I was a competitive swimmer as a kid.  In fact, I held a state record in one of my events.  Impressed?  Don’t be.  ‘Cuz it twarn’t nuthin’.  It was as insignificant a state record as anyone could ever hold.  Why?  Because I won the first event run in the first 25-meter pool in the state (before that, they were 25 yards).  That day, the competition was not fierce in my event, and it ended in a tie for first place.  My name was entered in the record book.  And a week later, it was gone for good.

So, you see?  It’s perfectly true that I held that state record.  But it’s equally true that upon closer examination, its significance is underwhelming.  All too often, crucial government pronouncements need to be examined closely to see if they have any more substance than my state record.

CRITICAL THINKING
One of the better classes I ever took in college was something called Data Analysis.  I use its lessons regularly.  In it, amongst other things, we learned that one of the seminal, oft-cited scientific papers proving that salmon navigate by magnetic orientation was fatally flawed.  The prof contacted the authors, and got them to send him their raw data.  They used two tanks for the studies, located in the field.  And, as it turns out, the effect was only seen in one of them – the one closest to their campfire.  Those ever-fascinating fish were orienting towards the light!  But the paper’s still cited today.  Looks like their sense of smell – shown in some other studies involving water diverted for a power plant – is much more what it’s about.

If you were giving a presentation, and that prof showed up with his calculator, it was enough to rattle you, no matter how well you knew your stuff.  If only more of our journalists had been required to take a similar class!

Like this damned business of deaths in Iraq.  Now, it’s only sectarian violence if they’re shot in the back of the head?  It’s garden variety criminality if they’re shot in the face?  Nice fiction.  And it’s not really a new game: The Nixon Administration (or was it James Watt under Reagan?) instituted a new legal definition of old growth forest, that trees of a much younger age were now defined as mature (aka “Old Growth”).  The arrogance of it all is breathtaking.  Like if you call something by a different name, then it doesn’t really count.

Of course, with the deaths in Iraq, it’s not spin, it’s lying!!  With the forest?  Maybe willful ignorance.  But maybe lying, too.

There are some laws you just cannot break, not even if you’re Dick Cheney.  Gravity for one.  And, unintended consequences for another.  And when it comes to dismantling the planet’s natural systems, no amount of legislating and pontificating will negate the reality on the ground.

LOS ALAMOS BURNING
I’ve had to deal with the Environmental Protection Agency through my work over the years.  Including in 2000, the year that a mega-forest fire roared through Los Alamos.  Let me say: The EPA is founded on a good idea.  Like the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, etc. – all positive legacies from the Nixon years.  But it got maimed and mutilated during the “go-go” Reagan years.  They couldn’t abolish it, so they did the next best thing (from their POV) – they mired it down in red tape and bureaucratic ineffectiveness.  Unlike the Republicans, who start cutting agencies they don’t like off at the knees right out of the starting gate, the Clinton Administration didn’t rush in to reverse the damage.  That presidency was drawing to a close – well into its 8th year –  when Los Alamos was burning.  And the EPA was still, in important ways, a travesty.  The case of the Cerro Fire, the one that burned Los Alamos, is a good illustrative example.

Los Alamos was where the first atom bomb was invented.  They tested it a few hundred miles away, down south, not so far from Socorro.  (The Trinity Site is open to visitors twice a year, for those who would like to consider an unconventional vacation destination.  And Roswell’s not far from there!  But I digress…)

All the lead-up experiments were here amongst the norteños, on a bunch of finger mesas overlooking San Ildefonso Pueblo along the Rio Grande.  In the early days of the Manhattan Project, they dumped all their waste – from motor oil to plutonium-contaminated material – in open unlined pits.  Sometimes, they set off small explosions which embedded uranium shrapnel in the Ponderosa pines which dominate the forested landscape around the Lab.

It’s hard to fathom why the neighboring Bandelier National Monument started up their “controlled burn” back in spring 2000.  Because it had been a very dry winter, and we were having one hellacious windy season, too.  It’s no gentle breeze that makes for a smoke plume like this:

But the folks at Bandelier had their reasons.  Arguably good ones, looking at the big picture.  The entire area was ripe for fire, and stewardship agencies had been racing against time to thin and do controlled burns reduce just the kind of fire that they inadvertently set loose across the landscape.  From the excellent Bill deBuys, in a High Country News essay that summer:

The physical culprits are well known: grazing, which removed the fuels that powered forest-thinning light burns, and fire suppression combined to jack up stand densities. The fire-starved pine zone shrank as pinon and juniper crept upslope and mixed conifer species crept down. Logging probably accelerated both trends; by removing big trees, it speeded establishment of over-dense, weedy cohorts. These were not accidental outcomes. The ultimate culprit was a way of thinking: the impulse to simplify.

