Weather -- or not

Cristoforo Colombo had heard about the powerful Caribbean storms that the Taino Indians called "huracan" on his early voyages, and when, on his fourth trip to the New World in 1502, the natives told him that one such storm was approaching Hispaniola, he strategically moved the ships he commanded to the opposite side of the island, saving the small fleet when the rain and wind struck the following day.

Today, of course, we have much more warning and information on hurricanes than Christopher Columbus, as he is now known, did. There is radar and satellite images and computer projections -- and we have the broadcast media, which seems to go berserk when any type of extraordinary weather event unfolds. The flashy graphics and dramatic music bursts from the screen as if America were going to war again, meteorologists and anchors repeat warnings and narrate video with hyperbolic commentary, and reporters in the field -- those poor souls -- are made to stand in outlandish conditions so we can see the worst of the weather without going out there ourselves.

I know that all this drives some people crazy, and I admit that much of it is over-the-top, but I am a weather junkie and when noteworthy storms strike -- as was the case with Hurricane Irene -- I get excited, flip channels, scroll through news items on the Internet, and post updates on Twitter as if the outside world were getting their only information from me. And with Irene, as with other storms of all types, I heard a chorus of voices before, during and after dismissing the hurricane as a "dud." For most people in the Boston area, the storm entailed some wind and rain, leaving them feeling that the projections and the coverage were all hype. However, even in the city limits of Boston, several thousand people lost electricity and 500 calls came in to City Hall about downed trees.

The bigger picture is awe-inspiring -- especially because Irene made landfall as weakening Category 1 hurricane and did significant damage after being downgraded to a lowly tropical storm. Fourteen states, plus Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and a number of other Caribbean Islands were affected; more than seven million people lost power on the US East Coast; damage at this early point is estimated at $10 billion; and, sadly, the death toll now stands at 54. The state of Vermont, far from landfall and coastal surges, is experiencing the worst flooding in a century due to Irene's downpours; at one point 11 towns were isolated as a result of rising rivers and washed-out roads.

Maybe you didn't need that bottled water and flashlight that you ran out and fought crowds to get, but some people did. The information and warnings from the National Weather Service should not be confused with the melodrama that broadcast news -- especially the local TV stations -- foments to go along with it. Local TV is over-the-top every night on virtually every story, so it's annoying, but no surprise, when they do the same every time a storm is on the way. The have to fill their time and they have to keep viewers on edge, and when they go live all day, as they did Sunday with Irene, there are a lot of hours to fill. At one point an anchor narrated a piece of video that showed a roof with two tiles fluttering gently in the breeze. "Look at that," she said. "Roof tiles are being torn off by Irene." Um....no.

The larger point I want to make is that, despite decades of cliches about their unreliability, meteorologists are terrifically accurate, especially these days. We were told, for example, at the end of last week that the weather in Boston after Irene passed would be upper 70s/low 80s all week and there might be a quick midweek shower but the next chance of a storm would be the weekend. Right on. I hear people complain when a snow forecast is a few inches off, not seeming to grasp that -- despite all the variables of weather and the complexities of predicting what will happen at any moment -- we were told several days in advance that a particular type of precipitation would fall from the sky for a predicted amount of time. Sorry if the forecast eight inches fell in the town next to you and only seven fell on your house.

Someone I know complained out loud one day last spring when it started to rain and I reminded her that the forecast had said there was a 20% chance of showers. "Yeah," she said. "That means it's not supposed to rain." I started to explain and then just threw up my hands.

Good Times

Bravo to the East Boston Times for reconfiguring its web site so that stories from the past are accessible and comments can be left after the stories. I'm not sure when these changes were made, but I just noticed them today. I know the Times will appreciate when I take the time to comment, which I hope to do frequently.

Ron Paul tells it like it is

Ron Paul deserves credit. No matter how much I disagree with many of the Texas Congressman's positions, mostly on domestic policy, there is much overlap in his libertarian ideology and the uber-liberal viewpoint that I come from -- and he is never afraid to stand up and say what he thinks.

Yesterday Rep. Paul was on the floor of the House offering a vastly different assessment of WikiLeaks than most other Republicans, who are calling for the web site's public face, Julian Assange, to be either prosecuted for espionage or taken out like a terrorist.

