$700 billion is a pretty large figure (TechPresident has a good post that puts it in perspective) and it’s one that will only increase the national deficit.

But interestingly, there’s a way to cover the $700 billion. If we are in a time of crisis, we all have to tighten up our belts: the president has said that the alternative is a really bad economy so I’d assume we are all in this together and we all need to pull in. With the figure of $700 billion being rougly $2300 per person, there’s no way we can ask for everyone to chip in that exact amount. But what if we decided to spread paying it back over several years.

So I started playing with the national budget simulator, a handy little tool which has older budget figures but can give us some ideas.

The first thing I did was repeal the Bush tax cuts from 2001 and 2003. If we are in an economic crisis, we have to figure out a way to get the country back on track so repealing tax cuts that were creating when the economy was arguably in a better state might do the job. Doing so against the 2006 Budget would have yielded $294.88 Billion. That gets up about a third of the way through paying for the bailout. So, if you repeal the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts over a 3 year period, you pay for the bailout. In times of crisis, that might work.

But that was the easy part. What if we need to pay for this in one shot. If that’s the case, we’d need to find another $400 billion in the budget:

• Get rid of reconstruction aid for Iraq gets us $6.84 billion. With $80 billion in oil revenue currently running for the Iraqi government, we could argue they can cover their own reconstruction cost and eliminate this.
• Cutting untaxed foreign profit would yield another $15.74 billion. You could argue that in times of crisis, we need to focus on internal profit and foreign profit is fair game.
• a 20% cut in defense research and development would yield another $13.62 billion (from base of $68.129 billion) but slow down our ability to develop new weapons.

But those are all small cuts and other cuts could have negative impact on the economy so, looking at most of the budget, the only way to get anywhere near the $700 billion mark would be to repeal those tax cuts from 2001 and 2003. They were expensive then but are now downright unaffordable and one could argue that it would be our patriotic duty to cut them.

Ideas, comments, suggestions as to how to raise the $700 billion are welcomed in the comment thread.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Paying for the bailout. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

My journey to this moment is one that, in retrospect, would pretty much a given. Since 1992, I’ve been involved on the outer periphery of presidential elections. In the mid-1990s, for a brief period, I was even lucky enough to be present when policies and legal precedents that continue to shape the Internet were established.

In the last presidential election, I took a week off from work to put my money where my mouth was, volunteering with the A.C.L.U. to help protect individual citizens’ right to free assembly and free speech during the New York Republican convention. I’ve had many memories from that week but what stuck most, in my mind, was the courageous group of three Republicans who, one night during that week, went down to Union Square, where most people were protesting against the GOP, and set up individual spot asking the protesters to debate them. The exchanges were both fiercely partisan and cordial and I am still amazed by the fact that people who sat on opposite extremes of the political spectrum could not only sit down and talk with each other but do so in a manner that may have helped all participants.

And yet the time passed and it took me another few years to even apply for American citizenship. But last year, I finally decided to make the leap. And the leap was made on one small but crucial and all to often taken for granted right: the right to vote.

I have not posted any partisan thoughts on this site when it comes to American politics. It was a conscious decision: back then I was a resident alien (yes, that’s the technical term) and I felt that to use this bully pulpit to discuss American politics would be in bad taste. As a non-citizen, I felt that I had little or no right to really voice my opinion as loudly because I considered it to be in bad taste.

But things started bugging me. It’s not that I was starting to dislike America but rather that I started to dislike how the administration was dismantling the idea of America that has been set down by the founding fathers. People who know me well know that I can be a bit obsessive about the US constitution and the bill of right. And what I felt, after a few more years of the Bush era, was that this administration was going against a substantial amount of what the founding fathers intended.

A worse crime than attacking the foundation of the American republic though, was in the way it was done, attempting through twisted logic, to paint that attack as in line with what the founding fathers intended. To besmirch their names in such a way was, I think one of the final straw.

The people who assembled in Philadelphia in 1776 and declared that enough was enough put their necks on the line for us with the declaration of independence. And the people who, 11 years later, came up with the US constitution did the improbable: they decided that, having defeated the mightiest army of the time, they would not accumulate and aggregate the power amongst themselves but rather, they would form a country where checks and balances would rule the day to ensure that the people had the strongest voice possible.

So the states would act as a check on federal powers; 3 branches of government would balance each other out to ensure that none became too strong; even those would be balanced as internal mechanisms would limit the authority of any single person within that branch.

George Washington, who had initially had a hard time prosecuting the war but eventually turned things around to win a country was given a chance at becoming the country’s new king. But not only did he turn down that opportunity, he did not seem to argue for a strong executive branch. Once in power, he not only avoided the trappings of royalty, but also set foreign policy precedents by declaring the US as a neutral nation in foreign conflicts, and eschewed any attempts at war, preferring peace.

Alexander Hamilton believed that the country’s burden ought to be shared by all. However, while heading the house of representative, he decided to sway votes to ensure that his political opponent (and a fierce advocate against that idea), Thomas Jefferson, could become president because he felt that doing otherwise would undermine the legitimacy of the country.

Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, decided to deride the practice of slavery in his initial draft of the declaration of independence and time and time again, pushed for laws that ended up dismantling some of his own interests.

The men intended on building a new country based on equality and justice for all, even if that meant that they would no longer be guaranteed worship but instead would be considered equals to all. And for this, I would say that they were not just mere men, they were supermen.

