Officials at Alabama’s Noccalula State Park are working to save wildlife and plants from the ravages of drought. Here’s a publicity shot of the falls from a Gadsden tourism site. It looks a lot like most of the other pictures you can find at Google Images.
This, OTOH, is a current picture published today on al.com:
(credit: Joe Songer, Birmingham News)
****
Meanwhile, in Texas:
(credit: AP Photo, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ron Jenkins)
(I had the opportunity to visit Israel in 2000, just before the beginning of the second intifada. It was a wonderful and enlightening experience, and it has left the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict weighing heavily on my mind. The roots of the conflict are deep and complex, and there’s plenty of blame to spread around for the lack of a just and peaceful resolution. In light of recent events, I’ve asked a friend who has studied the region and its history extensively to give his perspective on the current situation. –Kathy)
Today (6/19), President Bush is meeting with Israeli President Ehud Olmert to discuss the next steps in dealing with a situation that has changed drastically over the past week. Following warnings from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that a civil war was imminent, armed militia from Hamas overthrew the security forces in the Gaza Strip in a matter of days. Now Hamas, a radical Islamic group, controls the Gaza Strip, while Fatah, a non-sectarian party, is nominally in charge in the West Bank.
The contradictions and Byzantine entanglements of political parties in both Israel and Palestine are innumerable. Fatah, which was the predominant party in the Palestinian Authority from its founding in 1994 to January of 2006, had become hopelessly corrupt. Many of its officials had tucked away millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts; millions that were supposed to be used for food, for schools, and for basic infrastructure. The average Palestinian was filled with disgust over this abuse.
Hamas, on the other hand, is an enigma. Although it is a terrorist group that has sent waves of suicide bombers into Israel, Hamas is free of the corruption that plagued Fatah. According to Israeli scholar Reuven Paz, approximately 90% of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities. Hamas funds schools, orphanages, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues.
Israel and the United States are saying that they will do all that they can to bolster Abbas in the West Bank and isolate Hamas in Gaza. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/872633.html) Egypt and Jordan also pledge their support to Abbas. Abbas has cut all ties with Hamas and declared an emergency government in the West Bank. Hamas held its first cabinet meeting today and called for renewed talks with Fatah. The West Bank is rife with recriminations as to who is at fault for the loss of Gaza, a fight in which the Fatah forces were completely outmatched.
The question that looms at this time is: Now what?
This can’t be good. Prayers and good thoughts are in order now, relief efforts soon.
It may sound like something I chant when my children are driving me crazy, but it’s actually Open Hearts and Minds Lectures, coming up this weekend at Auburn University Montgomery. This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock. Dr. Brock will focus on the theme of “Our Common Good and the Care of This World” in her addresses on Friday and Saturday evening. During Saturday morning’s mini-conference, Dr. Brock will be joined by Birmingham author James Douglass and AUM professor Dr. Rosine Hall to explore “greening the soul”.
The lectures are free; the mini-conference is $15 (you can pay at the door). All the events are held in the Nursing School building at AUM, which has ample free parking.
I attended the last two OHM Lectures, featuring Bishop John Shelby Spong in 2004 and Dr. James Forbes and Dr. Charles Marsh in 2005, and I can tell you the organizers only bring in the best – engaging speakers with powerful messages. If you can get to Montgomery on Friday and Saturday, it will be well worth your time.
Perhaps Dr. Rice thinks she’s in the cast of Miss Congeniality. In today’s Washington Post, she declares she has a plan to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It matters not that the parties involved haven’t bought into her plan. This is typical neo-con arrogance: the US knows best, even when it doesn’t, and the rest of the world should just shut up and fall in line.
LONDON, Jan. 18 — As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Europe on Wednesday after four days of talks in the Middle East, her Boeing 757 jet passed high over Baghdad. On a cloudless day at 37,000 feet, the city seemed sparkling and calm; the U.S. military presence and the sectarian violence below could only be imagined.
The moment was an apt metaphor for Rice’s latest — and her 12th — visit to the region in the two years she has been the nation’s top diplomat.
Through much of her trip, she seemed to cruise at a very high altitude as she pitched President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, tried to revive peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians and sought to organize an Arab coalition against “violent extremists” such as Iran. But her results after six stops on the ground in the Middle East did not match her lofty rhetoric.
Rice announced that she had arranged a three-way meeting to discuss the contours of a Palestinian state, sidestepping questions about the political weakness of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders who would make a deal. She found generally tepid support from Arab leaders in the region for Bush’s proposed military buildup in Iraq. She shrugged off a request from the emir of Kuwait that the United States engage directly with Iran and Syria to prevent the Iraqi conflict from spilling over its borders.
