10.12.05
Rhein-Main ends flying operations
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
(photo by Air Force Staff Sgt Ricky Bloom)
The real “Gateway to Europe” is no more. As this article at European Command explains, the gateway mission will now be shared at two other U.S. air bases in Germany, Ramstein and Spangdahlem.
Present at the Monday ceremony was retired Colonel Gail Halvorsen, who became famous as the “Candy Bomber” during one of Rhein-Main’s most memorable missions, the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. I poked around on the web and found this CNN interview with Halvorsen. It’s worth reading. Here’s a little gem:
Kids came up on the other side of the barbed wire [and] looked at me in [my] uniform. … They came up and started talk to me: “How many sacks of flour have you got?”, you know, “How’s it going to be tomorrow? More airplanes?”
They’d tell me they kept a list, how many airplanes would come in every day, and week-to-week. But they got off the subject of flour very quickly [and onto] the subject of freedom. “Look,” [one of them] said. “Some day we’ll have enough to eat. Just give us a little. Just don’t give up on us when the weather gets bad. But we can get along without enough to eat. Some day we’ll have enough. But if we lose our freedom we may never get it back.“
And these kids were 8 to 14 years old and blew my mind with their maturity [and] understanding of what was important. They’d seen enough of Hitler; they saw what Stalin was doing across the border; their aunts and uncles were coming into West Berlin to use the library to find out what’s going on in the world; they couldn’t travel; they didn’t have their church opportunities. So these kids had a real understanding of what was important in their life and they wanted freedom like Americans.
[My emphasis]
31 Americans died during the airlift.
09.18.05
Who won the Cold War? Thoughts on the German Election.
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
The Left owns political and economic Germany. That’s my opinion, anyway. By saying this, I’m not ignoring the FDP’s suprising success in today’s election. What I’m suggesting is this: Germany is in a very difficult economic situation after seven years of the SPD and Greens, a leftist coalition. Yet no amount of misery seems enough to tilt people towards trying out a more free market economy. And don’t try to convince me that the FDP’s nice 2.6% gain is a sign of that — ok, maybe it is a bit, but let’s look instead at today’s real winners: the communists. Ok, I’ll call the combo of the PDS and Lafontainists “hard-lefties” instead of communists, just to play fair. They garnered 8.7% of the vote today, surpassing the Green party in the number of seats in Parliament. That’s a 4.7% jump for the hard-lefties.
And the Green party — which you might think would be punished a bit for being part of the coalition that has governed for seven years — lost almost nothing, with a measly 0.4% turning away from them. This means that the 4.3% who gave up on Schroeder’s SPD, plus the 0.4% that left the Greens, went in one and only one direction: left. According to the projections I am looking at right now (ZDF circa 22:15, 18. September 2005), the governing coalition parties’ losses (-4.3 + -0.4 = -4.7%) are exactly the far left’s gain (+4.7%).
Think of what this really means: it’s not just the case that nobody — after years of recession — has been convinced of a need to move towards a freer marketplace. It’s much worse: 4.7% of the voting populace fled towards even more socialism.
Still not convinced that The Left owns political and economic Germany? Think, then, about the tenor of the campaign. With such a miserable economy, you would think that the governing parties would be the ones on the defensive. But that was not at all the case. They had absolutely no reason to be on the defensive, because, fundamentally, most people think the same way they do: socialism and americo-skepticism (or blatant anti-americanism).
Speaking of being on the defensive, who the heck won the Cold War? The party that is more likely to let a positive utterance about the United States slip out — the CDU/CSU — had to be on the defensive and make sure they didn’t come across as pro-American. Rephrase: the greatest democratic ally that Germany has ever had was a liability in this campaign. But I also sense that Merkel was on the defensive economically. Instead of Gerhard Schroeder — or those more Socialist than he — being on the defensive and needing to explain what happened over the last several years, the CDU needed to be careful not to offend those people who live off of the state.
