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Why, in the year 2014, has the New York Times stopped publishing online? Click here to find out (8-minute film, probably Flash).

"I think the greatest source of danger in this world is indifference. I have always believed that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference ... The opposite of peace is not war, but indifference to peace and indifference to war ... Indifference is the enemy."



-- Elie Wiesel



(If you'd like a steady supply of inspirational or thought-provoking remarks, you can subscribe to a quote-of-the-day service here.)

Not depressed enough with the election and the looming economic crisis? Well, there's a flu pandemic on the horizon, too:

A global pandemic of avian influenza is "very, very likely" and could kill tens of millions of people worldwide, a top World Health Organization official said Monday.

Governments should be prepared to close schools, office buildings and factories in case of a pandemic, and should work out emergency staffing to prevent a breakdown in basic public services like electricity and transport, said Dr. Shigeru Omi, the organization's regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

Such arrangements may be needed if the disease infects 25 to 30 percent of the world's population, Omi said. That is the World Health Organization's estimate for what could happen if the disease - found mainly in chickens, ducks and other birds - develops the ability to spread easily from person to person.

Deaths associated with the rapid spread of a new form of influenza would be high, he said. "We are talking at least 2 to 7 million, maybe more - 20 million or 50 million, or in the worst case, 100" million, he said.

While many influenza experts have discussed similar figures privately, Omi's remarks represented the first time a top public health official had given such an estimate in public. < . . . >

A few analysts have suggested that the death toll could be considerably higher. Dr. Henry Niman, a medical researcher in Pittsburgh who criticizes the World Health Organization as being too conservative, said that with more than 70 percent of the human victims of the disease dying so far, the death toll could exceed one billion if the disease were to spread rapidly among people.

But Omi [ . . . ] pointed out that the high death rate recorded so far might be overstated, because people with less severe cases of the disease might not be diagnosed as having it. < . . . >

The World Health Organization, a Geneva-based UN agency, has reported 44 confirmed human cases of A(H5N1), 32 of whom have died, a 72.7 percent rate. The organization has identified only one case of probable human-to-human transmission - a mother who cradled her dying daughter all night - while the rest of the cases appeared to have been acquired directly from animals.

Researchers have been struggling to determine how and whether the disease might develop the ability to spread easily from person to person through the air the same way human influenza viruses do. Omi said that it was becoming more and more likely that the virus would develop the ability to spread among people for several reasons.

The virus has proved highly versatile in mixing genetic material with other viruses, he said. The disease has recently developed the ability to survive in domesticated ducks and be excreted in large quantities without making the ducks sick, making it hard for farmers to know which birds to cull.

Omi declined to predict when the virus might spread to people, but noted that winter was the most dangerous time for influenza viruses and that human cases had already started appearing this autumn, whereas last winter they did not start to appear until January.

The good news? Yes, there is a bit of it. Saline nasal inhalations appear to be effective in reducing the spread of germs, including viruses:

Inhaling a salt-water aerosol, a treatment often used for asthma, may also reduce the spread of germs that can spread disease, according to a new report.

People suffering from a variety of illnesses exhale bacteria and viruses which can spread disease to others.

Some people, apparently, exhale a lot more infectious particles than do others:

Those producing 500 or more particles per liter of air were considered high-producers.

The patients were given a six-minute inhalation of aerosol salt-water solution, a treatment often used for asthma patients.

Tests during the following six hours showed a sharp reduction in the number of particles exhaled by the high-producing individuals.

Since there's no way for you to know whether you're a high-producer, err on the side of caution. Don't have access to asthma treatments, or they're too expensive? Buy some saline nasal spray, over the counter. I use it to keep me from getting sinus infections--just a couple of squirts per day does the trick, and the asthma treatments seem to work on the same principle.

Wouldn't it be marvelous if such a simple thing helped prevent a worldwide flu epidemic, or at least kept you and yours safer? If you're at high risk for flu, talk to your doctor about what equipment is needed for the asthma treatment, and where you'd get it and the saline solution--probably a medical supply store would sell what you need.

If you're not normally at risk, buy some spray anyway, and use it religiously. At the very least, it'll keep away colds and sinus infections. And it just might save your life.

are such a mixed blessing; great to see the people, hard to travel, hard to get any work done--which, sadly, is a necessity when you're a grad student on the quarter system. I got back today, and now I have to hunker down and get a lot done. But I'm glad I went.

