Neighborhood Emergency Response

As many of you know, I am working on a new film project - a dark comedy about the possibility of a nuclear attack on one of our cities. A friend recently sent me some comments by Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt about bird flu. Here's a report from ABC:

In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

This whole bird flu thing, and my own script, got me to thinking - it's easy to critize the government, but what would I do differently if I were in charge? I actually may have come up with an answer. Later in his speech, Michael Leavitt talked about how a pandemic like bird flu would be like hundreds of Hurricane Katrina's, flooding our government with local requests to help. Ultimately, he suggested, we're on our own in such a catastrophic situation - thus stokc up on tune and powdered milk.

But, considering that even our own government is telling us that local response to crises is our best bet, why not start a nationwide, "neighborhood emergency response corps," modeled on the neighborhood watch system. This would invovle identifiying local volunteers, some basic training, and some local planning. In this way, when an emergency hit - terrorists attack, earthquake, hurricane, bird flu - the first responders could be our own neighbors. Each block of the country would look after itself, or at least have a plan and basic structure to attempt to do so. Imagine the comfort of seing your own neighbors band together to help each other. Imagine how much FEAR could be relieved by just having such a plan and training in place. Americans are very generous people - and in a crisis, they'd like to be able to help each other. It would go a long way to making our cities safer in the event of national crises... and relieve the national government to fight the most pressing and dangerous threats.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts on this!

The beginnings of dictatorship

This one almost got past me. I remember last week reading a report where recently resigned Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor revealed that she'd had a number of death threats from right wing groups. That was as far as the report I read (the AP, I think) took it. But, I just heard on NPR about the rest of her speech. Here is the report from Nina Totenberg of NPR, who was at the speech (an actual recording has not, to my knowledge, been released):

I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

I'm amazed that the mainstream press didn't pick this up more than it did. That's almost as frightening as her warning about the dangers we face. Again, I'd like to trumpet my own personal theme, the theme of this blog in a sense: what happens after the NEXT terrorist attack. We need to have a dialog about how we will respond next time, so that we can discuss it rationally, or a bit more rationally, rather than be totally manipulated by fear. Because if we let fear-mongering manipulate us, the terrorists will win and we will become a dictatorship.

Bomb dog gone wild

So, March madness begins, and a bomb dog "hits" on a suspicious target. And the target? A hotdog stand....

Hmmm... maybe the dog was hungry?

Shooting Quail

Please insert your favorite Dan Quayle joke here ---

What I'm most curious about the Cheney shooting /hunting incident is whether this increases or decreases his standing with the NRA. So far, according to news reports, they haven't commented, so maybe it's a wash. They're glad he's a hunter, just wish he's stick to birds.

I can see the bumper stickers now: Guns don't shoot people, Cheney shoots people.

You've got to be kidding me

Okay, so I live in LA. The front page of the LA Times said it all for me toay...

"Bush Gives New Details About Old Report of L.A. Terror Plot" next to "Libby Says 'Superiors' Authorized Leaks."

Hmmm.... let me see, there are hearings on Capitol Hill about the unconstitutional, illegal wire-tapping of Americans in America without a warrant.

Jack Abramoff, who has pled guilty to corruption charges, says he met Bush over a dozen times and they joked together. He was even invited to the Crawford ranch.

The investigation of Karl Rove is ongoing... and Libby is set to go on trial for a politically motivated outing of a CIA agent.

The Adminstration knew about the levee breaks in New Orleans two days before they said they knew, and they did NOTHING.

And the president comes out with old news about "success" in the War on Terror. I remember hearing about this a few years back. Come on, how pathetic can you get - even if intelligence from the illegal wiretapping was part of stopping this plot, it doesn't make it right that the wiretapping was done without a warrant. It's not like FISA would say no.

How stupid does the President think we all are? It's classic bait and switch. When things go bad, bring up the never-ending "War on Terror." It's actually disgusting to me -- making political points off the tragic loss of life.

I'm angry - there's so much good we can do in this world, and this is what we get? This is leadership?

Depression over New Orleans

Many of you who know me personally, also know that I've had a long-standing interest in New Orleans, sparked by one of my college friends, Kevin Lezak, who lived there for many years and introduced me to New Orleans style jazz.

