The wildlife news remains not good--there's been some more environmentalist action accusing BP of burning very endangered sea turtles along with oil. (Here's a way to register your protest.) But there is this good news for a rare animal in captivity: this is a photo of the first Red Panda to be born in 15 years at the National Zoo in DC, and its mother, holding it in her mouth. Also called the firefox, this animal is actually more closely related to raccoons than panda bears. They are native to the Himalayas, and there are fewer than 2500 left alive. Now there's one more, even if in a zoo. Hooray.

Storm Clouds

Update late Saturday from Houston Chronicle: "Tropical Storm Alex strengthened Saturday as it careened toward the Gulf of Mexico with 65-mph winds approaching hurricane status. Officials are keeping a close eye on the first named storm of the season, which looks likely to avoid Houston and to remain at least 400 miles from cleanup efforts of the largest oil spill in U.S. history. A change, however, could force BP to temporarily abandon cleanup efforts in the Gulf, where oil has been gushing since an offshore drilling rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

Most computer models predict that Alex will head over the Yucatan Peninsula by this morning and weaken as it reaches into Mexico later in the week. A tropical storm warning was issued for Belize's coast and the Yucatan Peninsula's east coast, where rainfall could reach 15 inches.

The storm's presence — and the new hurricane season - is forcing the team overseeing the spill site to make contingency plans. Any system with winds over 46 mph could stop work, and a full evacuation could delay cleanup for two weeks, officials said, adding that it could take about five days to get workers and equipment out of harm's way if the storm threatens. "

Jeff Masters figures the chances of Alex heading for the oil gusher at 10%.

[Early Saturday]
As of now the tropical depression near Honduras has become Tropical Storm Alex, ( as weather guru Jeff Masters predicted.) He cited an historical analysis of 19 similar storms shows that 5 of them hit the Gulf of Mexico.

But warmer waters etc. are making rather than following history. The Houston Chronicle reports: "The probable formation of Tropical Storm Alex in the western Caribbean Sea from such a wave has some meteorologists concerned because it's early for African waves to become so well organized."

The latest storm track doesn't have it heading for the Gulf, nor becoming very intense, though both could change. The HC article notes: "About 60 percent of the named storms during a given year form from African waves. But about 85 percent of the category 3 and stronger hurricanes, the most intense and damaging ones, originate from African waves." And if it tracks to the Gulf, it could arrive there as soon as Sunday.

Strong storms used to appear not much earlier than August, but all bets are off this year--as we hope the federal government realizes. On prepardedness, Gulf oil gusher point man Admiral Thad Allen gave some mixed messages Friday, settling on "We have a very robust hurricane contingency plan." But it would take several days to shut things down and move people away--which in itself would increase the amount of oil gushing. A storm would also threaten the relief wells, and at best would slow down their completion.

A storm would probably also further scatter the oil. Nobody really knows--or could know--whether it would dissipate it or make it a great deal worse. But if such a storm threatens, this would be a good time to make the effort bigger and more visible--with Navy ships and skimmers offered from foreign countries.

While contrary to some interpretations, the oil gusher does not seem to be adversely affecting President Obama's standing, a storm in the Gulf is a necessary opportunity for bold leadership, for fast and appropriately scaled response.

As for ongoing efforts to deal with the continuing and accumulating damage,Climate Progress has published a detailed and reasoned case for why the berms won't work--the solution that Louisiana Governor Jindal has been touting, and that CNN has been covering like not building them is irresponsible and tragic. This case should have been made by the Obama administration weeks ago. Maybe it was, and wasn't reported, but let's face it--they have to find a way to communicate effectively. But there have also been reports that there aren't enough oil skimming ships out there, and that other countries have offered some. I'd like to see some answers on that.

Pass/Fail

Pass (Finally): House and Senate lawmakers reached agreement early Friday on the most far-reaching rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression.

The final details, including creation of an agency to protect consumers in the financial marketplace and new regulations to reduce risk-taking by large banks and limit their trading of complex derivatives, were hashed out in a marathon 20-hour session that began Thursday morning."

(Think Progress has a handy chart on the details, and TPM provides more analysis. )

But the Fail is a big one--and in the short run, bigger: the Jobs bill which includes unemployment benefits extensions was stopped by GOPer fillibuster, with immediate and devastating effects for millions of people, affecting thousands of state jobs, and threatening any economic recovery.

This happened yesterday. Amazingly, there is almost nothing on the Internet news and blog sites today. (Except for something at Kos and this couple of cogent graphs at Time.) Another Fail.

Updates: So the new financial regulations will "bring new authority over Wall Street" and they won't change Wall Street much. And it's a game-changer. Uh huh.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The human mind is always wiser than its most atrocious deeds, since it can give them a name."

Alberto Manguel

photo: The aurora australis — the southern lights, as seen from the International Space Station.

The American People

A number of public opinion polls are touting themselves and their results this week, including one from Pew Research. One of their findings--extracted from a long survey about Americans' attitudes about the future and presented on the CNN crawl--should put many other opinions in perspective:

41% of American surveyed expect the Second Coming of Jesus Christ within the next forty years.

