world-events

world-events

Put It In The Hold

August 12, 2006
By

The London Times On Line reported further on the issue of all your valuables being shoved into the hold of the airliner in “Insurers refuse to cover iPods and phones in airline luggage”.

At first insurance companies promised great cooperation. That stopped quickly enough in Britain. Can the US be far behind? Is your insurance carrier your favorite partner?

According to The Times
Companies have decided to take a hard line, fearing that some travellers will try to exploit policies
MILLIONS of British air passengers were told last night that they will be travelling without insurance cover for valuable items such as jewellery, laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players that must now be packed in the aircraft hold.
There is also a fine article in The Times by Michael Clarke, Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London on “…Why Jihadis Just Love To Fly”.

“Aircraft”, he writes, “…are a symbol of modernity and look vulnerable — the ideal target in a holy war.”

He goes on to say,
Commercial aircraft represent globalism and high technology — they shrink the world and threaten cultural conservatism. The Boeing 747 was the last of the “great machines” that characterised the 20th century: it opened up air travel to the mass market. And it was so very American; big, brash and useful. But aircraft also appear vulnerable. In truth, civil aircraft are a lot more robust than people think, but the aviation industry is selling safety almost as much as it is selling transport and passengers need constant reassurance that aircraft are operating well within their technical limits.
And prognosticates
Airlines, however, will continue to be attractive targets for terrorists and the vulnerability and glamour of any machine travelling at 600mph at 30,000ft, will not diminish, whatever measures are taken at airports. The most effective way to deal with terrorism is still intelligence-led policing, and if yesterday’s operation is as significant as the security services indicate, they will have struck a good old-fashioned blow against a bad new fashionable terror technique.
Well worth the read. The subject is far more complex and will affect more people than I originally thought.

Terrorists Affect Musicians And Artists

August 12, 2006
By

The BBC reported in “Cabin Baggage Ban Hits Musicians” something the rest of us hadn’t quickly realized. The terrorist plot to fling burning aircraft and dying people from the skies (in order to please their god) will result in disruption for everyone. It will particularly hit musicians and artists who need instruments that they care deeply about.

For example,

Russian musicians returning from London after the Bolshoi Theatre’s season face an overland journey because of the new UK cabin baggage ban on planes. 

They are under contract to keep their instruments with them and cannot check them in as hold baggage, chief conductor Alexander Vedernikov said.

They will probably have to travel by rail via Paris, he added.

trumpetng6 Terrorists Affect Musicians And Artists

It beats dying in flames but, for musicians, photographers, videographers and the like; this will be a difficult act. When I was hard at work in years past, my camera bag was never out of my sight. When boarding a plane I was ready with empty cameras that could be opened and clear, plastic bags for the film cans to be hand checked. Luckily, I am no longer working and can no longer fly. But what about the photographers who are? What about the violinist with their back-country fiddle from generations-past or the Stradivarius with a big insurance policy that would still not replace its’ sound?

bodhrancelticcy2 Terrorists Affect Musicians And Artists
Celtic style Bodhran (visitHobgoblin-USA ).

The terrorists may be widely hated and many people will support each other to help in travel. But will the sticky-fingered baggage people or the big-city airport mafias stop shopping the baggage carts? If your clothes are lost for a few days you can buy some T-shirts and jeans. If your four Nikons, twelve lenses and four flashes go missing (probably never to return) will you be able to rent quickly enough to splash your genius in the client’s face? Will the symphony wait until you find a replacement cello, piccolo, bass, or kettle drum?

Julia Morneweg, a German freelance cellist, always booked an extra seat for the cello. Many musicians do. The BBC quoted her as relating,

“These restrictions are a disaster for me,” she wrote in a posting on the BBC’s Have Your Say before flying to Zurich. 

After her arrival in Switzerland, she recounted the ordeal of having to hand over the cello, valued at up to £10,000 ($19,000) and not covered by her insurance if carried in the hold.

“It is never safe enough in the hold and they don’t treat instruments properly,” she told the BBC News website.

