HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX
High HDI	Medium HDI		Low HDI
1 Norway   2 Iceland   3 Australia   4 Luxembourg   5 Canada   6 Sweden   7 Switzerland   8 Ireland   9 Belgium 10 United States 11 Japan 12 Netherlands 13 Finland 14 Denmark 15 United Kingdom 16 France 17 Austria 18 Italy 19 New Zealand 20 Germany 21 Spain 22 Hong Kong, China      (SAR) 23 Israel 24 Greece 25 Singapore 26 Slovenia 27 Portugal 28 Korea, Rep. of 29 Cyprus 30 Barbados 31 Czech Republic 32 Malta 33 Brunei Darussalam 34 Argentina 35 Hungary 36 Poland 37 Chile 38 Estonia 39 Lithuania 40 Qatar 41 United Arab Emirates 42 Slovakia 43 Bahrain 44 Kuwait 45 Croatia 46 Uruguay 47 Costa Rica 48 Latvia 49 Saint Kitts and Nevis 50 Bahamas 51 Seychelles 52 Cuba 53 Mexico 54 Tonga 55 Bulgaria 56 Panama 57 Trinidad and Tobago	58 Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 59 Macedonia, TFYR 60 Antigua and Barbuda 61 Malaysia 62 Russian Federation 63 Brazil 64 Romania 65 Mauritius 66 Grenada 67 Belarus 68 Bosnia and       Herzegovina 69 Colombia 70 Dominica 71 Oman 72 Albania 73 Thailand 74 Samoa (Western) 75 Venezuela 76 Saint Lucia 77 Saudi Arabia 78 Ukraine 79 Peru 80 Kazakhstan 81 Lebanon 82 Ecuador 83 Armenia 84 Philippines 85 China 86 Suriname 87 Saint Vincent &      the Grenadines 88 Paraguay 89 Tunisia 90 Jordan 91 Belize 92 Fiji 93 Sri Lanka 94 Turkey 95 Dominican Republic 96 Maldives 97 Turkmenistan 98 Jamaica 99 Iran, Islamic Rep. of 100 Georgia 101 Azerbaijan 102 Occupied Palestinian        Territories 103 Algeria 104 El Salvador 105 Cape Verde 106 Syrian Arab Republic 107 Guyana 108 Viet Nam 109 Kyrgyzstan 110 Indonesia 111 Uzbekistan 112 Nicaragua	113 Bolivia 114 Mongolia 115 Moldova, Rep. of 116 Honduras 117 Guatemala 118 Vanuatu 119 Egypt 120 South Africa 121 Equatorial Guinea 122 Tajikistan 123 Gabon 124 Morocco 125 Namibia 126 Saõ Tomé and        Principe 127 India 128 Solomon Islands 129 Myanmar 130 Cambodia 131 Botswana 132 Comoros 133 Lao People’s Dem.        Rep. 134 Bhutan 135 Pakistan 136 Nepal 137 Papua New Guinea 138 Ghana 139 Bangladesh 140 Timor-Leste 141 Sudan 142 Congo 143 Togo 144 Uganda 145 Zimbabwe	146 Madagascar 147 Swaziland 148 Cameroon 149 Lesotho 150 Djibouti 151 Yemen 152 Mauritania 153 Haiti 154 Kenya 155 Gambia 156 Guinea 157 Senegal 158 Nigeria 159 Rwanda 160 Angola 161 Eritrea 162 Benin 163 Côte d’Ivoire 164 Tanzania, U. Rep. of 165 Malawi 166 Zambia 167 Congo, Dem. Rep. of the 168 Mozambique 169 Burundi 170 Ethiopia 171 Central African Republic 172 Guinea-Bissau 173 Chad 174 Mali 175 Burkina Faso 176 Sierra Leone 177 Niger

Previous post
Some geographic trivia (9/10/05)

The HD Report includes a table in which 177 nations and territories are ranked by a "Human Development Index" (HDI). This index is based on "life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income." The countries are divided broadly into high, medium and low human development.

Until I get around to converting the table from PDF, try your knowledge—or best guesses.

Which are the world's best developed and least developed countries?

Did the United States make the Top Ten before Katrina?

Which island-nations are best and least developed?

Which Caribbean nations fall into the "high development" category? And did You-Know-Who make it?

Where are the best and worst places to go in Central America?

Which Arab country is most highly developed?

Is Russia in a High, Middle or Low stage?

Answers tomorrow.
 

Today FEMA has added a note to the first page of the registration process—

Does the online application require Internet Explorer?

Yes and no.

