Just a quiet note, to follow up to a post from November. Our neighbor, Ray, passed away this morning.
Martha and I had been to visit him several times where he had been receiving care for his fall, the last time a bit before I went out to Las Vegas last month. It was clear then that his health was deteriorating quickly. He was happy to see us, but was no longer as mentally sharp or aware of his surroundings as he had been, and in fact he struck me as being more than a little impatient to be ‘moving on.’ It was almost as though he felt he had overstayed his welcome, living to 97.
So I had been expecting this news. Still, it is a sadness.
But I’ll remember him for as long as I grow tomatoes. One thing he did last year, when he was still very much aware of this world, was to tell me to take his tomato towers, wonderful 6′ tall box-wire supports that are about as old as I am. The last few years I had borrowed these, ‘renting them’ in exchange for keeping him supplied with fresh tomatoes through the summer, dutifully stacking them back in his yard at the end of the season. Now they’ll have a new home.
As I suppose Ray does, in our memories.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Depression, Emergency, Guns, Health, Predictions, Publishing, Writing stuff
Well, I’ve been in a funk all week.
The news that UTI is closing down, a decision I respect and even prompted, is still news of one aspect of my life coming to an end.
And there are others.
My shooting buddy here in town is moving to California. We’ll still be able to keep in touch, but it is still a loss to have him go. He’ll be leaving this week – while I am gone to the SHOT Show.
And our old neighbor, Ray, is slipping in health. This is common in the elderly when they have taken a fall, or moved out of their home. We saw him the other day, and, well, I’m glad his daughter is in town this weekend to visit him.
Even the really good news about the book I got last Monday is a bit bittersweet. That may be hard for some folks to understand. But for me, I enjoy the process of working on something – and miss it when a project is done. I started thinking about the story behind Communion of Dreams about 15 years ago, and really started writing it over a decade ago. There’s a lot of my life tied up in that book.
So, forgive the funk. A lot of changes, all at once.
I will be mostly unavailable through the 26th, but will try and schedule some posts to cycle while I am gone. And I may have a chance to post some thoughts about my trip while out in Vegas – we’ll see.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism
As if the introduction of full-body scanners after some nut set his nuts on fire wasn’t enough – now security officials have decided to play a game of “hide the Semtex” and wound up losing a lump of it in a passenger’s baggage on an international flight. A lump big enough to down a jetliner. And then they didn’t bother to tell anyone for three days.
No, I am not making this up:
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — A failed airport security test ended up with a Slovak man unwittingly carrying hidden explosives in his luggage on a flight to Dublin, Slovak officials admitted Wednesday — a mistake that enraged Irish authorities and shocked aviation experts worldwide.
While the Slovaks blamed the incident on ”a silly and unprofessional mistake,” Irish officials and security experts said it was foolish for the Slovaks to hide actual bomb parts in the luggage of innocent passengers under any circumstances.
The passenger himself was detained by Irish police for several hours before being let go without charge Tuesday.
The Irish were also angry that it took the Slovaks three days to tell them about the Saturday mistake and that the pilot of the airplane decided to fly to Dublin anyway even after being told that an explosive was in his aircraft’s checked luggage.
Can you imagine being the poor bastard who unwittingly was the mule for this little exercise? That’d be my luck:
Ding dong.
“Honey, there are some gentlemen here from the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security who want a word with you . . . ”
Jeez.
Anyway, now that this delightful stunt has happened, I expect that we’ll all have to stop taking any luggage whatsoever, for fear that some security official somewhere will forget where he left his “bomb components”.
Hey, makes as much sense, and would do about as much good, as the full-body scanners we’ll all soon have to go through.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism, Violence
Look, not to be too explicit about this, but the use of full body scanners won’t make a damned bit of difference to someone who wants to smuggle a bomb or bomb components onto a plane (or anywhere else.) Because there are these things called body cavities, where people have actually been known to insert and hide stuff.
The Dutch have already announced that henceforth all passengers heading to the US will have to go through such scanners. Yesterday on All Things Considered I listened to professional fear-monger and former Bush Administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff claim that full body scanners are the solution, but that the evil ACLU had thwarted their use:
Mr. CHERTOFF: Well, a couple of years ago we began the process of testing them to see, first of all, if they worked and second, if they could be deployed without unduely restricting the flow of traffic. And the good news is that we were able to demonstrate that they were successful. We could use them without slowing up traffic and we could also protect privacy.
The difficulty is the ACLU and other similar organizations began a very aggressive campaign to limit or prevent the use of these machines and it culminated frankly last year in a vote by the House of Representatives to be very sharply restricted of the use of these machines. So, although we have acquired these machines, they are not as widely deployed as they should be.
