Past Peak: July 2006 Archives

Today's Gumpagraph. Kent is 'Gumpa' to his grandson Sebastian.

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Today's Bush Joke

In a speech, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "Either we are serious about this war or we are not." Of course, people didn't know if he meant the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war against people who disagree with him. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Rumsfeld "In A Parallel Universe And Slightly Deranged"

Iraq Palestine/Middle East Politics

Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria on ABC Sunday (via ThinkProgress):

If I were a Democrat, I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it's not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged as a result. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he's living in a different world, not a different country. [Emphasis added]

Rumsfeld and Cheney both. They're delusional men with enormous egos and enormous power. Not a happy combination. Incapable of admitting error or defeat, they will continue to escalate. Bush won't stop them and they won't stop themselves. They'll go to their graves convinced that they were right. The only question is whether they will take the rest of us with them.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:40 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this

July 30, 2006

Doubling Down

Iran Iraq Palestine/Middle East War and Peace

Josh Marshall links to an article in today's Jerusalem Post:

[Israeli] Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria. [Emphasis added]

He goes on to say:

[T]here do appear to be forces in Washington — seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade — who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve. [Emphasis added]

That's my fear as well, that the Bush/Cheney regime has painted itself into such a desperate corner that doubling down may seem, as Billmon put it a few months back, "like the only move left on the board." Billmon:

What we are witnessing...may be an example of what the Germans call the flucht nach vorne – the "flight forward." This refers to a situation in which an individual or institution seeks a way out of a crisis by becoming ever more daring and aggressive (or, as the White House propaganda department might put it: "bold") A familar analogy is the gambler in Vegas, who tries to get out of a hole by doubling down on each successive bet.
Classic historical examples of the flucht nach vornes include Napoleon's attempt to break the long stalemate with Britain by invading Russia, the decision of the Deep South slaveholding states to secede from the Union after Lincoln's election, and Milosevic's bid to create a "greater Serbia" after Yugoslavia fell apart.

As these examples suggest, flights forward usually don't end well — just as relatively few gamblers emerge from a doubling-down spree with their shirts still on their backs.

It's depressing to think how much human suffering is caused by a handful of men with big egos. Some guys would rather take us all down in flames than admit error or defeat. But there's something unbelievably archaic about issues like war and the fate of nations being held hostage to the pyschopathology of individual men (and maybe a few women) in leadership positions. It's like we think we're still a small band of primates living in the forest somewhere: the alpha males call the shots. Time to grow up.

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Sunday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

The heat wave is breaking records all across America. It was so hot in Washington, people are sweating like President Bush trying to spell Hezbollah. — Jay Leno

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July 29, 2006

From Lebanon To Iran

Iran Iraq Palestine/Middle East

As I wrote in an earlier post, if US forces are inserted into southern Lebanon, the inevitable Hezbollah attacks on those troops are sure to lead to a wider war pitting the US and Israel against Syria and/or Iran.

John Robb agrees, but believes the target will be Iran:

If the US sends troops to Lebanon as peacekeepers and/or as a force to disarm Hezbollah, we will see a quick escalation. Any attack (and it would be inevitable) on US forces by the Hez would be seen as a direct attack on the US by Syria and Iran. This would lead to an immediate expansion of hostilities (to include an EBO [effects based operation] against both countries as a means of punishment). From that point on, the situation would be beyond repair. [...]
I do not think I am overstating the danger here. Once momentum starts moving in that direction, we might soon find ourselves in another situation where stubborn pride, as much as anything else, would make it hard for us to modify our rhetoric and admit our inability and that of our Israeli allies to disarm and dismantle the military arm of Hizballah. It's a proxy war right now, but if our surrogates (the Israelis) fail to achieve their objectives, they will attempt very purposefully to broaden the conflict into a much larger one directly involving the United States and Iran. [Emphasis in the original]

Robb cites former CIA analyst Ray Close, who writes:

My source confirmed in detail the fact that intelligence being produced for the Bush Administration by the Pentagon strongly supports the thesis that Hizballah operations are directly controlled and closely managed from Teheran. My source considers this an exaggerated picture of the real situation. He believes that this assessment contributes to an unhealthy and even dangerous mindset in Washington, leading to potentially serious miscalculations and errors of judgment by President Bush and his closest advisors at this very critical time. [Emphasis added]

These people have their heads in a bubble, and they are going to get a lot of people killed. The idea that Hezbollah is being "directly controlled and closely managed" by Iran is as outmoded as the idea that the opposition in Iraq is just a bunch of foreign jihadists and Baathist dead-enders. And we know how that turned out. If the US allows itself to be drawn into a war with Iran, we will look back on our current difficulties with nostalgia.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

State Of The Union

Politics

As a kind of follow-on to the previous post, here are excerpts from an interview with Gore Vidal in the current issue of The Progressive:

The people don't matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They've got the troops. They've got the army. They've got Congress. They've got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him. [...]
What is it going to take to stop the Bush onslaught? Economic collapse. We are too deeply in debt...I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars. [...]

