Still quote of the moment: Martin Niemöller, “. . . I did not speak out . . .”

August 16, 2011

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

— Pastor Martin Niemöller

German theologian and Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller on a postage stamp, painted by Gerd Aretz in 1992 – Wikipedia

Some time this year school curricula turn to the Holocaust, in English, in world history, and in U.S. history.

Martin Niemöller’s poem registers powerfully for most people — often people do not remember exactly who said it. I have seen it attributed to Deitrich Bonhoeffer (who worked with Niemöller in opposing some Nazi programs), Albert Einstein, Reinhold Niebuhr, Albert Schweitzer, Elie Wiesel, and an “anonymous inmate in a concentration camp.”

Niemöller and his actions generate controversy — did he ever act forcefully enough? Did his actions atone for his earlier inactions? Could anything ever atone for not having seen through Hitler and opposing Naziism from the start? For those discussion reasons, I think it’s important to keep the poem attributed to Niemöller. The facts of his life, his times, and his creation of this poem, go beyond anything anyone could make up. The real story sheds light.

Resources:

Noted here last February.

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1 Comment | 1941-1945, Dissent, Famous quotes, History, Holocaust, Literature, Poetry, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Howard Zinn: Bank bailout was trickle down economics run amok

August 14, 2011

You can disagree with him about every other sentence, but he speaks a lot of sense and a lot of stuff we need to think about.  Before his death in 2010, historian Howard Zinn talked about the bank bailouts that got us out of 2008:

Leave a Comment » | Economics, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

August 13, 1961: The Berlin Wall’s 50th anniversary

August 13, 2011

August keeps handing us these dates:  How should the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall be remembered?

AP reports in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the current mayor of Berlin said we must use the Wall to remember that we must stand up for democracy.  Ceremonies in Berlin marked the anniversary and the creation of a new museum there.  I wrote before:

August 13 . . . [marks the 50th] “anniversary” of the erection of the Berlin Wall, the totem of the Cold War that came down in 1989, pushing the end of the Cold War. Residents of Berlin awoke on this day in 1961 to find the communist government of East Germany erecting what would become a 96-mile wall around the “western quarters” of the city — not so much to lay siege to the westerners (that had been tried in 1948, frustrated by the Berlin Airlift) as to keep easterners from “defecting” to the West. The Brandenburg Gate was closed on August 14, and all crossing points were closed on August 26.

From 1961 through 1991 1989, teachers could use the Berlin wall as a simple and clear symbol for the differences between the communist Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union and her satellite states, and the free West, which included most of the land mass of Germany, England, France, Italy, the United States and other free-market nations — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. I suspect most high school kids today know very little about the Wall, why it was there, and what its destruction meant, politically.

This era of history is generally neglected in high school. Many courses fail to go past World War II; in many courses the Cold War is in the curriculum sequenced after the ACT, SAT and state graduation examinations, so students and teachers have tuned out.

But the Wall certain had a sense of drama to it that should make for good lessons. When I visited the wall, in early 1988, late at night, there were eight fresh wreaths honoring eight people who had died trying to cross the Wall in the previous few weeks (in some places it was really a series of walls with space in between to make it easier for the East German guards to shoot people trying to escape) — it’s an image I never forget. Within a year after that, East Germans could travel through Hungary to visit the West, and many “forgot” to return. Within 18 months the wall itself was breached.

The Wall was a great backdrop for speeches, too — President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin in June 1963, and expressed his solidarity with the walled-in people of both West and East Berlin, with the memorable phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner,“ which produced astounding cheers from the tens of thousands who came to hear him. There are a few German-to-English translators who argue that some of the reaction was due to the fact that “Berliner” is also an idiomatic phrase in Berlin for a bakery confection like a jelly doughnut — so Kennedy’s words were a double entendre that could mean either “I am a citizen of Berlin,” or “I am a jelly doughnut.”  [Be sure to see the comments . . .  from Vince Treacy (9/28/2010).]  Ronald Reagan went to the same place Kennedy spoke to the Berlin Wall, too, to the Brandenburg Gate, in his famous June 1987 speech which included a plea to the Soviet Union’s Premier Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

What do we do appropriately with such memory?

What does the Berlin Wall, and its demise, mean to us today?  What should it mean?

4 Comments | Berlin Wall, Cold War, Communism, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Germany, History | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Will any Republican stand up for America?

August 12, 2011

Ezra Klein’s on-line column this morning worries me more — will any Republican stand up for America?

No, I don’t mean  lip service, I don’t mean flag lapel pins.  I mean, will any Republican stand up for the policies we need to steer through the shoals of economic woe we face in the next 60 months?