Yeah, as reported this morning on NPR, there are concerns about the scanners being “intrusive”:
But lawmakers have been among those reluctant to deploy the machines. In June, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to restrict their use. The vote was big — 310-118 — and bipartisan. Members of both parties said they were concerned that the pictures were too intrusive and questioned their effectiveness.
That’s what also worries privacy groups, which have mounted a major campaign against the machines, now being tested at 19 U-S airports. They say there’s no guarantee the pictures won’t be misused.
“There’s nothing to prevent images from being retained even when they say they won’t be retained,” says Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group at the forefront of the campaign.
But above and beyond the privacy concerns, is the simple fact that just scanning what is on the outside of someone’s body, or in their carry-on, or in their luggage, is insufficient. Because you can insert sufficient explosive into your rectum to do serious damage. In fact, it’s already been done on at least one occasion this year:
On the evening of Aug. 28, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister — and the man in charge of the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts — was receiving members of the public in connection with the celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. As part of the Ramadan celebration, it is customary for members of the Saudi royal family to hold public gatherings where citizens can seek to settle disputes or offer Ramadan greetings.
One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program.
* * *
But the al-Asiri case ended very differently from the al-Awfi case. Unlike al-Awfi, al-Asiri was not a genuine repentant — he was a human Trojan horse. After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
I’ve joked about this as the TSA’s “Grab your ankles, please” moment – but as a matter of simple fact, unless we actually go to full body-cavity searches, we cannot prevent this technique from being used in the future. Anything short of that is nothing more than a minor annoyance for terrorists, and an intrusion into the privacy of all other individuals who fly. Do we *really* want to take that step?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Humor, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Terrorism
the makers of Depends:
In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed new restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports and limit the ability of international passengers to move about an airplane.
The government was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be “unpredictable” and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport — a prospect that may upset airlines and travelers alike.
But several airlines released detailed information about the restrictions, saying that passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. It was not clear how often the rule would affect domestic flights.
That’s from today’s NYT’s article. Here’s what’s on the TSA site:
The Department of Homeland Security immediately put additional screening measures into place- for all domestic and international flights- to ensure the continued safety of the traveling public. We are also working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement on additional security measures, as well as our international partners on enhanced security at airports and on flights.
The American people should continue their planned holiday travel and, as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials.
Passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place. These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere.
And here’s this from a tech news site:
Multiple sources, among them Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing, have also been told that no electronics are allowed on international flights. None. So you can’t even play video games to distract yourself from how badly you have to pee.
Jeez. As I noted back in September, Bruce Schneier has already talked about an ‘underwear bomb’:
For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: “Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.” Now, sadly, we have an example of one.
Time to invest, I tell ya. The demand for Depends is going to go up. They’re not just for grandma anymore.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
“You guys are really good with him,” said the ER nurse.
* * * * * * *
The knock came at the back door as I was finishing my first cup of coffee. It was a neighbor two doors down.
“Jim, Ray’s fallen, and I need help to get him up,” he said, somewhat breathless from the quick walk over to our house.
Ray’s another neighbor, and an old family friend. He and Martha Sr shared a birthday, though he was five years older. This makes him 97. He’s been on his own for a while now, his wife having passed (he cared for her up until the final months of her life – she had Alzheimer’s) and his family long since scattered. But he was doing fine – spry, mental faculties still very sharp, and he would always consult with me on how my tomatoes were doing, offering his vastly greater experience what I should do for this or that minor problem. My wife and I, and the other neighbors, all kept an eye on him, and his family would call him a couple of times a day to keep track of how he was doing. Which is exactly what he wanted – he was adamant that he could continue to be on his own, in the house where he’d lived for 60 years.
I didn’t wait. I quickly headed out the door and across the yard, pulling out my mobile and calling my wife as I did so.
* * * * * * *
For some months now, I have been #4.
#4 on Ray’s speed-dial, that is. We set it up some time back, and tested it fairly regularly. Because though Ray was doing really well, recently he’d started having some problems with his balance. Reluctantly, he had started using a cane, then a walker. But he kept his phone with him at all times, because if something happened and he lost his balance, he wanted to have the ability to call me if he needed help getting back up or was injured.
And after his needing to call me a couple of times in the last month, I had taken to being more careful to make sure I always had my phone with me, that it was on. Recently I found myself checking it frequently, to make sure I hadn’t accidentally muted it, in case Ray called and I missed it.
This was a familiar feeling, an ingrained response. It was like always making sure I had the monitor with me while I was taking care of Martha Sr.
