recently (Sept. 27) an entire column detailing the "Secret History of Able Danger," in which he appears to debunk (but actually supports) the "Gorelick Wall" as a factor in the suppression of Able Danger's findings prior to the 9/11 attack. Like most government activity associated with counter-terrorism in the late 1990's, Able Danger was a "compartmented" effort. After the 1998 embassy bombings, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger directed that a tightly compartmented process be put in place to keep all counter-terrorism military planning secret.... U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)... worked with the Joint Chiefs to develop a set of 13 military options against Al Qaeda under a war plan called Infinite Resolve.As the Able Danger cell began its work, its first questions were: What is al Qaeda? How big is it? Where is it?As the 9/11 Commission said in its final report: "Despite the availability of information that al Qaeda was a global network, policymakers knew little about the organization. The reams of new information that the CIA's Bin Laden unit had been developing since 1996 had not been pulled together and synthesized for the rest of the government."Finally, Captain Ed writes today on his Captain's Quarters blog that one of the Able Danger whistle-blowers has been discharged from the DoD. Not for whistle-blowing, he hastens to point out, but for ancient offenses like stealing pens in 1985 and "going over his chain of command to do briefings." Col. Tony Shaffer has had his security clearances revoked by the DoD and [they] have officially notified his attorney of the circumstances surrounding the revocation. Although it does not technically affect his membership in the Army reserve, the action effectively ends the career of the former DIA liaison to the Able Danger project. Shaffer cannot pursue his specialties within the Army or DoD without security clearances. On the other hand, he can now testify (albeit with reduced credibility) before the Senate. That testimony may turn out to be more interesting than anything we learn from journalist Judith Miller.

Weekly BlogScan: Hurricanes and End Times

DrPat — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 17:02:34 EDT

Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico continue to spark news and opinion pieces all over the Web, but by far the strangest theme is the "end times" scenario. Based on prophecies in the Bible (and the Koran, and the "third secret of Fatima"—and "scientific" prophesies from ecologists), bloggers all over the world are discussing the signs that we are "entering the end of days."On Escape All These Things, the writer asks "Can you imagine the whole world like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?" and speculates that perhaps Katrina is "God's judgement" for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The discussion leaps from 9/11 (thousands dead) to the 2004 tsunami (hundreds of thousands dead) to Katrina (?? dead), and from there to "Planet Wormwood (Billions Dead)." He cites the Bible-codes.org site:This makes Rita the 8th hurricane that the Lord has spoken to me about—four last year and four this year. This is interesting since the hurricanes also represent the wheels of God's chariot. (As in Ezekiel 1-3, as discussed elsewhere). "A wheel intersecting a wheel" (Ezekiel 1-3.) Thus we have four wheels (i.e., major hurricanes)! Four last year and four this year; Rita makes the fourth wheel (major hurricane) this year. Chariot of God = Hurricane, from Bible-codes.org T. Clark of Revelation 13 also finds codes that relate to hurricanes, using Bible-code search software. (Who knew?) Clarke is even willing to set the date for Armageddon. The U.S. is being attacked by demonic forces, because the U.S. is a force for good in the world! But in the end these demonic forces will lose! The Satanic serpent will attack the U.S. by natural disasters, and by the green serpent of Muslim terrorism. But the U.S. must continue to defend Israel in the Middle East, and divine protection will defend the U.S. and