Wampum

The 15,000km (9,300mile) SAT-3 cable lands in eight West African countries as it winds its way between Europe and South Africa and is the only cable connecting West Africa to the rest of the world. Drops 9, 10 and 11 have been clobbered, cutting capacity to Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

Benin, Togo and Niger are using rare, expensive (and high latency low bandwidth) satellite connections to get online. I feel for them, this is how we've lived for four years and getting on a fat pipe now is a big improvement for our data and voip needs.

Posted by EBW at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is more along the lines of a note-to-self than something for Wampum's reader(z), but as the primary author of the W3C's P3P Spec's section on cookies ... I should write something thoughtful before the public comment period closes.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking public comments on the use of Web tracking techniques on federal government websites. Government agencies are currently prohibited from using persistent identifiers, such as cookies, except when there is a compelling need. EPIC, in comments to the President's Office of Science & Technology (OSTP), said that the government should not track users who are seeking online access to public information. EPIC is also pursuing a FOIA request concerning the transfer of personal information collected by federal agencies to private vendors. Comments are due to OMB by Aug. 10, 2009. Suggestions may also be submitted at the OSTP blog. For more information on persistent tracking, see EPIC Cookies

Posted by EBW at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For Immediate Release: (Revised) Lead Plaintiff Comments on Court Ruling

WASHINGTON, July 24 -- Today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the Indian Trust case makes clear that the government’s duty to account continues and that the government “cannot simply throw up its hands and stop the accounting,” Lead Plaintiff Ms. Elouise Cobell said.

She expressed appreciation for the court not freeing the government from its burden to render an accounting.

For hundreds of thousands of Indians, including children, the elderly, and the infirm who depend upon their trust funds for food, clothing, shelter, and health care, this ruling means that many more years will pass before they can hope to secure trust funds that the government has withheld unconscionably and in breach of trust duties that it has owed for generations.

The appellate court reversed the trial court’s $455.6 million award in restitution, stating that the district court may not relieve the government of an accounting duty as a matter of law.

Despite the fact that today’s decision may prolong the ultimate resolution of the case, Ms. Cobell affirmed the commitment of the plaintiffs to pursue the case: “We will continue to seek justice, no matter how long that takes. Tens of thousands of beneficiaries have died while this case has been pending without ever receiving an accounting of their trust assets.”

Accordingly, unless there is a fair settlement, plaintiffs will seek further review and request the appointment of a receiver to ensure that individual Indian trust beneficiaries finally receive the protection they are owed under the law.

Posted by EBW at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by EBW at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I was out of Ithaca (in Quebec, where there is health care) the local MoveOn dweebs send me mail suggesting that I "get Kirsten Gillibrand's back" as she is fighting to save the Clean Air Act, and all I could think of was "if she doesn't vote 16 times for single payer in the next week or so I'll vote for any primary challanger, and in the general, for anything left of the Insurance Parties".

Primary or Single Payer. One or the other.

Posted by EBW at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the hour I turned off the horrible Pimsler German III cds and tuned to Radio Canada. The balloting for the successor to Phil Fontaine as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations has been exciting. It went to eight rounds before Shawn Atleo got to the 60% threshold.

I was glad the culture candidate prevailed over the economic candidate, and I've a fondness for UBC Chiefs.

I spent the road hours suffering with the horrible Pimsler German III cds (gads, "lesson 6" was a duplicate of "lesson 5", and how many times does anyone wnat to hear "i learned X using the [horrible] Pimsler course" and how realistic is it that some Anglophone attending to the inane utterances of said horrible Pimsler cds would be deep in invited for dinner chats with random Germans? Language learning via ultra soft porn seems vastly less realistic than more banal "how do I sound kwel to a Germanophone of the opposite (or same) persuasion?"

I'll be spending part of next week in Germany, so I submitted myself to whatever the Ithaca public library had on hand.

While I was in Quebec I dropped in on the Abenaki museum in Odanak. Kezzie will be 7 tomorrow, and she needs something cultural.

Posted by EBW at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Suppose you'd like to know, just who is funding the ethnic cleansing of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the subject of Bibi's "[Jerusalem isn an] open city, an undivided city that has no separation according to religion or national affiliation" slap at Obama.

His five tables in a trailer now runs to over 170 gaming tables. A card room off the 605 in LaLa Land is funding the conquest of Arab East Jerusalem.

Its not an Indian Casino. We have scruples about ethnic cleansing.

