New York At Christmastime

Carnegie Hall, where people know how to dress for the theater

Some people say that New York City is rude, and in fact it's a standing joke in some parts of the country and world:  "So I'm in New York and I ask a local, 'Excuse me, what time is it -- or should I just go f--- myself?'"

I  never understood that, not at all. It's not at all the New York I've ever known, and I've known New York since I was a child.

I worked in New York for a long time, lived in the city, lived in the immediate area for over a quarter century, and as far as I am concerned, New York stands out among the world's great cities for courtesy and good civic will. London? Now, you want a rude city, just consider London. Los Angeles: Rude! Chicago? Rude, and with lousy pizza to boot!

You want a friendly American city, you get that in New York. Only San Francisco, in my estimation, comes even close.

Anyway, my wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to live in the Sonoran desert and still manage to visit New York for a week or so, a couple of times a year, to get what we refer to as our New York fix. This past week was one of those occasions.

Manhattan at Christmastime is an especially congenial place. We met our daughter and young granddaughter, who live in Albany, at the tree outside Rockefeller Center last Friday, a scene thronged with tourists and even locals, any one of whom is delighted to accept your camera and snap a family photo for you. And no, having your camera stolen is not an issue as it would be in, say, one of the world's truly awful cities, like Sao Paulo or Rio or Kiev.

Our daughter and granddaughter went to the Radio City Christmas show, the child's first. Yes, the tickets are expensive, but at least a mother and her daughter get a grand show, high holiday splendor, production values at a level not seen on a stage literally anywhere else, except at grand opera uptown at the Met. On the subject of taking a kid to a holiday show, I sometimes think of Woody Allen's line in "Hannah and Her Sisters," in which he was asked to contemplate reincarnation and Nietzche's theory of eternal recurrence: "Great, that means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."

Nobody would say that about the Radio City and the Rockettes.

My wife and also went twice to the theater during six days here. Once was to Broadway, to see "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof," starring Scarlett Johansson in a revival to which I won't hesitate to attach the word "unfortunate," even though we saw it on the second night of previews. (It opens in January, if it makes it that long).

I was thinking of the Broadway experience yesterday at Carnegie Hall, where we went for a splendid performance of "Messiah." Let me digress and say that several factors keep me from enthusiastically attending a Broadway show these days, among them a concern that any show, especially a straight play, that has a famous star in it, tends to attract an element in the audience that is, let us say, unfamiliar with the protocols of live theater. That is, when Al Pacino makes his entry in the (also unfortunate) revival of David Mamet's tiresome and overrated play "Glengarry Glen Ross," a disconcerting number of theatergoers behave in the way that tourists would behave if a movie star wandered into the little star-print plaza outside Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. They act like idiots! More generally, audiences these also tend to approach any straight theatrical drama as if it were a television situation comedy. That is, there are all of these automatic titters and chortles at lines and situations that a playwright never imagined would be considered amusing. (That was true at "Cat," incidentally. Not sure that Tennessee Williams thought he was writing a comedy. 

And so many people attending Broadway performances these days dress like they were going to the ballpark, and a ballpark for a losing team at that.  I swear, a big fat guy in row near us, in the expensive seats at the too-big-for-a-drama Richard Rogers Theater during "Cat,"  looked like he was dressed for an off day at the mall, complete with sweatshirt and that tall cup of soda that big fat people always seem to keep jammed in their mitts, as if hydration were a matter of life and death on a December evening in New York.

Anyway, it was with unmitigated delight that I saw how the big crowd was dressed at Carnegie Hall for the "Messiah" we saw on Sunday afternoon. They were dressed nicely, like it was Christmastime and they were in a nice place, with quality entertainment performed at an extremely high level of skill.

Call me a fussy old fart, but frankly, I ain't that old and I ain't that fussy, not really. But I do like to see minimal standards maintained, as they evidently are at Carnegie Hall. People dress like they're going somewhere nice!

Last year, to digress again, I remember reading one of those long-paid obits that  often are the only thing actually worth reading  in our local newspaper in Arizona, which I refer to only as "The Daily Stupid." It was written by a family member about a career Army colonel, a World War II veteran, who had just died. It went on and on, at wonderful detail, about this man's interesting life, but it was the final line of the obituary that delighted me. It said: "He was always on time, and he knew how to dress for dinner."

Anyway, Carnegie Hall, with the Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra "Messiah" performance, was the perfect cap on our latest New York visit.

And yes, the audience knew that it is traditional to stand for the rousing Hallelujah Chorus -- and then sit down quietly again, because, of course, it ain't over yet.

A perfect way, I thought, to say Merry Christmas, from New York.

###

The Vile Tells the Despicable: You're Crazy

The merely vile Rupert Murdoch, who seems to have actually come down on the right side of the out-of-control-guns issue, appears to have given marching orders to the New York Post newspaper whose extreme right-wing views he shapes: The despicable NRA boss Wayne LaPierre is a "gun nut" whose so-called "press conference" the other day was nothing more than a "bizarre rant."

This follows a Twitter note from Murdoch in which he asked, "Will politicians find the courage to ban automatic weapons?" Fox News, it does not need to be said, has also been put on notice, though Murdoch writing about "courage" is to me akin to Hitler writing about courtesy.

Anyway, LaPierre, the Vietnam draft dodger who has unaccountably been permitted to shape himself as a kind of warrior in the 40-plus yeas he has been with the NRA, has gotten a sucker punch from his presumable pals on the ideological fringe where the heavily subsidized New York Post and its in-house co-conspirators Fox News and the (also subsidized these days) Wall Street Journal editorial page usually set a media agenda for right-wing reactionary ranks.

That can't be good for Wayne. Meanwhile, the tabloid New York Daily News, still techically a newspaper, calls LaPierre the "craziest man on earth."

Now I want to see some reflection, in the general round-heeled media, on why 150 reporters showed up, dutifully as summoned, to LaPuerre's "press conference" the other day, an event marked by the rule that reporters couldn't ask questions of the NRA boss.

That's not a press conference, folks, that's a speech.

Here's a link to a story about the New York Post.

###

A New 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' Revival on Broadway, But the Question Is 'Why?'

Scarlett Johansson

In New York for a holiday visit, my wife and I saw the new "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" last night on Broadway with Scarlett Johansson as Maggie. It was the second night of previews (opening is early January).

The 1955 play, said to have been Tennessee Williams' personal favorite, has always been a problem, in that it really has never been clear -- not to audiences, not to a succession of directors starting with Elia Kazan, not even to  to Mr. Williams himself -- exactly what it's about. Repressed homosexuality? Mendacity? A spurned wife? Familial greed? The last gasp of Mississippi Delta Planter Culture? All of the above, take your pick?

The latest revival, alas, has no new answers, though I do like that it uses the full play as written by Williams.  It's long (about three hours) in three acts. But as usual, Act One doesn't speak coherently to Act Two, and Act Three thunders out in a King Lear tempest.

I know previews are supposed to be a time when kinks in a production are worked out, but hey, the tickets for the good seats run into the $200 range (plus fees when you book online). That's a lot for a preview! We'll see what the play looks like when it opens in a month (though I don't have much faith in today's Broadway critics), but my hunch is that this production is pretty well set in its current form right now.

Here's a preview review, in triplets:

Scarlett Johansson good. Big Daddy too. Brick's a cipher. Gooper simply baffling. Direction is chaotic. No-neck monsters: Way too cute. Skipper's ghost creepy. Actors seem lost. Play needs work. Probably not fixable.

Sad to say!

###

Rush to Judgment in Connecticut

[UPDATED]

A few thoughts on this catastrophe in Connecticut, as the story and its ramifications are being sorted out.

