nytimes.com:

April 11, 2007
Sea’s Rise in India Buries Islands and a Way of Life
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

GHORAMARA ISLAND, India — Shyamal Mandal lives at the edge of ruin.

In front of his small mud house lies the wreckage of what was once his village on this fragile delta island near the Bay of Bengal. Half of it has sunk into the river.

Only a handful of families still hang on so close to the water, and those that do are surrounded by reminders of inexorable destruction: an abandoned half-broken canoe, a coconut palm teetering on a cliff, the gouged-out remnants of a family’s fish pond.

All that stands between Mr. Mandal’s home and the water is a rudimentary mud embankment, and there is no telling, he confessed, when it, too, may fall away. “What will happen next, we don’t know,” he said, summing up his only certainty.

The sinking of Ghoramara can be attributed to a confluence of disasters, natural and human, not least the rising sea. The rivers that pour down from the Himalayas and empty into the bay have swelled and shifted in recent decades, placing this and the rest of the delicate islands known as the Sundarbans in the mouth of daily danger.

Certainly nature would have forced these islands to shift size and shape, drowning some, giving rise to others. But there is little doubt, scientists say, that human-induced climate change has made them particularly vulnerable.

A recent study by Sugata Hazra, an oceanographer at Jadavpur University in nearby Calcutta, found that in the last 30 years, nearly 31 square miles of the Sundarbans have vanished entirely.

More than 600 families have been displaced, according to local government authorities. Fields and ponds have been submerged. Ghoramara alone has shrunk to less than two square miles, about half of its size in 1969, Mr. Hazra’s study concluded. Two other islands have vanished entirely.

The Sundarbans are among the world’s largest collection of river delta islands. In geological terms they are young and still under formation, cut by an intricate network of streams and tributaries that straddle the border between India and Bangladesh. Ever since the British settled them 150 years ago in pursuit of timber, the mangroves have been steadily depleted — half of the islands have lost their forest cover — and the population has grown.

Today the rising sea and destruction of forests threaten the Sundarbans’ most storied inhabitant, the royal Bengal tiger, which drinks these salty waters and has an appetite for human flesh. Environmental degradation also threatens the unsung human residents: four million people live here on the Indian side of the border alone.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global warming, spurred by the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, could raise the ocean’s surface as much as 23 inches by 2100. [According to the panel’s latest report, released in early April, the ecology and people of this river delta system are among the most vulnerable in the world.]

It hardly seems to matter that Mr. Mandal and his neighbors — farmers and fishermen — are far too poor to produce much in the way of carbon emissions. They feel the assault already.

Mr. Mandal stood in his yard and pointed to the water. In his mind’s eye, he could still see the two islands that have already sunk into the sea. And there, he said, on what was then the outer edge of Ghoramara, was his old house, and the paddies and the vegetable patch he had cultivated with his own hands. Now there is only water.

Over the years, as the earth cracked and fell into the water, people on Ghoramara began moving farther inland. Mr. Mandal was among them. He built himself a new house in what was then the safe midsection of the island. He wonders where he will move now.

Hundreds of families have already been forced into a displaced people’s camp on Sagar, a neighboring island, which itself has shrunk by one and a half square miles in the last five years, according to the Jadavpur University study.

Even as India prospers, the Sundarbans have been left with little to no protection, and certainly none of the measures that wealthy low-lying countries like the Netherlands have undertaken to deal with the ravages of the sea.

Every year at least two cyclones pound the islands; scientists say the storms have grown increasingly intense, though less frequent. The mud embankments built over the years around these young, fragile islands are too feeble to keep away the tide. One storm, and one breach, can destroy a lifetime’s labor on the land.

“Nature didn’t create this place for humans to cut the forests and chase out the tigers and wildlife,” said Tushar Kanjilal, founder of the Tagore Society for Rural Development. “We are killing the Sundarbans. Our government, the people themselves, we are all together killing it. After 50 years, will they exist?”

Yudisthir Bhuiyan fled to Sagar one day during the equinoctial high tide, when the river surged and broke through the mud embankment that was expected to shield his village. His house collapsed. Cows and chickens were washed away. The family had no time to gather its belongings.

For a time they lived like refugees on the roadside, until the government settled them on a small patch of land on Sagar, far from the water. His island has since vanished entirely. He makes his living now as a day laborer.