This is actually down slightly from 1999, when 44% expected it.

Militaryness

I admit to being (pleasantly) surprised that the media played the Rolling Stone revelations primarily as the failures of General McBeermouth rather than embarrassing comments about the Obama administration. But while President Obama's strong action and the strong statement that accompanied it have ended a crisis and boosted his image as a leader, those comments are eventually going to provide new fodder for the Rabid Right and their insurrectionist hysteria. Until now their insanity was focused on domestic delusions (and climate, or as they would put it, weather.) Those comments provide opportunity to revive the Dem image of being incompetent on military matters. For them it will be another reason this guy should be overthrown.

This business also focused attention on the Afghanistan war. I don't support it, but I support President Obama's plan to bring it to a conclusion by 2011. He didn't start it, but he has to end it. The immense amount of money it costs as well as the attention that should be placed on more important matters, not to mention the morality of it all, means to me that it must be ended on schedule, if not sooner.

Only the Rabid Right would now think that's a radical position. But then they can't be too happy either about the most effective TV ads now running that promote clean energy--a brilliant series sponsored by VoteVets.org.

Oil Apocalypse

The tragedy in the Gulf is an apocalypse for its non-human life. One response is simply to make sure it is seared into the hearts and minds of responsible humans, to increase the possibility that it not be repeated. So if we can find the news, we must attend. An AP story says that dolphins, sharks and other sea creatures are showing up closer to shore, apparently fleeing oiled waters farther out, like animals fleeing a forest fire. If these shallow waters become too crowded, fish could die from lack of oxygen.

The number of animals known dead--including more than 40 dolphins and other mammals--are likely a small fraction of the actual casualties. But the prospects of entire species are crossing from speculative fears to deep concern. Among them are the Gulf's sperm whales. Several species of sea turtles are vulnerable, and there is this as yet unconfirmed report based on an NPR interview that BP crews are refusing to remove sea turtles from oiled waters before the oil is burned. The most vulnerable turtle species is disproportionately showing up among dead turtles. (This report is also diaried at Daily Kos.) If this report is true, the response may include charges of violations of the Endangered Species Act. These are ancient species of turtles that in their native habitat live long lives.

A Sobering Father's Day Quote

“We have no idea what sort of world our children will inherit, but we can no longer delude ourselves into supposing that it must resemble our own in reassuring ways.”

Tony Judt

Know Hope

Remember that unpopular health care bill? As parts of it start to go into effect, suddenly it's not so unpopular anymore. Now more Americans approve than disapprove. Think about that in connection with the next battle for clean energy, and don't miss Andrew Sullivan's eloquent appraisal of President Obama's achievements. It's called Getting Shit Done, and it ends: "And that's why Obama's incrementalism, his refusal to pose as a presidential magician, and his resistance to taking the bait of the fetid right (he's president - not a cable news host) seems to me to show not weakness, but a lethal and patient strength. And a resilient ambition. Know hope."

The self-destructive insanity from the Rabid Right GOP continues, with Rep. Joe Barton apologizing to BP for the President getting the $20 billion fund for Gulf gusher victims. But the left is suddenly not much better, from the virtual civil war being waged at Kos and more generally in the left blogosphere, and among the media pundits of whatever persuasion, whose self-fulfilling prophesies, which I've placed in this perspective here before, were exposed in a larger forum: Newsweek. For example, "In the postgame show, the pundits judged Obama’s success by how well or poorly he fulfilled the expectations that pundits like themselves had set earlier."

(Photos are from President Obama's appearance before the American Nurses Association yesterday--the Nurses were big supporters of healthcare reform. And thanks to blackwaterdog at Kos for links.)

Tough Repeat

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Lakers who repeat as NBA champions in a tough seventh game over the Boston Celtics. There's more at American Dash.

Pony Up

"Under pressure from President Barack Obama, BP agreed today to set aside $20 billion in a spill recovery escrow account to compensate Gulf Coast fishermen and others who have lost wages and work because of the massive spill from a BP deep-water well.

The company also said it will suspend its quarterly dividend payments to shareholders for the rest of this year and will divert some of that cash to the escrow account, which would be managed by an independent administrator and be funded over three and a half years.

BP also agreed to set aside $100 million to compensate oil industry workers whose jobs disappear because of the government's moratorium on deep-water drilling and a delay of exploration in shallower depths while regulators develop new safety regulations. " ---Houston Chronicle

Congress dithered and couldn't get this done. BP evaded, pouring its money into PR and planning bonuses and stock dividends. President Obama got what no one else got close to accomplishing. And as he promised in his Oval Office speech, the fund will not be administered by BP, or the government, but a special third party administrator. It could even be considered a "mind-boggling accomplishment." The President emphasized that the $20 billion is a floor, not a ceiling on what BP will pay to (as they're now saying in their TV ads) make this right. Oddly if predictably, Rabid Right GOPers are upset.

Only If We Seize the Moment

In his first Oval Office address to the nation, President Obama called the Gulf oil gusher "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced" but pledged "We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy."