Kevin and I went back to New Orleans and shot some documentary footage over Halloween weekend. (I'll try to figure out how to get that up on the net soon). At the time, I was in shock. The destruction was so bad, and over such a huge area that it frankly was overwhelming. We met a lot of people there who were trying to figure out what to do about damaged homes, lost jobs, and the future.

At the time, I had a hope that the city would come back, that some of the problems institutionalized there might be improved in the "new" New Orleans - poverty, lack of opportunity, poor public schools, and a very high crime rate.

But, recently, I've become very depressed about the future of the city. Reports I'm getting back from my friends describe a place that is not recovering very quickly. Violence broke out at a Second Line Parade recently, a frightening and sad reminder of the dark side of New Orleans even amidst a positive event.

Most frightening, it seems like the recovery of New Orleans has become less than even second page news. People aren't talking about it anymore. I don't hear the same outpouring of support. The Bush administration seems to be doing very little, except for occasional PR appearances. Where is the leadership on this? The major redevelopment plan published by the mayor has met with mixed reaction. Yes, it's a daunting task, but this is America, this is supposed to be what we're good at -- coming up with a crazy, positive vision and then following through.

I hope people are out there doing this, and I just haven't heard about it. Because I'm afraid of losing the beauty and soul of New Orleans... and fear isn't a good place to start rebuilding anything.

Spying on Americans

I just couldn't resist this one. When supporters of the war in Iraq like Christopher Hitchens are joining an ACLU lawsuit against the government, you know you have problems. I just can't believe people aren't more up in arms about the syping without warrants issue. The defense of the administration is amazing in its brazeness. The same old strategy always seems to apply - use the term "war on terror" and it justifies anything. But, I just have to ask - what are we fighting for? Yes, I want to win and protect Americans, but I don't want to sell our whole constitution up the river. Because, if spying inside the USA without a warrant is justified under "War Powers" given to the president, despite the existence of secret court to authorize such actions, then anything would be justified. Where does the slipperry slope end, and WHEN does it end? Because there is no end to the "War on Terror," is there?

The administration says - "just trust us, we're defending you." Well, our political system was set up to build in checks and balances, just in case. And these checks and balances are being lost.

I think Orwell is laughing at us - 1984 was really 2006!

Freedom of the Press

I went to an interesting book signing over the weekend - author/scholar Reza Aslan talked about his new book, No god but God, a look into the ideas behind Islam. He was engaging and had a lot to say. I'm just getting into the book, and will report back soon on it.

In the meantime, the "Cartoon" protests in the Mid East are making headlines. My friend, Alan Lazar wrote this letter to the editor (picked up here on Andrew Sullivan's blog) that I think is a great and engaging piece on fundamentalism and religion...

There's a tendency among many writers on the whole Danish cartoon crisis to criticize the violence of the extremist Islamic response while at the same time chiding the Danish newspaper for not being sensitive on this issue - the idea of freedom of expression with 'responsibility' towards peoples' religions. There's even being the suggestion by some at the BBC, that the Muslims 'have a point' - we do not generally in the west publish Holocaust deniers, for instance, because of the sensitivity of the issue.

What nobody is saying is that it's exactly in the realm of religion that freedom of expression should be guaranteed more than anywhere else, and if it weren't we'd all still be worshipping idols and languishing in spiritual backwardness.

Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and multiple other religious figures have been outcasts or heretics or misunderstood at first, and yet, in the great sweep of human history brought us closer to God. They all had to fight existing religious authorities to make their voices heard. If the freedom to blaspheme, the freedom to question all religious ideas and authority is denied to us, we are potentially denying ourselves the chance of getting closer to God, and an understanding of God's greatness.

I'm a religious person, Jewish by birth and still identify as such. But I have read widely in other religious texts - Christianity, Islam and also Eastern religions like Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Anyone who has really thought much about God, and anyone who has real respect for God, knows that each of these religions has something good to say on what God is about.

What the fundamentalists fail to understand, and this is how they land up BETRAYING the greatness of God, is that none of us humans, small and probably insignificant creatures in a huge cosmos, really can claim to know anything about the mind of God, the nature of God, and what he or she or it truly is. All we have is hints, and all we can do is grasp, often unknowingly, to try and touch and understand God's greatness.