At low tide it is possible to see the mud flats that represent Ghoramara’s vanishing past. At one tip of the island is a palm tree that drowns during high tide. There are embankments behind embankments, the futile efforts of islanders to hold the water back. Where once there was Mr. Bhuiyan’s bustling island, Lohachara, there is only water, with a ship passing by.

A new mud flat is visible now, just ahead of Mr. Mandal’s house, where mangroves are beginning to sprout. Mr. Mandal regards it as his only possible salvation, a would-be buffer against the tide.

To nurse hope like this is also to know despair.

Sheikh Suleman, now nearing 60, remembers when life was good. He was a young man then, and the labor of his great-grandfather, who settled in the Sundarbans, bore a life of bounty for the family. “There was fish,” he said. “There was land. We lacked for nothing.”

He was a young man when he noticed people beginning to leave the shores of Ghoramara. The water had begun to eat the land, he said. In a matter of two years, several dozen mud houses collapsed and washed away.

Mr. Suleman stared at the water each day. He looked for cracks in his land, the first sign of breakage. He built a new boundary wall. Then, when danger seemed imminent with only 25 feet of land left in front of his doorstep, he decided to move. “One day it can just wash away,” he said.

On Sagar, the government gave him enough land for a one-room hut and a fish pond. He survives largely on the earnings of two sons, who work in nearby Calcutta.

There was a time, he recalled, when his own harvest of coconuts was so plentiful that his wife would give them freely to their neighbors. Now, he said, she has to beg for a coconut. His eyes welled up with tears.
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msnbc.com:

Spy chief wants expanded powers
McConnell signals more aggressive posture on surveillance authority
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:18 p.m. ET April 10, 2007

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s spy chief is pushing to expand the government’s surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government’s powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used.

Known as “FISA,” the 1978 law was passed to allow surveillance in espionage and other foreign intelligence investigations, but still allow federal judges on a secretive panel to ensure protections for U.S. citizens — at home or abroad — and other permanent U.S. residents.

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists and other national security threats. The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives.

McConnell, who took over the 16 U.S. spy agencies and their 100,000 employees less than three months ago, is signaling a more aggressive posture for his office and will lay out his broad priorities on Wednesday as part of a 100-day plan.

The retired Navy vice admiral recently met with leaders at the National Security Agency, Justice Department and other agencies to learn more about the rules they operate under and what ties their hands, according to officials familiar with the discussions and McConnell’s proposals. The officials described them on condition that they not be identified because the plans are still being developed.

According to officials familiar with the draft changes to FISA, McConnell wants to:
# Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States. “Determinations about whether a court order is required should be based on considerations about the target of the surveillance, rather than the particular means of communication or the location from which the surveillance is being conducted,” NSA Director Keith Alexander told the Senate last year.
# Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.
# Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge.
# Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush’s terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.
# Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

McConnell, Alexander and a senior Justice Department official will appear at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on April 17 to discuss whether to amend the FISA law. Chad Kolton, McConnell’s spokesman, declined to comment on the director’s proposals.

Government officials have been publicly and privately discussing changes to FISA since last year. A senior intelligence official said the goal is to update the law to ensure Americans’ constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure, while improving use of government resources to pursue threats against U.S. interests.

‘Very skeptical’
Critics question whether the changes are needed and worry about what the Bush administration has in store, given a rash of allegations about domestic surveillance and abuse of power. “Congress should certainly be very skeptical about proposals to give this government greater powers to spy on its own citizens,” said Caroline Fredrickson, the Washington legislative office director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The proposed changes to domestic surveillance would be so broad that “you have basically done away with the protections of the FISA,” said Kate Martin, head of the Center for National Security Studies.

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who unsuccessfully sponsored legislation last year to update FISA, said Congress must act because current court orders bolstering the president’s terrorist surveillance program are legally shaky. She wants the law to be rewritten to ensure the NSA can continue the program.

Bush has faced months of criticism for his 2001 decision to order the NSA to monitor the international calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when terrorism is suspected. More recently, the Justice Department and FBI have been sharply rebuked for bad bookkeeping and other mistakes involving their powers under the USA Patriot Act to secretly demand Americans’ e-mail, financial and other personal records through so-called national security letters. Top government officials have tried to dampen the outrage by promising accountability and have argued that the letters are essential tools to protect against terror threats.

McConnell hinted at his discomfort with current laws last week during a speech before an audience of government executives, saying he worries that current laws and regulations prevent intelligence agencies from using all of their capabilities to protect the nation.