STRONTIUM
Strontium shares many chemical characteristics with calcium, which is one row above it on the periodic table of the elements.  (The link is to a LANL full periodic table: clicking it could alert them to this diary.) Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope, a product of the decay of uranium-235, and is common in spent nuclear fuel.  Because it is chemically similar to calcium and only slightly larger in size, it enters the same biochemical pathways as calcium – which is to say, into numerous metabolic processes, as calcium’s a central player in all sorts of cell signalling.

Strontium-90 had been taken up by the trees around Los Alamos over the years, from the shrapnel and from the soil.  It was in the smoke while the fire was burning through the lab, along with all kinds of other nasty stuff deserving big “Mister Yuck” labels.  But such things are classified…  This is a rural area, so not a whole lot of people were exposed, but I was one of the ones who was.  Home is right under that plume.

DOWNWIND
But, if you ask the government, there was nothing to worry about in that smoke.  I’m told there’s a general principle of emergency management that long-term effects take a back burner to the dictates of the emergency at hand.  Just like at the World Trade Center site after the towers fell.  The claim of “nothing to worry about” is less robust than my state record in swimming.  Such claims should always be doubted in crisis situations.  Actually, not just during crises, if you consider what’s happened to former uranium miners from Acoma & Laguna Pueblos who worked at (or lived downwind from) the Jackpile Mine.  Often, it seems best to be cautious with anyone from the government at all.

Here’s how it went down: After the fire started, EPA spent a few days on logistics, arranging for a mobile air quality lab to be brought in (from Alabama or Mississippi, IIRC).  But by the time it arrived, the fire had moved on, burning with a fury up around the Puye ruins above Santa Clara Pueblo.  The Lab’s contribution to the smoke was minimal by then.

I was working in a tribal environmental program, and so had the ear of EPA people available to take my calls.  The densest part of the smoke had been going over Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo (then known as San Juan), Picuris Pueblo, and right over Jicarita Peak, the highest point in the Pecos Wilderness, the southernmost part of the Rockies.  There was still plenty of snow left up above the timberline, and abundant soot had deposited thereon.  So, I suggested that EPA send people up to take samples of that blackened snow cap as the best way to find out what we’d all been breathing.  No dice!  These were air quality technicians, and they didn’t do snow, melted or otherwise.  That was a job for the water quality people, who had not been dispatched to this emergency.  So they sent dozens of people out (including plenty of “community relations” types), but neglected to collect the samples from the one place that could have told ’em what had gone on.  And they could have formed advisories about what would be in the water rushing down the mountains in the spring melt.  Water used for agricultural irrigation throughout the region.

So, no one sampled the smoke while the Lab proper was burning.  But an oft repeated scientific maxim is this: Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.. The EPA emergency responders at Los Alamos pretended otherwise.

Oh, but wait!!  LANL had worked cooperatively with tribes and communities in the area, and there were sensors installed to record various “parameters” of interest.  And, as it happened, the one at Ohkay Owingeh/San Juan had just been checked, calibrated and certified as working properly just a few weeks before the fire.  Lo and behold, it recorded a big spike of radioactivity.  And the “experts” consulted and decided that the monitoring station was broken and didn’t work properly.  That data point was just discarded, La-Dee-Dah.  It never appeared in any articles or presentations about the fire from the authorities.

That fall, and the next year, there was some “unusual” stuff, like friggin’ Americium fer chrissakes, found in agricultural produce under the plume area.  Americium is a “synthetic” element, not known to occur in nature.  But no one was ever advised against eating locally-grown produce.

There was a public information meeting that spring, while the fire was still smoldering a little.  The Forest Service (USFS), the EPA and the NM Environment Department (NMED) all gave presentations. 