"Is this not an example of killing the messenger for bad news?" asked Paul. He also had nine questions that we should be asking ourselves:

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

The reluctant president

In the last week a trio of liberal newspaper columnists expressed disappointment in Barack Obama's presidency -- a feeling that the left has been tormented by for months. Paul Krugman and Frank Rich of The New York Times and The Washington Post's EJ Dionne call out the president for his seeming reluctance to take a stand and fight the Republicans -- who use bellicosity as a strategy, no matter the issue and the lack of connection to reality of their position.

Dionne:

And what will Obama do about all this? Ronald Reagan ... found a way to stand strong, to fight back and to win. We will soon know whether our current president has this in him. 

Krugman:

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right. 

Rich:

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL.

They're right. Two years ago Democrats won in grand fashion, but they've struggled since then to control the agenda and to communicate with the public. Most of the responsibility for that falls on Obama's shoulders. There have been some gains, some important legislation -- health care and financial reform, for example -- but in each of those cases, and in others, the policies that became law were much weaker than we'd hoped. The Democrats emerged from those battles bruised and limping, checking their pockets with the strange feeling that their wallets had just been lifted.

This reminds me of a scene from the TV show The West Wing -- in fact, it's almost exactly where we find ourselves. Look at the episode's summary from Wikipedia:

The staff begin to realize that the Bartlet administration has been ineffective because it has been too timid to make bold decisions, focusing instead on the exigencies of politics. 

If only the Obama administration were to reach the conclusion that the fictional administration reaches:

Finally, Leo confronts President Bartlet with his own timidity, challenging him to be himself and to take the staff "off the leash." -- in other words, he seeks to "Let Bartlet be Bartlet." The President and his staff resolve to act boldly and "raise the level of public debate" in America.

Please ... let life imitate art.

Truth as treason

I may not be a First Amendment absolutist, but I'm pretty close. I will allow that there are a few limited areas where national security trumps press freedom, but those should be quite narrow. Democracy depends on the citizenry having access to information, and few concerns should ever be allowed to top that principle.

In the four years of its existence, WikiLeaks has risen from nowhere to be a prominent shaper of news and information. Such is the way that technology affects us these days: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and now WikiLeaks begin as an idea or a few lines of code and soon the way we see and understand the world is changed permanently.

Julian Assange, the force behind the site, is a wanted man these days. In the wake of WikiLeaks latest revelation -- 250,000 cables of US State Department reports -- a number of governments are investigating the Australian nomad, while Swedish authorities want to talk to him about sexual assault charges he has called phony. It's hard to see how this guy survives unless he takes cover underground for a very long time.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul tweeted this today: "Re: Wikileaks - In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble." While Paul -- a hardcore libertarian -- and I would disagree on many issues, on this one we share similar views. The US government has too many secrets. I am for a default position of openness and transparency in all branches and at all levels of government. WikiLeaks may have embarrassed the US and some of its allies this week, but exposing some of the workings of the State Department is, overall, a good thing.

When US missiles hit targets in Yemen one year ago, for example, it is the right of Americans AND Yemenis to know where those weapons came from, especially when many of those killed in these attacks were civilians -- including 14 women and 21 children. WikiLeaks is not the institution that illegally invaded Iraq and that has been occupying Afghanistan for nine years. That would be the US government.

News that Amazon.com dropped WikiLeaks from its servers yesterday and that today a New Hampshire company killed the domain WikiLeaks.org (find the site here, at WikiLeaks.ch) after Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman made some threatening comments is quite disturbing. This is not the way we treat information in the United States -- with the government actively seeking to prevent Americans from reading the truth. We're moving -- if we haven't been there since the passage of the PATRIOT Act -- toward 1984 territory. In that prophetic novel, one of the dystopian government's slogans would seem to be one that the US is now embracing: "Ignorance is strength."

Hubster new and improved!

Well, for the first time since starting this blog I changed the design and added some features in the right-hand column, including my Twitter feed, which I seem to be using more and more. Also, note the slide-show of photos top right. I think the whole thing looks snappier.

Election Day 2010

***Boston.com has a nice feature where you can type in your address and see information on every race and question that will appear on your ballot. It's on the right side of their election coverage page here.

***The Globe's endorsement of Deval Patrick. The Herald's endorsement of Charlie Baker.

***Most signs indicate that Republicans will take control of the House, while it appears Democrats will keep control of the Senate. The New York Times has cool interactive graphics in its national political coverage section.

