EMP, Tinfoil and HJR 40

The picture at the left is of a very small Faraday box, or Faraday cage, as they are more often called. It has been designed by a guy named Miles Stair, who hosts a web site called End Times Report. He has lots of survivalist stuff he designs. You can buy it from him. Looking through his catalog, the stuff is fairly low-priced, and decent quality. If there's an EMP attack, your box of tinfoil might come in more handy than your guns.

This Faraday box is supposed to fit over a radio he's designed, he calls the GP-4L. He markets it as a "survival radio," and its frequency span is from 75 to 108 Mhz. your car radio, for instance, most likely goes from 88 to 108 Mhz. The spectrum from 75 to just below 88 Mhz is part of the emergency services radio spectra.

The GP-4L, at $22.95, is a heckuva deal. But looking at his little, box, which he suggests you make yourself, by putting tinfoil over a traveler's soap box, I'm thinking more and more about the lead sheeting I used to place around my old Commodore 64, after the Commodore went into storage when I got my first Mac.

Tinfoil? Lead sheeting? How can this help me? And why is HJR 40 so important that it fairly quietly, but unanimously, passed through the Alaska Legislature at the beginning of April?

The possible negative effects from a nuclear or thermonuclear high-atmosphere or exo-atmosphereic explosion were predicted before one's ill effects were actually experienced after the explosion of the 1.1 megaton thermonuclear device, Starfish Prime, at an altitude of 250 miles, on the night of July 9, 1962.

This picture was taken from a USAF C-135 that was monitoring the detonation. It is a picture of the debris fireball, as it extended along the earth's magnetic field in the dissipation following the exo-atmospheric test. The C-135's advanced monitoring equipment was either incapacitated or destroyed by the explosion's electromagnetic pulse.

If the plane had been as reliant upon micro-circuitry as a modern 777 or Airbus is, it might have fallen out of the sky. Hundreds of electrical devices in Honolulu were either temporarily or permanently destroyed by the EMP.

All through the rest of the Cold War, the USA's infrastructure was more vulnerable to a Soviet-initiated EMP attack than was theirs to such an attack by the USA. That is because their system was electrically more primitive than ours, and the Soviets, rationally fearing more a thermonuclear attack from us than we did one from them, chose to build a very expensive EMP-proof command and control system for their military and national government infrastructures. Their MiG-25 super interceptor, for instance, used robust EPM-proof vacuum tubes in electronics, and was filled with little Faraday box structures around electronic components.

In a sense, Starfish Prime was a space weapon. It was also exploded over 45 years ago. What has spurred the sudden enactment of HJR 40, when there are only currently three countries that might be able to pull off a similar exo-atmospheric event: The USA, Russia and China? Nobody else, except for the UK, France and Israel are even remotely close to being able to threaten us with a large-scale EMP attack.

Millennialists, survivalists, right-wing militias and Christofascist cults all seem to have a high level of interest in getting information on how to build low-yield, non-nuclear EMP bombs. Sci-Fi writers have used all sorts of weird EMP bomb scenarios, and "future battle" computer gamers have to know how to inflict or survive EMP battle damage:



The alarmism I've read about, since September 11, 2001, on the EMP issue is often irrational, but there are some bright, articulate people and effective organizations involved in the dialogue, and in whatever levels of contingency planning that are ongoing that aren't classified.

The organization in Alaska pushing for more anti-EMP action here is the Institute of the North. They've created a Security and Defense Program, with this nifty, very alpha-looking Bald eagle perched upon its seal. You can subscribe to their newsletter, The Vanguard, at their home page. The S & D Program's mission statement reads:

"The Security and Defense program at the Institute of the North conducts research and educates policymakers on strategic issues relating to the defense of the country-region that particularly concern decision makers in Alaska and at the state and local level throughout the nation."

The program is directed by longtime Walter Hickel protege, Mead Treadwell. According to the S & D Program's web page, they're particularly interested in tying the existing and expanding Alaska-based missile interceptor program to our military ties to Japan.

The testimony before the Alaska House Rules Committee on the EMP HJR included a statement by Treadwell:

"Alaska took the initiative in calling upon the federal government to protect all 50 states against missile attack. Having an understanding of the [EMP] threat in the rest of the country will help people understand how valuable the missile defense system is."