• The forest service reviewed the air quality data from another fire, focusing on all the unhealthy stuff dumped into the air by any garden-variety forest fire
• NMED gave us a standard litany related to domestic hazmat.  400 families lost their homes in that fire – homes full of synthetic carpet, paint, and various commonly used household products that put all kinds of toxic particles and fumes in the smoke.
• Last was someone from EPA, and they reported the data from analysis of the air sampling they’d done.  They had found that there was nothing in the air samples to worry about.  They neglected to mention that they had taken no samples while the fire line was racing through the Lab.  Which makes their statement more disingenuous than my swimming record.

Clearly somebody wasn’t thinking about how these arguments would come across, strung together like that.  I’d heard all I needed to for my job, and was getting disgusted.  I almost walked out the door, but turned back as soon as left the room.  I raised my hand, and was recognized right away.

Your presentations would have us believe that bad toxic materials are released when a ponderosa forest burns, and when private homes burn.  But that the smoke that came out of Los Alamos was “clean”.  My question?  Do you actually expect that to pass the laugh test?

I didn’t really get an answer – they just changed the subject ASAP.  But that’s OK – it was a rhetorical question, after all.

DeBuys closes his HCN essay like this.  Always, it would seem, the people with valuable insights are much more modest in putting them forth than overconfident, strident ideologues:

Nevertheless, the debates will rage, and it will be interesting to see if anyone acknowledges the 600-pound gorilla frowning in the background of every discussion.  That gorilla is our ignorance. We don’t have complete answers to the conundrums we face. We really have not learned how to live in this place. Our land-management infrastructure (in which I include environmental and industry interests) is presently incapable of dealing effectively with the fuel and fire challenge. This inability is perfectly mirrored by the sustained lunacy of mortgagors, insurance companies, and the general citizenry.

How else should we characterize subdivisions and second homes in the piney woods – frame houses with shake or tar-based roofs, pine straw lawns, and doghair yards? Enforcement of a fire-savvy building code might have cut the losses in Los Alamos by half, but a town that leads the world in Ph.Ds per capita never thought the matter through. Good luck to the rest of us.

If we were to acknowledge the gorilla of our ignorance, we might start by putting aside the language of “land management.” We rarely manage; we mostly shove and bludgeon, or we walk away. A few noteworthy individuals have learned to nudge, and go with the flow, and if the rest of us wanted to be like them, we would approach every land treatment as an experiment, and we would experiment explicitly with different approaches in different places. We would monitor everything. We would expect to be surprised. We would become compulsive learners. We would study humility. We would agree that we are all in this together.

Thoughtful management?  Good luck on that!  Four years later, the following story was held for a couple of weeks, released in the hubbub the weekend before the Presidential election, where it was picked up by few news outlets:

Looking for a place to grow marijuana and live, rent-free, in a cave with all the creature comforts of home? Why not a canyon, tucked away within the 40 square miles of the nation’s top-secret nuclear weapons research facility in Los Alamos?

That’s where Roy Michael Moore, 56, was recently discovered living in a cave equipped with a glass front door, a wood stove, a bed, electricity-generating solar panels with batteries to store the power, and lights.

And this happened with security-conscious Republicans in charge!

From all I know of our flagship top secret weapons lab (beyond this whopper), its security measures are way short of stellar.  They’ve added vehicle checkpoints when you’re entering Los Alamos since then.  But curiously, none for those departing.  In some places, one mostly worries about what people might smuggle in.  And so, we have metal detectors at federal courthouses, and so on.  But Los Alamos? All the WMD-related stuff is already there.  You’d think they might want to protect against it leaving.  But what would I, just an ordinary citizen, know about that sort of technical stuff?

LIVE CULTURE BIOLAB
For all the billions being spent on high end security, I’ve long figured that someone who wanted to mess up the U.S. could travel around through drought areas with a Bic Lighter, and do immeasurable damage.  For a bio-attack, you’d infect someone who enters the country (while incubating), and send ’em to a conference with people from all over the country.

Speaking of bioweapons:  In early 2001, Los Alamos held hearings around the region about their plans to open a Biohazard Level 3 lab, which would keep live cultures of various potential bio-weapons pathogenic agents (anthrax, plague, influenza – 7 in all).  Oh joy!  A new 400-pound gorilla in the neighborhood!  My boss sent me to that meeting, asking for a report.  It was a lively three-ring circus.  But it is also a story for another day.  Suffice it to say that had they found a lab like the Los Alamos BioLab in Iraq, it would have been proof of WMD’s, fer sure!