1. As an old street reporter and city editor who's been around the track a few times, it seems to me that the police on the scene, from the earliest moments onward, behaved with brilliant professionalism in unspeakably difficult circumstances. This includes the first responders. If there is any flicker of human hope in this story of unmitigated horror, they (and those heroic teachers, below) give it to us, and attention must be paid.

2. What's to be said about those teachers at that school, the ones who died trying to protect little children, the others who handled a horrific situation with clear-eyed aplomb? They showed true and literal courage under fire, and we must honor them always.

3. Please, media, let's not rush to canonize the killer's slain mother. (Link). That's because, from the initial outlines at least as seen in this Washington Post story today, the mother, perhaps paranoid, was a gun nut with a clearly troubled son, whom she yanked out of school to home-school (uh-oh). At the same time, the mother nevertheless evidently raised that clearly troubled son, known to have difficulties getting along with others, as a budding gun-nut, and provided that clearly troubled son with ready access to powerful assault weapons. [UPDATE: The knee-jerk media so far have not advanced this story factually with a cogent profile of the evidently paranoid, gun-nut mother. The right-wing-loon blogosphere, hair on fire as usual, are starting to pick up on some speculation that the mother was a "prepper," that is, a survivalist laying in guns and ammo and supplies for an apocalypse that this crowd is always expecting. But from all I can see, the sources for this speculation are a few vague comments in two chronically half-assed British newspapers (yeah, uh-oh there), the Daily Mail (double uh-oh) and the Independent. We need serious reporting on the mother's demeanor and behavior before this horror was unleashed.]

4. Let's look more closely at the media hand-wringing, water-carrying on "mental health intervention," which usually consists of  encouraging the manifestly rapacious therapy industry to have more money to intervene even more in the worried-well general population. Meanwhile, as always, the mental health industry will continue to shrug off, if not totally ignore, the seriously mentally ill population. The seriously mentally ill, you see, tend to be resistant to treatment, difficult to handle and, alas, short on insurance reimbursement money. Big question to pursue: Given his evidently manifest emotional troubles, was this young mass murderer already receiving mental-health treatment -- and, if so, what kind, and by whom, and to what effect? This would not be the first time that a mass murderer turns out to have been already under psychiatric care. Link.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/aurora-shooting-suspect-was-under-psychiatrists-care-7984483.html

Just asking. I wish the media would do the same.

### 

Pray For What, Exactly?

Let us pray?

I have never understood why people flock to church in times like this to pray to a deity who by their own estimation and understanding exercised some sentient control over the occurrence of a horrific human tragedy, and is in a position to mitigate further such occurrences.

And I will never understand the media genuflection toward religious figures who callously insert themselves into the tragedy, with empty words that only make things worse.

Take the letter from Pope Benedict XVI, which was read at Catholic prayer vigils in Connecticut.

“I ask God our father to console all those who mourn and to sustain the entire community with the spiritual strength which triumphs over violence by the power of forgiveness, hope and reconciling love,” said the Pope (emphasis is mine), a hard-nosed old Vatican bureaucrat whose historical record on ensuring the protection of children is as murky as his inclination to "forgive" the guilty is clear.

What really  is to "forgive" here? Where is "hope?" Where was this God when the murderer shot those children down one by one?

Brooding and seething, evidently -- according to reactions of some of our insufferable home-grown piety practitioners. Let's have a look at some of the atrocious (rather than merely sadly ironic as in the case of the Pope's), comments by the domestic deacons of the right-wing lunacy contingent, the holy gun lovers and the invincibly pathetic.

Take Bible-thumping former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who said the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School came about because this peculiarly vindictive God he claims to know was not welcome in public school classrooms.

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News (and where else?). "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

Or how about the always quotable mental case and tea party darling Victoria Jackson, she late of the world's most overrated television show "Saturday Night Live?" Jackson told her legions of followers on Facebook that they should heed her friend, the tea party rabble-rouser Jim Riley:

"My friend Jim Riley posted: "Wasn't the Connecticut killer just doing what abortionists do every day? It's a wonder we don't have more 20 year old "dads" doing what women and doctors have been an accomplice to for years in America. When you forget the TEN COMMANDMENTS, people, THIS is what you get."

And then there came despicable right-wing Christian preacher Bryan Fischer, head of a group of hateful Bible-thumpers that calls itself the American Family Association. On his radio show today, Preacher Fischer allowed as how the God he claims to know allowed the massacre of the little children of Newtown because this God was peeved about the decline of school prayer.

Said Preacher Fischer (emphasis mine): "The question is going to come up, where was God? I though God cared about the little children. God protects the little children. Where was God when all this went down? Here's the bottom line, God is not going to go where he is not wanted. Now, we have spent since 1962 -- we're 50 years into this now-- we have spent 50 years telling God to get lost, telling God we do not want you in our schools, we don't want to pray to you in our schools, we do not want to pray to your before football games, we don't want to pray to you at graduations, we don't want anybody talking about you in a graduation speech...

"In 1962 we kicked prayer out of the schools. In 1963 we kicked God's word out of our schools. In 1980 we kicked the Ten Commandments out of our schools. We've kicked God out of our public school system. And I think God would say to us, 'Hey, I'll be glad to protect your children, but you've got to invite me back into your world first. I'm not going to go where I'm not wanted. ..."


***

And now, the pious having had their say about some strange and terrible deity they claim to know,  here come the photos of these murdered little children, that will break your heart.

###

Meet Wayne LaPierre ...

...Meet Wayne LaPierre, the loud-mouth fanatic who is executive director of the fanatic National Rifle Association (base pay $1 million a year) and who usually can be depended on to shoot off his mouth  about the insatiable need for more guns of all kinds.

LaPierre, 64, has been oddly silent in the last two days.

Incidentally, though he is a podium-warrior who supports all wars without reservation, LaPierre is among the so-called chicken hawks (like Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Rudy Giuliani and so many other right-wingers) who declined to actually bear arms in the U.S. military when the chance arrived. LaPierre managed to avoid military service, and Vietnam, by snaring medical deferrments.

###

Another TSA Fiasco

Child in wheelchair hauled off because some dumb TSA hump decided 1. There was "explosives residue" on the girl's hands and 2. Girl's mother -- protesting this idiocy -- had become "hostile."

Link, with video taken by the mother, a clearly sensible woman who was appalled at the treatment her daughter received, and the immediate reaction by the screener to accuse a parent of being disrespectful -- as if that screener were some kind of Third World cop.

The TSA will never reduce the public contempt it faces until it cracks down on the (small minority) of screeners who think they can behave like members of Central American goon-squads. Rather than just disciplining individual miscreants, the TSA needs to start disciplining the supervisor on site for misbehavior and stupidity of screeners at any given airport.

I'm talking to you, DFW. And hey, LAX, where do you think you're going?

###

Jersey Shore

Just try to get on this beach, buster

Seaside Heights: Everybody's welcome

Back in the 1990s, I wrote a weekly column called "Jersey" for the New York Times. In it, I roamed the state for material, and regularly settled on the vexing subject of the New Jersey seashore -- known to all as the Jersey Shore.

Unlike most reporters, from New York or elsewhere, I actually realized that the Jersey Shore started at Cape May to the south and ended 127 miles north at Sandy Hook --  and that the absolutely worst places to get a feel for it, whether in good times or stormy times -- were at those two easy-to-find, easy-to-reach-from-Manhattan towns on the northern stretches of the shore, Asbury Park and Long Branch.

[Obligatory mention of Bruce Springsteen whenever there's a mention of Asbury Park].

A couple of things about those two towns. One, until they became nicely gentrified by young professionals, especially affluent gays, in recent years, those towns were decrepit and largely overlooked by outsiders.

