Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

To: David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Dear Mr. Plouffe,

I have read with great alarm press reports that the Barack Obama campaign is in discussions to pay off the approximately $25 million campaign debt Hillary Clinton has generated in her increasingly desperate and destructive bid for the Democratic nomination. As one of over 1.5 million loyal contributors to the Obama for America campaign, I want to strongly and unequivocally express to you my opposition to any such plan.

Hillary Clinton has conducted one of the most divisive and racially charged Democratic primary campaigns in recent memory. She has waged this campaign while being bankrolled by a small group of wealthy Democratic power brokers and her personal fortune of over $109 million. As the campaign has gotten more desperate, her wealthy backers have threatened the Speaker of the House, the Democratic party chairman, and others to continue to back Hillary Clinton’s quixotic quest for the nomination. She has launched negative racially charged attacks, attempted to undermine the general election viability of the presumptive Democratic nominee, and disparaged your donors - we the American people - as "latte-drinkers", "eggheads" and "cultists". She has done this while being consistently and soundly defeated by the very people she has disparaged at the final metric of consequence in a democracy - the ballot box.

Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign over $11 million from her own fortune. She loaned this money to purchase negative ads against Barack Obama. She loaned this money knowing there was no possibility of her winning the nomination. Among the many people her campaign owes money is Mark Penn and his company. Mark Penn (who is owed about $5 million), her former chief strategist, was in large part responsible for her scorched-Earth campaign tactics. She also owes substantial sums to well-meaning small businesses that provided services to her campaign assuming that they would be paid back.

I can see a case being made to pay back money owed by her campaign to American businesses that have been cheated by her campaign. However, I can see no rationale to use our campaign contributions to pay back Hillary Clinton, Mark Penn and others involved with their shameful campaign. The responsibility to settle these debts lies with the Hillary Clinton campaign and her donors - not us. While the American people struggle to hold on to their homes as Washington tells them they have been irresponsible with their finances, it would be a grave insult for the Obama campaign - a campaign built on the aspirations of the American people - to bail out rich millionaires like Hillary Clinton and Mark Penn using the hard earned money of common American citizens.

I must make clear that I did not contribute to your campaign to have my hard earned money be diverted to Hillary Clinton’s or Mark Penn’s personal bank accounts. I contributed to Obama for America because I believe in the candidate and his vision of America. I exercised my first amendment rights, along with over 1.5 million others,  to make that vision a reality.

However, there now appears to be a real risk that my campaign contribution will end up in Hillary Clinton’s coffers. To clarify your position and reassure your supporters, I urge you to publicly offer a statement on your campaign’s position on this issue. Until that time, to avoid any misappropriation, I will withhold further contributions to your campaign. I am confident that the Obama for America campaign will make the right decision and resolve this matter without delay.

Sincerely,

Mash

Through the race-stained lens of the Democratic nomination race I am a Brown American. I have many American friends. But today they are apparently White Americans, Black Americans, Brown Americans, Red Americans, and Yellow Americans. I do not have enough buckets to store and segregate my friends of many hues and many colors. Repeatedly and often I mix colors and leave out the qualifier and focus on my American friends.

It is not that I don’t see the colors. I do. I am often reminded - sometimes quite harshly - of my own color and my own place in the fabric of a society that, like other societies, is struggling to unify and coexist.

If you want to cut me up and label me, there are other favorites of the day. I am a Muslim American. I am an Immigrant American. Then there are others which don’t quite fit the stereotype. I am white-collar. I am college educated. I am a suburban elite.

I am a pollster’s dream. I can check off many boxes at one time. I am a cross-sample.

I am also a voter. Once I am in the voting booth, I am reduced once again to an American - no qualifiers. My vote counts - not one half, not three-fifths. I get one whole vote - the same vote as a  White American, Black American, Red American or Yellow American.

When the Democratic nomination battle whittled down to two, the Democrats had made history. For the first time in American history, either a woman or an African American would be the nominee of a major political party. The Democrats had two strong candidates and it felt like either way it would be a giant leap forward for this nation. It was also sobering. It was inevitable that when the Democrats finally fielded their nominee, sexism or racism would rear its ugly head. It would not be easy to push past this barrier in American public life. It would not be easy for either a woman or an African American to rise to the most powerful position in the world. However, if it happened it would be truly historic and a testament to the strength of American democracy.

I have great affection for President Bill Clinton. And I had similar affection for the former First Lady. So I was undecided as to who I would favor. All that changed after South Carolina.