But somewhere, somehow, things started going horribly wrong in our times. And I suspect that the main issue has been one based on economics, with many people believing that the golden rule (“he who’s got the gold makes the rule”) should be the basis for our nation. That golden rule led to a belief that each American is an individual and, as such, has little or no responsibility to the rest of society. It elevated the individual to a place where kings would be OK, and thus, the belief of a strong president, stronger than congress or the courts, started to take hold.

And so, a new era of selfishness replaced the basis of selflessness that our founding fathers intended.

I could recount the ways in which those things can be illustrated by the actions of this administration. Whether it is a rush to war (and here, I do not talk about Afghanistan, a war that was based on facts and a real enemy but rather about Iraq, a war that was “sold” because it appealed to a certain group) or the belief that corporations can be above the law (for example, the telecom prosecution exemptions currently being discussed which, I’m sure, are leaving every criminal trying to figure out how they can present their trade in a way that will make them benefit from the same approach large telcos do), something went amiss.

But things going amiss are not the reason to become citizen of a country like the United States, a country that was founded on optimism, hope, and renewal.

And hope, renewal and optimism seems to be the flavor of our times. While we are still living in dark ages, there is a sense that a new breed of politics, a new breath of fresh air, may be allowed its place at the public table. In fact, I would even be so bold as to say that wild concepts like substance over style could have a chance to enter this election cycle.

Granted, Obama oozes style, with the type of delivery that not only presents new ideas but voices them in a way that people find it inspiring. Granted, McCain offers substantive policy but I am not wild about that sustance, as it provides a view of an America angry at the world, and fearful of others.

And that, ultimately, is what this precious voting right comes down to. By now, having lost half of the people who generally read my site (an assumption I’m making because I suspect that the previous few paragraphs will leave many of my Republican leaders angry), I can say that a lot of my thinking about getting US citizenship revolved around the right to vote and the right to belong. The USA, only 7 years ago, was a country that, for the most part, welcomed non-Americans. But since 9/11, things have changed and there seems to be a growing resentment of foreigners, largely dictated through policy pronouncements that would make the founding fathers spin in their graves.

So I am now a new citizen and, on election day, I will most probably go out and vote FOR Barack Obama. Voting FOR someone is an opportunity I missed in the 2000 election cycle (I have to admit that, had I been a citizen in 2004, I would have been more intent to vote AGAINST George Bush than FOR John Kerry).

But of course, there is a lot of work to do between now and then, and there is more than one election to go. This country, my country, is in trouble and I, like many others, have worked to do. And I hope that one or more people, having read this, will consider reconnecting with their civic duty.

But do not take this for my telling you who to vote for. Whether you believe in John McCain or Barack Obama only matters to me inasmuch as I might have to work with or against you politically. However, what would really touch me more than anything is if you, reader in any country where leaders are chosen by election, could reconnect with your community and help improve it by restoring real political dialogue, just like those republicans, with whom I respectfully disagreed on a warm night in August 2004, who decided to talk to their non-republican counterparts. On that night, all those involved may have come from different political factions but they talked in the language of exchange of ideas that so many decades ago inspired the world and defined one country, my country, the United States of America.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title American Me. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

• 6 years ago: “We Will Never Forget.” Today: “Time to Move on”. It seems there’s an expiration date on national grief.
• 6 terms most Americans didn’t know 6 years ago:
  • Osama Bin Laden
  • Al Qaeda
  • Patriot Act
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Guantanamo Bay detention center
  • NSA Wiretap
• For the last 5 years, the Empire State Building’s lights were turned off in memory of those who died on 9/11. The lighting schedule for tonight says that it will be different this year: the colors will be “red, white, and blue”.
• 9/11 Memorials are not dominating this morning’s headline in the New York Times but the events of that day and their repercussions still are:
  • Of the 17 headline on the front page, one is about today’s ceremony’s, one is about Pakistan (a country few cared about before 9/11), 5 are about Iraq (a war that was launched based on the erroneous claim of a link to 9/11), one is about surveillance laws (part of the extended powers given to law enforcement after 9/11 but still contentious), and one is about Giuliani (who built his national reputation (and presidential bid) on the fact that he was mayor on 9/11). That’s 9 headlines out of 17 and more than two thirds of the front page.
• 6 years later, only one tower (World Trade Center 7) has been built at ground zero. It took 3 years (1929–1931) to build the Empire State Building and 3 years (1928–1930) to build the Chrysler Building.
• There was a building on 28th street between Park and Madison avenue where someone had created a mini-memorial by having the following words engraved on the window in neat 28 point sans-serif type: “9/11/01 — We will never forget”. The building was recently converted to luxury condos; the window is gone.

In Memoriam: Carlos Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vincent, Michael DiPasquale, Cynthia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Halderman, Steve Weinberg, Gerard Jean Baptiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 6 observations about 9/11. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Before we dive in, I’d like to provide a word of caution to my more conservative readers. The following piece will be a lot more critical of the Bush administration than I usually am on this site. As the piece unfold, you will realize why I consider what is probably the defining event of my generation to be a list of missteps, miscues, and missed opportunities.

