American soccer fans

The New Zealand Herald had a story on English national soccer team's tour of the United States later this month. Unfortunately, England will be missing many of its top players due to injury and possibly to club committments; the English soccer community is notoriously hostile to the whole concept of friendlies (exhibitions) anyway. I hope England is able to have a strong squad for their 28 May match vs the United States, as there is no national team I dislike more, save Mexico.

Anyway, England boss Sven Goran Eriksson said, "I know soccer has grown immensely in the US... lots of young people are playing but I'm not sure what happens to them when they get to 21."

I beg to differ with Mr. Eriksson. The key age range is 12-14. Many youth soccer programs are run with an overemphasis on winning at all costs, even for young (pre-adolescent) age groups. As a result of messed-up priorities by some coaches and parents, many kids get burnt out before they even hit high school. Fortunately, most major American soccer organizations such the US Soccer Federation and US Youth Soccer have strongly discouraged that counterproductive mentality, but it still persists.

Even so, soccer remains one of the most popular participatory sports in the country. The main challenge remains transforming those avid players into fans of the professional game. As I've mentioned before, many players are usually so busy actually PLAYING on the weekends that they don't have time to watch professional games on television, let alone attend them.

Enlightened self-interest and the 'liberal' media

Dennis, over at The Moderate Republican wonders about recent actions by ABC. It decided to run an ad by the nominally religious right-wing Focus on the Family, run by the country's self-appointed moralized-in-chief James Dobson. Yet the Disney-owned network rejected an ad by the United Church for Christ, a Protestant denomination that showed different types of people were welcomed in their churches, including gays. ABC claimed the ad was "too controversial."

Now it makes you wonder why they would run propaganda by gay-baiting Dobson's group but refuse to run a rather milquetoast ad promoting tolerance.

As a supposed pillar of the 'liberal media,' shouldn't they have been expected to do the opposite?

Or perhaps the member of the CORPORATE media is simply acting in defense of their bottom line. If they'd run the 'gays are decent humans too' ad, ABC would've been savaged by Dobson and his ilk.

The Theocracy Brigade is far more vocal than progressives or, in Dennis' case, even moderate Republicans. In that sense, they are far more politically astute; as we can see, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And the Theocracy Brigade squeaks more often and more loudly than anyone.

In that sense, Dennis hits the nail on the head.

I think it's high time that we not only condemn a network like ABC for this act of hypocr[i]cy, but that we find ways of punishing them as well.

If enough open minded people make a stink about ABC's craven decision, perhaps the network will find that pandering to bigotry is not in their financial interests.

The Adirondack Park under assault

Upstate New York's Adirondack Park is the largest state or federal park in the country, outside Alaska. It is protected as 'forever wild' by New York's constitution. The charter is fairly unambigious about the role of state government in environmental conservation.

*-Forest and wild life conservation are hereby declared to be policies of the state. -Article XIV, Section 3 (1)

*-The policy of the state shall be to conserve and protect its natural resources and scenic beauty -Article XIV, Section 3 (4)

*-The legislature, in implementing this policy, shall include adequate provision for the abatement of air and water pollution and of excessive and unnecessary noise, the protection of agricultural lands, wetlands and shorelines, and the development and regulation of water resources. The legislature shall further provide for the acquisition of lands and waters, including improvements thereon and any interest therein, outside the forest preserve counties, and the dedication of properties so acquired or now owned, which because of their natural beauty, wilderness character, or geological, ecological or historical significance, shall be preserved and administered for the use and enjoyment of the people. -ibid

Seems pretty straightforward. The state must protect the natural beauty, resources and other environmental factors of the Adirondack state park. That's its constitutional obligation.

The state has set up an administrative body called the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The stated goal of the APA is to develop long-range land use plans for both public and private lands within the boundary of the Park. Within the framework of the state constitution, it should go without saying.

However, the APA is now run primarily by appointees of long-serving Republican Gov. George Pataki. Under Pataki's APA, reckless development is starting to take hold in the supposedly constitutionally-protected 'forever wild' state park.

On Friday, the excellent North Country Public Radio aired a pair of pieces on a huge vacation home development in Tupper Lake, one of the largest municipalities in the Park (pop.: ~3900 ). One was a news piece about the problems with the development. The other was a commentary by the managing editor of The Adirondack Daily Enterprise, who raised questions about public funding and tax subsidies surrounding the project.