We've never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It's as though we are evil. We strike first. We'll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It's like a war against dandruff. There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

But our media has collapsed. They've questioned no one. One of the reasons Bush and Cheney are so daring is that they know there's nobody to stop them. Nobody is going to write a story that says this is not a war, only Congress can declare war. And you can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids. Nothing makes any sense, and the people are getting very confused. The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.

[Our rulers] don't want us to know anything. When you've got a press like we have, you no longer have an informed citizenry. [...]

A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.

It's so stupid, everything that they say. And the media take on it is just as stupid as theirs, sometimes worse. They at least have motives. They are making money out of the republic or what's left of it. It's the stupidity that will really drive me away from this country. [...]

We certainly are not warlike. We don't want [military service]. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the most admirable things about Americans. We didn't want to go out and conquer other countries. We wanted to corner wheat in the stock market or something sensible like that. So we are very unbelligerent. [...]

[The Democrats aren't] an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party — the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. [...]

The tactic [to energize democracy] would be to go after smaller offices, state by state, school board, sheriff, state legislatures. You can turn them around and that doesn't take much of anything. Take back everything at the grassroots, starting with state legislatures. That's what Madison always said. I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian. [...]

I hope [Newton's Third Law] is still working. American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. And the Third Law is: There is no action without reaction. There should be a great deal of reaction to the total incompetence of this Administration. It's going to take two or three generations to recover what we had as of twenty years ago. [Emphasis added]

Not a pretty picture, but who can argue with it? Lots of chickens coming home to roost, sooner or later.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Summer Rerun

Iraq Media

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Boy, are they ever. E&P:

An analysis released today by Frank Newport, director of The Gallup Poll, shows that current public wishes for U.S. policy in the Iraq war eerily echo attitudes about the Vietnam war in 1970.
The most recent Gallup poll this month found that 52% of adult Americans want to see all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year, with 19% advocating immediate withdrawal. In the summer of 1970, Gallup found that 48% wanted a pullout within a year, with 23% embracing the "immediate" option. Just 7% want to send more troops now, vs. 10% then.

At present, 56% call the decision to invade Iraq a "mistake," with 41% disagreeing. Again this echoes the view of the Vietnam war in 1970, when that exact same number, 56%, in May 1970 called [Vietnam] a mistake in a Gallup poll.

While the U.S. involvement in the Korean war is often labeled unpopular, the highest number calling it a mistake in a Gallup poll was 51% in early 1952. That number actually declined to 43% by the end of that year. [Emphasis added]

So, the Iraq war is now tied for most unpopular American war ever.

There's one essential difference between now and 1970, though. Back then, opposition to the war had become a somewhat respectable position, openly advocated by the likes of Walter Cronkite and Bobby Kennedy. Today, if all you did was watch tv, you'd think it's only fringe elements who want the US to pull out of Iraq. Instead, it's a majority of Americans. Liberal media.

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Saturday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

Humanitarian aid in the U.S. has begun arriving in Lebanon. The U.S. Government sent 10,000 medical kits, 20,000 blankets, $30 million cash and today the people of New Orleans said: "They did what?" — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 28, 2006

Lebanese Now Overwhelmingly Back Hezbollah

Hezbollah is winning, especially in the war for hearts and minds. The ferocity of Israel's attack has united the Lebanese like nothing else could have done. CSM (via Billmon):

The ferocity of Israel's onslaught in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah's stubborn battles against Israeli ground forces may be working in the militant group's favor.
"They want to shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah. "Being victorious means not allowing Israel to achieve their aims, and so far that is the case."

Still, the intensity of the Israeli bombing campaign appears to have taken Hizbullah aback. Mahmoud Komati, the deputy head of Hizbullah's politburo told the Associated Press, "the truth is — let me say this clearly — we didn't even expect [this] response...that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us."

