A Rogue Result

Posted on February 25, 2006
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Americans need to read Jane Mayer’s article in the February 27 New Yorker. Secretary Rumsfeld’s deception and the dire influence of Vice President Cheyney’s office is laid out by the Navy’s newly retired general counsel. A truly disturbing account of arrogance trampling America’s values. Abu Graib wasn’t a rogue episode but a result. Who is going to call them to account? That’s the question at a historical pivot – now.

Sure, we’re at war with desperado militants. But this Administration has been recruiting for them – at such costs.

Hardy Souls

Posted on February 13, 2006
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What if, I got to thinking, a newspaper (like The Wall Street Journal used to do) decided to run a series on Hardy People/Hardy Souls, people who have what’s needed to survive, prosper, add honor to these times, what would the series look like?

Who would some of the epitome people be? Who would you look for, what types of hardy souls? Who’s resilient, can handle life coming at them fast, find meaning and honor. Say, a FEMA worker who, despite everything, keeps serving…a singer trying to get it down and be understood…a politician trying to be effective and restrained…a clergyman seeking new ways of bringing people together…a scientist working hard and cheerily on global warming…

People with cores of resilience and integrity…a technologist trying to find, harness meaning in the machines. We need epitomes, archetypes for our times. Honorable, hardy, optimistic and effective people. Who would they be?

A Silent Doorbell

Posted on February 8, 2006
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The reluctance, to put it kindly, of the Harrisburg, Pa., Police Department or Mayor’s Office to visit the family of a young man killed by a city police officer and explain how his death occurred has his family and friends upset. Understandably.

The police are involved in a death for which there is no explanation. It is simple courtesy to knock on a family’s door and present them with the information available, as well as regrets. Harrisburg’s Mayor Stephen Reed is on television frequently, at crime scenes and fires, speaking to the TV audience. But the city can’t advise a mother and father of how their son died?

Okay, the death is under official investigation. Yet if our legal system has reached the point where a fatality can’t be explained to the family involved, with personal condolences, while the details are under investigation, the system needs to be fixed – but meanwhile, the doorbell needs to be rung.

Words, Words…

Posted on February 1, 2006
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Condoleezza Rice’s amazing words on the Hamas victory in the Middle East – “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming. It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse” – should prompt the Bush Administration to consider how much else it has been misreading about the world scene. But Hamas’ big win over the Fatah party in the Palestinian elections probably won’t have any such salutary effect.

Events stream by with the Administration considering what fits its seeming advantage, or what it cares to acknowledge, not what may actually be occurring. Such blindsiding as the Palestinians delivered – and the State Department “missed” – indicates how hard it is for Americans to be accurately informed on the nation’s prospects.

Alone Together

Posted on February 1, 2006
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Concerns over the Bush Administration’s surveillance of Internet traffic aren’t about whether or not citizens are opposed to terrorism. (Of course we are.) They are about the secret exploitation of a whole new flow of communication, the implications of which we ought to be grappling with together. (But we’re not.)

Associated Press writer Matthew Fordahl put it well when he explained recently: “Critics question whether safeguards put in place a quarter-century ago following FBI wiretapping misconduct are strong enough to prevent abuse in the 21st Century. Others fear the information superhighway is turning out to be a fast path to mass surveillance.

“…Always a hot topic, the debate over wiretapping is further fueled not only by the knowledge of what’s possible but also by a dearth of details of what’s actually happening.”

The National Security Agency, Fordahl added whimsically, “did not return telephone calls seeking comment on its methods.”

A free society needs to understand the nature of its threats and options on a broad,
participatory basis. Otherwise, we risk subverting our freedoms out of easily manipulated fear – “We have nothing but fear itself,” someone put it recently.

On a related front, even The Wall Street Journal in a January 30 editorial had qualms about the Justice Department issuing a “sweeping” subpoena to Google for data on Web sites it indexes and the search terms submitted by its users.

That request is in the interest of fighting child pornography on the Internet. But, again, we know too little about the implications of commandeering vast amounts of
digital data. As a society, we should be sorting that out together, not attacking those who say, “Wait a minute…”

George Orwell wrote about people being enslaved by leaders exploiting their fears. That’s beginning to feel eery.

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