We will never forget

It’s hard to believe, now four years later that the nation swore that it would never forget what happened on that day. Beyond New York and Washington DC, however, it seems that people have moved on. I was even told to do so, during a conversation with people outside of the strike zones. It’s easy for people who only witnessed the matter on television to do so; It’s a little harder for people who witnessed it first hand; It’s even more difficult for those who lost friends in it; And I cannot even start to imagine how difficult it would be for those who lost family members in it. Some of us have not forgotten and it is our burden to bring it back, at least once a year, dredge up the dust and see how well we are doing in our recovery.

Since then, we’ve seen the largest reorganization of government, with an intent to prepare it for a major crisis, and its first test with the disaster in New Orleans; we’ve seen two wars, one with the intent to bring culprits to justice, the other with unclear objectives; we’ve seen the first steps of a reconstruction that may or may not be going slower than expected; and we’ve seen government work on financial appropriations that seemed to go anywhere but on the areas that need it.

… and so, we pick up the pieces and do the evaluation, and the assessment is, when faced with core facts, sadly inappropriate for an event in which over 2,000 people lost their lives. Let’s dig in on the details…

Disaster preparedness

As a result of the 9/11 disaster, the U.S. government reorganized itself to be more prepared for when future disasters struck. A new department, named the Department of Homeland Security was tasked with the responsibility of coordinating any effort relating to disasters, man-made or other, happening on U.S. soil.

The first major test came not from a man-made event but from hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and, if the event of the last couple of weeks are showcasing how successful or unsuccessful the department of homeland security was at protecting the homeland, I feel a little less secure now than I did on the morning of September 11th, 2001.

I will leave it to others to dig into whether the levies were under disrepair due to poor money allocation but it is without a doubt that the scenario of one of those levies breaking and flooding all of New Orleans was one that DHS should have prepared for. As opposed to the morning on September 11th, 2001, this last disaster was one where the general public was aware that it was coming. In fact, in the days leading up to the hurricane, breathless reports on most of the 24-hour TV news network talked about how the levies in New Orleans were a potential risk if the hurricane were to hit the city. Worries about a potential flood were so high, the government asked for a massive evacuation of New Orleans prior to the hurricane, and yet it did not provide buses or other modes of transportations to help those who did not have transportation get out of the area.

Katrina did not hit New Orleans head on (that distinction went to Gulfport, Mississippi, which is now what one could only call a former city, the destruction of the area being so complete that it is difficult to imagine a city once existed there) and yet, it was seriously damaged. Katrina was known of several days in advance, and yet government trucks with supplies did not roll into the city until a few days after the disaster. Images of people stranded in the Superdome made their way to the airwaves, and yet the head of FEMA and DHS did not seem to know there were people there until four days later.

If this is the kind of response the U.S. government now has to disasters, please give us back the pre-9/11 response scenario. At least, on that day, police and fire officers were there within minutes, FEMA was there within hours, and people were helped within a day or so.

Some will say that the response was different because this was an “act of God” but one could warrant that the only distinction that exists between an act of God and an act of man is that God gave us warning. Had a terrorist group decided to blow up one or more of those levies in New Orleans, I believe the response would not have been any better.

I now worry more than I did in the days prior to 9/11 and it is not because I fear terrorist more (having lived in France in the 80s, the age of terrorism is one I grew up in) but it is because I fear that our preparedness to a major disaster, whether it is a terrorist one or an act of God, is worse today than it was on the morning of 9/11. If a terror group where to attack the subway tunnels in New York city (let’s assume they’d blow up a bomb in one of the underwater tunnels, combining the horrors of 9/11 with those of Katrina), or if a major earthquake were to struck California (Los Angeles or San Francisco in particular), I fear that the U.S. government in un-ready in accomplishing the first duty of any government: protecting its people.

The Hunt for Bin Laden

If the government is not ready in dealing with a crisis after the fact, let’s look at what it is doing to deal with the people that are responsible, when a crisis is man-made. After 9/11, we were promised that those who were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center would be brought to justice. The main culprit, we were told, was a man by the name of Osama Bin Laden, who heads a group called Al Caeda. Based in Afghanistan, the group is a coalition of several terrorist groups around the world and has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be responsible for the horrific act in New York.

Four years later, Osama Bin Laden is still free, supposedly somewhere in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, based on what I’ve read of expert accounts in several newspapers. And four years later, Al Caeda’s capabilities do not seem to have diminished much. In fact, they seem to be on a new roll: recently, they claimed responsibilities for bombing in Madrid, Spain, and London, UK.

The U.S. did accomplish the toppling of the Taliban, which was the Afghan government hosting terrorists. However, it seems that the new government is having problem trying to regain control of the country. Some areas in Afghanistan are ruled by warlords, some of whom have aligned themselves with the Taliban, and democratically elected leaders are murdered on a regular bases by forces friendly to or associated with the Taliban. In other words, Afghanistan is a country that is teetering on the edge of a civil war, with a few American troops left behind (a substantial portion of the US troops on the ground were relocated to Iraq after that conflict started) attempting to keep the whole country from imploding.

Meanwhile, Bin Laden is taking advantage of the confusion and the rough terrain (the south of the country is very mountainous, making it difficult to do a successful man-hunt) to hide and continue directing global terror efforts via frequently leaked audio or videotapes bringing encouragement to his supporters. His demonization may have been forgotten in the United States but it has not been forgotten by US-opponents who are now seeing him as a rallying point, thus strengthening his power globally, and increasing the ranks of Al Caeda. As a hunt, it has been a major failure and as a fight against terrorism, it has been a disaster.