He briefly described clean-up efforts and pledged full committment to restoration and recovery. He said that a way of life in the Gulf is threatened.
"I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent third party."

But he cautioned that nothing will solve all the problems associated with the gusher immediately. As a disaster it is less like an earthquake and more like an epidemic--something that lasts a long time, and has diffuse and unpredictable outcomes.

He talked about broader environmental restoration in the Gulf area, in a way that early reports and commentaries seemed to miss. He mentioned the history of environmental degradation in the area, even before this catastrophe. And he announced a comprehensive effort to change that, with the help and expertise of the people of the region: Earlier, I asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, who is also a former governor of Mississippi and a son of the Gulf Coast, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible. The plan will be designed by states, local communities, tribes, fishermen, businesses, conservationists and other Gulf residents. And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region."

He talked about how to prevent such disasters in the future. He zeroed in on the failed policy of deregulation, and vowed to make government oversight work again, specifically in the agency that allowed Big Oil a free pass: "And so Secretary Salazar and I are bringing in new leadership at the agency -- Michael Bromwich, who was a tough federal prosecutor and Inspector General. And his charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry’s watchdog -- not its partner."

But there will always be risks of such disasters as long as oil consumption in America requires dangerous deep-water drilling, as well as sending billions overseas for oil. So to prevent these catastrophes, the ultimate answer is an end to fossil fuel dependence, and a domestic clean energy economy: "We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny."

"As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -– but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment."

The rest of his address outlined the coming fight for this new American clean energy economy, which involves everyone, but which will first of all be played out in the U.S. Congress. "When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses."


He spoke about other ideas proposed in the Senate (where this legislation doesn't have the votes to overcome the promised GOPer fillibuster.) "All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead. But the one approach I will not accept is inaction. The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is somehow too big and too difficult to meet."

"It’s a faith in the future that sustains us as a people. It is that same faith that sustains our neighbors in the Gulf right now."

In what will turn out to be his most prophetic words, President Obama said that: "The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through -– what has always seen us through –- is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it."


Here's a fairly objective account in the first hours after the speech. The first media and blogosphere comments on the address were either harshly critical (for several reasons, often contradictory ones) or with measured approval. In Peter Baker's mixed analysis for the NY Times, he wrote: "In his first use of the trappings of the office, Mr. Obama seemed at ease and filled the screen, as political professionals put it... Mr. Obama came across as confident and presidential..."

Baker noted a fact that surprised me a little--that at 18 minutes, President Obama's address was comparatively long for an Oval Office address. Much of the criticism of the speech concerned what he didn't say, that it wasn't specific and detailed enough, which would have made it a 30 minute speech at least. In terms of my expectations, President Obama hit the major points I believed were necessary, and he made strong, succinct statements in doing so. I also would have preferred him to be more descriptive, both of what the conditions now are and what's to be done. But some calculation about its length evidently was made in the White House.

We'll see over the next few days what the national reaction is, and of course, it will take a long time before its historical significance can be judged. Maybe it will take on political significance, but at least for now it does seem that realizing President Obama's fondest hope--for national unity in pursuit of a rational energy and climate policy to save the future--is not immediately apparent.

The Week Ahead

President Obama returns to the Gulf Monday, for meetings and observations in several states, staying overnight in Florida and returning to Washington Tuesday evening, where he will give his first Oval Office address to the nation of his presidency at 8 pm. That gives instant pundits way too much time to advise him on what he must say. But since I'm on record here advising that he make such an address, let me state the obvious. He needs to talk about four things: (1)what the government is doing and will do to stop the oil gusher, (2) what the government is doing and will do to deal with the effects of the oil and chemicals (preventing further damage as much as possible to the Gulf, the wetlands and beaches, as well as compensation and restoration); (3) what the government is doing and will do to prevent such disasters in the future by real federal scrutiny and enforcement, and (4) how this catastrophe relates to the need for getting serious about transitioning to a clean energy economy and efforts to address the Climate Crisis, specifically in the climate and energy legislation now in Congress. That's a tall order for the rumored length of fifteen minutes, so I hope he speaks at greater length.

Meanwhile, next week may see the first storm of the hurricane season, now developing (and designated 92L.). Jeff Masters of Wunder Blog doesn't expect it to become a full hurricane nor get close to the Gulf, but it is unusually early, in waters that are unusually warm: "However, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) underneath 92L are an extremely high 28 - 30°C, which is warmer than the temperatures reached during the peak of hurricane season last year, in August - September. In fact, with summer not even here, and three more months of heating remaining until we reach peak SSTs in the Atlantic, ocean temperatures across the entire Caribbean and waters between Africa and the Lesser Antilles are about the same as they were during the peak week for water temperatures in 2009 (mid-September.)"

