This day in history - July 25, 1956: The ocean liner Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm

By Richard K. Barry

On this day in 1956, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 46. The collision took place 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. The next day, the Andrea Doria sunk.

The incident was heavily covered by the media at the time. It is generally recognized that the design of the ship, which allowed it to stay afloat for 11 hours after impact, good behavior of the crew, improvements in communications, and the quick response of other ships averted a disaster on the scale of the Titanic in 1912.

The Andrea Doria was the last major transatlantic passenger vessel to sink before air travel became the preferred method of crossing the ocean.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Scenes from the Culture of Fear: Bagel-wielding professor removed from plane

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Hey, maybe this should be a new series here at The Reaction: Scenes from the Culture of Fear.

They're not really Signs of the Apocalypse, a series we've been doing for years, more signs that society is going crazy as a result of manufactured terror.

Last week I wrote about a model North Carolina high school student suspended for accidentally having a paring knife in her lunchbox, today it's this:

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.

That "suspicious package" turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

Monday's incident is another example of other passengers essentially becoming the authority on terrorist activity on planes.

Recently, passenger complaints have resulted authorities taking action against innocent passengers who went to the bathroom too often on a flight and who were just being annoying.

In the hyper-sensitive world of flying, sneezing too often could get you kicked off a flight and questioned by the FBI.

I mean, I can see if it was a Cinnabon or something, or maybe an explosive jelly doughnut, but this is just crazy.

Welcome to the Culture of Fear.

A modest proposal

By Carl

Little noticed in the hoopla over the failed terrorism attempt of Christmas Day, with the concurrent fingerpointing (these rules were instituted under the Bush administration, something jackasses like Rep. Peter King (R-Frontrunning Poser) seem to forget) was an item that made me think a little:

WUHAN, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway with the world's fastest train journey at a 350-km-per-hour designed speed, started operation Saturday.

Two passenger trains rolled out the Wuhan Railway Station and Guangzhou North Railway Station at about 9 a.m. and reached the terminals within three hours, compared with the previous 10 and a half hours.

The service between Wuhan, a metropolis in central China, and Guangzhou City, a business hub in the southern Guangdong Province, was put into trial operation on Dec. 9, reaching a maximum speed of 394.2 km (ed. note: roughly 250 miles) per hour.

Not quite as fast as a jet airplane, but no one drove a train into the 90th floor of the World Trade Center, either. And given the delays in airline terminals sure to arise from this incident, bullet trains might begin to make more sense.

Several reasons drive train travel in Europe and Asia that seem not to affect Americans: higher fuel prices due to government taxes, shorter distances between hub cities, less developed road systems (really, the Autobahn and perhaps Englands motorways are about the closest any nation comes to the US interstate highway system) creating slower speeds and longer travel times, among other reasons.

Indeed, China may be the only nation who suffers from both the need to have citizens in two places at once as well as the staggering large distances between those places.

Now, Barack Obama did propose investing in high speed rail systems, particularly across the heartland of the United States. So far, the only firm proposal is for a rail link between Disneyland and Las Vegas (courtesy of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid). I'm not entirely sure what the advantage is for having this. Do you drop your kids off with Goofy in the morning and pick them up at night after you've blown the mortgage payment?

But I digress. We have an opportunity now to invest in something that a) makes sense to do, given the economic catastrophe that higher fuel prices will create shortly; b) can be shovel-ready within months; c) would help wean us off foreign energy sources; d) could employ zero-emission power plants strung along the rail lines; e) would reinforce homeland security, both from a macroeconomic point of view as well as a micro-security viewpoint; and f) would give us a goal that most Americans can appreciate and wrap their minds around.

After all, rail travel has been around 150 years and there's a whole litany of romantic notions with regards to it. Imagine going from Chicago to Denver. It's a 17 hour drive. It's a three hour plane flight, plus two hours at security. At 660-odd miles and 250 mph on a train, it's 2 and one-half hours. And you're in downtown at both ends.

Makes sense, right?

On Big Brothers -- U.S. Intelligence/Security

By Carol Gee

Internal Big Brothers inside government: Homeland Security is implementing a program within the department for all employees to watch each other carefully for signs of being spies or terrorists. To quote a couple of articles:

• Types of behaviors that could be foreign espionage -- (from the CQ Behind the Lines newsletter, according to a memo obtained by the AP's Eileen Sullivan.) AP: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff . . said employees should suspect espionage if, for one example::




"A department employee has a personal relationship with a foreigner that seems suspicious."



