---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 8:07 AM
Subject: re: Silencing Dissent in Egypt
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   The old joke that the Muslim Brotherhood stood for "one man, one vote, one time" comes back with special bitterness this season. Because the Egyptian people did vote and did elect a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt's democracy has been strangled in the cradle. But it hasn't been strangled by the Brotherhood. The dirty deed was done by a reactionary junta, seemingly with the connivance of the U.S. department of State.

    As we in America give thanks for all we have, we should pause to remember the Egyptians who keep getting arrested, tortured, gunned down in the streets because they dare dream that they might also enjoy democracy.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/silencing-dissent-in-egypt.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

EDITORIAL

Silencing Dissent in Egypt

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: November 27, 2013

RelatedThe military-backed government that has ruled Egypt for the past five months is looking increasingly like the old dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak without Mr. Mubarak. In the name of crushing all resistance by the Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the democratically elected president ousted by the military in July, Egyptian authorities have now moved to ban most public protests and threaten those who take part in them with jail or heavy fines.

• New Law in Egypt Effectively Bans Street Protests (November 26, 2013)

Connect page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow@andyrNYT.

Egypt’s military strongman, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, owes his present power to such protests. Military leaders mostly stood aside in January 2011 when weeks of protest and sit-in vigils at Tahrir Square in Cairo forced Mr. Mubarak to resign. More recently, General Sisi approvingly cited even larger street protests against Mr. Morsi as his main justification for the July 3 military coup. And after that coup, he himself summoned millions of Egyptians into the streets to give advance approval to his violent crackdown on Morsi supporters.

But from now on, it seems, only public demonstrations that support General Sisi and his allies will be tolerated. A new law promulgated Sunday by the figurehead interim president, Adly Mansour, requires all gatherings of more than 10 people to seek advance government approval. It bans overnight sit-ins (like Tahrir Square) and protests at places of worship. Political groups across the spectrum have staged their protests following the end of Friday prayers. The new restrictions also give security forces the right to ban political campaign meetings, a provision that could be used to silence criticism of the Constitution scheduled to be voted on in January.

The Egyptian regime claims that the only opposition to its increasingly repressive rule comes from Muslim Brotherhood die-hards. That has never been the case. As The Timesreported on Monday, opposition from the secular left, much of which welcomed Mr. Morsi’s downfall, is growing. On Tuesday, riot police beat and harassed a gathering of some of Egypt’s best-known human rights activists challenging the new ban on unauthorized demonstrations. With all forms of public dissent now subject to repression, the real level of opposition to the present government will be increasingly hard to judge.

Amid these alarming developments, Washington has struggled to find an effective policy response. The Obama administration was right to suspend the delivery of some American weapons systems to Egypt and to hold up some of this year’s planned military aid. Unfortunately, Secretary of State John Kerry then undercut that message against the growing repression by declaring in Cairo that the suspensions were “not a punishment” and that Egypt’s transition to democracy seems on track.

The administration has apparently made the calculation that it needs the support of General Sisi and the Egyptian military for its regional security strategy, just as it long believed that it needed Mr. Mubarak. Washington should not let itself get taken in by the Egyptian regime’s assurances that its repressive practices are necessary to bring democracy and or maintain stability. Egypt may well be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the Mubarak era, but American policy need not be.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 10:10 AM
Subject: re: Alaska Democrats See a Palin Legacy They Can Like
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  If the usual suspects are too coddled and lazy to drill for oil without big government incentives, they deserve to be shouldered aside by new oil companies that want to do the work. Is that a partisan issue? I think Left, Right and Center are in agreement on this one.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/us/politics/democrats-see-a-palin-legacy-they-can-like.html

Alaska Democrats See a Palin Legacy They Can Like

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Andrew Halcro of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce said Sarah Palin’s higher taxes discouraged oil companies from drilling.

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: November 27, 2013

ANCHORAGE — For many Alaskans, Sarah Palin is a figure in the rearview mirror, the memories of her time as governor obscured and distorted by the national spotlight she stepped into as Republican vice-presidential candidate, pundit and Tea Party darling. And often as not the memories come with a grumble anyway, since her shooting-star career mostly took off after leaving the state.

Multimedia

But now the Palin legacy is being burnished, if not a little airbrushed, by a seemingly unlikely source: Democrats. The reason is oil.