The Rules Committee hearing also included written testimony by a protege of the late Edward Teller, Dr. William R. Graham, who wrote, "I believe the state will attract the advice and support of leading experts and organizations to provide whatever assistance the state and its local governments might need to make their own informed decisions regarding critical infrastructure protection."

Graham and Treadwell both tie the importance of the resolution directly to efforts already underway by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Graham's Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, mandated by Congress in 2004. Graham's commission's mandate is:

Develop a clear policy about how it will respond to an EMP attack;

Assess which assets of the nation's power grid and telecommunications infrastructure are most critical to the overall system;

Harden those critical assets against EMP;

Retrofit at least a portion of U.S. military assets to protect against EMP;

Engineer EMP protections into a greater percentage of future military capabilities; and

Deploy an effective ballistic missile defense.

A lot of money has been made, and billions perhaps wasted in this field by contractors since Ronald Reagan stood with Edward Teller to announce his "Star Wars" program. The costs of aspects of the Strategic Defense Initiative have been enormous. They haven't been as costly as our War on Iraq, by any means. but....

One of my first thoughts, as I watched the TV on the morning of September 11, 2001, was that for all the money we had spent on SDI and anti-missile defense shields up to that time, it did nothing to prevent September 11. If you subscribe to the standard September 11 narrative, a small group of fanatics who had to live in caves, spent about $250,000 to pull their operation off. Since then, we've spent well over a half a trillion dollars helping them recruit tens of thousands of new adherents worldwide. That worked, didn't it?

Many have written that the incredible costs of SDI were worth it, because the Soviet response to our program spent their country into its demise. I've never believed that to be the case. Their state failed for a wide array of long-standing reasons.

I just got off the phone with Mead Treadwell. I shared my concerns that my view of the most likely EMP weapon scenario is one involving a fairly small, conventionally fueled EMP device, set off by some sort of a Timothy McVeigh character. I'm not going to share design information, but I know I could build a small EMP bomb, and so could many readers here. Treadwell didn't disagree. He explained some of the evolution of the thinking behind the perceived need for HJR 40.

I hope to talk to him more about this, but I felt reassured that not only does he have a grasp of the enormous gaps in our public safety in regard to any EMP threat (an asteroid or meteor explosion in the near region of earth could create the same Compton scattering that causes the damage), but that he realizes programs developed to deal with this fairly unlikely, but potentially devastating possibility, need to be cost effective.

The Fucking Stupidest Guy on The Face of the Earth

Actually, according to retired Gen. Tommy Franks, that spot is already taken by Doug Feith, one of the miserable architects of a war strategy that beats the hell out of the stupidity of any war policies our government has ever undertaken.

Feith has a book coming out this Tuesday, April 8, in which he will be blaming the Bush administration's foreign policy and Middle East failures on everyone but those responsible for the war's massive screwups. Ironically, at least to me, exactly four years before his book's release date, I castigated Feith's handling of the Pentagon's so-called Office of Special Plans, in part of a speech I made at UAA. At the time, I quoted the most important article written up to that time on Feith, by former USAF LTC Karen Kwiatkowsk, PhD, in The American Conservative magazine. The speech ended in a near-riot of uncivil discourse.

Feith's book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, has already been soundly derided by people like Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post, and Keith Olbermann, of MSNBC's Countdown:


So, if Doug Feith is the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth, where does that put Dan Fagan? Retired UAA Prof, Steve Aufrecht, PhD, has been the most thorough and accurate chronicler of Fagan's pollution of the public discourse. Aufrecht wrote his first column on Fagan at What Do I Know? on the day Fagan's first Anchorage Daily News column was printed, June 10, 2007. Since then, Steve has directly covered Fagan seven other times.

I've written about Fagan's racism and hatred toward Muslims. And, like Steve, I've written about Fagan's obvious sexual insecurity, and his dim understandings of women and femininity. And about how discouraging it is to see him enabled by a fine newspaper like the Anchorage Daily News. Were Fagan spewing his vile bile about any groups other than Arabs or Muslims, he'd be out of a job or two by now.

Today's Fagan column in the ADN, titled Oil Firms Are the Only Innocents Here, though it steers away from the worst meanness Fagan has exhibited, creates one of the longest lists of falsehoods this hack has yet penned. I'm going to attempt to take it apart, lazy paragraph after pathetic sentence, as Steve did in one of his Fagan essays:

Did you see the headline in the New York Times? "Big Oil Executives Defend Profits." Congress made it clear last week we've reached a new milestone in our slow creep toward socialism. Profits are bad. The word profit no longer travels alone in newspapers. It now follows the word obscene.