* * * * * * *
“Martha, I’m going over to Ray’s. He’s fallen in his bedroom, may be hurt.” Our other neighbor, the one who came to get me, has a heart condition. If I needed to move Ray or anything, I needed my wife.
“I’ll be right there.”
I went in the back door, through the house to the bedroom. Ray was there. He’d fallen, had hit his head on the corner of a small table. There was blood, but not a lot, and it was dried. He had been there a while, possibly overnight. He was conscious, and recognized me. “Oh, good, Jim – help me up.”
I quickly checked him over, asked him some questions about whether he hurt anywhere. But his answers were somewhat confused – moreso than usual. Whether from the blow to his head, or as a result of something else, I couldn’t tell.
“Help me up, Jim.”
Sorry, Ray, not this time.
My wife got there, she knelt down and did the same quick assessment I did. She looked at me, and knew what I was thinking. I handed her my phone. “Call an ambulance.”
She left the room and did so. I stayed with Ray, holding his hand. He was insistent that he didn’t need an ambulance, but he was otherwise not making sense about what had happened or how long he had been down.
There comes a point in time in dealing with someone who is in this condition when you have to make the decision as to whether you are willing to ruin your relationship with them in order to make sure they get the proper care. This is what keeps many family members from taking away the car keys of a parent, or getting them into a nursing home. For me, it was an easy choice in this case. I liked and respected Ray, valued his friendship, but he needed professional medical care.
* * * * * * *
Martha rode in the ambulance with Ray. I came home, changed clothes, grabbed something to eat, then went to the hospital. We stayed with him there in the ER through the rest of the day, along with his nephew that lives here in town. They did tests, CAT scans, all the usual things. This and that doctor came in, consulted, did their best to communicate with him. We helped, talking with him loudly until I went back to his house and got his hearing aid, but mostly we were just there to be friendly faces.
Ray stabilized, and his confusion cleared up, but there were reasons why they wanted to keep him there for observation.
This was not news Ray wanted to hear. It took a lot of convincing that it needed to be done before he finally relented. We stayed with him until they got him settled into his own room.
It is never easy to be in an ER for a long time. Late afternoon, while they were doing something with him which required a bit of privacy, Martha and I were standing outside the room, next to the nurses’ station. We were both tired, and no doubt looked it. The nurse there at the desk looked up at us. “You guys are really good with him.”
We nodded. “We’ve got a lot of experience – we cared for my wife’s mother – Alzheimer’s – until she died last year. Ray’s an old friend.”
“You guys are really good with him,” she repeated, “that experience shows.”
* * * * * * *
Jim Downey
Post Script: one of Ray’s daughters got into town last night. She had planned on coming in for Thanksgiving, anyway, and they were going to spend some time looking to find a good assisted care facility for him while she was here. Ray had come to the conclusion that the time had come to take this step. It was just bad timing that this accident happened when it did.
Filed under: Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, Government, Humor, Predictions, Privacy, Terrorism
Good lord. I’d heard about this, as an “attempted assassination”, but I hadn’t heard the details:
On the evening of Aug. 28, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister — and the man in charge of the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts — was receiving members of the public in connection with the celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. As part of the Ramadan celebration, it is customary for members of the Saudi royal family to hold public gatherings where citizens can seek to settle disputes or offer Ramadan greetings.
One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program.
* * *
But the al-Asiri case ended very differently from the al-Awfi case. Unlike al-Awfi, al-Asiri was not a genuine repentant — he was a human Trojan horse. After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Nobody tell the TSA, but last month someone tried to assassinate a Saudi prince by exploding a bomb stuffed in his rectum.
* * *
For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: “Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.” Now, sadly, we have an example of one.
Richard Reid was the “shoe bomber”, and the reason why we all have to remove our shoes when you go through security at an airport.
Consider the possible reactions from the TSA. I suppose we all should limber up, and get used to literally bending over from now on.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Take a good look at this picture:
Guy looks reasonably well supplied, right? Good clothes, pump shotgun. Full sized backpack, sleeping roll visible on the bottom. He looks to be in decent physical condition, about 30-40 years of age.
Now read the first bit of the article that goes with that picture:
It promised to stretch reality television to the limit: one man pitting his wits against the Yukon wilderness with just a camera for company.
But hopes for an epic three-month contest between man and nature were dashed when adventurer Ed Wardle failed to go the distance.
Seven weeks after striding out into the rugged forests of western Canada armed with a rifle and a fishing rod, Mr Wardle had to be airlifted back to civilisation suffering from starvation.
