Ha Nguyen

As new reports on civilian deaths from drone strikes released, the drone issue has been raised again with the program’s effectiveness being questioned. It has fueled anger over the US drones.

The use of drones has been always controversial. Is the drone good or bad policy? And in reality, do drone strikes do more good than harm?

After Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are tired of spending money and blood in fighting on the ground. So drones, the unmanned US aerial vehicles, seem to be the best choice for the country’s counter-terrorism efforts for years to come for its ability of lessening the need to send troops into harm’s way and reducing the number of US casualties.

Yes, the use of drones has proved to be saving American lives. But they have killed innocent people. So how should we judge it?

Although “the drone strikes were legal because of the right to self-defense” under the international law, as stated by US State Department legal advisor Harold Koh, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said that the US was violating international law by carrying out strikes against a country that never attacked the US.

Another much discussed issue is the way the Obama administration has carried out hundreds of strikes through a secret process sealed off from other branches of government. President Obama approves each strike himself through “kill lists” in some cases and the standard of evidence to carry out these attacks is not known. His administration has not provided public reports on the targets and results on drone strikes.

But the more controversial aspect of the drone strikes is their collateral damage. The strikes did not only kill targeted militants but also innocent civilians.

According to the New America Foundation, there were approximately 300 civilian deaths from US drone strikes between 2004 and the present. But the number seems much greater than what the US government has reported, approximately 700 since 2004, including nearly 200 children, according to a recent survey by human rights experts at Stanford Law School and the New York University School of Law.

“Signature” targeting, the CIA’s practice of approving strikes in Pakistan based on patterns of suspicious behavior, has been the source of controversy. The change in tactics, introduced in 2008, has resulted in fewer deaths of high-value targets and in more deaths of lower-level fighters. Drone critics make the claim that regular citizen behaviors can easily be mistaken for militant signatures. The Anti-War Committee asserted that “the physical distant between the drone and its shooter makes lack of precision unavoidable.”

Together with civilian casualties, the weaponized drones have eliminated 22 of al-Qaeda’s top 30 leaders. “The drone attacks were effective and would continue,” stated Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. But with that high number of innocent civilians killed, the effectiveness of drones is being questioned.

The ‘drone war’ has therefore resulted in a rise of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, where 95 per cent of US drone strikes have occurred. Almost all Pakistanis (97 per cent, according to Pew polling from June) expressed disapproval and believed they kill too many innocent people (94 per cent). “Drone strikes may well contribute to the extremism and terrorism the US seeks to deter,” said Congressman of Minnesota Keith Ellison in New York Times.

After a September drone strike that killed 13 civilians, a local Yemeni activist told CNN, “I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen joined the likes of al-Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake. This part of Yemen takes revenge very seriously.” A Yemen villager named Mohammed told The Washington Post, “If the Americans are responsible, I would have no choice but to sympathize with al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda is fighting America.”

We don’t know how long it will take to end this War of Terror and how many innocent civilians will die before the drone strikes can eliminate all Talibans and al-Qaeda militants.

But we are afraid that if it continues to kill innocent civilians, it will increase hatred among those who lost their family members and friends. They will in return plot revenge and take revenge, like what the Yemen villagers said.

Is it sowing the seeds for the next 9/11 just as the America’s intervention in the Middle East showed the seeds for the last?

Demonstrators carry a giant mock pipeline while calling for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline during a rally in front of the White House in Washington on Nov. 6, 2011. Photo by Joshua Roberts, Reuters

One of Obama’s main goals to realize in his second term is addressing global warming. This target was highlighted in his re-election speech on the Hill and then confirmed in his State of Union message.

The president soon has to determine whether or not to approve a project that ranks as one of the top climate decisions this year. But it is a tough decision to make as if he says ‘no’ it would hurt the US-Canada relationship and if he says ‘yes’, it’s against his commitment to take action on climate change.

Here is what the president should do: say ‘No.’ There are right reasons for that rejection.

The Keystone XL pipeline, if built, would open up the tar sands to major exploitation that would involve environmental damage. Carbon-intensive process of extracting crude from Alberta’s oil sands will destabilize the planet, according to Bill MacKibben, co-founder of 350.org, an international environmental organization.

Alberta, the Canadian province, has 1.8 trillion barrels of oil contained within the tar sands. Extracting and burning all of that tar would cause a global temperature increase of about 0.7 degrees F. That is about half of the warming that humans have already caused. 

Sierra Club called it “the dirtiest oil project in the country.” People living in the affected areas are concerned not only about the project’s impact on climate but also about the spills it could cause. Regulators said there is always some risk of spill. The people’s concerns are reasonable because who can make sure that it would be properly managed all the time. 