I wish I thought she had a chance to bring about an end to conflict in the Middle East, but this sounds like more overreaching Bush administration rhetoric. The reaction in the Arab world is summed up here:
The Arab media was highly skeptical of Rice’s efforts. The Arab News, a Saudi newspaper, asked the day after she left Riyadh, “To what extent is Rice just another siren, mesmerizing the Middle East with pleasing songs while dragging it onto the rocks of fresh conflict because of her own country’s incompetence?”
Even an amateur like me knows that no Middle East peace negotiation will succeed if either side feels it is losing face. Having Condi fly in and announce that she has all the answers is no way to start. Could we please tell her to go somewhere and write about the history of the Soviet Union while we bring in a real Middle East expert to salvage whatever we can from the mess we’ve exacerbated there?
China will soon be facing a major woman shortage.
BEIJING - China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting in part from the country’s tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday. Traditional preferences for sons has led to the widespread - but illegal - practice of women aborting babies if an early term sonogram shows it is a girl.
The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability problems, the China Daily said in a front-page report.
…”Discrimination against the female sex remains the primary cause of China’s growing gender imbalance,” Liu Bohong, vice director of the women studies institute under the All-China Women’s Federation, was quoted as saying in a report from the State Population and Family Planning Commission.
Ya think?
The report, carried in the newspaper, said China’s sex ratio for newborn babies in 2005 was 118 boys to 100 girls, a huge jump from 110 to 100 in 2000.
In some regions such as the southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, the ratio has ballooned to 130 boys to 100 girls, the newspaper said. The average for industrialized countries is between 104 and 107 boys for every 100 girls.
…China Daily said one way to solve the problem would be to create a proper social security system so rural couples would not feel they needed a son to depend on when they get old.
I don’t know. The daughters will have the opportunity to be very selective when they choose husbands. Their parents may end up much better off than they would have been with sons.
Seriously, it’s a shame that any society would devalue women to the point that it would end up with a major shortage of them. Not going to even start on the craziness of the government determining how many children a family can have. I wonder if they’ll start paying parents to have girls now.
Richard Clarke looks at a laundry list of problems that aren’t getting the attention they need because of our involvement in Iraq. It’s scary.
…but I can’t celebrate. Yes, he’s a terrible man who is responsible for atrocities I don’t want to imagine. But where’s our moral high ground? We’ll be complicit in the taking of one more life. A quick and easy death won’t repay Saddam for what he’s done, and it won’t help to unite this fractured world we occupy. Why is an execution better than life in prison? I see no upside.
Scientists released a report today saying that even a small nuclear war could result in marked cooling of the planet.
Using modern climate and population models, researchers estimated that a small-scale nuclear conflict between two warring nations would cause 3 million to 17 million immediate casualties and lead to a marked cooldown of the planet that could lead to crop failures and further misery.
As dire as the predictions seem, they fall short of nuclear winter. That theory says that smoke and dust from an atomic war between the superpowers would blot out the sun, plunge the Earth into the deep freeze and cause mass starvation, wiping out 90 percent of the Earth’s population, or billions of people.
Oh. Well, that makes me feel better. Our country is in a sad state when I can say with a straight face that I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush was considering this approach as a viable solution to global warming. And life as we know it, of course, but he isn’t one to let reality get in the way of his plans.
I feel a bit like a prairie dog sticking my head out of a hole to see what’s happening in the world. Daddy’s actually feeling a little better right now, mostly because he’s eaten more than a teaspoon per meal the last couple of days. He’s still very weak, and I’m not expecting long-term improvement.
So the Baker Commission released its report today. The report recommends a major diplomatic effort in Iraq and pulling most of the troops out by early 2008. If Bush wants any comfort, he’d better look to Barney, because the report is straightforward about his failure.
WASHINGTON - President Bush’s policy in Iraq “is not working,” a high-level commission said bluntly on Wednesday, prodding the administration to use diplomacy to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most American combat troops by early 2008.
“The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing,” the commission said in a report obtained by The Associated Press.
“There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved,” the commissioners said after an exhaustive review of a war that has taken the lives of more than 2,900 U.S. troops and grown so unpopular at home that it helped trigger a Democratic takeover of Congress in last month’s elections.
Bush keeps insisting that the troops won’t leave Iraq till “the job’s done”, but I haven’t heard him elaborate on exactly what the job is and how we’ll know when it’s done. He says “no timetable” for troop withdrawals, but I’d be shocked if he didn’t accede to the recommendation and at least start bringing home troops by 2008. Otherwise, the Republicans can kiss their presidential aspirations goodbye, and the real movers and shakers of the political world won’t have that.
UPDATE: Here’s more detailed coverage of the report.
What else is going on out there?