Two, most of the other Jersey Shore towns -- Cape May, Wildwood, Avalon, Stone Harbor, Ocean City, Atlantic City, Long Beach Island's communities, Seaside Heights, etc -- are on barrier islands. Asbury Park and Long branch are on the mainland. The issues most pressing shore issues -- erosion, reckless development, restricted public access to beaches that are expensively, constantly, painstakingly restored with federal and state tax money -- are centered on the barrier islands, and not on the mainland.

And vis a vis public use of the beaches, the actual issue is access. The issue is not the $3 or $5 a beach town might charge per day for using the beach. Some of the towns that charge fees enthusiastically welcome the public to come in and pay them. Others, the exclusive towns that keep the public out by prohibiting parking anywhere in town, officially have "beach fees" -- but they are basically a fiction because no one can actually get to the beach who doesn't live there at least seasonally.

Despite my efforts, the media never got this right, and they still don't, as seen in this well-meaning but basically pointless report on NPR about beach fees and public access.

On the Jersey Shore in summertime, wide-open towns like Cape May, Ocean City, Seaside Heights, Point Pleasant Beach and the like, all impose nominal beach fees to offset local expenses of hiring lifeguards and maintenance. In these funloving towns, which welcome the public, it's easy to find the place to actually pay the daily fee (usually at numerous booths at the boardwalks), and public accommodations, including parking, are readily available. No problemo, as they might say in Seaside Heights.

[Only a few major beach towns, namely Wildwood and Atlantic City, do not impose fees of any kind, incidentally. Access is totally open.]

But most of the rest of the Shore is exclusive, with beach access actually available only to well-heeled residents, who go to great efforts, abetted by their local police departments, to keep out the riff-raff, which is defined as the rest of us who might be looking for a day at the shore and not planning to spend it at the big boardwalk towns.

Just try to find public parking, let alone a place to actually pay a beach fee or buy a beach tag, in Avalon or Harvey Cedars or Deal or a dozen other Jersey Shore towns that make it clear that "Day Tripper" is a dirty word. Just try to walk on their damn beach! You will see what the word exclusive really means. And it just so happens that these towns -- which comprise the bulk of the Jersey Shore oceanfront real estate -- tend to be the ones with the greatest demands for taxpayer-funded beach replenishment and anti-erosion projects because, you see, these are the most ecologically vulnerable areas, where the most inadvisable beachfront development -- read, multi-million-dollar homes built on beaches that are extremely susceptible to erosion -- has occurred in the last four decades.

New Jersey Gov. Chris ("Thar She Blows") Christie now lobbies for many billions in federal aid to restore the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy, the devastation of which he called "unthinkable." Yet it wasn't "unthinkable," it was absolutely predictable and inevitable -- but no one is really pressing Christie and his likes on just exactly what kind of restoration they have in mind.

Lemme guess. Does the term "status quo ante" sound about right? Is it your guess, as it is mine, that Christie's plan is to back the rebuilding of the Jersey Shore just as it was, with all of those splendid mansions on the seaside, revived and protected by taxpayers?

The NPR report correctly seeks out comment from people like Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group. It says:

"Before the storm, he says, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent years building up the beaches by pumping sand onto them. But that shouldn't be a solution to restoring the shore, he says.
'We need to design the beaches to be sustainable, to be open to the public, in a way that everybody can get to them, everywhere, and we need to design them so they're ecologically sensitive and they provide for habitat,' Dillingham says."

Seventy-five percent of the restoration costs for the Jersey shore, the report says, accurately, "is likely to come from federal taxpayers, with the state picking up a significant chunk too." And it adds, again accurately: "Yet much of the beach-restoration work will end up protecting private property. The relatively few beach areas now accessible to the public on the Jersey shore often charge fees of $8, $10 and even $12 a day for access. And some towns are considering hiking those fees to help pay for the renovations."

But that's where we slip off the rails. The issue, as presented by the NPR report, is that politicians in the New Jersey state legislature are hoping to pass a law saying that beach towns that have access fees in place can't accept taxpayer restoration money.

Who would be hurt by that? Why, the big boardwalk towns like Seaside Heights and Ocean City that charge beach fees and at the same time welcome the public, providing parking and rest rooms and other services, including lifeguards.

Who would not care in the least? Why, the "stay-the-hell-away" towns that have fees in place mainly  to maintain the fiction that beach access is available -- when, in fact, there is no practical way for outsiders to access or use  the beach, given parking restrictions and a total lack of public services. So why would they care if they can't charge beach fees to the public at large? In these towns, the beach is for the locals, there is no public parking anywhere in town -- but the bill for restoring that beach and fixing expensive homes that are recklessly built in vulnerable oceanfront locations, well, that bill is presented to taxpayers at large.

(Yes, the virtual gated communities do charge residents for beach passes to residents, but on a seasonal, not daily, basis. That is, residents pay for the whole summer. Officially banned from charging public "beach fees," these towns could just as easily designate these seasonal passes as  membership assessments, and hence make it official that what they're actually running is a kind of beachfront country club reserved for the swells.)  

So "access" is available in the big boardwalk towns, at a nominal fee (except for Wildwood and Atlantic City, where it's free) -- but virtually denied in most of these other towns, even though they maintain the fiction of access. Realistically there is no way for the public to use those beaches in the most exclusive shore towns with the most expensive real estate. On a summer day, you can't park there, and just try to even find a place to pay that beach fee.

So the NPR piece is well-intentioned, and so perhaps (just perhaps) is the move in the Jersey legislature to ban beach fees in towns that accept restoration money. But it misses the real point. A $5 daily beach fee in raucous, wonderful Seaside Heights, teeming with the general public during the summer, that isn't the issue. The smug archipelago of virtual gated communities, hogging taxpayer-maintained beaches that are effectively closed to the general public under all circumstances -- that's the issue on the Jersey Shore.


And you're not going to learn about the real issue, standing on a beach in Long Branch, where they actually let you stand on the beach. Try doing that in, say, the town of Deal.


###   

Packing for the Airport (Continued)

Headline on today's weekly report from the Transportation Security Administration on  weapons found in the last week in passengers' carry-on bags at U.S. airports:

"TSA Week in Review: 41 Firearms, 40 Stun Guns, 4 Grenades, 1 Rocket Launcher. No Partridge in a Pear Tree…"

 

I don't know why the media (myself aside) keep ignoring this remarkable onslaught of weaponry discovered at the airports (and the question of how many other firearms are getting through security), but here's this week's grim report on guns: 41 guns found in passenger carry-ons, 36 of them loaded. Here's the breakdown just of the firearms found in the last week, via the TSA:

 Here's a link to the full report on the TSA blog.

General Jan, Reporting From the Front

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer goes to war

Jon Stewart had a segment last night called "Please Tell Me This Is Rock Bottom," based on the bizarre vote by Senate Republicans to block ratification of a United Nations treaty that would basically bring U.N. members up to the long-established standards of the United States on protecting people with disabilities. The Republicans said that the U.N. treaty was an example of socialism, and ratifying it would be a direct threat to Americans who home-school their children.

Well, we have gotta hit rock bottom eventually in bat-shit-crazy Republican politics, but that day has not yet arrived.

Witness the apparition yesterday of Arizona  Governor Jan Brewer, reported AWOL from the state all this week after last week 1. hitting a reporter whose question she did not like; 2. hearing that she was not legally clear to run for another term in 2014 and 3. Being dissed when only two governors turned up to hear her speak at the Western Governors Association conference on the weekend.

To the mattresses she went.


Where's Jan? That was the question when she disappeared without explanation other than a vague comment from an aide that she was on "official state business." Jokes, of course, ensued. Was she  hiking the proverbial Appalachian Trail? Holed up with Sheriff Joe Arpaio checking IDs at the border crossing at Nogales? Naturally, someone noted the fact that although the governor was missing, no one had offered a reward for her safe return.

