Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

Majid: I don’t know. But one of their activists, Cindy Sheehan, lost her son in Iraq and is leading the campaign against President Bush now.

Hassan: Was she against his decision to join the armed forces?

Majid: Apparently yes. That’s what she says.

Hassan: Did she try to convince him not to enroll?

Majid: Yes, that’s what she said.

Hassan: So, her son refused to obey her

Majid: Yes.

Hassan: He disagreed with her?

Majid: Yes.

Hassan: So he had different views than she did?

Majid: Well, he joined the Army, and she didn’t want him to join.

Hassan: Was she against the War in Iraq before he joined?

Majid: She was against the removal of Saddam.

Hassan: And now she is acting as a mother who lost her child who refused to obey her and was killed in a war she opposed?

Majid: Exactly. She considers the war that liberated us a war that killed her son. She was against regime change in Iraq. I also heard she criticized Bush, Chirac, and Blair for removing the Syrians from Lebanon.

Hassan: Why is she against our peoples’ freedoms?

Majid: She says removing Saddam wasn’t a good cause.

Hassan: Did she ever meet with Iraqi mothers who lost their children, husbands, and babies?

Majid: Not that I know of.

Hassan: So stopping the genocide in Iraq is not enough of a noble cause for her?

Majid: She and her movement say no.

The United States said at the outset of global talks on information technology yesterday that it will fight attempts to put the United Nations or any international group in charge of the Internet.

"We want to make sure the private sector leads and the Internet continues to be a reservoir of great innovation, and that governments continue to focus on enabling the growth of the Internet, and not of controlling its use," Ambassador David A. Gross told The Washington Times in an interview.

Major developing nations spearheaded by China, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a number of industrialized countries including Norway, Switzerland and Russia would like to see the United States relinquish its historic control of the Internet.

"This situation is very undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable," said Sha Zukang, the ambassador from China, which this week imposed new rules that allow only "healthy and civilized" news to be read by the mainland's 100 million Web users.

China's government will determine which news is healthy and which news is not.

Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Somehow, a FEMA for fixing up people on blind dates makes me wary.

"Of course, raising questions about the steps-and-lanes system is a ferocious attack on teachers so we can't do that! (Incidentally, one reader writes to ask why you can criticize American policy in Iraq and still support the troops but not raise questions about these contracts without being a teacher basher? Good question…)"

I liked this speech so much more after going through it the second time. I think after the last two weeks I expected more out of President Bush than I did out of Kathleen Blanco. Although I liked President Bush's speech much better, it didn't impress me as much as Kathleen Blanco.

Yet the system, at every level of government, was not well coordinated and was overwhelmed in the first few days.

Just another Blue State Bush-hater, right?

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, "Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain."

"The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain," declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. "This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain," Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6. The professor concluded, "[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina."

Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, "Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system." (Emphasis added.) Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. Further, SOWL's recollection of this case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfidious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dreaded capitalist investment.

Worse yet, the environmentalists' ultimate decision to reinforce existing levees may have actually further harmed the Big Easy. There is at least one expert who claims the New Orleans levees made no difference – in fact, they contributed to the problem. Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane Center and Director of the Center for the Study Public Health Impacts by Hurricanes Ivor van Heerden said, "The levees 'have literally starved our wetlands to death' by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico."

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

We could use your help. We put up a site 28 hours ago and it is finally emerging from its cocoon www.im-ok.org . As refugees are streaming into Dallas, could you, through your blog, round up some folks who want to help, to take their portable laptops and wireless air cards and put them to work.

Survivors can register "I'm OK" or have someone else register for them that "I'm OK." Aid stations and relief centers can use this registry to assist people in making their whereabouts visible to their family and friends.

The search side of the site allows for a specific pinpoint search for a person by household rather than generic searches by city. All the search requires is the person's telephone number from before the disaster. Family and friends searching for the same person can communicate with each other through the message board tied to that phone number.

The link is www.im-ok.org

The site is sponsored by O. R. Colan Associates (ORC) and developed by ComputerNex Corporation, both of Fort Lauderdale. Beneath the simple appearance of the site there is a heavy duty search engine and the band width capacity to support thousands of simultaneous queries.

The principal source of lead exposure for children is lead-contaminated dust (from lead-based paint), but other sources may have particular implications for Latinos. One such source is lead-glazed pottery, which some tourists and immigrants continue to bring in from Mexico and other countries. Some Latino children may also be eating lead in candy, as reported in an April 2004 Orange County Register investigative story. The article explained how lead-contaminated candies manufactured in Mexico make their way into the U.S. market.

Another factor for increased risk of childhood lead poisoning among Latino immigrants, particularly those of Mexican origin, is the use of certain folk remedies. Such traditional remedies as greta and azarcón, which may contain nearly 100 percent lead and are often used to treat stomachaches, may expose children to dangerously high lead concentrations.

In children, lead is known to cause neurological problems even at tiny doses. Most notably, lead has been associated with a decline in IQ and with learning disabilities, hyperactive behavior, violence, and an increase in antisocial behavior. In adults, lead has been linked to neurological problems, high blood pressure, and kidney problems.

When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief."

In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism. What the New Republic was saying--along with other media outlets that prominently and respectfully considered the thesis of Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein's book--is that racism is a respectable intellectual position, and has a legitimate place in the national debate on race.

Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality. And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ... well, that they have ceased to be liberals in the classic sense.

First hour guest, 'historian of the future' Charles Ostman presented the theory that weather manipulation may have been used to steer the direction of Hurricane Katrina into America's oil facilities, as a "geopolitical attack." A country such as China could be using HAARP-like technology with the goal of creating economic chaos in the U.S., he further conjectured.