“That’s the big challenge going forward,” he said, acknowledging changes would require significant congressional debate.
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Got a response to the HDS HR interview critique request - a non-response really:

"I set your email aside to give a thoughtful reply and then forgot to reply altogether. I am terribly sorry.

I really don't have any comments or advice about your interviewing skills. I thought you handle the interview appropriately and communicated effectively. The decision in this search came down to hiring the person who was best qualified for this particular position. There was nothing in the way you interviewed that stood out as something I would advise you to change.

Best wishes with your employment search. Thanks for your interest in HDS."

Ah, well. . .

spam (bulk):

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---------------------

Again, playing off the journal - the latter: Fred Kramer. . . when have I ever been concerned about being voted sexy?

washingtonpost.com:

3 Generals Spurn War 'Czar' Position
Overseer Sought For Iraq, Afghanistan

By Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 11, 2007; A01

/>The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House's management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure.

The administration's interest in the idea stems from long-standing concern over the coordination of civilian and military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by different parts of the U.S. government. The Defense and State departments have long struggled over their roles and responsibilities in Iraq, with the White House often forced to referee.

The highest-ranking White House official responsible exclusively for the wars is deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who reports to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and does not have power to issue orders to agencies. O'Sullivan plans to step down soon, giving the White House the opportunity to rethink how it organizes the war effort.

Unlike O'Sullivan, the new czar would report directly to Bush and to Hadley and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have, the sources said. The new czar would also have "tasking authority," or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said.

To fill such a role, the White House is searching for someone with enough stature and confidence to deal directly with heavyweight administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Besides Sheehan, sources said, the White House or intermediaries have sounded out retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who also said they are not interested. Ralston declined to comment; Keane confirmed he declined the offer, adding: "It was discussed weeks ago."

Kurt Campbell, a Clinton administration Pentagon official who heads the Center for a New American Security, said the difficulty in finding someone to take the job shows that Bush has exhausted his ability to sign up top people to help salvage a disastrous war. "Who's sitting on the bench?" he asked. "Who is there to turn to? And who would want to take the job?"

All three generals who declined the job have been to varying degrees administration insiders. Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, was one of the primary proponents of sending more troops to Iraq and presented Bush with his plan for a major force increase during an Oval Office meeting in December. The president adopted the concept in January, although he did not dispatch as many troops as Keane proposed.

Ralston, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was named by Rice last August to serve as her special envoy for countering the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a group designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Sheehan, a 35-year Marine, served on the Defense Policy Board advising the Pentagon early in the Bush administration and at one point was reportedly considered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He now works as an executive at Bechtel Corp. developing oil projects in the Middle East.

In an interview yesterday, Sheehan said that Hadley contacted him and they discussed the job for two weeks but that he was dubious from the start. "I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence." Sheehan said he wrote a note March 27 declining interest.

Gordon Johndroe, a National Security Council spokesman, would not discuss contacts with candidates but confirmed that officials are considering a newly empowered czar.

"The White House is looking at a number of options on how to structure the Iraq and Afghanistan office in light of Meghan O'Sullivan's departure and the completion of both the Iraq and Afghanistan strategic reviews," he said. He added that "No decisions have been made" and "a list of candidates has not been narrowed down."

The idea of someone overseeing the wars has been promoted to the White House by several outside advisers. "It would be definitely a good idea," said Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Hope they do it, and hope they do it soon. And I hope they pick the right guy. It's a real problem that we don't have a single individual back here who is really capable of coordinating the effort."

Other variations are under consideration. House Democrats have put a provision in their version of a war spending bill that would authorize a person to coordinate all assistance to Iraq. That person, who would report directly to the president, would require Senate confirmation; the White House said it opposes the proposal because Rice already has an aid coordinator.

Some administration critics said the ideas miss the point. "An individual can't fix a failed policy," said Carlos Pascual, former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction, who is now a vice president at the Brookings Institution. "So the key thing is to figure out where the policy is wrong."
--------------------------

washingtonpost.com:

Case Puts Texas Futile-Treatment Law Under a Microscope
Statute Allows for Deadline on Care

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 11, 2007; A03

AUSTIN, April 10 -- A 17-month-old deaf, blind and terminally ill child on life support is the latest focus in an emotional fight against a Texas law that allows hospitals to withdraw care when a patient's ongoing treatment is declared "medically futile."