Cartoonist

Mark Fiore gives us the essential about Bush's nominee to replace John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez. He sure is impressive, that Gonzalez.

Oh, how quickly it strikes.



My brother, via email:



Hey! You haven't blogged anything for a while. What do you want me to do here, start working or something?



Me:



Geez, sorry! I've been busy attending to the minor details of my grad student life, like grading papers so I can get them handed back by next Tuesday. Bloggy goodness will resume soon . . .



Him:



MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

MUST BLOG NOW.

M.U.S.T B.L.O.G N.O.W.





I tell ya, the public is so demanding!



Apologies to any and all who have checked for posts and thought, "What, flaking out already?" Many things have asked, nay begged, to be posted, but reality has kept rudely intruding. So I cry you patience as I strive for balance.

"I'll stop calling these people 'Orwellian' when they stop using 1984 as an operating manual."



I heart Paul Krugman.

You may have seen this in your inbox already, but if not, one of the best sites on the Internet right now is SorryEverybody.com. Most of it is messages from Americans to the rest of the world, apologizing for the election; but there are also numerous messages from people in dozens of countries, offering their forgiveness and encouragement.



As one Canadian says (paraphrasing), "This site is doing more for your international relations than anything else could." Of course, some bemoan the "liberal impulse" to apologize, as if our regret were a bad thing. If it became a self-indulgent pity party, unaccompanied by concrete action, it would be bad; but for myself, I don't think the numerous posts from citizens of other countries, saying that the site has prevented them from hating all Americans indiscriminately, should be dismissed that lightly.

Just how much will the Bush administration do to satisfy its religious-right base? Michael Crowley over at Slate has an article about James Dobson, the uber-evangelical who heads up Focus on the Family, a ministry that "gets so much mail it has its own zip code."



After being less than enthused about W in 2000, Dobson campaigned hard for Bush this time. What drove Dobson, who supposedly finds the compromises of politics disgusting, to enter the nasty fray, and what does he want in return? Hint: you get three guesses, and the first two don't count.



Right the first time! Yes indeed, Dobson's special wrath is reserved for gays. Crowley describes Dobson's preoccupation with the issue of homosexuality:



It was the gay-marriage debate that finally hurled Dobson into politics wholeheartedly. The subject of homosexuality seems to exert a special power over him, and he has devoted much idiosyncratic thought to it. When discussing gays he spares no detail, no matter how prurient. In Bringing Up Boys, he gleefully reprints a letter he received from a 13-year-old boy who describes wiggling his naked body in front of the mirror to 'make my genitals bounce up and down' and admits to having 'tried more than once to suck my own penis (to be frank).' Dobson believes that such adolescents suffer from what he calls 'pre-homosexuality,' a formative stage which results from having a weak father figure. Dobson further contends that homosexuality, especially in such an early stage, can be 'cured.' His ministry runs a program called Love Won Out that seeks to convert 'ex-gays' to heterosexuality. (Alas, the program's director, a self-proclaimed 'ex-gay' himself, was spotted at a gay bar in 2000, an episode Dobson downplayed as 'a momentary setback.')



What Dobson wants from Bush is nothing less than an all-out, fire-and-brimstone assault on gay rights. But he'd better not be holding his breath; the GOP has used the religious right far more than it has served it. Dobson, for all his support this year, seems to know it:



Dobson himself predicted future disappointment during an appearance on ABC's This Week last Sunday. Asked whether Bush would fail evangelicals, Dobson replied, "I'm sure he will fail us. He doesn't dance to our tune."



The America Dobson wants, if he gets it, will drive away independent and moderate voters, as Crowley points out. If he doesn't get it, he may well withdraw his support for the Republican candidate in 2008, a move that in 2000 is thought to have cost W a good many votes.



Damned if they do, or damned if they don't? Either way, the GOP could wind up viewing its dealings with the radical right in a more Mephistophelian light.

The good people over at The Blogging of the President are maintaining a list of links to stories/articles/etc. on whether, and how, and to what extent, election fraud took place on November 2.