Posted by EBW at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Quiconque veut conduire la société vers l'insécurité, quel que soit son rang et son titre, sera détesté par le peuple", a prévenu Ali Khamenei. "Nos élites doivent être vigilantes. Toute parole, toute action, toute analyse qui aident (les ennemis) sera contraire à la voie du peuple", a-t-il dit.

That's the non-marja Ali Khamenei slap at his probable successor, Rafsanjani.

There's a lot of Billmon worship out in the blogosphere. That investment banker took high umbrage at my writing that ... Ahmadinejad eventually hopes to force the retirement of Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei ... was one of the more unlikely and unique analyses of the balance of forces in Iranian politics and left this gem in comments:you literally have not a clue what you are writing about. to Reading Billmon (more ice please).

I don't miss him, or his coterie.

Posted by EBW at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From We just got $2 billion for economic development – let’s use it, By Tex G. Hall and Chris Stearns

As the debate over the impact of President Obama’s economic stimulus bill rages in Washington, we want to call attention to an unprecedented source of $2 billion in funding for tribal economic development projects. The stimulus bill authorizes American Indian and Alaska Native tribes to issue tax-exempt Tribal Economic Development bonds in an aggregate amount of $2 billion over the next two years.

There is a catch – the Treasury Department only recently issued guidelines for the tribal bonds and then set an application deadline of Aug. 15 – that’s less than five weeks away – for tribes to submit applications for the first $1 billion in available bond authority.

The upside is that the new tribal bonds are not subject to the old restrictive rules that governed past tribal bond issues. A tribe may apply for up to $30 million in bond authority that it can then use to finance the construction of hotels, tourism centers, energy projects, golf courses, housing projects, and sports and entertainment venues. Tribes can also use the new bonds to “refund” or refinance previously issued bonds. What the new bonds do is finally offer tribes a chance to take advantage of tax exempt bonds the same way that states and local governments have been doing for decades.

The Treasury Department will simply allocate the bond authority among all the tribes who submit applications. In other words, the door is wide open, but tribes will need to work quickly with their financial and legal advisors to:

• pick projects;
  
• set up financing plans;
  
• work with rating agencies, underwriters, bond buyers, and bond counsel;
  
• complete the Treasury Department’s application.
  

The second round of funding starts Aug. 16, and ends Jan. 1, 2010, a period of just four-and-a-half months. The Treasury Department said it may stick to the $30 million per tribe limit for the second round, but reserves the right to raise, lower, or do away with the limit.

The good news for Indian country is that tribes can enter into joint projects with other tribes by combining their own bond allocations with the allocations of other tribes. In other words, if three tribes went in on a joint tribal project and each tribe received $30 million in bond authority, together they could raise $90 million through a bond issue. There are some tighter restrictions on the kinds of projects that can be financed under this scenario.

The new rules also allow a tribe that receives an allocation to use an agent – another tribe, for instance – to issue bonds on its behalf and then loan the money back to the tribe that initially received the allocation. So-called bond pool financing allows smaller tribes or tribes with lower borrowing requirements to reduce their underwriting costs and benefit from greater bond ratings which translate into lower interest rates.

These last two options are very important because of the historical and institutional hurdles that smaller or poorer tribes face when it comes to issuing bonds. But it is those tribes who need the money the most.

Of course, every silver lining has its cloud, and the major drawback to this program is the lack of federal enhancements – that is a source of federal financial backing that would help a tribe guarantee that it could meet its interest payments. We think the Treasury Department and the Interior Department should work with Indian country to utilize loan guarantee programs – across the administration – to offer support to tribal bond issues in order to make those bonds attractive to market investors.

The bottom line is that tribes should seize the financing opportunities available to them through Tribal Economic Development bonds. If they do, they will be in a far better position to control and direct their own economic fortunes and create jobs than they would be if they stand back and rely on the formula funding, BIA spending, or state discretionary spending contained in the rest of the economic stimulus bill.

Tex G. Hall is the chairman of the Inter-Tribal Economic Alliance, past-president of the National Congress of American Indians, and past-chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation. Chris Stearns is of counsel to Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, a national firm specializing in Indian law and tribal finance law.

Posted by EBW at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The dollar value for a few minutes of nurse and nurse practitioner time in Ithaca, New York, evaluating a puncture wound, irrigation of the wound, placing a dressing (no stitches) on the wound, and the purchase and administration of a DPT (tetnus) booster was $324.