What began as race baiting in South Carolina has reached its sad and tragic depths today. In trolling for votes in West Virginia, Hillary Clinton has chosen the path of division. It started with her surrogates on Tuesday night, and continued with her campaign strategists on Wednesday morning and has now reached its filthy bottom with the candidate herself. Hillary Clinton has declared herself the candidate of the White people - White Americans. The working, hard-working, White Americans. She said:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There’s a pattern emerging here," she said.

It is a deliberate strategy by the Clinton campaign. It is shameful.

I chose to support Barack Obama after South Carolina. All my life I have grown up searching for Bobby Kennedy - someone with the vision for a better tomorrow and with the intellect and the commitment to make that tomorrow happen. After South Carolina I found him. Here was a man who saw within our grasp a more unified nation, who had  the strength to lead this nation forward, and who had the strength to battle the inevitable challenges that would be thrown our way. His vision - a tomorrow that I want for my seven-year-old daughter - was that we are not White Americans, Black Americans, Brown Americans, Red Americans, or Yellow Americans; that we are not red states or blue states; that we are the United States of America.

Barack Obama envisioned an ideal for America that is basic and foundational - that inspired a movement and is now poised to change this nation and this world. Beyond the policy positions and the hard work of putting policy into action, Obama offered a unifying vision. I support his vision and his candidacy for the most selfish of reasons. I support it for my daughter and her future.

Barack Obama need not have had a monopoly on this vision. Hillary Clinton had the opportunity to also move this country in that direction. But, sadly, the arc of her candidacy went in the opposite direction. What could have been an inspiring campaign instead succumbed to the baser instincts of race baiting and the politics of division.

I do not want to live in Hillary Clinton’s America. I do not want my daughter to grow up in Hillary Clinton’s America. I want to live in the United States of America. As this country tries to move forward toward racial equality, I do not want a presidential candidate to pit White against Black - one race against another - for a few extra votes. I want a candidate who can inspire this nation to move toward its promise and its ideals, not away from them. Hillary Clinton has embarrassed herself as she desperately tries to hold on to a fantasy. She has become a race baiter on the biggest stage of them all - on the campaign trail for the presidency of the United States. She has embarrassed this country and debased its ideals.

This Brown American - this American - wants her to stop.

Today marks 37 years of independence for a tiny country I love, a country that gave me birth before it was itself born, a country founded on the belief that freedom is precious and worth dying for, a country of brave martyrs and brave survivors, a country of unfulfilled promises called Bangladesh.

Thirty seven years ago today the Pakistan army and their Islamist allies launched a campaign of genocide against 75 million of its own citizens. The army was intent on massacring into submission 75 million Bengalis who had committed a singularly unforgivable crime. Months earlier the Bengalis had gone to the polls and voted for a candidate of their choice to become the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. The Pakistan army responded to the vote with a genocide. In the name of "God and a united Pakistan" the killing began.

In the end, the Pakistan army failed in its purpose. Nine months later, an army that had engaged in the killing of millions of its citizens surrendered in humiliation to the Indian army and Bangladeshi freedom fighters. An army that was so adept in machine gunning unarmed civilians proved to be no match for men and women who could shoot back.

A new nation was born. But at great cost. Up to three million Bengalis were killed in nine months of genocide. Two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Bengali women were raped. Ten million refugees had fled to India. Cities were devastated, villages had been razed, and the new country’s intellectual class had been massacred in a last minute frenzy of madness.

I was a child during the genocide of Bangladesh. I am one of the lucky ones - I survived. But I have been haunted all my life by memories of those who did not. I am haunted by watching the hopes of those who fought so bravely for the ideals of democracy, for freedom to speak without fear of persecution, for freedom from relgious bigotry, for freedom from poverty, dashed repeatedly over the last three decades. I have watched the Islamists who were apparently defeated in 1971 come creeping back into the Bangladeshi political mainstream. I have watched the cottage industry of genocide denial grow in Bangladesh. I have watched as family members of the millions killed have pleaded in vain for some measure of justice. I have watched known genocide perpetrators live as free men in Bangladesh, in the United States and United Kingdom. I have been again and again let down by successive American governments that pay lip service against genocide after the fact but do nothing to prevent them. I have had to witness the top American diplomat in Bangladesh have tea with a leading Islamist and known perpetrator of genocide.

I have grown weary and my hair is graying. The child that lived through the genocide is now a grown man. In the years to come, the generation that lived through the genocide will be gone forever. Gone will be the eyewitnesses to one of history’s most brutal killing sprees.

So we collect our stories and collect every fragment of documentation we can find. We want to leave for our children the memory of what our fathers and mothers fought and died for. We want to leave for the world the memory of a genocide that the world should never forget.

