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March 31, 2006
| Record Die-Off Of Caribbean Coral | Environment |
Centuries-old Caribbean coral reefs are dying, quite suddenly, just in the past few months. AP (via ENN):
A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.Researchers from around the globe are scrambling to figure out the extent of the loss. Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.
"It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef ... We're talking colonies that were here when Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."
Some of the devastated coral can never be replaced because it only grows the width of one dime a year, Miller said.
Coral reefs are the basis for a multibillion-dollar tourism and commercial fishing economy in the Caribbean. Key fish species use coral as habitat and feeding grounds. Reefs limit the damage from hurricanes and tsunamis. More recently they are being touted as possible sources for new medicines. [...]
On Sunday, [Puerto Rican biologist Edwin] Hernandez-Delgado found a colony of 800-year-old star coral — more than 13 feet high — that had just died in the waters off Puerto Rico.
"We did lose entire colonies," he said. "This is something we have never seen before." [...]
"We haven't seen an event of this magnitude in the Caribbean before," said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Watch.
The Caribbean is actually better off than areas of the Indian and Pacific ocean where mortality rates — mostly from warming waters — have been in the 90 percent range in past years, said Tom Goreau of the Global Coral Reef Alliance. Goreau called what's happening worldwide "an underwater holocaust."
And with global warming, scientists are pessimistic about the future of coral reefs.
"The prognosis is not good," said biochemistry professor M. James Crabbe of the University of Luton near London. In early April, he will investigate coral reef mortality in Jamaica. "If you want to see a coral reef, go now, because they just won't survive in their current state." [...]
New NOAA sea surface temperature figures show the sustained heating in the Caribbean last summer and fall was by far the worst in 21 years of satellite monitoring, Eakin said.
"The 2005 event is bigger than all the previous 20 years combined," he said.
What happened in the Caribbean would be the equivalent of every city in the United States recording a record high temperature at the same time, Eakin said. And it remained hot for weeks, even months, stressing the coral. [...]
"This is probably a harbinger of things to come," said John Rollino, the chief scientist for the Bahamian Reef Survey. "The coral bleaching is probably more a symptom of disease — the widespread global environmental degradation — that's going on."
Crabbe said evidence of global warming is overwhelming.
"The big problem for coral is the question of whether they can adapt sufficiently quickly to cope with climate change," Crabbe said. "I think the evidence we have at the moment is: No, they can't. [Emphasis added]
The global effects of global warming are not some vague threats somewhere off in the indefinite future. They're happening now, more suddenly and more quickly than anyone anticipated. This is the challenge for our time.
Posted by Jonathan at 05:16 PM
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| Somebody Tell Bush: That "Fundamental Debate" Is Over | Environment Politics |
Two days ago, in response to a questioner from Australia, President Bush said this about global warming:
We — first of all, there is — the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural. Put that aside.
RealClimate, an excellent site run by working climate scientists, had this response:
The first part is the silver lining: despite receiving novelist Michael Crichton in the White House recently, Bush obviously has not bought his theory that the globe is in fact not warming. Crichton is one of the last trend sceptics who deny the warming trend is real.Rather, Bush adopts an attribution sceptic position: warming yes, but is it caused by humans? This position is equally out of step with science, where the debate over this question has also now been settled.
Data show that carbon dioxide levels are rising, they are now 30% higher than at any time during at least the past 650,000 years, and likely even the past several million years. This rise is caused entirely by human activities. This is also demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt by data - for a start, we know how much CO2 we have emitted, and the observed rise is equal to 57% of this (the rest has been taken up by ocean and biosphere). That carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping longwave radiation, is also a measured fact and well-established physics since the 19th Century...In equilibrium, you [would] expect a warming of 2 ºC based solely on the human-caused rise in greenhouse gas concentration. But there's a time lag due to ocean heat uptake ("thermal intertia"), so that up to half the expected warming would still be in the pipeline and not here yet (this is shown by models and confirmed by oceanographic data...). That means: this rough calculation shows that the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases can explain at least 1 ºC of global warming. The observed warming is 0.8 ºC - this is less than what would be expected from greenhouse gases alone, because greenhouse gases are of course not the only factor that affects climate - there is a cooling effect by aerosols which counteracts part of the warming.
What about a "natural" explanation for the observed global warming? There is none. Indicators and measurements of solar activity show no increasing trend over the past 60 years. The orbital cycles, which cause the ice ages, would currently tend towards cooling, if anything. There is no remotely feasible alternative explanation for the observed warming published in the scientific literature. The "fundamental debate" postulated by Bush is a media phenomenon - to use the words of ABC News, a "con job" by special interest groups. It is not a debate that is ongoing in the scientific community. The numerous, often hair-raising arguments that have been brought forward as part of this "con job" have been thoroughly refuted many times.
In summary, the following scientific findings can no longer credibly be argued to be in dispute:
(1) The observed large-scale warming of the atmosphere and ocean is an entirely expected, and in fact well-predicted, consequence of the human-caused accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
(2) There is no other reasonable scientific explanation for the observed warming. [Emphasis added]
It's impossible to know if Bush actually believes what he's saying. He is such an intellectually lazy and incurious man that it's entirely possible. But that's no excuse. Far from it. With the fate of millions hanging in the balance, a man in Bush's position has an absolute moral duty to educate himself on the issue and act in consonance with the best scientific opinion. This is no time for know-nothing frat boy leadership. This is a time for leadership by smart, conscientious, serious-minded grownups.
