One of our principal aims at Popular Logistics is to persuade or remind our readers how unpalatable we’d find any sudden interruption in power supply. Accidental or otherwise. Here’s an example of “energy extortion:” Gazprom (read: Russia qua Gazprom) holds Ukraine hostage:
Russia’s natural gas monopoly Gazprom on Tuesday threatened to further cut gas to Ukraine within hours unless agreement was reached on a debt dispute and contracts for future deliveries. Continue reading
Chinese government hasn’t been tracking drug manufacturers, much less regulating them, or ensuring drug safety. This arises out the investigation of (at least) four deaths linked to heparin sold in the United States by Baxter International, which contained ingredients made by a firm called Changzhou SPL, which is in China but whose majority ownership is held by the American company Scientific Protein Laboratories.
Excellent recent account (from which most of the details above were obtained can be found in Blood Thinner Might Be Tied to More Deaths," by Walt Bogdanich, and "China Didn’t Check Drug Supplier, Files Show ," by Bogdanich and Jake Hooker, both of The New York Times .
Since getting drug companies to behave themselves responsibly is often so difficult – and setting up regulatory schemes is difficult even in the absence of an industry determined to resist regulation – we’d like to propose an interim solution: require that all pharmaceuticals which contain any ingredients, packaging, or in any other way have been produced in China, be explicitly and brightly labeled. The text might be only "Some components may have been made in the People’s Republic of China." As an interim measure, this might allow the market to assist in reducing the risks associated with taking medication.
– Inside Politics for Political Insider – has been started by Jared Kushner, the publisher of The New York Observer
. At present they’ve got about a dozen sites up, includings PoliticsNJ.com, (Now PolitickerNJ.com ) which was acquired, rather than being built by the Observer group. To the extent that it creates more detailed coverage of statehouses – and perhaps some competition to provide richer news streams, and more transparency, this could be a very good thing. The plan seems to be to use two or three full-timers in each state, and a much larger number of “editors” – who will come from the ranks of political insiders. Perhaps if the recruitment is sufficiently heterogeneous, biases will be overcome or at least clearly stated. Since New York isn’t one of the states that’s up yet, it’s difficult for us to judge – but the New Jersey site looks pretty good.
His charm notwithstanding, let’s remember some of the things William F. Buckley stood for:
“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes-the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
-William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957.
Here’s the opening graf of the Times obituary :
William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.
We thought that the notion of “advanced race” put one at the edge, rather than the center, of American politics. Perhaps this is part of an editorial policy of being polite. But it does reek of inaccuracy and timidity.
Wikileaks has a report, “U.S. Military Equipment in Iraq (2007),” based on leaked documents, outlining the array and cost of equipment held by United States forces in Iraq:
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Important points (on our first reading) include: Chemical and biological weapons portable facilities
The United States has been caught with at least 2,386 low-grade chemical weapons deployed in Iraq. The items appear in a spectacular 2,000 page leak of nearly one million items of US military equipment deployed in Iraq given to the government transparency group Wikileaks
. The items are labeled under the military’s own NATO supply classificationChemical weapons and equipment. Continue reading
Who said this:
” If there is a philosophical issue that you can’t trust private industry to do anything, then I have to say, you’ve got no business getting on an airplane.”
Answer after the jump. Via Open Target, the blog of Clark Kent Ervin, the honorable former IG of the Department of Homeland Security, and before that, the Department of State.
Answer: Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Secretary Chertoff appears to have said this on the record, testifying before Congress last fall. Remarkable. From Clark Kent Ervin’s post “The Law Is what We Say It Is.”
Aida Edemariam, in The Guardian
, interviews Joseph Stiglitz about his new book, written with Linda Bilmes, The Three-Trillion-Dollar War.
From HelpBobLevinson.com :
On Sunday, March 9, 2008, the Levinson Family will be holding the Help Bob Levinson Rally of Hope in Coral Springs, Florida.
We hope that you, our family and friends, will join us in showing love and support for Bob on the one year anniversary of his disappearance and the eve of his 60th Birthday.
We’ll try to provide further information shortly.
Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle
has an interesting discussion of sewage systems – she points out that
While most of sewage systems do a great job of making the water look clean and getting rid of bacteria and viruses, they often aren’t designed to remove synthetic chemicals. With so many of us dependent on daily doses of pharmaceuticals, we’re excreting lots of drugs (or their metabolites), and they’re sticking around in treated wastewater. Researchers are now starting to discover what that means for the environment.
And then, typically for The Pump Handle , follows up with well-sourced, calm discussion which will leave you better informed.