Needless to say, I am unhappy with the election results. I’m sorry to say this, because I wish the Germans well, but to me this seems like Germany is even less “dynamic” — and more stagnant — than I previously thought. I might even say it seems like a “fearful” country, where the people shy away from change and are hiding under a thin and shabby security blanket that they are terrified will be yanked off of them.
09.17.05
The Elderly: Helpless and Left to Die. Don’t know about it? Well it didn’t happen in the USA.
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
The outrageous coverage of Hurricane Katrina here in Austria and Germany has included many references to “third world” similarities. See, for example, Ray’s blog posting concerning Stern magazine’s editorial, “Somalia in America’s South.” The sneering arrogance, the gruesome Schadenfreude and the completely over the top moralizing reminded me of something that occurred two years ago in the United States, which also elicited “third world” references.
You will recall that on August 14, 2003, an enormous power failure occurred across a huge chunk of the United States and parts of Canada. On September 5, 2003, I made the following blog entry here:
Third World?
After the blackout that hit the US and Canada, the next issue of Austria’s profil magazine contained a two-page story titled “A Bit of the Third World” and with the following eye-catching pull-quote:
Why would George W. Bush want to fix up Baghdad’s infrastructure, when there is so much to repair at home?
Clever! Whoa, that’s like really puttin’ things in perspective for me!
This “article” is not labeled as an opinion piece or guest column; it’s just an “article” in the International section of this weekly news magazine. But I’ll translate the first paragraph and you tell me if you think this “article” is actually an opinion piece written by someone who is obsessed with … you guessed it:
One thing you can always say about George W. Bush: he makes himself scarce in frightening situations. On [9/11] … he found himself in Florida and last week, as large parts of the northeast fell into darkness, he was fortunate enough to be in San Diego collecting dough for his reelection campaign, though things were looking gloomy on the other side of the american continent.
This is an opinion piece, whether or not they label it as such. It is written by Martin Kilian. I assume this is Martin Kilian, professional America-hater, who writes for Weltwoche (Switzerland).
The blackout occurred 14. August, and this Kilian “article” appeared in the 18. August issue of profil. I tell you that just to give you a bit of an idea of when one might expect an article about a major event to first appear on the newsstands.
On 11. August, Le Figaro first reported that “the heat wave is killing people” in France.
On 14. August, according to the Washington Post, French government officials reported that at least 3,000 people had died from the heat wave.
By the 21st, the Post reported that the French government had acknowledged that up to 10,000 people may have died.
On 29. August, this CNN report indicated that the toll was actually over 11,000.
Wouldn’t you say that 11,000 deaths from heat in a modern and industrialized country such as France could also be compared to the “Third World”? Okay, maybe that’s unfair — we don’t want to be like Kilian, after all. But at least it’s some pretty big news! Or is it?
The 18. August, 25. August and 1. September issues of profil, as far as I can tell, make absolutely no mention whatsoever of the heat deaths in France..
I later followed-up with a few other postings, including:
- Anecdotal evidence of the Austrian public’s complete lack of awareness that anything tragic had occurred in France in August 2003;
- An update from Sept 11, 2003, to remark that profil had still not written a word on the subject.
- A Sept 20, 2003, posting quoting an Austrian journalist’s own disgust at the treatment in his media of the two incidents (the American power failure and the French heatwave.)
You know where I’m going with all of this… In light of the press’s treatment of the Katrina situation, it is worth revisiting their absolute silence over a nearby catastrophe — totally preventable in ways that the Katrina catastrophe was not — of almost unbelievable proportions.
When I sat down to write about this today, I realized I had not “checked the facts” since September of 2003. In much the same way that projections about Katrina’s death toll could turn out to have been wildly off, perhaps the original reports about the deaths during France’s 2003 heatwave also ended up being exaggerations.
They were not exaggerations. Eurosurveillance (“Peer-reviewed European information on communicable disease surveillance and control”), an organization that is funded by the European Commission and which, in 2005, “embarked on the process of becoming the regular scientific communication of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)”, recently published a report entitled “Summary of the mortality impact assessment of the 2003 heat wave in France.”
