Liz Cheney and dad Dick Cheney

Time: “‘Pro-Life’ Liz Cheney Explains Why Her Fellow Republicans Should Back Harris.” Why wouldn't Liz instead enlist as a Democrat? I am no Conservative or Liberal but it'd be less alienating if she decides for certain her party allegiance. No wonder she lost the Republican Primary in 2022 to Harriet Hageman. The margin of defeat was the 2nd worst for a House incumbent in the last 60 years. Yet when I think about her dad Dick, I definitely have more to say. 😏😒🤨

Or let me just share an Mother Jones article, Sept/Oct 2006 issue. “Sweet Subpoena” by James Ridgeway, on the Dick Cheney part. 

<>Grounds for impeachment? Congressional investigators digging into the aforementioned questions cannot ignore the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney, who figures prominently in almost every one of the scandals engulfing the administration. It was Cheney who ran the government’s response to the 9/11 attacks without constitutional authority, at one point ordering shoot-downs of commercial planes and what would turn out to be a medevac helicopter; who led the secret meetings of administration officials and oilmen to set energy policy; who allowed Ahmed Chalabi to play the U.S. government like a violin; who very well may be the origin of the whisper campaign that culminated in the Plame leak; and, of course, it was Cheney’s former employer (and source of continuing deferred compensation paychecks) that benefited enormously from no-bid contracts in Iraq. 

       Judicial Watch, the conservative legal outfit in Washington, has unearthed an email dated March 5, 2003, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official whose name had been blacked out, that said of a pending deal under which Halliburton would rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, “We anticipate no issue since the action has been coordinated w VP’s office.” There’s plenty more where that came from; whether any of Cheney’s actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors” is for Congress, and the nation, to debate. 🏛🗽🏛

Photo: The Intercept.

Disaster Days Stories. After the Agony, Holiday Community Joy.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s.

BACK home in the Philippines, typhoons (or hurricanes in Asia Pacific) happen several times a year so people live with the fact. But life has "gifts." After months of agony and funk, the Christmas holiday season enters. As early as September (when the last rains usually end) Christmas songs are heard(!) People start decorating, a colorful "parol" hangs in the window and doors, children go “karoling” house after house. This Filipino truth is more cultural than religious. 

       Meanwhile, by mid November, workers and employees are handed a "13th month pay" (law) or extra month's salary (excluding the non-compulsory bonus and office gifts). By law as well, most employees in businesses and government agencies take a paid 15-day vacation starting December 15 so they can spend time with family. Filipinos abroad usually visit home and family in December. Some work but that'd be OT or extra pay or moonlighting income. We all go back to work on January 3 or 4. 

       And then in March/April Lent happens. Solemnity and relative quiet. But Maytime harvest glee ensues and the revelry heightens in the fiesta season till the last week of August. On these happy days, food is offered free in the plaza, mostly farm produce and home-cooked food. Gift-giving is all over. When you enter a house or wandered into a private yard, you are invited for dinner. Warring Communists rebels and Muslim secessionists and government troops spontaneously declare a ceasefire. After the holidays, we prepare for the coming storm again. 

       I grew up not knowing what clinical depression or shrinks or anti depressant pills are. But sadness is real yet we have family and community and lots of free food and gifts during those fun months. 🌬💨💓

[Photo credits: HGS OSS. Washington Post.]

Disaster in America, Disaster in the Philippines.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s.

HAVING been into and survived many similar disasters elsewhere where the safety net is magnificently weak or haplessly bankrupt, FEMA’s response to post-Helene devastation in the mountain was disappointing. That’s because this is America. The most powerful nation on earth with surefire trillion$ budget allocations to several federal projects. But not for FEMA, which is a “mere” sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security. 

       Which brings me to why I say Hurricane Helene is a disaster response (and preparedness) failure. Budget. FEMA has always been plagued by a budget deficit, or since Katrina 2005. Last year, over $4 billion as the military expenditures went over the annual budget to $916 billion. Why would FEMA's work be praised when the agency itself may have felt awkward with the accolade? They knew they could have done better if they had enough resources. 

       More than two weeks after the fact, they haven't even reached some badly-hit mountain spots to deliver aid. Regardless, weren’t aid workers “reinforced” by the National Guard? Reason given: “Threat from armed militia.” Don't soldiers deliver help in much more dangerous battle zones abroad? 