Posted by Jonathan at 04:48 PM
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| Infernal Machine | Energy |
This is, uh, impressive (PowerPoint; link via Oil Drum). An open-pit mining machine capable of filling 100,000 large dump trucks a day. It takes an infernal machine to feed the dark Satanic mills.
Posted by Jonathan at 04:11 PM
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| Friday Gumpagraph | Gumpagraphs |
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| © Kent Tenney |
Posted by Jonathan at 10:35 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
This problem with illegal immigration is nothing new. In fact, the Indians had a special name for it. They called it "white people." — Jay Leno
Posted by Jonathan at 10:30 AM
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March 30, 2006
| New Orleans: The Disaster Continues | Disasters Politics |
Republican ideologues believe government cannot solve problems, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who believe in government and who want government to succeed: those are the people who can govern well. Consider New Orleans. Bill Quigley:
In New Orleans, seven months after Katrina, senior citizens are living in their cars...Korean War veteran Paul Morris, 74, and his wife Yvonne, 66,...have been sleeping in their two-door sedan since January. They have been waiting that long for FEMA contractors to unlock the 240 square foot trailer in their yard and connect the power so they can sleep inside it in front of their devastated home.This tale of lunacy does not begin to stop there.
Their 240 square foot trailer may well cost more than their house. While FEMA flat out refuses to say how much the government is paying for trailers, reliable estimates by the New York Times and others place the cost at over $60,000 each.
How could these tiny FEMA trailers cost so much?
Follow the money.
Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time, that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a website.
Here is how it works. The original contractor takes their cut and subcontracts out the work of constructing the trailer to other companies. Once it is built, they subcontract out the transporting the trailers to yet other companies which pay drivers, gas, insurance and mileage. They then subcontract out the hookups of the trailers to other companies and keep taking cuts for their services. Usually none of the people who make the money are local workers.
With $60,000 many people could adequately repair their homes.
Why not just give the $60,000 directly to the elderly couple and let them fix up their home? Ask Congress. FEMA is not allowed to give grants of that much. Money for fixing up homes comes from somewhere else and people are still waiting for that to arrive.
While many corporations are making big money off of Katrina, Mr. and Mrs. Morris wait in their car.
Craziness continues in the area of the right to vote.
You would think that the nation that put on elections with satellite voting boxes for Iraqis and Afghanis and Haitians and many others would do the same for Katrina evacuees. Wrong. There is no satellite voting for the 230,000 citizens of New Orleans who are out of state. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, ACORN and the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund have all fought for satellite voting but Louisiana and the courts and the U.S. Justice Department have said no.
The rule of thumb around here is that the poorer you are, the further you have been displaced. African Americans are also much more likely to be poor and renters — the people who cannot yet come back to a city where rents have doubled. They are the ones bearing the burdens of no satellite voting.
The people already back are much more affluent than the pre-Katrina New Orleans. The city is also much whiter. Many of those already back in New Orleans are not so sure that all of New Orleans should be rebuilt. The consequence of that is not everyone will be allowed to return. Planners and politicians openly suggest turning poor neighborhoods into green spaces. No one yet has said they want to turn their own neighborhood into green space — only other people's neighborhoods — usually poor people's neighborhoods. Those who disagree are by and large not here.
New Orleans has not been majority white for decades, but it is quite possible that a majority of those who are able to vote in the upcoming election will be white. Thus the decisions about the future of New Orleans are poised to be made by those who have been able to get back and will exclude many of those still evacuated. Guess what type of plans they will have for New Orleans? [Emphasis added]
The majority party in Washington thinks their responsibility ends when they decide which political crony to reward with a contract. They have no interest in governing, no interest in managing. Their interest is in plundering the treasury and accumulating power. Banana Republicans.
What is happening in New Orleans is a disgraceful national failure. Every time we countenance such failure, we grow weaker as a nation. Morally weaker. And if there ever was a time when we needed all our strength to face the challenges ahead, this is that time.
Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 PM
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| Thursday Gumpagraph | Gumpagraphs |
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| © Kent Tenney |
Posted by Jonathan at 10:34 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
You know Andrew Card? He resigned. I know what you're thinking: Who would leave a dream job like that? Finally somebody in the White House has an exit strategy. — David Letterman
Andy Card resigned. Finally a Republican leaving Washington not in handcuffs. — Jay Leno
Posted by Jonathan at 10:32 AM
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March 29, 2006
| Absolute Bloody Chaos | Iraq |
Riverbend, the Iraqi woman who blogs at Baghdad Burning, yesterday posted this (excerpt):
I sat late last night switching between Iraqi channels (the half dozen or so I sometimes try to watch). It's a late-night tradition for me when there's electricity — [...]I paused on the Sharqiya channel which many Iraqis consider to be a reasonably toned channel (and which during the elections showed its support for Allawi in particular). I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the page. The usual — mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an American soldier killed here, another one wounded there... 12 Iraqi corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read it correctly.
E. was sitting at the other end of the living room...I called him over with the words, "Come here and read this — I'm sure I misunderstood..." He stood in front of the television and watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was feeling.
The line said:
وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة
The translation:
"The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area."
That's how messed up the country is at this point.