Both are well worth a listen. But the news piece was most interesting. Reporter Brian Mann interviewed APA officials who are so swamped with development permit applications that they can barely keep up. One official admitted that each project was looked at in a vacuum and that neither he, nor the commission, had any idea of the cumulative long-term environmental effects of this avalanche of development.

I wonder how that squares with the APA's mandate to to develop long-range land use plans for the Park.

Perhaps it's time for Park residents to take the APA to court. Contrary to the whinings of 'judicial activism' one might expect, this is specifically authorized in the state constitution (A violation of any of the provisions of this article may be restrained at the suit of the people -Article XIV, Section 5). Neither legislators nor the APA can ignore the constitution merely because of the dubious contention that "the people want it" (ie: they feel like it).

If big developers, Gov. Pataki or his APA don't like 'forever wild,' then they are free to try to change the state constitution. Until that happens, the state needs to control development in the Park very tightly, in accordance with its constitutional obligations.

In the interim, the APA should adopt a sort of 'Hippocratic' principle of development: first, do no harm. If the agency has no idea of the long-term environmental consequences of unfettered development, then maybe permits should be 'fettered' a little more slowly. The APA's primary obligation should be to the popularly approved constitution, not big developers.

Another vote of confidence in John Bolton

More warm words for the Bush administration's nominee to be UN ambassador. One senator had the following kind words to describe Bolton.

"This administration can do better than that."

Bolton is "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be."

"No one really is excited about him."

"I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton,"

"What message are we sending to the world community?"

The senator said Bolton would be fired if he was in the private sector.

Some might say that Bolton's obnoxiousness and gratuitous rudeness is merely "frankness" or "openness." Most jobs aren't that of America's #2 diplomat.

Some say that the UN needs an American representative who is "plain spoken." Except people not only tend to dislike bullies, but they tend not to respect them either. America's international credibility has taken a battering precisely because of the Bush administration's contempt for, well, anyone who doesn't lick its boots.

Far from helping our credibility and respect (as Richard Goldstone so eloquently advocates here), nominating a boor like Bolton will only strengthen international perception that the Bush administration is hell bent on spitting on the rest of the world. The American reputation for bad behavior, worsened since Bush took office, will only be further reinforced.

At the end of the day, it really won't matter that much if Bolton is approved or not. If he's voted down, the Bush administration will only nominate someone even more oafish instead.

Bush appointee John Danforth, the most recent UN envoy, was a decent ambassador. He was critical of the UN but more or less fair about it. I didn't always agree with him but I respected him. But perhaps that was his problem, in the eyes of the Bush administration and its lackeys. They don't do fair. [see previous entry]

By the way, the above votes of confidence in Bolton were made not by "obstructionist" Democrats or whiny liberals, but by Republican Sen. George Voinovich.


Update: Even the committee chairman, Republican Sen. Dick Lugar, gushed, "Secretary Bolton's actions were not always exemplary" and "His blunt style alienated some colleagues. But there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct."

He isn't very good but we can't prove he did anything technically illegal.

The administration has such high standards!

And it's worth adding that Lugar is a SUPPORTER of Bolton.

Anatomy of a smear

As some of you may know, Norm Coleman is a Republican US senator from Minnesota. He's also quite ambitious. Most politicians are ambitious. But the paradox about Americans is that while we may expect politicians to be ambitious, we also expect them to not come across as ambitious. If they do, they seem like opportunistic slimeballs. Sen. Coleman is one of those.

The nakedly ambitious Coleman is an eager lapdog for the Bush administration. He earlier led the administration's assault against UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. He called for Annan's resignation for sins significantly less grave than those of his beloved president.

Now, Coleman is continuing his smear campaign against all enemies, real and imagined, of the administration's policies. The Senate permanent subcommittee on investiations, chaired by Coleman, issued a report on corruption in the oil-for-food program. The report accused British member of parliament George Galloway and former French interior minister Charles Pasqua of being paid off by Saddam Hussein's regime in exchange for working against sanctions.

I do not know if Galloway and Pasqua are guilty of Coleman's accusations, though both flat out deny the claims. The idea that there could possibly be corruption and deceit in activities involving the oil industry is almost inconceivable.