Israel when Armageddon comes in 2007.Media Matters for America documents that, in a September 9th broadcast of Trinity Broadcasting Network's International Intelligence Briefing, Biblical prophecy author and host Hal Lindsay (The Last Days of the Late, Great Planet Earth) linked the end times to Katrina. They quote Lindsay: It seems clear that the prophetic times I have been expecting for decades have finally arrived. And even worse, it appears that the judgment of America has begun. I warn continually that the last days lineup of world powers does not include anything resembling the United States of America. Instead, a revived Roman Empire in Europe is to rule the West, and then the world. Of interest here is the fact that Lindsay does not write of this in his regular column on WorldNet Daily. Greg Laurie, does, though—in a commentary dated September 5th, Laurie writes: When Jesus was asked what the signs of His return would be... [he] said: "And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven" (Luke 21:11, NKJV). The Bible teaches that there is a generation of people who will not see death, but rather will meet the Lord in what is often referred to as the rapture of the Church.... Could we be that generation? Time will tell. But if I were you, I would pay careful attention to all that is happening—you will be glad that you did! For a non-Biblical take on the hurricanes in the Gulf, nothing tops Captain's Blog's Richard C. Hoagland, and his "Hyperdimensional Katrina" theory of a "'hyperdimensional homing beacon'—specifically designed by 'someone' to guide Katrina to a catastrophic landfall at New Orleans just eleven days [later]." Multiple animated illustrations are used to support his theory. That, in fact, is exactly what our "hyperdimensional model" for Hurricane Katrina is proposing: that what we are seeing in this extraordinary radar sequence... is the standard NEXRAD radar signal being—somehow—reflected back from the clear air over and around New Orleans... air which has somehow been made "radar reflective" by the application of an otherwise invisible "energy" signature... from somewhere. [Ellipses and emphasis are author's, not mine.]William Bowles' blog Investigating New Imperialism imputes this "end times" approach to President Bush, without ever bringing Biblical prophecies into it....the hypothesis goes something like this: some years back the US calculated that global climate meltdown was an inevitability and therefore needed to produce a plan that would enable US capitalism to come out the "other side" on top in what the PNAC describes as a position of "full spectrum dominance" of this post-apocalyptic world... Moreover, the federal government's "benign neglect" of the disaster that has struck New Orleans would seem to fit the hypothesis, in fact, it's almost a "dry run" for what now seems to be a foretaste of what we can expect to be a "normal" event in the future. And Bill Moyers' comments in Mother Jones recently (quoted on AlterNet in "Battlefield Earth") also take off from this environmental "end of days" worry. In the essay, Moyers describes how the problems "journalists routinely cover—conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution—may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations."The most unmanageable of all... could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.... That's one challenge we journalists face—how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras... CNN Online quoted Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher at Florida International University in Miami, in refutation of this global-warming Apocalypse: "From 1970 to 1995, there weren't that many hurricanes, and the ones we had were nice, well-mannered, housebroken hurricanes that stayed out to sea and didn't make a mess," Willoughby said. "The only thing I can say," he added, "is this run of good luck we had is ending."To keep things in perspective, The Easter Egg Archive informs us the Region 4 copy of End of Days contains an Easter Egg that opens a trailer for The Hurricane. Now that's prophecy!