When Hizbullah guerrillas snatched two Israeli soldiers from across the border, it appeared to be a serious miscalculation. In the days that followed the July 12 capture, Israel unleashed its biggest offensive against Lebanon since its 1982 invasion, smashing the country's infrastructure, creating 500,000 refugees, and so far killing more than 400 civilians. [...]

In a televised address Tuesday, Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general, said the Israeli onslaught was an attempt by the US and Israel to "impose a new Middle East" in which Lebanon would be under US hegemony. [...]

The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines. According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January. [...]

Ghassan Farran, a doctor and head of a local cultural organization, gazes in disbelief at the pile of smoking ruins which was once his home. Minutes earlier, an Israeli jet dropped two guided missiles into the six-story apartment block in the centre of Tyre.

"Look what America gives us, bombs and missiles," says this educated, middle-class professional. "I was never a political person and never with Hizbullah but now after this I am with Hizbullah." [Emphasis added]

The leaders of the US and Israel don't view their adversaries fully as people, so it's not all that surprising that they fail to understand that they will react like people do everywhere when their homes are bombed and their loved ones killed and maimed. If the US/Israeli aim is to create generations of people who bear us nothing but ill will, mission accomplished.

Commenter Michael pointed to this quote from former CIA analyst Tom Whipple, who usually writes on peak oil issues:

The Israelis, of course, will heartily approve the arrival of outside peacekeepers in southern Lebanon as they can turn the whole mess over to somebody else. Hezbollah, of course, will find that Jihad and martyrdom will work against peacekeepers just as well as Israelis. It is difficult to conceive the current level of conflict going on for long without dragging in some Middle East country with oil wells and then, the world will change. [Emphasis added]

There is no supply cushion in the oil markets anymore. Any disruption in the flow of Middle Eastern oil will be felt immediately and powerfully by the world's economy.

Meanwhile, the neocons here and in Israel seem determined to widen the war, to bend Syria and Iran to their will. All of this is proceeding without anyone asking us what we want, here in what used to like to think of itself as a democracy.

How can this not end badly?

Posted by Jonathan at 06:23 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Friday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

A Tomahawk cruise missile fell off a truck in the Bronx this week. A cruise missile, isn't that unbelievable? You know what that means? There are now more weapons of mass destruction in the Bronx than there were in Iraq. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Republican McCloskey Says Vote Democratic

Politics

Former Republican Congressman and Presidential wannabe Pete McCloskey has written a long letter explaining why Republicans should vote for Democrats this fall. A short excerpt (read the rest at Seeing the Forest):

I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans. [...]
It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. [...]

These Republican incumbents have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the public interest. [...]

I have therefore reluctantly concluded that party loyalty should be set aside, and that it is in the best interests of the nation, and indeed the future of the Republican Party itself, to return control of the House to temporary Democrat control, if only to return the House for a time to the kind of ethics standards practiced by Republicans in former years. [Emphasis added]

Guess who won't be doing any McCloskey fundraisers.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:37 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 27, 2006

How's The Weather?

Environment

Something's up with the weather. Here in Madison, the summer's been a freaky succession of highly localized, unusually potent storms leaving trails of downed trees and power outages. Here's a parking lot near downtown Madison, lunchtime today, after one of these micro cloudbursts:

That ain't normal.

Elsewhere, it's hot. Record high temperatures are being recorded in the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Here in the US, hundreds of thousands of people have been subjected to heat-related power outages lasting many days in NYC, St. Louis, and California. Scores if not hundreds of people have died. There was a time when it would have seemed like a big deal; now it's just the way things are. The public infrastructure is unraveling, and we're already getting hardened to it. Like New Orleans, only less so. Sign of the times.

Meanwhile, the weather just doesn't feel normal. I know, I know — individual weather events prove nothing about larger patterns (so you can spare me the usual comments and emails). Still, are we not to credit the evidence of our own senses? How's the weather where you are?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:41 PM | Comments (5) | Link to this

Killing Hostages

Zbigniew Brzezinski must not have gotten Dershowitz's memo. Here's Brzezinski, quoted by Steve Clemons (via Rolling Stone):

I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect — maybe not in intent — the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages.
Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing. [Emphasis added]

Who ever thought Brzezinski would wind up looking like one of the sane ones?

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Thursday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

George Bush is a "Wheel of Fortune" President in a "Jeopardy" world. — Will Durst

Posted by Jonathan at 08:42 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 26, 2006

Dead Man's Curve

John Robb, who understands fourth generation war as well as anyone, is worried. Very.