Well, not to worry! She was in Afghanistan! Reporting from the front! On state business! You know, a person with absolutely no foreign affairs knowledge or previous apparent interest had gone to Afghanistan, on state business, to report back to us bumpkins on the progress of the war and, well, also to get her picture taken with tanks and soldiers, and to wear that swell combat uniform with her name on the pocket, like a soldier.

So there was General Jan on a camouflaged helicopter in Kabul, wearing a helmet (which is so much safer than that tin-foil hat she usually wears). She had gone to Afghanistan secretly, very hush-hush. You know, because the Taliban and al Queda, not to mention the Russians, are constantly monitoring the movements of somebody like Jan Brewer.
 
General Jan had lots to say in a press conference heralding her now-no-longer secret visit to the Front. Here is one gem: “You know, I was so happy and so honored to be able to come, I don’t think the reality really set in with me until I got there. Then, I realized that it was the real deal, you know. We’re flying in helicopters, we have guns, guns hanging out the windows.”

Speaking by telephone to the Tucson paper, she confided the remarkable observation that war is "unimaginable," and added: "As we sit over there on the mainland and see and hear everything going on, it's really different over here."

Hark! Do I hear echoes of Henvy V's St. Chrispen's Day speech in the words thus spake by Gen. Brewer: "It's really different over here?"

Back here on the "mainland," the media, all sense of journalistic hilarity left hanging out the window,  are reporting this stuff with absolutely straight faces.  You know, Politico had a piece last week speculating that Jan Brewer could be among the group of Republicans considering a run for the presidential nomination in 2016. I sincerely hope that some serious journalists start having some fun with this nutty story. Because hope springs eternal! I mean, Jan Brewer actually thinks she might be running for president and has even met recently with that red-haired old multi-billionaire who blew $150 million on losing GOP races, the beautiful Sheldon Edelson. Imagine Jan Brewer at the debates. Hell, that alone would be worth another $150 million of the gambling magnate's dough.

There is no more to say about this. Except to assure Jon Stewart that rock bottom might still be a long way down.

Here's a link to the Stewart segment on the vote on the U.N. treaty, incidentally.

###

What the Hell Is Going On in Phoenix?

"And another thing--" Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has a word with the president

 [UPDATED]

Yeah, I  know, you could ask that question ("What the hell is going on in Phoenix?") fairly regularly, but the fact is, strange things are happening (again) in Phoenix.

You haven't heard much about this because the news media in Phoenix and Tucson so far aren't on the story, but here's the latest:

Gov. Jan Brewer -- she of that bony finger stuck in President Obama's face -- seems to have gone missing. Brewer hasn't been in the state all week, though she didn't do what governors are supposed to do, which is announce that they're going away and let people know where they went. The only word about Brewer is a report that she was seen at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland visiting a wounded soldier.

An AWOL governor playing candystriper in Maryland? A news media that isn't motivated, as the media would be in any place I ever worked, to, you know, go find her?

Wait, it gets weirder (it always does, doesn't it). 

Last week, before she went missing, there was a strange contretemps in Phoenix between Brewer and a television reporter who asked her about global warming during a press conference. The question was based on the fact that Brewer was due to speak this week at a meeting on energy policy (which she was a no-show at, subsequently).

After mumbling a reply to the effect that global warming was not caused by humans, Brewer went blank for one of those long vacant stares of hers, you know, the ones that make you wonder if she is seeing visions in her head of demons or prehistoric birds of prey.

That's when it got weird. In a report on the media insider site Romenesko.com, a local news photographer who was there, Michael Clawson, said this:

"After her answer, a handler swooped in and whisked her away, but about three paces out she turned back around to face the reporter who asked the last question. He had turned to a camera operator and seemed to be putting his microphone away. Brewer took her left hand, balled it into a fist and with the back of her hand she slugged the reporter on the back of his right arm. Not hard, but with enough force that he spun around to see what was going on. She leaned in real close and looked up (she’s a shorter lady) and said in a whisper loud enough for most of us to hear, “Where the hell’d that come from?”

A video snippet of Brewer storming away went viral days ago, but the fact that she also actually slugged the reporter had not previously been reported. Not that the reporter was harmed. Despite that Gidget doo from 1963 and the chronic belligerence, Brewer is a tiny old lady, and getting slugged by her would be like being hit by a jelly doughnut.

And after that, Brewer went AWOL. And her fate is still unknown, as they used to say about Charlie and the M.T.A. Pressed by the A.P. this week, a Brewer spokesman would say only that the governor is out of state on undisclosed "official business."

Online, Brewer's AWOL is getting some national attention. Wags online are joking that, oddly, no reward has yet been offered for Brewer's safe return. Others  suggest she's "hiking the Appalachian trail." Or that she went to find John McAfee to have him fix a virus on her computer.

My suggestions are that she's actually out getting her hair done at Maaco. Or that she and fellow loon Sheriff Joe Arpaio are holed up in Laredo, checking Mexicans' IDs. Or that she has been gone all Aimee Semple McPherson and been kidnapped and spirited to Agua Pieta by desperadoes named Steve and Mexicali Rose.

UPDATE: Okay, I said it probably gets weirder and it does. It seems that Brewer's "official state business" is to go to Afghanistan and get her picture taken with soldiers. And here's weird on a stick: Some people think she's positioning herself for a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. I mean, people who actually seem to have mailing addresses on this planet.


### 

United 787 in Emergency Landing, 'Dreamliner' Hype Aside

Media swells being taken for a ride

I'm glad to know that United Airlines got its money's worth flying all of those media and travel-world swells around on a multi-city junket that yielded such effusive publicity for the inaugural flight of its new 787 Dreamliner aircraft last month.  From the media accounts, you'd have thought this was the reincarnation of the supersonic Concorde:

"Even the lavatories are pretty darn cool," the CNBC man gushed. "...The Dreamliner is a fantastic airplane and I'm looking forward to my next ride."  Link.
 
Well, the media slobbering on the junket tour aside, United has already had a problem on a flight with actual fare-paying passengers, on one of the two 787s it has on hand (United has another 48 on order from Boeing).

A United 787 bound to Newark from Houston had to make an emergency landing in New Orleans today because of a mechanical problem. Nobody got hurt. United said it will work with Boeing on finding a solution to whatever the problem is. Link.

[According to Reuters, meanwhile, Boeing says that the F.A.A. has ordered the entire fleet of 787 jets to be inspected for a possible fuel line problem.]

Some media accounts, by the way, left the impression that the 787 Dreamliner is the kind of plane most of us might one day be flying on, rather than, say, one of those crappy 50-seat or 70-seat regional jets that handle most domestic flights.

Forget about it! While United is trying to show off the 787 domestically now, the plane in fact is a premium aircraft designed for long-haul international flights.


###

These People Are For Real

...and at least for the ones in the U.S., their vote counts the same as yours.

An amusing collection of photos here from Buzzfeed.

###

The Intractable Triviality of the Media

A minor pier-like extension north of the Boardwalk.

Having spent 40-plus years in the major media, I think I can with some authority state that I am frequently astonished by the regular stupidity of some elements of that media, not to mention the occasional stupidity of other elements.
 
That's a theme I think I'll stay with in this column for a while.

Today's example:

The media proclivity to constantly cite and amplify false reporting ("Al Gore claims he invented the Internet!") in subsequent stories, long after the initial story has been debunked. Even if the subsequent reports do acknowledge somewhere along the line that the initial reports have been called into question, the initial reports still form the basis of the new reporting.

Case in point: Section of Atlantic City Boardwalk swept out to sea by hurricane.