She was not allowed to see the cello being put in and had to hand it over to the bulky items desk despite asking for it to be treated like a child’s pram, which would have allowed her to keep tabs on it right up until boarding.

“I looked out the window and could see it wobbling on the luggage trolley,” she said.

violinzg0 Terrorists Affect Musicians And Artists

CNN just published a guide to “Airline Security Rules” by country. These are the guidelines, for the moment, for the USA.

Travelers boarding commercial flights at a U.S. airport will not be allowed to carry “any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions” onto airliners. 

Passengers on flights from Great Britain are prohibited from carrying electronics on board. There are no such restrictions on people traveling on domestic flights or from the U.S. to Great Britain.

Beverages purchased beyond security checkpoints must be consumed before boarding — they will not be permitted aboard the aircraft.

TSA screeners will recheck every bag at boarding gates for banned items, preventing passengers from carrying items purchased in boarding areas.

Gate-side inspections are taking place for all passengers on flights to Great Britain. On other flights, the TSA is conducting random gate-side inspections.

Federal security directors — the top TSA officials at airports — have discretion on how to implement the new policy. They can also use any resource available to conduct the inspections, meaning they can use their own screeners, state and local law enforcement personnel or airline personnel.

Are musicians and photographers the only people to be hurt by this latest attack on civilization? Hardly! Businessmen won’t want to see their laptops on that baggage cart and what, I wonder, will the diamond merchant do with his sample case? But the crazies are targeting your music now! It is surely time to nip their buds. Said one composer who travels lightly and would not, himself, be affected, he is looking forward to his next tour with his musicians as being a long trip — by ship.



Florida’s ACLU Wins Book Banning Battle

July 25, 2006
By

The BBC noted today, July 24, that “US judge overturns Cuba book ban”.

The Miami-Dade Student Government Association and the ACLU said removing the book was violated students’ constitutional right of access to information under the First Amendment. 

“By totally banning the Cuba books and the rest of the series, the school board is in fact prohibiting even the voluntary consideration of the themes contained in the books by students at their leisure,” said Judge Gold.

vamosacubaps4 Florida’s ACLU Wins Book Banning Battle

America and Florida are again leading seeing the results of those who would deny access to knowledge to those who voluntarily seek. In this case it is political rather than religious and the complainant, Juan Amador Rodriguez, may have good reason to feel strongly about the Castro government. He does not want his primary school daughter to read anything positive about the country where he was a political prisoner. The desire to protect her is valid enough for a parent. However, he also fled this totalitarian regime to enter into the freedoms that the American Constitution guarantees. That means his daughter does not have to read the book, Vamos A Cuba. It does not mean that his complaint nor the support of a strong member of the Miami-Dade County School System, Frank Bolaños , can keep other children from this book nor from the entire series of childrens’ books that had been banned.

The entire, lengthy legal opinion of the United States Southern District Court, Southern District of Florida in the case of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida v. Miami Dade County School Board is available as a pdf document for download.

aclusg0 Florida’s ACLU Wins Book Banning Battle

TheMiami Heraldwhich has been reporting on this issue published an article by Ani Martinez on 14 July titled “VAMOS A CUBA Book’s foe sensitive to tyranny” where she describes the Cuban exile’s third grader’s interest in her father’s homeland.

Ten-year-old Yilen Amador Rodriguez couldn’t wait for bedtime so she could show her dad a book about Cuba that she had brought home from school.

The third-grader had often heard her father talk about his homeland at the dinner table. But she was surprised when he began to thumb through Vamos a Cuba, which Yilen had checked out last spring from the library at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary School in West Miami-Dade County.

His smile quickly faded when the former political prisoner saw pictures of children dressed in communist school uniforms.

”When you are 5 years old in Cuba, you denounce your family and belong to the state,” explained the father, Juan Amador Rodriguez, who formally complained about the book in April and got it banned by the Miami-Dade School Board on June 14.

He has his right to request a time-out from freedom. Amazingly (except that it is Florida) the school board went along with him and banned this book and a whole series of books about children living in other societies.