We switched to another channel, the "Baghdad" channel (allied with Muhsin Abdul Hameed and his group) and they had the same news item, but instead of the general "coalition forces" they had "American coalition forces".
[T]oday as it was repeated on another channel. [...]
It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning — the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.
But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can't even trust its own personnel, unless they are "accompanied by American coalition forces". [...]
They've been finding corpses all over Baghdad for weeks now — and it's always the same: holes drilled in the head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hung. Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their homes by security forces — police or special army brigades... Some of them were rounded up from mosques. [Emphasis added]
How bad does it have to be for the Ministry of Defence to go on the air and publicly advise people to ignore the orders of its own army and police unless they're accompanied by Americans. The same army and police that Bush says are "standing up" so US forces can "stand down."
The horror that is unfolding in that country is impossible to imagine. We have so much to answer for.
Posted by Jonathan at 08:02 PM
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| Chomsky On Iraq And Oil | 9/11, "War On Terror" Iraq Peak Oil |
On Friday, the Washington Post hosted an online chat with Noam Chomsky. The first Q&A went right to the connection between Iraq and oil:
Q: Why do you think the US went to war against Iraq?Noam Chomsky: Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, it is right in the midst of the major energy reserves in the world. Its been a primary goal of US policy since World War II (like Britain before it) to control what the State Department called "a stupendous source of strategic power" and one of the greatest material prizes in history. Establishing a client state in Iraq would significantly enhance that strategic power, a matter of great significance for the future. As Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, it would provide the US with "critical leverage" [over] its European and Asian rivals, a conception with roots in early post-war planning. These are substantial reasons for aggression — not unlike those of the British when they invaded and occupied Iraq over 80 years earlier, at the dawn of the oil age.
Reading this statement, one is struck by how rare such candor is in US public discourse. Pretty much everybody in the mainstream avoids stating the obvious: Iraq is about oil. Yes, other interests are served, but oil is the driver behind US foreign policy today and into the future. It's obvious, yet no one will say it.
Talk about the Emperor's New Clothes.
Posted by Jonathan at 05:07 PM
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| Wombats Never Lie | Activism Environment |
Everything we need to know, in a nutshell. (Flash, with sound)
Now we just have to learn it. While we still can.
[Thanks, Carie]
Posted by Jonathan at 11:19 AM
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| Wednesday Gumpagraph | Gumpagraphs |
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| © Kent Tenney |
Posted by Jonathan at 11:10 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
Here now a list of requirements for Dick Cheney's "downtime suite": He wants bottled water. He wants decaffeinated coffee. He wants an ice bucket. He wants ammo. ... Cheney wants bottled water, decaffeinated coffee. He wants his lights on. He wants the temperature at 68 degrees, the TVs must be tuned to Fox news. I was thinking, "My God, I wish they would have put this much preparation into the Iraq War!" — David Letterman
Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 AM
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March 28, 2006
| Reaching Higher |
I defy you to watch this without smiling. Be sure to have the sound turned on. A beautiful, witty, and ultimately poignant performance.
(Some people have quibbled with the level of technical juggling skill involved, but I have to say I think they're missing the point.)
Posted by Jonathan at 08:13 PM
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| The Fire Next Time | Disasters Environment |
When Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans, we got a preview of what awaits the world's coastal cities as global warming leads to bigger storms and higher sea levels.
In the interior, however, the global warming threat isn't floods, it's fire. Fire fed by drought, like the current drought in the Texas Panhandle that has led to the largest wildfires in Texas history. Texas officials say that if such wildfires were to reach Austin, they would be powerless: much of Austin would be lost. Austin American-Statesman (link via Viridian):
Authorities urged residents in six Panhandle towns to evacuate Wednesday and warned that the state's largest wildfire outbreak in history could cross into Oklahoma. [...]Although this fire was raging in sparsely populated ranching country, Texas Forest Service Director James B. Hull warned Wednesday that such a fire striking Austin and Travis County would yield a more nightmarish fate.
"Austin is going to be the worst catastrophe Texas has ever seen," Hull said as he toured firefighting operations in the Panhandle. "The conditions we're having in the Panhandle right now, when it gets to Austin, it will be a tragedy."
Mix drought conditions and high winds in an urban-area forest like the cedar-covered hills of western Travis County and the area would be a tinder box of gigantic proportions, Hull said.
Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Palmer Buck agreed: "It would not be what house we are going to save...it would be what neighborhood are we going to save."
The Fire Department does not have the resources to fight a major wildfire in the hills along Lake Austin or the rugged terrain of the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve area, Buck said. [...]
The 1,800 volunteer fire departments with 40,000 firefighters are the backbone of protection in rural communities. But almost half those departments have budgets of $10,000 or less. Hull said volunteer departments often have old equipment and are not equipped to battle blazes that last days or weeks. [...]
When Sunday's 55-mph winds first fueled the Panhandle fires, the state at first could offer only minimal backup to local fire departments. The Texas Forest Service had a management team in Amarillo and, luckily, had been able to get five large air tankers from the U.S. Forest Service to fly from Albuquerque, N.M., and Ardmore, Okla., to drop fire retardant.
Typically, those planes would be fighting fires in other parts of the country, and Texas would have to rely on eight National Guard helicopters to fly large buckets of water to the fires. The war in Iraq, however, has reduced that option.
"There have been times when none of the helicopters were available," Hull said. [...]