Facts: During the hurricane, breathless television reporters on CNN and elsewhere, desperate for visuals and drama, got their hair on fire over a snippet of video taken by emergency helicopter, showing some storm damage to a small, wayward extension of the Atlantic City Boardwalk in the northern Inlet section of town where bay and sea meet (that's far from the familiar, wide, five-mile stretch of famous Boardwalk along the oceanfront). Anyone who knows anything about Atlantic City realized, seeing that video, that this was an inconsequential bit of damage (during an extremely consequential and devastating storm) to an inconsequential section of the boardwalk, and easily repaired with some wood and nails. Bang bang bang, all fixed.


Intractable stupidity: The official hurricane Sandy narrative now always includes an assertion that the Atlantic City Boardwalk sustained major damage. Ergo, no damage to Boardwalk now being evident, a great catastrophe has been overcome.

Evidence: From the increasingly inexplicable USA Today, today: "TV viewers during Superstorm Sandy saw portions of the Atlantic City Boardwalk engulfed by waves and swept out to sea. That's an image that the gambling-driven resort hopes to erase during the crucial holiday season. ..."

Reality: Viewers saw no such thing. They did not see waves sweeping an engulfed portion of the Boardwalk out to sea. They saw a snippet of video, and a still photo or two, showing damage to that small and forlorn section of the boardwalk, basically a long pier, where the waves had indeed intruded on their way to doing serious damage to nearby homes, destroying about a 50-foot section. Period. The actual Atlantic City Boardwalk sustained no significant damage.

The actual Atlantic City Boardwalk, undamaged.

And oh, by the way. The USA Today story is also an example of a journalistic practice I call "recipe writing."

That is, a reporter (or worse, editor) from Publiciation B sees a story in Publication A, and proceeds to "re-report" it, using Publication A as a recipe for the ingredients.

Like this column three weeks ago by Monica Yant Kinney in the Philadelphia Inquirer that appears to have been the recipe for the one in USA Today.

It's a cheesy practice, but not strictly unethical. Just cheesy.


A piece of information in the earlier Inky story (which seems to have been prompted by PR promotion from Atlantic City) that should have been kept in the recipe: "Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck, 41 percent of Americans polled erroneously believed the Atlantic City Boardwalk had washed away; 21 percent had heard the Jersey Shore was still closed to travelers. ..."

###

Delta Making a Move on Virgin Atlantic?

Delta Air Lines seems to be making preliminary moves to buy a big chunk of Virgin Atlantic. The most recent indication of that is that Singapore Airlines, which owns 49 percent of Virgin Atlantic, confirms that it wants to sell that stake.

Here's Reuters on it.

Delta won't comment. Delta, which has expressed interest in Virgin in the past, is the most obvious buyer of the Singapore stake, possibly in a combination bid with Air France-KLM. The controlling share of Virgin -- 51 percent -- is owned by its founder, Richard Branson. Delta acquiring the other 49 percent would give it access to Virgin's slots at all-important Heathrow Airport in London, as a deal in combination with its SkyTeam Alliance partner Air France/KLM would circumvent European laws about foreign control of an EU carrier.

Speculation then says that Delta-AirFrance/KLM could even acquire full control of Virgin, with Delta maintaining that minority 49 percent stake to avoid regulatory hurdles.

Virgin is now the second-largest carrier at Heathrow, an airport that is operating at full capacity with no immediate room for adding new slots. So the only way you get slots there these days is to buy them from someone else, and add them to your alliance bundle, in this case SkyTeam.  As Mike Boyd points out today, "Add all the SkyTeam slots, including the Virgin Atlantic access, and SkyTeam will have 650 slots. A pittance to the BA 4,900, but still enough to be in a strong second place."

In his weekly essay at his usual post at the Boyd Group International site, Mike also suggests that maybe the alliance world isn't as monolithic as has been assumed, and may be starting to flounder as members fight over turf. That's very interesting reading.

Meanwhile, to the extent that anybody in the mainstream media actually covers airlines (other than as a weird stock-play, a fare-oriented consumer-interest story, or a lame rehash about international markets like this one in USA Today), this will be reported with bafflement.

But here's the way I see it if Delta in fact does move on Virgin Atlantic:

The biggest story in airlines today, which goes almost unreported, is the move toward consolidation, not just with mergers and acquisitions, but with rapidly growing deals in which airlines basically get around antitrust regulations and act in deep concert, through alliances, code-shares and those strange little special antitrust-exempt deals that let them flat-out collude on prices and supply on specified international routes. The name for this is "cartel."

A combination would accelerate continue that trend, if regulators let it happen.

 Airlines are interested these days not in market share on domestic routes, but in feeding high-revenue passengers into long-haul hub-to-hub routes with lucrative connections, including in cooperation with code-share and alliance partners, to international routes. That's the game being played by the major domestic airlines (Southwest excepted), to the detriment of comprehensive air-service between U.S. markets that are don't produce high-yield business traffic and international feeds.

Oh, by the way: Is anybody looking at Virgin America (which Branson's company has a minority stake in), the feisty and highly regarded American carrier (only five years old and unable to expand much) -- whose main assets are juicy transcontinental routes with high-yield potential international feed?

You bet they are.

###

Common Sense and Aviation Disasters, Via France

A French appeals court threw out a criminal conviction for involuntary manslaughter of Continental Airlines for its part in the crash of an Air France Concorde plane in Paris that killed 113 in 2000. Here's the Times report today.

This sensible move -- in effect, "de-criminalizing" an accident that occurred partly as a result of human error -- comes as authorities in Brazil continue the clear folly of criminalizing another accident that was the result of human error, the horrific mid-air collision between a business jet and a 737 over the Amazon in 2006 that killed 154.

In Brazil, in the latest manifestation of stubborn foolishness, prosecutors are now making charges of perjury against a pilot who served as a major defense witness in the criminal trial of the two American pilots of the business jet that collided with the 737.  The rationale? Well, since the American pilots were earlier convicted (in what I have described as a sham trial that was part of the Brazilian authorities' ongoing attempts to cover up the major role that Brazilian air traffic control played in the mid-air crash), why, then, the expert witness for the defense must have lied. Otherwise, you see, the defendants would have been acquitted. This is reasoning out of Alice in Wonderland, of course.


More on that nonsense later today, but now back to the Air France Concorde disaster and the very good ruling by the French appeals court.

Long story short, the Concorde disaster in Paris came about through a series of errors and occurrences, which is almost always the case in major aviation accidents. Continental and one of its mechanics had been faulted for an apparent mechanical error that led to the loss of a metal strip off a Continental plane, which took off on the runway minutes before the Concorde took off and crashed on that runway, after that metal strip punctured a Concorde tire.

There were, of course, other factors in the crash, all of which played a part in the investigation. But the issue, in Paris as it was in Brazil, is the question of criminalizing  an accident, of rushing to assign criminal culpability. In Brazil, one of the most notable consequences of this rush to criminal judgment (the emotional, xenophobic rush to blame the Americans and exonerate Brazilian air traffic control) was that important witnesses, including air traffic controllers, simply clammed up. The result was a wretchedly botched investigation -- and yet another major embarrassment for Brazil in the international aviation community.


[I was one of seven survivors on the American jet, and I was subsequently convicted in Brazil of causing "dishonor" to Brazil by my reporting on the coverup. My case then became a small part of the momentum that led to a new federal law in the U.S. called the SPEECH Act, which forbids a U.S. court from enforcing spurious libel and slander judgments against Americans for speech, made in the U.S., that is entirely protected by the First Amendment.

[And one of the more amusing aspects of that ridiculousness seeking unsuccessfully to silence me came when a group representing Brazilian "journalists," the National Federation of Journalists, belched forth a statement in 2011 supporting the civil and criminal actions against me because I "published posts offensive to Brazil" and showed a "disrespectful manner" when I argued against the Brazilian coverup. This august association of Brazilian journalists then proceeded to repeat obvious lies and asinine whoppers about what I had in fact written. But I digress ...]