At Wonkbook Klein said:

The most telling moment of Thursday’s GOP debate wasn’t when Michele Bachmann cooly stuck a knife between Tim Pawlenty’s ribs, or when Rick Santorum plaintively begged for more airtime, or when Mitt Romney easily slipped past questions about his record on health-care reform. It was when every single GOP candidate on the stage agreed that they would reject a budget deal that was $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Even Fox News’s Bret Baier couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He asked again just to make sure the assembled candidates had understood the question.

Primary debates are usually watched for what they say about the candidates, but they’re generally important for what they say about the party. This one was no different. With the notable exceptions of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, the candidates didn’t disagree over policy. They disagreed over fealty to policy.

Bachmann didn’t attack Pawlenty’s policy proposals. She attacked him for past statements suggesting he might believe in other policy proposals, like the individual mandate and cap-and-trade. Pawlenty’s assault on Romney took the same form. This debate wasn’t about what policies the candidates believed in. That was largely a given. This debate was about which of the candidates believed in those policies the most.

The best policy in this debate wasn’t the policy most likely to work, or the policy most likely to pass. It was the most orthodox policy. The policy least sullied by compromise. A world in which the GOP will not agree to deficit reduction with a 10:1 split between spending cuts and tax increases is a world where entitlement reform can’t happen. It’s a world where the “supercommittee” fails and the trigger is pulled, and thus a world in which $1 out of every $2 in cuts comes from the Pentagon. It’s not a world that fits what many in the GOP consider ideal policy. But it is a world in which none in the GOP need to traverse the treacherous politics of compromise.

Policies discussed weren’t mainline, capitalist economic policies, either.  They’re so far out in left field they can’t even see the pitcher’s mound from where they are.  Plus, they’re looking the wrong way.

Over and over again, [Michelle] Bachmann misstated basic facts. She said that Tim Pawlenty “implemented” cap-and-trade in Minnesota. He did no such thing. She said “we just heard from Standard Poor’s,” and “when they dropped our credit rating what they said was we don’t have an ability to repay our debt.” Simply not true.

S&P has never questioned our ability to repay our debt. That’s why we remain AA+. They have questioned whether political brinksmanship will stop us from paying our debt. The downgrade “was pretty much motivated by all of the debate about the raising of the debt ceiling,” said John Chambers, head of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee. That is to say, it was motivated by political brinksmanship from the likes of, well, Michele Bachmann.

It’s fitting that the candidate best able to resist compromise is the candidate who seems least able to correctly explain the policies at issue and the choices we face. It’s a lot easier to take a hard line if you don’t understand the consequences of your actions, and a lot simpler to belt out applause lines if you’re not slowed down by the messy complexities of the issues. But where Bachmann is leading, the other candidates are following. Mitt Romney knows perfectly well that a deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases is a great deal for conservatives. What he probably doesn’t know is how he’s going to explain why he pretended otherwise when he was vying for the nomination.

Winners in the debate?  Unclear.  Losers?  You, me, and every American.

Can any Republican explain where in the world they got these nightmare economic policies?  Are they being made up on the spot?

53 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Campaigns, Economics, Elections, History, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Genesis 51 — Ben Franklin’s favorite part of the Bible

August 11, 2011

There’s a longer explanation, but this needs to be put out where it can be caught by search engines.

Ben Franklin reads to a bird, statue at the University of Pennsylvania - photo via Priyank

Benjamin Franklin reading the Pennsylvania Gazette, or “Ben on the Bench” (with a bird), statue at the University of Pennsylvania – photo via Priyank

This is the 51st chapter of the Book of Genesis, as related by Benjamin Franklin.  This copy of the text comes from a newspaper, The Otago Witness, December 2, 1887, page 35, courtesy of a website called Papers Past, maintained by the National Library of New Zealand.

Paste It in Your Bible.

A Chapter Verily Like the Original— How Benjamin Franklin Surprised Ms Friends.

Over 100 years ago the following so-called “Genesis 51” was used to puzzle Biblical scholars, and today, were it read aloud in any mixed company, it is questionable if its fraudulent nature would be discovered, so beautifully is the spirit and language of the Old Testament imitated : —

1. And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.

2. And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness leaning on a staff.

3. And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early on the morrow, and go thy way.

4. But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree.

5. And Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.

6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, Wherefore does thou not worship the most high God, Creator of heaven and earth?

7. And the man answered and said, I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a God which abideth always in my house and provideth me with all things.

8. And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and drove him forth with  blows into the wilderness.

9. And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, Abraham, where is the stranger?

10. And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship Thee, neither would he call upon Thy name, therefore have I driven him out from before my face into the wilderness.

11. And God said, Have I not borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him notwithstanding his rebellion against me, and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night ?

12. And Abraham said. Let not the anger of my Lord wax against His servant; lo! I have sinned, forgive me, I pray thee.

13. And Abraham arose and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and found him and returned with him to the tent, and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.

14, And God spake again unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land.