• "Homeland Security setting up counterspy unit" from USA Today (8/12/08) via ProPublica. To quote:
  
  

  Concerns about foreign spies and terrorists have prompted the Homeland Security Department to set up its own counterintelligence division and require strict reporting from employees about foreign travel, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
  
  The new directive comes as the federal government increases its counterspy efforts across all agencies and raises the awareness of intelligence vulnerabilities in the private industry as well as in protecting government secrets.
  
  The Homeland Security Department "is vulnerable to adversaries who seek information about our nation's homeland defense programs,classified or unclassified," Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in the Aug. 4 memo to employees obtained by AP.

Homeland Security AS your Big Brother when you travel -- To quote a recent e-mail from Carolyn Frederickson of the ACLU:

Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country? If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye.

With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history. The Department of Homeland Security confirms that this is the official policy.

What happens if you refuse to let the agents download your personal photos? Or if you have encrypted your private information? Then Border Patrol -- which is now an agency of the Department of Homeland Security -- can simply copy your entire hard drive or even take your device and hang on to it indefinitely.

Unfortunately, seizing laptops and cameras at the border isn’t the only travel security measure that infringes on our civil liberties. Just last month, the U.S. government's "terrorist watch list" surpassed one million names and is growing by over twenty-thousand names per month. The watch list includes the names of prominent people, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), plus hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans -- many of them with common names like Robert Johnson and James Robinson. Your name might be on the list, but there's no way to know for sure until you are delayed -- or even detained for hours in a back room. If you discover your name is on the list, it's nearly impossible to get off. It actually took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the list. No joke. An Act of Congress.

These abuses have something in common: They make all of us into suspects, with no rule of law and no accountability. . . Traveling shouldn’t mean checking your rights when you’re checking your luggage. It’s time for some sanity when it comes to security. Please, speak out now.

Tell Congress: it’s time to rein in travel abuses by the Department of Homeland Security.

Related to this is a possible travel remedy from my 8/13/08 CQ Behind the Lines newsletter: “Congress needs to set the rules for how border agents can delve into travelers’ laptops,” the Post opines.

State and local Big Brothers -- These items come from my 8/11/08 CQ Behind the Lines newsletter:

• "Some $4.5 million in federal funding for the Maryland State Police is imperiled by a probe into its use of a criminal database to track peaceful activists, The Washington Times tells. . ." Quoting further:
  

  The undercover infiltration of the protest groups appears legal under state law, legal analysts said. But entering a Baltimore activist's name in the drug-trafficking and terror suspect database without apparent justification could violate 1970s-era regulations stemming from revelations of domestic spying by national intelligence agencies. It also could breach Maryland privacy laws . .
  

• The local Institute for Security Studies has put together a DVD, "The Seven Signs of Terror," for people such as school police who could help spot terrorist activity, Las Vegas's CBS 4 News notes. To quote:
  
  

  The DVD, which serves the entire state of Nevada, illustrates the “Seven Signs of Terrorism” and explains how to report such signs. The “Seven Signs of Terrorism” are:
  
  • Surveillance
  • Information Gathering
  • Testing Security
  • Planning
  • Suspicious Behavior
  • Rehearsal
  • Getting Into Position
  
  According to the DVD, if a potential terrorist act is interrupted during any of the “Seven Signs” the planned act can be stopped. Ordinary citizens reporting suspicious activities they have witnessed is an important tool for law enforcement working to stop terrorist acts

Business Big Brothers -- from The Washington Post (8/12/08) comes this headline, "Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent," by Ellen Nakashima. To quote:

Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

. . . The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.

. . . Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), [ ] created the Privacy Caucus 12 years ago. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information."

Markey said he and his colleagues plan to introduce legislation next year, a sort of online-privacy Bill of Rights, that would require that consumers must opt in to the tracking of their online behavior and the collection and sharing of their personal data.

Previous S/SW posts on this subject:

1. Like An Ubiquitous Spook (Sept. 2007) Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV
2. Bigger and Bigger Brothers (Jan. 2008)
3. Ubiquitous Big Brothers (Feb. 2008)
4. The State of the Surveillance State (April 2008)
5. Understanding Your FBI (May 2008)
   

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

It is about where one stands

By Carol Gee

One's perspective on reality depends on where one stands. Within the past month I traveled across several Western of these United States. The journey was a useful experience in regaining a sane perspective in an occasionally insane world. The question of what happens to perspective when a person stands in a different place also applies to our two presidential candidates.