Currently to complete your application online you must be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 or above. We are in the process of modifying the application so that it will be available to additional browsers.

If you do not have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, you may still be able to check the status of your application and update your information online once you have registered by phone.

Yes and No? The answer to the question is "YES"—period. (Is there any way we can stop the government from lying?)

And of course you might as well try predicting the next hurricane disaster as to predict when FEMA will be able to accept applications from other browsers. Great planning, guys!

Then there's this—

Received an Error Message?

Due to the heavy load on our online registration application some of you are receiving an error message when you try to apply. We apologize for this and ask you to call the FEMA Technical Helpdesk at 1-800-745-0243 for further assistance.

NBC Nightly News gave it a try last night (See "FEMA site frustration," but only if you're using IE6!). No luck. And forget the Helpdesk!

Still, considering that FEMA recommends calling between 2 am and 6 am if you want to register by phone—1-800-621-FEMA (3362) and 1-800-462-7585 for hearing/speech impaired—registering online may be worth a try.

Help for Mozilla and Firefox users

If you're using either Mozilla or Firefox, there's help! ChrisPederick.com is providing a "User Agent Switcher Extension" that will allow you to fill out the FEMA application using either browser. The extension works for Windows, MacOS X and Linux versions of Firefox and Mozilla. The folks at Macs Only! say they've tested the Mac version and it works.

Gee! All this in open-source software in just a few days for less than a gazillion dollars. You think they could get a Homeland Security or FEMA grant? Not likely unless they (1) are certified Republican donors, (2) raise the cost by a factor of at least a million, (3) do the job in not under six months to a year, and (4) keep the code "top secret."
 

Nancy Pelosi Stands Up for Justice, the Truth, and Slaps Down a Bushevik Reporter on CNN! We Love the New Nancy! Remember, to Beat Back the Republican Putsch, You Must Give as Good as You Get!

It was an interesting bit of theater. Kyra Phillips interviewed Nancy Pelosi. Diane04 has the complete transcript at Kos. Why everyone is excited about Pelosi is this—

PELOSI: Kyra, Kyra, Kyra...

PHILLIPS: It's Kyra. It's Kyra.

PELOSI: ... if you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll. But the (INAUDIBLE)...

The remark seems to have rankled, because Phillips returned to it near the close of the interview—

PHILLIPS: And by all due respect, nobody in this organization or any network is on the payroll of the Bush administration right now. Everybody has been challenging every leader in every agency in this disaster, because it's pathetic to see something like this happen in the United States and to see dead bodies still on the ground in -- on American soil. It is absolutely pathetic.

It's a little incoherent. I don't know what she means by "this organization or any network"? And I love the "right now." But she ended on as strong an editorial comment as you could wish. And perhaps Pelosi deserves credit for eliciting the statement.

But truth be told, Phillips asked Pelosi a question in the middle of the interview that deserves a better answer, or I should say a real answer.

PHILLIPS: You think politics had nothing to do with this disaster right now?

PELOSI: What I'm saying is, let's form an independent commission to look into that, to make an assessment of what the decisions were made...
....

PHILLIPS: All right, let me about [ask] you about an independent commission, because I addressed this to Senator Collins, and I addressed this to Senator Lieberman the other day. I mean, we had warnings before 9/11. We knew that there were intelligence failures. We knew where Osama bin Laden was. We knew there were issues among our intelligence agencies, and 9/11 happened, and then there were all these reports and all these investigations and all these commissions that were formed, and all this focus on terrorism.

Now, you had all these reports that were put forward talking about how this was going to happen to New Orleans, that Hurricane Pam, this project that was put forward, was showing and revealing all these problems with the levees and the hurricane -- or the flooding systems there. And we heard from the Army Corps of Engineer.

Now we see, despite all those warnings, what happened in New Orleans and what happened to other states. And now all of a sudden, everybody wants more investigations and more commissions. I mean, this is pathetic. How many things...

PELOSI: It is pathetic. It is pathetic.

PHILLIPS: ... have to go wrong in our country, and how many...
...

investigations and commissions do we need?

And this was Pelosi's pathetic answer—

PELOSI: We need as many until we make the country safer for the American people. We all have to settle down and take a deep breath, and say, How do we make the American people safer? And in order to do that, we have to have an assessment of how this happened.

First she implies that investigations and commissions are the appropriate tools for making the country safer. To paraphrase a saying, a lunatic is a person who makes a mistake and then goes on making it.

Then she asks us all to meditate and ponder the question "How do we make the American people safer?" mantra-fashion, it seems.

And then she would treat us all to another assessment (through an investigation by a commission or committee, of course).

