Friday, January 14, 2005
today's papersFBI Computer Error: System Not FoundBy David SarnoPosted Friday, Jan. 14, 2005, at 2:45 AM PT
Reprising yesterday's Los Angeles Times lead, the New York Times goes high with the FBI's scuttling of its current $170 million computer system overhaul, which—if it hadn't run aground because of bureaucratic ineptitude—would have made information sharing and cross-referencing exceedingly more efficient than the current paper-based system. The Washington Post leads with a CIA think tank's report that because of its relative anarchy, porous borders, and large, unguarded weapons caches, Iraq will be a major new breeding ground for terrorists. For its top non-local story, the LAT off-leads the assassination of an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the latest in a series of attacks against the cleric's representatives meant to destabilize the country in advance of the elections. The Wall Street Journal's worldwide news box also leads the assassination, noting that White House and Iraqi officials have vowed that "[the Jan. 30] elections will be held on time no matter how badly the security situation deteriorates."
USA Today leads with a summary of its interview with President Bush, choosing to highlight Bush's suggestion that retiree benefits may not have to be "dramatically slash[ed]" as part of the Social Security revamp.
The 9/11 commission called a modernized FBI information network "critical to domestic security." But according to officials interviewed for the NYT lead, "The bulk of the internal reports and documents produced at the [FBI] must still be printed, signed and scanned by hand into computer format each day." Members of the 9/11 commission, along with several senators and even Director Robert Mueller himself, expressed dissatisfaction with the mishandling of the system upgrade, which the FBI claimed would be ready by the end of 2004. (Only 10 percent of the system is now deployed.) The LAT mentioned one fact the NYT didn't: Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI has spent $581 million on the ill-fated project.
The Post's lead provides little evidence to back its claim that Iraq is breeding new terrorists: There are no mentions of any specific training efforts discovered thus far, nor of the organizations, locations, or persons involved. The closest thing we get to a hard-news item is the number of pages in the CIA report: 119. One expert quoted in the article's second paragraph observes that there is "the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed [in Iraq] will … disperse to various other countries." Headline news?
In another piece lacking journalistic rigor, the Post's off-lead asks a few guys in a Baghdad cafe to give their opinions on the upcoming elections. The article's best moment is a nice description of democracy in Iraq-tion: "Candidates' names are not published, for fear of assassination. Rallies are few, posters are often torn down, and hardly anyone can describe a party's platform, much less its nominees." But almost everyone the reporter interviews supports the elections—a pattern the reporter makes no attempt to explain (it's not mentioned, for instance, whether the men are Sunni or Shiite)—so we're left wondering why a half-dozen men in Baghdad should be representative of 23 million Iraqis.
The NYT off-leads (and the LAT and Post front) the decision by the pro baseball players' union to accept beefed-up antisteroid policies, including more frequent testing and stiffer penalties. The agreement was criticized for failing to include amphetamines, which are thought to be at least as prevalent as steroids.
The Post fronts the Bush administration's decision to saw a huge chunk off the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The cuts are aimed specifically at HUD's community branch and will eliminate "dozens of economic development projects" and negatively affect several "high-profile anti-poverty efforts." The administration claims the programs are inefficient and duplicative, but critics think they're just trying to divert the money into higher-priority policies like the new tax cuts and possibly, the article notes, a mission to Mars.
The LAT fronts preparations for the 55th presidential inauguration ceremonies (which begin Tuesday; the swearing-in's at noon Thursday). Planners are facing "an awkward challenge": to avoid excessive pomp and circumstance considering the troubling international backdrop. To avoid ostentation, festivities will be limited to "10 balls, three candlelight dinners, a presidential gala … a fancy brunch for dignitaries, a 1.7-mile-long parade and a youth rock concert hosted by the Bush twins."