There may be long-term planning implications with respect to how we design sewage and filtration systems. We’re also reminded of the toxic soup post-Katrina – composed not only of sewage – but of every opened bottle of household cleanser, paint, insecticide, etc. which was on a floor low enough to have the water pass through. (I’ll try to update later with links to the post-Katrina water issues).
Additional resources and ideas about the use of blogs during disasters:
Rex Hammock puts it very concisely in this post, “Hyper-Local Blogging:
In times of local crisis, the importance of having an active blogging community becomes very apparent. There are so many people outside an area who are desperately seeking information — any information — from the ground, so even if power and web-access is out in a city, the information being shared is much needed. (One of the reasons I blog hurricanes is that all of my family (including inlaws) live within one-mile of the Florida or Alabama gulf coasts.) In addition to the standard “meet-ups” that are popular among bloggers here in Nashville and other cities, I suggest that some emergency preparation might be a good thing for bloggers to discuss before the need arises. I’d be happy to point to any examples or list of emergency-blog planning suggestions that exist. Feel free to e-mail me some, or add to the comments below. And I’d be happy to assist in helping Nashville bloggers organize for such an effort.
Josh Hallett makes the case that public information officers should familiarize themselves with local bloggers and make use of them during emergencies. (Hallett was, I think, thinking about government PIO’s – but since so much of the private sector can be involved in crises, private organizations big enough to have a public information function, in my view, can take similar advantage of the blogosphere). From PIOs – Add Bloggers to your Media Distribution List for Disasters & Emergencies
My wife was the public information officer (PIO) for our local county for a number of years. During hurricanes or other emergency situations (remember Y2K) she would spend countless hours at the emergency operations center doing media updates.Like Rex, I feel it’s important for PIOs to be connected with their local blogging community. When a PIO sends out an update to the media they should include local bloggers. The best case scenario would be for the county/local agency to have a blog/rss feed of such content. Continue reading
When a subcontracting firm – the “John Galt Corporation” – is named for the protagonist in an anti-union, anti-government-regulator novel (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead) it is to be hoped that at least one decision-maker would have thought it disturbing to put such a firm in charge of safety. (See David W. Dunlap’s “A Literary Footnote to a Fire: John Galt,” on the Times’s
John Galt Corporation and Bovis Lend-Lease are accused of safety violations which led to the deaths of two firefighters. William K. Rashbaum and Charles V. Bagli, “Bank Tower Contractors Accused of 44 Violations
,” The New York Times
, February 20th, 2008. Rashbaum and Bagli report that the staff of the New York County District Attorney’s Office have been presentign evidence to a grand jury.
This isn’t, I think, what one hopes for in government efficiency: taking a defective and dangerous item which shouldn’t have been distributed in the first place – and giving them to a different
set of disaster victims.
Doctor of Thinkology has an account here: “Love, FEMA.
” The Doctor’s claims notwithstanding, there’s clearly no need for a diploma or a brain.
In Case of Emergency – also known as BreakGlass.WordPress.com
— is a blog, like this one, about public health and disaster preparedness. We’ve listed the formal blog name and the URL just to make sure everyone gets it. The author of this blog is doing a much better job than we are in many areas: to give an example, his coverage of the CDC is excellent. We’ll be adding In Case of Emergency to our blogroll, and intend to be frequently linking to their coverage.
Michael Bergey of Bergey Power Company, a manufacturer of wind-power hardware, is the author of the very helpful Primer on Small Wind Turbines
.
Check out the following information graphic, prepared by The New York Times based on data provided by the American Wind Energy Association: [singlepic=248,419,391,,right] This graphic accompanied Clifford Krauss’s
article “Move Over Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind
,” in yesterday’s paper.
More on Krauss’s excellent article in another post – but – if you’re also aware that Krauss reported a 45% increase in wind-energy production from 2006 to 2007 – and have that in mind while looking at this chart – this is very good news. If we were to continue at this rate, it would mean a doubling of capacity would occur in slightly over two years.
This is part of a Times series called The Energy Challenge. Check out this series, and you can see that the Times has, perhaps slowly but steadily, been providing good, detailed coverage of energy issues; look closely at the bylines, and it’s apparent that the Times has assigned some of its best reporters to covering energy issues. (As to the chart – which is only credited “The New York Times” – we suspect that Khoi Vinh may have had something to do with it. Why the infographic designer, as who, as much as the reporter and her/his editors, has interpretive responsibility, gets no byline, we don’t understand).
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