Today my good friend and fellow blogger Rezwan has launched a website to collect what needs to be collected. Bangladesh Genocide Archive has been launched as a platform to collect together in one place on the Internet the available documentation on the genocide perpetrated on the people of Bangladesh in 1971. For our children and for the world.

My life began the year that of Robert Francis Kennedy was taken away. Yet I have been moved by his words. Growing up, Bobby Kennedy represented to me the promise and the possibility of America. It is that promise that brought me to its shores and it is that promise that makes me proud to be a citizen.

Four decades later a new generation, my daughter’s generation, will inherit that promise and that possibility. This morning, in a sweeping 30 minute speech, Barack Obama gave me hope that my daughter will grow up in an America that will be a more perfect union - an America full of promise and possibility.

Nearly forty two years ago Bobby Kennedy stepped up to the podium at the University of Cape Town in South Africa to speak against apartheid and of the American struggle with its own racial history. He began:

I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

Bobby Kennedy spoke of the struggle to overcome racial prejudices in America in personal terms:

For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality, on social class or race — discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and to the command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: "No Irish Need Apply." Two generations later President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s progress because they were Catholic or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums — untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?

In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens, and to help the deprived both white and black, than in the hundred years before that time. But much, much more remains to be done. For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the law; and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted, the injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and of Watts and of the South Side Chicago.

He then described some of the road traveled and the challenges that still lie ahead:

But a Negro American trains now as an astronaut, one of mankind’s first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the benches of our court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts for social justice between all of the races.

We have passed laws prohibiting — We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of centuries — of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and degradation and pain.

So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside all of us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important to all to understand — though change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.

Bobby Kennedy spoke of hope at a time of racial turmoil in America and the world. Much has changed in the decades since. But many challenges lie ahead as our prejudices continue to collide with our ideals.

Today Barack Obama challenged America to carry on the work of overcoming the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination. His speech was both personal in its depth and sweeping in its scope. He asked of all of us to play our part:

I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

…

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

It has been said that his campaign transcends race, but today Barack Obama transcended his campaign by speaking to America about an issue that has the potential to deeply divide us or to finally unite us. He spoke to the fulcrum between our hopes and our fears. Our hope that we will leave for our children a society that will indeed judge them by the content of their character and our fear that we will bequeath a country and a world divided by the color of their skin. Barack Obama has now bet his entire candidacy on the gamble that America and its future is a place of hope and not of fear.

I place that bet with him because I want to believe that my child, a child of color living in America, will grow to adulthood in a country that will continue to work toward its promise of a more perfect union.

Last month in Virginia I cast my vote for Barack Obama. Today I am certain I made the right choice. Whether he is the next president of the United States or not, Barack Obama today enriched American politics and the idea of America. Today was a historic day. It was a speech for this generation and the next. I was privileged to have been alive to witness it.

No words this year.

Last week I received an email from a dear friend. The email came from Sweden, on Valentine’s Day. I have spent the better part of this week trying to craft a response. I have failed. This post is my attempt at a response.

This blog is anti-torture. There is a logo on the sidebar of this blog that declares the unequivocal position of this blog and its author. Being anti-torture seems to me to be a commonsense position to hold. It is however not a position that is universally held. There are torturers in this world and there are those who aid and abet the torturers. Then there are the victims. My friend, Tasneem Khalil, is a torture victim.

On May 10th of last year I received an urgent email from a friend. It was 4:04pm and I was at my mundane day job. Soon many other emails arrived with the same news. Tasneem Khalil, a Bangladeshi journalist and researcher for Human Rights Watch, had been picked just hours earlier by the Bangladesh military. Just before 1am on the morning of May 11 (Bangladesh time) members of Bangladesh military’s intelligence services, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), had taken away Tasneem from his home in Dhaka. Tasneem’s wife, left alone with their 6-month old baby boy, managed to get word out of his abduction.

Via email and SMS Bangladeshi bloggers from all over the world came together within minutes of hearing the news. Soon blog posts were going up everywhere. American and British bloggers joined in and the news spread quickly. Soon Human Rights Watch put out a press release demanding his release, and CNN and the Associated Press put the news out over the wire. After sustained pressure from human rights organizations, foreign diplomats, and the press Tasneem was released 22 hours later. He was alive, but he had been tortured.

After his release, Sweden offered Tasneem, his wife Suchi and his baby boy Tiyash, political asylum. Today they have begun a new life in Sweden, in exile.

On February 14th Human Rights Watch released a 44-page report  (PDF) entitled "The Torture of Tasneem Khalil: How the Bangladesh Military Abuses Its Power Under the State of Emergency". The report, in first person testimony, details how the DGFI brutally beat and threatened Tasneem during his 22 hour ordeal.