The analysis of death certificates given by the departmental health offices allowed InVS to produce a first estimate on 28 August of 11 435 excess deaths (excess of 55%) between 1 and 15 August 2003 [2]. On 25 September, INSERM estimated the cumulative excess deaths between 1 and 20 August at 14 800 (excess of 60%) [1].The impact was greater for women (70% increase in excess total mortality) than for men (40% increase in excess mortality)(1). This was the case even for same age groups. Excess mortality reached 20% in the 45-74 year age group, 70% in the 75-94 year age group and 20% in people aged 94 years and over [1].
INSERM also showed that during the last third of the month of August and the month of September the mortality had reached the usual level [3]. October and November 2003 showed the usual death rates in every region.(…)
The impact was greater for women (70% increase in excess total mortality) than for men (40% increase in excess mortality)(1). This was the case even for same age groups. Excess mortality reached 20% in the 45-74 year age group, 70% in the 75-94 year age group and 20% in people aged 94 years and over [1]
[see the original for footnote references]
Paris itself experienced a disastrous 142% excess in the mortality rate, meaning more than twice the usual number of people died there between August 1 and August 19, 2003. This occurred even though the temperature delta in Paris (+6.7) was no higher than, say, Toulouse (+6.6), where the mortality rate suffered an excess of “just” 36%.
To put Paris’s numbers in a Katrina perspective: according to today’s New York Times online, the death toll in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — which, I know, will rise — stands at 812. The excess death count in Paris alone between August 1 and August 19, 2003, was more than double the current Katrina figure: 1,854. And these were deaths from heat. I don’t mean to underestimate heat, which I know can be a terrible killer of human beings. But I just don’t believe that the heat wave of 2003 can be compared to a Category 4–5 hurricane putting an entire major city under water.
These numbers from France were and are extremely tragic and sad. Yet let me tell you the following with great certainty:
Athough France is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from Austria…
- These staggering figures are basically unknown to the general Austrian public.
- While a massive and preventable human catastrophe occurred within 800 miles of Vienna, Austria’s most significant political and news weekly magazine, profil, remained absolutely silent about it. (Note: I did not track other magazines, such as the usual German suspects Stern and Der Spiegel.)
- Every Austrian Tom, Dick and Harry (Tomas, Richard und Harald) knows with certainty that a) the American South (thousands and thousands of miles away) just experienced a massive hurricane; b) it was George W. Bush’s fault that assistance was not as timely as it should have been; c) a major American city descended into third-world chaos; d) surely nothing similar could ever happen in Austria.
I want to close by noting something that I think is important. I realize the gruesome and somewhat catty nature of a tit-for-tat blog entry that compares and contrasts natural disasters in order to make a political point. It’s embarrassing even to discuss the French tragedy in these terms. But the overwhelming bias and arrogance displayed by the European media towards the United States should not go unanswered. The seering heat in the fever swamps of the European press offices blinds its occupants to nearby tragedies that cannot be blamed on the United States. For the sake of a hopeful, future return to sense and balance, the double-standards and hypocrisies must be exposed whenever they are as glaringly obvious as they are in the case of these two natural disasters.
[If you are interested in seeing some of the things web-accessible articles I have read in connection with Katrina, the U.S. government response, and the French heat wave of 2003, you can visit my del.icio.us bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/billdawson/katrina.]
09.13.05
Eye-opening quote of the day
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
Poland, Holland, and the Ukraine each contributed more soldiers to the Iraq War coalition than the French did to the Korean War.
From Karl Zinsmeister, “Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons”, American Enterprise Online.
[hat tip Power Line]
08.24.05
The UK’s other terrorists score a victory
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
Grave desecration is rightly considered one of the most hateful and despicable of crimes. However, nothing is too low for the domestic terrorists in the UK who have successfully employed desecration for blackmail. I was going to say that this story almost defies belief, but it really doesn’t, does it? It’s all too believable. In fact, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often:
A family that breeds guinea pigs for medical research announced yesterday that it was to close its farm in a final attempt to get back the remains of a relative whose body was dug up by animal rights extremists.