       I myself helped bring aid in mountain barrios, years ago, while a typhoon raged amidst the government's Communist counterinsurgency program. I rode in military choppers provided by the U.S. base in Clark. We just have to do our job. We were threatened, we were shot at--but the need to save mostly vulnerable children was utmost. 

       Again, this is America, not the Philippines. Who accomplished the government's job faster, instead? Local volunteers. The community. 🌬💨💓

[Photo credit: Associated Press.]

Disaster Days Stories. Curfew, essential emergency services, and Stuff.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s.

IN emergency situations, including in wars, but mostly after devastation of a natural calamity, “makeshift” places that offer essential needs to people don't close at all. Especially “tent hospitals” and relief camps that feed people and attend to their basic needs and health conditions. In many cases (in my experience in other countries) workers, both from government agencies and NGO volunteer institutions, go door to door to check on people since ways to communicate (phones etc) and means to move around (cars etc) are out of the question.

 

       Individuals who offer to help enlist with "official" professional groups to facilitate a better organization of aid. Press or media people coordinate via a nerve center "camp" so dissemination of info is orchestrated. To keep order and calm, soldiers are deployed as they also render manual labor assistance (remove felled trees, hike to reach isolated spots etc). These, I saw during an ongoing disaster and then reinforced when the calamity subsided, as search and rescue doubled up. 

       Asheville: I see segments of such a primal community reflex employed in neighborhoods in WNC as they carried out help. Curfew is no brainer since they needed to rest, of course, then open again the next day. But government functionaries and NGO/non-profit operations don’t stop. Staff and volunteers work/ed per shifts. 

       When I say I am frustrated with the city (and federal) government, it is borne from the fact that I don't see a 24-hour, 24/7 effort to deliver dire community service, post-Helene. During the devastation? Figure it out. 

        "They didn't see it coming" or the emergency was unexpected are unacceptable excuses. Emergencies are unexpected, isn't it? That is why it is called an “emergency.” In the past, as a journalist and aid worker,I saw government staff coordinate with known rescue groups, notably the Red Cross. Nonstop, till situations normalize/d. Private business and individual volunteers help but they must not be faulted if they close or rest at a certain time. But, I repeat, government-run rescue/aid centers should not close at any time as well as NGOs or nonprofits that are recognized as aid groups. 🌬💨💓

IN my experience in other calamity-hit countries or towns, essential services were (are) active, 24/7: <>Door to door check to ensure people are served or attended to. Yes, including applications for personal government aid. Professional personnel are there to fix whatever. Of course, they come with relief goods and medical staff. All are served, including non-citizens and illegals. No need to show IDs or paperwork. 

       <>Specific spots (such as hospitals, bathrooms etc) are open, 24/7. Soldiers and law enforcers are around to help keep order. <>In these internet days, wifi is available in specific spots where electric power is restored or wifi can be had via other means, such as satellite internet (Starlink?) plugged to a generator or giant vehicles. These spots, albeit makeshift, are located in media nerve center headquarters or each spot has a media desk, where reports and data and info are orchestrated or organized. Yes, these areas are real even in ongoing wars. 

       <>I didn't see this in ravaged Asheville where I live. But private volunteers and neighbors a.k.a. The community filled the vacuum via sheer reflex and resilience. And yes, three weeks after the fact, we still don't have water. 🌬💨💓

[Photo credits: Western North Carolina. Adobe Stock.]

Disaster Days Stories. Disaster here and disaster at home.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s.

I SHARED my frustration with my housemate hours ago. My "confused torment." Coming from a country that is pummeled by typhoons (hurricanes in Asia) dozens of times a year, with years of rescue experience and exposure as a journalist, my pain is more mental/emotional but a different kind. Not really because I am devastated by Helene per se but because I couldn't relate. I feel people's agony but mine isn't what many feel; it is hell because my torment isn't connected. It cuts so deep because this pain has no ally right now. 

       I helped bury people in mass graves back home, saw kids die in evacuation centers, mostly unattended; an entire village buried in a pile of mud; cadavers floating. And so warring rebels and government troops declared a ceasefire themselves to help rescue and hand relief goods, rebuild shanties. Mostly those were dictatorship years. Yet when I read my FB page, people are arguing politics, people complain about a lying media, people accuse people of being karens and brats. Etcetera. Arguments that are peripheral or nonsense to me regardless of the election weeks ahead. 

