We must think about disasters before they happen

BY OAKLEY BROOKS

I went to a flattened college Saturday. The names of the dead were scrawled on a sliver of salvaged dry-erase board. A crowd of gawking teenagers hovered near an excavator working the rubble, along with the dowdy, fidgeting headmistress. Periodically sobbing parents were hanging about in the background. When the searchers reached five students crushed below a staircase, and soldiers emerged from the rubble bearing black body bags, a grim practice followed: A rescue worker would bring a student's putrid backpack or purse to a shocked mother or father to confirm whom they'd found. And the waiting youngsters with camcorders and cell phone cameras flocked around the scene like moths to a light.

Bearing scars of grief in unwanted limelight

BY PETULA DVORAK

She makes herself do it.

Judy Shepard doesn't enjoy talking in front of people, living a public life, giving speeches.

``Speech class was my worst nightmare,'' she said.

Rights still to be won

BY JULIAN BOND

The civil rights struggle for legal equality in America today is no less necessary, nor worthy, than a similar struggle fought by blacks several decades ago. Now, as then, Americans are denied rights simply because of who they are. When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans gather in Washington Sunday for the National Equality March, they will invoke the unfulfilled promise in our Constitution that they, too, are due equal protection under the law.

A better way to health reform

BY MARTIN FELDSTEIN

The American health-care system suffers from three serious problems: Health-care costs are rising much faster than our incomes. More than 15 percent of the population has neither private nor public insurance. And the high cost of health care can lead to personal bankruptcy, even for families that do have health insurance.

Recovering the New Deal ideals

BY HAROLD MEYERSON

A disquieting phrase has entered our economic lexicon: ``new normal.'' The ``new normal'' economy that emerges from our recovery, many economists fear, won't look like the old normal, the American economy of the past couple of decades. It will look worse.

Let there be (incandescent) light

BY DAVID HENDERSON

What would Thomas Edison say?

Last month, stores in Europe stopped acquiring new stocks of Edison's brilliant invention. In truth, the traditional incandescent light bulb is terribly inefficient: Only about 10 percent of its energy output is in the form of visible light; the rest is emitted as heat. Switching everyone to alternatives such as compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) will result in fairly significant reductions in energy consumption, which will help Europe meet its targets for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

Ditch tax credit for first-time homebuyers

BY JAY HANCOCK

The economy will not begin to recover until home prices stop falling. That's what smart people counseled a year ago as things collapsed from Wall Street to Los Angeles, and they were right.

The subtext of a driving hazard

BY PETULA DVORAK

To boss: ``u will hv story in 5 mins''

To husband: ``u pickd up m yet? u r l8 4 class!''

Phone rings: ``Hello? Hi, Mom. Yes, yes, we're fine. The boys are fine. No, the weather is good. If you saw it on the Weather Channel, why are you calling me to ask? Yes, I'll make sure the boys wear jackets. Gotta go, Mom, I'll call you back.''

Living among the not-so-great unwashed

BY FRANK HARRIS III

A group of interplanetary aliens studying Americans might easily decide that we are the cleanest bunch of folks in the galaxy.

``They've got all these hand sanitizers,'' they would say to the Mother Ship. ``Stuff called Purell.''

After the Pax Americana

BY CHRISTOPHER LAYNE and BEJNAMIN SCHWARZ

The international order that emerged after World War II has rightly been termed the Pax Americana; it's a Washington-led arrangement that has maintained political stability and promoted an open global economic system. Today, however, the Pax Americana is withering, thanks to what the National Intelligence Council in a recent report described as a ``global shift in relative wealth and economic power without precedent in modern history'' -- a shift that has accelerated enormously as a result of the economic crisis of 2007-09.

The civil-rights struggle of today

BY CESAR J. BALDELOMAR

November 8, 2009, will mark the one-year anniversary of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcello Lucero's brutal murder at the hand of seven high school teens in the infamously anti-immigrant Suffolk County, New York. Unfortunately, it took the death of one human being to raise awareness of the injustices occurring in Suffolk County and across the United States, which, ironically, has always been a nation of immigrants.

Where could one find hope?

By VANESSA LOPEZ

After nearly a week of euphoria, I think it's time the overly optimistic Cuban-American community put their feet back on the ground. For the past week, I've heard all sorts of claims about the value of the Juanes concert, how it will build hope among Cuban youth, how it's a sign the regime is changing, how it's a sign the exile community is changing. I must respectfully disagree.