Cross-posted

Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe. But there’s good news from the Democrats, today, on a few different fronts.

First, and a hit tip to Granny Doc, the Associated Press is reporting:

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner intends to run for the Senate next year, Democratic officials said Wednesday, assuring his party a competitive race for a seat long in Republican hands.

Warner scheduled an e-mail announcement of his plans for Thursday. The seat is currently held by Republican Sen. John Warner, who recently said he will retire at the end of his current term after 30 years in office.

This should be as close to a gimme as the Democrats will get, next year. Only Jeanne Shaheen, if she runs against Sununu in New Hampshire, should be as easy a pick-up. This would also mean two Democratic senators from formerly deep red Virginia.

But the news gets even better.

From Reuters:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid vowed on Wednesday to block former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson from becoming attorney general if President George W. Bush nominates him to replace Alberto Gonzales.

Congressional and administration officials have described Olson as a leading contender for the job as chief U.S. law enforcement officer, but Reid declared, “Ted Olson will not be confirmed” by the Senate.

“He’s a partisan, and the last thing we need as an attorney general is a partisan,” Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told Reuters in a brief hallway interview on Capitol Hill.

Olson is very smart, and very connected, and his wife was murdered by the 9/11 terrorists, for which he deserves great sympathy, but he’s also a very sleazy man. Read a book about the actual right wing conspiracy that actually did hound the Clintons, and you’ll read about Ted Olson. He wouldn’t be the complete lapdog attorney general that Abu Gonzales was, but he might actually be worse. Because he can think for himself. And there is no reason to think he would be any more an honorable or professional attorney general than was Abu. Kudos to Senator Reid!

And then, there’s the sudden tough talk about Iraq…

The New York Times reports that Democratic leaders are opposed to the Petraeus smoke-and-mirrors plan:

Senate Democratic leaders today called the Bush administration’s plan to keep 130,000 or more troops in Iraq through mid-2008 unacceptable and promised to challenge the approach through legislation next week.

Several proposals were being weighed, including one requiring the American military role to be shifted more to training and counterterrorism in order to cut the force more deeply than President Bush is expected to promise on Thursday. Another would guarantee troops longer respites from the battlefield, effectively cutting the numbers available for combat.

Even if those proposals were able to draw the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster – a level that has eluded Democrats this year – any real strictures on the president would face a veto, frustrating war critics and raising the prospect that roughly as many American troops might be in Iraq a year from now as were there a year ago.

Still, the Democrats tried to get ahead of President Bush’s planned Thursday night speech on Iraq, and to press what they see as a political advantage in opposing the war during the months before the 2008 elections, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and two party leaders on military issues accused Mr. Bush of embracing “more of the same” and trying to pass off as a significant policy shift a troop drop that would probably have occurred without a policy change.

Will they actually do something, this time? Will they hold the line? We’ll see. But they’re at least saying the right things, for the moment. Clearly, they know we’re here. Clearly, they’re trembling! Not bad for our first day! And maybe they will soon get on board with Armando’s plan to defund. After that, impeach!

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has released their latest annual Strategic Survey report for 2007 likening the impact of global warming to nuclear war according to a story in Reuters today. The report states:

The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition … that if the emission of greenhouse gases … is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic — on the level of nuclear war.

The IISS is a forty-nine year old British think tank that describes itself as “the world’s leading authority on political military conflict”.

Despite what some naysayers would have us believe, global warming is not just the concern of ‘treehuggers’ and environmentalists. The Security Survey 2007 makes it clear that global warming is a national security issue for every country on the planet. The report’s executive summary states:

International moves towards combating global warming indicates recognition of the need to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. Even if effective measures are adopted there will still be unavoidable impacts on the environment, economies and human security… The security dimension will come increasingly to the forefront as countries begin to see falls in available resources and economic vitality, increased stress on their armed forces, greater instability in regions of strategic import, increases in ethnic rivalries, and a widening gap between rich and poor.

The world has already been witness to resource driven conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan and in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Reuters notes the IISS found global warming’s “impact was already being felt — particularly in conflicts in Kenya and Sudan — and more was expected in places from Asia to Latin America as dwindling resources led to competition between haves and have nots.” IISS specialists acknowledged that mitigating the threat of global warming is more difficult than identifying it.