As though wishing to disprove her own idea, Pelosi went on to say—

But let's take a very objective, nonpartisan look at this. We have a great example in the 9/11 commission, where people, in a bipartisan way, nonpartisan way, made an assessment of what happened leading up to 9/11 and what we can do to go forward to make America safer.

Do people still say "Oh, barf!"?

No. Kyra Phillips' question—How many things have to go wrong in our country, and how many investigations and commissions do we need?—may be dismissed as rhetorical because it's framed rhetorically. But it's a serious question that deserves an answer.

The question that Pelosi along with all her Congressional co-conspirators need to answer is this—We have already had Congressional investigations and commissions looking into what was needed in the event of a disaster such as Katrina. The results are as we see them. And many other examples, perhaps none so horrific as the current one, could be cited of post-investigation, post-commission failure.

Why should the American public tolerate more of the same? The public should know by now that these investigations aren't held for the public good but for the protection and self-aggrandizement it affords the politicians. Isn't it time that questions such as "Why didn't we save a city?" be taken out of the hands of politicians and reviewed by disaster planners and scientists? After all, Congress thought it wise to recuse itself from decisions by the Federal Reserve.

Maybe the commission that we really need would investigate in what other areas the public interest would be served by the creation of truly independent bodies shielded from partisan politics. Like public broadcasting, for instance.

Pelosi and all our Congressional leaders need to stop evading Kyra Phillips' question and give the public an honest answer. And the public needs to demand it.
 

Today's news template comes from Urban Search and Rescue. I've put the FEMA instructions in italics and colored in red where I had to fill in the blanks. With the FEMA press kit and story templates, you can whip out a story and still have time for a tall one at your favorite watering hole.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Local, state and federal emergency workers continue combing through rubble in the New Orleans area looking for survivors who may be trapped in the wreckage caused by Katrina.

[Verified facts about the disaster: When the disaster occurred, what happened (stick to the facts), where injured individuals were taken, whether there are confirmed fatalities (but not how many… those numbers tend to fluctuate.]

Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Mississippi and Louisiana coast a week ago Monday with such intensity that authorities were just baffled by the extent of the damage. Some fatalities have been confirmed, but authorities refuse to speculate on the total number of deaths because they say they tend to fluctuate. So far, however, unofficial body counts have only fluctuated upwards.

Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) urban search-and-rescue task forces are here working [12-hour shifts round-the-clock] round-the-clock in an effort to locate survivors.

Anecdote or detail of how many people have been found, where, etc.

Groups of people who appeared to be dazed were found walking along the Interstate. "That was the last place we expected to find them," said local FEMA coordinator Ray Sizzem. "There was just no way we could get to them, strung out like they were on an open road."

To solve the problem FEMA officials decided to invoke a plan developed during previous disaster exercises. Known as "herding," it called for survivors to be directed to a central location where they could be watched for signs of anarchy. "Fortunately we had both the Superdome and the Convention Center at our disposal," added Mr. Sizzem, "so we could check them for weapons and drugs before they even got through the door. After that it was only a matter of keeping them penned."

“Obviously, our hearts go out to everyone affected by this disaster,” stated [ESF-9 coordinating official,] Kay Oss, who coordinates urban search-and-rescue for FEMA Region VIII. “We will work as hard as we can for as long as we are needed to locate the missing individuals.”

FEMA search-and-rescue personnel are working side by side with local and state emergency workers, and [hundreds of volunteers] countless volunteers who have shown up to help with the rescue effort. Each member of the FEMA team[s] team is highly trained for search-and-rescue operations in damaged or collapsed structures, hazardous materials evaluations, stabilization of damaged structures, and can provide emergency medical care to the injured.

There now. Thanks to FEMA and the free press, you know all you need to know.

Ultimately New Orleans will be booming. A disaster takes funds that would normally go to insurance executives and stockholders and redistributes them, at least partially, among the gainfully employed.
 

Daniel Barenboim, world famous conductor of the Chicago Symphony and an Israeli citizen, has devoted considerable effort to the causes of peace and especially to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. As described on his website,

1) A Jew born during the Second World War - and an Israeli by nationality - he has worked closely over many years with three German orchestras - the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra - in an atmosphere of mutual affection and respect.

2) In the early 1990s, a chance meeting between Mr. Barenboim and the late Palestinian-born writer and Columbia University professor Edward Said in a London hotel lobby led to an intensive friendship that has had both political and musical repercussions. These two men, who should have been poles apart politically, discovered in that first meeting, which lasted for hours, that they had similar visions of Israeli/Palestinian possible future cooperation. They decided to continue their dialogue and to collaborate on musical events to further their shared vision of peaceful co-existence in the Middle East. This led to Mr. Barenboim's first concert on the West Bank, a piano recital at the Palestinian Birzeit University in February 1999, and to a workshop for young musicians from the Middle East that took place in Weimar, Germany, in August 1999.