Meanwhile, here's a smart statement on the French case by the Flight Safety Foundation. [Italic emphasis mine]:

Foundation Applauds Decision of French Court

Alexandria, VA, November 29, 2012 –The Flight Safety Foundation applauded the decision today by the French appeals court to throw out the convictions against Continental Airlines and one of their mechanics in relation to the tragic crash of the Concorde in 2000.

“We’re very pleased that courts are recognizing that professional human error does not amount to criminal conduct, even where it can lead to catastrophic consequences,” stated Kenneth Quinn, FSF General Counsel. “The tragedy of this accident and others is only compounded by decades-long efforts to find someone to ‘blame,’ rather than focus on human factors, training, and technology to make sure that the tragedy does not reoccur.”

“Undue prosecutorial and judicial interference can not only create further victims of accidents, but more importantly harm the integrity and timeliness of the accident investigation process, with an adverse effect on aviation safety” Quinn continued.

Mr. Quinn is currently also serving as Vice Chair of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Task Force on Safety Information Protection, which will be hosting a listening session on December 5, 2012 in Washington, DC, with many interested stakeholders and family representatives scheduled to attend.


###

 

Flight Chaos Arrives

No need to go on and on about this. You're watching and reading the news:


Number of flight cancellations today, via Flightstats.com -- 7,328

Tomorrow (so far) -- 2,791 (that will at least double by tomorrow

### 

Flight Cancellations Mounting

Flight cancellations for tomorrow (so far): 5,848, according to FlightAware.com

That's roughly a quarter of the total number of flights.

###

Stormfront: Here We Go Again

[UPDATED]

The New York City transit system, with subway stations vulnerable to flooding, is being shut down tonight. Oh, what an adventure Monday morning is going to be in the world's greatest city.

Evacuations are spreading in coastal areas, including the New Jersey barrier islands, which have not experienced a really major coastal storm -- of the sort that can significantly alter geography -- since the 1960s, before those shore towns were so massively developed on fragile barrier islands.

Atlantic City (yes, it's on a barrier island) is emptying out. Atlantic City has been significantly developed since the last two decades of the 19th Century. Check out the amount of development that has occurred since the 1960s on the other barrier islands that form the Jersey Shore from Cape May northward.

So here we go again. A crisis, and a long time coping with and reacting to a crisis. And then we'll resume life just as before.

Why can't we respond to this one, after we've responded on the most basic levels of safety, by asking some questions?

--Isn't it time to cut the nonsense and insist that everybody admit that climate change is for real and we need to accept the reality while trying to undo some of the damage -- or at least not continue letting it get worse?  Why aren't we looking those congressional climate-change deniers right in the eye and saying, "You know what? You're an idiot."

--Why can't we develop emergency plans that go beyond dispatching motorboats with first-responders to rescue those foolish or unfortunate enough to be stranded by a storm everybody sees coming?

--Why don't we move immediately to define and address discrepancies and deficiencies in the satellite networks we depend on for weather forecasting? Why haven't we demanded to know, for example, why there was so little warning to the public when the threat from Hurricane Irene in August 2011 abruptly changed from wind in Atlantic City to flooding in, say, Binghamton?

--There's probably nothing we can do to undo the insanity of having allowed massive development in flood zones, especially on the New Jersey barrier islands. But why do we think that flood insurance should protect this folly? (And on the Jersey shore, we're talking mainly about expensive beachfront homes in literally exclusive shore towns that do everything they can to keep out the public, and are the first to wail for help when their beaches wash away and their homes get damaged.) And why do politicians in New Jersey, in particular, resist any and all discussions about seashore development, the environment and the subsidizing of exclusice communities built for the one-percent on the fundamental assurance that they'll be looked after?

--What about all of those power lines that come down every time it rains and the wind blows, or when it snows and ice forms? In much of the country, in suburbs that have been developed since the 60s, the electricity grid is safely tucked underground. (It's complicated, with ramifications and staggering expenses. Then again, so was the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.)

But New Jersey and the near New York State suburbs were substantially developed over a century ago, and are saddled with aging infrastructure. Power lines exposed to the weather, creaky phone lines that require constant patching even in normal times, emergency plans that are based on air raid response protocols from World War Two. I used to live in Glen Ridge, a pleasant New Jersey town with gas street-lamps that dated to the 1920s. But the phone lines also come from that era, literally a time when Thomas Edison was still running his company 15 miles away. Every time it rained hard, the phones went out. (At least the gas lamps stayed on.)

After Hurricane Irene in August 2011, while the hurricand dramatists were still lovingly rerunning videos of themselves on the strand with wind-touseled hair, the actual issue -- the one we hadn't fully seen coming -- was heavy rains and flooding.

In Atlantic City, which is situated on a barrier island a lot more substantial that, say, Long Beach Island a bit farther north, bays and ocean met each other during the last huge coastal story in 1962. That was a storm surge of 8 1/2 feet. The current predicted surge level is 10 feet.


Rather than these repetitive scenes of hurricane-wind drama queens like New Jersey governor Chris "Thar She Blows" Christie slipping on his official windbreaker and bellowing that citizens need to run away from the threat (which they do need to do, obviously) -- wouldn't it be nice if, after this one blows over, we had a cogent, grown-up civic conversation about perhaps launching a major infrastructure initiative, throughout Old America, to protect our electricity supply against wind and rain and ice, elements that have been with us for a very long time?

Wouldn't it be nice if politicians like Christie started addressing issues like unwise seashore development on vulnerable barrier islands, and how we need to rethink coastal ecology?

Wouldn't it be nice if electricity companies, which are enormously profitable corporations, were required -- by government -- to start accounting for their inability to better ensure the delivery of the power supply? 

These are questions just for starters. Because in weather events of a profound nature, it appears that this is the new normal.

[UPDATE: By mid-afternoon today, long before the storm was due to arrive, some New Jersey seashore towns were flooding, even though it wasn't raining. The reason, obviously, is that a massive storm approaching from the south is pushing around vast volumes of sea water, a storm surge that raises levels in the back bays. This is the classic example of the vulnerability of a barrier island.]

###

Frankenstorm and the Boy Who Cried Wolf

[UPDATED Oct. 27]

It's interesting to watch other people's weather when you live in a place like southern Arizona, where the only real changes in weather are from "nice and warm" to "nice and really, really hot."

So here we go once again with all this media carrying-on about the apparently approaching East Coast Storm of a Lifetime, or Frankenstorm, or whatever the TV dramatists are calling it now.

Remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf.  That's kind of what happened on the Northeast Seaboard in 2011. The lesson is apt, because this storm is looking like the real thing, and people who shrug it off may have some 'splaining to do.

Remember August 2011, when a good chunk of the coastal areas of New York City and the New Jersey coast were ordered evacuated by the imperious New York mayor, Michael "Hurricane Mike" Bloomberg and the combative New Jersey governor, Chris "Thar She Blows!" Christie? Turned out that except for flooding in upstate Pennsylvania and New York State, there was no emergency of a degree sufficient to get as excited as these two did. It just rained.

This one could peter out too, though as I said, it sure looks real from here in the Sonoran desert.

You never know, given the degree to which the media will turn on the hysteria pipes at the least excuse. You know it's coming at you full blast when some TV reporter informs you that the supermarkets are running out of toilet paper. (Why can't people take some clues from the prudent Mormons, and maintain well-stocked off-the-grid home supply caches in case of the Second Coming or whatever it is they're preparing for?)

As of now, "Thar She Blows" Christie, who ordered New Jersey's coastal areas to evacuate as Hurricane Irene hysteria mounted in 2011, is playing it less dramatic. "I encourage all families to stay informed, get ready, and reach out to those you know who may be isolated, or in need of extra assistance," Christie tweeted today.