One of Fagan's themes is that we're slowly creeping toward socialism. We're not. The highest personal and corporate income tax rates in the USA were during Dwight Eisenhower's administration. Since then, the trend has been relentlessly downward for these tax rates. The gap between America's richest and our country's strength - a strong middle class - grows every hour.

Class envy is an old game in politics and politicians play it well. Especially when it involves an easy target like oil company executives. Politicians forget less than a decade ago the price of oil hovered around $8 a barrel.

That's right. Under Bill Clinton, the economy was chugging along, oil was cheap, and people could afford to live in the Alaska Bush. But your cronies have screwed that up. The dollar was worth 30% more than the Euro then. Now it's worth 30% less.

But this is 2008 and high prices at the pump and budget-busting home heating bills provide the perfect opportunity for vote-seeking politicians to demonize the industry.

Dan would rather we do what? Or that politicians avoid looking at this, or merely seek advice from the energy monopolies?

But is the industry really to blame for rising energy costs?

In part, yes, but there are a host of problems that have led to this, the most basic being increasing worldwide demand for a finite, non-renewable resource. The Chinese are at the point of overtaking the US global lead as importer of oil.

Environmentalists, not oil companies prevent drilling in ANWR, fight drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea, and block drilling off Florida's coast. These policies limit U.S. supply and force us to import more than 12 million barrels of oil a day.

Environmentalists, and many other groups are concerned about existing examples of oil company negligence, and mistrust guarantees given by companies like BP, for instance, whose recent negligence on our North Slope was so obvious.

Environmentalists, not oil companies, fight to block the building of U.S. refineries.

Though no new refineries have been built in the US in the past 20 years, saying that environmentalists are responsible for this is like saying environmentalists are responsible for Levi Strauss deciding to make pants in Mexico or Indonesia, or Microsoft out-sourcing to Bangalore. Oil companies build refineries overseas, primarily to cut labor costs and so they can build them in ways we wouldn't allow them to - shoddily. To ignore this is highly meretricious. Oil companies have expanded U.S. refinery capacity considerably over the past 30 years:

"The industry has found it costs less money and takes less time to expand existing facilities. Over the past 15 years, the U.S. refining industry has added the equivalent of one new, state-of-the-art refinery a year, each with a capacity to refine 150,000 to 300,000 barrels per day."

Environmentalists also lead the charge against the most efficient and cheap energy available: nuclear power.

So, go get a job at the Chernobyl radio station, Dan. The basic problem with expanding nuclear power plant numbers in the U.S. is that the only "safe" designs are far, far more expensive to build and maintain than any electrical utility could afford to build. Mini plants, like the one built by Toshiba and proposed for Galena, can only be built with a huge grant of Federal or state funds. I'm sure Dan would approve of that. I think it is called "socialism."

And then there are dictators like Hugo Chavez, not the oil industry, that tie the hands of the producers. That lowers supply, increases demand and drives up prices.

Hugo Chavez, though authoritarian, is not a dictator. The elections in which he was put into the Venezuelan presidency were among the fairest in that country's shady electoral past.

The Venezuelan government is investing millions of dollars per month in dealing with the pollution and environmental legacies of the days of rampant oil company manipulation of the country's ecosystem in their oil fields. In Lake Maracaibo, the government is spending over $2,000,000 per month dealing with pollution legacies. The energy companies who created the disasters there, are creating new ones in Equador, Nigeria and elsewhere, try to get off scott free every chance they get. Sort of like Exxon and the Exxon Valdez, Dan.

Adding to the supply crunch are greedy, corrupt leaders like those in Russia, not oil executives.

As opposed to our leaders like Dick Cheney, who moved many Halliburton operations offshore, so that they 1) wouldn't have to pay U.S. taxes, and 2) could do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with Iraq under Saddam, and Iran, in violation of U.S. law?

And then there are socialists like our own governor, who raised production taxes on the industry 400 per cent. Our governor also passes legislation that helps keep producers from building a gas pipeline.