Another story that began last week and is likely to continue this week involves Alvin Greene, the complete unknown who won the Democratic primary for U. S. Senator in South Carolina, despite being an accused felon and without having done any noticeable campaigning. Questions of who sponsored his candidacy and whether he is a GOPer plant are likely to get more pointed, but the most interesting question so far is: why didn't anybody notice this guy before he won? One convincing answer is that nobody was being paid by a newspaper or a news network to watch that campaign. The major South Carolina newspaper has specifically cut back its on the ground political campaign reporting, and this (notes Walter Shapiro) is a general trend. The lack of actual reporting is also why there is so much opinion and punditry, because it's apparently only cost effective to guess, and otherwise bloviate. Bloggers don't seem to be picking up the slack either. It seems that there's no substitute for paid reporters and experienced editors who report, not because it makes them feel good, but because it's their job.

Emerson for the Day

"There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion."

Emerson

"The American Scholar"

Climate Crisis News

There was talk of the climate bill including the suspension of enforcement efforts by the EPA to regulate heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act. The Obama administration came out against the change, and the Senate turned away a GOPer attempt to gut the EPA's current enforcement powers.

Contra interpretations of recent polls, a Stanford study funded by the National Science Foundation found that three-quarters of Americans surveyed believe that global warming is real and the result of industrial heat-trapping gases. The slight dip since 2007 (from more than 80%) came from a particular segment of the population that tends to change its mind on the topic based on the weather. A cold winter with snowstorms made them temporary skeptics. Since it's been a hot spring, they're apt to change back.

Meanwhile a Yale study says that support for action to address the Climate Crisis is growing in the U.S. This support has grown since January, reflecting perhaps not only the hot spring but the catastrophe in the Gulf.

On the connection between the Gulf and global heating, Bill McKibben contributed a rare Kos diary saying that the media are missing it: "One has something to do with peak oil. BP has gone to all this trouble for a well that taps into what they now think may be 100 million barrels of oil. And that's... five days supply for the U.S? Does that give you any sense of the precariousness of the arrangements under-girding our economy right at the moment?"

"The questions that the Gulf spill raises, in other words, go well beyond: How big an idiot is Tony Hayward? What will happen to the tourist economy of the Gulf? How cool is James Cameron's minisub? The questions are more like: How out of balance with the natural world are we? And what would it require to get back in balance?"

The Kids From Kalamazoo Meet the President

When I was fourteen I shook hands with President Kennedy, about 48 hours after he was inaugurated. It's a moment that's always been with me. President Obama spoke at the graduation of a high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but before the speech he paid a surprise visit to the graduating seniors. This one minute video caught that moment. It was a great moment for them, and maybe vicariously for you.

The Gulf

The gulf between what BP says and what it does has grown more obvious, if not larger. It may always have been as big as the Gulf of Mexico.

The situation has gone way beyond links to news stories.

There is something called "The Beauty Strip," such as the strip of trees on the side of the highway that masks the clearcuts, concrete buildings and toxic waste dumps on the other side. BP tried that philosophy on the ocean, but using toxic chemical disperants to drive the oil below the surface where it couldn't be readily seen.

But there are cameras and they can go underwater, and the underwater death camps perpetrated by BP with the apparent connivance of the Bush era Interior Dept. are on view.

I expect that BP's various forms of lying--either lying directly to the federal government, or lying by means of PR to the public, or lying to its employees and those affected on land--bought top execs and stockholders the time they needed to move their money out of the company. But those not smart enough to intuit what was coming have lost out, because the company's paper is now worth half of what it had been, and some form of bankruptcy is coming.

President Obama continues to be hammered, irrationally as usual but also partly because of the White House. He should have addressed the nation by now, and taken some large action, even if it was symbolic rather than the serious action the federal government is taking, without credit. They really should have figured out by now that the only way open to them to communicate directly via TV is by getting that hour of prime-time, with the President in the Oval Office, talking directly to the nation.

But I must say that my overwhelming emotion right now is grief. There is so much death and dying out there in the Gulf, it's almost inconceivable. Yes, there are lives and livelihoods being tested among the people, but they're alive and they can move and adapt. Not so those thousands of creatures out there. The only appropriate response is keening, long and loud.

Ripples of Hope: RFK in Capetown June 6, 1966

June 6 is an important date in the history of Robert F. Kennedy, for two reasons. I will emphasize the first: June 6, 1966.

Partly for his support of independence movements in Africa as U.S. Attorney-General, and partly because of President John F. Kennedy’s opposition to South Africa’s racist policies, Robert F. Kennedy—then junior Senator from New York—was invited to speak at the annual Day of Affirmation held by the National Union of South African Students, an organization dedicated to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Kennedy’s acceptance set off a domestic firestorm in the U.S. William Loeb, publisher of the right-wing newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader in New Hampshire, wrote:

“Bobby Kennedy is the most vicious and most dangerous leader in the United States today. It would make no more sense to us for South Africa to admit Bobby Kennedy...than it would to take a viper into one’s bed.”