It seems to me that it is not at all a big jump from desecrating graves to murdering humans. That’s the logical next step for the “Animal Rights Militia”, and I’ve no doubt that it’s coming up. Reacting to the ARM’s succcess, one supporter shows us that these people can be just as fanatical as your neighborhood Islamist:
A spokesman for Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs, a campaign group set up in 1999 to lobby for the farm’s closure, said: “This is the most fantastic day of my life. It’s a victory for the animals and it’s a fundamental victory for the animal rights movement. I feel so unbelievably proud to be part of the movement.”
This brand of terrorism does not yet threaten society to the extent that Islamists do. But they should be fought against just as hard.
08.04.05
“70,000 prisoners in secret US prisons worldwide”
[editor's note: this post was "pasted" in -- it appeared originally at the old Dawson's Danube site, which is archived here.]
That is the translated headline of an article that appeared yesterday (03. August 2005) at the Austrian daily newspaper, Der Standard’s web site: “70.000 Gefangene in geheimen US-Gefängnissen weltweit”. The article then begins with this paragraph:
| Die USA halten laut einem Bericht der Menschenrechtsorganisation amnesty international (ai) etwa 70.000 Menschen in geheimen Gefängnissen gefangen. Die Gefängnisse befänden sich außerhalb der USA an unbekannten Orten. | According to a report from the human rights organization amnesty international, the USA holds 70,000 people in secret prisons. The prisons are located outside the USA in undisclosed locations. |
This is a gross (and transparently deliberate) mischaracterization of the facts on many levels. I — probably unlike the vast majority of Austrians who happened to come across the article — decided to dig a bit to figure out where they got this information. First of all, the real purpose of the article is to discuss a press release today from Amnesty International titled “USA/ Jordan/ Yemen: Secret detention centres”. That press release and the longer report that it refers to tell the stories of Salah Nasser Salim ‘Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah, two men who were apparently sent by the US to secret prisons in other countries. Neither the press release nor the longer report contains any reference to “70,000”.
After discovering that fact, I was tempted to just label this an outright fabrication. But I knew that there must be some document somewhere that contains this figure of “70,000”, so I started looking around.
Indeed, a May 2005 report from Amnesty titled “Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power” contains the long table shown here to the left. Note that the final value in the table is 70,000 and that it refers to an estimate of the total count of detainees held during the “war on terror” (which, we should remember, has been underway for at least three and one-half years.) Der Standard’s (or the Austrian Press Agency’s) use of this figure is therefore ludicrous for many reasons:
- By headlining the figure, they are suggesting that this is new information. In fact, the information was mentioned by Amnesty International three months ago in a much-discussed report.
- In the first paragraph, by mentioning that the figure of 70,000 is “according to a report from … amnesty international”, they are deliberately and misleadingly suggesting that the figure is from the same report that they then go on to discuss in the rest of the short article. In fact, the figure does not appear anywhere in the 04. August 2005 Amnesty press release or report. But no reader could be blamed for concluding that Amnesty has just now discovered that 70,000 prisoners are being held by the US in secret prisons worldwide.
- Even if the article made clear that the “70,000” is old and from a different report, it would still be a complete mischaracterization of Amnesty’s own use of that figure. As noted above, the Amnesty table of detainee figures makes it clear that the “70,000” is a total count of all detainees held at any time throughout the War on Terror. The Der Standard article uses the present tense (halten … gefangen / “hold prisoner”). It would be too forgiving to say that this merely implies that the U.S. currently holds 70,000. The truth is, it asserts that this is the current total.