The IISS report predicts that climate change will cause states to collapse and reduce the international community’s ability to “tackle the causes and to reduce the effects of global warming.” In addition, “state failures would increase the gap between rich and poor and heighten racial and ethnic tensions which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict.”

Overall, it said 65 countries were likely to lose over 15 percent of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world’s population was expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people.

Urban areas would not be exempt from the fallout as falling crop yields due to reduced water and rising temperatures would push food prices higher, IISS said.

“Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three,” it added.

Addressing global warming and mitigating the impact of climate change is a national security issue for every nation in the world, including the United States of America. The tired arguments about how dealing with global warming will hurt the economy do not consider how the world economy will crater as the earth continues to heat up. I suspect that the ever-widening gap between rich and poor is part of the wealthy’s strategy to insulate themselves from the impending planetary disaster. Securing more oil from Iraq, the Arctic, or Canadian oil tar sands is not going to make the United States be better situated to muddle through the climate meltdown. Unless we start rolling back our rampant consumer society, the war in Iraq is just a prelude to the future resource wars to come.

A short, somewhat meandering, but still memorable flick of Angela talkin’.

Which she does, as always, very well…

Enjoy, comment, discuss amongst yourselves….be excellent to each other.

Dr. Turing will return this evening to give belated ponies!

My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

^{Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers}

John Coltrane playing sax0phone. One of my favorite things. Zen. Somewhere else.
Transcendent. Terrifying. Alone. Everything.

If you’ve never experienced Trane, here’s a taste,
blowing what else, My Favorite Things.
The soprano… sharp and new. So outside, it’s inside.
Love the way musicians talk. I always thought that if God existed,
his spirit was channeling through these cats…

okay… we’ve launched… and this is not your kid’s MySpace…
it’s way more than politics… it’s open… it’s zen, and it’s not…
there is still some ass-whomping to be had here… so don’t take a seat..
keep on your feet: play, talk and, as buhdy commands, be excellent to each other….

oh… forgot to ask: what are your favorite things?

In Honor of buhdydharma’s successful move to Mexico and blog launch:

Please Drop The Torta
by Dog Staring Intently at You

So, I noticed you got a torta there. Nice torta, I might say. You got that at Ruchi’s, or is that possibly from Torta Mundo? See, I am what you could say a connoisseur of tortas. I even spotted you holding that torta from across the Jardín. But I noticed, you have not dropped the torta.

Okay, we both got all day, but that torta needs to take a fall. While you talk to your friend there, that torta is just dangling in your hand. You neglect your torta, while I cherish the ground it walks on. Speaking of the ground, please drop that torta there.

How can you resist my puppy seal stare? I worked on this sad look for hours back in the old days in Colonia San Rafael. It was not until I was able to bring tears to even the most hardened hearts with my big brown eyes did I earn the right to be a street dog in el Centro. Yet, you are resistant to my well-honed skills, refusing to drop that torta.

Please drop the torta. No? Oh please, oh please, oh please? Still no?
That’s cool. This one time, back in September, this totally drunk dude spilled trying to sit down on that very bench. And this dude, right, he totally dumps a whole box of pizza all over the ground when he bit it. I’m more of a torta dog myself, as you well know, but this was from Juanita’s. That’s choice. But the dude gets up, all pissed off you know, because of the pizza, and starts just flailing away with his arms and screaming and jumping up and down. Well, you know what kind of effect that could have on a drunk dude, and he totally blows chunks all over the bench. But get this, he totally misses the pizza. I ate well that night. I was hoping this long rambling tale would lure you to sleep, so you would drop that torta, helping to bring back those good well-fed times.

Oh, that was just cruel. Did you just pull off some bread for that pigeon, that rat with wings, just to spite me? What do you have against other mammals? Are you leading me to believe that if I walk around like a bad caricature of a 70s pimp going cooo cooo cooo, I am then worthy of that torta? Sir, please, let’s digress, and just drop that torta.

