newshour
Hang them high, high. high and then some
Sep 8th
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu September 07, 2010 In normal, civilized and sane times, one can postulate a solid, airtight defence against the imposition of the death penalty for murder. No problem. However, times, albeit living conditions, in T&T are abnormal, uncivilized and insane to the nth degree; ergo, any defence against the death penalty under [...]
Chile Dispatch: Trapped Miners Sent Small Luxuries, but Pine for More
Sep 8th
COPIAPO, Chile | On Tuesday afternoon, a city of Copiapo truck dumped a fresh load of firewood next to a small cluster of tents where several trapped miners’ families have spent the last month camping on the rocky ground.
They need the wood. At night the temperature here in the Atacama desert drops to about 40 degrees.
The main entrance to the San Jose gold and copper mine is not a very pleasant place to camp. It’s noisy and hot during the day, and also a little chaotic. Heavy trucks deliver supplies and equipment all day long, often kicking up a fresh cloud of dust that drifts over the small tent city. Some of the tents are set up so close to the road that it’s a wonder that they don’t get run over during the night.
The whole plateau is covered with huge pieces of granite that have been hauled out of the mine as the tunnels and shafts were excavated over the years. In some places the piles are 60 feet high. Hundreds of posters, flags, and signs are attached to the rocks, as well as simple shrines bearing the names and pictures of the 33 trapped miners, offering encouragement and expressions of love.
A small army of journalists patrols the grounds, looking for fresh angles on a story that’s likely to last at least two more months. A camera crew setting up for an interview quickly attracts a small crowd of other reporters who wonder if they’re missing anything.
A daily 1 p.m. news conference is a major source of information, but Tuesday it offered little more than assurances that all was going well and an update on how deeply one of the rigs drilling an escape shaft has penetrated the mountain. Today, it’s about 325 feet down after eight days of drilling, which translates into about 2,000 feet to go.
Another rig is working to enlarge one of the three 4-inch tubes that rescuers on the surface have been using to communicate with the miners. That effort has reached about 30 feet down so far. And a third rig — a huge oil-drilling platform — is expected to arrive in pieces aboard some three dozen trucks on Wednesday.
It can drill much faster than the existing machines, but since it’s starting later, it’s not expected to complete a rescue shaft much before the other machines. The government is cautious about when any shaft might reach the miners. Their most optimistic estimate is mid-November, but other sources say it should be sooner.
The miners were treated on Tuesday to a video feed of a soccer game between the Chilean national soccer team and Ukraine. A small projector and a rolled up screen had been successfully sent down the tube. Several families on the surface shared the experience separately in a tent on the surface.
But despite the entertainment, some of the miners are beginning to rebel against government rules that only allow letters with positive messages to be sent underground.
They are also unhappy that no alcohol or tobacco is being supplied. Dr. Jorge Dias Anaiz, who is in charge of the 14 doctors overseeing the miners’ health, told the NewsHour that such restrictions are necessary to maintain the miners’ mental stability during the long ordeal they face in the coming months.
They will have to assist in their own rescue by moving an estimated 4,000 tons of rock that will spill out of a relief shaft before they can be hauled to the surface. Anaiz says the men are in good physical health now, and will have to stay that way for the labor that lies ahead.
We’ll have more from Tom Bearden on the Chilean miners’ story on Wednesday’s PBS NewsHour.
Gov2.0: Challenge.Gov Aims to Make Government More User-Friendly
Sep 8th
Two of the most consistent themes at this week’s Gov2.0 Summit is that government is bad at making the things it needs and it spends far too much on bad technology.
“Think about on a daily basis whether you’re booking a flight, your favorite restaurant or a hotel reservation, it’s done online; it happens in a couple of minutes,” Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, said in an interview with the NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan. “Yet when you’re dealing with government, you have to stand in line, you’ve got to turn in a paper form or you’ve got to essentially hold on the phone.”