Ms. Palin was elected governor in 2006 on a pledge to clean house after revelations of oil-industry corruption in the State Legislature, and in 2007 oversaw a sweeping overhaul of policy that included big new taxes on oil profits. But this year Gov. Sean Parnell — Ms. Palin’s lieutenant governor, and successor after her resignation in 2009 — led a drive in the Republican-controlled Legislature to repeal the Palin tax package, arguing that it discouraged new exploration. That is a big issue in Alaska, where oil taxes pay for 90 percent of the state’s general fund budget.

But that was not the end of it. Opponents of the new law gathered enough signatures this spring and summer to put the issue on the statewide ballot next year. They want voters to repeal Mr. Parnell’s new tax plan and replace it with Ms. Palin’s old one.

And that has stirred up a very strange political cocktail: Democrats leading the repeal effort have every incentive to make the Palin years under her oil taxes look good, while Republicans and many business leaders, in supporting the new system, are pulling in the opposite direction. The Palin era, they say, was a glass half empty at best.

“She was a transformational figure in Alaska politics,” said State Senator Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat from Anchorage and leader of the repeal effort. Oil remade the state’s economy, he said, but tax policy on that bounty has not kept up. “People realized that for decades Alaska had not gotten a fair share.”

Supporters of the Parnell plan scoff that nostalgia for the Palin years is misguided hindsight. The old law, they said, created big disincentives for oil companies to explore and drill.

“People were angry at the oil industry, angry at the Republican Party, angry at the lawmakers who got caught in the scandal, and she channeled that,” said Andrew Halcro, the president of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, referring to Ms. Palin. “And so when she raised taxes, people were like, ‘All right, you go get ’em.’ But then the reality sunk in.”

Buffing or besmirching the Palin aura is a risky business, people in both parties said.

Many Alaskans affiliated with the Tea Party still revere her, which makes it tricky for Republican supporters of the Parnell plan to speak too harshly. But she also evokes strong negative feelings across party lines in Alaska, Democrats say, partly because of her attack dog role during the 2008 presidential campaign and partly because of her decision to resign as governor, which many residents took as a slap. That makes the repeal forces hesitant to ask her to help or endorse their efforts — even if she had an inclination to do so.

“She did the right thing. She put in a tax that was tough on the big guys,” said Jack Roderick, 87, a major public figure since Alaska’s early statehood as a lawyer, author, former Democratic mayor of Anchorage Borough — and now leader of the repeal drive. But her image now is so divisive, he said, that active campaigning on her part would “probably not be helpful.”

Another former Anchorage mayor, Rick Mystrom, a Republican who is a co-chairman of a group called Vote No on 1, which is fighting the referendum, said a discussion of the Palin legacy would probably not factor in at all. “I don’t think we’re even going to touch on Sarah Palin, we believe that our arguments are so logical and rational,” he said.

Ms. Palin, who has been on a book tour and making political endorsements, did not respond to requests for comment
.

Both parties are divided over how to tax the oil that shapes Alaska’s economic life. Mr. Parnell’s plan gained final approval in the State Senate by an 11-to-9 vote this past spring, with 11 Republicans voting yes, and two Republicans joining with the seven minority Democrats in voting no. Some prominent Democrats, meanwhile, including two former governors, Tony Knowles and Bill Sheffield, are supporting Mr. Parnell.

Multimedia

What complicates the picture for Mr. Parnell is that his new system will hurt state tax collections. Even he and his supporters say billions of dollars of tax revenue will be forgone in the early going, though they say that new drilling and production incentives will eventually build state revenues. The old law, called ACES, for Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share, included an escalator clause that raised oil tax rates as profits went up; the new law scraps that for a flat rate.

Leaders of the repeal effort, who accuse Mr. Parnell of a giveaway to the oil companies, have already begun reminding voters of the billions of dollars that flooded the treasury under ACES.

So Mr. Parnell, whose proposed 2014 budget comes out in the next few weeks, said his plan was to “fight back with the truth.”

“In just the last five or six months, Alaskans are starting to see the benefit of a competitive tax regime,” he said in a telephone interview, pointing to new investment in oil drilling areas. He said that he gradually saw harmful effects in the ACES law he helped Ms. Palin pass and that Democrats, in “all of a sudden now raising her legacy,” were overlooking or ignoring the explosive rise of challengers in energy production since Ms. Palin’s time, notably North Dakota.

Timing is an issue too. The referendum on oil taxes will be in August. Mr. Parnell is aiming to seek a second full term in the general election two months later. The two races are now intertwined, Democrats said.

“Repeal bodes ill for the governor,” said State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat from Anchorage and a would-be candidate for lieutenant governor.

Mr. Halcro at the Chamber of Commerce also worries that Mr. Parnell and Republican legislators will try to solve their budget trouble with spending cuts, which could be directly felt by voters and attributed to the new tax law.