Hil-Harry-ous!: And while the royal family prepared to take part in ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Britain's Prince Harry attended a posh costume party dressed as a Nazi officer. In the photograph, a swastika is clearly visible on the young prince's cigarette-holding hand. (Someone told me that in one of the pictures, he was talking to a girl in a bikini.) Sharing in the world's outrage, Prince Charles pledged that his son would attend an education session at Auschwitz when was done skiing in Andorra.David Sarno is a writer in Iowa City.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112296/
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Reprising yesterday's Los Angeles Times lead, the New York Times goes high with the FBI's scuttling of its current $170 million computer system overhaul, which—if it hadn't run aground because of bureaucratic ineptitude—would have made information sharing and cross-referencing exceedingly more efficient than the current paper-based system. The Washington Post leads with a CIA think tank's report that because of its relative anarchy, porous borders, and large, unguarded weapons caches, Iraq will be a major new breeding ground for terrorists. For its top non-local story, the LAT off-leads the assassination of an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the latest in a series of attacks against the cleric's representatives meant to destabilize the country in advance of the elections. The Wall Street Journal's worldwide news box also leads the assassination, noting that White House and Iraqi officials have vowed that "[the Jan. 30] elections will be held on time no matter how badly the security situation deteriorates."
USA Today leads with a summary of its interview with President Bush, choosing to highlight Bush's suggestion that retiree benefits may not have to be "dramatically slash[ed]" as part of the Social Security revamp.
The 9/11 commission called a modernized FBI information network "critical to domestic security." But according to officials interviewed for the NYT lead, "The bulk of the internal reports and documents produced at the [FBI] must still be printed, signed and scanned by hand into computer format each day." Members of the 9/11 commission, along with several senators and even Director Robert Mueller himself, expressed dissatisfaction with the mishandling of the system upgrade, which the FBI claimed would be ready by the end of 2004. (Only 10 percent of the system is now deployed.) The LAT mentioned one fact the NYT didn't: Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI has spent $581 million on the ill-fated project.
The Post's lead provides little evidence to back its claim that Iraq is breeding new terrorists: There are no mentions of any specific training efforts discovered thus far, nor of the organizations, locations, or persons involved. The closest thing we get to a hard-news item is the number of pages in the CIA report: 119. One expert quoted in the article's second paragraph observes that there is "the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed [in Iraq] will … disperse to various other countries." Headline news?
In another piece lacking journalistic rigor, the Post's off-lead asks a few guys in a Baghdad cafe to give their opinions on the upcoming elections. The article's best moment is a nice description of democracy in Iraq-tion: "Candidates' names are not published, for fear of assassination. Rallies are few, posters are often torn down, and hardly anyone can describe a party's platform, much less its nominees." But almost everyone the reporter interviews supports the elections—a pattern the reporter makes no attempt to explain (it's not mentioned, for instance, whether the men are Sunni or Shiite)—so we're left wondering why a half-dozen men in Baghdad should be representative of 23 million Iraqis.
The NYT off-leads (and the LAT and Post front) the decision by the pro baseball players' union to accept beefed-up antisteroid policies, including more frequent testing and stiffer penalties. The agreement was criticized for failing to include amphetamines, which are thought to be at least as prevalent as steroids.
The Post fronts the Bush administration's decision to saw a huge chunk off the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The cuts are aimed specifically at HUD's community branch and will eliminate "dozens of economic development projects" and negatively affect several "high-profile anti-poverty efforts." The administration claims the programs are inefficient and duplicative, but critics think they're just trying to divert the money into higher-priority policies like the new tax cuts and possibly, the article notes, a mission to Mars.
The LAT fronts preparations for the 55th presidential inauguration ceremonies (which begin Tuesday; the swearing-in's at noon Thursday). Planners are facing "an awkward challenge": to avoid excessive pomp and circumstance considering the troubling international backdrop. To avoid ostentation, festivities will be limited to "10 balls, three candlelight dinners, a presidential gala … a fancy brunch for dignitaries, a 1.7-mile-long parade and a youth rock concert hosted by the Bush twins."