We’ve been at this for, what, 10 minutes now, and not only have you not dropped that torta, you haven’t even eaten it. While I have stared holes through you, using all my Jedi skills to get you to drop that torta, you have regaled your friend there with the latest cantina gossip. That’s great what that dude said after his fifth tequila, but you have wandered off from the issue at hand, the torta. And while she found what he said flattering, while in its own right funny as all heck, that jamon con queso amarillo should be the center of all of our attentions. I know it is mine. Please drop the torta.

No? Oh, well, okay then, I will just sit here and stare and stare and stare and stare…

——-

¡Viva Mexico cabrón, don’t ever be the dog with two tortas, or with none!

Thank you Joan Baez!

This diary is to express my admiration for Joan Baez, to thank her for all she has done, and to draw inspiration from her for the struggles that lie ahead.  Joan’s singing can fill me with the sublimest emotion and her voice and spirit have shepherded me through trial and tribulation over a lifetime punctuated by tragedy – as all of ours are.  Her voice washes through my troubled soul like a river of grace and mercy.  And one can’t help but admire and be moved by her personal courage and commitment to humanitarian and progressive causes.  She has not only fought, but has led us through many righteous battles.  She is a warrior for humanity, possessing the voice of an angel and the heart of a lion.

Her voice is like a person who has discovered all the secrets of nature and then utters them back reverently and elegantly while nature listens and nods in approval.

~ so eloquently put by my good friend Norwegian Chef

Joan Baez ~ Oh Freedom – Turn Me Around

At a time in our country’s history when it was neither safe nor fashionable, Joan put herself on the line countless times, and her life’s work was mirrored in her music. She sang about freedom and Civil Rights everywhere, from the backs of flatbed trucks to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963. In 1964, she withheld 60% of her income tax from the IRS to protest miltary spending, and participated in the birth of the Free Speech movement at UC Berkeley. A year later she co-founded the Institute For The Study of Nonviolence near her home in Carmel Valley. In 1966, Joan Baez stood in the fields alongside Cesar Chavez and migrant farm workers striking for fair wages, and opposed capital punishment at San Quentin during a Christmas vigil. The following year she turned her attention to the draft resistance movement. As the war in Vietnam escalated in the late ’60s and early ’70s, she traveled to Hanoi with the U.S.-based Liaison Committee and helped establish Amnesty International on the West Coast.

~ excerpted from Joan’s official biography

Throughout the turbulent 60s Joan helped millions of my generation both to resist the rightwing madness and to heal from the many terrible tragedies that befell those of us in the civil rights movement and the resistance to the Vietnam War.  She was our Florence Nightingale.  Her ability to soothe and heal were (and remain) phenomenal.

Joan gave me one of the highlights of my life

I was a young gay man in San Francisco in the late 1970’s, the Golden Age of gay liberation.  It all came crashing to a halt the day Dan White assassinated Harvey Milk and George Moscone in 1979.  It was like the day Kennedy was shot for San Franciscans.

A hundred thousand or more gathered in the Castro that evening with candles, and we marched down Market Street to City Hall.  Politicians and activists spoke, but the purpose of the meeting was the gathering and the crying together.  Strangers hugged and cried on each others’ shoulders.

Then Joan Baez took the mike on the City Hall balcony, and sang Amazing Grace in the purest soaring a capella I’ve ever heard in my life.  It was as if an angel had descended to give voice to all the sorrow and hope our hearts could hold.  She mesmerized the huge crowd, and afterward we all felt visited by grace.  It was one of the few truly spiritual experiences of my life.

OPOL, I hope you and Daniel bring home similar memories from DC.  I’ve had the good fortune of meeting your amazing son, and am glad you’re taking him.  We need his conscience in decades to come.  Wish I could come the 2000 miles, but it’s not in the cards.  Like others, I’ll be there with you in spirit.

~ a recent comment from my dear friend Dallasdoc

Joan Baez ~ Amazing Grace

Joan Baez ~ Where have all the flowers gone?

Bob Dylan & Joan Baez ~ Blowing in the wind

Joan Baez ~ Marching up to freedom land

From the depths of my soul and the bottom of my heart, thank you dear sweet angel Joan Baez.

P.S.  Join us this Saturday, September 15th in Washington D.C. as we honor Joan’s spirit by marching against our runaway outlaw government!  Kossacks are meeting up at the site of the National Christmas Tree on the ellipse (15th & E Street) beginning at 11:00 a.m.  We’ll join the march at high noon.