Update: [7/27 8:49AM] - More from John Robb here.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Betting The Ranch

Things can't get any crazier, right? Think again. Harper's (via Billmon):

There's much discussion of putting a multinational, NATO-led force in southern Lebanon as part of a ceasefire agreement in the Israel–Lebanon conflict, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a story in the Washington Post, has said that she does "not think that it is anticipated that U.S. ground forces...are expected for that force." [A non-denial denial - PP] However, a well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a deployment.
The officer, who had broad experience in the Middle East while at the CIA, noted that NATO and European countries, including England, have made clear that they are either unwilling or extremely reluctant to participate in an international force. Given other nations' lack of commitment, any "robust" force — between 10,000 and 30,000 troops, according to estimates being discussed in the media — would by definition require major U.S. participation. According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a "multinational" deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.

The uniformed military, however, is ardently opposed to sending American soldiers to the region, according to my source. "They are saying 'What the fuck?'" he told me. "Most of our combat-ready divisions are in Iraq or Afghanistan, or on their way, or coming back. The generals don't like it because we're already way overstretched." [...]

The former CIA officer said that the Bush Administration seems not to understand Hezbollah's deep roots and broad support among Lebanon's Shiites, the country's largest single ethnic bloc. "...Once you start fighting in a place like that you're basically at war with the Shiite population. That means that our soldiers are going to be getting shot at by Hezbollah. This would be a sheer disaster for us."

The scenario of an American deployment appears to come straight out of the neoconservative playbook: send U.S. forces into the Middle East, regardless of what our own military leaders suggest, in order to "stabilize" the region. The chances of success, as we have seen in Iraq, are remote. So what should be done? My source said the situation is so volatile at the moment that the only smart policy is to get an immediate ceasefire and worry about the terms of a lasting truce afterwards. [Emphasis added]

What is it that they imagine they're doing? What scenario can they have in mind?

A US force in Southern Lebanon would have an enormous bulls-eye on its back, putting it mildly. It couldn't help but take significant casualties from Hezbollah and others (who could be portrayed as puppets of Syria and/or Iran, as needed). Sooner or later, we'd wind up with US and Israeli forces fighting side by side, the forces of radical Islam arrayed against them — the clash of civilizations, or at least that's how it would play on Fox News. US and Israeli forces fighting together, taking casualties together — the precedent would be set. Next stop, Damascus? Tehran?

Putting a substantial US force in southern Lebanon would be reckless in the extreme. You know that, I know that. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld must know it, too. That they're even contemplating such a move shows how big of a gamble they're still prepared to take. How could a US troop presence in southern Lebanon not lead to a much-expanded regional war? How can the administration imagine such a war to be winnable? Nukes?

Posted by Jonathan at 09:33 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

Learning From Geckos

Science/Technology

Taking a little respite from the world's troubles. Here's a cool little tech story. BBC:

Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors. [...]
Like the reptile's foot, the polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip.

Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit.

"It would mean that your local window cleaner could dispense with his ladders and climb up the side of your house," says Dr Sajad Haq a principle research scientist at the company's Advanced Technology Centre in Filton, Bristol.

"There's a whole host of applications. It's just a question of your imagination." [...]

The cumulative attractive force of billions of setae allows geckos to scurry up walls and even hang upside down on polished glass.

The grip is only released when the animal peels its foot off the surface. [...]

Although the material has fantastic adhesive properties it does not feel "sticky".

"It's only when you press the material to the substrate that it actually sticks," says Dr Haq. "It's the molecular interaction that causes it to stick." [...]

So far, the team have manufactured several different materials with different sized mushrooms to try to optimise its "stickiness".

They have produced several samples up to 100mm in diameter which stick to almost any surface, including those covered in dirt.

However the team cannot quite match the performance of the nimble footed reptile.

"The material we have made so far will hold a family car to a roof, or an elephant if you wish," says Dr Haq. "[But we're] not quite at the level of mimicking the sticking power of the gecko." [Emphasis added]

The adhesion involves no liquids or gases, so it can be used in the vacuum of space.

The technologies for studying and manipulating materials at nano scales are developing at exponential rates, so we can expect lots more of these kinds of stories. Nature has had a very long time to find optimal solutions to problems, and humanity increasingly is in a position to capitalize on Nature's "intellectual property".