It's a good resource to bookmark, and they're updating it continually as new information comes in.

from Atrios:



I just heard a report on NPR about a group of Chinese Muslims who have been in Guantanmo [sic]. We've decided that they're no longer a threat. The Chinese government wants us to hand them over so they can try them on terrorism charges.



We don't want to hand them over because... yes, you know it's coming...



The Chinese government may torture them.

Well, the generally incompetent Terry McAuliffe has reached the end of his term as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and a battle is raging within the party to see who will replace him. The Clintonian branch of the party is agitating for a "centrist" chair (read: business as usual, compete for voters by sounding more like the Republicans--in other words, the same tactics that have been losing elections for the last 30 years). The progressives in the party would like to see a co-chairmanship of Howard Dean and Simon Rosenberg, the visionary behind the New Democratic Network.



There are also several other names being tossed around, most of them in the centrist/business as usual camp. One of them, though, would be far worse for the party than merely a complete lack of new ideas:



If you care about solving the electronic voting problem, and stopping it, you must not allow Roy Barnes to take over control of the DNC. Because the moment he does, Diebold and electronic voting become the owners of our party.



Barnes, the former governor of Georgia, was instrumental in getting Diebold machines, even then known to be hackable and unreliable, installed in Georgia prior to the 2002 mid-term elections, in which 146 of 159 counties in Georgia had unexplainable voting "anomalies" in favor of Republican candidates.



Unfortunately, Democrats at large do not get to vote for the DNC chair (something that needs to be remedied in the future). For now, the new chair will be elected by the 440 members of the DNC itself; background on the Committee, and a list of the members, is here.



Mr. Barnes cannot be trusted with the future of the Democratic party. It would be good to let the members of the DNC know that.

The always excellent James Wolcott documents some of the signs of declining American empire.

I am . . .




Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a
mystery novel dealing with theology, especially
with catholic vs liberal issues. You search
wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that
learning is essential in life.



Which literature classic are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway has Amy Goodman interviewing UPI reporter Mark Benjamin about the injured troops from Iraq and Afghanistan:



AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the numbers, as you understand them today, of, not the dead, but the wounded?



MARK BENJAMIN: Well, with respect to the wounded, the Pentagon does report a number that it says is the number of soldiers that are wounded in the war. I think we're running around 7,000 or 8,000 in Iraq. But what that number does not include is the number of soldiers who are wounded or ill, or injured in operations that are not directly due to the bullets and bombs of the insurgents. So, for example, as of mid-September, if you take actually Afghanistan and Iraq together, there were 17,000 soldiers who were injured or ill enough to be put on airplanes and flown out of theater, and none of those casualties, and I call them casualties because they fit the Pentagon's definition of casualties, none of those casualties appear on any public casualty lists.



AMY GOODMAN: How do you get these figures, and why aren’t they being more reported?



MARK BENJAMIN: You have to ask the right questions. If you go to the Pentagon, and you take their own definitions of casualties and ask you them the right questions, they will give you some answers. So, for example, the reason why I started asking questions is that I visited eight major military facilities around the country -- well, in the United States and Europe, and frankly, I just saw more soldiers that were hurt than seemed to be reflected in the Pentagon reports. They -- the Pentagon says, when I asked them what was on and not on their casualty lists, they said they weren't keeping track of the number of soldiers. The Pentagon told me we are not keeping track of the number of soldiers who are wounded or ill or injured that are not hit by the enemy's bullets and bombs. If you go to the Pentagon's transportation command, however -- these are the people that put wounded soldiers on airplanes and fly them out -- they will give you some data. What the Pentagon says is, well, not every single person who is put on an airplane and flown out of Iraq is a casualty; some of them may have appendicitis, and so on and so forth. But they won't tell you how many of each category there are. So in other words, we know that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of potential casualties that are not being reported.



AMY GOODMAN: And how are these troops being treated? You could refresh people on your groundbreaking story on Ft. Stewart, Georgia, and what was happening there. But what has happened since, as well?