[UPDATE: Christie today ordered the Jersey Shore barrier islands evacuated. Most of New Jersey's seashore communities aere on those narrow, storm-vulnerable barrier islands just off the coast. And those islands haven't been tested in a major direct-hit hurricane/severe winter-like storm since the 1960s, way before most of them became extremely developed.]

This is going to be interesting.

Meanwhile, if you're planning to fly anywhere near the Northeast early next week, I have some advice:

Don't.

The air travel system -- which the airlines have been allowed to shrink to the point where there is absolutely no slack to handle disruptions -- is likely to descend into chaos.

###

Big Questions Still Unanswered in Border Patrol Fatal Shooting of Rock-Thrower on Mexico Side

The twice-weekly Nogales International is doing a singularly excellent job covering the aftermath of a shooting by a Border Patrol agent of a 16-year-old who was in a small group throwing rocks at U.S. agents who responded to a smuggling attempt from the Mexican side. Here's a link to the current story.

Reporters for the paper obtained the reports from the scene not of the Border Patrol, but of two local police officers who responded to the disturbance last week.

“I immediately got behind cover, and remained in the area during the gunfire,” one wrote, referring to the gunshots fired across the fence, evidently from a hill, by the U.S. agents. The police officers names are Garcia and Zuniga.

According to the Nogales newspaper, "When the firing stopped, Garcia walked into the open and met with Zuniga and several Border Patrol agents, who told him that a male suspect had been throwing rocks at the agents from Mexico. 'The male subject had been shot by one of the U.S. Border Patrol agents,' Garcia wrote.'I saw that around the immediate area of the scene where the units were stopped at, there were many medium sized rocks scattered on the street and sidewalk,' he wrote."

Good reporting. But I have mentioned previously that reporters and editors across the board these days -- whether in local or national news organizations -- seem to need some drilling in using words precisely. Note the paraphrased word "suspect" in the excerpt above -- when the actual police report refers to the dead youth more neutrally as "subject."  And incidentally, it does not appear that the rock-throwing youth, who was shot at least six times, was one of the two smugglers who agents said tried get over the fence with a backpack of marijuana.

The most serious unanswered (and as far as I can see unasked) question is this: When they saw that rocks were being tossed from the Mexican side, why didn't the Border Patrol agents simply retreat to a place where the rocks couldn't reach them? After all, they do not seem to have been pinned down, and the Mexican rock-throwers were unable to advance over the border.

Among the other questions that remain unanswered:

--How many shots were fired? Mexican reports say that besides the bullet-riddled youth, a nearby building was also riddled with bullets.

--How far away were the Mexican assailants when they tossed rocks across the fence?

--Where specifically were the Border Patrol agents?

The Nogales paper reported that a surveillance video was routinely made of the incident. The video  will answer at least some of the questions.


###

Brazil Appeals Court Affirms Criminal Convictions of American Pilots in 2006 Mid-Air Collision That Killed 154 Over Amazon

[UPDATED Oct. 16]

Confusion never ends in the long saga of the attempt by certain elements in Brazil to exact revenge on the two American pilots involved in the 2006 mid-air collision over the Amazon that killed 154.

A regional federal court in Brasilia tonight affirmed the criminal convictions, but said that the original trial-court sentence of community service given to the pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan  Paladino, no longer stands. Instead, the court ordered that the pilots serve time in "open regime" on the highly controversial conviction  of over three years, rather than the four years of community service.

It wasn't immediately clear whether an "open regime" sentence requires a prison term. The new sentence is defined by the court as being "not convertible to community service," however.

[UPDATE OCT. 16 -- The AP is reporting today that the ruling actually is a victory of some kind for the pilots:

"On Monday, judges at a regional federal court in Brasilia ruled that the men do not need to perform community service. They also shortened their sentence to three years and one month — but ruled the men could serve their sentence in an "open" regime, meaning under Brazilian law they need not step foot in prison, just occasionally check in with Brazilian authorities. The ruling can be appealed and prosecutors had earlier indicated that was likely if this ruling did not go their way."]

The pilots lawyer said he would "study the sentence," and possibly appeal. Prosecutors, who I think are responding in part to media pressure from an angry group that represents a small number of the victims' families and has been relentless in villifying the Americans, also will appeal, seeking stiffer sentences.

Thanks as usual to Richard Pedicini, who took the all-night bus from Sao Paulo to Brasilia to cover the appeal verdict. Richard has been an invaluable and indefatigable reporter in Brazil since I first started writing about this strange case, shortly after I was among the seven people who survived the collision between a Brazilian GOL 737 airliner, which went down with all aboard in the central Amazon, and Legacy 600 business jet that somehow managed an emergency landing in the jungle.

The planes had collided at 37,000 feet on Sept. 19, 2006, after a series of errors by Brazilian air traffic control out them on a head-on path. A Brazilian investigation asserted that the American pilots were at fault for various reasons, primarily the fact that the Legacy's transponder was not functioning when the planes collided.  The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which did its own investigation because an American-made plane was involved (the Boeing), found otherwise, stating that the primary cause of the accident was likely systemic and operational fauilts by Brazil's long-troubled, military-run air traffic control.

An atmosphere of intense anti-American emotionalism followed the crash in Brazil, where the media helped fan the flames and passed along false rumors, among them that the American pilots were flying aerial maneuvers at the time of the accident. In fact, the plane was flying straight and routinely, at its assigned altitude, when the crash occurred.

Ten months after the Amazon disaster, following a long air-travel upheaval throughout the country caused by Brazilian air-traffic controllers protesting that they should not be blamed for the disaster, there was another horrific aviation accident when a jet crashed at the airport in Sao Paulo, killing 199 people.

By the way, the report today in Newsday, the newspaper in Long Island where ExcelAire, the company that had just bought the Legacy, is based, does a competent job of covering the incremental news in this, but precision in nuances is sometimes a problem.

Today, for example, the Newsday report states that the American pilots were convicted of negligence "for not verifying that anti-collision equipment and a transponder that would have alerted controllers to their location were functioning in the Embraer Legacy 600 ..." (Italics mine).

This is a quibble, but the words in italics are debatable assertion, given that all evidence shows that Brazilian air traffic controllers were demonstrably not paying attention to the Legacy as it crossed the portion of the Amazon where radar and radio communications are notoriously spotty. Yes, a functioning transponder would have corresponded with Brazilian radar, and more importantly, the anti-collision alert that works with the transponder would have been the last chance to avoid the collision. But to assert that a functioning transponder would have alerted controllers is to stipulate that the controllers were alert.

Which they demonstrably were not.


###

More Questions on Border Patrol Shooting of Mexican Rock-Thrower

[UPDATED]

From today's Los Angeles Times, the only daily American news organization that seems to be interested in doing reporting on the latest incident where U.S. Border Patrol agents fired fatal gunshots at rock-throwing Mexicans on the other side of the border:

"Sonora state police released a statement saying they found Elena Rodriguez's body, "with various gunshot wounds on different parts of the body," shortly after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, lying next to the curb on Calle Internacional, a street that runs along the border fence. The body was found four blocks from the border crossing in downtown Nogales, at a spot where there is roughly a 10-foot vertical drop from the base of the fence to the street below."

And the latest questions would be:

--Where specifically was the body found, and how far from the fence? The report cited above is somewhat unclear.

--Where was the Border Patrol agent who fired those shots positioned, specifically?

--Did other Border Patrol agents fire into, or at, the crowd across the border?

The other questions, of course, are as outlined here in recent days: 

--Why didn't the Border Patrol agents simply retreat from the physical threat posed by the rock-throwers, rather than firing into the group across the border? The agents weren't "pinned down." Presumably, they could have moved to a position on the U.S. side beyond the ability of the assailants to throw a rock that could hit them. 