“Fuel to the fire,” he said. “The governor has got to keep investing in education and keep investing in infrastructure.” State savings funds are ample, he said, and should be tapped in the short term.

For voters like Phil Shanahan, a lawyer in Anchorage, who described himself as a Democrat and an opponent of the oil tax rollback, there is a definite awkwardness to the debate. He likes almost nothing about Ms. Palin’s views now, but says that as governors go, Alaska has had worse.

“Palin had the right concept,” he said as he stopped for coffee at Side Street Espresso downtown on a recent chilly morning. Then he paused and lowered his voice: “I have a hard time saying that out loud.”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 5:22 PM
Subject: re: N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Should I be comforted that--by the NSA's own analysis--some surveillance of Americans is illegal? Do they keep separate records of the spying that they conduct within their concept of the law and that which they do in violation of the law? What even is the point of law if no one prosecutes the NSA's agents, officers, partners and contractors when they are caught breaking it again and again? 

   The Congress of the United States duly drafted, debated and enacted the FISA statute of 1978 making it a crime to tap communications of Americans without a court order. The President of the United States signed it into law. Yet two presidents now have not "take[n] care that these laws be faithfully executed". 

     Even though a feckless Congress didn't impeach president George W. Bush for directing this vast criminal enterprise, it remains for us the people to insist that president Obama do his job, as our Constitution describes it. Violations of the FISA statute were crimes and must be prosecuted. And if the NSA has some pipedream of even greater powers, we'll discuss it later.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/nsa-report-outlined-goals-for-more-power.html?_r=0

N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power

By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS

Published: November 22, 2013

WASHINGTON — Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document.

MIn a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency’s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.”

Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded.

Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to “revolutionize” analysis of its vast collections of data to “radically increase operational impact.”

The strategy document, provided by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, was written at a time when the agency was at the peak of its powers and the scope of its surveillance operations was still secret. Since then, Mr. Snowden’s revelations have changed the political landscape.

Prompted by a public outcry over the N.S.A.’s domestic operations, the agency’s critics in Congress have been pushing to limit, rather than expand, its ability to routinely collect the phone and email records of millions of Americans, while foreign leaders have protested reports of virtually unlimited N.S.A. surveillance overseas, even in allied nations. Several inquiries are underway in Washington; Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the N.S.A.’s longest-serving director, has announced plans to retire; and the White House has offered proposals to disclose more information about the agency’s domestic surveillance activities.

The N.S.A. document, titled “Sigint Strategy 2012-2016,” does not make clear what legal or policy changes the agency might seek. The N.S.A.’s powers are determined variously by Congress, executive orders and the nation’s secret intelligence court, and its operations are governed by layers of regulations. While asserting that the agency’s “culture of compliance” would not be compromised, N.S.A. officials argued that they needed more flexibility, according to the paper.

Senior intelligence officials, responding to questions about the document, said that the N.S.A. believed that legal impediments limited its ability to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects inside the United States. Despite an overhaul of national security law in 2008, the officials said, if a terrorism suspect who is under surveillance overseas enters the United States, the agency has to stop monitoring him until it obtains a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“N.S.A.’s Sigint strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,” the agency said in a statement. “In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, N.S.A. tries to get in front of issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the U.S. government.”

Critics, including some congressional leaders, say that the role of N.S.A. surveillance in thwarting terrorist attacks — often cited by the agency to justify expanded powers — has been exaggerated. In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.’s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 “terrorist-related activities.” But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism.

Agency leaders believe that the N.S.A. has never enjoyed such a target-rich environment as it does now because of the global explosion of digital information — and they want to make certain that they can dominate “the Sigint battle space” in the future, the document said. To be “optimally effective,” the paper said, “legal, policy and process authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit.”

Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency’s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world’s telecommunications networks.

Reports based on other documents previously leaked by Mr. Snowden showed that the N.S.A. has infiltrated the cable links to Google and Yahoo data centers around the world, leading to protests from company executives and a growing backlash against the N.S.A. in Silicon Valley.

Yet the paper also shows how the agency believes it can influence and shape trends in high-tech industries in other ways to suit its needs. One of the agency’s goals is to “continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.” The paper added that the N.S.A. must seek to “identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services.”

And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its “capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,” the paper stated.

The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering “ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption” is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint” — human intelligence, meaning spies.

The document also mentioned a goal of integrating the agency’s eavesdropping and data collection systems into a national network of sensors that interactively “sense, respond and alert one another at machine speed.” Senior intelligence officials said that the system of sensors is designed to protect the computer networks of the Defense Department, and that the N.S.A. does not use data collected from Americans for the system.