The solution, according to Gov2.0 advocates, is for the government to simply do less and allow citizens and (especially) software developers to build more.
But getting ad hoc communities to create services that usually come from the government is complicated, and when civic-minded technologists here talk about it, the conversation often strays into social psychology and economics and building better ecosystems.
“Oftentimes, it’s about asking what can the government not do that can be done better by these ecosystems,” Aneesh Chopra, the federal government’s chief technology officer, told the NewsHour. “The government’s role is to find data and release it.”
To that end, Chopra and Kundra on Tuesday unveiled Challenge.gov, a site built to organize app contests that have been successful in cities such as Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New York. The government’s two top technologists also told the NewsHour who is in charge of making the contents of President Obama’s BlackBerry public.
Hari Sreenivasan contributed to this report. Follow him on Twitter.
1 in 5 American Adults Still Smoke, CDC Report Shows
Sep 8th
After decades of decline, the smoking rate in the United States has plateaued over the past five years. About one in five American adults is a smoker, according to a study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control. That percentage has remained virtually unchanged since 2005.
Another study also released Tuesday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that despite an increasing number of laws that restrict smoking in public places, about 40 percent of nonsmoking adults and 54 percent of children still show evidence of tobacco exposure through secondhand smoke. Virtually all children who live with smokers — 98 percent — have some exposure to the toxic chemicals.
“We hope that this report is a wakeup call for the continuing threat that tobacco use poses,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden told reporters.
The research parsed out many of the ways in which smoking rates vary widely by state, and by factors such as education level and gender:
• Men are much more likely to smoke than women are — 24 percent as compared to 18 percent.
• Twenty-six percent of people who have less than a high-school education smoke, as compared to 25 percent of high school graduates, 11 percent of college graduates and six percent of people with a graduate degree.
• Thirty-one percent of people who live below the poverty level smoke, while only 20 percent of those who earn above the poverty level do so.
Looking at the numbers geographically, more people smoke in the Midwest and Southeastern states; fewer do so in the Northeast and Western states. Utah and California have the lowest percentage of smokers, at 10 and 13 percent respectively; West Virginia and Kentucky have the highest percentage, at 26 percent.
In a statement to reporters, Frieden attributed the stall in smoking’s decline to increased efforts by tobacco companies to sell their products, along with a lag in some states’ smoking cessation efforts.
Frieden said that the industry has developed new ways to target cigarettes to young smokers, has deceived smokers by suggesting that “light” cigarettes are less harmful than others, and has sold some cigarettes at deep discounts as “loss leaders” to encourage people to keep smoking.
Frieden also said that more money should be spent on smoking cessation programs. He said that states take in about $25 billion in excise taxes on cigarettes, but only spend about $700 million of that on anti-smoking programs.
“While government efforts are often standing still or even moving backwards, the tobacco industry is not standing still,” he said.
Gary Giovino, a community health researcher at the University at Buffalo, said he agreed with Frieden’s analysis.
He added that some researchers also believe that a “hardening” of the smoker population might also be contributing to the stalled decline: The “low-hanging fruit” of people who could quit more easily have already done so, and so the smokers who are left are those who say they can’t or won’t quit. Giovino says that he hasn’t seen evidence of that hypothesis in his own population studies, but that some researchers who look at people who enter smoking-cessation programs have suggested it.
Meanwhile, the decline in smoking among U.S. teens has also stalled. According to research released last month by the CDC, teen smoking has not decreased by a statistically significant amount since 2006.
For Iraqi Refugees, Survival Can Come at a High Price
Sep 8th
I am among the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees still living far from home more than seven years after the U.S.-led coalition took over Baghdad. This is one story among hundreds of thousands.
In August, I visited my family in Syria and Jordan, where they have been residing since they fled Iraq in 2007 after a series of threats and losses of loved ones. A few months earlier, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and had moved to New York City where I was later granted asylum.