Sexually insecure Dan Fagan can never let Sarah Palin alone. I think there may be more here than meets the casual observer's eye. Besides that, he's wrong. Palin isn't a socialist under any sane definition of the term. And in the 41 years that a gas pipeline hasn't been built since the opening of Prudhoe Bay, Palin has been governor for just over two of them, and is trying harder than all previous governors put together to get a deal through.

More supply is the key to lower prices and when it comes to supply oil companies want to drill, drill, drill. But environmentalists and politicians like our governor get in their way.

I'd let that one pass without comment, it is so simplistic, except for one thing: I've noticed on the radio, and sometimes in print, that in the next sentence, after mentioning a woman he's fixated upon, Dan starts sharing his fantasies. Drill, drill, drill, Dan? heh...

We never hear those on the left mention any of this when talking about high energy costs. But blaming the oil industry is typical with the left. The left loathes the industry. They blame it for global warming. Liberals believe oil producers present a clear and present danger to their god, Mother Earth.

Another simplistic argument. Most knowledgeable people on the left, where most scientists reside, know that the earth is in a long warming trend. They also believe the mounting evidence that CO2 emissions are exacerbating that, and that oil consumption represents part of the emission addition. As far as Gaia or other earth mother faiths, 90% of the liberals I know are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics or atheists - not Gaians of any sort. I'm a Unitarian.

Those in the media have clearly joined in on the side of environmentalists in the war against the oil industry. You can tell by the way the media refer to both sides. Environmentalists are now conservationists. The oil industry is now big oil. Big bad oil!

Yeah, right. That's why we have Conoco-Phillips ads blasted all over the ADN, APRN, KTUU, and so on, ad infinitum. That's why, in spite of Fagan's writing deficiencies and hatred, he's allowed to cross-platform his ignorant rants.

The media should support science when it is sound, not when it is funded by energy companies determined to falsify the record. But, Dan's premise of the media only crafting language to suit a liberal agenda is totally false. They pick up terminology like "no child left behind" and "clear skies" as adeptly as they switch "environment" to "conservation."

Liberals in the media are also quick to jump to cover the mistakes of the industry. If a producer drips an ounce of oil on a blade of grass the media swoop in with live trucks, helicopters and a regiment of reporters. It's a circus.

I know, he's exaggerating... The other side of this coin, though, is - at what point should pollution stories be ignored? As usual, Dan is no help.

The danger of all this anti-oil populism is it leads to a shift of power from the private sector to government. Government-owned oil agencies now control about 90 per cent of the world's petroleum reserves. Fourteen of the top 20 upstream oil and gas companies in the world are now government controlled.

The first part of what Dan is saying here is one of his mantras. He doesn't think countries or states should be able to own the oil under their soil. He's accurate on the second point, for what it's worth.

Everyone likes to blame big bad Exxon for high prices as though Exxon can control prices. There are 14 oil companies, most of them government-controlled, with more oil reserves than Exxon.

I've haven't heard Exxon blamed for high prices in years. They were blamed for the high prices in the summer of 1989.

And it is only going to get worse. Investor owned oil firms like Exxon, Chevron and Shell are buying back their stock instead of increasing their reserves. Governments and politicians make it more difficult for investor-owned companies to drill with higher taxes and the threat of unstable regimes.

Dan's getting a bit incoherent here. He's been confusing apples (control of proven reserves) and oranges (control of production/distribution) all along. For these companies to increase their reserves, they can't just leave the earth. The barriers Fagan describes are only increasing pretty closely to the increasing importance of what remains of this non-renewable treasure to the country's that own them. How are companies going to stabilize such an investment climate, worldwide, or in North America?

What politicians like Palin and others don't understand is the more difficult they make it for private-sector oil companies to meet U.S energy needs, the more power they transfer to government-owned oil producers in other countries.

Note how Dan brings Sarah back in. He's again accusing her of taking something away from him.

Many of these governments are led by dictators who would love nothing more than seeing the United States come begging for energy.

Dan's fixation in the next sentence after talking about a woman he's depicting - S&M visions this time around - come out again. The problem Dan's sense of history has with this, is that what he's actually complaining about is that in too many cases "our" dictators - the Shah of Iran was one of many - are being replaced by others.

Every time a U.S. politician raises taxes on the industry, passes an anti-drilling law or caves to an environmentalist, the cost of heating your home and filling up your tank goes up.