***The only House race that is tightly contested is the 10th District, where William Delahunt is retiring. Democrat William Keating leads Republican Jeff Perry by a small margin in the latest polls. It would be a disgrace if Perry, who watched and did nothing as two teenage girls were improperly strip-searched by a police officer under his command when he was on the Wareham force AND THEN lied about it to investigators, were to win the seat.

***It would also be a travesty if Tea Party nut job Sharron Angle were to beat Majority Leader Harry Reid in the battle for his Nevada Senate seat.

Gumption at the Times

I saw this week's East Boston Times a short while ago and I need to give praise where it's due. In the Eastie Watch column there is a logically argued defense of the Lower Manhattan community center -- dubbed by the media as the Ground Zero Mosque. The piece took me by surprise, and I want to publicly laud the paper and the writer, which I believe to be John Lynds.

Not only is the thinking in the article open-minded and forward-thinking, but just the fact that the Times waded into this issue when it certainly didn't have to shows courage that is to be commended. I would think that a significant number of the paper's readers will be angered by the sentiments expressed, and the Times must have recognized that and went ahead with it anyway. That's the kind of gumption one desires in an journalistic endeavor.

More alike than you think

There's been much discussion about comments that President Obama's spokesman made about criticism that the administration has been getting from liberals. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, spoke dismissively of the "professional left," saying, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality." Gibbs (photo from NY Times) also said that, “I hear these people saying [Obama is] like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested.”

I am only part of the amateur left. I have been critical of Barack Obama, who I voted for in both the primary and the general, on a wide range of issues. Gibbs comments are off the mark for a couple of reasons. First, they call to mind the story, possibly apocryphal, about FDR, who told liberal reformers at one point, "I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it." As a citizen, it's my duty, I believe, to say what I think; it's not my job to worry about how my criticism plays out politically.

More deeply, however, what Gibbs' little rant ignores is that those of us on the left understand the political realities and the national climate; we are not unaware of how these factors can limit a president's legislative agenda. I wanted the stimulus package to be more sweeping; I wanted health-care reform to be more bold; I wanted financial regulation to be tougher. Each of these bills was watered down in Congress. I wish the president had been more forceful and had pushed harder, but I understand the obstacles. I wanted to see immigration reform and an energy bill, but I understand that there was no appetite for either. With majorities in both houses and control of the White House, I hoped the Democrats would be more aggressive, but there were some victories.

Much more troubling than these issues, however, is this administration's failings on foreign policy, civil rights, government transparency and national security. Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald does a commendable job keeping up with these issues, and to be honest my level of disappointment with Obama in these areas is through the roof. The US military is still in Iraq and Afghanistan, people are still being held in American military prisons without being charged and tried, way too much information is still kept secret and Americans are still being spied on by their government. On these and other similar issues Obama is indeed "like George Bush." And implying that those of us who are willing to speak the truth are chemically impaired is an insult and a disgrace.

Chronicling Eastie

Check out segments of the Channel 5 show Chronicle that featured East Boston, which originally aired last week:

Segment #1: hidden gem, diversity, views
Segment #2: real estate, culture
Segment #3: sailing, outdoor art, food
Segment #4: greenway, teen view

Snake oil

A cap has apparently been lowered on the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, and BP says that there are tests that need to be done to determine its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, one of the aspects of this story that is most infuriating is the collaboration between the oil giant and the US government to restrict the media's access to areas on the land and sea affected by the spill. CNN's Anderson Cooper was justifiably angry about the policy announced on July 1 that could result in fines or prison time for anyone who comes within 65 feet of a boom or vessel working on the spill.

Despite the "safety and security" rationale, this is clearly an attempt to limit images and stories that would shed more bad light on BP. Putting a corporation's interest above the right of the American people to get information is unconscionable and clearly violates the First Amendment.

The image above is an Associated Press photo of a dead turtle in a pool of oil. I found it at a blog that has collected some images of the devastation caused by the leak -- images that are generally being kept from Americans.

Abandon your money -- and your kids

Globe columnist Kevin Cullen does a good job raising only some of the pertinent issues in the legislature's rush to permanently change the culture and quality of life in this state by introducing expanded gambling. The first part of his piece today describes the machinations involved in arranging a local referendum on a proposed casino, but take a look at the last half of his column:

In the same week Massachusetts state troopers buried one of their own, a father of four run down by an accused drunk driver while he was questioning another accused drunk driver, the Massachusetts Senate voted to let casinos serve free booze to their customers.