Loeb’s editorial reminds us that right wing vituperation is not new. It also reminds me of something Robert Kennedy said on another occasion: “What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

Lyndon Johnson’s White House also opposed the trip. LBJ considered RFK a dangerous political rival. Though the white South African government granted RFK a visa, no government ministers would greet him. The government especially disapproved of the organization he would address, and two weeks before he arrived, the head of NUSAS was banned from political and social activity for five years. Visas to 40 U.S. print and TV reporters requesting to cover the event were denied.

RFK and his entourage landed in Johannesburg, South Africa on June 4, 1966. A loud, demonstrative crowd was at the airport, part of it protesting his presence, part of it welcoming him.

During his several days in South Africa, RFK met with or spoke to a number of groups, and he was typically forthright. He met with white businessmen in Pretoria, who justified apartheid and authoritarian rule because they were “beleaguered” by the majority black population. RFK wondered who was more beleaguered—the businessmen smoking cigars and sipping brandy after dinner, or the now-banned Ian Robertson, head of NUSAS, or the famed writer Alan Paton, whose passport was revoked because of his opposition to apartheid, or Albert Lutili, then president of the African National Congress and winner of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize, who was confined to the immediate vicinity of his rural home.

(During his trip, RFK met with each of them: Robertson, Paton and Lutili.)

He spoke to a group of white university students, and asked them why blacks weren’t allowed to vote or to worship in their churches. “What the hell would you do if you found out that God is black?”

Before an audience of 10,000 at the University of Natal, RFK observed, “Maybe there is a black man outside this room who is brighter than anyone in this room. The chances are that there are many.”

At another university he faced a questioner who claimed that blacks were too barbarous to be given political power. RFK responded:

“It was not the black man in Africa who invented and used poison gas and the atomic bomb, who sent six million men and women and children to the gas ovens, and used their bodies as fertilizer.”

RFK went to Soweto, the black township, and spoke several times, standing atop his car, on the steps of a church, in a school playground. In another city, he stopped to be greeted by a group of Africans, and sang “We Shall Overcome” with them.

His popularity, particularly with young South Africans—of all races—increased daily on his visit. His presence energized and encouraged the anti-apartheid movement. Once he left, the South African government would not permit him to return. He was called a Communist, as he also was by some in the U.S.

But the highlight of the trip was the address he was invited to give, which some believe is his greatest speech. He spoke to a young audience of some 15,000 on the Day of Affirmation: June 6, 1966.

He began by talking about a country:

"settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage."

And then employing the humorous but meaningful irony so characteristic of JFK and RFK (and their speechwriters), he said:

"I refer, of course, to the United States of America."

But this was not simply a rhetorical ploy, for this was a description of South African as well as American history. Throughout the first part of his speech, he continued to describe the American ideals of racial equality, and the difficulties America historically had in living up to them. In explaining those ideals, his audience naturally applied them to their own country.

For example, he spoke about freedom of speech, but also “the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men’s lives....
Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where government must answer -- not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race, but to all of the people."

He related the struggle of African Americans in America to other prejudices, felt by immigrants including his own ancestors:

"Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: "No Irish Need Apply." Two generations later President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums -- untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans? "

He praised Martin Luther King, and the goal of non-violent social change. He talked about historical and contemporary evils, and issued a call to conscience:

"These are different evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world."


He then made this directly relevant to his audience, the youth of South Africa:

"It is these qualities which make of our youth today the only true international community. More than this, I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress -- not material welfare as an end in/of itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would all be proud to have built."

He sharpened the message:

"Our answer is the world's hope: It is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.

This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease..."

But by having talked so much about America, he also blunted the criticism that he was urging another country to realize ideals that his own people had not fully met. The rest of his speech instead was about making common cause with everyone working for social and political justice. It was about how to create change:

"Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and then the total -- all of these acts -- will be written in the history of this generation."

After noting the examples of the Peace Corps and the Resistance to the Nazis in Europe, he said this, the most-quoted part of the speech:

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

But there was more. In a few words he defined the true Kennedy legacy, the necessary fusion of ideals and realism to create a better future:

"The second danger is that of expediency: of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we must act effectively, we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs -- that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems.

It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief -- forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis. "

Rising to the challenge, in July 1966 the National Union of South African Students came out explicitly against apartheid.

This was June 6, 1966. Two years later to the day, Robert F. Kennedy died from wounds inflicted by an assasin’s bullet two days before. He had just won the California primary for the U.S. presidency in 1968. He would be going to the Democratic convention in Chicago with the most votes, but not yet enough to assure the nomination. Looking tired and a little haunted, he ended his victory speech with the exhortation, “Now on to Chicago, and let’s win there,” flashing a peace sign and the Kennedy smile.

But before this exhortation, his last public words that night of June 4, 1966 were these: “We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running."

[A version of this was on the rescued list at Daily Kos.]

There are many photos around now of birds saturated in heavy oil, dead, dying or helpless, as a result of the BP oil gusher in the Gulf. At a certain point reproducing them seems indecent, but they must be seen. This one is tragic enough. The more graphic images perhaps must be seen to understand the consequences to other beings, although the images themselves are apparently not sufficient. Even progressive writers and talkers have no vocabulary to recognize other beings--they are "wildlife" or "the environment," just abstractions in the political noise, as they have been in the so-called scientific noise. Governor Bobby Jindal was so intent on making political points that he watched one oiled bird flop around in front of him without trying to help. These beings deserve some dignity as well as recognition. More on this point in the post below.