15. But for thy repentance will I deliver them, and they shall come forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.

In 1759, when in England as agent for the colony of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin privately printed this “Chapter,” as he always termed it.  Taking only a sheet of paper, he kept it laid in his Bible at the end of Genesis, and used to amuse himself by reading it aloud to his friends, and hearing them express their surprise that they had never recollected reading it, and their openly expressed admiration of the moral it carried with it. Its origin is unknown.  It has been traced back 700 years to a Persian poet, who simply says “it was so related.” It must be very old.

Ben Franklin’s version of Chapter 51 of the Book of Genesis is a hoax.  There is no such chapter.

11 Comments | Ben Franklin, History, Hoaxes, Humor | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Climate denialists on Texas weather 2011: Ain’t no heat wave, on average

August 8, 2011

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

In defense of his claim that Texas has not warmed over the last century (“Texas temperatures not rising; Wisconsin temperatures not rising”) and, therefore, Texas does not suffer from global warming, and therefore there is no global warming and no ill effects from warming, Steve Goddard posted this today:

Year-To-Date In Texas

Posted on August 7, 2011 by stevengoddard

Almost as warm as 1927, 1925 and 1953. Only a degree cooler than 1911.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/tx.html

It’s heading for 105°, but since it was 15° one day in February, that averages to 60°, so Texas is okay, according to Goddard.  In their drive to fuzz up the facts and surround policy debates with snark, the denialists will deny anything, leave no weather record untwisted, and deny the sweat on the nose on their face.  According to Goddard, snow in the Great Basin means no drought in Las Vegas, as shown by there being no drought affecting Lake Powell.

Remember Straight Dope’s Cecil Adams’s old line?  “Fighting ignorance since 1973 (it’s taking longer than we thought.)”  Yeah, that applies to climate denialists in quantity.

Here’s what’s going on in Texas right now:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

  •  Texas A&M says the drought of 2011 is the worst ever 1-year drought in Texas history; note how their press release describes the event, and the increasing heat:

    Preliminary reports from the National Climatic Data Center indicate that July 2011 was the warmest month ever recorded statewide for Texas, with data going back to 1895, [State Climatologist John] Nielsen-Gammon reports. The average temperature of 87.2 degrees broke the previous record of 86.5 degrees set in 1998. The June average temperature of 85.2 was a record for that month and now ranks fifth warmest overall.

    Rainfall totals were also unusually light across the state. The July monthly total of 0.72 inches ranks third driest, surpassed by the 0.69 inches recorded in both 1980 and 2000. This is the fifth consecutive month in which precipitation totals were among the 10 driest for that month, says the Texas A&M professor.

Drought and searing heat in Texas.  Caused by climate change?  That’s difficult to say, difficult to trace.  Made worse by climate change?  Most likely.

Dallas media track the consecutive days over 100° F.  It’s a form of misery index — people can recover from a day or two over the century mark.  But more than a couple of days and the heat begins to take a heavier toll on people, on plants and animals, on houses, on cars, on crops, on everything we do in Texas.  It’s difficult to make news make sense on weather stories.  Tracking the number of days over 100° gives a quick graphic for television news, and puts the story into the vein of a sports record story, a narrative people know.

Here’s how things stack up in Dallas, in terms of days over 100°:

Rank Year Consecutive 100° days
1 1980 42
2 2011 37 (and counting)
3 1998 29
4 1952 25
5 1999 24
6 1954 20
7 2006 19
8 2010 18
8 1978 18
10 1956 17

If one looks at the heat streaks, one cannot help but notice that all of the top ten streaks have come since 1952, and that three are in the last decade, five since 1998.  Brutal heat streaks appear to be coming more frequently, many close on the heels of previous heat streaks, and with greater severity.

That is what one would expect from global warming.

Moreover, the recent streaks show greater oscillations.  2011 also saw snow and freezing weather in Dallas, a rarity.  Greater oscillations in weather also would be expected from global warming.

Goddard offers a comparison of January to June temperatures — the coolest part of the calendar year, and leaving out most of the heat-streak days — and on that basis of a half-comparison, he suggests (doesn’t say — he doesn’t want to be caught lying outright) that there isn’t a warming problem in Dallas in 2011.

Heat stroke?  It’s a figment of your socialist imagination.  14 dead?  They probably were smokers.  Global warming?   Not if Steve Goddard can find a statistic somewhere that can be manipulated to appear to deny it.

What do his charts show for July and August of those years?

Finally, there is this:   Assume for a moment that there has been no significant warming in Texas as a complete landmass over the past 100 years:  Does that mean Texas is not battered by any warming that occurs elsewhere?