But what's most revealing is the methodology used by the committee.

Galloway blasted the Senate investigation, which he said had never written to him, spoken to him, or responded to his offers to testify.

The controversial, and recently re-elected, parliamentarian added that it was "patently absurd" to think that, as an MP being closely watched by UK security services, he could have become an "oil billionaire" on the sly.

Let me get this straight: Coleman's committee accused somebody of serious wrongdoing but flat out refused to let that person formally answer the charges against him. If Coleman had overwhelming evidence of Galloway's guilt, what did he have to fear in letting the British MP testify? Then again, that assumes that getting at the truth was one of Coleman's objectives.

Coleman is focused yet again on scoring cheap political points against anyone who dares disagree with his masters while attacking that person's reputation rather without allowing them to respond. It shows how malevolent types like him and others in Washington are more interested in advancing their agenda via ideologically driven character assassination smoke screens than getting at any semblance of truth.



Update: The committee today finally decided to accept Galloway's repeated requests to testify. This AFTER their report was released and conclusions published. Perhaps even the esteemed Sen. Coleman can be embarassed into doing things in the right way, however unwillingly and belatedly.

Yeah, they're part of these United States too

North Carolina has a 200 year old law banning unmarried couples from living together. That's not North Carolina, Afghanistan but North Carolina, United States.

A female sheriff's department dispatcher claims her boss ordered her to get married, move out or find another job after he [the sheriff] found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did not want to get married, so the dispatcher quit.

Then again, this is the state that kept re-electing Jesse Helms so obviously they have some 'interesting' standards down there.

NC is hardly the only state where such activity is illegal. The others are Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota. North Carolina appears to be the only state where the law is being challenged.

There are lots of old laws on the books that no one has bothered to revisit so you might be forgiven for thinking that the continued existence of such archaic prohibitions is merely a legislative oversight. Amazingly, earlier this very year, the North Dakota House defeated a challenge to its cohabitation law on a 52 to 37 vote.

In its infinite evilness, the dastardly, much-maligned ACLU is challenging in court this wonderful (and surely constitutional) piece of North Carolina legislation.

Sierra Leonian in upstate NY university inspires fellow students

This essay is part of a weekly feature on my blog that presents interesting stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, Israel and Iraq.


The Glens Falls (NY) Post-Star did a great article on a Skidmore College student from Sierra Leone named Joseph Kaifala. He and his father were caught in Liberia in 1989 when that country's civil war was provoked by now-indicted war criminal Charles Taylor. Kaifala and his father spent six months in a Liberian prison, even though the son was only six years old at the time. Two years later, the war spread across into Sierra Leone; Kaifala and his family (minus his father who'd died) fled to neighboring Guinea.

Years later, he received and accepted a scholarship to attend a United World College high school in Norway, where he initiated his own humanitarian group -- Beatitude International -- as a way to help those whom he left behind physically, but not mentally, writes The Post-Star's Jarrett Warshaw.

Once every term, Kaifala would visit his homeland to deliver donated clothing, money and medical supplies to children. He continues the charitable practice now from Skidmore, where he is a first-year student.

His story has inspired other Skidmore students to help.

"I heard his story and thought we should do something on campus," said Vanessa Ruiz, a third-year student and president of the Newman Catholic club. "A lot of people at Skidmore don't fully realize what's going on in the world. This is a person-to-person relationship, not something you can get out of a textbook."

With the help of Ruiz, the Newman club and the group's adviser, Catholic chaplain Catherine Minnery, Kaifala organized a clothing drive for students to give unwanted clothing to Beatitude International, she said.

"What I marvel at is how people experience these horrible situations and somehow come away hopeful," said Minnery, who coordinated charity efforts with St. Peter's Church in Saratoga Springs and the College of Saint Rose in Albany.

And that is probably the most admirable thing of all.


Note: subscribers to The Post-Star online can read the article here. Others can read it here, though it may only be available for a certain amount of time.

Sometimes in April

For those of you living in the US, PBS affiliates will this month be showing Sometimes in April. The film about the Rwandan genocide follows a Hutu family torn apart by the genocide, the film also explores the world's response to the atrocities and the Rwandan struggle to find justice and accountability 10 years later.

[Click here for local listings]