Rodriquez was jailed in Cuba for over four years when he was 18 for denouncing the Castro government. When he was released he went to work building a raft. In 1995 he, his wife and his brothers embarked on the raft and made it to Miami where the little girl, Yilen, was born. He now owns a number of lunch trucks that sell to construction workers in the Doral area of Miami.

The blog, “Miami Gradebook: Inside South Florida Education” by the education writer for the Miami Herald who is writing about the case, Matthew I. Pinzur, says

It’s a pretty decisive win for the ACLU. The question now is whether Frank Bolaños can convince the majority of the board to appeal the injunction and push forward on the case, or whether the majority of the board reads Judge Gold’s decision and decides to cut bait. 

Mr. Rodriquez undoubtedly has reason for a strong distaste for anything that seems to support a totalitarian regime from which he fled. However, the banning and burning of books whether for children or anyone else who can or can hope to learn to read is anathema to the freedoms of the country to which he fled. Florida has a terrible history of repressiveness and racism, bigotry and religious intolerance. This decision seems to buck that tradition as it protects the society as a whole from the desires of a few to limit access to information.

MORE on Blogcritics >>>>>>>>


Beirut: A Garden Without Fences

July 23, 2006
By

Postcard of Beirut in 1974 from Discover Lebanon, a tourism site.

It was the “Paris of the Middle East” it was said back in the Sixties.

Now it is always “war-torn” Beirut and is again torn by war. “The Opinion Journal” of the Wall Street Journal in an editorial, “Hostage to Hezbollah” by Fouad Hajami writes of the sadness of Lebanon as an international tool of the Iranians and Syrians.

A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the “gift” of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah’s latest deed.

The editorial presents a fascinating view on the political andrealpolitik threads in the conflict raging after the Israel Defense Forces responded to Lebanese attacks on their country.

MapLebanon Beirut: A Garden Without Fences

The question for us is what George Bush’s administration will do to help or what line it will take. For now, The New York Times reported that the US will send more smart bombs to Israel.

The Jerusalem Post reports on the stepped-up sale of smart bombs,
T

he US is rushing a delivery of “smart bombs” to Israel after Israel indicated it needed the bombs for its military campaign against the Hizbullah. 

The New York Times reported Saturday that the decision to rush the shipment was reached after little debate within the administration.

The “smart bombs” – bombs which are equipped with precision guidance devises, are part of an arms deal reached months ago between Israel and the US, but the fighting in Lebanon led Israel to ask for an expedited delivery of the bombs, before the agreed scheduled of supply.

Wikipedia describes comtemporary histoy of the city, a sad story of civil war, religious strife and international machinations,

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War, Beirut, along with all of Lebanon was given to the French. The French administration showed great preference for the Christian community, leading to religious strains in the city. Lebanon was given its independence following the Second World War and Beirut became its capital city. Beirut remained the intellectual capital of the Arab world and a major commercial and tourist centre until 1975 when a brutal civil war broke out in Lebanon. During most of the war, the city was divided between the largely Muslim west part and the Christian east. The central area of the city, previously the focus of much of the commercial and cultural activities, became a no-man’s land. Many of the city’s best and brightest inhabitants fled to other countries. In 1983 French and US barracks were bombed, killing 302.

Since the end of the war in 1989, the people of Lebanon have been rebuilding Beirut, and the city has regained its status as a tourist, cultural and intellectual centre of the Middle East, as well as the center for commerce, fashion and media. Beirut is home to the international designer, Elie Saab and to some of the most popular and successful satellite television, such as Al-Manar, New TV, LBC and Future TV. The city was host to the Asian Basketball Championship and the Asian Football Championship. Beirut also successfully hosted the Miss Europe pageant twice.

Another article soon is rattling around in my head. How many “paradises” can the world afford to lose? Not merely Beirut of civil wars and terrorist havens but Bacalar (here in Mexico) being hit with anti-American violence and crime waves, our mid-Hudson Valley of NY being gentrified by the exurban masses, New Orleans allowed to slip beneath the waters and how many more places were once beautiful and sweet and now are not?