Dan offers no solutions. Unless we do what? Go back to letting oil companies write our state statutes, like they did for 20 years?

It also weakens us as a nation.

This feature in Fagan's narrative bothers me more than the sexism and narcissism, less than the racism and denigrations of minorities, and of others' faiths. He stands with so many of the other yellow chicken hawks in our community, in our so-called liberal media, on our pulpits, in the marketplace - especially the corporate marketplace, totally misplacing the blame for the recent disgrace of our country in the eyes of the world.

He misses a lot of points, some from his rigid beliefs, others from his obtuse lack of curiosity. He's not the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth. Another sock puppet has that distinction. No, Dan Fagan is merely one of the biggest laughingstocks in Alaska.

Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - April 5, 2008

Ishmael Melville at Kodiak Konfidential, beat everyone else, including the Anchorage Daily News and An Alaskan Abroad, to the punch on announcing the publication of a book about Governor Palin. Ish also managed to fool a few people on April 1, when he announced, "That's all, folks! I've been fingered as Ishmael too many times, impairing my ability to comment openly about the goings on here in Kodiak. I get too many truly mean comments that are just too disturbing to deal with on a daily basis. And, really, what else do I have to say? I think I've accomplished all I've set out to do."

He was fooling, as most soon discovered. KoKon is in it for the long haul. And another of my favorite Alaska blogs, Independent Alaskan, is back. The blog's proprieter, a very recent American citizen, honored back at the beginning of the year by Ethan Berkowitz at the monthly Mat-Su Democrats' Egan Dinner, has been hounded by a white supremacist named Carl Loerbs. Loerbs has had a habit of encouraging right-wing hate bloggers to swamp Independent Alaskan with slime and sleaze.

Wednesday's ADN newsreader inadvertently linked to Loerb's racist site in an article about Tuesday's Anchorage elections. KUDO's Aaron Selbig, Progressive Alaska, and others protested. The ADN removed the reference-link, and posted a suitable apology, the next day. Another local, perceived by many to be a white supremacist, Paul Bauer, took a fall this week, as Anchorage voters seem to have experienced a moment of sanity, turning to the left in search of a better future.

Freshwrestler's Reprieve links to a claim that when we vote liberal, we ALL make more money. When we vote conservative, some make more money - the super-duper wealthy. But when Democrats are president, as opposed to Republicans, everybody does better.

Some Democrats, at least. Gryphen at The Immoral Minority, who rarely writes about Alaska stuff, but is spot on when it comes to bringing up absurdities in the HRC presidential campaign, alerts us to the fact that Hillary is $292,000 in arrears in payments on the health care premiums for her paid campaign staff. Sheesh! As Gryphen tersely puts it, "This is stunningly tone deaf of her campaign to have allowed this to happen. When you base your main talking points on providing health care for everybody it does not bode well for your campaign to skip a payment to cover your own staff. No wonder the Republicans want to run against her."

The ADN Recycling & Renewables blog saw changes this week, with the announcement that MOA Renewable Resources manager, Kevin Harun, has moved on, to, as he puts it, "work on an electoral campaign to help move our state forward." Replacing him at the blog is Mary Fisher, Executive Director of ALPAR, Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling.

Unlike lots of Alaska media and blogs, I've avoided discussing the Michelle Linehan trial. The best essay I've read on the case, one called Puppet Master or Media Marionette, was penned this week by Theresa, at My Fairbanks Life.

Dillon, at An Alaskan Abroad, deals with white power more responsibly than some others did last week - the white power of his dog, Kuba, and a YouTube about the real Polar bear agenda.

Steve at What Do I Know? had to make another quick run across the Thai-Burmese border this week, to get his visa stamped. He's posted some nifty google earth-type pictures to help readers understand where he is in relationship to Alaska. I realized, looking at the map, that he's having to travel, on the road from Chiang Mai to Mae Sai, right through the area where Richard Armitage earned his chops in the underworld of off-the-books U.S. intelligence ops, helping Khun Sa come to power in Burma, and feeding the needs of Armitage's so-called "import-export business," based between 1976 and 1978 in Bangkok.