Of course not.  The current drought in Texas is thought to be triggered in no small part by the La Niña effect, a chilling of the surface of the Pacific in a broad band that stretches west of Peru for about 5,000 miles to the far South Pacific.  La Niña is a counterpart to El Niño, a warming of the same band of water that produces different, not-average weather effects.  The cycles are not well understood as to cause — there are good hypotheses being tested — but it has been observed that, especially in the latter part of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, these cycles are speeding up.  The best, not-disproven hypothesis is that these cycles react and speed up due to global warming.

So, to the best of our hypothesizing today, the Texas drought is a function of global warming, in timing, frequency and severity.

This demonstrates the ultimate problem with using a local temperature readings to make authoritative statements about global warming, even averaged over about a hundred million acres like Texas:  Problems of global warming are not always simply problems of temperature, and non-local causes may cause local effects that will not show up in temperature, especially local effects in precipitation, in timing and amounts.

Botanists, foresters, range scientists and biogeographers noticed effects of warming 50 years ago, with the migration of species northward, and up mountainsides.  Wildlife managers noticed altered migrations of game birds and non-game birds about the same time, migration alterations that continue to today.  Plant zones used by farmers and gardeners demonstrate a good deal of change, generally favoring warming, over the past century.  Evidence for warming is quite solid without a single temperature reading.

A bastion of average temperature non-increases, if Texas is one, may still be hammered by warming and its effects in the Pacific, and especially in the Gulf of Mexico.  Is it fair to say the entire system shows no signs of warming?

So we should ask:  Are temperatures and precipitation averages, frequencies, timing and totals, about average for the last century or two?  Then  the case for global warming is a bit weaker.

Dallas will eclipse the previous record string of 100° F days in the next week.  All of Texas is in severe drought, and most of the state is in extreme drought.  Sounds as if there is something going on with the climate.

Last year the denialism sites lit up with a report that a fourth grade student in South Texas had a science project that disproved global warming, and which won an award from the National Science Foundation.  It was a sad hoax.  The speed with which these sites pounced on the report should have warned us that a school of thought devoid of practical results from the lab bench or observation in nature gets too desperate for results, and will cut corners to claim them.  Goddard’s reports repeat the bad methodology of that hoax.

Richard Feynman once wrote, wryly, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”  Goddard and other denialists appear to read that wrongly, thinking that experts are not to be trusted, and that all experts are ignorant of all things, and therefore stupid.

Politics and especially the politics of science cry out for someone to read Feynman — actually read what he wrote.  Feynman said we should not assume all scientists are infallible.  He did not write that all scientists are fallible and wrong.

12 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, History, How do we know what we know, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

August 6, 1945: Hiroshima felt atomic warfare, 66 years ago today

August 6, 2011

Hiroshima citizens float candles in the river, Hiroshima Day 2008

Hiroshima residents float lanterns in the river to remember the dead after a traditional Hiroshima Day concert, 2008; the concert and lantern floating are annual events

66 years ago, U.S. military action brought a quick close to hostilities without an invasion of Japan, with the detonation of two atomic bombs, one over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and one over Nagasaki on August 9.

Events marking the anniversary this year carry the spectre of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which experienced core meltdowns in reactors as a result of a tsunami earlier in 2011.  Anti-nuclear activists in Australia note similarities between the bombs ending the war, and the disaster at Fukushima.

Daily Yomiuri Online carried a description of memorial events in Hiroshima in 2008, from Yomiuri Shimbun:

NAGASAKI–The Nagasaki municipal government held a ceremony Saturday marking the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, at which participants called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

A total of 5,650 A-bomb survivors, representatives of victims’ families from around the nation and Nagasaki citizens participated in the ceremony. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also attended the ceremony, which was held in Nagasaki Peace Park near ground zero.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue read out the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, which urges the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.

“Human beings have no future unless nuclear weapons are eliminated. We shall clearly say no to nuclear weapons,” Taue said.

The ceremony started at 10:40 a.m. Three books listing the names of 3,058 people confirmed to have died as a result of the bombing in the past year were placed inside a memorial box in front of the Peace Statue.

The total number of books listing the names of the deceased is 147, and the number of names is 145,984.

Representatives of surviving victims, bereaved families, the prime minister and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba placed flowers at the site.

At 11:02 a.m., the time the atomic bomb struck, ceremony participants offered a silent prayer. At the same time, local high school students rang the Bells of Nagasaki.

In the peace declaration, Taue read from an academic paper written by four people, including a former U.S. secretary of state, which promoted a new policy for developing nuclear weapons. The proposal encouraged countries to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The mayor said world nuclear powers “should sincerely fulfill their responsibility of nuclear disarmament,” and urged the government to pass the three nonnuclear principles into law.

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Takashi Nagai, a medical doctor who helped rescue of victims after the bombing.

The mayor referenced one of the doctor’s remarks, saying: “There are no winners or losers in a war. There is only destruction.”