MARK BENJAMIN: What has happened since is that essentially the treatment of the soldier, I think, depends to a certain extent on how badly they're injured, how they're injured and what stage of the treatment they're in. So for example, the military is very, very good at getting to wounded soldiers in the field and putting them on airplanes, flying them out of Iraq, taking them to Lahnstuhl, Germany, taking care of them and bringing them to Walter Reed. These are people hit by, for example, improvised explosive devices and missing arms and legs. As you go down the spectrum of casualties in terms of people that have their backs broken in car accidents, or frankly, people that have mental problems which is a growing and very serious toll from this war, which I think is also underreported, the treatment, at least according to soldiers, is not as good. I would add one other thing. The new, I think the latest, phenomenon that seems to be occurring is we now see an increasing number of soldiers reaching the end of their medical care with the military, and being put out of the military, now in the hands of the VA. And while I believe there’s some very, very capable people and caring people at the Veteran's Administration, they appear to be overloaded, and we’re reaching a situation now where sick, wounded and otherwise hurt soldiers are being essentially put out of the military and not getting the kind of care that I think they would like at the VA. And I think there are some soldiers that are starting to fall through the cracks.



AMY GOODMAN: Mark Benjamin, as when you see once again, President Bush going to Walter Reed Hospital, your final thoughts?



MARK BENJAMIN: I'm certainly glad that the president is visiting the troops. I think he's probably seeing part of the picture. For example, I suspect they probably took him to the -- one of the wards there where they have more of the traditional war injuries as opposed to, for example, Ward 54, which is where I visited, which is the in-patient psychiatric ward where we have soldiers who frankly have been driven deeply insane by combat. I wish that the American people knew more about what is happening with respect to the toll of this war, because I think it's a lot bigger and a lot more troubling than most people know.



At Walter Reed Medical Center, the main request that the troops have is for long-distance phone cards. The government does not pay for LD costs for either the injured troops, or the troops actively serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. An official at Walter Reed estimates that last month, the patients there used about 55,000 minutes of long-distance time calling their families.



If you'd like to help out, phone cards of any amount can be sent to:



Medical Family Assistance Center

Walter Reed Medical Center

6900 Georgia Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20307-5001



The troops still on active duty overseas have the same need, as do injured troops at other medical centers. If I get contact information for them, I'll pass it on to you.

Guess what? After the most dismal spending record in presidential history, and ever-increasing deficits, Bush is suddenly a believer in budget discipline:



Six years after the Supreme Court took away the president's ability to veto specific parts of legislation, President Bush is asking Congress to bring back the line-item veto to let him make precision strikes against projects and tax provisions he doesn't like.



At a news conference after his re-election, Bush said he wanted a line-item veto that "passed constitutional muster," explaining it would help him work with lawmakers "to make sure that we're able to maintain budget discipline."



What a riot. Who knew Bush was such a natural comedian? This is almost as hilarious as that video clip where he went looking under couch cushions for the missing weapons of mass destruction.



Since Bush has a pet Congress, they're likely to give him what he wants--which is another weapon to reward and punish his lackeys and enemies. Pork barrels for your right-wing constituencies? No problem. Funding for, say, an afterschool program? Watch the mighty sword of budget discipline do its work!



The Supreme Court struck down Clinton's line-item veto power in 1997, saying it "gave the president unconstitutional unilateral power to change laws enacted by Congress." It'll be interesting to see if anyone manages to get a legal challenge all the way to the SC this time, and if they do, whether the Supremes will find some way to justify a different ruling.

Pericles, over at Daily Kos, has written an insightful and thought-provoking diary about, not the whys, but the hows of extremism, and the dynamic it needs in order to thrive. While I have some quibbles with it, overall it's excellent, and deserves a wider audience. Check it out.

Like so many other things that come out of his mouth, Bush's insistence that there "won't be a draft" is, well, less than fully honest:



David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.



But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.



This is not a case of a reservist, even an inactive reservist, being called up. This guy was done. Completely. Finished. And now he's being told that the Army can call him back whenever it likes, presumably for the rest of his life.



This is going to be a rude awakening for the rah-rah patriots who vehemently supported Bush's war--so long as it was someone else fighting it.



(via Daily Kos)

Conservative Paul Craig Roberts says November 2 was An Election That Will Live In Infamy:



On November 2 Americans blew their only chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world.



Roberts has impeccable conservative credentials: Reagan's former Asst. Secy. of the Treasury, a former Cato Distinguished Fellow and former Wall Street Journal editor. Currently, he's a senior fellow in Stanford's Hoover Institution, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, and research fellow at the Independent Institute.