One of the agency’s other four-year goals was to “share bulk data” more broadly to allow for better analysis. While the paper does not explain in detail how widely it would disseminate bulk data within the intelligence community, the proposal raises questions about what safeguards the N.S.A. plans to place on its domestic phone and email data collection programs to protect Americans’ privacy.

N.S.A. officials have insisted that they have placed tight controls on those programs. In an interview, the senior intelligence officials said that the strategy paper was referring to the agency’s desire to share foreign data more broadly, not phone logs of Americans collected under the Patriot Act.

Above all, the strategy paper suggests the N.S.A.’s vast view of its mission: nothing less than to “dramatically increase mastery of the global network.”

Other N.S.A. documents offer hints of how the agency is trying to do just that. One program, code-named Treasure Map, provides what a secret N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation describes as “a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.” According to the undated PowerPoint presentation, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, Treasure Map gives the N.S.A. “a 300,000 foot view of the Internet.” 

Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map is a sophisticated tool, one that the PowerPoint presentation describes as a “massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine.” It collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses — code that can reveal the location and owner of a computer, mobile device or router — are represented each day on Treasure Map, according to the document. It boasts that the program can map “any device, anywhere, all the time.” 

The documents include addresses labeled as based in the “U.S.,” and because so much Internet traffic flows through the United States, it would be difficult to map much of the world without capturing such addresses.

Multimedia

Document

A Strategy for Surveillance PowersBut the intelligence officials said that Treasure Map maps only foreign and Defense Department networks, and is limited by the amount of data available to the agency. There are several billion I.P. addresses on the Internet, the officials said, and Treasure Map cannot map them all. The program is not used for surveillance, they said, but to understand computer networks.

The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the “traceroutes” through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to “13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,” according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore.

Despite the document’s reference to “unwitting data centers,” government officials said that the agency does not hack into those centers. Instead, the officials said, the intelligence community secretly uses front companies to lease space on the servers.

Despite the N.S.A.’s broad surveillance powers, the strategy paper shows that N.S.A. officials still worry about the agency’s ability to fend off bureaucratic inertia while keeping pace with change.

“To sustain current mission relevance,” the document said, Signals Intelligence Directorate, the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence arm, “must undertake a profound and revolutionary shift from the mission approach which has served us so well in the decades preceding the onset of the information age.”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 9:27 AM
Subject: re: Democracy Returns to the Senate
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  The filibuster has been with us at least since 1837. The intent was noble--to insure that the merits and flaws of a nomination or bill had been duly deliberated before it was confirmed or enacted. But as with any rule, it is the letter and not the spirit that gets enforced. And so it became in time a parliamentary tool to require a super-majority rather than a mere majority to pass legislation or to confirm a president's nominees.  

   Senator Reid has belatedly restored democracy to the process for appointing judges and other civil servants. Now that the Senate calendar is no longer clogged with filibusters of those, perhaps he'll use a few minutes of the liberated time to explain why democracy isn't likewise good enough for nominations to the Supreme Court, or for legislation.

Barry Haskell Levine

1142 Brown Ave
Lafayette, CA 94549

510 407 7553

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/opinion/democracy-returns-to-the-senate.html

EDITORIAL

Democracy Returns to the Senate

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: November 21, 2013 497 Comments

RelatedFor five years, Senate Republicans have refused to allow confirmation votes on dozens of perfectly qualified candidates nominated by President Obama for government positions. They tried to nullify entire federal agencies by denying them leaders. They abused Senate rules past the point of tolerance or responsibility. And so they were left enraged and threatening revenge on Thursday when a majority did the only logical thing and stripped away their power to block the president’s nominees.

In a 52-to-48 vote that substantially altered the balance of power in Washington, the Senate changed its most infuriating rule and effectively ended the filibuster on executive and judicial appointments. From now on, if any senator tries to filibuster a presidential nominee, that filibuster can be stopped with a simple majority, not the 60-vote requirement of the past. That means a return to the democratic process of giving nominees an up-or-down vote, allowing them to be either confirmed or rejected by a simple majority.

The only exceptions are nominations to the Supreme Court, for which a filibuster would still be allowed. But now that the Senate has begun to tear down undemocratic procedures, the precedent set on Thursday will increase the pressure to end those filibusters, too.

This vote was long overdue. “I have waited 18 years for this moment,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa.