Shigeko Mori, 72, representing survivors of the bombing, read out an oath for peace that said Japan should promote its Constitution and the three nonnuclear principles to the rest of the world to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Fukuda gave a speech, saying, “Japan should play a responsible role in the international community as a nation cooperating for peace.”

(Aug. 10, 2008)

Other information:

Other related posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

Remembering that U.S. involvement in World War II as a combatant came after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, one may respect and appreciate the Japanese national desire to commemorate the brutal end of the war with conversations about peace and how to achieve it.  The film below is a short, touching introduction to the Hiroshima Peace Museum website:

4 Comments | 1941-1945, Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima, History, Nuclear weapons, Travel, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Encore quote of the moment: Wolfgang Pauli, “not even wrong”

August 5, 2011

Talking about Tea Party and Republican economics in the next few months?  You’ll need to have Wolfgang Pauli’s wisdom at your fingertips:

Wolfgang Pauli, circa 1945 - Nobel Foundation photo

Wolfgang Pauli, circa 1945 – Nobel Foundation photo

That’s not right. It’s not even wrong.

Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), as quoted by R. Peierls

From Wikipedia:

Peierls (1960) writes of Pauli, “… a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘That’s not right. It’s not even wrong'”. (Peierls R (1960). “Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900-1958”. Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Royal Society 5: 174-92. Royal Society (Great Britain))

Pauli won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945: ” At this stage of the development of atomic theory, Wolfgang Pauli made a decisive contribution through his discovery in 1925 of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle. The 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Pauli for this discovery.”

A mostly encore post.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Famous quotes, History, Physics, Quotes, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“It Takes Balls To Execute An Innocent Man”

August 4, 2011

Occasionally I stumble into a discussion of whether anywhere in the U.S. a government may have executed an innocent person.  Generally I note the horrible Texas case in which Texas fought for years for the point that a convicted murderer whose three allowed appeals had been exhausted should not be allowed to reopen his case simply because new evidence of his innocence had emerged.  In Herrera v. Collins (506 US 390, 1993), Texas won the right to not allow evidence of innocence to get a review of the case, and the man was executed.

Ladies and gentlemen I ask you:  Why would a state fight for the right to execute an innocent man, to the Supreme Court, if it did not intend to use that right?

The question rises more frequently these days as Texas Gov. Rick Perry steams toward announcing he will run for the presidency.

I point out that Herrera came down nearly eight years before Perry stumbled into the governor’s chair, his having been standing outside the door as Lieutenant Governor when George W. Bush persuaded the Supreme Court — most of the same justices — to stop both the popular vote and change the electoral vote to give him the presidency.  So we can’t blame that one on Perry.

But we can blame the execution of Todd Willingham on Rick Perry, even understanding that he was relying on what he assumed to be good evidence in his naturally uncurious waltz of destruction across Texas.   Perry could claim he got bad advice.  Though Texas’s governer really has little more than ceremonial power and some appointments, for someone like Perry it is a big job he can barely handle.  People would cut him slack on letting an innocent man die, convicted of a capital crime that as the evidence showed at the time probably did not occur, if he’d just confess it.

Instead, Perry engaged in a four-year campaign to cover up the affair — a cover up that is so far successful.

Jonathan Chait blogging at New Republic cites Politico and The New Yorker on the way to painting all Texans as morally bankrupt for allowing the coverup to go on — justifiably, I think.  While the newspapers cover the story, outrage does not rise from the drought-stricken populace.  New Republic’s blog explained the cover-up, and Texas’s blase attitude:

Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman have a story for Politico about Rick Perry’s limitations as a general election candidate. It’s a really excellent piece on its own terms, but at the same time, it’s a bit of a parody of a Politico story in that it takes a vital moral question, drains it of all its moral significance, and presents it in purely electoral terms. The thesis of the piece is that Perry appeals to very conservative white southerners, but not to anybody else, making him a questionable choice to head the Republican ticket. The piece bears out that thesis pretty well. In the middle it includes a glancing reference to one episode of Perry’s gubernatorial tenure:

Perry would also have to answer for parts of his record that have either never been fully scrutinized in Texas, or that might be far more problematic before a national audience.

Veterans of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s unsuccessful 2010 primary challenge to Perry recalled being stunned at the way attacks bounced off the governor in a strongly conservative state gripped by tea party fever. Multiple former Hutchison advisers recalled asking a focus group about the charge that Perry may have presided over the execution of an innocent man – Cameron Todd Willingham – and got this response from a primary voter: “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

The Willingham case is just one episode in Perry’s gubernatorial tenure that could be revived against him in the very different context of a national race, potentially compromising him in a general election.

If you’re not familiar with this episode, David Grann wrote about in for the New Yorker in 2009 in what may be the single greatest piece of journalism I have ever read in my life. (I am biased, as David is a friend and former colleague.) The upshot is that Perry is essentially an accessory to murder. He executed an innocent man, displaying zero interest in the man’s innocence. When a commission subsequently investigated the episode, Perry fired its members.