Hil-Harry-ous!: And while the royal family prepared to take part in ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Britain's Prince Harry attended a posh costume party dressed as a Nazi officer. In the photograph, a swastika is clearly visible on the young prince's cigarette-holding hand. (Someone told me that in one of the pictures, he was talking to a girl in a bikini.) Sharing in the world's outrage, Prince Charles pledged that his son would attend an education session at Auschwitz when was done skiing in Andorra.David Sarno is a writer in Iowa City.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112296/
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January 14, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Identities Lost at SeaBy AMITAV GHOSH Calcutta — ON Jan. 1, six days after the Indian Ocean earthquake, I visited several emergency camps in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This chain of 572 islets, less than 200 miles north of Sumatra, is a territory of India and was badly hit by the tsunami. One of the camps I visited was run by the Roman Catholic Church. It was housed in the Nirmala School and was presided over by a mild-mannered young priest, Father Johnson.On the morning of my visit, Father Johnson was at the center of an altercation. It was not over deprivation or hardship - there was more than enough food and water and clothes for all who had taken shelter. The problem was that the refugees, most of whom had lost not only their homes but every last possession as well, had spent the previous three days waiting anxiously, and no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going? And, most important, how could they rebuild their lives?Their anxieties were founded not just in their experience of the tsunami but also in their separation from their safety net of identity and support. Despite the hundreds of miles of ocean that separate the islands from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair have the appearance of miniaturized portraits of the nation. The people in the camps are for the most part, settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Only a small percentage of the refugees are indigenous to the islands and they are mainly from the Nicobar chain.The settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories, I found it easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: tens of thousands were able to make their way out of poverty and overcrowding and into the ranks of the expanding middle class. But on the morning of Dec. 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle class in India, or anywhere else, is to be kept afloat on a life raft of paper: identity cards, drivers licenses, ration cards, school certificates, checkbooks, certificates of life insurance and records of deposits. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to pack up their essential documents. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught, allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors' homes and families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world. And this, more than anything, was the cause of the panic that morning at the Nirmala School. Of course, Father Johnson could give them no answers - he was just as helpless as they were. The officials in charge of the relief effort had told him nothing about their plans. His school was supposed to reopen two days later. He had no idea how he was going to manage his students with more than 1,600 refugees camping on the grounds. Realizing eventually that Father Johnson knew no more than they did, the refugees reduced their demands to a single, modest query: could they have some paper and a few pens? No sooner had this request been met than another uproar broke out: those who'd been given pens and paper now became the center of the siege. People began to push and jostle, clamoring to have their names written down. It seemed to occur to them simultaneously that identity was now no more than a matter of assertion, and nothing seemed to matter more than to create a trail of paper. Somehow they had come to believe that on this, the random scribbling of a name on a sheet of paper in a refugee camp, depended the eventual reclamation of a life.At the center of the crowd was a middle-aged Sikh, Paramjeet Kaur. She was a woman of determined aspect, dressed in a dun salwaar kameez. Noticing my notebook, she said: "Are you taking names too? Here, write mine down." She told me she had come to the islands some 30 years before, by dint of marriage. Her husband was a Sikh from Campbell Bay, a settlement on the southernmost tip of the Nicobar chain. Like many others in the settlement, her husband belonged to a family that had been given a grant of land in recognition of army service. At that time, Paramjeet Kaur's husband and in-laws were granted a small amount of farmland and a plot on which to build a residence. The settlement that grew up around them was as varied as the regiments of the Indian Army: there were Marathis, Malayalis, Jharkhandis and people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. "There was nothing there but jungle then," said Paramjeet Kaur. "We cleared it with our own hands and we laid out