Weekly BlogScan: Lost Orleans

DrPat — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 16:35:45 EDT

It's sinking in, finally. Buried under the muck of Katrina's passage is an icon of 18th, 19th and 20th century America, the "Big Easy," never to be quite so big, nor quite so easy again.As people around the world scrambled to help the survivors, we mourned that loss. We screamed, "No!" when told it might be too expensive to restore the charming relic on the Mississippi delta to its former glory. Denial and anger are everywhere, and they must give way, eventually, to acceptance. Former residents of the city are attuned to this grief. Metro-Blogging :: New Orleans' blogger Richard assesses the similarity to the five stages of coping with grief, from "Shock: Complete change of life in twelve little hours? Yeah, that counts as shock in my book..." to: Anger: Tonight on Fox News (why it was on, I don't know), a bunch of clean-shaven crackers were discussing the whole disaster relief thing for New Orleans, and from the get-go, the tone was one of, "Why should we help these people out when they knew this could happen? Why should we help people who choose to live in dangerous places?" At which point I was screaming at the television... Acceptance: Yeah, right.... We'll talk in a couple of months. At Dan Washburn's Shanghai, Dan quotes from a friend's letter that arrived to tell him his friend was safe: We're all alive though, and we all know where everyone is, which is huge. The houses, the possessions, all that stuff is just stuff. New Orleans won't ever be the same—certainly not in the way that I've known it. But I can think about all of that later. Craig Giesecke is another at Metro-Blogging :: New Orleans, who writes about the frustration of paperwork in the wake of his loss, a business. "What I don't understand is all the whining from homeowners who are griping they're not covered for a flood. This is spelled out pretty clearly in the list of exclusions you get when you receive your policy."But that's not kind of loss we are all coping with. Jeff at Rigorous Intuition gropes for an analogy to the loss of a city, and turns to Bob Dylan: ...we've come to this almost inconceivable moment, when dogs pick at uncollected corpses in the streets of a murdered American city... what's really needed is a proper allegory. Something like Bob Dylan's Masked and Anonymous... "What nourishes gods? The smell of fear. The gods get fat on fear. These gods left before the Bible was written...." And isn't that what this feels like? That the ancient gods are back, and their priests are in the high places. God was on Laura's mind at DomeBlog, too, where she is "Blogging the evacuees at the Reliant Astrodome and George R. Brown Convention Center." Jody Collins, 46, lost his home, two trucks, a boat, and his lawn care business. "Basically what I feared in life was losing everything I had," Laura reports Collins saying. "Now I don't have to worry about it anymore because it is all gone..."The Heritage Preservation Organization lists lost buildings, although their first focus is "lowering water levels, evacuating people, removing debris, clearing roads, and retrieving corpses." For preservationists, the hurricane dealt a series of irretrivable losses. The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art (2001 CAP awardee) sustained major damage... A dislodged casino barge crushed part of an addition designed by Frank Gehry and the Pleasant Reed House, a museum of African-American history, was destroyed except for the chimney... While the city's most famous historic areas—the French Quarter, the Garden District and the Warehouse District—were spared from the deluge caused by Hurricane Katrina, groups fear that several less-well-known historic areas received significant storm damage, from both wind and flooding. Now they fear they will be bulldozed... At Bene Diction, the anger triggered by floods during monsoons in India during late July and early August is noted. "10 days after monsoons and record rainfall devastated parts of India, people are turning to blogs and text messages to help themselves out. There is a great deal of anger in Mumbai (Bombay) as infrastructures and government fail." And speaking of anger, in a provocative piece, "Who Lost New Orleans?," Pat Buchanan points out that "Books are yet being written on how Kimmel and Short, the commanders at Pearl, were scapegoated. Had we not broken the Japanese code? Did not FDR know by decoded intercepts the night of Dec. 6 that Tokyo had terminated talks and this meant war? Why was Gen. Marshall horseback riding the morning of Dec. 7, as aides frantically searched for him to alert Pearl?" If the language from the last two seems familiar, it is because the undirected anger that arrives in the wake of immense loss must find a target. We are all grieving.