I went out on a boat near the Channel Islands in California on the weekend with my partner, and we were lucky enough to see a pod of Orca whales - amazing creatures. I sat and watched them and thought about this whole cartoon crisis. You know when you see these huge beautiful animals, whether they were created by God, or if God was just complicit somewhere in the great cosmic scheme that gave us such beauty and grace and majesty, you have to be angry at anyone who claims to have a monopoly on the meaning and nature of God and God's will, and what God wants. True respect for God means knowing we only have tiny glimpses of God's greatness and God's will, and we are exceptionally arrogant to ever think otherwise.

Great legal language

So, I'm becoming the clearinghouse for civil liberties lawsuits. Maybe it's because judges have the time to really work on their rhetoric. Also, frankly, it's giving me hope for the future of our Republic. This latest is from a Judge Henry Floyd, a Bush appointee, regarding Jose Padilla, a US citizen jailed as an "enemy combatant."

The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold Petitioner as an enemy combatant...

If the law in its current state is found by the president to be insufficient to protect this country from terrorist plots, such as the one alleged here, then the president should prevail upon Congress to remedy the problem.

On social security

I'm just going to add my two cents worth here on these private acounts for social secirty. I'm all for allowing people to have more choice in their lives, BUT.... the whole idea of "social security" is.... SECURITY. Has anybody looked at what social security can pay out? It's a tiny amount, just enough to keep someone housed and fed. That's what it's there for. Shifting part of it to a risky private account tied to the stock market seems like a recipe for disaster to me. What if we had another stock market shock? We could face a situation where a whole generation of reitrees are suddenly getting a lot less payouts than they'd like, and a depression-like stock market event is exactly when the government has less resources to bail them out. It seems like another case of the rich getting richer (the influx of money into the stock market will mostly help corporations and their major shareholders) and the poor taking on more, not less risk. If we're really serious about getting people to save a bit more and take responsibilty for their retirement, we should keep moving in the direction of offering tax credits for IRA's and other private accounts that already exits. Maybe simplifying the whole process, and really making the benefits clear to individuals would be the way to go if this is the real goal.

Richard Clarke is back

This caught my eye in Sunday's New York Times -- turns out Richard Clarke warned Condoleeza Rice very specifically about Al Qaeda in January of 2001 and proposed a series of steps to go after them. Why are we finding this out now? Why is nobody in this administration held accountable for their failures? It's like there's a blind spot in both the media and the American public. It's time we do something about it.

Elections in Iraq

I'm always looking for good news and reasons for optimism, and am very heartened by the elections in Iraq. After all the death and destruction over there in the past few years, it's nice to see some progress. Of course, insurgents will continue to attack, and who knows how much longer American forces will be over there, but at least there's some hope of progress now. The longer US troops stay over there, the more the perception of them as occupiers rather than liberators. The question is how to train an Iraq army, and get out of there, wihtout leaving a country on the verge of a sectarian civil war.

Guantanamo detainees in the courts

An interesting decision by U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green just announced will not be the final word. This one will probably go all the way up to the Supreme Court. But the logic here seems to make sense. You lawyers out there will have to inform me about the applicability of the 5th Ammendment to non-citizens.

Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats, that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over two hundred years...

In sum, there can be no question that the Fifth Amendment right asserted by the Guantanamo detainees in this litigation -- the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law -- is one of the most fundamental rights recognized by the U.S. Constitution.

Just kidding!

So, it turns out all the rhetoric about spreading liberty and democracy around the world - it's just rhetoric. We have now been told that it does not actually mark a new policy by our government, just a long-term desire. Wow, I'm inspired! So we can keep supporting Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Egypt with their non-freedom loving governments because it's in our self interest, while spreading "freedom" where it fits our needs. How convenient! It's not so much a long-term goal, we're now told, as a vague and unrealistic desireable end state. So much for leadership...

Freedom's on the march?

So, the President's rhetoric feels good - heck the idea of spreading liberty across the world fits with the whole concept of my blog. But the complicated question is how to achieve it. Here's a good summary of the inherent policy contradictions our government is facing on this issue.

If we actually support democratic freedom, won't we have to do something about Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt? It's an interesting dilemma - where real politik hits idealism, what does the US do? And if we attack Iran, do we really think an inherently democratic front will rise up and rebel? I think the problem there is that we installed a couple of dictators, and the current government is a reaction to that!

Can't wait to hear the administration's answer to all these questions. This is one issue where's a lot easier being on the outside than inside!