- Even if the Der Standard article made it clear that the figure of “70,000” refers to a total head count throughout the War on Terror, it would (if I may repeat myself) still be a complete mischaracterization of Amnesty’s own use of that figure. The Der Standard article insists that the Amnesty report shows that 70,000 detainees are held in secret prisons. Never mind the fact — noted earlier — that the Amnesty report which they are really reporting on (04. August 2005) does not even contain the figure of 70,000. If we forgive them that oversight and recognize that they really meant to refer to a three-month old Amnesty report, we still must note that Amnesty most certainly does not assert that these 70,000 detainees are/were held in secret prisons. Look closely at the table: the majority of current detainees that they list are at known facilities. The rows of data that refer to what some call “ghost detainees” (or “rendition” detainees) are the rows that begin with “Worldwide…”. They list 40 detainees at CIA facilities, 150 “secret transfers” and an estimate of “several thousand” held by other governments for the USA. By the way, I would argue that the latter figure does not represent “secret facilities” — but even if I allow that, the total is “several thousand.” Not only does Amnesty not assert that there are 70,000 detainees in secret prisons, they do not even assert that there are 70,000 current detainees in total.
What shall we conclude about Der Standard’s article? Based on my review of the available information, it would be difficult to conclude anything other than that it is an outright lie. And since the lie concerns the United States, the War on Terror, the war in Iraq and the administration of a certain George W. Bush, I can only conclude it is a lie told for political reasons.
By the way, I should mention that the article refers to the Austrian Press Agency (APA) as a source. I could not find the original APA release (they scroll off their web site quite quickly), so I don’t know if it mentions the “70,000” in addition to the real news, which was the new report from Amnesty. For that reason, I checked several other Austrian news web sites (see references below) because they, too, could have made use of the APA release. I was unable to find anything at all at these other Austrian sites as of 12:15 pm today. Recall that Der Standard published their article yesterday.
Finally, you might find this question interesting: where did Amnesty International themselves get the 70,000 figure referred to in their 13. May 2005 report? If you look at the top of the table of figures, you’ll notice a reference to footnote 11. The footnote refers to five different sources but contains no links:
With a little luck, I found them all on the web and I link to each of them below at the end of the “References” section. I’ve read them all, and I can tell you exactly where the 70,000 figure comes from. At the DOD 10 March 2005 briefing, Colonel Pete Champagne, Army Deputy Provost Marshal, says:
I note that some of you in the audience today were also at the hearing. And I’d just like to start off my remarks by just noting that one of the senators today said you need to put this issue in proper context. When you consider the fact that we’ve had about a million servicemen deployed over the last couple of years in the global war on terrorism, and there’s only been about 300 cases of detainee abuse, and we’ve handled over 70,000 detainees, that equates, if you do the math, to less than one-tenth of 1 percent. Of course the department doesn’t condone any incident of abuse, and we’re aggressively pursuing any allegation of abuse.
How ironic that Col. Champagne uses the figure to highlight something positive. Five months later, the figure has landed in a Der Standard headline in the form of a deliberate lie.
References
The Der Standard article that piqued my interest: “70.000 Gefangene in geheimen US-Gefängnissen weltweit” (03. August 2005).
Amnesty International: “USA/ Jordan/ Yemen: Secret detention centres” (04. August 2005). This is the press release which, I believe, prompted the Der Standard article. The press release then contains a link to the longer report (also dated 04. August 2005) that details the stories of Salah Nasser Salim ‘Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah. Neither the press release nor the longer report contains any reference to “70,000”.
Amnesty International: “Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power” (13. May 2005). This is the report that contains “70,000”. Note that it is three months old, yet Der Standard uses this figure in a headline that suggests it is news.
Other publications referring to the 04. August AI report on their web sites:
Süddeutsche Zeitung: “Amerikaner Unterhalten ‘geheime Gefangenenlager’” (04. August 2005). Like the article in Der Standard, this article discusses the Amnesty International releases dated 04. August 2005. It contains no mention of “70,000” in its title or body.
Other publications whose web sites were checked but which did not contain any stories concerning the 04. August 2005 AI report (as of 12:15 p.m. 04. August): Salzburger Nachrichten, Die Presse, Kleine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Note that three of those are Austrian and therefore clients of the APA, which Der Standard cites as a source for their article.