--How many shots were fired by the Border Patrol? Mexican authorities now say the dead teenager's body had seven bullet wounds, and that more than a dozen bullets also hit a medical building on the Mexican side of the border. According to The Nogales International, a twice-weekly paper in Nogales, Ariz., that has been aggressively covering the story, the Nogales, Sonora, mayor said that the 16-year-old was killed in a "hail of bullets."

--What is the specific operative law or regulation that the Border Patrol is citing to justify these incidents of firing across the border at rock-throwers?

--What is the identity of the agent who fired the fatal shots? What is the current status of that agent?

UPDATE Oct. 15 -- The Nogales International, a twice weekly newspaper in Nogales, Ariz., has been singularly covering this story as it should be covered. From today's report, this information on the physical site of the incident: (italics mine)

"The physical location of the shooting has raised questions as well. The area from where the agent reportedly fired is on a hill, approximately 10-15 feet above Calle Internacional in Nogales, Sonora, where [the teenager] was found dead. The border fence rises another 25 feet, creating a challenging angle for a rock-thrower trying to throw over the barrier and hit an agent. However, a well-aimed toss could breach the fence through one of the 4-inch gaps in the bollard-style structure."

Not addressed in that last assertion is, again, why the agents could not simply have retreated to a spot beyond the ability of any "well-aimed toss" that somehow breaches the fence through four-inch gaps in the posts to physically reach them -- given that the rock-throwers were confined to the other side of the border.

###

Border Patrol's Deadly Response to Rock-Throwing from Mexican Side

The Los Angeles Times, unlike the timid local daily papers in Arizona, is following up on the disturbing story of Border Patrol agents riddling a teenager's body with bullets, when that teenager was in a group of rock-tossing Mexicans on the other side of the international border at Nogales.

From today's Los Angeles Times report (Emphasis mine): "Under agency guidelines, repelling rock attacks with bullets can be regarded as a justifiable use of force in part because rocks have inflicted serious injuries on agents. But critics have grown increasingly vocal at the frequency of such incidents and what they call a lack of transparency in follow-up investigations. Wednesday's confrontation was the third incident since September; at least 15 civilians have died in agent-involved confrontations since 2010."

Not addressed yet, and it won't be addressed cogently unless the national media pay attention to this dismaying story that the local daily media are evidently afraid to touch: Why couldn't Border Patrol agents simply have retreated to a spot where the rocks could not reach them, given that the assailants were unable to advance (being on the Mexico side of the border)?

--Also, how many shots did the Border Patrol fire? The dead youth's body was hit with eight gunshots, Mexican authorities said, while at least a dozen more bullets hit a medical building nearby on the Mexican side.

--Also, what was the specific threat that the Border Patrol agents say they responded to? Again, throwing rocks at someone is a crime -- a local crime. Firing wildly across an international border is an international incident, whatever the other questions of manslaughter and inadequate training.

--Also, see the Los Angeles Tiomes story linked to above, which refers to the dead 16-year-old as the "suspected smuggler." There is no attribution for that, and no indication from the reporting that the dead youth was in fact a "suspected smuggler" (though he may have been, of course). In which casse, the crime location was on the Mexican side of the border, Mexican law enforcement was the legal authority, and the question still remains about the use of deadly force, which seems to have included a hail of bullets.  However, from the facts as they have currently been presented, it appears that the 16-year-old was part of a small group of people who tossed rocks at the agents across the border fence. -- in response to what would have been the Border Patrol agents' legitimate attempts to capture on this side, or repel, the actual smugglers who tossed a bundle of what seems to have been marijuana across the fence.

Again, why couldn't the agents have simply retreated from the rocks? Who gave the order to fire?

Less sloppy reporting is required here, on a sensitive topic.

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Does the Border Patrol Require Better Supervision?

[Border fence between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico.]

The latest fiasco from the Border Patrol, the powerful federal police bureaucracy that has militarized the border region, especially in southern Arizona:

A Border Patrol agent in Nogales, Arizona, fired shots across the border into Nogales, Mexico on Wednesday night, killing a 16-year-old boy who was part of a crowd throwing rocks after Border Patrol agents disrupted smugglers who had tossed a bundle of drugs across the wall.

The Tucson and Phoenix media have the story of course, mostly based on a press release from the Border Patrol. But, per usual, they have not asked basic questions about a very troubling incident involving the Border Patrol:

1. If the Border Patrol agent felt threatened by rock-throwers who were on the other side of the international border, why did he not simply retreat away from the fence? This, after all, was a situation where it would seem that a retreat from the flying rocks, to a position where the rocks simply could not  reach, would have resolved the threat -- given that the assailants were blocked from advancing by a fortified border fence that kept them in Mexico.

2. How many shots were fired by the Border Patrol? (A Mexican newspaper report says the dead teenager had eight bullet wounds, which would fit the description of the phrase "body riddled with bullets." Other reports say that more than a dozen bullets struck a nearby building on the Mexican side).  Did more than one agent fire a gun at the crowd across the international border? How many agents fired?

3. What specific international and national laws pertain when a U.S. federal law enforcement officer opens fire across an international border, killing a citizen of a foreign country?

I don't expect that the timid daily media in Tucson and Phoenix will do much more to cogently report this developing story, given the prevailing fear of right-wing criticism that drives editorial decisions here. After all, the media must be exhausted from all that pious coverage of the Border Patrol agent who tragically (precise use of the word here) died last week near Bisbee -- after that agent had recklessly opened fire on two other agents, who returned fire in the dead of night in the desolate desert near the border. Initially, the media fully went along with speculation by the usual crowd of Phoenix statehouse loons and national right-wing crazies that that incident involved Mexican bandits, rather than Border Patrol agents who were engaged in that most inexcusable of police misadventures, death of a fellow officer by friendly fire.

This was the latest of four fatal shootings by Border Patrol agents of Mexican nationals at the border since January 2010. Two of the earlier ones also involved Mexican nationals throwing rocks from their side of the border. Here's some background on those.

Throwing rocks at a cop is always stupid and ill-advised.

Throwing rocks at anyone at all is a local crime. Shooting across a border is an international incident. Both should be pursued by the appropriate law-enforcement authorities, and the Department of Homeland security owes us a detailed explanation.

By the way, while the daily media in Arizona predictably fear to venture too far into explaining this story (their standard excuse is "we don't have the staff," which is a way of saying, "we stink because we don't make the effort not to stink"), a twice-a-week paper on the border, The Nogales International, is doing actual reporting. See this initial report in The Nogales International by Cesar Barron and Jonathan Clark. 

It quotes a Border Patrol spokesman: "Preliminary reports indicate that the agents observed the smugglers drop a narcotics load on the U.S. side of the international boundary and flee back to Mexico,” McKenzie said in an emailed statement. “Subjects at the scene then began assaulting the agents with rocks. After verbal commands from agents to cease were ignored, one agent then discharged his service firearm. One of the subjects appeared to have been hit.”

But then it goes further, describing how the rock-throwing incident began after the two alleged smugglers fled back into Mexico:

"At that point, four more males arrived on the Mexican side and began to throw rocks toward the fence in an apparent effort to help the two suspects escape. That's when an agent began firing, the witness told Barron. Some of the bullets reportedly struck the walls of a medical office behind Rodríguez. Luis Contreras Sánchez, the physician who operates the office, was quoted by the newspaper Expreso as saying the building was hit 14 times. Other news outlets put the count between five and “12 or more.”

Contreras Sánchez’s building and the sidewalk where Rodríguez's body was found are located below a point at which the border fence begins rising up a hill, and are approximately 12 feet below the base of the 25-foot fence. The fence is comprised of interconnected steel poles with 4 inches of space between them."

That's called reporting, and we need more of it on the border.

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