I think that if I'd clocked the contact time that staff was being billed out to an uninsured client at more than a thousand dollars an hour.

Or perhaps the price of a DPT dose, retail to the uninsured cash customer, is on the order of a hundred dollars. The average price for enhanced pediatric vaccines, which includes DTaP is around $12 per dose.

I'll pop into a pediatric practice in Quebec tomorrow and ask "How much for a low intervention puncture wound and a tetnus booster?" Maybe it will be more in Loonies.

I'll bring this up when the local Dem asks for my vote, my money, my time, to "pass the President's health care agenda". Maybe the words "single payer" will enter the conversation.

Posted by EBW at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Obama Administration vs. Prime Minister Netanyahu: Confrontation in the Making? INSS Insight No. 108, May 17, 2009
Shalom, Zaki

A few months after coming into office, the strategic political approach of the new Obama administration towards Israel and the Palestinian issue is becoming clearer. Although it has not yet been fully solidified, this approach does not augur well for the Netanyahu government and the political positions it represents. While thus far the administration has not yet announced an official new peace plan, several recent utterances create a picture that might appear unfriendly, perhaps even threatening, from the perspective of the current Israeli government.

President Shimon Peres' recent visit to the United States, before the arrival of Prime Minister Netanyahu and of other heads of state from the region, is exceptional, at least in terms of diplomatic protocol. Beyond his status as the president of the State of Israel, Peres has a unique international standing. More than any other formal representative of Israel, he is seen as a political moderate and personally identified with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Israel probably intended thus to present Prime Minister Netanyahu as a leader truly seeking to promote the Middle East peace process. If the US administration were convinced that this message is authentic – so it was probably hoped in the Prime Minister’s Office – Netanyahu would be granted the heartfelt and warm reception the administration bestows on its favorites. The US administration apparently identified this intention and chose not to cooperate with the plan. Instead, it tended to minimize the media attention and the visit's public impact.

A sequence of public utterances and media reports by fairly senior officials in the US administration, none of which was officially denied, also clearly indicates that a cloud is hovering over the relations between the two states, which might be flagrantly visible during Netanyahu’s visit to the US and in his meetings with administration leaders, including President Obama:

1. National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones has made it clear that the administration links its policy towards Iran and its nuclear advances to developments towards a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Netanyahu government will likely not endorse such linkage. Gen. Jones’ previous appointment was Special Envoy for Middle East Security. His mission was to work out the security arrangements necessary for the “two states for two peoples” vision to materialize. According to many media reports, he wrote a report highly critical of Israel’s positions and policies on the Palestinian issue and argued that Israel defines its security interests in a future two-state solution too broadly. According to Jones’ report, these interests do not require Israeli military presence in the territories, as Israel holds. Instead, NATO forces can be deployed.

2. The statement by the US that it expects Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: although similar statements have been sounded from various US officials in the past, now, especially considering the dialogue the Obama administration hopes to conduct with Iran, this statement is more worrisome. This position of the administration, if it is pursued more assertively, might legitimize to an extent Iran’s claim that the issue of Iran’s nuclear activity must be discussed in tandem with the Israeli nuclear option.

3. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, stated at the recent AIPAC convention that this is the moment of truth for Israel, that the two-state solution is the only solution and that the United States is committed to it, and that all parties to the conflict must fulfill their obligations, as difficult as that might be. This statement was made before a pro-Israel forum, after senior officials in Netanyahu’s government have voiced explicit disagreement with the two-state vision, and after the prime minister deliberately avoided openly embracing this vision.
   

Moreover, there is clear improvement in the work of the Palestinian security apparatuses, especially those trained by Gen. Keith Dayton of the United States military. The security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority during Operation Cast Lead, acknowledged by IDF Chief of Staff Ashkenazi, gives the option of security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority much more strategic weight than before. The US administration can now claim, and with some justification, that if the two-state vision is implemented, the Palestinians will cooperate with Israel on an even broader level than at present against the extremist forces among the Palestinians.

In the area of domestic politics, President Obama has succeeded in reaching a stable and powerful status within the American political system. A considerable part of the Jewish community in the US supports him, as well as his political and economic moves. The president may thus conclude that it is time to put his fist on the table and put forward a clear American plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, even if it is not acceptable to Netanyahu’s government. If indeed the president decides to act intensively to implement the two-state vision, he can expect broad international support for these efforts. The vast majority of international actors, especially in Europe, massively support the drive to promote the two-state solution.