Bird Brain

I'm fascinated with this interview with a neurobiologist who studies the neurobiology of music. First of all, this is the first instance I've run across of a key scientific finding that started with a viral YouTube video (which I referenced on this site at the time, of Snowball the dancing cockatoo.)

Then there's this suggestive statement: "What do humans have in common with parrots? Both species are vocal learners, with the ability to imitate sounds. We share that rare skill with parrots. In that one respect, our brains are more like those of parrots than chimpanzees." I suspect there is more than this one respect, but it does emphasize the importance of the auditory in humans, especially when visual primacy is so heavily promoted.

I note once again that like too many other human endeavors, science is a prisoner of fashion. Studying the neurobiology involved in making and responding to music is a relatively new field, even though humans have been making and responding to music since probably before they were human. But fashion dictated that music wasn't scientific enough. "One of the founders of this field, Dr. Robert Zatorre, before 2000, he never used the word music in a grant application. He knew it would get turned down automatically because people thought this was not scientific. Instead, he used terms like “complex nonlinguistic auditory processing.”

Finally, the reason that this finding is so earth-shattering is not that it is a new phenomenon, nor one that would especially surprise people who have been around birds a lot. It's the latest in a growing line of corrections to human (scientific) arrogance. Man, the only tool maker and tool user? Not really. Man, the only maker and user of language? Hardly. Now add to that, man, the only musical creature. Not so much. Seriously. That a bird--moreover, a bird that can imitate virtually any sound, including melodies--can dance to a beat has astounded modern science.

It is only because of scientific arrogance--serving the worst of human arrogance--as our species has separated itself from all others. And is now the agent for ridding the planet of other species--thousands of them every year, from plants to our closest genetic relatives.

Indigenous peoples who lived in the same context as other animals learned music from bird song. Their stories and traditions--surviving into the 20th century, as chronicled by Richard Nelson among others--profess the notion, so apparently odd to our official knowledge, that we are not the only beings on the planet. But we are so far away from those other beings that it takes the pomposity of neuroscience to square the circle. We will lose so many of those beings before we figure out once again how to relate to them, or even how to talk about them except as objects and abstractions.

The Dreaming Up the Future Daily Quote

"It’s our job as a nation to advocate on behalf of the America that we hope for -- to make decisions that will benefit the next generation -- even if it’s not always popular; even if we can’t always see those benefits in the short-term. We make decisions like this on behalf of our own children every single day. And while it’s harder to do with an entire country as large and diverse as ours, it’s no less important.

The role of government has never been to plan every detail or dictate every outcome. At its best, government has simply knocked away barriers to opportunity and laid the foundation for a better future. Our people -- with all their drive and ingenuity -- always end up building the rest. And if we can do that again -- if we can continue building that foundation and making those hard decisions on behalf of the next generation -- I have no doubt that we will leave our children the America that we all hope for."

President Barack Obama
Pittsburgh, PA
June 2, 2010

Technology and the Politics of Hope

Can technology save the future? There are a lot of answers to that question, such as "Maybe, if we use it right," "If it doesn't, what will?" or "Sure, if we can afford to buy it from China."

Technology can't prevent a lot of what may happen, not anymore. But it can help us deal with it. And it can make everyone's future better than it might otherwise be, while it may still be able to save the farther future. The future is an adventure, and technology should be part of it.

In an eloquent address at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, President Obama described his efforts dealing with the economy in the political context, and as an expression of his philosophy of government. He also talked about the future, the contributions of new technologies, and specifically, the crucial role of renewable energy technologies.

"But there’s no natural lobby for the clean energy company that may start a few years from now," he said. "There’s no natural lobby for the research that may lead to a lifesaving medical breakthrough. There’s no natural lobby for the student who may not be able to afford a college education, but if they got one could end up making discoveries that would transform America and the world.

It’s our job as a nation to advocate on behalf of the America that we hope for -- to make decisions that will benefit the next generation -- even if it’s not always popular; even if we can’t always see those benefits in the short-term."

He praised Pittsburgh as an example of a community working for the future, transforming itself from the rust belt to green technologies, health care and education. "All of this came to be because as a community, you prepared and adapted and invested in a better future -- even if you weren’t always sure what that future would look like."

President Obama also said that putting a price on carbon pollution is essential to creating a new energy economy, and he pledged to support climate and energy legislation. "And, Pittsburgh, I want you to know, the votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months. (Applause.) I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can. (Applause.) I will work with anyone to get this done -- and we will get it done."

The Pittsburgh speech was Obama's clearest statement yet as President of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. defined as the politics of hope--the politics that looks forward to the future.

Elements within the U.S., but also efforts elsewhere in the world with stronger government backing, are advancing clean energy technology and capabilities. But as this report shows (among others) is that clean energy is a key to the future of the U.S. economy, not just domestically but in international trade. These opportunities are forging new economic models.