The West-Eastern Divan Workshop took two years to organize and involved talented young musicians between the ages of 14 and 25 from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and Israel. The idea was that they would come together to make music on neutral ground with the guidance of some of the world's best musicians.

So Barenboim was in Israel to launch a book he coauthored with Edward Said. An Israeli military reporter wanted to interview him, but he refused so long as she was in military uniform. And the result? Why, Barenboim is an anti-semite! According to the AP report by Ravi Nessman,

Israel's education minister described the conductor Daniel Barenboim as a "real anti-Semite" yesterday after the musician refused to grant an interview to an Israel Army Radio reporter because she wore a military uniform to the launch of a book he co-wrote with a Palestinian.
....

The education minister, Limor Livnat, was outraged by the incident and said the conductor was "a real Jew-hater, a real anti-Semite."

Mr Barenboim, who was born in Argentina and raised in Israel, has had frequent spats with Israel's government. Last year, he angered Israeli officials when he criticised the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The conductor, in a telephone interview with Army Radio yesterday, did not deny the incident and defended his actions.

"Anti-Semitic? What is anti-Semitic about it? When I say a uniform should be worn to the right places and not to the wrong ones, there is nothing anti-Semitic about it, there is no logic to this," Mr Barenboim said. "I just thought that in this place, discussing a book written together with a Palestinian, it shows lack of sensitivity."

Oh, and have I ever mentioned the cooperation of the Israeli government in denying the Armenian holocaust?
 

Jim Rutenberg reports in the NY Times that

The 30-second ad features Mr. Bush's face superimposed upon a middle-aged man's naked torso as Mr. Ellner says of the president that "the emperor has no clothes." Mr. Ellner also introduces his partner, Simon Holloway, in the spot - which the campaign says is the first time in city history that a gay candidate has introduced his or her partner in a campaign commercial.

It all sounds on the up-and-up to me.

Tim Arnold, a media adviser to Mr. Ellner, said the station had at first agreed to sell the campaign advertising time but then rejected the advertisement after seeing it. The campaign has already spent about $250,000 to put the ad on the air.

Mr. Arnold said that when he pushed for a more detailed explanation of the rejection, a station representative told him that the station believed the advertisement was "disrespectful of the office of the president."

Mr. Arnold said Channel 5 was the only local station to reject the advertisement out of roughly 15 network or cable affiliates - including NY1 News, WABC and WNBC - that the campaign said it approached. The campaign said it did not try to place the ad on WWOR, which like Channel 5 is part the Fox Television Stations group, a unit of News Corporation.

Theoretically, refusing to run the ad is illegal—

Broadcast channels, which are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, are allowed to reject so-called issue advertisements from interest groups based on their content. But they are prohibited from doing so with ads from candidates.

"There is part of the statute that says the station cannot censor the content of a political ad," said a communications commission official who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the commission's general practice of avoiding public comment upon matters in which it is not involved. (The F.C.C. generally only acts on complaints; Mr. Ellner said he would probably file one but had not done so.)

The commission official said that after a station agrees to sell time for a campaign commercial, "the station is required to put it on the air - they have no option."

... the official said there was a way around the rules. While stations are required to accept all commercials for federal candidates, they can pick and choose the local races for which they will run commercials.

And stations in the past have cited that loophole after being accused of rejecting candidate spots based on their content.

There is a silver lining—

Mr. Ellner's team devised the spot in large part to appeal to gays and lesbians, and the borough's more liberal voters in general. Fox's refusal to run the ad is likely to help Mr. Ellner's aims.

The stations just came under the control of Roger Ailes, the Fox News Channel chairman, in August. A spokesman for Ailes said the decision was made by the local station. But you will note that even reporter Rutenberg speaks of "Fox's refusal."

A question raised neither by the Times nor the Ellner campaign is whether it was really the gay aspect of the commercial that the Fox station found "in poor taste."

Manhattan's Gawker says,

We admit we’ve been strongly considering voting for the cute gay guy running for Manhattan borough president. This is mostly because it’s a largely irrelevant job, so why not vote for the one who’s fun to look at?

You can watch the ad here. It's fun.
 

Previous posts
The Duumvirate (9/3/05)
George Bush: Cheerleader-in-Chief of Social Security "reform" (2/14/05)