It would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, when the majority leader, Harry Reid, was still holding out hope for a long-lasting deal with Republicans and insisting that federal judges, because of their lifetime appointments, should still be subject to supermajority thresholds. But Mr. Reid, along with all but three Senate Democrats, was pushed to act by the Republicans’ refusal to allow any appointments to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, just because they wanted to keep a conservative majority on that important court.

That move was as outrageous as the tactic they used earlier this year to try to cripple the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which they despise) by blocking all appointments to those agencies. That obstruction was removed in July when Mr. Reid threatened to end the filibuster and Republicans backed down. The recent blockade of judges to the D.C. appellate court was the last straw.

Republicans warned that the rule change could haunt the Democrats if they lost the White House and the Senate. But the Constitution gives presidents the right to nominate top officials in their administration and name judges, and it says nothing about the ability of a Senate minority to stop them. (The practice barely existed before the 1970s.) From now on, voters will have to understand that presidents are likely to get their way on nominations if their party controls the Senate.

Given the extreme degree of Republican obstruction during the Obama administration, the Democrats had little choice but to change the filibuster rule. As Mr. Reid noted on the floor, half of all filibusters waged against nominations in Senate history have occurred since Mr. Obama was elected. Twenty of his district court nominees were filibustered; only three such filibusters took place before he took office. There has also been a record-setting amount of delay in approving the president’s choices for cabinet positions and federal agency posts, even when no objections have been raised about a nominee’s qualifications.

The rule change does not end the 60-vote threshold for blocking legislation, which we have argued is worth preserving. But the vote may lead to broader filibuster changes. A proposal by several younger Democratic senators to require “talking filibusters” — forcing objecting lawmakers to stand up at length and make their cases — may well gain steam now, and it could finally spell an end to logjams that have prevented important legislation from reaching votes.

Democrats made the filibuster change with a simple-majority vote, which Republicans insisted was a violation of the rules. There is ample precedent for this kind of change, though it should be used judiciously. Today’s vote was an appropriate use of that power, and it was necessary to turn the Senate back into a functioning legislative body.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 9:31 AM
Subject: re: Raw Sewage and Anger Flood Gaza’s Streets as Electricity Runs Low
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:  

     Rather than buy diesel fuel from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas prefers to keep Gazans in sewage and squalor. But that lede is buried in paragraph 17 of 25. The few readers who get that far must first plod through the undigested dump of field notes that never add up to a story.

     If this paper continues to chase away journalists (Lichtblau and Risen come to mine) it will find eventually that readers notice the difference, even if your editors don't.

Barry Haskell Levine

1142 Brown Ave

Lafayette, CA 94549

5120 407 7553

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/world/middleeast/raw-sewage-and-anger-floods-gazas-streets-as-electricity-runs-low.html?_r=0

Raw Sewage and Anger Flood Gaza’s Streets as Electricity Runs Low

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 

  Wissam Nassar for The New York Times

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7

A Palestinian family cooks over a wood fire in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza during a power outage.

By FARES AKRAM and JODI RUDOREN

Published: November 20, 2013

Three more sewage stations in Gaza City and 10 others elsewhere in the Gaza Strip are close to overflowing, sanitation officials here said, and 3.5 million cubic feet of raw sewage is seeping into the Mediterranean Sea daily. The sanitation department may soon no longer be able to pump drinking water to Gaza homes.GAZA CITY — Raw sewage has flooded streets in a southern Gaza City neighborhood in recent days, threatening a health disaster, after a shortage of electricity and cheap diesel fuel from Egypt led the Hamas government to shut down Gaza’s lone power plant, causing a pump station to flood.

“Any day that passes without a solution has disastrous effects,” Farid Ashour, director of sanitation at the Gaza Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, said Tuesday in an interview. “We haven’t faced a situation as dangerous as this time.”

The sewage crisis is the most acute of an array of problems since the Islamist Hamas movement that governs Gaza shut down the power plant on Nov. 1. Four months earlier Egypt’s new military-backed government closed the smuggling tunnels that were used to transport around one million liters (about 260,000 gallons) of diesel here each day.

Hamas has refused to import Israeli diesel because of taxes imposed by the Palestinian Authority.

Having gotten used to years of scheduled blackouts, generally eight hours without electricity two of every three days, Gaza’s 1.7 million residents are now facing daily power failures of 12 or even 18 hours.

Businesses have cut back production, hospitals are rationing electricity to keep dialysis and cardiac support systems running, students are doing Internet research in the middle of the night and battery sales are brisk. Everywhere, the drone of generators mixes with the odor of kerosene lamps.