Obama's foreign perspective vs. McCain's purposefully domestic campaign view -- In the past day or so Barack Obama stood before 200,000 people in Berlin and talked to them about what it means to be citizens of one world. John McCain stood in a grocery store and projected a somewhat narrower perspective by ignoring an opportunity to talk about the economic difficulties of his fellow U.S. citizens. One looked at the horizon. One looked at the eggs and failed to really see them, because he got lost in his bizarre campaign appearance that missed the mark. Obama stood before the largest crowd ever assembled to hear him speak; McCain decided to make another appearance, this time in a German restaurant and at a Fudge Haus.

These current little news stories, that will soon be lost to the next episodes of campaign buzz, illustrate why voters can trust their guts about choosing the next president based on where he stands. Barack Obama looks and sounds like a genuine leader moving with the times; John McCain looks like a "has-been" politician traveling by reality and failing to recognize it.

My travels across a familiar route, over which I have traveled annually for several years, again brought home some simple truths to me. Family matters to me, and keeping in touch with my family of origin is important enough to make a 2400+ mile journey every year. Geography matters to me also. Texas and Wyoming have similar characteristics, but the differences are stark. A change of perspective reminds me of the value of Wyoming's clean blue skies, open lands and green grass, abundant natural energy resources, animals still roaming wild, and a fiercely independent little cadre of voters. I am reminded again that the entire population of the state is less than the metropolitan area in which I live. For the past month I drove on a freeway only twice. And I saw very few television news broadcasts because my siblings prefer either no news or Fox Network. Now that I am back home, I am again breathing the detritus of life beside the freeways. And my eyes are smarting again from the pollution caused by Texans' love for their individual cars and trucks. And my old friends at C-SPAN, CNN, and MSNBC are again defining reality for me. For a political blogger, it is sublime.

Expansive geography characterizes each state. Both states have huge raw energy reserves that are being consumed at rapid rates. Wind farms dot the horizons of each. Crops being harvested across flat or rolling plains help to feed and clothe the nation. Both native populations are "independent cusses" with a basic mistrust of government and dislike of the news media. Both peoples have a large connection to animals and empty open spaces with miles and miles of highways.

I stand on my own porch again, glad to be home, but equally glad to have been in the vicinity of what was my original home until I became an adult. And I sit at my own computer again, no longer befuddled nor limited by time with a borrowed or library computer. It may take me a while to get my feet on the ground and reconnected with Blogworld.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Monday, Monday is the song

By Carol Gee

The meadowlark is the State Bird of Wyoming. The photo is by Karen Hollingsworth.

I am visiting my family of origin in Wyoming. Therefore blog posting has sometimes been sporadic. But I have been tuned in to the web as much as possible, given technology and circumstances. I was "off" the weekend before last, due to Blogger problems, which I was able to remedy. And I returned to posting, revived a bit by an outdoor cookout. The event, hosted by my brother who makes a dynamite potato salad, was complete with his resident meadowlark moving from fence post to fence post.

My time here is dwindling fast. Soon I will be singing the blues because I am leaving my mom and three siblings, these bright blue skies, the clear rushing water, the blue snow-topped mountains, and the town where I was born that I love so much.

Gasoline prices are currently running between $4.12 and $4.22 per gallon. The roads are filled with big hunky motorcycles of all makes and vintages, as singles and couples filter in to Wyoming prior to heading for Sturgis, South Dakota. All the small towns are full of tourists, a surprising number utilizing a recreational vehicle. The alfalfa hay is being cut and baled in the irrigated fields, and the grain crops are getting some height. Perennial flower borders are a signature of this lovely town, along with huge old trees and long hiking and biking paths.

Wyoming politics have been a bit hard to deduce. Phil Roberts at The Wyoming Almanac debunks a few myths, however. My sisters are Democrats; my mom and brother are Republicans. Therefore political discussions vary, depending on the company. My mom worked at elections in years past, and my sisters attended this year's caucuses.

Wednesday I am off to Texas by car. Another day, another $4+ per gallon. Wish me luck.

(Cross-posted earlier at South by Southwest, updated a bit here.)