Another reason for not approving the construction is that with the shale gas boom driven by hydraulic fracturing, the country in time will not need to import energy. The International Energy Agency estimates that the US could become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 with such technologies. And the tar sands oil would not help secure the country’s energy system because the project was never designed for American security in the first place, as noted by Rep. Ed Markey, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee. The oil shipped though it would be sold to the highest global bidder, according to him. 

Like hydraulic fracturing, the most advanced process to frack oil and gas, tar sands oil would make us more dependent on fossil fuel. As Joe Nocera of The New York Times put it, the emphasis should be on demand, not supply. The country’s economic need for the tar sands would evaporate if it stopped consuming so much of the world’s oil. Refusing to import crude oil from Canada through Keystone pipeline is a way to start to move away from fossil fuels.

Although the reality is that we are dependent on fossil fuel in a near term, we need to find ways to build a bridge to a different energy future before it’s too late. We need to act now, just as Obama pledged in his State of the Union address that “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

To weight its costs and benefits, Obama turned down the project’s permit application a year ago, which forced the project developer, TransCanada, to reroute the pipeline. His delay in approval has shown that Obama has been taking seriously what he has vowed to address climate change. The President laid out a goal in his first year of office of reducing the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.

The current debate on hydraulic fracturing – the most advanced process to frack oil and natural gas – makes us confused.

Is fracking creating enormous impacts in economy and business? Or is it degrading our eco-system? Does this help secure the country’s energy system or make it more dependent on fossil fuel?

America’s shale gas boom driven by fracking technology has been seen as the most important event in decades and believed to be an ‘energy revolution.’ The production of shale gas through fracking is the most significant development in the US energy sector in generations, as declared by Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and George Mitchell, chairman of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation. The International Energy Agency estimates that the US could become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 with such technologies.

One of the major benefits of the shale gas production from this fracking revolution, as claimed by the industry, is “helping reduce energy costs.” The other benefits brought in by this advanced method include creating jobs, reducing US dependence on coal, which would help improve air quality and fight climate change.”

For those reasons, there are suggestions that the federal government should embrace hydraulic fracturing and take full advantage of its economic and security benefits.

But there's another argument to not promote fracking. It's for the sake of our environment which should be greatly considered. 

The natural gas glut has played a welcome role in the reduced growth rate of US carbon dioxide emissions and the climate benefits of switching from coal to natural gas are clear. But the extracting it can be very dirty as the technology pollutes water supplies and creates contaminated air if the drilling and fracking are not done properly. “A lot of fracking is done by mom-and-pop drillers” that do not maintain high drilling standards, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The leakage of uncombusted natural gas from wellheads and pipelines would undermine the carbon advantage.

There are statistics that suggested fracking would cost the environment and public safety more than the economic benefits it creates.

The DC-based non-governmental organization, Food & Water Watch, said the 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics employment claims in counties with shale gas development in Pennsylvania are baseless and its analysis of actual jobs data shows little evidence of large job gains. The organization, and other critics, claimed that shale gas drilling increases drinking water contamination. The growing scientific consensus is that natural gas is a false solution for global climate change although it burns more cleanly than oil and coal. Continuing to burn fossil fuels will only worsen the future consequences and societal costs of global climate change.

The natural gas is temporarily cheap but will it be still cheap in the next few decades when the fossil fuel is closer to its limit? It is going to send the price soaring as a limited amount will be produced.

But after all, this extraction method makes us more dependent on natural gas, which is still fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is limited and once it’s gone, it’s gone. This is the reason why Germany wants to limit fracking and the French, despite sitting on shale reserves estimated to be the second largest in Europe, bans fracking and imports 98% of its natural gas.

The popular claim is that the US has 100 years worth of natural gas. How would we go after the supply of natural gas is gone? It takes many decades to develop and switch the entire country over to alternative. This should be a transition for the US while looking for developing sustainable and renewable energies. This transitional period should be used wisely as Friedman said: “A sustained gas glut could undermine new investments in wind, solar, nuclear and energy efficiency systems – which have zero emissions.”

To be wise in this fracking era, leaders should partner with government officials and environmental organizations, and decision makers in states must carefully weigh the costs against actual employment data, not against the rosy economic projections of industry.

This Pulitzer prize winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine depicts a starving child crawling towards a UN food camp nearby while the vulture is waiting nearby for the child to die so that it can it.

This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

When Obama took office in 2009, he made ethics a signature issue. In his campaign for the presidency, Obama abandoned public financing. The president, beginning his second term, however, seems to go in direct contradiction to what he claimed.

Two months after winning the re-election, Obama set up a permanent advocacy organization, Organizing for Action (OFA), that enlists his supporters to fight for his policy agenda.