In my last weekend in Syria, a group of young Iraqi men suggested we go to a party at a night club on the outskirts of Damascus. One of my companions said to me: “Here you’ll find the most beautiful Iraqi refugee women … and they are very affordable.”
As we walked in, the stage was packed with women wearing heavy make up and revealing clothes. An Iraqi singer was performing live and the surrounding tables were occupied mostly by Arab men from the wealthy Gulf States and surrounding countries. Alcohol was being served and smoking was permitted.
A couple of hours into the night, the singer stepped aside and men from the crowd started joining the women on stage. Two women approached our table, asking if they could join us. From their accents, we knew they were Iraqi. Once they realized we were Iraqi too, they started talking about Iraq, the war, President Bush, Iran, al-Qaida and their lives in Syria.
The two women were cousins: Ananas, a 34-year-old pharmacist, and Dunya, a 28-year-old poetess. Ananas first came to Syria in 2006 after her brother and father were shot dead by a U.S. military convoy while he was driving during curfew hours. “They were all I had. Once they were gone, my uncles were forcing me to marry my cousin. He was 21 years older than me and already married. I escaped two days before the wedding date, got on a bus and came to Syria,” she said.
As for Dunya, she got married at the age of 16. “My husband was killed by armed militiamen in our front yard. I saw it … I was looking from the kitchen window. They stormed into our house after and raped me. I didn’t try to resist because I didn’t want them to go upstairs and find my daughter and hurt her. She was only 9 at the time.” Dunya then fled to Syria with her daughter in 2007 and united with her cousin Ananas, who had already found her way into the sex industry.
When I asked about Dunya’s daughter, she said, “Her name is Tamara. She is doing alright now. Oh, she is right there in fact,” as she started waving at a young girl, now 11-years-old, with wavy hair and wearing make up.
Tamara was on the stage dancing and was occasionally joined by men to talk or dance with her. When I asked Dunya whether she worried about Tamara losing her innocence, her reply was: “Innocence? That is not something for our children. It may be for the children in America or Europe but not us. Tamara is going to grow up in a society that judges her, restricts her and takes advantage of her. Being innocent is only going to make it worse and turn her life harder.”
Dunya said she is willing to marry Tamara to a man who would look after her.
Displaced Iraqi women — once removed from the support system in their homeland — become easy prey for the sex industry. Home, tribe, community and extended family are what provided that support system, and without it they sometimes turn to prostitution for survival.
A Syrian security official, who asked not to be identified, said thousands of Iraqi women have faced arrest, jail and forced deportation after being charged with prostitution.
A few days after meeting Ananas and Dunya, I drove to Amman, Jordan, the host country of the second largest Iraqi refugee population, after Syria. During my two weeks in Amman, it became clear there was a class division within the Iraqi community.
Jordan, like neighboring Syria, admitted Iraqis as “guests” or “tourists” and did not grant them refugee status, as neither one of these countries ratified the 1951 U.N. convention on refugees. Jordan, however, has set up a system in which Iraqis are granted residency once they deposit $100,000 in special government accounts.
So while Jordan can be a safe haven for investors and businessmen, the high cost of living and lack of access to legal work have imposed serious financial challenges on the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees living there today.
There also appeared to be two groups of Iraqi refugees: those who lost everything and have nothing left to return to in Iraq, and others who fear losing everything if they return. And for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families in Jordan and Syria, the uncertainty over their future is far from over.
Hamza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Under a grant from the Ford Foundation, he accompanied NewsHour special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro during his reporting on the struggles of Iraqi refugees now living in Jordan:
Hari Sreenivasan contributed to this post.
Political Checklist: Polls Hold More Bad Midterm News for Democrats
Sep 8th
In this week’s edition of the Political Checklist, Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill spoke with political editor David Chalian about new polls that bring more bad news for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, as well as President Obama’s big economic initiatives rolling out this week and his rare news conference this Friday.
At Gov 2.0 Summit, Democratizing Data Is the Watchword
Sep 7th
The Rundown is covering this week’s Gov2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C., where a mix of technologists, activists and industry professionals have gathered to talk about methods to run governments in more open and useful manners.
