Donald Winslow's blog

Shawnee’s homeless population has suffered a couple of setbacks in the last few months. First, the Shawnee Public Library has started making loiterers leave the library property. Second, the Shawnee City Commission voted not to rezone the Shawnee Rescue Mission’s property on Louisa to permit an overnight shelter. Third, the City Commission voted not to approve a rezoning request to allow a soup kitchen on Main Street. Fourth, the city personnel have been trying to discourage the homeless from visiting city parks.

The change in practice at the Shawnee Public Library came about because other members of the public at the library complained about homeless members of the public at the library. Some patrons report feeling intimidated by the presence of homeless individuals. Since homeless people are members of the public, they are allowed to use library resources (such as books and computers). However, anyone sitting on the bench outside the library is now asked to leave.

So what is the purpose of the bench? Libraries in Oklahoma City have in fact removed benches, and the library in Shawnee has removed some of the more comfortable furniture inside. These changes only cause us to become more destitute as a society. A public library is more than a collection of books; it is a public space. I say the bench is a library resource.

The Shawnee Rescue Mission will have a day shelter, but not this winter. They had asked for the rezoning so they could also establish an overnight shelter. Many members of the community have voiced support for the shelter, but some with businesses nearby have opposed it. Notably, Commissioner Harrod’s daughter said that an overnight shelter would hurt their business. Others complained that a homeless shelter might house criminals. It was Commissioner Harrod who introduced the motion to deny the rezoning.

But denying the rezoning for a homeless shelter will not make the homeless go away. Indeed, they are by definition homeless, so they have no place to go. We can try to move them from one place to another, but avoiding the problem doesn’t solve it.

Some community members expressed concern over allowing a soup kitchen on Main Street, complaining that it would hamper efforts to revitalize downtown. Someone wants to serve food in the center of your village and you’re worried that’s going to lower your standard of living?

The City of Shawnee is no longer allowing churches to reserve park shelters to feed the hungry. Rumor has it the churches don’t bother reserving the shelters, so this policy change has not hampered their efforts.

Where’s Occupy Shawnee? Where’s Food not Bombs? Where’s the ACLU? Where’s Habitat for Humanity?

Gareth Porter – LIVE at bambuser.com/v/3303694

Email @TheJusticeDept today – urge them to hold @BP_America fully accountable for the Gulf Oil Spill. bit.ly/Qqi7MU #makeBPpay

I know it took me a while, but I finally published the election ballots for 6 November in my precinct in Shawnee, Oklahoma. There’s more going on than just the presidential race (don’t even bother with that), so point your browser to http://donaldwinslow.info/sampleballots.html and read all those state questions! You’ll have to zoom in.

In their first debate, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney discussed domestic issues. They concentrated almost exclusively on what we call “economy”. Obama blamed the Bush administration for breaking the economy; Romney blamed the Obama administration for not fixing it. Unfortunately, they both continue with the questionable assumption that it is possible or desirable to continue indefinitely to grow the economy.

The big crash that happened at the end of the Bush administration resulted from overvalued assets. Assets are overvalued precisely because economists and investors fail to question the assumption of perpetual growth. In fact, there are limits to growth. The natural resource base we depend on is largely finite. Yes, there are renewable resources, but the expansion of these industries will also bring social and ecological problems. Meanwhile, we are heavily dependent on technologies that undermine our future prosperity.

As we burn our finite reserves of fossil fuels we spin off many tangential challenges. One of the most daunting is climate change. The two years of drought we’ve seen in North America will raise food prices globally. Other goods and services will follow suit.

It’s a pity that Jill Stein wasn’t invited to the debate!

If Mitt Romney’s “47%” quote didn’t make the Republican agenda completely clear, the statements of a couple of Pennsylvania legislators leave no room for misinterpretation. Like many states, Pennsylvania recently passed a law requiring would-be voters to present identification cards. As in other states, the law is being challenged in court. Usually supporters of such bills claim they are trying to eliminate voter fraud, but the PA Republicans make no bones about it. Their target is lazy people.

According to this article published today in Wikinews, State Representative Daryl Metcalfe said “We have 40-something percent of the people that are living off the public dole, living off of their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there who are too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need.” House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said that the voter identification law is “going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania”.

The implication is clear. If lazy people are allowed to vote, they will support policies that allow them to avoid work. This is an unveiled attempt to marginalize slackers! I argued in June that slackers need to demand access to information if we want a voice in politics. Clearly we need to demand the right to vote, also. If the Republicans are correct that 40-50% of Americans are slackers, we will not be ignored!

If I get around to it, I’ll ask my wife to stop in the county building and get sample ballots before the first Tuesday in November. That way I can publish them here at donaldwinslow.info, and other slackers won’t have to walk downtown to learn who they get to vote against on Election Day!

Foreign forces in Afghanistan are between a rock and a hard place–we can’t stay but we can’t leave. Now one may argue it’s been like that all along. Afghanistan has been plagued by war for decades; surely civil war will follow when ISAF withdraws. But now there are some concrete logistical barriers to leaving.