Keep our eyes on the prize

By JOE CARDONA

After the Juanes concert in Havana and the highs and lows it provided let's analyze the discourse and rhetoric left in its wake. As someone who on The Miami Herald's ``Other Views'' page took issue with the concert's potential to legitimize the regime that oppresses Cuba, I was quite pleased and inspired by some of what I saw take place at the plaza de la revolución (revolutionary plaza) and yet I my stance against the violations committed and perpetuated by the Cuban government was reaffirmed.

Reagan's missile defense triumph

BY ANDREW NAGORSKI

If Ronald Reagan was watching the news from afar last week, he had to be smiling. Not because of President Obama's decision to abandon the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Reagan certainly wouldn't like the political symbolism of that gesture -- walking away from an agreement with two allies in Central Europe and appearing to bend to pressure from the Kremlin. As a partisan fighter, he would be in line with the Republican chorus of disapproval.

Gitmo may close, but legal problems will remain

BY JUDITH MILLER

It's been a busy summer at the detention center in the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The joint task force in charge of the 226 remaining detainees is spending about $440,000 to expand the recreation yards at Camp 6. At nearby Camp 4, which offers communal living for the most ``compliant'' captives, the soccer yard is being enlarged. At Camp 5, a maximum-security facility, a $73,000 classroom is under construction. In March, the task force added art classes to the thrice-weekly instruction it offers in Arabic, Pashtu and English, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

Juanes' concert for peace -- reading the tea leaves

BY CARLOS SALADRIGAS

After watching the much talked-about Juanes concert on Sunday, I was left with a feeling that something transcendental had taken place.

Almost 10 percent of Cuba's population showed up -- about 30 percent of Cuba's youth. Considering the lack of available transportation, it became clear the Cuban people voted with their feet.

Cuba offers circuses and no bread

BY XAVIER SUAREZ

Anyone who wants to get a flavor of how cruel life is in Cuba need only read The Miami Herald story of the young lady who fainted and lost her shoe during the Juanes concert. It was an interesting vignette of life in Cuba, as endured by a young woman who seemed typical of the many who attended this unique event.

Main Street banks may crush the recovery

BY PETER MORICI

Like a boxer staggering to its feet, the U.S. economy is recovering. Since May, real consumer spending has been gradually rising. Technology spending is looking up, as computers age and Asian growth pulls demand for sophisticated components. New home construction is showing new life.

Real peace and not ambiguities

BY RABBI MARVIN HIER

As the Obama administration gets ready to unveil its much anticipated Middle East peace initiative, there is much consternation and nervousness in the air in Israel. Despite assurances of evenhandedness, many Israelis remain skeptical, believing that the plan will call for Israel to take the risks and demand that she do most of the compromising.

What women need from healthcare reform

BY NANCY RATZAN

With healthcare reform efforts reaching a critical stage, the stakes couldn't be higher for women. Women are the victims of a healthcare system that treats most people badly at one point or another, but that treats women badly all the time.

Time to get serious about poverty

BY REV. LARRY SNYDER

Economic collapse is not an anniversary anyone wants to mark, but we note it this month.

A year ago the news of Lehman Brothers' collapse and AIG's near collapse stunned our nation, led to a global economic crisis and was followed by an infusion of hundreds of billions of bailout dollars to preserve the country's financial system.

Our allies deserve better

BY D. JEFFREY HIRSCHBERG

On the front lines of the battle against extremism, in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, fiercely dedicated journalists risk their lives every day to report accurate news to audiences besieged by terrorist violence and propaganda.

We're all ‘wilderness warriors'

BY JANE DANOWITZ and MIKE MATZ

In Wilderness Warrior, a new and acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt, author Douglas Brinkley says the former Rough Rider's crusade for conservation was perhaps the greatest presidential initiative between the Civil War and World War II. Brinkley credits the 26th president with saving, virtually single-handedly, 234 million acres of public lands through the creation of national parks, forests and monuments, like the Grand Canyon, as well as federal bird reservations and game preserves.

Uphold immigrant women's rights

BY SHYAMA VENKATESWAR

The story of L.R., as she is referred to in court records, is that of a Mexican woman, who, for more than 20 years was held captive, beaten, raped at gun-point, and, at one point, almost burned alive when her common-law husband set her bed ablaze after learning she was pregnant. L.R.'s struggle represents the latest in a 13-year legal battle over the issue of granting asylum to battered women.

Saving the shark that bit me

BY DEBBIE SALAMONE

Sharks rarely attack people. The odds of a shark bite are roughly one in every 11.5 million times a person visits a beach, according to the International Shark Attack File. Unfortunately, I became one of the unlucky few, five years ago, when I was bitten by a shark while wading in waist-deep water, just 50 feet offshore of Florida's Cape Canaveral National Seashore.