War in Iraq

So instead of trying to locate Bin Laden, the U.S. leadership has been trying to shift the fighting ground, first by talking up a presumed link between Iraq and the terrorists that struck the world trade center (several government investigations later, the existence of such link has been refuted time and time again by commissions appointed by the same president who has led the administration’s effort at creating the link in the first place.) That supposed link and the subsequent inference by members of the Bush administration that we had to invade Iraq before we ended up seeing “a mushroom cloud over an American city” led to a conflict that lowered the reputation of the United States around the world (a day after the WTC was destroyed, French president Jacques Chirac declared “Today, we are all Americans” a couple of years later, France has become one of the biggest opponents to the Iraqi conflict.)

While the U.S. administration was building up its case to invade Iraq, millions of people in the US and abroad made the counter-case: that, while Saddam Hussein was a horrible individual, he was a despot under control, weighted down by years of U.N. sanctions and that what would follow his removal would be potential anarchy in a country that controls almost 20 percent of the world’s oil reserve. The case was also made that an invasion of Iraq would be costly in terms of invaders’ blood and that it would probably help strengthen, not weaken, terrorists as it gave them something to point to the evilness of the west.

Sadly, the invasion of Iraq went through, with the United States and United Kingdom leading the charge, and few others following. The first days looked very good as the forces met with very little resistance, making it into Baghdad within days, capturing Hussein within months and looking as if all the nay-sayers had been wrong…

… but time has told another story. While the initial success of the invasion of Iraq could have been cause for praise, the following years have been a long descent into hell with many of the worst predictions made by opponents of the invasion turning from conjecture to truth. At the current time, American troops have suffered over 2,000 casualties with more coming every day; tension between Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites are increasing to the point where the country may soon be facing civil war… and Al Caeda has been using the invasion as not only a recruiting tool (claiming that the imperialism of the west is the reason for their fight, a big of circular logic on its own as it was not the reason they gave for 9/11) but also as a training ground in urban warfare for their future recruits.

Much as the cold-war Afghani proxy fight between Russians and Americans had been a training ground for the Bin Laden generation of terrorists, Iraq is turning out a new generation not only of insurgents but also of future carriers of atrocities.

The new argument coming from the administration is that it is better to take the fight to the terrorist than it is to have them to it to us. This argument, which is how Saudi Arabia has managed to be an exporter of terror by removing its more extreme elements to foreign places like Afghanistan, is starting to show wear and tear. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they have recently seen attacks against foreigners in their own country. In the case of the West, London and Madrid stand as painful reminder that the fight is not just located in Iraq but is metastizing into a cancer that infiltrates every society. It may not have happened in the United States since 9/11 (and thank god for that) but I fear that it is only a question of time before they strike again.

As a tool in the war on terror (a term recently replaced by “struggle against violent extremists” or SAVE, an acronym which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable), the Iraqi conflict has been a disaster and one can only hope that the situation will not get any worse than it is now.

Financial Appropriation

Considering the different failures at the federal level, one hopes that more is happening at the local level and that the federal government has been doing a good job at providing cities and states with what they need to defend themselves against terrorist attacks.

From a New York standpoint, things haven’t been particularly rosy. New York City may have been the primary target on September 11th, 2001; the New York area may have a population of 20 millions people (8 millions in the city ), representing roughly 10 percent of the US population but Congress decided to use a different formula to calculate financial appropriations of counter-terrorist funds. As a result, places like Montana or Wyoming find themselves with per capita appropriations that are several multiple larger than the per capita appropriations the New York area (or for that matter, any other major Metropolitan area) does.

But the real irony is that the city ends up giving the federal government more of that money than any other area. In other words, if there were no federal allocation of money for terrorism, New York City would find itself with more money to fight terrorism than it is under the present case.

And, considering the recent disaster in New Orleans, there is another sad fact to take into account: when the Department of Homeland Security was created, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was folded into it. As more allocations were made to fighting terrorists, some of the money was taken from dealing with other issues. Some of the money that was taken away was money to deal with ensuring that some of the infrastructure was kept in good shape. As hurricanes and earthquakes took a back sit to fighting terrorists, repairing levees in order for them to be able to survive during a natural disaster became less important. The images of the last couple of weeks are a painful reminder of the cost of such calculation.

Reconstruction Confusion

Four years later, there is, however, one bit of good news: at ground zero, a new building is rising… but not the one you’d expect. World Trade Center 7, which burned down a few hours after the hours collapsed, is rising anew above ground zero. It represents a beacon of hope for all New Yorkers who went through that horrible day.

Sadly, the rest of reconstruction at ground zero has been pretty horrible, with petty fights breaking out between the different individuals and agencies involved in said reconstruction. The result is that, four years after the towers went down, there is still a large hole not only in our hearts but also in the New York grounds. Inspired architecture was promised, then dismissed as concerns about security took hold. Instead, we may soon see what may either be the most beautiful bunker or one of the most awful towers to grace the New York City skyline. As a symbol of rebirth, it will be one brought force by fear and anxiety, not by the optimism and hopefulness that once were the hallmark of this country.

… and four years after our world changed, that is a damn shame.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 9–11 at 4. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Before the convention

For New Yorkers, the Republican effort started becoming visible weeks ago, as police tightened up the area. Living only a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, where conventioneers gathered, I started to realize with some level of concern that this convention had the potential of being a major annoyance. Rumors were flying high of the potential of some public transportation being shut down and, in the absence of actual information from the city (since none of the plans beyond street closures were revealed until the last minute), most New Yorkers made do with rumors.