And he says what so many of us feel:



The world was waiting hopefully for the sensible American people to rectify the ill-advised actions of a rogue neoconservative administration. Instead, Americans placed the stamp of approval on the least justifiable military action since Hitler invaded Poland.



If only he'd spoken out before the election; if only more of his fellow conservatives had done the same; if only people had listened. If only . . .

Nothing like starting my blog with a nice, light-hearted post, eh?



"Fascist" is not a word to be used lightly, and I assure you this is not a joke. The short answer to the question: not yet, but we could be.



DyspepTex over at the Daily Kos has a diary about it, including a suggested summary of the 14 characteristics of fascist states, such as: nationalism; militarism; persecuted scapegoats; political leaders who identify with the dominant religion, even as their actions violate its precepts; obsession with national security; restricted rights for individuals even as corporations are given free reign; and corruption of the electoral process.



Sound familiar? Read it all; I've only listed a few, but all fourteen seem more or less relevant to our current situation.



David Neiwert, whose excellent blog Orcinus tracks domestic terrorism and hate crimes, says that what we have in the U.S. now is "pseudo-fascism," but trending toward fascism. His seven-part series examining the rise of pseudo-fascism is here (the link is to Part 7, which has at the beginning links to the other six parts).



Neiwert has documented a rise in incidents of right-wing violence against perceived opponents. When that violence, he says, becomes "condoned and organizational," we will have crossed the line into full-fledged fascism.



Of course, this raises the question: if we are on the verge of becoming a fascist state, what can we do about it? The level of polarization we've already reached makes it seem unlikely that a productive dialogue is even possible. But the alternative is to sit back and watch our country be taken over, so we have to try.



Neiwert says he'll be offering suggestions in the near future on how to approach the red states. One thing he points out, that I've noticed in my ramblings about the Internets (sic), is the extent to which lefties are contemptuous of those on the right. It is ironic, to say the least, for those on the left to castigate the right for their "ignorance," when they themselves are largely, and willfully, ignorant of what life is like for those in areas that heavily supported Bush. If we consider ourselves to be the "reality-based community," then we have a responsibility to try to understand their reality, not just dismiss them out of hand.



I read a profile in Fortune magazine of the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune (did you know they have more money than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined?). The article mentioned that Sam Walton's children, especially his daughter, have worked to build a better infrastructure in northern Arkansas. This includes things like a four-lane road and an airport, issues of basic accessibility. While I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart, I also recognize that they have benefitted their corner of the world in some very tangible ways, even as they have exploited economic conditions the world over. And people in northern Arkansas know whom to thank for the airport and the four-lane road, and the growth of their job market. The insularity of the South is geographical as well as cultural, and we in the blue states have given many of its residents no particular reason to believe that we have their best interests in mind.



Another blind spot--or sticking point--for many lefties is religion. While we can rightfully decry the ways that religion has been exploited by this administration, we do ourselves no favors by sneering at the genuineness of the faith that many people hold. Even as we hear reports that we are becoming a more secular nation, 80% of Americans claim some kind of belief in God. The fact that church attendance has steadily dropped is not necessarily a sign that people are abandoning religion, but rather that it is being explored in less structured, less traditional ways. The (often accurate) sense that red-state residents have that liberals hold their faith in contempt is, again, less than worthy of the open-mindedness and tolerance that the left espouses. If we want to reach religious conservatives, we need to speak their language. For many on the left, this is simply impossible; but if we cannot sympathize with conservatives' religious views, we should at least try to understand them; and if we cannot understand, we need to reach for the respect every person deserves.



Issues of fairness and equity, and of compassion for those in need, are values that we can and do share, and we need to learn to speak to those issues in an authentic way. Economic populism, a la John Edwards, is still a potent force, and one that is consistent with the deepest roots and values of the Democratic party.



I'll have more to say about these issues in future posts; but for now, think about how we can make inroads into the insularity of the red states, and inoculate ourselves, at least in part, against the creeping tide of fascism.

I've been writing a de facto blog for some time via email, bombarding my hapless recipient list with frequent links to blog entries, articles, etc. So I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and post all that stuff here instead, and free up their long-suffering inboxes.



My posts here will probably, topic-wise, be much like my emails: lots of politics and social issues, and unknown quantities of whatever else happens to strike me on a given day.



Welcome, and please do feel free to leave your comments.