Although state firefighting officials were able to predict the threat of the Panhandle fires because of the projected wind speeds, drought conditions and low humidity, they had no firefighting equipment on the ground to back up local operations. [...]
Part of the problem is the sheer size of the state.
"We're fighting fires all the way from Laredo to East Texas, through the Hill Country, to here in the Panhandle," Hull said. "We're stretched very thin." [...]
A study done by the Austin Fire Department in 2003 showed that about 50,000 homes in Travis County are in either extreme- or high-risk fire zones. [...]
"Texas still has a rural mentality," Hull said. "But with 22.5 million people, we are an urban state, and we have to plan for that urban catastrophe." [Emphasis added]
Sooner or later, it's really going to dawn on us what we've set in motion. Outside, a wind is rising.
Posted by Jonathan at 07:27 PM
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| Tuesday Gumpagraph | Gumpagraphs |
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| © Kent Tenney |
Posted by Jonathan at 10:58 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
The president's mother, Barbara Bush, donated tax deductible money to the Katrina Relief...Now we find out the specific instructions — that the money be spent for educational software owned by her son, Neil. Because who can forget those tragic images of the poor black people on the rooftops in New Orleans holding up signs that said, "Send educational software." — Bill Maher
Posted by Jonathan at 10:53 AM
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| The Long War | 9/11, "War On Terror" Energy Iraq Peak Oil |
James Kunstler loves to go overboard, but in his latest missive, he's got a point: the Iraq debate is grounded in delusion. Kunstler:
This is how deluded the American public is now: Various polls are showing that the war in Iraq has reached new lows of unpopularity. The dumb bunnies in the news media are implying that when the numbers get low enough, we will pull our troops out and go home.This is not going to happen. Our inordinate hubris has led us to believe that this conflict is optional.
Notice, too, that the war-weary public has done, and continues to do, nothing to change its habits of profligate oil use which have driven us to project our military into the Middle East. We have not even begun a discussion of what we might do. We just expect to keep running American society exactly the way it has been set up to run — as a nonstop demolition derby, with hamburgers and fries between laps around the freeway.
At the highest level of public discourse, the cluelessness is shocking. The New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a front-page piece yesterday on Francis Fukuyama's latest salvo, America at the Crossroads, which is largely about our Middle East war policy, without once using the word "oil." [...]
The plain truth is, if anything happens to upset the current management and allocation system of the the global oil markets, the industrial economies of the world will collapse, and America's will collapse hardest and worst because of the way we have arranged things for ourselves. The global oil markets currently revolve around Middle East oil production. If the region is overcome by instability, than it's simply GAME OVER. [...]
Our denial runs deep and hard. Even the educated minority (including the tech wonks) believe that we can run the freeways and the WalMarts on alternative fuels. They flatter themselves listening to the morning yammer about "renewables" on NPR as they make the daily commute from, say, the suburban asteroid belts of Northern Virginia into Washington, DC. They bethink themselves progressive, cutting edge, morally superior in their Priuses. [...]
What can we do? Oil man Jeffrey Brown of Dallas has made the interesting suggestion that we replace some or all of the national income tax with a substantial national gasoline tax. A congressional debate over that would be worth hearing. It would be a good start in concentrating our minds in the right direction: that is, toward the problems we have created for ourselves at home. There are many other things we could do also, from rebuilding our railroads to removing incentives for suburban development. They would all require major shifts in our behavior. We can either begin them voluntarily or wait for events to compel us to live differently. In the absence of that, our presence in Iraq is not optional. [Emphasis added]
Iraq is about oil. Obviously. And the oil problem isn't going away. We should understand, therefore, that the architects of the war — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice — have absolutely no intention of withdrawing US forces. Not till the oil runs out.
They have lied about everything else, and they will lie about this, too, but actions speak louder than words. We just need to look at the bases US forces are building in Iraq. AP (link via Deep Blade):
Balad Air Base, Iraq - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.
At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.
Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.
"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base. [...]
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from "permanent," and the official U.S. position is carefully worded. [...]
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was "an interesting question." He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if "they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time."
In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. "If they aren't planning for bases, they ought to say so," she said. "I would expect to hear 'No bases.'"
Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.
In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or proposed almost $1 billion for U.S. military construction in Iraq, as American forces consolidate at Balad, known as Anaconda, and a handful of other installations, big bases under the old regime. [...]
"The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces," [Major Lee] English said.
The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets. [...]
Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man’s-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.
The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid — a typical sign of a long-term base. [...]
Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.
Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force's huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and reconnaissance helicopters. [...]
"[W]e're good for as long as we need to run it," [Lt. Col. Scott] Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. "I'd say so." [...]
In the counterinsurgency fight, Balad's central location enables strike aircraft to reach targets in minutes. And in the broader context of reinforcing the U.S. presence in the oil-rich Mideast, Iraq bases are preferable to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, said a longtime defense analyst.
"Carriers don't have the punch," said Gordon Adams of Washington's George Washington University. "There's a huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases." [...]
"It's a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable," [Anthony] Zinni, a former Central Command chief, said in a Washington interview. "It would damage our image in the region, where people would decide that this" — seizing bases — "was our original intent." [...]
If long-term basing is, indeed, on the horizon, "the politics back here and the politics in the region say, 'Don't announce it,'" Adams said in Washington. That's what's done elsewhere, as with the quiet U.S. basing of spy planes and other aircraft in the United Arab Emirates. [...]