Furthermore, President Obama can expect moderate Arab countries to "upgrade" the Arab League’s peace plan (also known as the Arab Initiative), so that it could become more acceptable to Israel. Even in its present form it receives fairly wide support among Israelis. Formulations that are more palatable to Israel, especially on the issue of the right of return, would no doubt make it very attractive to large segments of Israeli public opinion. If Arab states show their willingness to cooperate with Israel on Iran in return for Israel’s willingness to soften its position on the Arab Initiative, it is quite likely that the plan would become widely accepted by the Israeli public.

Finally, the US administration might speculate that Prime Minister Netanyahu has a fairly positive public image in Israel and commands a stable government. Precisely because he is perceived as a hawk, he has the ability to "make history" and lead Israel to a far-reaching settlement of the prolonged conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In any case, if there will be extremist factions in the Israeli governing coalition that are not able to accept such flexibility in Netanyahu’s position, they will have to leave the government and would thus enable Netanyahu to form a new, broad and stable coalition predicated upon considerably more moderate positions, compared to the current government. This would be the administration’s response to Netanyahu’s possible claim that he cannot make progress on the Palestinian issue because of domestic political problems.

It is quite possible that President Obama’s administration will choose to confront Prime Minister Netanyahu with positions that are incompatible with those hitherto stated by his government. If the president decides to use the means of influence and pressure at his disposal to convince Israel to accept his dictates, a possible Israeli-US confrontation of an unknown scale, intensity, and aftermath might ensue.

Posted by EBW at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bebe's going to "open East Jerusalem" to the chosen ones of the Likud, the dullards of the right. Living in shacks on hilltops isn't bringing in the wackos like it used to, so Bebe's going to go to the best demographic he's got, the Russians, and offer them passports and social benefits if they will just come and ... Russify the eastern part of old Jerusalem.

Le Monde's headline writers style it as "Nouvelle passe d'armes entre Nétanyahou et l'administration Obama", but you have to wonder, what on earth does Bebe think he's got, a Q Bomb?

Have his AIPAC spies informed him that in exchange for Sotomayor, his Wise Latina Woman hating Xtian amigos on the Hill, the homoerotic and hetrodox Party of God, will give him the 25 F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), that Bush and Cheney signed off on in 2008? Tsahal submitted a Letter of Request (LoR) to the Pentagon for them just last week, so perhaps using the Russians for a human wave assualt on Arab East Jerusalem is just a bluff, ment to be called, in exchange for ... more, not less, offensive capabilities.

Posted by EBW at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dennis writes:

Dear Friends,

With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.

The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care.

Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final passage!

The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices manipulating physician prescribing habits. An amendment stops the insurance industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient care).

Please make sure you post this message on your social networking site, ask all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up at www.Kucinich.us so we can build full momentum behind this movement for real health care.

Let's do this!
Dennis

Posted by EBW at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

The AP reports:

...When Mahdi Karroubi, another pro-reform candidate in the June election, headed for the prayers, plainclothes hard-line supporters attacked him, shoving him and knocking his turban to the ground, witnesses said. "Death to the opponent of Velayat-e-Faqih," the hard-liners chanted as they attacked him, referring to the supreme leader, the witnesses said.

As she headed for the university, a prominent women's rights activist, Shadi Sadr, was beaten by militiamen, pushed into a car and driven away to an unknown location, taken away, Mousavi's Web site http://www.mowjcamp.com and a women's rights site http://www.meydaan.com said.

Le Monde reports:

...Les deux leaders de l'opposition à Mahmoud Amhadinejad, Mir Hossein Moussavi et Mehdi Karoubi, avaient annoncé qu'ils se rendraient au prêche de M. Rafsandjani. Des hommes auraient attaqué M. Karoubi avant qu'il ne s'y rende. Son fils, dont les propos sont repris sur le site Internet de son parti, Etemad Melli, explique : "Lorsque mon père est descendu de la voiture à l'entrée de l'université [où se déroulait la prière], des hommes en civil l'ont attaqué et insulté et son turban est tombé. Ils ont tenu des propos insultants et outranciers à son égard." Une militante des droits des femmes, Shadi Sadr, a quant à elle été arrêtée par des miliciens et emmenée vers une destination inconnue.

Of course, Mahdi Karrobui is not just another pro-reform candidate in the recent elections. He ran in the previous cycle, and like the winner of that campaign, campaigned for the economic improvement of the poor. He was also Speaker of the 6th Majlis, and a highly respected cleric.