Feeling that I needed to take a break and figuring that this might be a good time to skip town, I started planning on taking time off from work for convention week several months in advance. It then hit me that the mass hysteria stirred up by some of the more extreme newspaper (The NY Post, for example) was just media people playing around with facts that had little grounding in reality. Besides, having been through town on 9/11 and then again during last year’s blackout, I figured that New Yorkers had the guts and resolve to face any challenge. Combined with the lure of being close to a hot story, this left me with the decision to stick around.

The next question became how to best experience this. Of course, I knew that I had little chance to get into the convention itself but its perimeter seemed to offer a million interesting stories. With hundreds of thousands of protesters at the ready, it seemed to me that a potentially huge story could be developing outside the convention center, directly on the streets of Manhattan.

The First Amendment

One of the reason I love living in the United States is its constitution and attached bill of rights. Go read it, if you haven’t already. It’s quite a combo and of course, coming out of journalism, I fell deeply enamored with the first amendment and its protection of the press. However, re-reading it recently, I became more keenly aware of its other parts:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These considerations, in an age of increasing uncertainty in the balance of civil liberties versus security, have led me to be a contributor to the American Civil Liberties Union, a group that works hard to ensure that the government lives by this promise.

As a contributor, I get to receive the newsletter for the local New York chapter and had recently learned from it that there would be a storefront established during the Republican convention as part of a wider campaign to protect the rights of protesters. This seemed like a great fit for me and I walked in there on the Saturday prior to the convention, asking if they needed volunteers. They did and I signed up to start on the following Monday, the first day of the convention.

Protesting

I am not a radical leftist. Nor am I on the right. The best way I could possibly describe myself on the political spectrum would probably be extreme centrist. I believe almost religiously in the genius of capitalism. That belief is only trumped by my belief in what I would call “Capital D Democracy”: A government of the people, by the people and for the people. Coming from Europe, I may have a different view from most Americans when it comes to social issues. I strongly believe that anyone should have access to free health care and free high grade education. Because those sit at the core of my political belief, and because I grew up politically through the Bush father administration, followed by the Clinton administration, I would probably qualify as a fairly conservative (small d) democrat in the United States.

Over the past couple of years, I must say that I’ve drifted a little further into that camp, as a direct result of what I’ve experienced and what I read. As everyone knows, September 11th was a horrible day, when many of us lost friends in the Twin Towers. Looking back at that time, I still feel that the Bush administration did a great job by going into Afghanistan to dislocate the Taliban, which had been a long-time supporter of Al-Qaeda. I know that it must have been hard to do so, as no president really wants to put soldiers in harm’s way. The Afghani mission was an important one and one that still needs more support than it gets.

However, as many New Yorkers, I felt blindsided when the administration decided to start making the case for going into Iraq. I had read a fair amount about Iraq and the middle east region in general. As far as I could tell from all the newspapers and magazine reports I was reading, Sadam Hussein was a megalomaniac who would do anything to hold on to power. After being rebuffed from Kuwait by an international coalition led by Bush pere, he had focused inland, using chemical weapons against the Kurds in order to avoid having them overthrow him. For the following decade, the United Stations enforced sanctions that contained him while looking for more information about what types of weapons he had. He kept stonewalling them on two major issues: chemical and nuclear weapons. I personally believe that this was a tactical moved aimed at dealing with internal Iraqi issues: By stonewalling the UN, he ensured that questions would be raised as to how many of those weapons he could have. If word that he held chemical weapons came back into Iraq, along with the remembrance of what he did to Kurds, people would be afraid to attempt an uprising. Similarly, if word was spread that he had a nuclear program, Iran might stay more quiet.

In fall 2002, then CIA-director Tenet testified before Congress about the Iraqi thread. His belief at the time (or at least what he told senators) was that involving ourselves in Iraq would only increase the terrorist threat. Having lived through 9/11, the words increase and threat were not the ones I wanted to hear. At the time, reports from the United States and Europe also pointed out that there was no credible reports of evidence linking Iraq and Al-Qaeda. This was all public information available in late 2002 (I do read a lot on the Internet, not only by using RSS feeds but also visiting the web sites of several news sources in the United States, United Kingdom, and France). This led me to believe that the Iraqi threat was being overstated. However, trying to keep an open mind, I listen to arguments from the administration and, for every point they would make, there would be tens of rebuttal points coming from European publications.

I started to feel that people living in the US were being bamboozled so I started listening more closely to the people advocating peace. I did not agree with all of them (I believe war is sometimes necessary) but I did agree with them that this threatened conflict (at the time, the war had not started) was one that was unnecessary. I joined demonstrations, I met smart people there. Over time, I became more acquainted with the issues surrounding them. While I disagreed with the most extremist elements, I believed in their rights to free speech.

Last year on February 15, a huge march was impeded by the police, which would not let people get to the proper location of the rally and where policemen would provide misleading information to people who were trying to legally join the march. The tactics prompted an ACLU lawsuit which resulted in orders by the court for the police to alter their practices. Knowing this, I still approached the largest protest set for August 29th with a little apprehension.