Gov2.0 is a catch-all term coined by publisher Tim O’Reilly. It includes everything from government transparency and open data, to procurement reform and new kinds of diplomacy.
At the core is the idea that government should act more like a platform for development, on which citizens can build the services they need, and less like a vending machine of services.
“The idea of being a platform provider is that you do the least possible, not the most possible to enable others to build on what you do,” O’Reilly said in a video advocating open data for public transit agencies:
Carl Malamud is one of the forerunners of this movement. In his opening keynote address, he called for three reforms the federal government needs now:
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Finish the open gov revolution. “We need open data standards,” Malamud said. This means both releasing government data in regular formats that can be read by machines, and changing public record laws so public information ends up online before someone asks.
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National digitization: “If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can launch the national archive into cyberspace.” On top of scanning government-held documents, Malamud called for copyright reform, so taxpayers have access to information they pay for.
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An open systems revolution: “Our federal government spends $89.1 billion a year on information technology. Much of that is wasted effort. We build systems so badly it is crippling the federal government.” Malamud called for a computer commission to conduct agency by agency reviews, and to change standard practices from “over reliance on proprietary systems” to one based on open source foundations.
Australia Cobbles Together New Government
Sep 7th
It took more than two weeks of horse trading to win the votes of independent members of parliament, but Australia now has a government with the narrowest of majorities. And that is an accurate reflection of the election last month that basically produced a tie.
Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard gets to keep her job, even though her party lost its majority in the House of Representatives in the Aug. 21 election. With promises of largesse to rural regions, she managed to woo three independents and a member of the Green Party to give her coalition. It will have 76 seats in the lower House, a one vote edge.
How long her government will remain in office will be the tantalizing question for months to come in Canberra, but the Associated Press quoted Gillard this morning saying:
“Labor is prepared to govern. Labor is prepared to deliver stable, effective and secure government for the next three years.”
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, part of Gillard’s bargaining included a promise to give a government job to the prime minister she ousted earlier this year, Kevin Rudd. But she did not commit to making the Chinese-speaking Rudd, who is popular in Washington, her foreign minister.
Tuesday: Petraeus Warns Against Quran Burning; Obama to Call for Tax Breaks
Sep 7th
Indonesian demonstrators rally outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta to protest a Florida church’s plans to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Photo by Aldo Utama/AFP/Getty Images.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday that an American church’s threat to burn copies of the Quran could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.
“Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” Petraeus said in an e-mail to the Associated Press.
Petraeus’ comments followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the anniversary of 9/11.
The pastor of the church, Terry Jones, told CNN on Tuesday that while the congregation plans to go through with its plans, the church is “weighing” its intentions.
The Washington Post also reports Tuesday on how American Muslims are planning to tone down their Eid celebrations marking the end of the Ramadan month of fasting as the holiday falls this year around the 9/11 anniversary.
Obama to Call for New Tax Breaks
President Obama will call on Congress to pass new tax breaks allowing U.S. businesses to write off 100 percent of their new capital investments through 2011. An administration official said the tax breaks would save businesses $200 billion over two years, allowing companies to have more cash on hand.
The president will outline the proposal Wednesday during a speech on the economy in Cleveland.
Marketplace reporter Scott Tong explains the plan:
“[I]f you’re for it, you argue that this creates jobs and contracts for the people who make stuff, like bulldozers and computers. If you’re against it, you argue this may not change much.”
Jefferson Thomas, One of ‘Little Rock Nine,’ Dies
Jefferson Thomas, one of the “Little Rock Nine” who provoked a major civil rights battle when they integrated Arkansas’ largest public high school in 1957, died Sept. 5 at a care facility in Columbus, Ohio.