Weekly BlogScan: Hurricane Relief - Stepping Up

DrPat — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 02:57:18 EDT

I spent 8 hours today at a relief donation site in one small city in California, and saw again the real face of humanity. People are stepping up to help, in whatever way they can. Politics were set aside—I didn't hear one word in 8 hours about White House, FEMA, or the Corps of Engineers. What I did hear was humbling: Over and over, people asked the same simple question, "How can I help?"Teenage girls came by to donate their babysitting money, and stayed to help sort donations. Elderly women walked over from an assisted living facility nearby, and began labeling boxes in clear, school-teacherly text. Two boys zipped up on bicycles, and stayed to cart boxes up into the trailer. A mother brought her three adolescents to help, and they bagged up thousands of personal-relief gifts (toothpaste, toothbrush, comb and brush, individual sizes of hand lotion, mouthwash and shampoo).On the blogs, people have also been stepping up. Blog-hub maven The Truth Laid Bear rallied the troops in that corner of the blogosphere with a massive fund drive for the Red Cross. N.Z. Bear and his blog-buddies are tracking relief organizations (from Insta-pundit, and providing a central place to find news of survivors (67071 records so far on GulfCoastNews), or launch a search for the missing.Richard was last known to be at a high rise down town. I haven not heard from him since last Sunday. If you have any information, PLEASE let me know. Thankyou so very much. (He has made contact with his family.)Carline B. in the early 80 were you and your family station in japan. My mom beckie p. has been worried. please email susan b. (Still no news on Caroline B.)Last seen at BAY ST. LOUIS, MS High School - we need to know if she's still there. Please contact 727... (FOUND at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport!) News from New Orleans itself can be found at NOLA.com.Saturday, Sept. 10—Sheriff Harry Lee said Saturday night that the Jefferson Parish Coroner's office had processed 152 bodies, but only 20 of those were deaths related to Hurricane Katrina... He also said that body count does not include bodies that may have been taken to the morgue in St. Gabriel...Commercial air traffic will resume Tuesday at Louis Armstrong International Airport, Aviation Director Roy Williams said... Commerical cargo flights have already begun...Jefferson Parish will begin collecting food waste at some sites around the parish, all waste at the Jefferson Parish landfill and will begin picking up garbage on Monday...The [Corps of Engineers] reported the following activities during the past 24 hours: ...Power is coming back online in the impacted areas. We have completed 352 requests for power assessments to critical facilities. New requests come in during the past 24 hours. A priority is being given to bringing water treatment facilities back on line and providing generators for key locations... Bloggers helped to build the picture of the devastation, and guide relief efforts. Left Brain Female in a Right Brain World cites the slideshow/photo gallery put together by a flood survivor, Alvaro R. Morales Villa, "who evacuated New Orleans under his own power last week—4 days after hurricane Katrina struck." Villa's gallery is linked from her blog. At Me, Marcel & I, the blogger ran ahead of the storm to escape New Orleans, finally providing a brief message that he and his family are safe, and heading west.Bloggers found ways to motivate their readers to give. At Babalu, the "island on the net without a bearded dictator" is offering a free Babalu T-Shirt to all who donate $20 or more to hurricane relief. Dave Nalle of The Scriptorium offered a series of three fonts, donating all proceeds to charity. John-Paul and Deb Micek of The Business Owner's Blog set up a $1000 matching fund to promote donations—and succeeded 10 times over. "We received proof of over $11,500 in donations by 11:59 p.m. September 1. With our matching challenge amount of $1,000 we are humbled to have catalyzed $12,500 in donations for victims of hurricane Katrina in just 24-hours."You can pitch in to help Katrina victims even from virtual worlds—according to Popular Mechanics online, "players immersed in massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) like Everquest II or World of Warcraft are aware that there is a real world with real problems that is outside of their spell-conjuring, battle-ridden, adventurous virtual worlds. Sony Online Entertainment is taking advantage of Everquest's hundreds of thousands of online players, allowing them to make in-game donations with a command keystroke, so that gamers don't have to leave their desks to help those affected by Katrina."It's not only happening in America, either. At Love America First, they report a "a donation of 1.000.000 dinars (about $680)" from an Iraqi Army base. "The amount of money is small in American dollars... but it represents a huge act of compassion from Iraqi soldiers to their American counterparts," said U.S. Army Maj. Michael Goyne. "I was overwhelmed by the amount of their generosity," Goyne said. "I was proud and happy to know Col. Abbas, his officers, NCOs and fellow soldiers. That amount represents a month's salary for most of those soldiers." Farrah Stockman at The Boston Globe online noted that Fatma Al-Khalifa, director of the information office at the Kuwaiti Embassy, said her country donated a massive package of cash and crude oil—worth half a billion dollars—because Americans came to the tiny country's aid during the first Gulf War.Mostly Cajun notes that Canadian relief ships are coming down to lend a hand, "200-odd years after they ran MY ancestors out of Acadia and renamed it 'Nova Scotia'." "Three Sea Kings and 1,000 personnel, set sail Tuesday from Halifax (...that's in Nova Scotia...)." In a similar vein, BlondeSense blogger PeterofLoneTree asks "Do American Citizens Have to Obey Orders from Mexican Troops?" He cites an AP story with a San Antonio dateline: Mexican Army troops encamped Thursday evening on a field at a former U.S. Air Force base, setting up a mobile kitchen and large tents to sleep in, part of a plan to spend up to a month in San Antonio to help evacuees of Hurricane Katrina. Finally, in a prime example of stepping up, there's Jabbar Gibson, the teenager who loaded friends and neighbors into a commandeered school bus and drove them to safety. There's now a petition online to honor Gibson. I note, however, that he didn't do it for the honor.He did it because, like millions of people around the world, he was motivated to step up and help.