From the start, in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move from tents to today's living quarters in air-conditioned trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008. [Emphasis added]
In its latest Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon stopped talking about a war on terror. Instead, they're talking about "the long war". They're not kidding.
It's all one big Gordian Knot: Iraq, peak oil, global warming. We need to understand that and not forget it. If we don't deal with energy, we will be stuck with war and catastrophic climate change. It's all one problem.
Posted by Jonathan at 12:31 AM
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March 27, 2006
| Monday Gumpagraph | Gumpagraphs |
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| © Kent Tenney |
Posted by Jonathan at 10:07 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
The FBI is investigating Americans — just for opposing the war. You know, maybe when we're done establishing a democracy in Iraq, we could try it over here. Stop, don't applaud, I don't want to get investigated! — Jay Leno
Posted by Jonathan at 10:02 AM
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March 26, 2006
| Good Ol' Wikipedia | Politics |
This cuts right to the chase. Great stuff.
[Thanks, Kent]
Posted by Jonathan at 06:25 PM
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| Reporting For The CIA | Media Politics |
Americans are naive. We're brought up to believe that we've got a free news media, we've got real representative politics, and so on. The game may be rigged in other countries, but not here. So, we know that the NSA listens to every scrap of electronic communications overseas, but we take it on faith that they don't listen to communications here in the US. But then it turns out they do.
We know also that the CIA is skilled in manipulating the news media overseas. We know they manipulate other countries' political processes, funding this candidate, smearing that one, bolstering a regime here, creating chaos there. But we take it on faith that they don't apply those skills internally. Why? If they believe the national security is at stake, why wouldn't they conclude it is their duty to bring to bear every tool at their disposal?
Actually, we don't have to guess. In 1977, Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame wrote an article for Rolling Stone that exposed the fact that hundreds of American journalists, including some of the biggest names in news, had secretly carried out assignments on behalf of the CIA. Bernstein:
[M]ore than 400 American journalists...in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. [...]The Agency's relationship with the [New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy...to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.
...[T]he Agency's working relationship with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper...
CBS was unquestionably the CIA's most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and [CIA Director] Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship...[CBS] allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings. [Emphasis added]
200 reporters, Bernstein said, had gone so far as to sign secrecy agreements with the CIA. That was in 1977. But CIA infiltration of the American news media isn't exactly something a CIA-infiltrated news media is going to report on, so, in the 30 years since Bernstein's article, we haven't heard much more about it.
But SusanG at DailyKos (link via Xymphora) has posted an interview she did with Daniel Ellsberg, who speculates on the current state of affairs as seen through the prism of the Judith Miller affair. Excerpt below the fold.
Excerpt:
Over 200 reporters, according to Bernstein, had signed secrecy agreements with the CIA. There were a number of individuals who did really work to put stories in that they wanted, to publish stuff they wanted. I believe that's what they were saying about Joe Alsop and Stewart Alsop, that they were essentially assets of the CIA, which means they would put out CIA line. Not because they were literal employees, but because they were friends with people in the CIA.Q: But that's a thin line isn't it? I'm not sure that anybody said specifically, write a story that's very positive about X so that we look good. I think a lot of it is just an understanding of being a part of that establishment back then and they saw it as patriotism, from what Bernstein said.
Certainly that is a major aspect to the whole thing. They're not under the impression that they're working for and with the city machine or the mafia or something. This is the U.S. government, this is the CIA, this is the establishment.
But let me put a slightly different spin on it: Remember Sy Sulzberger was mentioned as one person who had a clearance. He had a column, and he denied it, but several people from the CIA said that on one occasion he called up for information, they gave him the briefing paper and he simply put the briefing in under his byline. He literally reproduced the whole briefing paper.
Now how often is that done? Remember, a lot of these people were putting out mainly opinion columns, not reporting news...like Joe Alsop and Stewart Alsop. How often did they call up their friend at the CIA who simply told them, here's what's going on. And they then go on to print, here's what's going on. They don't say, I was told by a high official. See, they say, this is the reality. This is what's really happening, here's the real news. Sometimes they would say, yes, I got this from some official, but other times they would just say, this is a result of my observations or this is they way I see it. How often was the way they saw it in their highly read column simply what Allen Dulles or Richard Helms told them and they believed it? It wasn't that they were just being servile, they're just presenting a crafted CIA line which has been given to them.
Here's the point I was really coming to: I was most struck in that by the idea of a secrecy clearance, as somebody who had had a dozen simultaneous clearances.
The relationship that that implies has a number of dimensions to it. One of them - it's just one, but it's an important one - is that you are led to believe (quite misleadingly actually) that if you violate that agreement, you will be prosecuted. You are violating a law. And even if you're not prosecuted, you will know you are violating a law if you break the terms of that agreement. They mention to you 18 USC 793 (d) and (e) and so forth - what I was charged with. And indeed, I was prosecuted.
Now the catch is, I was the first person ever prosecuted for it. No one had ever been prosecuted, but I didn't know that, and they don't know that, and most people don't know it to this day. Not one reporter in a hundred have I ever met - and I've talked to audiences of journalists - knows that I was the first person ever to be prosecuted.