Tasneem was taken to one of the DGFI’s torture chambers known as a "black hole". The HRW report explains:

In Dhaka alone, the DGFI maintains at least three unofficial detention centers, known as "black holes." "Black Hole 1" is located in DGFI headquarters inside Dhaka cantonment near BNS Haji Moshin naval base. "Black Hole 2" is near Kachukhet, a civilian residential area inside Dhaka cantonment. "Black Hole 3" is maintained in the Uttara residential district near Zia International Airport.

 Of his ordeal Tasneem writes in the HRW report:

The Forum article made my interrogators furious. They started beating me again mercilessly, from all possible directions with hands and batons and kicks. I pleaded with them to give me one last chance. I said I would not do those things again. But one person said I had already "made the blunder." I think this was a reference to my lunch with the diplomats.

I started begging for mercy. The beating continued for some time. Then another person said, "We will think about giving you a chance, but you have to do as we say." He said I had to write a confession to the AIG [Additional Inspector General] of police, saying what they wanted me to say. Then I had to beg for his mercy.

…

There were two CCTV cameras in the corners attached to the ceiling. There was a fan. I was sitting in front of a table and three batons were on the table along with some stationery. One was a wooden baton, about a meter long. The other two were covered with black plastic. Poking out of the end of these were metal wires which appeared to fill the plastic covers. The plastic and wire batons were a little shorter than the wooden one. I assume these were the batons they tortured me with. When one guy saw that I was looking at them, he put them aside. I’m not sure if they used electricity on me. The pain often came like shocks, but they were hitting me so hard that I’m not sure whether it was just the force that hurt like this or if it was electricity.

They tortured Tasneem because he had dared to write an article critical of the Bangladesh military and he had just recently given an interview to the Washington Post. It was not a ticking bomb scenario. It was pure thuggery, as all torture is.

Tasneem’s torturers barked that he was "anti-state" because his journalism hurt the military’s "image":

And then the second voice said, "Baanchot [an abusive word], you have only reported on negative things. And you have fucked Bangladesh by your bloody anti-state reports. Whatever you have reported for CNN in all these years is all negative news. You shit on the same plate you eat, you are a traitor. You work for a foreign agency, and damage Bangladesh’s image outside."

Someone started punching the side and back of my head. I started crying out in pain. Then someone cried out an order, "Bring in salt and nails!"

Tasneem’s torturer was the military government of Bangladesh. It was the state torturing its own citizen. The most fundamental responsibility of a government is the protection of its own people. When a government not only fails to protect its own citizens but instead actively terrorizes and tortures them it has lost all legitimacy, moral or legal, to govern. It has become anti-state.

Yet there are defenders of Bangladesh’s military government. The defenders include elements of civil society within Bangladesh who see the military as their meal ticket to power and foreign governments such as the Bush administration and the British government who believe only the iron hand of the military can control 150 million people who are perceived to be unfit to govern themselves. To these defenders the minor inconveniences of torture, death in custody, extra-judicial killings, suspension of fundamental rights, and the occasional mass beating are the cost of doing business. Certainly to these defenders the torture of one man, Tasneem Khalil, does not matter.

To me it matters. It matters that my friend was tortured. It matters that, save for the overwhelming response to his detention, he would today be a statistic - a dead body as a result of the uniquely Bangladeshi opera known as "crossfire". It matters that the 150 million citizens of Bangladesh, who earned their freedom through blood and sacrifice, are today ruled by the gun.

So, this is my response to the email you sent me last week Tasneem. I was told over the weekend, in a harshly worded diatribe from a man with little regard for this "Virginia-based blogger", that we bloggers are cowards. That we don’t understand real life. That we hide behind our keyboards. That we are irrelevant.

Perhaps.

But I would not trade a thousand words that I write that fall on deaf ears for the one email that you sent me. I am glad you are here my friend. It is, in the sum total of my life, one of the facts I am most proud of.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr, a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, is expected to make landfall late Thursday (Friday morning Bangladesh time) somewhere between Kolkata and the western coastline of Bangladesh. Millions of people along the coastline of Bangladesh and India are in the path of this massive storm.  The storm is expected to weaken somewhat before making landfall. Bloomberg reports:

Tropical Cyclone Sidr’s winds strengthened to 241 kilometers (150 miles) per hour as it moved across the Bay of Bengal toward Kolkata in India and the west coast of Bangladesh, the U.S. Navy’s typhoon center said.