It turned out that I didn’t need to. The police worked hard to keep the peace while respecting the rights of protester. Countless times, I saw police officers doing their job as they should, ensuring that things would work out and that protesters could stay safe. With half a million people taking to the streets of Manhattan and a police contingent that numbered in the thousands, it turned out to be a really great event and made me feel better about the week that was to come up. All the tension that had existed prior to the protests starting seemed to dissipate and free speech was respected, just as the founding fathers would have it.

With protesters as far as the eyes could see (45 blocks of solidly packed people were taken over by the protest), my wife and I joined the 1000 coffins group, which honored the memory of fallen American soldiers in Iraq, all the while making a powerful statement on the impact of this war on our troops.

At the end of the protest route, I had the chance to witness a crowd of hundreds of people folding American flags in a way that was both respectful and legal.

The New York Observer

On Monday, after some basic training on what to do and what to watch for, I made my first foray in the field. The police presence was strong at every event but, for the most parts, things would run OK during daylight. Once night fell, however, it seemed that the police turned into Mr. Hyde, arresting peaceful protesters rather quickly and working in an intimidating fashion otherwise. Many of the clashes I personally witnessed were at night, probably as much the result of exhaustion (I don’t know how long the police shifts were but it seems that nerves were more frayed towards the end of the day, leading me to conclude that some of the officers may have been tired).

Much of what a legal observer does is very similar to what a journalist does. Largely, the job of a journalist in the field is to sit around the location of an event and talk to people, hoping to get some juicy bit. Often, it’s just sitting around waiting for something to happen. In the case of legal monitors, the situation is similar; you sit (or stand) around, checking whether fencing is locked or not, and eventually post yourself in a location where it is likely that something would happen. You then idle around that location until something happens, and then start taking notes, observing whether policemen are doing their job properly and calling in to the main office if infractions are very serious and could lead to further trouble. Your job is, however, not as a participant but an observer.

Occasionally, you cross the line into a more active role, at the request of one of the two actors (protesters or cops) asking you to step in. For example, I was asked by a cop if I could work as a liaison to help relay an inquiry to the leader of a protest group. After putting the top officer in charge on the scene with the lead organizer in touch with each other, I watched the interaction to ensure that the police was not trying to abuse its power. The discussion between the two people was tense but cordial and an agreement was quickly struck, leading to an eventual change of location for the protester so they would not block regular pedestrian traffic and a pull-back from the police force so they would not seem as intimidating to protesters. This was an example of the two groups working together properly.

While police and protesters danced around each others, with legal monitors and observers like myself checking the scene out, other people seemed intent on disturbing this tight choreography. At ground zero, a woman looked at my ACLU T-shirt and exclaimed “the ACLU, those free speech Nazis” (emphasis is mine).

However, at times, there were failures. I witnessed such a failure at ground zero on Tuesday when police worked with a group called the War Resisters League decided to start a march from ground zero to Madison Square Garden. The police worked out what seemed like an agreement to let protesters go through their march without a permit and then, a few minutes later, changed its mind and arrested a number of people. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of such incident can be considered fairly worrisome and a true threat to democracy.

Republicans in the Square, Dancers in Elephant country

Fortunately, the real spirit of democracy could also be felt this week and it came for a bi-partisan effort to work together. On Tuesday night, a group of about half a dozen Republicans skipped their attendance at the convention and headed down to Union Square, where many of the protesters were gathering. A dizzying array of discussions ensued as people from the complete political spectrum engage in debate for most of the evening. Groups gathered to listen in, sometimes throwing extra discussion points into the flow. Conversations covered such a wide range of issues such as the recent success/failure of the war in Iraq, the economy, educational reform, job programs, environmental issues, general foreign policy, etc… Kudos to those republicans for having the guts to enter their enemies’ territory and be willing to engage into longer discussion on policy matters. If such thing were happening more frequently, we would be better off as a country.

Sadly, however, the current tenor of the political dialogue seem to be far from such matters. When discussion surrounding candidates are limited to “George Bush is a baby-killer” or “John Kerry is a flip-flopper”, the system needs fixing and it is incumbent on everyone to get involved in creating that fix. There are approximately two months between now and the US presidential election so I would urge all my readers in the United States to do the following: find someone you disagree with politically, and agree to go out to lunch at least once a week to discuss political matters. Similarly, put pressure on politicians to discuss issues of substance. Whether John Kerry should have received two or three purple hearts in Vietnam, or whether George Bush did not tend to his national guards duties during the same era will have little relevance on the future of the country. What does, however, is how they see the future of the country. There are substantial differences in how the different candidates view the world. Dig in, get informed, and go out and get other people to do the same. It’s part of the homework required to make a democracy work.

And remember that it can all be fun. While there is some homework, there are occasional recesses and sometimes some out and out silliness. John Perry Barlow put together some Dance Flash Mobs which were quite a blast to follow. Imagine a basic street crowd. People are walking around, traffic is busy. All of sudden, someone turns on a boom box. Three quarters of the crowd start swerving, slowly; building, building, and then, all of the sudden, it’s a street party, with 15 to 20 people out in the street, dancing their hearts out. One has to admit that it is a very effective form of protest. A sudden derivation from the norm by a large group of “normal looking” people can create quite a disconnect. If you’re a New Yorker, you find such variations generally amusing, part of the great thing about living in the city. Based on my observation at one of the event, that may not be the case if you’re from out of town. They’re is something a little crazy that feel a little threatening. Your reality gets shaken for a moment, you pause, not sure of how to react and by the time you realize what happened, the crowd has moved on.