However, every time you sign that agreement, you are confronted with these laws that say you are subject to prosecution, so they think they're violating a law if they put that out, that they will get prosecuted having agreed to this. A reporter who is just slipped something under the cover on one particular day or who was told something over lunch, a reporter who hasn't signed an agreement, I think, is unlikely to believe that he or she is in trouble if he puts it out. He's more likely to believe that the source will get in trouble.
A reporter who has signed that agreement is definitely led to believe that he or she is subject to prosecution if he breaks that agreement. That's the number one point.
Number two point is... Judith Miller said, I had a security clearance. Now I think she was telling the truth. They said, no, it was just a simple non-disclosure agreement or some misunderstanding, I think that's the cover story. She had a clearance. What would that mean?
It means that she's trusted by these people as one of the team. They're not giving it to her under threat, they're giving it to her because they trust her to carry this out. Wonderful self-esteem there and the feeling of being an insider, and your fellows don't have that. It means you will now get information that people who don't have that clearance will not get. You'll get it in part because you're trusted and because you have something to lose, they'll take it away. If you violate it, you won't get that stuff anymore. You infer from that that you will get information that others don't get because you'll be trusted not to print it unless they tell you it's all right.
My guess is very strongly that Judith Miller did have such a clearance and did have a background check and it meant that she was entitled to get information authoritatively that others were not entitled to get on the understanding that she has a lot to lose - namely a clearance - and not just the one source, but from a lot of sources. It gives her entrée. [...]
If she has a clearance, he could take her to a meeting, to a place, to anybody, and say, "This woman is okay, she's cleared."
I thought right away: Judith Miller, Judith Miller. She's one of Bernstein's people here. And remember, he says it was one of their most carefully guarded secrets that they had, that they kept the Church Committee from putting out. They gave them stuff on assassination instead; that was less scary.
In every case, Bernstein said, where a journalist had such an agreement, it was known to their boss - to their editor or publisher or both. So I infer from that that probably Bill Keller - possibly not - or Howell Raines, but certainly the publisher, Sulzberger, did know. Now let's go one step further. Bernstein quotes somebody at the CIA as saying, "Our greatest asset is the New York Times." All right. [...]
...I'm sorry, I would not be happy to have it proved that the New York Times, which is the first thing I read every morning is, after all, a government newspaper. And obviously there are limitations to that because there's no question that they do put out from time to time things that the government does not want out. I can say that I know that better than most.
But keep in mind that Nixon was not in fact unhappy to see the Pentagon Papers out, and he wanted to put more stuff out.
Q: And in order to be an effective instrument of the government, it has to sometimes challenge the government.
It should show a certain amount of independence from time to time, yes.
But the stuff that was coming out during the first Gulf War was exactly like what was coming out in the invasion of Iraq this time. If the coverage had been coming right out of a shop in the Pentagon, controlling every aspect of the television coverage of the first Gulf War, how different would it have been? I didn't see how it could have been different.
It's still going on.
Q: So how did they do it?
...The control of the war coverage was very, very effective. And these PR guys know what they're doing. They did it in Grenada. I believe they didn't allow any reporters in when the actual operation was going on. And in Panama, there was hardly any coverage and to this day there's never been any investigation of how many Panamanians had been killed in that attack on Noriega's headquarters.
Just from the outside, you look at that and you say: You know, they're acting as though it's a controlled press. So let me put into the pot just the hypothesis that to a greater extent than we are really aware, it is a controlled press. And it's not 100 percent and some of the exposes occasionally - not that many - even go beyond what is necessary to establish an appearance of independence and constitutes a real degree of independence. But I think it's just possible that when you look a flagship like the New York Times from which other papers take their cues as to what is news and what isn't, there may be a critical element of top-level people being actually on the team. It's clear that Judith Miller was on the team. I'm suggesting that that goes beyond a mere groupie-type enthusiasm for the policy. She was on the team, period. She was one of us. She's an insider, not an outsider, let's say.
The Bush family has intelligence ties going back several generations. George H. W. Bush was CIA Director. The name of CIA headquarters is the George Bush Center for Intelligence, for pete's sake. Think back to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Do they pass the smell test? Or did the Bush forces manipulate them the way the CIA has long since learned to manipulate elections abroad?
Posted by Jonathan at 06:21 PM
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Posted by Jonathan at 12:02 PM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
Everybody's excited about March Madness, the big NCAA basketball tournament. Here's how it works: It starts at 65, then 64, then 32, then 16. It's just like Bush's approval rating. — David Letterman
Posted by Jonathan at 11:59 AM
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March 25, 2006
| Rising Sea Levels A Threat To Coastal Cities | Environment |
Storm surge floods low-lying coastal city: a true 21st-century story. New Orleans was only a preview. Guardian:
Half of Greenland and vast areas of Antarctica are destined to melt if global warming continues at the same pace until the end of the century, scientists warned yesterday. Their research shows that the loss of so much ice will trigger dramatic rises in sea levels, ultimately swamping low-lying regions of Essex, Lincolnshire and Norfolk and threatening the flood defences of cities such as London, Liverpool and Bristol. The last time so much ice was lost from the poles - in a period between ice ages 129,000 years ago - global sea levels rose by four to six metres.Experts believe many coastal regions would suffer long before sea levels rose significantly, because even a minor rise will make storm surges more devastating and increase the risk of flooding. A rise of one metre would in effect close the port of London as the Thames barrier would need to be raised for 300 days a year to protect the city, according to one scientist.