What do you call a state that endorses the concept of getting its citizens liquored up and taking their money in a game of chance that’s stacked against them?

“Nuts,’’ said Susan Tucker, a Democrat from Andover, and one of a minority of senators who thinks this is madness.

“We outlawed happy hours in this state because we had statistical evidence that they increased the number of fatalities and serious injuries,’’ she said. “And now we’re saying it’s OK for casinos to have an open bar? We’re overturning our public safety laws for a predatory industry.’’

Welcome to Mississippi-on-the-Charles, where anything goes, as long as it convinces some corporation that it’ll be able to maximize its ability to fleece people. We are so desperate for jobs, so desperate for tax revenue, that we will sell our collective souls, and then redefine what constitutes those souls.

To be fair, the Senate is asking the casinos to step up to the plate on at least one thing: The bill would require casinos to check their parking lots regularly for abandoned children and animals.

“Maybe it’s me,’’ Susan Tucker said, “but if we believe there are going to be children and pets abandoned because of this industry, should we be facilitating them? I don’t remember ever requiring a biotech company to check its parking lots for abandoned children.’’

Meanwhile, a few elected officials and a representative from Suffolk Downs have been added to the program of Wednesday night's "Forum on Casino Gambling," which will be held at Don Orione starting at 6:30 p.m. This move, I think, is a terrible idea. The politicians' opinions are always broadcast through the media, and as for Suffolk COO Chip Tuttle -- well, we get to see the East Boston Times play footsie with him every week.

Times continues Suffolk lovefest

The East Boston Times continues to shill for Suffolk Downs as the track moves forward on its quest to bring expanded gambling to the Eastie/Revere line. In a front-page story this week, Times' new favorite son Chip Tuttle, Suffolk's chief operating officer, is quoted extensively from his appearance at a recent public hearing -- and between his quotes the newspaper itself sounds like a Suffolk press release.

Though three people who support the gambling proposals are mentioned in the story by name -- Tuttle, State Sen. Anthony Petruccelli and Teamsters leader Sean O'Brien -- no one opposed to the idea is named or quoted directly. There are exactly two sentences in the story that express a contrary opinion and in both cases the people holding those opinions are referred to as "some." For example: "Expanded gaming or full scale resort-style casino’s in the Commonwealth are not going to be as epidemic as crack was in the 1980s as some suggested at the public hearing."

Yes, that is an undoctored sentence from the story (and the spelling and punctuation errors are the newspaper's, not mine.) The Times would have us believe that fear of a crack epidemic is the best argument that those against a rush to casinos have. It is, of course, a commonly used tactic: rebut the most far-fetched opposition argument you can so as to divert attention from smart, solid arguments.

Why won't the East Boston Times dedicate some space to a real discussion of an issue that is of huge importance to this neighborhood?

Doubting Thomas silenced

Helen Thomas is a giant in the field of journalism -- a groundbreaking woman and a thorn in the side of those in power for five decades. Thomas, who will be 90 years old this summer, was forced to retire today after insensitive remarks about the Middle East. Her legacy is much bigger than this last misstep, and tonight -- without Thomas sitting in the front row of the White House press room -- our democracy is that much weaker.

Photo from OpEdNews.com.

Bad language

It appears that The East Boston Times is not the only newspaper owned by the Independent Newspaper Group that cuts and pastes information from other sources into its stories without proper attribution. A front-page article in this week's issue of The Chelsea Record includes more than half of its material from a year-old press release, though the source is never cited.

The story, titled "Night-time closures have begun on Chelsea Bridge" (and, by the way, "nighttime" takes no hyphen and "bridge" should be lowercase in this instance) starts out well enough with comments from local traffic guru John Vitagliano, but the copied information begins in the eighth paragraph. Then, after the line, "The Chelsea Street Bridge was one of these projects," the rest of the piece is lifted right from a March 16, 2009 press release from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which can be found here.

More than half of the 604-word story was not written by the newspaper's reporters, yet there is no indication that the material is the work of someone else. As I've written before, this is not a hazy area. Cutting and pasting without proper attribution is unacceptable by any and all journalistic standards. Why do ING newspapers allow it?