Here’s another bit:
Mr Wardle was chosen for the project because of his abilitiy as a cameraman and producer, and his experience of filming in the North Pole and on the summit of Everest.
He has worked on shows for Channel 4, ITV, BBC and Discovery.
But he had no specific training for living alone in the remote territory, 80 per cent of which is pristene wilderness.
OK, I saw this story early this morning, and have been thinking about it. It’s stuck in my head sufficiently that I can’t concentrate on working on the caregiving book until I write about it and get it out of my system. I’ve had several reactions to the whole thing, but I keep coming back to: “what kind of idiot do you have to be to try something like this without at least rudimentary training in wilderness survival?”
But close behind that is: “what kind of idiot, that well equipped (the article says that he had a fishing pole and tackle, as well), would you have to be in order to *not* survive just fine for three months in an environment teeming with fish & game?”
I mean, yeah, sure, anything can happen. Twist an ankle or break your wrist in a fall, and you’re in pretty deep shit. But look back at that photo – that guy could easily have enough decent gear and a change of clothes to get through three months of living rough without any problems. Hell, I’m in poor physical condition (relative to him, anyway) and I’m confident that I could do it just fine. I would’ve preferred a good .22 over the shotgun – much lighter ammo, and living off of small game is easier – but still.
Well, OK, that’s out of my system. Back to work.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Government, Guns, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Terrorism, Violence
Following up to the March revelation that the Bush Administration had concluded that it had the legal authority to effectively suspend civil liberties, comes a piece in the New York Times about how they almost used that authority in 2002:
Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests
WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
OK, so in March we found out that the Bush Administration had constructed a legal theory that would allow it to suspend at least some of the Bill of Rights. From the initial Harper’s article:
Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
And, curiously, the author of that article did wonder about how it may have been considered being used by the Administration:
We need to know how the memo was used. Bradbury suggests it was not much relied upon; I don’t believe that for a second. Moreover Bradbury’s decision to wait to the very end before repealing it suggests that someone in the Bush hierarchy was keen on having it.
It’s pretty clear that it served several purposes. Clearly it was designed to authorize sweeping warrantless surveillance by military agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Using special new surveillance programs that required the collaboration of telecommunications and Internet service providers, these agencies were sweeping through the emails, IMs, faxes, and phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. Clearly such unlawful surveillance occurred. But the language of the memos suggest that much more was afoot, including the deployment of military units and military police powers on American soil. These memos suggest that John Yoo found a way to treat the Posse Comitatus Act as suspended.
Today’s NYT report is the first which reveals that high-level Bush officials actively considered and even advocated that the power to use the military to arrest American citizens on U.S. soil be used. In this instance, Cheney and Addington argued that the U.S. Army should be deployed to Buffalo to arrest six American citizens — dubbed the “Lackawanna Six” — suspected of being Al Qaeda members (though not suspected of being anywhere near executing an actual Terrorist attack). The Cheney/Addington plan was opposed by DOJ officials who wanted domestic law enforcement jurisdiction for themselves, and the plan was ultimately rejected by Bush, who instead dispatched the FBI to arrest them [all six were ultimately charged in federal court with crimes (“material support for terrorism”); all pled guilty and were sentenced to long prison terms, and they then cooperated in other cases, once again illustrating how effective our normal criminal justice and federal prison systems are in incapacitating Terrorists].
Greenwald goes on to argue that it is critical for the Obama Administration to renounce the legal decisions behind the Bush Administration policies:
Those are the stakes when it comes to debates over Obama’s detention, surveillance and secrecy policies. To endorse the idea that Terrorism justifies extreme presidential powers in these areas is to ensure that we permanently embrace a radical departure from our core principles of justice. It should come as no surprise that once John Yoo did what he was meant to do — give his legal approval to a truly limitless presidency, one literally unconstrained even by the Bill of Rights, even as applied to American citizens on U.S. soil — then Dick Cheney and David Addington sought to use those powers (in the Buffalo case) and Bush did use them (in the case of Jose Padilla). That’s how extreme powers work: once implemented, they will be used, and used far beyond their original intent — whether by the well-intentioned implementing President or a subsequent one with less benign motives. That’s why it’s so vital that such policies be opposed before they take root.
Just consider for a moment how the Obama Administration (or some subsequent administration) might construe this same authority to “suspend” other components of the Bill of Rights. To shut down some particularly troublesome “fringe” religious group. To impose “limited” censorship on internet traffic. To “stop the terrorism of handgun violence”.
This is the legacy of the Bush Administration, and why so many of us were so very nervous about the precedents being set by it. Because history is long, and freedom is easily lost.
Jim Downey
(Via BalloonJuice. Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 