The warning comes from climate scientists who combined historical records of Arctic and Antarctic ice melting with advanced computer models capable of predicting future environmental conditions. They found that if nothing is done to put the brakes on climate change, Greenland, the west Antarctic ice sheet and other expanses of polar ice will be warmed beyond a "tipping point" after which their melting is inevitable. [...]
"We showed that that level of warming will come later in this century unless we act on carbon emissions," said Professor Overpeck. "An Arctic warming of 3C to 5C is enough to cause four to six metres of sea level rise."
If temperatures do rise as the scientists predict, the ice at the poles will not be lost immediately. Enough ice is likely to melt within the next 100 years to raise sea levels by a metre, but ultimately the fresh water pouring into the North Atlantic would slow down the Gulf stream, which bathes Britain in warm water from the tropics, by a quarter. "These ice sheets have melted before and sea levels rose. The warmth needed isn't that much above present conditions," said Dr Otto-Bliesner.
The major concern is that unless climate change slows down significantly, the eventual loss of polar ice and subsequent six-metre rise in sea levels will be unavoidable. "There has been an increasing number of observations from the ice sheets suggesting they are responding faster to climate change than anticipated. Now along come our results showing these kinds of changes occurred in the past and lead to large ice sheet retreat and sea level rise. There's a threshold beyond which we'll be committed to this melting and sea level rise irreversibly in the future and that will come later this century," said Prof Overpeck. A one-metre rise in sea level would see the Maldives disappear, make most of Bangladesh uninhabitable and put cities such as New Orleans "out of business", according to Prof Overpeck. The research is published in two papers in the US journal Science today. [...]
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stand at around 380 parts per million, but many scientists believe they will rise to 550ppm by the middle of the century. "If we were to experience a rise of one metre [in sea levels], we would have to improve sea defences around the country and that would be extremely costly. We wouldn't be able to use the port of London because the Thames barrier would have to be closed for much of the year," said Professor David Vaughan, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. [Emphasis added]
Republicans say we can't do anything to limit emissions because that would be bad for business. As if losing a bunch of coastal cities and ports will be good for business.
A core problem is that our existing commercial and governmental institutions have a short term focus. No one gets anywhere in business or politics by worrying about problems that are a few decades off in the future. But some problems just aren't short term problems.
[Thanks, Jeff]
Posted by Jonathan at 08:52 PM
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Posted by Jonathan at 12:31 PM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
Osama bin Laden says the US won’t take him alive. If I were him, I'd hide somewhere lacking US federal presence. Might want to try New Orleans' 9th Ward. — Will Durst
Posted by Jonathan at 12:19 PM
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March 24, 2006
| Prius |
Just picked up my new Prius. Sweet car.
Think I'll go play. Maybe a post later tonight, maybe not. :-)
Posted by Jonathan at 05:37 PM
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Rosebud.
Posted by Jonathan at 08:46 AM
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| Today's Bush Joke | Humor & Fun |
Vice President Cheney says there is no civil war in Iraq and that the violence is directed towards us. Wow, talk about good news, bad news. — Will Durst
Posted by Jonathan at 08:45 AM
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March 23, 2006
| USDA Stops Firm From Doing Extra Inspections On Its Own Beef | Corporations, Globalization |
This isn't a new story, but it was new to me, and it deserves a wider audience. Prepare to be outraged. LA Times (via ReclaimDemocracy.org):
Creekstone Farms is a little slaughterhouse in Kansas with an idea that would have had Adam Smith's mouth watering. Faced with consumers who remain skittish over mad cow disease — especially in Japan — Creekstone decided that all its beef would be tested for mad cow, a radical departure from the random testing done by other companies. It was a case study in free-market meatpacking entrepreneurship. That is, until the Bush administration's Department of Agriculture blocked the enterprise, apparently at the behest of Creekstone's competitors.According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.
What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."
The Agriculture Department's Creekstone decision reveals the best thinking of Soviet central planning: The government shoots the innovator to preserve market stability. Though President Bush invokes free-market principles when it comes to industry downsizing, "outsourcing" jobs, media mergers and energy deregulation, those principles apparently have their limits when a company seeks to become an industry leader in consumer protection.
Located in the small town of Arkansas City, Creekstone is a model operation in an industry that often seems medieval. It traces the origins of its high-quality Black Angus beef to reduce the use of animals that have been given antibiotics. It pays high wages, employs humane slaughtering techniques (they make for better-tasting beef) and maintains a slow enough production line to guarantee worker safety and to ensure that animals are dead before they are butchered. Although the largest U.S. meatpacking companies have fought regulations that would force such practices, Creekstone — which has been in business since 1995 — has proved that some consumers will pay more for such corporate policies and the premium product that results.
The appearance of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd hit Creekstone's small operation hard. Much of its market was in Japan, where all cows are tested for the disease and where U.S. beef is banned because American meatpackers don't follow the same policy. So Creekstone's chief operating officer, Bill Fielding, announced that he would voluntarily test the 300,000 cows his company slaughters annually, to satisfy customers willing to pay the cost. Absent the test, Fielding says Creekstone may face bankruptcy and have to lay off its 790 workers.
The Department of Agriculture seems to have only one purpose in preventing Creekstone from testing — appeasing the big slaughterhouses. The USDA has a long history of doing the bidding of the meatpacking industry at the expense of the public. Indeed, in many academic studies, the department is presented as a textbook example of the problem of "agency capture," wherein an agency becomes so identified with the companies it regulates that it becomes an extension of those companies.