I’m a Texan, and I’m appalled.  Dear Reader, what can a Texan do?  Please advise.

Surely the rest of America would be concerned and shocked, no?  We can excuse goofs in the histories of our presidential candidates.  Especially since Nixon, we should be doubly wary of those who work hard to cover up their errors, rather than learn from them.

By the way, in the latest action, the office of the Texas Attorney General issued a report on the duties of the commission established to investigate Texas justice to make it more fair — the commission whose members Perry fired when they got close to the Willingham case.  The report says that that Willingham case is water under the bridge, that the commission may not investigatet cases that predate the commission’s creation.

It’s a gross miscarriage of justice, and an attack on the democratic form of government which relies very much on continuous improvement of governmental processes, especially the due processes of criminal justice.

8 Comments | 2012 Campaigns, 2012 Elections, Crime, History, Justice, Law, Politics, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

August 4, 1944: Germans capture Anne Frank and her family

August 4, 2011

When I look at the time line, I feel frustrated and angry.

On August 4, 1944, the German Army in the Netherlands raided the warehouse where Anne Frank’s family hid from the Nazis since 1942.  As you know, Anne died in a concentration camp shortly after — only her father survived from her immediate family.

History students will recognize that this was nearly two months after D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy that set off the events leading to liberation of Europe from Nazi rule and the collapse of Hitler’s grand visions of conquest.  How could Nazi minions not know their time was limited, and oppression ultimately futile?

Germany surrendered in May 1945.  In nine months, the Frank family would not need to hide.  Anne died in March 1945, less than eight weeks before the surrender of Germany.

More:

Photos from the liberation of Amsterdam, which occurred on May 6, 1945:

5 Comments | 1941-1945, History, Holocaust, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT fanatic a former Monsanto lobbyist?

August 4, 2011

Sometimes in unexpected places you stumble across a factoid that makes sense out of a lot of other factoids, turning them into enlightening, and perhaps useful, information.

Steven Milloy used to be a Monsanto lobbyist?  Is that accurate?

Among the allegations, that Monsanto aggressively protects its patents on seeds and other products sold to farmers, and that the company may not be above a bit of skullduggery to push farmers and, in this case, milk processors, to use Monsanto products.  Watch for Steven Milloy’s name to pop up in the last paragraph.  The site quotes a Vanity Fair  article on Monsanto from 2008.

Even if Monsanto’s efforts to secure across-the-board labeling changes should fall short, there’s nothing to stop state agriculture departments from restricting labeling on a dairy-by-dairy basis. Beyond that, Monsanto also has allies whose foot soldiers will almost certainly keep up the pressure on dairies that don’t use Monsanto’s artificial hormone. Jeff Kleinpeter knows about them, too.

He got a call one day from the man who prints the labels for his milk cartons, asking if he had seen the attack on Kleinpeter Dairy that had been posted on the Internet. Kleinpeter went online to a site called StopLabelingLies, which claims to “help consumers by publicizing examples of false and misleading food and other product labels.” There, sure enough, Kleinpeter and other dairies that didn’t use Monsanto’s product were being accused of making misleading claims to sell their milk.

There was no address or phone number on the Web site, only a list of groups that apparently contribute to the site and whose issues range from disparaging organic farming to downplaying the impact of global warming. “They were criticizing people like me for doing what we had a right to do, had gone through a government agency to do,” says Kleinpeter. “We never could get to the bottom of that Web site to get that corrected.”

As it turns out, the Web site counts among its contributors Steven Milloy, the “junk science” commentator for FoxNews.com and operator of junkscience.com, which claims to debunk “faulty scientific data and analysis.” It may come as no surprise that earlier in his career, Milloy, who calls himself the “junkman,” was a registered lobbyist for Monsanto.

If accurate, it’s a sort of “origins” story — I don’t think it explains Milloy’s current advocacy of DDT and almost all other things anti-environmentally-wise.  Nor does it explain Milloy’s penchant for making things up whole cloth.  Does Fox News disclose this anywhere?

It does suggest his dirty tricks chops against environmentalists and scientists get exercised more than I had imagined.

The story is an interesting and odd footnote in the debunking of the unholy War on Science that claims Rachel Carson was wrong, and DDT is harmless and right.

More: 

4 Comments | DDT, Environment, Environmental protection, History, Junk science, Politics, Rachel Carson, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: August 3, 1914, “Lamps are going out all over Europe”

August 3, 2011

According to Time Magazine’s edition of August 30, 1943:

Portrait of Sir Edward Grey at Balliol College; 1928 portrait by Sir James Guthrie

Portrait of Sir Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, KG FRS (1862-1933), at Balliol College; 1928 portrait by Sir James Guthrie

On Aug. 3, 1914, Sir Edward Grey of the British Foreign Office, watched London’s street lamps being lit. Mused Sir Edward: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

On the same day, Germany declared war on France, Britain’s ally, as “entangling alliances” increasingly drew European powers into the conflict started by Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia a few days earlier.