Weekly BlogScan: Katrina and the Mother of All Spin

DrPat — Sat, 3 Sep 2005 15:48:30 EDT

The gale-force spin of Hurricane Katrina has nothing on the response in the blogosphere. Before the remnants of the storm had vanished from the weather radar, pundits and commenters were already busy pointing fingers. From the marginally plausible to the seriously looney, many bloggers thought it would be more helpful to establish who caused the disaster than to organize relief.Horrified by the length of time taken to purchase a candy-bar in this post-Katrina world, Blunderford tells his readers why "I Won't Contribute to Katrina. He advises, "You want disaster relief? Impeach George W. Bush." And his reaction is comparatively mild.Daily Kos lays bare the unconscionable crimes of our President in a comment about a moment captured from CNN. Above the caption "Bush: I'm incredibly proud of the Coast Guard", we see... well, let Kos describe it: Notice the nicely positioned Coast Guard helicopters in the background, not rescuing people and delivering supplies. Notice the uniformed personnel standing at attention in the back, providing a nice backdrop to Bush, not rescuing people and delivering supplies... At the same site, a diary by Patricia Taylor lays out talking points to tie lack of hurricane relief to the war in Iraq. She asks "Where are the Louisiana National Guard?" and answers, essentially, that they are "blowin' in the wind." (I paraphrase.) Paul at Wizbang (who is there on the ground—in fact, in the Superdome) has a different answer for Taylor's question. "Actually if [she had] used Google news [she] would have known the Guard is in the Superdome. (among other places)" Jmaximus (aka John Bill) is tweaked about the lack of foreign help for the US in recovering from this disaster. "Where is Jan Jan the Norwegian Man of late?" John asks, referring to the suggestion by Norway's UN Ambassador, Jan Egelands, that the United States was being "stingy" with relief funds for the 2004 tsumani. Cat5 Katrina at 175 mph. Courtesy Wikipedia.With tongue firmly in cheek, John Burgess left a comment for Wizbang (carrying Katrina news from the Superdome), in response to a post decrying the partisan spin on Katrina: You guys have clearly forgotten Karl Rove's Super-Secret Time Machine(TM) [SSTM]. Karl went waay back and started the Industrial Revolution--see, it's always Halliburton! That started the CO2 thing, which lead to global warming, which lead to catastrophic hurricanes every other week... It was only THEN that he had the gall to pull the [National Guard] out of LA to make the Democrats, the poor, and the undocumented aliens suffer this untoward fate. Power Line blog quoted an AP story from August 28 to show that President Bush is not being given credit for steps taken to get help on the ground before the storm hit New Orleans. "Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference [last Sunday, as they called for evacuation], said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding." On Viewpoint Journal, David Flanagan added to this the observation that the "President declared that whole area a disaster area before Katrina hit so that FEMA could move into the area and prepare for recovery efforts. Which they did."The spin to left and right inspired Chris Muir's Day By Day ("The best cartoon you're not reading."—Michael King) comic for today. Just four days after the storm dribbled out over the Mississippi Basin, Chris' characters drink coffee as they muse on reaction to the disaster. Don't skip it, click on the link!CThomasEsq of DeToqueville Blvd muses about "Root Causes" for the disaster on the Gulf, laying the blame squarely on ordinary drivers (you and me) for contributing to global warming. Oh, yeah, and President Bush for not signing the Kyoto Accords.Okay, that does it! It must be true, -I- caused Hurricane Katrina. I mean, what is it, a giant moving mass of hot air? I rest my case. And what does it matter? A few weeks from now, when every single person who can be rescued has been brought to safety—then is the time to explore who's at fault. Tort law being what it is, I guarantee this will happen. Meantime, there are better things to do than point fingers. This week's BlogScan supplements the Special Edition posted Augest 30, 2005.

Weekly BlogScan: Blogging Katrina (Special Edition)