But we are in danger of being left behind. China is advancing more aggressively. Apart from the Climate Crisis itself, this is the greatest challenge to our ability as a nation to safeguard our country's future, and to participate in the world's future.

In a general sense, there are lots of ideas out there for technologies that cooperate with nature rather than fight it. Some combination of them could be revolutionary beyond our imagination, in providing clean energy, in helping us deal with the effects of the Climate Crisis, and even to address its causes directly.

Though we're tempted to see massive projects as evidence of success, the technologies that will give the future the best possibilities will be small-scale, extremely efficient, easy to replicate and use locally by individual families and communities, very hardy, flexible and adaptable.

There are dangerous technologies, too, battling for attention and development money, that appeal to our arrogance. The roles and powers of technology have been themes of thought and art since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and those issues are even more pressing today. We are in many ways dominated now by powerful technologies gone wrong: our extractive energy technologies, our wasteful, destructive and cruel technologies for feeding ourselves, and the other wasteful, destructive and suicidal technologies of our society, such as our technologies of violence and war.

And there is also the apparently strong current--stronger that we might have imagined in this day and age--of opposition to science and the most settled scientific questions. A resurgence of impulses we associate with the Dark Ages. This, too, as much as powerful technologies gone wrong, threatens the future.

In this regard, I am haunted by a scene in the 1953 movie version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which relocated the action from England to southern California. At one point, the scientists at Cal Tech trying to study how to defeat the Martian invaders, must evacuate to a lab in the mountains. But before they can get there, a panicked mob waylays their truck, destroys their equipment and injures several of the scientists. I wonder if metaphorically this isn't what's happening now, and I fear it suggests what may happen.

Fortunately at the moment we have a President who has a vision of the future and a commitment to science and knowledge. (Also on Wednesday, while at the White House receiving a Library of Congress award for songwriting, Paul McCartney quipped that "it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is.") He is supported by enough Democratic members of Congress to at least get a bill increasing funding for science and science education passed, despite a pathetically cynical GOPer maneuver.

Technology by itself won't save us. But together with the politics of hope, maybe it can help give the future a chance.

The President says he has no doubt that we will create a better future. I have doubts. But doubts don't matter. What you believe will happen doesn't matter. What matters is believing that working towards a better future in whatever ways you can is how you want to live your life.

Gulf Disaster & the Climate Future: The Shadow Government is You

As the Climate Crisis leaches into Climate Cataclysm, we're likely to see more disasters. Some of them, like hurricanes and other storms, will spend their first fury within a relatively short period of time, with a long aftermath of coping and recovery. Others, like droughts and other climate effects, will be slow-motion catastrophes. Still others will be something in between, similar to the current BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: they will happen and keep happening over time, with effects that are both immediate and long-lasting.

The prospect of such disasters fill us with forboding, because they cause a lot of pain, and often change things for a long time for many people and for a particular place, with some effects continuing forever. But we fear these disasters not only for what hurricanes or whatever forces do, but for what we may do to each other, or not do for each other. And in this regard, Rebecca Solnit has some reassurance, although she also finds some truth in another fear.

San Francisco-based author Rebecca Solnit explores how people responded to historical and contemporary disasters, from the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake to hurricane Katrina, in her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (Viking.) Her two principal findings contradict conventional expectations, and in Katrina particularly, suggest that what we think we know through media coverage is pretty close to dead wrong.

From movies and TV as well as common philosophies of human nature we expect responses to disasters that range from fearful selfishness to predatory violence. But time after time, as evidenced by reporting and scientific studies, the opposite happens: people share, help each other, and work together, Solnit finds. And despite the dire circumstances, they do so joyfully.

This happened in New Orleans, although this catastrophe wasn’t reported that way. Which follows from Solnit’s second conclusion: authorities like police and military often make matters worse by treating civilians as dangerous criminals, and the media reports from their point of view.

Think of the New Orleans Superdome, which we heard was a nest of violence, gangs, murder and rape. The truth was slower to emerge: no murders, and the "gangs" were often young men who organized to prevent rapes and to “loot” stores—for food, water and supplies, with particular attention to the needs of babies and the elderly. Meanwhile, the people there and elsewhere in New Orleans were all but abandoned by authorities, not only unable to help, but obsessed with keeping order and afraid of the people who looked to them for help. They even discouraged volunteer rescuers. That the New Orleans police and white vigilantes murdered black citizens, often rescuers, is documented and now slowly coming to trials.

Solnit’s book ends before the Haiti earthquake, but reporting from there supports these observations: authorities were often more afraid of ordinary people than they were intent on helping them stay alive.

Solnit’s general conclusion is that the existing system, built on fear, “is mitigated every day by altruism, mutual aid, and solidarity, by the acts of individuals and organizations who are motivated by hope and by love rather than fear. They are akin to a shadow government—another system ready to do more were they voted into power. Disaster votes them in, in a sense, because in an emergency these skills and ties work while fear and divisiveness do not.”