Here are links to the references in footnote 11 of Amnesty International’s 13. May 2005 report:
United States Department of Defense: “Department of Defense Briefing on Detention Operations and Interrogation Techniques” (10. March 2005). Colonel Champagne’s comment — “When you consider the fact that we’ve had about a million servicemen deployed over the last couple of years in the global war on terrorism, and there’s only been about 300 cases of detainee abuse, and we’ve handled over 70,000 detainees,… — could perhaps be the source of Amnesty’s figure of 70,000. Note that the briefing took place five months ago.
Washington Post: “US to expand prison facilities in Iraq” (10. May 2005). The article mentions that there are over 11,000 detainees in Iraq. It does not refer to the detention facilities as “secret.” The ICRC regularly visits facilities in Iraq.
United States Department of Defense: “Detainee Transfer Announced” (26. April 2005). This is the source of the figure of 520 detainees at GTMO.
International Committee of the Red Cross: “Operational Update” (29. March 2005). This is the source of these figures: 300 detainees at Bagram and 250 detainees at Kandahar. The article also mentions an “unknown number” held “outside any legal framework.”
New York Times: “Rule change lets CIA freely send suspects abroad to jails” (06.03.2005 — the article is archived and available for a fee. Perhaps you can find it elsewhere for free on the web if you search on the title.). The article mentions that there are 100 to 150 “rendition” detainees via the CIA, and 60 via the DOD.
07.27.05
An e-mail interview with Tom Kilroy, co-founder of Contra Café
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
Background: Contra Café markets coffee grown by Nicaraguan farmers who were Contra freedom fighters against the former Communist regime. They tell their own story better than I possibly could, so go visit their website, read more about them, and order some coffee!
Recently Contra Café enjoyed an “instalaunch”, having been mentioned by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. That’s how I found out about them.
The co-founders of Contra Café are two Dartmouth students. Tom Kilroy was kind of enough to respond to my request for an “e-mail interview”, which appears below. Thank you, Tom!
Interview with Tom Kilroy, co-founder of Contra CaféDD: Tom, first I want to say thank you for taking the time to answer some questions.
Let’s start with the coffee itself. Although I am an addict, I’m not necessarily a connoisseur. How would you describe your coffee in terms of some of the lingo I’m familiar with? For example, Starbucks shows three categories (Mild, Smooth, Bold) with multiple coffees in each. Where would you say your coffee fits in?
TK: Our beans fall towards the mild end of the spectrum. The taste is smooth, almost sweet, with no harsh overtones. This sweetness is actually pretty standard for really high quality Central American beans. What’s unique about the Contra Cafe coffee is that it also offers an extremely full body and rich flavor. I’m not a coffee expert, but I find the taste to be outstanding. It’s definitely one of the best coffees I’ve ever had.
DD: Personally speaking, do you take milk and/or sugar in your coffee?
TK: No milk or sugar for me. I learned to drink my coffee black when I worked in the coffee industry down in Nicaragua. With really great coffee, there’s no need to mask the flavor. That said, it’s really an individual thing. Almost all of our farmers drink their coffee with very heavy milk and sugar.
DD: Are you planning to sell using other channels/distributors besides the website?
TK: We’re exploring other distribution channels but haven’t had much luck so far. I think that most retailers and distributors shy away from carrying products like Contra Cafe. Most businesses want to stay away from controversy, not attract it. This is especialy true in the coffee business where most cafes have sympathies on the left. So if we’re going to move beyond the web, we’ll have to find a partner who is willing to weather a few angry customers. Right now the most promising possibilities for us are in Southern Florida with stores that serve communities of Cuban and Nicaraguan exiles. We are looking into that market and hoping to make some progress.
DD: Tell us a bit about the Nicaragua of today. After the whole Iran/Contra thing and, later, the fall of the Sandinistas, we don’t hear a whole lot about the country anymore. What are the government and economy like now? Is the economy, relatively speaking, a free market? Do communists still enjoy a large voting bloc?
