CONUNDRUMS:PROTECTING FREEDOM-QUAKES AND NUKE PLANTS-PELICAN BRIEFS-BRIDGES AND STREEP

A SCIENTIST'S WARNING

     The former senior resident inspector at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant believes the plant should be shut down until it can prove that it can withstand an earthquake along the newly discovered Shoreline fault. The plant is  90 minutes down the coast from the scenes below.

     California Senator Barbara Boxer plans hearings to examine the earthquake risks at Diablo Canyon. The AP reports Boxer says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is failing to do its job to protect public safety.  The San Luis Obispo Tribune reports the NRC says it "does not have a  timeline" for its response to the inspector's criticism.

SPIES HELP

    News organizations report intelligence officers are close to identifying the masked jihadist seen speaking in a video of the beheading of American Journalist James Foley.

     Sophisticated analytical technology has driven the search. In an irony of life the super sleuthing and spy systems, invasive as they are, are tools needed in a world of terror.

      Protecting freedoms and lives in the shadow world is tricky going. It takes a continuous attention to the thin and often permeable line of balance. What may be needed in espionage and intelligence may not look so good in the light of day. A sense of history, judgement and wise oversight is mandatory

      THE GIVER CODICIL

       In 1993 my daughter Katherine read The Giver, the newly published Lois Lowry book about a seeming utopia. The book gained attention then as the utopia of the overview was revealed to be a dystopian state where people were medicated daily to eliminate emotions and where others were killed though the euphemism was "released to "Elsewhere."

       Back then Jeff Bridges was so taken by the story he turned it into a home movie staring his father Lloyd. Now Bridges himself stars as the wizened Giver, the holder of wisdom and history, in the Philip Noyce directed film.  

       I watched the film with my daughter and we discussed how 21 years later the idea of finding a balance where negative emotions and behavior could be controlled for the greater good is still a vexing question. "Nanny state" laws and regulations, preemptive policing, an increasingly medicated populace, an almost ubiquitous surveillance, algorithmic data capture and analysis, political influence of financial interests and etc eerily echo the Lowry premise as well as Orwell's more profound 1984. 

      The Giver transfers beautifully to film, populated by good acting.  Meryl Streep is haunting as a ruling elder. Katie Holmes turns in a solid though limited role as a mother. Newcomers Brenton Thwaites, Odeya Rush and Cameron Monaghan are all excellent.  Monaghan has already earned acclaim as one of the sons in the dysfunctional family drama Shameless.

     Though published as a young adult novel, the 2014 spin of The Giver makes for an entertaining sci-fi posing challenging questions about balance and how much is too far? Not unlike how far do democracies go to protect liberty?  How invasive do we become before we violate what we set out to protect?

      CLARITY

      There is nothing good in the IS. Islamic State is a dangerous menace to a modern world. Disturbingly they are tenacious, manipulative, effective and should be broken and then destroyed. Eliminating an evil like IS will raise hard questions for the world's modern nations, especially democracies.

MORNING BREAK 

  And taking his or her place amongst the pelicans, cormorants and gulls is a heron.

FINDING COZY

   Our cats sleep around.  They'll find a spot, settle in and then in a couple of days, maybe a week,  they move on.  It never ceases to amaze us where they find a bed.  Joy rests here on a box of oil paints tucked at the back of a work desk in Lana's studio.

   See you down the trail.

FERGUSON AND HISTORY-REVERSING SUNSET ON REASON-A DEATH FOR NEWS-A DRY REVERIE

JAMES FOLEY

1974-2014

Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Pedneault freejamesfoley.org

    Executed by an IS jihadist, American journalist James Foley is the most recent to die while pursuing news.

   Faces of journalists killed in the line of duty.  Below is the memorial wall at the Newseum in Washington D.C.

   Most give very little thought to the dangers encountered by those who work to keep us informed.  We are in their debt.

     WHEN WILL WE LEARN?

      In critiquing the performance of the police in Ferguson Missouri, Norm Stamper the former police chief in Seattle told the LA Times the first thing he thought when he saw the images was "When will we ever learn?", the lines from the Pete Seeger song made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary.

     He said he was thinking, "please learn from my mistakes." Stamper made a few when his force was vilified for the way they over reacted to the WTO protests in 1999. The incident spawned books and movies.

     Scenes like those in Ferguson are familiar to many of us. If you are old enough you remember police dogs and fire hoses being turned on civil rights protesters and the media by police and sheriffs in the south in the 1960's.  Most infamous perhaps was racist Bull Connor in Birmingham Alabama.

      The 1967 Kerner Commission report on the spate of riots and violence in American cities concluded that frustration at lack of economic opportunity was the powder keg.

      In that same era I covered protests, street violence and police thuggery.  In 1968 the Walker Report called the action of the Chicago Police Department a "police riot" during the Democratic National Convention.

      I've been tear gassed, and bullied by police, knocked out by flag pole in a scuffle between anti war and pro war demonstrators and I've seen protests from Washington to conflict zones in Central America, the Middle East and Africa. There was a time when it seemed police had learned, as Norm Stamper did, though in his case after the fact.

      Ferguson reminds us there is still a long way to go. There are a few simple things that can happen immediately-

       ---police need to remember that a peaceable assembly to protest is a guaranteed freedom.  And protesters need to remember the good lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King-peaceful protest or civil disobedience, which will precipitate likely arrest, but in a peaceful way.

       ---As Stamper said "don't tear gas non violent and non threatening protesters and for God's sake don't bring dogs out…it's a throw back to Bull Connor."

       ---Stamper and others who are experts in law enforcement and security also decry the militarization of local police departments.  They look like army units, ready for invasion. Maybe there's a place for that, but it's not in an emotionally tinged protest over questionable use of lethal force. Pointing loaded weapons, that look like instruments of war, at unarmed civilians is stupid and dangerous. It is a scene you'd expect from Syria, Russia or someplace other than the American heartland.

       I've accompanied police on armed drug raids, waited hours with SWAT officers in highly charged hostage sieges, and seen officers, including friends, gunned down in shoot outs. I've been there as folded flags that draped a coffin were presented to grieving wives and children.  It is dangerous work they do, but that is no excuse to trample liberties, rights or to abuse people who have committed no crime. Restraint is required on both sides of the line and the same goes for the media.  In our case, the media, we need to remember proportionality and perspective. The sun needs to rise on reason.

REVERIE IN DROUGHT

    In normal circumstances this wetland and pond would be alive with birds.

   See you down the trail.