DrPat — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:37:19 EDT

Hurricanes striking the eastern coast of Florida are a seasonal cliché. Floridians plan for them, stocking plywood and bottled water in preparation for each year's big blow. 1992's Hurricane Andrew notwithstanding (the "costliest disaster in U.S history" with 15 directly- and 25 indirectly-caused deaths and $30-billion in property damage, according to a St. Petersburg Times retrospective)—that experience shows. Florida usually weathers these storms.Katrina, however, jumped the fence, running into the Gulf of Mexico with Category 5 force, heading straight for New Orleans. And the blogosphere watched aghast, and commented, and worried, and sprang into action to offer relief. Blog watchers at Bloggers Blog reported the virtual storm."A Technorati search for Hurricane Katrina now [Monday] gives over 9,000 results. Nearly double the number we reported on Sunday... Humor writer Dave Barry even blogged about the event." (Barry, who lives in South Florida, writes, "The good news is, I'm fine. There's virtually no hurricane damage where I am. The bad news is, this is because I'm in California.") Katrina hits LA, Navy-sat photo from RisingSlowly.com At Rising Slowly, the "UK Weather Blog," coverage of Katrina began on Saturday, when the storm, which had already killed 5 in its first assault on the Florida coast, turned around and headed back toward the penninsula.The blog GulfSails is dedicated to the hurricane; its sub-head now reads: "Located in New Orleans - I will be riding out Hurricane Katrina with a generator, some beer and the ability to post via cell phone after we lose hardlines. I will attempt at least hourly posts. Pictures will be available until land lines are lost." The blogger reminds us that "New Orleans is effectively an island and there are only three exits out of the city." An earlier post worried about the people left unevacuated due to a class-action lawsuit.New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin... has been asked several times why he has not issued a mandatory evacuation of Orleans Parish. (All other SE Louisiana parishes have as of Saturday evening.) His replies have constantly been that he can't because of a legal matter that he has the City Attorney looking into... Apparantly, if he orders a mandatory evacuation, individuals who can not personally evacuate the city for whatever reason become the legal responsibility of the City Of New Orleans. The closest estimate is that there are 100,000 New Orleanians who have no personal transportation. Poker-blogger adb_davoice, taunts Katrina on Random Musings of Mine with "Do Your Worst Biotch!" The blogger muses, "You know it's not going to be a good day when you live 3 blocks (literally) from the beach where JIM CANTORE from the Weather Channel is doing his updates. This guy is like a freaking hurricane magnet!"Professional-looking HurricaneNOW is carrying constantly-updated coverage of Katrina and hosts a chat room for constructive comments and feedback. "In the meantime," co-founder Jeff Flock suggests, "consider a hurricane relief donation to assist the many victims of this devastating storm." HurricaneNOW's assessment?Hurricane Katrina was one of the most powerful storms to ever strike the US. Our HurricaneNow.com crew would normally follow the storm inland. However, because of the widespread devastation and flooding, we were unable to travel outside of downtown New Orleans. We are making all efforts to webcast, but it is technically impossible at this time. Other blogs quickly sprouted posts with links to charities: Connie of Sugar-Shock Blog included links to seven, then broadcast an appeal to others in the blogging community to step up.Nancy Terry at My Kingdom takes a different view of hurricane relief from Andalusia, AL. "Now that we have this 'Hurricane' coming," she wrote on Sunday, "the whole city is going to be in a state of shear panic. These people really need to find something more productive to do with their time than sit in front of the t.v all day watching the weather channel. Maybe they need to have more sex." Residents survey damage, photo from smh.com Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald online (smh.com) reminds us that it has been a long time since New Orleans faced such a storm.New Orleans' worst hurricane disaster happened 40 years ago, when Hurricane Betsy blasted the Gulf Coast. Flood waters approached six metres in some areas, fishing villages were flattened, and the storm surge left almost half of New Orleans under water and 60,000 residents homeless. Seventy-four people died in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. Paul at Wizbang (who rode out the storm in the gale-damaged Superbowl) is one of many bloggers who ring the knell of destruction in the aftermath of the storm:80% of the city is underwater... New Orleans proper has a population of about 500,000Both Airports are underwaterAn oil tanker is aground and leaking oil - 3 more "big boats" are agroundMAJOR levee break on the 17th street canal flooding both [New Orleans] and MetairieThe Southern Yacht Club burned and is completely destroyedThe High-rise bridge got hit by a barge and they don't know if it is safeAll of Slidell under water (population ~110,000)Most of Metairie under water (population ~200,000)About 50% of the "lower Northshore" (Mandeville, etc., population ~150,000) is under waterGas leaks all over the city, many burning...The Twin Span bridges are completely destroyed...they don't know about the safety of the Causeway Meanwhile, political blogs took left- or right-eye views of the impending storm and its aftermath. While the Michelle Malkin blog concentrates on blogger reports of storm damage, John Aravosis of AmericaBlog writes "You fight disaster with the army you have left...," arguing that the deployment of National Guard units to Iraq leaves the US bare of amphibious vehicles that could be used to rescue people trapped by floodwaters. Noting Aravosis' comments, Steven Spruiell's Media Blog on National Review Online is not surprised:Of course, left-wing blogs are using the disaster to take shots at President Bush, because, you know, if he wanted he could change the course of the hurricane with his secret neo-con weather machine. Don't you get it? New Orleans voted for Kerry! And many bloggers are concerned about the impact on gas prices from the loss of the port of New Orleans. Donald Sensing links many of these economic concerns at his Tennessee blog, One Hand Clapping.New Orleans [and] other nearby ports are major petroleum transshipment points; one news report I heard this afternoon said that 25 percent of the country's petroleum passes through the New Orleans area. Louisiana is itself one of the most important oil-producing states... The knell continues to toll, folks. And bloggers around the world are listening and passing the word.