Nema Hamad, who is 64 and has sleep apnea, struggles to keep from suffocating. Some nights, her sons run improvised lines from neighbors who have electricity to keep Ms. Hamad’s airway pressure mask working. Three times, they paid $100 for Ms. Hamad to sleep in a private hospital. Once, she woke up gasping for air when the electricity went off unexpectedly and ran into the street, desperately looking for oxygen.

“This is not a life,” Ms. Hamad said as she sat on a mattress in dim candlelight. “Sometimes, I fear that it might be the last time I sleep.”

The electricity shortage comes a year after eight days of intense cross-border violencethat killed 167 Palestinians and six Israelis, and it is a profound sign of how Gaza’s situation has shifted since then. The past 12 months have been the quietest in a decade in terms of fire exchanged with Israel, though Israel’s air force struck a weapons facility and two tunnels on Tuesday night after reports of rocket fire near Gaza’s border earlier in the day. Israel has also eased some of its restrictions on the strip, but political changes in Egypt have left a siege of another sort.

The number of trucks bringing goods, including fuel, into Gaza from Israel has increased 18 percent since the ouster in July of President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, according to Gisha, an Israeli group that advocates freedom of movement.

The number of Palestinians allowed to leave Gaza through Israel’s Erez crossing is up nearly 30 percent since July, Gisha records show, while exits through Egypt’s Rafah crossing — which has lately been closed as often as not — in October were a third of what they had been in January.

Closing the tunnels has left thousands of construction workers without work and other residents frustrated over scarce supplies and rising prices for groceries and electronics, cars and other consumer products. But the idling of the power plant, which by week’s end will have lasted longer than the record 21-day closing in 2008, has hit many people hard.

Gaza requires 400 megawatts of electricity daily to keep the lights on full time, according to the Hamas-run power authority. For decades, it has bought 120 megawatts from Israel through direct cables. During the yearlong presidency of Mr. Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood spawned Hamas, Gaza received 30 megawatts directly from Egypt and enough diesel via the tunnels to provide 85 megawatts through its power plant.

The plant, which opened in 2002, could produce up to 140 megawatts daily before Israel bombed it after the 2006 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. It was idle for seven months then and has never returned to full capacity. But Hamas officials say the overall electricity shortage has worsened from about 40 percent before Mr. Morsi was ousted to 65 percent now, and will rise further as winter sets in.

“You’re asking me why? Ask the world why instead,” Mayor Rafiq Mekki of Gaza City said as he toured sewage-filled streets around the flooded Zeitoun pumping station. “We are under siege, and ask the world which besieges us this question. We called on all international organizations to intervene, but no one cares so far.”

Ihab Bessisso, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said it had rescinded a longstanding tax exemption on fuel for Gaza because it was unfair to West Bank residents.

Hamas has since refused the $1.62 per liter price, insisting on paying no more than 79 cents per liter, Mr. Bessisso said. Instead, it closed the plant.

So Omar al-Khouli has cut in half the bread he makes at his bakery here, running a generator when the power goes out only to finish the batch in the oven. He plans to start closing the shop on mornings when there is no electricity.

“I blame Israel, the Ramallah government and Hamas for the crisis,” said Mr. Khouli, referring to the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. “They should work together and find a solution for this because it’s the people who are paying the price.”

Some people have bought expensive Chinese-made inverters that provide enough current to light a lamp or two and recharge cellphones.

Yasmeen Ayyoub, a psychology student at Gaza’s Islamic University, said that when power is out during the day, she is forced to study from midnight to 6 a.m. “at the expense of my sleeping hours.”

And in the Sabra neighborhood, near the Zeitoun pumping station, which has flooded three times since Sunday, the stench of sewage hung over the pools of standing water in the streets. Mosquitoes abounded, and residents said their children were vomiting and had diarrhea.

“Every day, we call the electricity company and they say, ‘It’s not our responsibility,’ ” complained Thabet Khatab, 56, a grocer, who was busy piling dirt in front of his house to prevent sewage from seeping inside a second time. “We call the municipality, but they say, ‘Bring diesel for us so we can run the generator in the pumping station.’ ”

Mr. Khatab’s neighbor Nahla Quzat, a mother of eight, said, “They say there is no diesel for the generator, but the government’s cars don’t seem to be suffering from a lack of diesel.”

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 8:10 AM
Subject: re: F.C.C. Chairman Calls for Transforming the Technology Used by Phone Systems
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     Bizarrely, in 2013, U.S. law recognizes my expectation of privacy on "Plain Old Telephone Service" ("POTS") but not when I use a cellphone or when my signal is relayed by microwave. To tap the former requires a court order. To tap the latter does not because when I transmitted that message by radio to the cell-tower, I entrusted it to a third party and therefore surrendered any expectation of privacy.