Since Dec. 28, baby Emilio Gonzales has spent his days in a pediatric intensive care unit, mostly asleep from the powerful drugs he is administered, and breathing with the help of a respirator. Children's Hospital here declared his case hopeless last month and gave his mother 10 days, as legally required, to find another facility to take the baby. That deadline, extended once already, was due to expire Wednesday, at which time the hospital was to shut off Emilio's respirator. Without the machine, Emilio would die within minutes or hours, hospital officials have said.

But the child's mother, Catarina Gonzales, 23, and lawyers representing a coalition of state and national disability rights advocates and groups that favor prolonging life persuaded a Travis County judge Tuesday to force the hospital to maintain Emilio's care while the search for a facility to accept him continues. The group's attempt last week to persuade a federal judge to intervene in the case failed.

County Probate Judge Guy Herman appointed a guardian ad litem, or attorney, to represent Emilio's interests and issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Children's Hospital from removing life-sustaining care from the child. He set an April 19 hearing on the mother's and lawyers' request for a temporary injunction against the hospital.

"I believe there is a hospital that is going to accept my son," said Gonzales following the brief hearing. "I just want to spend time with my son. . . . I want to let him die naturally without someone coming up and saying we're going to cut off on a certain day."

Michael Regier, senior vice president for legal affairs of the Seton Family of Hospitals, which includes Children's Hospital, said the child's condition continues to deteriorate although he has not met the criteria to be declared brain dead. He said the hospital has contacted 31 facilities "without any single indication of interest in taking the transfer."

Gonzales and her lawyers are seeking a transfer for the child, diagnosed with a terminal neurometabolic disorder called Leigh's disease, to a hospital that will perform a tracheotomy and insert a feeding tube so that he can live out his life in the facility or at home with his mother. But Children's Hospital doctors have declared that continuing treatment is potentially painful and is prolonging the child's suffering.

Emilio's case has drawn interest and support nationwide, including from the siblings of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was in a persistent vegetative state and who died in 2005 after doctors, acting on a court order, removed her life-sustaining feeding tube.

Texas's six-year-old "futile-care" law is one of two in the country that allow a hospital's ethics committee to declare the care of a terminally ill patient to be of no benefit and to discontinue care within a certain time frame. The patient's family or guardian must be informed in advance of the ethics committee meeting and must be allowed to participate. The family must also be given 10 days to find a medical facility willing to accept their terminal relative. After that period, the hospital may withdraw life support. Virginia gives a family 14 days to transfer a patient once a futile-care decision is made.

According to a 2005 report by the National Right to Life Committee, 11 states require that a patient be given life-sustaining treatment until a transfer is completed, without prescribing a deadline. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that require treatment pending a patient's transfer but do not define the type of treatment. Twenty-four states and territories have laws addressing the issue but are ambiguous about treatment pending a transfer.

"Texas has the worst law in the country because the families have no recourse," said Elizabeth Graham, director of Texas Right to Life. "In Texas, doctors only provide treatment for 10 days, and if it there's no transfer, they pull the plug."

Both the Texas and Virginia laws were borne out of attempts by disability rights advocates and others to fight legislation that would give doctors the power to withdraw life support in certain cases with no notice to patients and families.

In Texas, compromise legislation was negotiated, passed and signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush. The law was supported at the time by antiabortion groups, but the practical application since has been problematic, Graham said. "We had no idea at the time . . . that 10 days would not be enough."

A 2003 amendment to Texas's law requires a hospital to give a family a list of organizations and lawyers interested in helping with the patient transfer process. Included is Texas Right to Life, which for the past 18 months has helped coordinate representation for 28 families involved in a variety of futile-care cases -- a 6-month-old in Houston, a 90-year-old in Dallas. Also involved in Emilio's case is the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium.

Catarina Gonzales's lead attorney, Jerri Ward, along with Texas Right to Life and other groups, has asked state lawmakers currently in session to change the law so life-sustaining care is provided, with no deadline, until a patient transfer is made.

"The benefit of treatment for this child is continued life," Ward said. "Yes, he will never be a normal little boy, but there are plenty of people out there who are not normal but continue life and enjoy it to the level they are capable of."
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Even if I may not myself fully appreciate the value of life (but I think I do), I certainly don't diminish it, I think, by or for or unto others. . .

I'll have to call the storage place tomorrow. . .

I must sleep now. . . be well. . .