New Polls Show Democrats in Deep Hole
Sep 7th
President Obama walks to the Oval Office on Monday after returning from a trip to Milwaukee. Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
The new Washington Post/ABC News and Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls released Tuesday provide a double whammy of bad news for Democrats and the Obama White House eight weeks before the votes are counted and control of Congress is determined.
If you’re looking for a silver lining for the Democrats in these numbers, it simply isn’t there. The one thing Democrats will, no doubt, try to highlight is that there’s no great love affair with Republicans among the voters. The part Democrats are likely to leave out is that it appears not to matter.
Some highlights from the Washington Post/ABC News poll:
–Among likely voters, 53 percent say they would vote for a generic Republican candidate for Congress this year vs. 40 percent who say they would vote for the generic Democrat on a ballot. That 13-point GOP advantage is the largest in the poll’s history dating back to 1981.
–President Obama scores his lowest approval rating to date: 46 percent approve of the president’s job performance, while a slim majority, 52 percent, disapprove.
–The poll shows a six-point increase since July, from 32 percent to 38 percent, in voters who say the economy is getting worse.
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and Jon Cohen take a look at those critical independent voters:
“The poll findings highlight one of the most significant problems for Obama and Democrats heading into fall: a steep erosion in support among independent voters. In 2008, Obama won independents by eight percentage points. In 2006, independents broke for Democratic House candidates by an unprecedented 18-point margin.”
“Independents’ disapproval of the president has reached an all-time high, with 57 percent giving him negative marks. About 61 percent of independents say Obama has not brought change to Washington. Nearly half now consider him “too liberal” ideologically.”
“Overall, by a 13-point margin, independent voters say they would support Republican over Democratic candidates in their House districts. A majority of independents – 59 percent – say they would prefer to have Republicans in charge of Congress to serve as a check on the president’s agenda.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Gerry Seib writes up the significant voter enthusiasm gap apparent in the NBC/WSJ poll:
“In the survey, those who expressed the very highest levels of interest in this year’s election preferred a Republican Congress by a margin of 53% to 35%. Among all other, less interested voters, Democrats are preferred by a 20-point margin.”
“So Democrats’ most urgent challenge in the next eight weeks is to turn these uninterested voters into interested voters–a difficult task, but one party leaders insist they are tackling.”
Stu Rothenberg, one of the most-watched congressional handicappers in Washington, updates his House overview: “Likely Republican gain of 37-42 seats, with the caveat that substantially larger GOP gains in the 45-55 seat range are quite possible.”
ON THE AIR
Helping to kick off the post-Labor Day political frenzy, two of Florida’s three Senate candidates will be out with their first television ads of the general election on Tuesday.
Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek released his new spot in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The ad, called “Only One,” puts Meek in humorous settings, like riding aboard an airboat, with the candidate saying, “I’m the only one who has fought against developers draining the Everglades.”
There’s no mention of Meek’s two opponents — Independent Gov. Charlie Crist and Republican Marco Rubio — but the spot does look to highlight Meek’s positions on issues important to the Democratic base, such as the environment, Social Security and abortion rights.
Crist is also ready to unveil his first ad of the general election, called “Best of Both.” In it, Crist appears on screen with the word “Democrats” appearing in blue letters on one side of him and “Republicans” in red on the other side, with Crist saying: “How do we get results for Florida? By putting aside our differences and putting people ahead of politics.”
Crist then begins to rearrange the letters, continuing his narration: “As an independent, I will take the best ideas of Democrats and Republicans to get things done. Because at the end of the day, there’s only one party I work for.” At this point, it’s revealed that Crist has spelled “Americans.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a statement in response to Crist’s spot:
“If Floridians have learned anything from Charlie Crist’s politically opportunistic policy shifts and empty rhetoric, it’s that he’s willing to say or do anything in an attempt to get elected. Charlie Crist only cares about his own interests, and his misleading claim to ‘put people ahead of politics’ simply does not match reality,” NRSC Press Secretary Amber Marchand said in a statement titled: “Crist New TV Ad Spells ‘Opportunist.’”