   In this legal milieu, to take from me my landline telephone and replace it with a modern system of data streaming is to open all my 'phone conversations to search without warrant. If we are going to change the technology of telephony, we must first change the legal protections that go with it.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/business/media/fcc-chairman-calls-for-transforming-the-technology-used-by-phone-systems.html

F.C.C. Chairman Calls for Transforming the Technology Used by Phone Systems

By EDWARD WYATT

Published: November 19, 2013

Enlarge This ImageWASHINGTON — Americans could soon be one step closer to getting that videophone they were promised in the 1960s.

Mary F. Calvert for The New York Times

Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the F.C.C., said experiments would begin next year to set the transition in motion.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday that the agency would begin “a diverse set of experiments” next year that would begin to move the nation’s telephone system from its century-old network of circuits, switches and copper wires to one that transmits phone calls in a manner similar to that used for Internet data.

The Internet-based systems allow more information to be transmitted at one time, making possible the addition of video to phone calls, as employed by services like Skype andVonage. While consumers can already use those services, most of the legacy telephone networks still use analog technology, employing an out-of-date system of physical switches that is expensive to keep operating.

Those old networks make possible what is known in the communications industry as Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS, and they use types of switches that in many cases are no longer manufactured, telephone company executives say. The outdated switches limit the ability of companies to expand the networks to carry more traffic and impede a company’s ability to refurbish equipment.

The F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, who took over the post Nov. 4, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that he expected the commission to approve a plan in January to consider rewriting the legal, policy and technical issues that govern telephone service.

“This is what I call the Fourth Network Revolution,” Mr. Wheeler wrote. “History has shown that new networks catalyze innovation, investment, ideas and ingenuity. Their spillover effects can transform society — think of the creation of industrial organizations and the standardized time zones that followed in the wake of the railroad and telegraph.”

The transition from the old system, known as time-division multiplexing, to Internet protocol communication, or I.P., is both symbolic and substantive. Millions of Americans already have I.P.-based telephone service, which transmits packets of data and carries larger amounts of that data than is possible with the old system.

In addition to Skype and Vonage, I.P.-based services include VerizonFiOS and AT&T’s U-Verse.

AT&T petitioned the F.C.C. last year to begin the transition to the new system from the old by setting up trials of upgraded service. But some consumer advocates and public interest groups have warned that because the F.C.C. has limited authority over the Internet, telephone systems that use I.P. might not be subject to many of the rules that produced universal telephone service.

Those requirements include a regulation that one phone company in every geographic area serve as the carrier of last resort, so that anybody in the United States who wants telephone service in their home is guaranteed to receive it.

Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs, said the company welcomed Mr. Wheeler’s action.

“Our current infrastructure has served us well for almost a century, but it no longer meets the needs of America’s consumers,” Mr. Cicconi said in a statement. “The transition to broadband and I.P. services that has already begun is driven by consumers who are moving to the Internet and choosing to connect in ways not imagined just a decade ago.”

He added: “Like any change, it requires planning. The geographic trials directed by Chairman Wheeler will provide the real-world answers needed to ensure a seamless transition.” Mr. Cicconi said the company was committed to working “closely and constructively” with the F.C.C. and other groups with an interest in the conversion.

Public Knowledge, a consumer-oriented group, said Mr. Wheeler and the F.C.C. “must ensure that the policies and principles that have guaranteed that the telephone network is universal, accessible and reliable continue to apply to the communications networks of the 21st Century.”

Significantly, the consumer group has championed the transition in recent months, agreeing that the technology needs updating. “It’s important that the F.C.C. show that this transition is not just about AT&T or any other carrier,” Harold Feld, a senior vice president at Public Knowledge, said. “It impacts the lives and well-being of every American.”

Mr. Wheeler said a task force would report at the commission’s December meeting on what needed to be done, and in January the commission would adopt an order to begin the process. That adoption requires a vote of a majority of the five commissioners, but Mr. Wheeler noted that the three commissioners with the longest tenure have supported moving ahead.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:13 AM
Subject: re: Bloomberg News Suspends Reporter Whose Article on China Was Not Published
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Matthew Winkler neatly summarizes "If we run the story, we'll be kicked out of China" why the corporate media--including this newspaper--cannot suffice to keep the electorate informed in the 21st century.  A news organization that has a corporate address is a news organization that can be leashed and muzzled. 