2009's most important person

Time magazine came up short when they chose Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as the Person of the Year, but The Times of London got it right: Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was killed during anti-government protests in June.

The shocking and graphic video of Soltan being shot through the chest and dying in the street spread around the world and her death has become the iconic moment of the Iranian peoples' struggle. Neda is important because this uprising of the citizenry may well signal the end of the oppressive and internationally combative regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, further, her documented murder at the hands of a government militiaman may be the tipping point.

More broadly, the capturing of the horrible event by cell phone video and the spreading of it over YouTube, as well as the use of the Internet -- especially blogs and Twitter -- to organize and follow the protests, mark an important point in the realm of popular uprisings. The printing press, in essence, made democracy possible -- and hence, the United States came into being. The Internet is another key juncture on that road. The "information superhighway" has its positives and negatives, but it does seem to be a tool that is difficult (not impossible: see China) for tyrants to manage.

And so Neda Soltan's death is meaningful for a number of reasons, and she is, I think, the better choice. Bernanke did some good things and some not-so-good before and during the current economic crisis. However, even if the housing boom and financial meltdown are the only things that matter, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan's faith in the markets is more integral to causing the crisis -- and his statement before a Congressional committee that his worldview was "flawed" is an admission that laissez-faire capitalism does not work. That stands as a key moment as well.

Photo from The Times of London web site.

Protests in Iran reach new level

Street protests throughout Iran have seemingly reached a new level, but in general the American mainstream media seems not to have noticed. Today was the Day of Ashura, a holy day for Muslims and a holiday in Islamic countries. Iranians demonstrating against their government have flooded the streets in a number of cities, marching and in some cases attacking the street police and setting their motorbikes afire.

These protests are a continuation of those that unfolded after the national election results last summer, which appeared to many people to have been tampered with to protect the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei backed Ahmadinejad and the protests were met with violence, arrests and show trials.

The determination and spirit of the Iranian people, however, seems to have not been broken, and they are making their voices heard, despite reports that 10 or more of the protesters have been killed. Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan, who followed the summer protests closely and provided an outlet for reports and video from the scene, is on top of the story again. Be advised that some of the images are graphic.

Photo from Kosoof.com.

Get yourself a cup of Jolt

The newest rendition of The Eastie Jolt is up, featuring lyrics from the young people of ZUMIX and a remembrance of the fabled East Boston Community News, which published its last issue 20 years ago.
You'll also find poetry, fiction, photography and an essay on why its important to stick together in tough economic times.

The Jolt is an outlet for creativity in East Boston. Those who live and work here are invited to contribute to the site. To submit material, send along an idea or offer feedback, email editor@eastiejolt.com.

Tweeting locally

If you use Twitter you might want to add East_Boston to the list of those you follow (check it out at twitter.com/East_Boston). There's also the good folks at EastBoston.com on Twitter at EBDotCom (twitter.com/EBDotCom).

Hubster praises Times -- with one complaint

First off, for those who say that I never have anything good to say about the East Boston Times, there's a photo on Page 11 of this week's paper that is shot from a low angle and shows some veterans from behind with the flag above them. There's some creativity to the shot, and I like it.

Also, on Page 10, there is a photo of two people talking at the opening of an artists' building -- a rare instance of people not posed in a Times photo. On Page 3 the photos at the Salesian Boys and Girls Club Spaghetti Supper don't include any of the usual suspects, which is nice to see.

I only have one criticism this week, but it's a serious factual error. The story of the Spaghetti Supper begins:

It’s no secret there was some animosity towards the Salesians after the religious order evicted Savio Prep High School from its property on Byron Street two years ago.

The Salesians did not, in fact, evict Savio Prep High School, and it is misleading to say so. The school's board of directors voted to shut down Savio in January or February of 2007. I know because I was on the faculty at the time. There was, I believe, one more year left on the school's lease.

Now, I'm not saying that there weren't issues between the Salesians and the school, but the reality is that Savio should not have even opened up for that last year. As it was, the place went bankrupt before it finished paying all of the salary obligations to employees (despite assurances I was personally given when I returned that fall that the school would be open for at least two years, I and others were screwed thousands of dollars) and the building was not in good shape.

Anyway, while it's true that there was animosity, it is incorrect to say that Savio was evicted.