[Thanks, Maurice]

Posted by Jonathan at 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

World's Funniest Joke

The world's funniest joke, according to psychology professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire (Telegraph, via Lew Rockwell):

Two hunters are out in the woods in New Jersey when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed.
The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

Got a better one? Leave it in the comments.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:27 AM | Comments (8) | Link to this

Wednesday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

We're still on the road to World War III. Things were looking a little grim last week — all those countries pressuring us to call for an immediate cease-fire, but we stayed strong. Sure, we sent over Condi Rice to negotiate, but she's not there for a cease-fire. No, she's there for a "sustainable cease-fire," which considering the Middle East, is like sending her to bring back Jimmy Hoffa on a unicorn. — Stephen Colbert

Posted by Jonathan at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 25, 2006

Oh. My. God.

Environment

Pretty clearly the worst news yet. Words fail me. The Independent:

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.
Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

The alarming news comes in the midst of a heatwave gripping Britain and much of Europe and the United States. Temperatures in the south of England reached a July record of 36.3C on Tuesday. And it comes hard on the heels of a warning by an international group of experts, led by the Eastern Orthodox "pope" Bartholomew, last week that the forest is rapidly approaching a "tipping point" that would lead to its total destruction.

The research, carried out by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole centre in Santarem on the Amazon river, has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise. When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002, by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain, he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes.

The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest, the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.

[T]he Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

Dr Nepstead expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert.

Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that "the lock has broken" on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction". [Emphasis added]

I don't know words strong enough to say how significant this is. If you're not scared yet, you should be.

Posted by Jonathan at 01:50 PM | Comments (7) | Link to this

Ignoring Congress

Politics Rights, Law

The White House continues to flout the will of Congress. Congress won't repeal the estate tax, so what does the White House do? They fire the IRS lawyers who enforce it. NYT:

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. [...]
[S]ix I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a "back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax." [Emphasis added]

Refusing to enforce a law is one way Bush has circumvented Congress. So-called "signing statements" are another. Yesterday, the American Bar Association weighed in on Presidential signing statements, calling them "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers." The Nation:

[Monday], a bipartisan American Bar Association task force released its report challenging George Bush's flagrant misuse of signing statements to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers.
Bush has issued more than 800 challenges to provisions of passed laws (more than all previous presidents combined) and he has asserted "his right to ignore law." Among the areas of laws Bush has threatened through this "shortcut veto" are the ban on torture, affirmative action, whistleblower protection, and limits on use of "illegally collected intelligence."

The 10 member ABA panel includes three well-known conservatives, including Mickey Edwards – a former Republican Congressman who places protecting the Constitution above lock-step partisanship. Edwards, a former chair of the American Conservative Union and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, is a true maverick whose recent article in The Nation signals his commitment to protecting our constitutional design. "The President. " Edwards wrote, [has] "chosen not to veto legislation with which he disagreed – thus giving Congress a chance to override his veto – but simply to assert his right to ignore the law, whether a domestic issue or a prohibition against torturing prisoners of war."

Task force member Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan administration, concurs: "When the president signs a bill and says he is not going to enforce parts of a bill that he finds unconstitutional, it is in effect an absolute veto, because the Congress has no power to override him."

According to The Washington Post, panel members wrote: "The President's constitutional duty is to enforce laws he has signed into being unless and until they are held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or a subordinate tribunal. The Constitution is not what the President says it is." [Emphasis added]

Bush has issued more than 800 signing statements, a couple of hundred more than all previous presidents combined.

The ABA panel optimistically recommends "that Congress pass laws enabling judicial review of any instances in which the President claims authority to refuse to enforce legislation against the clear intent of Congress." No word on what happens when such a law is itself met with a signing statement, as one assumes it will be.

[Thanks, Mark]

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Tuesday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

President Bush says he is personally working on a solution for global warming. He says thanks to Republicans, soon every American will receive a voucher for a free popsicle. — Jay Leno

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July 24, 2006

Cantarell's Steep Decline

Peak Oil

Grim news. Mexico's Cantarell oil field, the world's second largest producer, is apparently in free fall. LA Times:

Output at Mexico's most important oil field has fallen steeply this year, raising fears that wells there that generate 60% of the country's petroleum are in the throes of a major decline.
Production at Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, in the shallow gulf waters off the shore of Mexico's southern Campeche state, averaged just over 1.8 million barrels a day in May, according to the most recent government figures. That's a 7% drop from the first of the year and the lowest monthly output since July 2005, when Hurricane Emily forced the evacuation of thousands of oil workers from the region.