Additional info. on rideshares, room and board, the march, etc. is available at Road2DC.

Four stories in the news at 4 o’clock. Simple, huh?

1. Two earthquakes shook Sumatra, Indonesia today, Bloomberg reports. “An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck near the coast of Indonesia’s Bengkulu province on Sumatra island, prompting countries bordering the Indian Ocean to evacuate people from coastal areas amid fears of a tsunami. ¶ The earthquake hit at 6:10 p.m. local time at a depth of 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. The Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency lifted its tsunami warning two hours later, though issued a second warning following a 6.6 magnitude quake in the same area at 9:40 p.m. It later lifted that warning too… ¶ Today’s quake, which shook buildings from Jakarta to Singapore, killed at least one person in Indonesia and injured five others.” Xinhua reports seven people were killed and “the number of fatalit[ies] was expected to rise as there were many collapsed buildings still uncounted.”

2. The Telegraph is reporting that the United States has confirmed an Israeli air strike on Syria. “A US official has confirmed that Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike ‘deep inside’ Syria, escalating tensions between the two countries. The target of the strike last Thursday remained unclear but Israeli media reported that a shipment of Iranian arms crossing Syria for use by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was attacked… ¶ Another theory gaining ground yesterday was that Israel was deliberately attacking the Russian-made Pantsyr air defence system recently bought by Damascus. The sale includes provision for the Pantsyr system to be shipped on to Iran and it is possible the Israeli attack was co-ordinated with America to probe the effectiveness of the system. It is believed that Iran would use the Pantsyr system to defend its nuclear facilities.”

3. According to The Guardian, Russia has announced it has created the ‘father of all bombs’. ORT First Channel, the state-run Russian television, claimed the bomb is four times more deadly than the US’s ‘Mother of all Bombs’. “Russia’s military yesterday announced that it had successfully tested a lethal new air-delivered bomb, which it described as the world’s most powerful non-nuclear weapon. ¶ In what appears to be the Kremlin’s latest display of military might, officials said Moscow had developed a new thermobaric bomb to add to its already potent nuclear arsenal… ¶ Last night’s announcement comes at a time of growing tension between Russia and the west”. The Telegraph adds the following from Russian General Alexander Rushkin. “‘Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon,’ he said. ‘The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature,’ ORT added. ‘All that is alive merely evaporates.’ Despite its destructive qualities, the bomb is environmentally friendly, Gen Rushkin said.” That’s right — environmentally friendly mass murder. Good to see Moscow going green.

4. Hindus across India protested yesterday against the Indian government’s plan to proceed with the $560 million Sethu Samudram project that will dredge a ship channel through the Rama Setu (Adam’s Bridge) — a 30 mile chain of limestone shoals, between the islands of Mannar, in northwestern Sri Lanka, and Rameswaram, off the southeastern coast of India. According to Sahara Samay, “Traffic came to grinding halt at several places in the national capital today with the Vishva Hindu Parishad [World Hindu Council] calling for a chakka jam protesting the government’s plan to go ahead with the Sethusamudram project, which envisages destroying a portion of the ancient Ram Setu bridge… Hindu groups have called on the government to stop the project, saying it will demolish a bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, believed to have been built by Lord Ram.” Along with the VHP, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party), and other groups blocked traffic and train service according to The Hindu and other sources. In New Delhi, according to the Times of India the blockades began at 8 a.m. and “a number of activists, including some local leaders of VHP and BJP, were also detained.” Adding to the Hindu parties anger, the Hindustan Times reports, the “Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Wednesday stating there was no historical and scientific evidence to establish the existence of Lord Ram or the other characters in Ramayana… According to the ASI, the bridge is a natural formation made up of shoals and sand bars.”

One more story below the fold…

5. BBC News is reporting that Led Zeppelin has confirmed a one-off reunion concert. “The surviving members of legendary rock group Led Zeppelin are to reform for a star-studded tribute concert in London. Singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones will play at the show to remember the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. ¶ The one-off concert, the trio’s first performance for 19 years, will take place at the O₂ arena on 26 November. Tickets will cost £125 and be allocated by ballot. Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman and Paolo Nutini will also perform. Ertegun, who signed Led Zeppelin in 1968, died last year. ¶ The place of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980, will be taken by his son Jason.” It’s time to Ramble On!

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