TK: It’s not a bright picture right now in Nicaragua. The democratic government is controlled by corrupt strongmen who are out to increase their own power, not improve the welfare of the country. The current president, Enrique Bolanos, is above corruption and a strong supporter of free markets, but he’s been hobbled by a lack of political support from his own party. It’s hard to believe, but Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas still enjoy a large voting bloc. Ortega basically owns the judiciary because he appointed most of the judges during the Sandinista dictatorship. Now he leverages that power over the judiciary to build his own political base and undermine opponents. Just last week, on the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, he gave a speech that still harped on the same Marxist themes: rich vs. poor, capital vs. labor, etc. It’s amazing that people still buy these lies, especially when Daniel has stolen so much that he is now one of the richest of the rich.
DD: What are some other Nicaraguan exports besides coffee?
TK: Nicaragua mostly exports other agricultural products like beef, tobacco, sugar, and shrimp. There is also a bit of textile manufacture and export. I’m wearing a pair of Columbia shorts right now that were made in Nicaragua.
DD: You make it clear on your website that Contra Café is not “certified Fair Trade Coffee”. What is “Fair Trade Coffee” and why have you chosen to not be part of it?
TK: When you see the Fair Trade label on a bag of coffee in the store, it means that the farmer received at least $1.26 per lb for the beans (or $1.45 in the case of organic coffee). It also means that the coffee is coming from small farmers as opposed to large producers. We chose not to put the Fair Trade label on our bag because the groups that control Fair Trade in Nicaragua blocked the Contra farmers when they applied to sell as Fair Trade about five years ago. Even though these former Contras met all the requirements — they are small farmers and produce coffee of outstanding quality — they were put on a waiting list and told there was little chance they’d make it off the list. The groups that control Fair Trade certification in Nicaragua have strong ties to the Sandinistas, but I actually think they blocked the Contra farmers more out of greed than political avarice. They preferred not to expand the circle of eligible farmers because that would have meant sharing the wealth of higher prices with more farmers rather than keeping the group small and enriching themselves. Indeed, many believed that the Fair Trade-certified cooperatives were purchasing coffee on the local market for 50 cents then turning around and selling it as their own Fair Trade for $1.26 and pocketing the difference. I should mention that the Contra farmers now tell me that Fair Trade in Nicaragua has cleaned up a great deal in the last few years. Apparently, they now run things much more transparently. Be that as it may, I’ve decided to stay away from the Fair Trade label.
DD: You’re too modest to mention it in your short bio at Contra Café, but nosey people like myself will have noticed that you earned two awards within the Notre Dame Great Books program. In ‘98 you won the Edward J. Cronin Award, “the highest prize for writing in the course of ordinary course work.” Then in ‘99 you won the Willis D. Nutting Award as “that senior who has contributed most to the education of his or her fellow students and teachers.” Which of your writings do you think (or know) was most responsible for the Cronin award?
TK: I’m impressed by your detective work! I received the Cronin award for an essay comparing the merits of the Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and Copernican cosmologies using the evidence available in the early 16th century. However, most of my academic work in the Great Books program focused on the Federalist Papers and the American Founding. My senior thesis argued that Publius thought a democracy could not be built on self-interest alone; a reasonably virtuous political leadership is also a necessity. I’ve seen this theory come to life in Nicaragua’s struggle with venal politicians.
DD: Are you looking forward to doing in Cuba — hopefully soon — what you’re doing in Nicaragua today?
TK: I look forward to visiting Cuba (and buying their coffee and tobacco) when it is a free country. I’m optimistic that day will come soon.
DD: Tom, thank you again.
She’s out of this world.
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
Eileen Collins is commanding a Shuttle flight for the second time. This time she even gets to dock the orbiter with the International Space Station. I think she’s pretty cool.
Last night before bed she said:
“And finally,” she concluded, “we reflect on the last shuttle mission, the great ship Columbia and her crew — Rick, Willie, Mike, K.C., Dave, Laurel and Elan. We miss them, and we are continuing their mission. God bless them tonight, and God bless their families. Good night.”