Congressman Maurice Hinchey: A Profile in Courage

June 28, 2006
By

Dave Nalle has just written this article for Blogcritics.org on the continuing battle for the legalization of Marijuana for medical use and research.

The gist of the article is:

Yet again the House of Representatives is considering a vote on the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Amendment, the Wilmot Proviso of the new millennium. It’s an amendment jointly sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat to protect the rights and safety of private users of medical marijuana and exempt them from criminal prosecution. It doesn’t legalize pot and doesn’t even generally decriminalize marijuana. All it does is make sure that those suffering with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other medical conditions won’t be thrown in jail for using the one viable treatment available for their conditions. It restricts federal authorities from interfering with state laws that protect medical marijuana users in the 11 states which have passed medical marijuana laws. 

I responded there and continue to sing the praises of an old friend and a fine legislator, Maurice Hinchey (110th Congressional District – Dem. NY). His stand takes sense and compassion and courage. They are not new virtures for him.

Maurice and I became friends when I began photography and journalism in the Hudson Valley in the early 1980s. He was in the NY State Lesgislature and was nice enough to take me with him one day to hang out together in the State Capitol. I made a lot of pictures that I hope helped him in his, then, new career. One set that he pushed the guards to allow me to shoot — looking down at the bicameral floor of the House — became one of my all-time best sellers as a stock photo.

The silliest part of the day was me, still new to photography, weighed down with all the camera bodies and lenses I owned (Nikon Ftns then), watching Maurice to follow him to any meeting, caucus or floor debate. He stood, formally, and headed off the floor. I grabbed my gear and followed at a run. I was loading film, checking meters and barely noticed before holding a camera to my eye that we were in the mens’ room standing in front of the urinals. Unlike recent movies that consider it de rigeur I was totally uninterested in the urinal shot.

Maurice is now in the Federal House of Representatives. I think he is in his 6th term. He is a fine politician in the sense of the word that comes from JFK’s Profiles in Courage.

Amazingly he continues to win in the 110th which runs an increditble gamut of distance and of outlooks from the most conservative and the radical good ole boys to the aging Hippies of Woodstock and the exurban professionals of the Hudson Valley. Throw in some college and university communities and mix it together. The first race was close against one of those anti- everything, radical rightists, law and order freaks. Now he continues to win and the numbers are not so close.

Having a few good men in Washington makes the country continue to work in spite of the dangers of the present Executive branch.

I add from his web site

Maurice Hinchey was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1992 after serving 18 years in the New York State Assembly, including 14 years as Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation. From January 1993 through December 1998, he was a member of the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He was then elected by his colleagues to the House Appropriations Committee and serves on its subcommittees on Agriculture and the Interior. The congressman is also one of 20 members on the bicameral and bipartisan Joint Economic Committee. Additionally, Hinchey serves on the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Early in his first year in Congress, Hinchey initiated and led the successful effort to preserve Sterling Forest, the last significant area of open space in the New York metropolitan region and an important watershed for southeastern New York and northern New Jersey. He also introduced and saw enacted legislation to create the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, the first federal action formally recognizing the fundamentally significant role the people of the Hudson Valley played in the early development of America and its institutions.

Perhaps he is able to cross the red & blue lines of currently dichotomized America because his background was not in an insulated suburb or wealthy, urban barrio:

Born on Manhattan’s Lower West Side in 1938 and raised there and in Saugerties, New York, Hinchey enlisted in the U.S. Navy after high school graduation, serving in the Pacific on the destroyer U.S.S. Marshall. After receiving an honorable discharge, he worked for two years as a laborer in a Hudson Valley cement plant. Hinchey then enrolled in the State University of New York at New Paltz and put himself through college working as a night-shift toll collector on the New York State Thruway. He went on to earn a master’s degree at SUNY New Paltz and did advanced graduate work in public administration and economics at the State University of New York at Albany.