orchards of areca and coconut. With God's blessing we prospered, and built a cement house with three rooms and a veranda."The strip of land that was zoned for houses lay right on the seafront, providing fine views. It was no mere accident, then, that placed Paramjeet Kaur's house in the path of the tsunami: its location was determined by an outlook that owed more to Europe than to its immediate surroundings. After all, the sea poses little danger to the corniches of the French Riviera or the coastline of Italy. The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, on the other hand, are the breeding grounds of cyclones, the hurricanes of East. This is why a certain wariness of the sea can be seen in the ancient harbor cities of southern Asia: they are often situated upriver, at a cautious distance from open water.As European tastes took hold, however, the pattern seems to have been reversed, so that it could almost be stated as a rule that the more modern and prosperous a settlement, the more likely it is to hug the water. On the island of Car Nicobar, for example, the Indian Air Force base was built a few dozen yards from the water's edge and it was so laid out that the more senior the servicemen, the closer they were to the sea. Although no one could have anticipated the tsunami, the choice of location for settlements is still shocking. Cyclones can cause surges of water to heights of 30 feet, and their effect would have been similar to what happened last month. But, of course, it is all too easy to be wise after the event: given the choice between a beach view and a plot in the mosquito-infested interior, what would anyone have chosen before Dec. 26? So for Paramjeet Kaur, some 30 years of labor were washed away in an instant. "When we were young we had the energy to cut the jungle and reclaim the land," she told me. "We laid out fields and orchards and we did well. But at my age, how can I start again? Where will I begin?""What will you do then?" I asked. "We will go back to Punjab, where we have family. The government must give us land there; that is our demand." Some other immigrants - office workers from Uttar Pradesh, fishermen from Andhra Pradesh, construction laborers from Bengal - seconded her idea. They had all built good lives for themselves in the islands, but now, having lost their homes, their relatives and even their identities, they were intent on returning to the mainland, no matter what. "If nothing else," one said to me, "we will live in slums beside the rail tracks. But never again by the sea." Amitav Ghosh is the author of the forthcoming novel "The Hungry Tide
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January 14, 2005OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Identities Lost at SeaBy AMITAV GHOSH Calcutta — ON Jan. 1, six days after the Indian Ocean earthquake, I visited several emergency camps in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This chain of 572 islets, less than 200 miles north of Sumatra, is a territory of India and was badly hit by the tsunami. One of the camps I visited was run by the Roman Catholic Church. It was housed in the Nirmala School and was presided over by a mild-mannered young priest, Father Johnson.On the morning of my visit, Father Johnson was at the center of an altercation. It was not over deprivation or hardship - there was more than enough food and water and clothes for all who had taken shelter. The problem was that the refugees, most of whom had lost not only their homes but every last possession as well, had spent the previous three days waiting anxiously, and no one had asked them where they wanted to go or when; none of them had any idea of what was to become of them and the sense of being adrift had brought them to the end of their tether. In the absence of any other figure of authority they had laid siege to Father Johnson: when would they be allowed to move on? Where would they be going? And, most important, how could they rebuild their lives?Their anxieties were founded not just in their experience of the tsunami but also in their separation from their safety net of identity and support. Despite the hundreds of miles of ocean that separate the islands from the Indian mainland, many of the relief camps in Port Blair have the appearance of miniaturized portraits of the nation. The people in the camps are for the most part, settlers from different parts of the mainland: Bengal, Orissa, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Only a small percentage of the refugees are indigenous to the islands and they are mainly from the Nicobar chain.The settlers in the camps are almost unanimous in describing themselves as having come to the islands in search of land and opportunity. Listening to their stories, I found it easy to believe that most of them found what they were looking for: tens of thousands were able to make their way out of poverty and overcrowding and into the ranks of the expanding middle class. But on the morning of Dec. 26, this hard-won betterment became a potent source of vulnerability. For to be middle class in India, or anywhere else, is to be kept afloat on a life raft of paper: identity cards, drivers licenses, ration cards, school