Far North Science blog is following the progress of UAF Prof. Kenji Yoshikawa, as he travels by snowmobile from Emmonak to Kotzebue, documenting presence or absence in a number of places. Great pictures! And, as always, more great pictures and commentary from erin and hig at Journey on the Wild Coast Blog, as they wend their way from Lake Clark to Lake Iliamna, stopping off at Kokhanok (or, Kakhonak, depending on which usage one chooses) to talk to kids. They're checking the route of the proposed Pebble Mine access road, that will go from Williamsport, on Cook Inlet, to the site.

Last, in this week's blog roundup, at the ADN Art Snob Blog, Mike Dunham visited a few First Friday art events, but was miffed when, at UAA to listen to the UAA Trombone Trio concert, he was unable to see Jeff Patrick's marvelous installation in the Kimura Gallery, because the gallery is closed on Friday evenings. Dunham writes very kindly about our efforts in the concert.

MLK on WAR

"...To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?..."

"...This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play..."


Thanks to Celtic Diva for culling those quotes from his great April 4, 1967 Riverside Church speech on the Vietnam War, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence. She's posted a video of the speech at her Blue Oasis.

When Rev. King was assassinated, I was going to college at the University of Washington, and working at a steel fabrication plant, Steel Products, under the shadow of the Fremont Bridge. I was in the U.S. Army when he made the speech, but read about it soon afterward. I managed to read the speech sometime during the summer of 1967, right after I got out of the Army.

That summer - the so-called Summer of Love - 1967, in Seattle, there were racial incidents, flamed by the Seattle Police Department, that was at its worst around that time. The ROTC building on the U of W campus was burnt down in 1967. 1967 saw racial tension in many urban areas of the country.

After King's death, racial and anti-war violence got worse in Seattle, far, far worse in other parts of the country. And, two months later, in California, Robert Kennedy was also gunned down. The combination of these two deaths set progressive thought and action in the USA back more than we'll ever know.

Robert Kennedy wasn't and isn't thought to be a martyr in the strict sense, but Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is regarded by many faiths to be an actual martyr. He's venerated by the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and his Martyr's Feast Day is today.

Here's a set of statues I've visited on my past two trips to London. They're on the side of Westminster Abbey, the frieze being called Twentieth Century Martyrs. The martyrs depicted are Mother Elizabeth of Russia, Rev. King, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

People should seriously reflect on this Iraq War today, as Dr. King did on the Vietnam War during the final year of his ministry. There are aspects of his positive effect and impact upon peoples' lives that reach into many parts of American life and culture. As an example, here's a video of Nichelle Nichols, remembering Rev. King's influence on her, on women, on the stereotyping of minorities, and the TV series, Star Trek:


Part of the importance of what Rev. Martin Luther King's legacy was and is, is our reflection on both his commitment to social justice and the still enormous changes needed to effect them. The depth of his humanity had many, many personal moments like that described by Ms. Nichols.

hat tip to Celtic Diva

They Fixed It. Now Fix

This

An innocent error at the Anchorage Daily News Wednesday, brought several people out on call-in radio, blogs, phones and-mail groups. The ADN acted swiftly and fully.

A link to a white power website, viewed by many to be a hate site, posted at the newsreader, to illustrate the relationship between spending and victory in the Anchorage municipal elections this week, pissed some people off.

I was one of them. The site has posted locally written essays claiming, to give one example, that the convictions of African American kids in Jena were just, maybe even soft.

The site's main menu offers up a quick link to a free, downloadable English translation of Mein Kampf.

You can get free stuff there that proves that MLK was a hard-line commie. Several versions.

MalcolmX stuff? --- You bet!

So, the ADN took care of it.

Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to create misunderstanding and contempt for Arabs and adherents to Islam in the American, Alaskan and Anchorage media, than it is to stereotype African Americans, Latinos, Jews and other minorities and heritages.

It shouldn't be.

ADN Newsreader Brings Shame While The Press Just Gets Better

Yesterday's Anchorage Daily News Newsreader feature celebrated tomorrow's 40th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King by directly linking to an Alaska White Power and hate site. The site, which I'm not going to name or link to has such front page features as the full text of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (in HTML), a category called "White Nationalist Websites," and others that purport to tell the "true story" of Dr. King.

KUDO's Aaron Selbig (who is owed the thanks of the community for having aired "the tape" last month) and I commented at the newsreader about this. Aaron and I discussed it briefly on Aaron's KUDO call-in program.

When Robert Dillon linked to this site last year, I commented at Dillon's site, and Dillon responded with an acknowledgment that this hadn't been intentional. Let's see if the newsreader shows that much class in today's edition.