An odd target for the Basiji to single out and beat in public.

Posted by EBW at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Breaking the Silence announced this morning the publication of testimony by members of Tsahal who participated in Operation Cast Lead, organized as a 54 page booklet. The testimony exposes significant gaps between the statements of record of Tsahal's press officers and events on the ground.

Among the 54 testimonies are stories revealing the use of "accepted practices," the destruction of hundreds of houses and mosques for no military purpose, the firing of phosphorous gas in the direction of populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and most of all, a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions. The booklet compiles the testimonies of about 30 reserve and regular combat soldiers from various units that participated in the fighting. The testimonies demonstrate that the soldiers were not given directives stating the goal of the operation and, as one soldier testifies, "there was not much said about the issue of innocent civilians."

Posted by EBW at 06:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sam: Is mobility the best test for disability?
Jonah (climbing atop balustrade): Didn't we just walk up the hill?

Jonah (doing balustrade zazen): But what about vision, what if the disability itself can't be seen?
Sam: You're not stimming!

Posted by EBW at 07:40 PM | Permalink

The coverage the Daily Graphic is worth reading.

See also the text of President Obama's Speech to Ghana's Parliament.

On a personal note, I'm assisting the dot Africa project, which will augment the 53 ccTLDs, most of which are fairly modest, with a pan-African registry. I've been at this since the Paris ICANN-32 meeting, June 2008, before the economic collapse, and therefore, before the collapse of the GOP's McCain/Palin product in the early Fall.

Posted by EBW at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Juan Cole meta-comments in today's post

I can tell by various web metrics that you guys are not interested in the Afghanistan story. You should be and I am going to parse it today anyway. It is one of the advantages of being non-profit that I write what I want and you can read it or not as you like. But really, you should be following this war.

I suspect that for many criticism of the current (elected, modulo Iowa, Nevada and Texas) administration's escalation of the prior (appointed) regime's war in Afghanistan is less attractive than criticism of the prior regime's Iraq war, which the current administration is deescalating.

However, it, the Afghan War, is part of the calculus of Russian - American interests, is part of the end of, or simply an invasion lacking a exit plan by, the Atlantic Alliance, is part of the calculus of Iran - American interests, is part of the question, and answer, to "what is Pakistan?", and is part of the calculus of China - India and India - Pakistan.

It is also part of the calculus of humanitarian assistance - military conflicts. Which is the better characterization of American Foreign Policy? Of the dominant ideology of the donor states? Wheat or Weapons?

The idea that several hundreds of thousands of men must be kept under arms and under a centralized government at a cost of third or more of Afghanistan's GDP, opium revenues included in the GDP calculation, for the indefinite future, naturally consuming all labor and capital that could be allocated to civil development, is an odd one to pursue from armchairs half a world away, and oddly like the idea that enticed Bob McNamara to play fixer in Indochina with the lives and limbs of my classmates.

Posted by EBW at 07:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm reading the Department of Commerce's (DoC) National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program, Docket No. 0660-ZA29, and associated Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) documents.

The "Authority" cite is "Title II, Division A of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), Public Law No. 111-5 123 Stat. 115 (Feb. 17, 2009); Broadband Data Improvement Act (BDIA), Title I of Public Law No. 110-385, 122 Stat. 4096 (Oct. 10, 2008)."

There are three basic components:

1. the BDIA, or data acquisition, allocated $240 million
2. the USDA's Rurual Utilities Service (RUS) Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), allocated $2.5 billion, and
3. the NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), allocated $4.7 billion

One of the things that really stands out is that the BDIA was written so that no single, or group, of Tribal Governments, can possibly participate in the Act. Each State may submit a single grant application, and that's that. There is no way for a Tribal Government to provide the United States with broadband accessibility data except through a State.

There are exceptions specific to the Territorial governments of Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Commonealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, but nothing for Alaska, the Navajo and Hopi territories, Hawai'i or anywhere else.

So, for the purposes of the Act, Indian Tribes are subordinate, independent of prior case law, Acts of Congress, findings of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Executive Orders and Treaties, universally and without exception, to States.

At 692-695 there is the following:

If applicable, any applications that do not include the collection of data from Indian tribes (as defined in Section 4 of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act), tribal lands, or Native Hawaiian organizations will not be eligible for grants.