Protest Tech

Of course, I couldn’t resist going a whole post without sticking in some thoughts on technology. For the most part, technology at these events was more interesting because of its pervasiveness, rather than any single technologies being of interest. I’ve learned that the police did use some cameras with head mounted displays for monitoring but I do see any. What I did see, however, was heavy use of technologies like text-messaging and push-to-talk telephones to coordinate protest efforts. It’s interesting to me that those are now part of the protester’s arsenal as they provide with quick ways to deploy small to medium sized groups across a grid. When flash mobs happened last year as a summer diversion, I did not imagine the potential they could have in the political world. Witnessing events this week, I’ve come to realize that flash mobs can have a tremendous power in reshaping political dialogue by quickly creating and disbanding protest groups. This will probably be a challenge for law enforcement officials wanting to control such thing as they might have difficulties to locate such events in the future. One could consider those to be essentially guerrilla tactics empowered by technology and they can represent of fairly powerful component of new protests.

The other bit of surprise, to me, was to importance blogs have taken for some people. At one of the events, I was chatting with one of the observers, waiting for a group of conspiracy theorist (yes, their theories are protected by the first amendment too) to wrap up their protest so I could move on to something more interesting. Some guy seemed to be getting a lot of media so I asked the observer if he knew what the deal was with that guy. “He’s a major star. You should check out his website at…” I don’t remember the guys name but did check out his site. Basically, it was a badly designed conspiracy theory site run by a guy who seems to have his own online streaming show. When upper middle class people (the observer is actually a lawyer for a big firm) look at people as big stars because they have a website and a radio stream, you know the Internet has become pretty pervasive.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Conventional Wisdom: The RNC Hits New York. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

I worked with Micah at Earthweb in the mid-90s. He’s a really nice guy and a great journalist. Not only that, but he’s also a great developer, who helped us launched the initial push channel for the developer.com network, back in 1997. Please help spread the word about this.…

Update

Beyond spreading the word, you should also try to call your elected representatives to voice your concern on this. Ask them to contact Jenny Fu at the State Department. She’s the one monitoring the situation.

Update 2

Australian News reports that Moqtada al-Sadr is intervening. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Update 3

The Associated Press reports that the militants have promised to release him today (08/20/04).

Update 4

The Associated Press reports that kidnappers have lifted their death threats (08/21/04).

Update 5 (Final)

Micah has been released! Score +1 for the good guys… and here’s to hoping other kidnappees will be released soon. (08/22/04)

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Iraq hits close. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Exactly two years ago, human insanity and cruelty appeared at our doors, taking along with it thousands of innocent lives, taking with it some of our innocence. Looking back now, with the benefit of some hindsight (though two years in the grand scheme of things is not a very long time), I realize that it was an event that changed many of us.

For me, the biggest change was a realignment of priorities. Prior to this day, I was intensely career-driven, focusing on getting the job done, no matter what company I worked for and no matter what it took. Now, that impulse is tempered by the need for a balance between personal and work life. I still do care a tremendous amount about work but it is no longer the only thing that drives me.

Along with this came some other significant changes in my world. Getting married, earlier this year, was one of those, a decision that will change the rest of my life as I agreed to invest the rest of my days in caring for another person: Amy. As a fiercely independent person, this was an important realization. You can go on running forever but for what purpose? Running on your own has no purpose than the running itself. Running with a partner, caring and loving someone else (and being cared for and loved in return) is a feeling that I can hardly describe in words. And it feels good!

Recognizing that I need to spend more time with friends was another change. Prior to September 11, 2001, it was almost a given that I would end my emails or phone calls with something along the lines of “let’s do lunch/drinks/dinner soon”. Now, a new sense of urgency has set in. I am no longer content to just say soon but often want to set a date. That change in my nature is largely due to the fact that I had outstanding open-ended invitations with a few friends who perished when the towers fell.

Like most New Yorkers, my world is also a little darker. When the blackout happened a few weeks ago, everyone’s thought immediately turned to the possibility of another attack. When word passed by that it wasn’t, a great sense of relief set in. We live with terrorism as a constant. Not front of mind but definitely there, idling on the edge of our minds. This is the post 9/11 world, this is the world we live in.

Many of us are uneasy about this. I, for one, do not tend to share much on this site about my day to day feelings. For starters, I don’t believe it appropriate of me to bear my thoughts as openly in public. I tend to be a very introverted (and, hard to believe, shy) individual. When sitting down with some friends who were THERE, who escaped from the towers, we do not talk about it much. We might toast some lost friends, we know the feelings are there but it is still the elephant in the room, always around, but never spoken of. It’s uneasy but it is how we adapt.

Two years have passed and everywhere, the events of that day are used to justify just about anything. Curtail freedoms expressively given by the bill of rights; justify wars, like the conflict in Iraq; justify a deficit created out of new tax cuts. All those have been done in the name of the victims, often put in hushed words: “Well, you know, because of 9/11…” It seems that more and more, politicians are happy to stand on the pile of corpses from that day and use it as a bully pulpit to clamp down on free speech and justify unpopular positions. No tie was ever found between Iraq and what happened on that day but 70% of Americans think that they exist. Why is that? Could it be the constant barrage of pseudo-reporting on the likes of CNN and Fox News, showing the president create that linkage, albeit never directly so that no one could call him on it?