This, frankly, doesn't surprise me. It's not just that people are naturally compassionate. It's that people have capabilities they never get to use, for a purpose they know is good. They are often eager to do so.

The heartening message is the ability and willingness of ordinary people to focus on helping each other, because typically that’s all the help there is for at least the first 48 hours after a big disaster. That's a comfort for those of us in a perennial danger zone, as many of us are (here on the North Coast, a catastrophic earthquake is inevitable, probably within a generation.) But the dismaying message is the tension between authorities and people. The paranoid Rabid Right analysis of police and government has some basis in fact, though as New Orleans shows, the white middle class people promoting it have less to fear than minorities, including the objects of the Rabid Right's Arizxenophobia.

We also see perhaps a new wrinkle on this tendency in the Gulf, where it is a mega-corporation that is pushing people around--including (reportedly) preventing people from wearing protective masks when cleaning up toxic oil and chemicals from the beaches. When police are basically in the employ of corporations--or, as in the case of mercenaries like Blackwater in New Orleans--are corporations themselves, then people and their communities are in danger from the very people that finance Tea Partiers, and that they and their libertarian ideologues support.

At the very least, I hope Solnit's book is read by disaster response planners, government officials, police and the military, and it helps them focus on ways to help people instead of treating them as the enemy.

Don't Forget, Don't Neglect

The media simply isn't covering the biggest economic, cultural, social and political story going, beyond the BP oil Armaggedon: unemployment benefits have run out for an estimated one million Americans, with many more behind them as their benefits run out.

The House has passed an extension, as well as a bill stripping tax breaks for companies that export jobs out of the U.S. But the Senate left Washington on recess without passing it, because of opposition. The arguments against it are counterfactual, as usual--for one thing, the extension is likely to create thousands of new jobs and is a proven economic stimulus. But GOPers and the resurgent Rabid Right is particularly good at the reverse equivalent of the schoolyard taunt, "That's what you are, what am I?" When they sling charges and call names, they're very often saying, That's what I am, what are you? Every time their opponents raise a social justice issue, the GOPers cry "Class War!" When class war is exactly what they are waging. It's the Rich against everybody else.

As Paul Krugman wrote, the latest self-reinforcing congressional delusion is that cutting the deficit is more important than stimulating the economy, and more to the point, helping the victims of The Rich First, Last and Always economy keep their heads above water. "More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real."

Functionally, the deficit is this case is just a reason that the rich might someday get taxed more. This is even clearer here in California, where the poor, the helpless and the old will be abandoned in Ahnold's budget, so that the wealthy--like the Republicans spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their campaigns--won't have to pay for the consequences of their rapaciousness.

Oily News That's Fit to Print: Welcome to the Future

Welcome to the future. More than any event so far, the BP oil disaster is a preview of the near future: A future of consequences, of dreadful crises--often more than one happening at once-- with no easy solutions and maybe no solutions at all, of media panic and Internet hysteria feeding on itself, people feeling pain needing someone to blame, with unrealistic expectations and the propensity to destroy the best they can ever expect to get. A future that will call for courage, imagination and self-awareness, the ability to step back, and to step up, to do what can be done. A future of unlikely and unknown heroes, and of perseverance in the whirlwind of self-destruction.

BP's Top Kill unsurprisingly failed, and as the company gets ready to trot out an even riskier fix, BP is further alienating scientists and the White House. According to this report in the Guardian, BP is challenging scientific findings of underwater oil plumes: "BP's claim is likely only to further anger environmentalists and the White House, which has grown increasingly suspicious of the company's claims to be frank and transparent on developments. The president's environmental adviser and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, has accused BP of misstating the scale of the leak."

The Guardian also reports that "the US military has ruled out taking charge of the operation to stem the flow of oil from the blown-out BP rig. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, today said that military chiefs had looked at the available equipment and concluded that "the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry".

However, the Guardian erroneously reports that "former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the military should step in because the crisis was now "beyond the capacity" of BP to stop." What Powell actually said was that the military might be able to help, but that current military leaders would know better if they in fact can.

Another report on the underwater oil:"researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain."Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.

"Recent discoveries of endangered sea turtles soaked in oil and 22 dolphins found dead in the spill zone only hint at the scope of a potential calamity that could last years and unravel the Gulf's food web."

Dispersing the oil lower into the water column protects beaches, but also keeps it in cooler waters where oil does not break down as fast. That could prolong the oil's potential to poison fish, said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "There's a school of thought that says we've made it worse because of the dispersants," he said."

President Obama meets Tuesday "with the leaders of a panel he created to probe the worst oil spill in U.S. history... as a giant slick from BP's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well poses a new threat to the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama."

Also today, "U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will meet with federal prosecutors and state attorneys general in New Orleans. It will be Holder's first trip to survey the damage before what legal experts believe will be a criminal investigation into the disaster."

Meanwhile, the first named storm of the season, Tropical Storm Agatha, killed more than one hundred people in Central America, with torrential rains, and a sinkhole that swallowed a city building.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.'"

Martin Luther King, Jr.