       I wrote in one of my poems years ago that when I miss home, I miss the sorrow more than I miss the pleasures. In sorrow, that's when I saw people came out as one in tactical alliances; in pleasure, people mostly sever ties because pleasures come in so many versions. But sorrow as in hurricane ruins is one, singular swath of pain. And when 1 sorrow disrupts 30 pleasures, we get confused how to respond. So we point Left vs Right instead of simply helping a neighbor get up for a hot meal after the tempest. 🌬💨💓

[Photo: Spectrum News.]

Disaster Days Stories. ABOUT random volunteerism.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s. 

I BELIEVE, it is not you or our individual sincerity to help. It is mainly because aid and info are scattered on Social Media that systematizing distribution and actual volunteer-to-victim help has gone confused or harder to attend to. I remember when we (a small group of Asheville friends) drove to New York City in 2011’s “Occupy” protest, with almost a "truckful" of farm food to donate, which I saw ended up being thrown away. Not many places to cook them and people don't really need food, it was Wall Street country. 

       Best way to help is to go to a friend or friends' house or area and hand out necessities, from our own resources and those that we picked up from donation areas. Many don’t have a way to drive out to where relief commodities are handed out. 

       Me and my housemates’ “little” aid, our way? On Facebook, I focused on directing first-response aid (and info knowledge) from those volunteers online near my isolated friend and her neighbors in Hendersonville. Make sure they are all safe and fed. And when I was sure roads had been cleared by professional rescuers, we drove there to give follow up help. (Most of the people there don't use Facebook or social media even if they have power, which they still don't have). 

       Meanwhile, we here in the house offer our Starlink access to neighbors; my housemate and his teenage daughter have been bringing the gadget (since Saturday AM or first day after the fact) as well to several areas, powered mostly by his car, so people can communicate or go online and use their phones for obvious reasons. 🌬💨💓

IT is a general/organizational decision, I reckon, for her (staff at rescue base or HQ) to "remove" your info. So they could process info and donation more systematically and hopefully, faster. Same with media before the advent of social media. The desk in the office quarterbacks 7 to 10 (depends on resources) reporters with photographers each to strategic areas, during and after the disaster. Info that we called in or faxed or Morse coded (yes) are deliberated by editors before printing and sent for public consumption. Then we do updates or follow up stories. 

       Relief organizations or NGOs follow basically the same system. Until social media was born. But that's only my insight and based on my experiences, being born in a "disaster country" and as a journalist and aid volunteer in two continents. 🌬💨💓

NO way to really figure out the veracity of "stories." Media sources (including local news) are doubted or negated due to crisscrossing, conflicting, exaggerated or "diminished/controlled" takes, opinions and insight by people on Facebook or social media. Then there's the political Left vs Right anglings. 

       My family abroad and in New York and the West Coast know I am safe because I told them and I am alive and unscathed. But details? Despite availability of news all over, who knows--not even Asheville residents, who were far from the “line of “hurricane/flooding” fire” actually know. 🌬💨💓

(Photo credit: USA Today.)

Disaster Days Stories.

Responses to posts in Friends’ page/s. 

"INSTAGRAMMERS instagramming in a very instagrammable place" while some parts of the world are sunk in grief--is a fact of life. They are not here so although they probably know, what must they do? Weep all day? I was born and grew up in an island nation that is pummeled by typhoons and other natural calamities dozens of times yearly. We bury thousands each time a killer typhoon hits. 

       But would I feel a bit pissed that my cousin in New York City or uncle in London are comfy like royalty and partying like crazy? Before Helene hit, the world was already flooded with news of wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon then there's strife in Sudan and Haiti. These countries don't have sturdy safety nets and trillions$ budget signed for this and that project like the U.S. is capable of, just like that. 

       In most instances, these poor countries' leadership makes their life more miserable than better, regardless of foreign aid. In Asheville, we got 2 or 3 days of tragedy; they get several bombs dropped at them, how many times a week? They toss their dead in mass graves. 

       Yes, I see friends in Asheville who lost their house, some died. And I see grim flashbacks of home in disaster months. It feels like the first time. I stare at the ceiling, outside, blank. Then I see people somewhere in bliss and comfort. Instagramming. But then, watching them doesn't make me feel bad. It's the contrary. I see life, I see joy. That light warms me. Gives me hope and thankful that I am still here. 🌬💨💓

[Photo credit: WFMY News 2.]