Time explained further in that 1943 issue:

Sir Edward lived to see the lights come up; died when they flickered in 1933. Others saw the lights blow out again. Europe’s darkness this time spread to Africa, Asia, Australia, America; in the universal war, even neutrals had to accept the night. Among the world’s blacked-out cities: London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Bern, Budapest, Helsinki, Honolulu. Dimmed-out cities: Moscow, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Bombay.

Portent. From Egypt last week came a hopeful ray for another dawn: Cairo turned on its lights, first of the war-benighted cities to do so. From Shepherds Hotel, caravansary for restless polyglots, lights blazed out again on the Mid-East mosaic: tanned cosmopolites sipping gin & limes on Shepheard’s terrace; rattletrap taxis twisting up dust from the swarming streets; soft-voiced dragomans swishing at flies and barefooted fellahin ignoring them. Dawn’s early ray found Cairo unchanged, unchallenging; but the city was free from fear.

More:

2 Comments | Famous quotes, History, Quotes, World War I, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Plan to save the spotted owls

August 2, 2011

A lawyer complains in the Wall Street Journal that the plan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) intended to help the endangered spotted owl should be dismissed because, well, the spotted owl is still endangered, and after all, didn’t the spotted owl personally shut down the entire lumber industry in the Northwest?

Well, no, the owl didn’t shut down the mills.

But before we discuss, can we at least read the shorthand version of what USFWS has to say?  Here’s the press release on the plan:

Plan Marks New Route for Recovering Northern Spotted Owl and Promoting Healthy Northwest Forests

Contact:
Janet Lebson
503-231-6179
janet_lebson@fws.gov

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released a final revised recovery plan for the threatened northern spotted owl, stepping up actions that so far have helped stem but not reverse the old-growth forest raptor’s decline. The revised plan identifies three main priorities for achieving spotted owl recovery:  protecting the best of its remaining habitat, actively managing forests to improve forest health, and reducing competition from barred owls, a native of eastern North America that has progressively moved into the spotted owl’s range in Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

“For more than 20 years, northern spotted owl recovery has been a focal point of broader forest conservation efforts in the Pacific Northwest,” said Robyn Thorson, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Northwest Regional Director. “This revised recovery plan is based on sound science and affirms that the best things we can do to help the spotted owl turn the corner are conserving its habitat, managing the barred owl, and restoring vitality to our forests.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will use the recovery plan to work with land managers in the Pacific Northwest such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, as well as other federal and non-federal landowners, to advise them on habitat management activities that can benefit the spotted owl and contribute to improved forest health.

Because about 20 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands and about 2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands are potentially affected by recovery plan recommendations, the three agencies worked together on key recommendations related to forest management. Both agencies provided formal letters of support for the plan’s recovery goals.

“This recovery plan is a welcome update to the state of the science surrounding the northern spotted owl,” said Cal Joyner, Deputy Regional Forester for the Pacific Northwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service. “The plan will help us implement a mix of actively managing and protecting habitat to best contribute to conservation and recovery.”

“The recovery plan provides space to develop ecological forestry principles and to actively manage our public forests to achieve the twin goals of improving ecological conditions and supplying timber,” said Ed Shepard, Oregon/Washington State Director for the Bureau of Land Management. “We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service as we put the science from the recovery plan to work in our planning, in evaluating proposed timber projects, and in improving forest health.”

Overarching recommendations in the revised plan include:

  • Conservation of spotted owl sites and high-value spotted owl habitat across the landscape. This means the habitat protections provided under land use plans on federal land will continue to be a focus of recovery, but protection of other areas is likely needed to achieve full success (including some of the lands previously slated for potential timber harvest on federal lands, and possibly non-federal lands in certain parts of the owl’s range where federal lands are limited).
  • Active management of forests to make forest ecosystems healthier and more resilient to the effects of climate change and catastrophic wildfire, disease, and insect outbreaks. This involves an “ecological forestry” approach in certain areas that will restore ecosystem functioning and resiliency. This may include carefully applied prescriptions such as fuels treatment to reduce the threat of severe fires, thinning, and restoration to enhance habitat and return the natural dynamics of a healthy forest landscape. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommends this approach in areas where it promotes ecosystem function and is in the best long-term interest of spotted owl recovery. The agency also strongly affirms adaptive management principles to continually evaluate and refine active forest management techniques.
  • Management of the encroaching barred owl to reduce harm to spotted owls. Most of the recovery actions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has carried out since finalizing the spotted owl’s 2008 recovery plan deal with the barred owl threat. A major part of this is developing a proposal for experimental removal of barred owls in certain areas to see what effect that would have on spotted owls, and then to evaluate whether or not broad scale removal should be considered. This portion of the 2008 plan was not significantly revised.