I'm influenced or informed by the history of the Passamaquoddy, Maliseets and Penobscot attempt to maintain a direct relationship with the EPA over water quality data issues, which was crushed by the State of Maine, acting as the captive agent of the paper companies exploiting the remaining portion of the Northern Boreal Forest situated within the boundaries of the State of Maine. In Maine, a Tribe may now inform the State, to which the EPA has delegated its water quality monitoring responsibilities, of a water quality issue, say lots of dioxin in the water going into residential water supplies, which the State may freely redact, or simply determine if the appropriate standard for water quality is State, or Federal.

Another related nit is jurisdictional boundaries. Broadband service to Passamaquoddy, Maliseets and Mic'mac residential areas in Maine is probably best done from Canada, not from Verizon/Bangor. The Chicago-Naperville-Joliet-Gary Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) takes in parts of three states and the San Diego – Tijuana and the Detroit-Windsor metropolitan areas take in parts of three countries.

In future posts I'll go into the details of each of the BDIA, the BTOP, and the BIP, but this is "the thing" that Howard Dean promised in his pre-Iowa campaign that swept up "the netroots" with the promise of "broadband for more". This is the telco-and-cable monopolies' $7.5 billion, their 1% slice of the Recovery Pie.

Posted by EBW at 08:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is everyone to the left of ... well, Genghis Khan, getting spam from brackobama.com urging the recipient O-cult co-celebrant to decorate the local OpEd page with "support for three principles for real health care reform"

1. keeping the for-profit farce,
   
2. keeping the for-profit farce, and
   
3. keeping the for-profit farce
   

Posted by EBW at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via Suburban Gurrilla news that every US resident is now an Indian, and has complete access to health care, as defined by Henry John Hyde, R-Chicago, and the current Senate Majority having 60 votes, or more, on reproductive rights.

Everybody I meet tomorrow will be happy, and an Indian. How amazing!

Posted by EBW at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How utterly feckless:

“[The US] cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.”

Three F*ing times he repeated the message to Stephanaopoulos. We may as well tell Dick Cheney to come back and start yet another war for the sheer joy of cordite and kinetic effects.

I suppose we're used to a government so stupid it could add two and two and come up with an odd integer, so having the "serious foreign policy half" of the center-right ticket suddenly announce that the US has forgotten that it makes or breaks the Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli governments with the same material largess given, or withheld, and other banana republics and banana monarchies, this shouldn't hurt more than a lamp post to the face.

So Bibi and Ehud, joined at the hip by the Russian xenophobic mafia, have a green light to play "risk". Next week I suppose this administration will find it can't demand that its citizens be released by the pirates that lurk off the coast of Palestine because ... that would be dictating to another sovereign nation.

Bush and Cheney were insane and stupid and criminals, but they weren't so stupid as to pretend that the US was incapable of determining the limits of other state actors.

Posted by EBW at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah just self-medicated! After getting yes-but-defer messages from Dad, Mom, and Grace, he went and got himself a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

At night, in the new house, after he and Kezzie were tucked in and good nights said, he crawled into bed with me and snuggled up close and we both fell asleep.

Posted by EBW at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Photo: Jonah writing in a new medium, something MB sent me while I was in Oz last week.

At the check-out counter on a shopping for snacks and fluids break yesterday from shifting part of our household from storage in Pittsburg to storage in Ithaca, while Jonah bounced around tethered by one hand and the checker on the other, my standard distractions, Kezzie decided that she needed a flag. An 8" x 10" on a stick with a nice stab-Sam-pointy-final, and she looked like she stepped out of a 1940's Hollywood film fragment as she marched a few steps back and forth using a flag as a child's marching fashion accessory.

A flag. A thing I left behind a long time ago, after I'd done my service. Visual litter, except at consulates abroad, where it serves a purpose. A cult totem. A reminder of how close the MittleEuropa of the 1930's is to the present moment in a culture that chose war and would not unchoose Bush/Cheney.

I took a breath, put a foot on Jonah's foot to hold him while I used both hands to sign for the purchase and bought a little girl a pretty colored fabric on a stick, which she happily waved about until it was time to pile into the truck, when, in the interest of public safety and in the presence of latent menace, the stab-Sam-with-a-pointy-stick moment, I took it and put it under the seats.

I suppose that she'll need it today as we move into our new house.

Posted by EBW at 05:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to switch over nai.nic-naa.net from wordpress to drupal+civicrm. I've started a FaceBook group -- Friends of NAI in the IANA root.

Its going to be fun, that's it, fun.

Posted by EBW at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)