certificates, checkbooks, certificates of life insurance and records of deposits. An earthquake would have left remnants to rummage through; floods and hurricanes would have allowed time for survivors to pack up their essential documents. The tsunami, in the suddenness of its onslaught, allowed for no preparations: not only did it destroy the survivors' homes and families; it also robbed them of all the evidentiary traces of their place in the world. And this, more than anything, was the cause of the panic that morning at the Nirmala School. Of course, Father Johnson could give them no answers - he was just as helpless as they were. The officials in charge of the relief effort had told him nothing about their plans. His school was supposed to reopen two days later. He had no idea how he was going to manage his students with more than 1,600 refugees camping on the grounds. Realizing eventually that Father Johnson knew no more than they did, the refugees reduced their demands to a single, modest query: could they have some paper and a few pens? No sooner had this request been met than another uproar broke out: those who'd been given pens and paper now became the center of the siege. People began to push and jostle, clamoring to have their names written down. It seemed to occur to them simultaneously that identity was now no more than a matter of assertion, and nothing seemed to matter more than to create a trail of paper. Somehow they had come to believe that on this, the random scribbling of a name on a sheet of paper in a refugee camp, depended the eventual reclamation of a life.At the center of the crowd was a middle-aged Sikh, Paramjeet Kaur. She was a woman of determined aspect, dressed in a dun salwaar kameez. Noticing my notebook, she said: "Are you taking names too? Here, write mine down." She told me she had come to the islands some 30 years before, by dint of marriage. Her husband was a Sikh from Campbell Bay, a settlement on the southernmost tip of the Nicobar chain. Like many others in the settlement, her husband belonged to a family that had been given a grant of land in recognition of army service. At that time, Paramjeet Kaur's husband and in-laws were granted a small amount of farmland and a plot on which to build a residence. The settlement that grew up around them was as varied as the regiments of the Indian Army: there were Marathis, Malayalis, Jharkhandis and people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. "There was nothing there but jungle then," said Paramjeet Kaur. "We cleared it with our own hands and we laid out orchards of areca and coconut. With God's blessing we prospered, and built a cement house with three rooms and a veranda."The strip of land that was zoned for houses lay right on the seafront, providing fine views. It was no mere accident, then, that placed Paramjeet Kaur's house in the path of the tsunami: its location was determined by an outlook that owed more to Europe than to its immediate surroundings. After all, the sea poses little danger to the corniches of the French Riviera or the coastline of Italy. The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, on the other hand, are the breeding grounds of cyclones, the hurricanes of East. This is why a certain wariness of the sea can be seen in the ancient harbor cities of southern Asia: they are often situated upriver, at a cautious distance from open water.As European tastes took hold, however, the pattern seems to have been reversed, so that it could almost be stated as a rule that the more modern and prosperous a settlement, the more likely it is to hug the water. On the island of Car Nicobar, for example, the Indian Air Force base was built a few dozen yards from the water's edge and it was so laid out that the more senior the servicemen, the closer they were to the sea. Although no one could have anticipated the tsunami, the choice of location for settlements is still shocking. Cyclones can cause surges of water to heights of 30 feet, and their effect would have been similar to what happened last month. But, of course, it is all too easy to be wise after the event: given the choice between a beach view and a plot in the mosquito-infested interior, what would anyone have chosen before Dec. 26? So for Paramjeet Kaur, some 30 years of labor were washed away in an instant. "When we were young we had the energy to cut the jungle and reclaim the land," she told me. "We laid out fields and orchards and we did well. But at my age, how can I start again? Where will I begin?""What will you do then?" I asked. "We will go back to Punjab, where we have family. The government must give us land there; that is our demand." Some other immigrants - office workers from Uttar Pradesh, fishermen from Andhra Pradesh, construction laborers from Bengal - seconded her idea. They had all built good lives for themselves in the islands, but now, having lost their homes, their relatives and even their identities, they were intent on returning to the mainland, no matter what. "If nothing else," one said to me, "we will live in slums beside the rail tracks. But never again by the sea." Amitav Ghosh is the author of the forthcoming novel "The Hungry Tide
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