Obama’s former campaign manager Jim Menissa who chairs the new group describes the organization as an extension of Obama’s successful bid for a second term.

With a goal of raising $50 million to help Obama carry out his agenda of fighting for issues like immigration reform, climate change, balanced deficit reduction, and reducing gun violence, the new group is expected to be one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations. This lobbying group is subject to few regulations that are seen as unclear and no taxes, as it has been set up as a tax-exempt “social welfare group.”

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a leading reform group, calls OFA “dangerous and unprecedented.” 

Criticism has been escalating over the organization’s donorship. Unlike its campaign’s old limits, it accepts unlimited personal and corporate contributions and donors get privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president.  The recent Washington Post editorial puts this as “an open invitation to donors who want access and influence on policy decisions.” The conservative super PAC American Crossroads released a video last week mocking the group as “Organizing for Acce$$.” The appearance of the president and his aides at fund raising events, according to the Post, would give “big donors the chance to ask Obama about a pet project or appointment.”

The White House denies a report that it is selling access to the president. But it’s a fact that anyone who writes a $500,000 check is put on the national advisory board to have a ‘facetime’ with the president four times a year. Isn’t that a lot of access for a president who refuses to answer questions from the press about his action?

The New York Times says “any corporation with a matter pending before the administration can give lavishly to Organizing for Action as a way of currying favor.” The Post labels that a “dark money temptation” and calls for the President to “wake up to the dangers in Organizing for Action.” Isn’t it giving “a green light to a new stampede of special interest money”? Two years ago, Obama used these words to denounce the Citizen United Supreme Court decision striking down many campaign finance limits.

Obama, on his fifth year as president, is poised to have a legacy by 2016. The OFA is Obama’s formidable campaign that he promised to put behind Democratic House candidates and it is serving as the President’s tool to further this agenda. The organization’s first efforts began early this month with thousands of Obama supporters being deployed through GOP held districts around the country to rally for support of stricter background checks for gun buyers. Some Obama allies say the president views FOA as a way of marshaling his political power.

As Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) said: “The president’s priority is to try to pass the agenda that he ran on, and everything he’s doing now is in pursuit of that goal.”

Without corporate contributions, the FOA would still be able to run with other financial sources and a limit in donations would give the organization the political spirit that helped Obama win in 2008.

After coming back from a trip to the Grand Canyon, I posted the photos I took of its amazing scenery on my Facebook personal account. It was my first time ever visiting one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and its natural beauty amazed me. And not many people have done that. Even thinking back on it now, I’m filled with a feeling of excitement. My Facebook friends were able to get to know about my adventure. Lots of positive comments came back, which meant that I was able to repeatedly relive the high points of my trip. It was immensely satisfying feeling. So was Facebook making me happy?

A new study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer review journal, has found out the positive side of using Facebook. The report, Why is Facebook So Successful? Psychophysiological Measures Describe a Core Flow State While Using Facebook, says that the use of Facebook is associated with people’s relaxation and happiness. It points out that the successful spread of social networking services might be related to a specific positive affective state experienced by users. The researchers, from American and Italian universities, collected measurements of physical and psychological responses such as breathing rate, brain activation, and pupil dilation, designed to assess a person’s psychological state. The research was done on a group of individuals participating in either a relaxing or stressful task or being online on their own personal Facebook account. The results revealed a significantly different experience for stress or relaxation exposure compared to the response to Facebook.

In contrary to a study that suggests that seeing other people's happy lives on Facebook makes us depressed, a new study associates people's happiness with Facebook use

I found this study’s finding interesting because there have been many written about the negative impacts of social networking sites on people’s behavior, such as faking identity, losing face-to-face communication, becoming miserable and addiction.

A lot has been written about “Facebook addiction”. A study from the University of Chicago suggests that “Facebook and Twitter are more addictive than cigarettes or alcohol.” Why are people addicted to Facebook? Because it makes people feel good when using it. Would you want to spend time on something that makes you feel good? Although the study did not confirm any particularly strong relationship between the use of online social networks and life satisfaction, it would seem that Facebook is something of a savior for the users, giving them relaxing and happy moments. One of the main goals of social networking is building and extending friendship and relationship. Facebook is a perfect platform for this aim as it connects people all around the world, helping them expand social network and even reliving old relationship through messages and pictures. This is why it has reached 1 billion users to become the largest social networking site.

The academic literature reveals that social relationships are important contributors to our happiness. Facebook helps people make friends easily while the creation of this network of friends are often not easy in the ‘offline’ world. Yes, a large circle of friends makes people feel more popular, more socialized, especially for those with low self-confidence. According to David Myers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy-and Why, extroverted people are more involved with others and have a large circle of friends, which lead to greater social support, an important contributor to well-being. Extroverts say they are happy.