“While the new recovery plan has been refined and improved from the 2008 version, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to implement the most important recommendations,” said Acting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Rowan Gould. “We have begun to address the barred owl threat, improved survey protocols, and developed incentives for private landowners to voluntarily participate in recovery actions. We look forward to expanding conservation partnerships to contribute to the spotted owl’s recovery.”

Since the northern spotted owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) 21 years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recovery partners are benefitting from far more information on what factors most affect its survival and productivity. This includes a broader body of scientific knowledge on the species itself and forest ecosystem dynamics — including variables such as climate change and the role of natural disturbances such as wildfire. Recovery partners also are taking advantage of new science and technology to develop more precise tools for analyzing how different strategies can contribute to recovery.

In addition, land managers have made significant strides in advancing active forest management techniques to promote the health and resilience of forest ecosystems. The recovery plan emphasizes the concept of adaptive management to apply new knowledge and science to those techniques on an ongoing basis. This is a more mainstream approach today than in 1994 when the Northwest Forest Plan was created to address the needs of several forest-dependent species, including the spotted owl, and the region’s timber industry.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed a final recovery plan specific to the spotted owl for the first time in 2008. As the agency and recovery partners moved forward in implementing many recommendations in the 2008 plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service initiated a targeted scientific revision to some portions of that plan after facing legal challenges and critical reviews from leading scientific organizations in the conservation community.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tapped the knowledge and perspectives of public and private sector experts over the last two years in developing this revised plan, the draft of which was released in September 2010. The agency held more than 30 workshops and meetings with public and private partners throughout the spotted owl’s range to share information, evaluate options, and incorporate valuable input during the revised plan’s development. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service accepted public comments on the draft revised plan for a 90-day period and received more than 11,700 comments. In April 2011, the agency released an updated Appendix C, relating to a new habitat modeling tool, for an additional 30-day public comment period and received about 20 public comments.

The revised recovery plan does not include recommendations from the 2008 plan for a new habitat conservation network of “Managed Owl Conservation Areas.” Rather than creating a potentially confusing new land classification, the plan identifies the scientific rationale and parameters for habitat protection and will revise the spotted owl’s designated critical habitat to reflect the latest scientific information about areas essential for the owl’s recovery. Identifying this habitat through the critical habitat process — as the ESA intended — will be more efficient and provide land managers and the public with additional opportunities for review and comment.

For a recovery timeline, Frequently Asked Questions, related information, and the recovery plan itself, visit www.fws.gov/oregonfwo.

America’s fish, wildlife and plant resources belong to all of us, and ensuring the health of imperiled species is a shared responsibility. The Service is working to actively engage conservation partners and the public in the search for improved and innovative ways to conserve and recover imperiled species. To learn more about the Service’s Endangered Species program, go to http://www.fws.gov/endangered/.

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit www.fws.gov. Connect with our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/usfws, follow our tweets at www.twitter.com/usfwshq, watch our YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/usfws and download photos from our Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwshq.

-FWS-

Stay tuned for the response, and my response to the response.

_____________

Oooooh, bonus!  Story in the Daily Astorian says saving the spotted owl habitat also ties up carbon, helping out with the fight against global warming.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, endangered species, Environmental protection, Forestry, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, History, Politics, Science, trees, Wildlife | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

President Obama on the deficit ceiling deal

August 1, 2011

The White House published this video within the last hour or so:

302 views at posting

Here are the White House bullet points on the deal:

What the Debt Deal Does

  • Removes economic uncertainty surrounding the debt limit at a critical time and prevents either party from using a failure to meet our obligations for political gain.
  • Makes a significant down payment to reduce the deficit — finding savings in defense and domestic spending while protecting critical investments in education and job creation.
  • Creates a bipartisan commission to find a balanced approach to continue this progress on deficit reduction.
  • Establishes an incentive for both sides to compromise on historic deficit reduction while protecting Social Security, Medicare beneficiaries, and programs that help low-income families.
  • Follows through on President Obama’s commitment to shared sacrifice by making sure that the middle class, seniors, and those who are most vulnerable do not shoulder the burden of reducing the deficit. As the process moves forward, the President will continue to insist that the wealthiest Americans share the burden.
  • For a closer look at the mechanics of the debt agreement, take a look at this infographic.

More from Obama here.

2 Comments | Barack Obama, Economics, History, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Somalia crisis partly caused by global warming?

July 30, 2011

Is the Somalia drought caused by global warming, even partly? Voice of America reports, with Rebecca Ward (can’t find the “non-autoplay” button in the HTML; see the thing below the fold):

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Africa, Climate change, Global warming, History, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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