Here’s are excerpts from her 2004 pre-flight interview:
I have always loved flying, ever since I was a small child and growing up in Elmira, N.Y. I’d watch the gliders fly overhead. Elmira, with its Harris Hill, is the “soaring capital” of America, and I was very fortunate to have grown up in that area. I went to summer camp near the Soaring Museum and the glider field. My family never had the money to get me flying lessons or even get me a ride in an airplane. I think my desire to fly just continued to build. The way I helped satisfy that as a child was to read books. I learned about flying from every different perspective, civilian flying and military flying; I read about, World War I, World War II, all the way up through the Vietnam War. And, when I got a job at age 16 I started saving money. Eventually I had saved up $1,000 and I took that to my local airport, at age 19, and I asked them to teach me how to fly. Very timid, very shy, you know, there are no other women up there, this was a guy thing but I wanted to do it anyway. And, my flight instructor was a former F-4 pilot from Vietnam, and, he really inspired me. I went on to military flying. It turned out that the year that I started military pilot training for the Air Force, 1978, was the same year that NASA took their first women into the Shuttle program. The six women that were in the first Shuttle class became role models to me. They were Mission Specialists but I knew that I wanted to be a pilot. I knew that this program existed, and that’s when I decided that someday I was going to go on and fly as an astronaut.
(…)
In 1986 after the Challenger accident, I was in graduate school. The accident, obviously, was just a terrible tragedy, and as the news was unfolding in the media I found just how interested I was in learning about what happened and learning more about the Shuttle program. But I immediately wanted to apply to the astronaut program after the Challenger accident — I thought they needed help, and I wanted to be there. I wanted to be part of helping the space program move on and do great things … along with the fact that I wanted to fly.
(…)
But I have an older daughter, who I really do need to talk to [about the Columbia failure], and I have been talking to her. In fact, to share a little story with you, in December, around Christmastime of 2002, I told her about the Challenger accident. She had just turned seven and she had never heard of the Challenger accident or the crew. So I showed her a picture of the crew, and told her their names and who they were and what they had done, and how they were heroes — and, and they, you know, really loved what they were doing. I told her about the accident and how it happened, and I told her (that problem) has been fixed … and that will never happen again. Then, five weeks later, we had the Columbia accident. I had to start that process over with her. That was difficult, but it’s going to be a long process. Immediately after the accident, I told my daughter, “Mommy’s not going to fly for a long time so I don’t want you to worry. We have lots of time to talk about this, and we’ve got lots of time to figure out what happened and to get things straightened out.” Occasionally I’ll bring up our mission and what we’re doing, but I have made it a mission of mine to help her learn more about what we’re doing in space, because I find that a person will have less fear if they understand what’s going on.
She will come home safely, I’m certain of it.
07.25.05
I’m traveling…
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
I’ll be away from the blog until the middle of the week. I’m going to London on business — my chance to say hello to a great city and a great country. I haven’t been there in years. I will kiss my hand and then touch the wall when I get inside Heathrow (I don’t want to be too dramatic and kiss the ground like the Pope.)
Speaking of the UK, how do you like this book cover? Can’t wait to read it.
If you’re new here, have a look around. I just started with a new blog host this month, so everything beginning in July has “categories” — you can use the category links on the right. For everything before that, have a look at the older archive pages.
Some of my own favorite topics here include:
Wolfgang Welsch: here, here, here, and here.
EU constitution: here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Sophie Scholl: here, here, and here.
See you when I get back.
07.24.05
Great, great idea: Contra Café
[editor’s note: this post was “pasted” in — it appeared originally at the old Dawson’s Danube site, which is archived here.]
I love this idea on many levels, including political.
At the height of the Cold War, the Nicaraguan Contras successfully fought to secure their freedom and block the spread of Communism. Today these freedom fighters need our help. Many former Contras are small-scale coffee farmers who produce high quality beans but struggle to break even because of low coffee prices. Your purchase of Contra Café allows these farmers to earn the livelihood they deserve.
Started by two Dartmouth MBA students, Contra Café promises great coffee, and I want to order it. Will they ship it to Austria? I’ve already asked and I’m hopeful for a quick and positive answer.