As many people know, I am a French citizen living in the United States. The past few months have been interesting in the sense that I am now more aware of the kind of discrimination that can occur when nations are mobilized against a new evil. Technically, what I’ve written in the paragraph above could probably be considered seditious enough to get me investigated. Then who knows… Maybe a one way ticket to an army prison barrack, where I could be held for an indefinite amount of time, without the right to a lawyer or any of the due process expressed in the American constitution. It is something that pains me, to see a country as great as the United States be torn apart in such a fashion.

And yet, I remain optimistic. I believe, now more than ever, that this is just a phase, similar to what must have happened during the McCarthy era in this country. I believe that the American founding fathers were geniuses, not for coming up with the constitution and the bill of rights, but for realizing that they did not hold all the answers and for creating a structure that allowed for some leeway back and forth. I believe that being an American is about being allowed to express one’s views, no matter how unpopular they may be. No other country actually spells out the right to free speech in its establishing documents.

I also believe in good for goodness sake, as we recently witnessed with the blackout. When the blackout happened, my neighbors were checking on each others and on us. Everyone was willing to share what they had, whether it was good stories, candles, flashlights, insights, or news. We were brought together and I believe that the horror of 9/11 is what did it for us. The realization that somewhere out there someone wants to kill us for no other reason that we are us brings us nearer to each others, something akin to the kind of foxhole relationships developed in times of wars. As a result of 9/11, I’ve gained membership in a new club: I am now a New Yorker. I may not be an American citizen but being a New Yorker is something that defies boundaries. I recently saw an advertisement saying that over 250 languages are spoken in this great city of ours. We are really the capital of the world and yet, we do not boast about it, we go on day after day, caring for each other. I’ve noticed a softer edge to the city since these events. It seems people are more compassionate. It seems people are more willing to care for their fellow men.

So two years have gone by. It’s not a lot of time but it’s been a big time of change. I know that 9/11 changed me forever. I’m only scratching the surface as to how. At this time, six of my friends have been confirmed dead. A few more acquaintances have just disappeared without a trace. Year one and two were big grieving years. Today, we still mourn our dead but today is also a day of rebirth. Year one made it impossible to move on, the wound was two fresh. Year two set up a better world to prepare for what’s next. I will never forget the events of that day but I know that now may be a good time to let go of some of the grief and try to resume a normal life. Normal, that is, based on the new definition of normal in our world.

Today I cry for those who have passed on and yet, I have to acknowledge their sacrifice and see that they made me a better person. It is really a shame that I could not see this without something as horrible as what happened and I now wish it hadn’t been that way. But you can never take back the past, you can only work on improving the future. Listening to the children at ground zero today, I hope for a better world, one that we can leave to them improved, renewed, and one that we can hopefully make a little more tolerant.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Two Years. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

My personal suspicion is that the net community will route around the problem once enough people become aware of what is going on.

The rise of Linux as an alternative to deeply entrenched Windows is showing that something new is happening here. While SCO has started menacing litigation over intellectual property and Linux, the message from big companies is that they are not changing their strategy. What is important here is not the fact that companies are adopting Linux but the fact that companies are starting to look at the OS as a commodity, one that can easily be replaced at a later time. This is an important development because it lowers the potential for control. In order to fully control what consumers have access to, you need to be able to control the environment. With operating systems becoming a commodity, that control erodes.

Control of the operating system is one of the key elements behind the TCPA’s goal to lock up computers in order to give more control to content producers. However, with a commodity operating system that control becomes more difficult to gain. The next two areas in which such control can happen are at the processor level (and here, I would invoke market dynamics as a surefire way to fight this point since at least one vendor will probably want to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering non-crippled chips) and at the access level.

That last point, however, is countered by the fact that increasingly (and this is something the phone and cable companies do not want you to know), the cost of running your own access point is dropping. True, it still costs several hundreds or thousands of dollars a month to do so but I suspect that something much scarier could happen if the pipes start clamping down.

With the rise of Wi-Fi, control of the net is moving from cables to the open airspace. Granted, many will say that in order to access resources on the Internet, there is still a need for access to a land line software, even if that land line is connected to a wireless router. However, with the rise of cheap access point devices, there is a possibility for creating a new network, one that does not touch upon the rest of the net, but one that does connect computers from access point to access point. In a way, all the technology needed for this already exists. A network protocol like TCP/IP can carry content over the air, and technologies like Zero Configuration Networking make discoverability easy to do. Coupled with the explosive growth of wireless hotspots, the hold on connection lines is increasingly becoming irrelevant. What is happening here is not only a commoditization of the operating system but also a commoditization of the connectivity space.

Even in a world where the United States manages to outlaw Linux and where the big telcos manage to regulate Internet access, unfetered access to ressource beyond their control will continue. If one studies geopolitics, it is easy to see that some countries will see it in their best interest to avoid such regulation so they can offer data havens, picking up nice extra tax dollars on the sale of goods and services in those havens. Ultimately, the problem US companies have, whether they manage to regulate the Internet or not, is that the network is now largely a global one.

To date, attempts to limit Internet activities in certain parts of the world (Iraq and China for example) have only met with resistance and ultimately failure in terms of limiting what people can and cannot see. I suspect that if such limits were imposed by large corporation, they would meet the same fate as those efforts, maybe stopping activity for a little while but, eventually, someone would find a hole. And it is from such small hole that the dam would burst.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Route Around. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.