    We need alternative news sources not because they are intrinsically more credible in what they say, but because the corporate media are always suspect in what they cannot say.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/world/asia/reporter-on-unpublished-bloomberg-article-is-suspended.html

Bloomberg News Suspends Reporter Whose Article on China Was Not Published

By EDWARD WONG and CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: November 17, 2013

RelatedBEIJING — A reporter for Bloomberg News who worked on an unpublished article about China, which employees for the company said had been killed for political reasons by top Bloomberg editors, was suspended last week by managers.

• Bloomberg News Is Said to Curb Articles That Might Anger China(November 9, 2013)

• Bloomberg Says News Service Did Not Kill Articles on China(November 13, 2013)

The reporter, Michael Forsythe, was based in Hong Kong and has written award-winning investigative articles on China. He met with supervisors and was placed on leave, said two Bloomberg employees with knowledge of the situation, which was supposed to be private. The move came days after several news outlets, including The New York Times, published reports quoting unnamed Bloomberg employees saying that top editors, led by Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief, decided in late October not to publish an investigative article because of fears that Bloomberg would be expelled from China.

The article, about a Chinese tycoon and his ties to families of Communist Party leaders, was written by Mr. Forsythe and Shai Oster. Mr. Winkler has denied that the article was killed.

Last week, after the allegations of self-censorship were published, reporters and editors in the Bloomberg bureau in Hong Kong who had worked on the unpublished article were called into a series of meetings, Bloomberg employees said. They were asked questions about the news reports face to face and through conference calls with top editors and executives based in Hong Kong and New York, the employees said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Forsythe, who joined Bloomberg in 2000, was asked to go to the floor where human resources offices are, and he did not return to the newsroom, employees said.

Two representatives of Bloomberg News declined to comment on Sunday. Mr. Forsythe also declined to comment for this story.

At around 6:40 p.m. on Monday, he said on his Twitter account @PekingMike, “Thanks everyone for the incredible outpouring of sympathy and support. It has really helped me and my family get through this.” Around 8 p.m., he sent out the first line of that same message in Chinese.

The Times’s account of the unpublished article appeared online on Nov. 8 and cited Bloomberg employees who said that Mr. Winkler had conveyed his decision about the article in a conference call on Oct. 29 to Mr. Forsythe, Mr. Oster and two other Hong Kong-based journalists, after the text had already been through a series of late-stage edits in which no big objections were raised, and had been approved by a lawyer.

In the call, Mr. Winkler defended his decision by comparing it to the self-censorship by foreign news bureaus trying to preserve their ability to report inside Nazi-era Germany, according to the Bloomberg employees familiar with the discussion. “He said, ‘If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,’ ” one employee said.

Mr. Winkler said in an email to The Times that “the stories are active and not spiked.” He would not comment on the conference call.

The Financial Times and Next Media Animation also reported independently on the accusations of self-censorship. The Financial Times published what it said were excerpts from emails from top Bloomberg editors in New York to the reporters that expressed strong support for the story in September. An email dated Sept. 18 from Laurie Hays, a senior executive editor, said the story was “almost there.” An email nine days later from Jonathan Kaufman, a managing editor, said: “The story is terrific. I am in awe of the way you tracked down and deciphered the financial holdings and the players. It’s a real revelation. Looking forward to pushing it up the line.”

The suspension of Mr. Forsythe was first reported on Friday night by The New York Post.

Last Thursday, Norman Pearlstine, who recently left the post of chief content officer at Bloomberg L.P. to rejoin Time Inc., was asked about the news reports at a public talk. Mr. Pearlstine said that he had spoken with Mr. Winkler and had heard that “the story was just not ready for publication and they’re still working on it.”

Bloomberg L.P., the parent company of Bloomberg News, receives much of its revenue from selling subscriptions for its financial-information terminals. After Bloomberg News published an article in June 2012 on the family wealth of Xi Jinping, at that time the incoming Communist Party chief, sales of Bloomberg terminals in China slowed, as officials ordered state enterprises not to subscribe. Officials also blocked Bloomberg’s website on Chinese servers, and the company has been unable to get residency visas for new journalists.

Mr. Forsythe was a lead reporter on the article about the Xi family and other articles in the 2012 “Revolution to Riches” series, which received a George Polk Award and awards from the Asia Society, the Overseas Press Club and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Last Wednesday, Amanda Bennett, until recently the executive editor for projects and investigations at Bloomberg, said she was leaving the company. She told Talking Biz News that she was “most proud of the groundbreaking” article on the Xi family. Bloomberg employees said that the investigative unit Ms. Bennett had run would soon undergo major changes.

Edward Wong reported from Beijing, and Christine Haughney from New York.