The allegations of agency capture have been magnified in the Bush administration, in which former industry executives hold key regulatory positions — Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman has a chief of staff who was the head lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. and a senior advisor who was the association's associate director for food policy.
When mad cow disease appeared in the United States, the department again took the industry line and resisted calls for added testing. Only after worldwide criticism did it reluctantly make such modest rule changes as requiring slaughterhouses to discard "downed" animals — cows so sick that they had to be dragged into slaughterhouses to be butchered. Most Americans were surprised to learn that the department had ever allowed such animals into the food supply in the first place.
The administration may be correct that testing every animal in the U.S. is unnecessary and not cost-effective. But why not let Creekstone find out what the market will bear? The position of the administration is an affront to anyone who believes in the free market. It's as if the Department of Transportation refused to allow Volvo to add air bags just to keep the pressure off other carmakers.
Congress should step in and end the department's monopoly over testing kits. It should also call for the removal of the officials involved in the decision. [Emphasis added]
Creekstone did end up laying off workers.
This is one of those stories that's so outrageous it just leaves you sputtering. Just to be clear, Creekstone wanted to do extra testing, not replace the USDA's testing. And it wanted to do the extra testing on its own dime. It wanted to respond to a market need. It wanted to produce a safer product.
Four companies — Tyson, Smithfield, Swift & Co., and Excel Corp. — control 80 percent of US meatpacking. Government "regulators," the White House, and much of the Congress dance to their tune. Who's looking out for consumers? Nobody.
Whenever big business and their hired guns in government start mouthing platitudes about competition and the free market, remember this story. And put your hand on your wallet.
Posted by Jonathan at 09:36 PM
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Posted by Jonathan at 10:46 AM
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According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, Republicans are happier than Democrats. Well of course they are, they own everything. — Jay Leno
Posted by Jonathan at 10:45 AM
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March 22, 2006
| Net Oil Available For Consumption | Peak Oil |
Norwegian Jan Herdal of oljekrisa.no (via EnergyBulletin) raises an essential point regarding Peak Oil.
We're all watching for the global peak in overall oil production, but another very important peak will come sooner — maybe it already has. That's the peak in what Herdal calls "net oil for consumption" — the amount of oil that's being produced minus the oil-equivalent of the energy used to find, extract, transport, and refine that oil.
The giant fields of light sweet crude were discovered long ago. What's left are the much smaller and harder to reach fields containing oil that's harder to refine. So the energy cost of each new barrel keeps going up. Which means the net energy value of each new barrel keeps going down. At the end of the day, it's not a question of how much oil is pumped out of the ground. It's a question of the net energy available for consumption. Excerpt:
Peak Oil is the buzzword among oil critics today, describing the point when global gross oil production peaks and starts on its irreversible decline. Although this is an important turn of the tide, we should not forget that net oil for consumption will peak long before peak oil. Possibly it already has.There are two aspects of the law of diminishing returns related to oil production to consider.
The more important aspect is the gradually worsening energy net return on energy invested (ENROI). More oil and other forms of energy are expended in finding, producing and delivering the same amount of oil to the market. The industry must turn to smaller sources of oil that are costlier to exploit.
The few fields still being discovered on the Norwegian shelf are dwarfs compared to the big fields still in production (and that by now have been emptied for roughly three fourths of their extractable oil). [...]
In the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are now drilling down to 30,000 feet. According to US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, there are 530,000 producing oil wells in the US today (averaging less than 10 barrels production a day); still production is slowly declining.
Estimates differ, but it seems likely that between 3 and 5 barrels are now required to produce 10 barrels of oil in the US. Of 5 million barrels produced a day, perhaps only 3 million reach consumers.
This trend is global. Even in the Middle East, where this ratio for decades has been estimated to be 1:10, billions of dollars must now be spent just to keep production going.
New techniques, like horizontal drilling, seem to increase the oil output of a field, but they also require more energy. Production drilling takes a lot of energy. You have to drill more and longer wells to get the same amount of oil. Injection of water and gas also takes a lot of energy. Deeper and deeper offshore wells — the same.
When the global energy costs increase by 10 percent of the total production, practically the whole Saudi-Arabian oil production is down the drain.
The second factor to consider is oil quality, actually another side of the same issue. Oil on the world market is gradually becoming heavier (and increasingly sour, which is an environmental problem). Heavy oil is more difficult, more expensive and more energy intensive to refine into the lighter products demanded by the market, such as gasoline, diesel and airplane fuel.
The situation in the US is now a perfect illustration of the consequences of this trend. Refineries are flooded with heavy oil that they are not able to process. Oil reserves are up, while US imports of gasoline are also up 20 percent from February 2005 compared to the same month this year.
We will seriously misjudge our situation if we only focus on gross production Peak Oil and neglect the worsening quality of oil and worsening energy net return on energy invested (ENROI). [Emphasis added]
Oil spent getting other oil is like oil we never had.
Which is an enormously important point. It's not just Peak Oil that matters. It's the peak in net oil available for consumption. And as Herdal says, that peak may already be behind us.
Posted by Jonathan at 09:25 PM
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| Feingold On Daily Show Tonight | Media Politics |
Senator Russ Feingold is scheduled to appear on "The Daily Show" tonight. Should be good.
Posted by Jonathan at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) |