Monday's travel digest

By Carol Gee

What are traveling bloggers up to these days? Steve Clemons of The Washington Note is currently in China, staying at the "Beijing Friendship Hotel, built for Soviet technocrats." He writes "Some Initial China Trip Reactions" today. Grant McCracken, who writes This Blog sits at the: . . ., was in a hotel in Princeton a few days ago and posted very thoughtfully about "How Obama Speaks." He closes with this:

I think Obama has studied other oratorical exemplars. And I think he has made this a very careful and purposeful study. I leave it to someone with an ear better than mine to "reverse engineer" Obama's style speech and figure out what these influences are.

Traveling this summer has brought me some surprises. I have been surprised at the number of Recreational Vehicles on the road. I have been delightfully surprised to eat tomaotes again in Colorado and Wyoming. And I have been surprised at the gree, green grass gracing the plains. Ours has been a road trip, and the gas pump surprises have brought breathtaking costs. Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, according to Think Progress, says, "It doesn't matter that he does not know the price of gas." That is certainly no surprise. To quote:

McCain’s cluelessness about gas prices is compounded by the fact that he is clueless about what to do about it. He is promoting a gas tax holiday for drivers because he claims to understand Americans are hurting.” It will provide “a little psychological boost,” McCain said of his plan.

Tips aplenty -- The Independent Traveler.com gives "Ten Tips for Road Trips" that have been useful. You might also want to look at their "Summer Travel Preview 2008."

Send yourself to camp -- A bit of research on travel trends found five summer trends in "summer camps" for adults, according to Independent Traveler.com. They include Dog Training camps, Sports camps, Wine, Beer and Cooking camps, Rock 'n' Roll camps, Arts and Crafts camps, and Fitness camps. This website is a rich source of ideas and contacts for each of these specialized vacation possibilities.

Settling for a while -- I now have reached my destination and a working computer, so posting will be more regular for a while. Safe trips to all.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Road warrior report

By Carol Gee

Travel in the USA is an interesting challenge in these days of storms and high gasoline prices. Here's the latest from one who's just been there.

**********

Good day to everyone at The Reaction. We are in "the wilds" of Wyoming on our annual trek to visit my family of origin.

We started in Texas, arriving here in Cheyenne via New Mexico and Colorado. Many motorcycles are on the road. A bunch of them, "non-Harleys," were headed for a big rally in Taos, New Mexico. There are also a surprisingly high number of RVs of all sorts on the roadn to as many as last year, but more than I expected. . The trip has been marked by huge road construction projects all along the way. Summer is for dirt work in the West. Winters shut down most construction due to blizzards and frozen ground. Happily for Democrats the freeways that have been under construction for years in Denver are all finished. Gas prices have ranged form a high of $4.04 in Colorado Springs, to a low of $3.81 in west Texas. Tomatoes are safe in Colorado and Wyoming. My traveling companion is living proof; he is alive and kcikin' this morning. We had a hamburger and a salad last night here at Cheyene's Hitching Post Inn. The quantity was generous -- 1/3 pound of juicy Angus at $5.65 each, plus tip. Motel prices ranged from $100 a night to $80.

It was 42 degrees in Big Piney, Wyoming last night. Storms are predicted along our route today. The weather ranged from a sand storm in the high desert of New Mexico to a magnificent thunderstorrm a few miles later. The clouds and lightning filled the sky with darks and lights and flashes. There is still a great deal of snow on the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and the streams and rivers run high and fast for rain and snow melt. Agribusiness and abandoned (and a few working) family farms and ranches stretched all along the countryside. Grains and cotton grows with the aid of irrigation water pumped from below ground. We saw herds of cattle with lots of baby calves. Because of plenty of rain the plains and hills are green and lush in places. The antelope herds transplanted to New Mexico a few years ago have thrived, and often feed near cattle and share the watering holes or tanks beneath windmills. We saw a big herd of buffalo at the Colorado/Wyoming line, also boasting lots of adorable little ones.

Politics along the route has been a little hard to deduce without talking to everyone along the way. But I did pick up a few tidbits, for what they are worth. A School Principal in Greeley was fired because he was caught having an affair. We passed a great big sign announcing the "Focus on the Family" world headquarters in Colorado, within the same period as when Barack Obama was being chastized by them for his incorrect interpretation of the Bible. Denver is observing "Bike to Work Day" today. The city expects 1,000 to participate. The Denver TV station announced that there would be "streamed live video online in Spanish from the Democratic Convention" in August.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)