Friday, November 11, 2016
Hillary Clinton is Amazing!
Friday, October 10, 2014
Ready for Hillary? Not so much.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
US ready to attack Syria as evidence mounts that the Assad regime is responsible
(Image Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo) |
A chemical attack on a civilian population certainly demands a response. But the wrong response may be much worse than no response. Is it any wonder that most Americans do not support military action? Will the Obama administration’s evidence change people’s opinion? Only time will tell. I find it hard to be optimistic about the outcome of the action the US is likely to take.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
What really happened and who is to blame?
It is no secret that I love boats. Little boats, big boats, almost any kind of boat. So I’ve been spell bound by the story of the Costa Concordia. And of course anyone who has enjoyed a cruise on a luxury ship has to shudder to think that such a memorable and enjoyable experience could have turned into the nightmare we see repeated over and over again on the news and in the papers. But I could not help wondering, even as the media and the ship’s owners’ were quick to condemn the Capitan, how did this happen? Capitan Francesco Schettino is an experienced mariner and the ship was launched less than six years ago.
Villian or scape goat? Hard to tell at this point but the story is slowly unfolding. The media rushed to portray Capitan Schettino as a reckless grandstander showing off his magnificent ship to locals on the island of Giglio by sailing too close to its rocky shore. The Capitan early on stated that his ship struck uncharted rocks and that he did nothing wrong. Nothing I’ve read has even attempted to be a balanced look at this terrible accident. But there is clearly more to this story than reporters looking for their name on a byline are telling us. Even a story from Fox News trying to further inflame the story by reporting on a supposed mystery woman seen at the Capitan’s table earlier in the evening let slip a couple of facts that call into question the so far unchallenged charges. You can begin to understand why a judge ordered the Capitan released from jail (but keeping him under house arrest) while the investigation continues.
Here is the passage from the Fox report that starts to shift the story from the one sided outrage spewed by the news media and to provide some counter balance that hopefully will lead to the truth behind this tragedy.
The ship's operator, Crociere Costa SpA, has accused Schettino of causing the wreck by making the unapproved detour, and the captain has acknowledged carrying out what he called a "tourist navigation" that brought the ship closer to Giglio. Costa has said such a navigational "fly by" was done last Aug. 9-10, after being approved by the company and Giglio port authorities.
However, Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading maritime publication, said Wednesday its tracking of the ship's August route showed it actually took the Concordia slightly closer to Giglio than the course that caused Friday's disaster.
"This is not a black-and-white case," Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd's List, said in a statement.
"Our data suggests that both routes took the vessel within 200 yards of the impact point and that the authorized route was actually closer to shore."
So, this is not a black and white case and the owners and the port authorities had approved a similar maneuver in August that placed the ship even closer to the shoreline than where it crashed into the submerged rocks.
Then there are the charges that the Capitan abandoned ship while passengers where still aboard. Again, quoting the Fox report, here is his response.
New audio of Schettino's communications with the coast guard during the crisis emerged Wednesday, with the captain claiming he ended up in a life raft after he tripped and fell into the water.
"I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board, the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water," Schettino said, according to a transcript published Wednesday in the Corriere della Sera paper.
I’ve read lots of references to the charges of abandoning the ship but little of the statements of some crew members claiming the outcome would have been much more dire if the Capitan had not maneuvered the ship closer to shore and to shallower water after impact.
There are many more charges to be answered. Why was the crew largely untrained in the basics of evacuation? Why was a lifeboat drill postponed until the following day so passengers had no idea where to report for assistance into the lifeboats? And why where the lifeboats so late in being deployed that some could not be launched due to the listing of the stricken ship?
While I’ll be anxiously waiting to find the answers to these questions and to better understand how in this day of advanced navigational and safety technology a major ship the size of a small city could end up crushed and laying on its side on a rocky island shoreline, I doubt that I’ll read it in the mainstream press unless I’m able to read between the lines and draw out facts dropped in reports like the Fox News piece. Their attempt was to titillate. The facts revealed were secondary to the story they were hawking.
You can read the entire Fox News report here:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/19/captain-in-cruise-ship-disaster-says-fell-out-ship-during-evacuation/
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Vietnam War 1959 - 1975 : Afghanistan War 2002 - ?
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Watching Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight on PBS brought this famous quote to mind. (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/watch.html) Moyers recounts President Lyndon Johnson’s agonizing deliberations and decision to escalate the Vietnam War. The story is heartbreaking, especially in retrospect. We know now that the cost of that war damaged the United States for decades and generations. The pain of the massive loss of American and Vietnamese life is felt to this day. The program shows that Johnson was under tremendous pressure and that the decisions made were based on the perceived realities of the day. There is no way to watch and hear LBJ try to avoid escalation while being goaded by Republicans to enlarge the war, even to use atomic bombs against the North, without feeling his pain. His decisions seem somehow inevitable. But we now know they shouldn’t have been. They destroyed his Presidency and led to his decision not to run for re-election in 1968. President Johnson was aware that the war stifled his domestic agenda and regretted not being able to do more at home. What would his re-election in 1968 have accomplished if he had been a viable candidate in that election? Where would the Great Society have gone? For instance, would universal health care have followed the creation of Medicare and Medicaid? It seems a natural progression that was interrupted by the events of history.
The thought that has me feeling depressed is that you cannot watch the Moyers program without clearly seeing the parallels between Vietnam in the sixties and Afghanistan today. Like LBJ, President Obama inherited a war that was not of his making. Like LBJ, President Obama is being advised by the military that he needs to go in big for a win. Like LBJ, President Obama seems to be looking for another course of action. Like LBJ, President Obama faces tremendous political pressure by the Republicans and some in his own party to escalate the war. President Johnson feared he could not be re-elected or govern as a strong President if he was painted as weak by his opponents. We can clearly see that Johnson’s flawed conclusions were disastrous for the country and for his political future. The lives of countless Americans were devastated by his decisions made under terrible circumstances.
President Obama is clearly trying to find better choices in Afghanistan. But is he strong enough and wise enough to do so? The anti-war forces of the 60s and 70s were massive and included many voices of reason including lots of soldiers who returned and spoke out against the futility of trying to prop up a weak and corrupt government half way around the world. But it took years for those forces to finally become strong enough to sway President Nixon to withdraw. Where is the massive anti-war sentiment today? Where are the numbers that can give President Obama political cover to buck the Pentagon and the Republicans and refuse to escalate?
On October 27th the Washington Post reported that Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in Afghanistan where he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. (http://newstrust.net/stories/
Days later, on November 11th, the Washington Post reported that Ambassador Eikenberry sent two classified cables to Washington expressing deep concerns about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/
With the voices of these two influential men questioning the course the Pentagon is proposing, where are the public protests demanding an end to the war? Will enough voices of dissent be heard before it is too late? There is so little time left.
President Obama’s decision on an altered course for the nearly eight year old war in Afghanistan may well lead us down the same path that LBJ followed in South East Asia. Or perhaps he will prove himself to be strong enough to stand up to the generals and steer a better course. President Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962. Many have argued that his assignation only 13 months later was related but we will probably never know if that is true.
President Obama clearly knows history. How will our history effect his decision?