Earlier this year Pakistan refused to allow the United States to transport supplies through their territory. An apology and a bit of haggling allowed those routes to reopen, but it will still be dangerous and costly to move equipment and supplies out of Afghanistan.

And now insider shootings are frustrating American attempts to train Afghans to take over security. That’s the key step in the plan. Karzai and Obama assure us the Afghan forces will be able to keep militants in check after NATO and allies are gone. But American forces have now suspended training Afghans because of the increasing incidence of uniformed Afghans shooting foreign soldiers. By various accounts, 10-25% of these killings may be accounted for by Taliban infiltration and coercion. If this was actually the Taliban’s plan, it’s brilliant. If foreign forces can’t train their replacements they can’t leave. But they will have to, because of declining morale and domestic pressures, so they will leave without replacements.

Tyrell Mayfield (http://www.thekabulcable.com/?p=1513) pointed out that the number of insider killings is in fact small compared to the incidence of suicide among American troops. In fact, in July more American soldiers killed themselves than died in combat. Now I’m not going to pretend to understand what causes a soldier to take his own life, having never been in combat nor had suicidal thoughts, but I think it must be related to declining morale. So the Mujahadeen are winning the moral war. By this I do not mean that a majority of Afghans believe that the militants are more righteous than American or Afghan troops; rather I mean that the militants believe in what they are doing more than the American forces believe in what they are doing. And because Jihad is a movement and not an organization, drone strikes on prominent leaders and innocent villagers will only draw more militants to the fray.

The war in Afghanistan is becoming decreasingly popular in the United States, as it is in most of the nations who have sent troops. In the USA the main two presidential candidates avoid the issue. Mitt Romney did not even mention the Afghan war–the longest running war in US history–during his convention speech. Barack Obama can only say that we are leaving by 2014. But for many Americans that’s not soon enough. And most observers are forced to conclude that Afghanistan will not be ready by that time.

So we can’t leave, but we can’t stay.

On 12 August 2012 an article by Mark Brunswick on domestic drone use was published in The Star, a Canadian newspaper.

Brunswick states that as many as 30,000 may be in use in the USA by the end of the decade. A Predator drone was used in 2011 to arrest six individuals on their family farm in North Dakota, apparently for cattle rustling. Some drones are small enough to be hand-held.

The military is pleading for more money for pilots. Even though these devices are unmanned, it takes a lot of men to fly them. The Grand Forks Air Force Base is expecting to acquire about 20 more drones and about 900 more personnel to operate them.

A sheriff’s deputy reported seeing one hovering above his patrol car.

The ACLU wrote a policy paper called “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance”.

Brunswick quoted Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School: “Think about it; they are inscrutable, flying, intelligent. They are really very difficult for the human mind to cleanly characterize.”

Brunswick quoted Al Palmer, director of the University of North Dakota’s Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Education, and Training: “Where aviation was in 1925, that’s where we are today with unmanned aerial vehicles. The possibilities are endless.”

Let’s think about some of those possibilities. Clearly not everyone will be able to obtain a permit to fly a drone, so drones will serve to enhance the power of the federal government. If not properly regulated, they could allow private contractors to spy on individuals beyond the scope of government contracts. Drones have been subject to cyber attacks, so they could even be used to serve the interests of insurgents or criminals or terrorists. Alternatively, they could be used by a corrupt administration or regime to maintain power. Currently, it takes a lot of human work to operate them, but they will inevitably become more autonomous. Eventually, they could even be threatening to those who operate them.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1239494–aerial-drones-spies-in-the-sky-signal-new-age-of-surveillance

Governor Fallin declared Oklahoma to be in a state of emergency due to the drought. It was 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Shawnee today. There were 600 million people without power in India today. Our cable internet was down all afternoon, and the provider did not answer my repeated calls. After cable service was restored, my router went out. Consequently, donaldwinslow.info and associated domains had significant down time today. But we’re up now, thanks to a very patient technician who, judging by his accent, may have lost power today. And if I can’t blame all that on the full moon, perhaps Luna was responsible for Forest‘s wakefulness. My 17-month did not nap at all today.Hopefully he’ll sleep well tonight!

We are currently under water rationing in Shawnee. For instance, our household is only allowed to use water outside on Tuesdays and Fridays, and only before 10 am or after 6 pm. We are told that the lake levels are fine, and the limitation is rather the capacity of the water treatment plant.

There are two questions one might ask about this situation. One would be “Why did the City of Shawnee contemplate building a sports facility on the other side of the highway if the water treatment plant needs to be upgraded?” On the other hand, “Why do the citizens of Shawnee need treated water to spray on their lawns?”

We should all have rainwater collection systems on our houses. I had one at the last house I inhabited, but haven’t put one in here. I have no interest in watering my lawn (then I’d have to mow it!), but I would like to water my vegetable garden. It rained tonight; I should have had my buckets out!