The eye of Sidr, a Category 4 storm, was 667 kilometers south of Kolkata at 11:30 p.m. local time yesterday, according to the latest advisory on the navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center Web site. The storm is moving north at 17 kilometers an hour.

Bangladesh authorities ordered thousands of people to evacuate coastal areas around Chittagong, Mongla and Cox’s Bazaar and raised the highest alert, Associated Press reported. In India, authorities issued warnings to residents in Kolkata and nearby coastal areas, the Hindu Times said.

…

Sidr’s winds were gusting to 296 kilometers per hour and waves in the vicinity of the storm’s eye were 12 meters (40 feet) high, according to the advisory. The cyclone is expected to maintain strength today before weakening as it approaches Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, and Bangladesh late tomorrow.

Bangladesh has a tragic history of devastating cyclones. In 1970, the deadliest storm ever recorded, the Bhola Cyclone, struck Bangladesh and claimed up to 500,000 lives. Emergency preparedness has improved dramatically in independent Bangladesh since the Bhola Cyclone. I hope the evacuations and early warning systems will prevent a large loss of life from this storm as it comes ashore. I hope also that the forcasts predicting some weakening of this storm bear out and blunt the power of this cyclone.

My thoughts and prayers are with my friends and family and the entire people of Bangladesh as they once again confront nature’s wrath.

Update (11/15/2007 5:00PM):

Sidr made landfall along the western coastline of Bangladesh a few hours ago. It accelerated and did not lose any of its strength as it made landfall. It struck with maximum sustained winds of 150MPH as a very strong category 4 storm. The storm came ashore during high tide with potentially catastropic consequences. Damage is expected from the storm surge, wind and resultant flooding:

A powerful cyclone slammed into Bangladesh on Thursday night, tearing down flimsy houses, toppling trees and power poles, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in the low-lying nation. 

Tropical Cyclone Sidr swept in from the Bay of Bengal packing winds of 149 mph (240 kilometers per hour), buffeting southwestern coastal areas within a 155-mile radius of its eye with heavy rain and storm surges predicted to reach 20 feet high.

Sidr’s eye crossed the Khulna-Barisal coast near the Sundarbans mangrove forests around 9:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. ET), the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said. It was centered over the Baleshwar River in Barguna district.

In the coastal districts of Bagerhat, Barisal and Bhola, residents said the storm flattened thousands of flimsy straw and mud huts, and uprooted trees and electric poles.

"We sitting out the storm by candlelight," resident Bishnu Prashad said by phone from Bagerhat.

At least 620,000 people had moved into official shelters and 3.2 million people were expected to be evacuated in all, said Ali Imam Majumder, a senior government official in Dhaka.

No casualties were immediately reported, but rescue teams were on standby, forest official Mozharul Islam said in Khulna.

Communications with remote forest areas and offshore islands were temporarily cut off.

The extent of the damage and loss of life will not be known at least until daybreak in Bangladesh. It will probably take several days beyond that to take stock of the devastation. I will update this post as news becomes available from Bangladesh.

Update (11/16/2007 2:56 am): Early reports state that at least 242 people have been killed by Sidr. Communications and electricity are down across Bangladesh. The real scale of the devastation is not yet known. MSNBC reports:

A cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh’s coast with 140 mph winds killed at least 242 people, leveled homes and forced the evacuation of 650,000 villagers before heading inland and losing power Friday, officials said.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr roared across the country’s southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves. The storm left about 242 villagers dead from falling debris, said Nahid Sultana, an official at a cyclone control room in Dhaka.

By early Friday, the cyclone had weakened into a tropical storm and was moving across the country to the northeast, with overcast skies and wind speed falling to 37 mph, the department said.

Today is Eid ul-Fitr. It marks the end of the month of Ramadan and is a day of celebration, forgiveness, peace and unity.

On the occasion of Eid ul-Fitr, my family and I wish all of you peace, serenity, and joy. Eid Mubarak.

In a few hours from now former Vice President Al Gore will most likely be the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. If he wins, and I think he will, he should go for the trifecta.

The White House awaits. Buhdydharma at Daily Kos has a message for Mr. Gore: "Please?"

Good luck Mr. Vice President and, after you win, consider Buhdydharma’s request.

Update: Al Gore wins the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize press release:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.

Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

On this day in 1968 Robert Francis Kennedy lost his life to an assassin’s bullet.

In mourning him today we also celebrate his life. It was a life that gave the world hope. And with hope comes possibility. He said:

"Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed."

Rest in peace, Bobby.

In remembrance:

• Robert Kennedy’s speech at University of Cape Town
• Edward Kennedy’s tribute to Bobby Kennedy