I've been intending to find a time when there might be context to conversations I had last month with the station manager at KFQD and the Editorial Page Editor at the ADN, Matt Zencey, about Dan Fagan's hate comments on KFQD on March 14. When I pointed out to Zencey, that by giving Fagan a cross platform set-up where he touts his ADN relationship on KFQD, and his KFQD hate program is listed in the ADN, that Zencey is a participant in Fagan's hate and racism, Zencey defended not only Fagan's right to his views, but the views themselves. Zencey further showed his qualifications as an editor by defending the quality of Fagan's writing style with zest.

Meanwhile, yesterday I got a preview of today's feature article in the Anchorage Press. It is a fairly thorough piece by Monica Bradbury, called Into the Sky, about Nick Begich, Don Young's predecessor in the U.S. House's AK-AL seat, and the father of Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, and the rest of the Begich kids who have had such positive influence on Southcentral Alaska over the years.

Good Job, Anchorage Press!

Fix it, Anchorage Daily News!

Update - Thursday 11:45 a.m: Today's ADN Newsreader is up. No apology or indication that anyone there is considering one. Waiting on a call back from ADN Assistant Managing Editor David Hulen on this, after speaking with Terry Carr, who assures me the linking to the hate site yesterday was inadvertent. I told Terry, whose work I generally admire, that I strongly feel an ADN apology to the community is in order.

Update - Thursday 1:45 p.m: Just off the iPhone with David Hulen. Excellent discussion. The ADN has removed the link to the site some of us found abhorrent. They have posted the following at today's newsreader:

Readers: On Wednesday, Newsreader linked to an analysis of the Anchorage municipal elections on a locally written blog. Readers informed us later that the blog we linked to contains links to other sites with white supremacist and racist views. I wasn't aware of the nature of that material on the blog when I linked to it; I was focused on an individual post concerning spending in the city election. We have removed the link from the Newsreader and apologize to anyone offended that we linked to the site. -- Terry Carr

Bravo, ADN!!

image - a Jena Six noose

More Thoughts on the MOA Elections Before We Move On

The small turnouts in recent local elections have so far favored Democrats and - in non-partisan elections like yesterday's Anchorage set - liberals. It isn't so much that the Democratic Party here has energized their base or formed a new one, as that the Republican base is staying home, despirited and glum.


The Democrats need to reach out to the 79% of voters who don't want to go out and push those levers. The Dems already are, but an unprecedented effort needs to be pushed.

We need to attack, Attack, Attack and ATTACK!

Here's my DailyKos post on the MOA elections.

Adios, Pablo....

Lo siento mucho.

From reports I got early this evening, ex-Anchorage Assemblyman Paul Bauer and his family couldn't handle the enormous numbers of Gutierrez supporters that had showed up at the corner of Boniface and Northern Lights today. As the dozens of Mike's supporters tried to find room along the sides of thawing sidewalks, Bauer minions yelled at them. Bauer himself shoved people around, and his son was photographed shoving a camera into the face of a petite school teacher, as he forced her to back toward the curb at a busy intersection.

Starr survived, but he may soon be wishing he hadn't. The further to the left a candidate ran, the better she or he did.

Watching the TV news at 10:00 tonight, I didn't see or hear anyone declaring this to be a victory for or validation of Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Things went so far to the left, Begich may consider resigning sooner than many expect, to concentrate on his U.S. Senate aspirations.

Congratulations, Anchorage progressives and moderates! You've just shown your town, the state of Alaska and the country that we are moving toward sanity here in the far north far quicker than any other red state.

The string of victories progressives and moderates have been winning for the past two years in the Mat-Su Valley didn't raise a lot of attention to the possibility of a major change in Alaska's political dynamics. From former State Senator Scott Ogan's demise, to coal bed methane's repulse, to the elections of many rational people to borough, city and school board seats, to the humiliation of the Matanuska Electrical Association's Soviet-style regime, few people paid much attention.

But now that some sanity is surfacing in Anchorage, maybe folks will begin to notice that Alaskans, not merely "Valley trash," are sick and tired of a corrupt status quo.

Even more, they're tired of being force fed right wing KFQD and KENI AM radio talking points, enabled by the so-called "liberal" Anchorage Daily News.

They're tired of people who claim that the only thing that matters is life between conception and birth, preferring people who are concerned about that, but also think life after birth is at least as important for most living people.

They're tired of politicians who secretly brag to each other about the sweet deals their public service has bought - literally - until they get caught in their hypocrisy, on tape.

They're sick of being framed into categories subdivided by niches of negative stereotypes and barely disguised hatred for people of color.

They're sick of seeing schools gradually erode in the biggest city of the only state in the country to be in a financial situation that might easily remedy infrastructure deficits that have so dangerously accumulated during a time of greed and waste today's defeated relished and promoted.

The vanquished will go home tonight to blame the Daily News, KSKA and KAKM, KUDO, me and al-Qaeda for their demise.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the National Review, the once-illustrious flagship publication of conservative thought in the USA, wrote an editorial on April 1 that recommended the GOP DROP DON because he's "too liberal."

I thought it was an April Fools Day joke when I got to that part of the editorial. But it isn't.

Begich's On-Line Fundraising Bulletin from the Day Before the End of the FEC Quarter

Here's a bulletin Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich was sending out to contributors yesterday, as many candidates struggled to meet self-imposed goals on the final fundraising day of the first quarter of 2008:

I know you may have received several e-mails already, but I am sending this one from my personal address book and I would like to share some information with you.

The outpouring of support has been greatly appreciated for my Exploratory Committee for the US Senate. I have been to Bethel and Fairbanks in the last two weeks and the support has been very positive. Each place has been encouraging and the desire for change with a purpose is a clear message that I am hearing. I will continue to travel to many more places over the next few weeks listening to people about their concerns, challenges and dreams for our great state.

Two weeks ago a statewide poll was done and the numbers were very positive for us. It showed this race 46% Begich and 42% Stevens. This is the third poll in the past few months that has shown me in the lead.

As of today we have almost 800 contributors and we have raised about $100,000 just on the Internet. We are in the last 24 hours before the first reporting period closes. I hope you can help push us over 800 contributors and exceed the $100,000 mark on the Internet fundraising.

Please make your contribution today.

Thanks for your help in getting me to this point. Everyday looks more and more positive.

Mark

This is a fairly phenomenal amount to be raising on the web, though Begich isn't clear about how that compares to his other contributions or over what time span the nearly $100K has come in over, but I believe the amount he's taken in over the web is the highest on record for a month or so by an Alaska candidate.

But the amount per donor, over $100, is a bit too high for this to be considered a phenomenon or grassroots response to his exploration. What he's going to be able to do, by having the exploratory committee active, is get a lot of people to donate $2,300 to the exploratory committee, and then donate again to the primary campaign. Then, if he wins that, another $2,300 for the general election.

Anyone still doubting Begich will be announcing shortly after the end of the legislative session may have to do some more thinking about this.

Anchorage Municipal Election Postponed

Just kidding!

Happy April Fools' Day, everyone.

A busy week for me, with a lot of practicing and rehearsing, along with work, and efforts to finish an article about a person inaccurate DLC shill, and Real Clear Politics writer Stuart Rothenberg doesn't know exists. Twice now, Rothenberg has penned articles about Alaska's AK-AL U.S. House race riddled with inaccuracies. This one only has one major flaw, apparently unnoticed by the ADN Newsreader and an Alaskan Abroad, having to do with our state:

"Young now faces a serious primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell (R). The chaos could help Berkowitz, who must be hoping that a bloodied Young survives to the general election."

Governor Palin, very busy listening to legislators beg for their earmarks, showed a lack of knowledge of the One Per-cent for the Arts program, in this exchange:

"But [Rep. Kevin] Meyer pressed ahead with a list of what he said are valid needs.

""I'll start with the next big one, the Anchorage Museum, $5 million," he said.

"The money is needed for maintenance, he said, noting a leaky roof that threatens artwork.

""Who's paying for that Lego thing up front, that statue?" Palin asked."

Today's Anchorage Municipal Election will show whether or not the progressive and moderate victories so recently evident in Mat-Su Valley politics are resonating into wider areas of the state. With so many GOP-tied figures in the allegedly non-partisan MOA election shooting themselves in their feet lately, a comparison - should they go down to defeat today - might not be totally apt, but will probably show a continued trend away from figures tied to the far right. If that's the case today, it bodes well for Democrats in Alaska come this fall.

headline dedicated to Steve...