Though analysts have long forecast the withering of this mature field, a rapid demise would pose serious challenges for the world's No. 5 oil producer. The oil field has supplied the bulk of Mexico's oil riches for the last quarter of a century, and petroleum revenue funds more than a third of federal spending.

"Cantarell is going to fall a lot, and quickly," said independent consultant Guillermo Cruz Dominguez Vargas, a former executive with Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex. "I can't imagine the strain on this society if there is nothing to replace it."

It would also be bad news for the United States, for which Mexico is the No. 2 petroleum supplier, behind Canada. And it could exacerbate tight global supplies that have kept oil at record prices. [...]

Exceeded in size only by Saudi Arabia's leviathan Ghawar field, Cantarell is a prolific giant that is past its prime. Monthly production peaked in late 2004 at just over 2.1 million barrels a day and has fallen more than 15% since then. Experts agree it has nowhere to go but down. [...]

Seawater is threatening to swamp the wells of Cantarell as the field's pressure diminishes, a debilitating symptom of old age that makes it tougher to extract the remaining oil. Leaked internal reports of Pemex's own worst-case scenarios published in Mexican newspapers show production plummeting to about 520,000 barrels a day by the end of 2008 — a 71% free-fall from May levels in less than three years.

Mexico City energy analyst David Shields said the swift drop over the first five months of 2006, and conversations with Pemex insiders have convinced him that prospects at Cantarell are worse than officials will admit publicly. June figures for the field won't be available until later this month. But Mexico's overall crude production fell in June, the third straight monthly decline, making it unlikely that Cantarell staged a revival.

"It's doing very badly," said Shields, general manager of Energia a Debate, an industry trade publication, and the author of two books on Pemex. "My reading of the situation is that it's dire." [Emphasis added]

Sign of the times. Producers have every incentive to hide their problems until they cannot be hidden any longer. As a result, declines, when they come, will tend to come suddenly and precipitously. In other words, we are almost certainly in worse trouble than we know. How long before we get similar news from Ghawar?

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Freedom-Haters

Politics Rights, Law

Yes, this has been going on for a while, but WTF? AP (via C&L):

When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration's policies.
Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating "No More War." What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

Authorities say they were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions... [Emphasis added]

What a bunch of cowardly, un-American weasels. Tom Paine spins in his grave.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Oil Back Above $75

Energy Peak Oil

Oil's back above $75 a barrel — $75.16 as I write this.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:45 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Quagmire

Excellent post by Billmon. Go read it.

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Monday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

People still talking about President Bush's use of a four-letter word at the G-8 Summit. It's not a big deal, President Bush using a four-letter word. Now if President Bush used a four-syllable word... — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 23, 2006

The Meaning Of Democracy

Yesterday, it was Alan Dershowitz. Today, it's Noah Feldman, NYU law professor and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A couple of law professors arguing that up is down and black is white. Billmon highlights these passages:

For its part, Israel is gambling that the right strategy is to make the people who elected Hamas and a government that includes Hezbollah reckon the costs of their representatives' recklessness. That is why Israel has targeted not only Hezbollah leaders and strongholds but has also bombed infrastructure that sustains daily life for everybody in Lebanon. From Israel's standpoint, this is no longer a fight with nonstate terrorists who are holding their fellow citizens hostage to their tactics. It is, rather, war between Israel and countries that are pursuing (or tolerating) violent policies endorsed (or at least accepted) by their electorates. [...]
Democracy can no longer be seen as an end in itself, and the fate of peoples lies in their own hands. [Emphasis added]

Translation: you can vote, but if we don't like who you vote for we have the right to bomb you. So much for our much-vaunted eagerness to spread democracy in the Middle East.

It's staight out of Chomsky: public "intellectuals" tying themselves in knots to justify the crimes of empire. It's seldom so appallingly, nakedly obvious, though. So I guess we can at least thank Dershowitz and Feldman for that: they've laid it bare for all to see.

As for Feldman's argument, one is reminded of Henry Kissinger's famous statement regarding US support for the coup that resulted in the overthrow and death of democratically-elected Chilean president Salvador Allende, and his replacement by the monstrous Augusto Pinochet:

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

Democracy, get it?

Posted by Jonathan at 11:05 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Meanwhile In Iraq

Iraq

How many corners have we turned now in Iraq? Most recently, there was the election of the national unity government. And the killing of al-Zarqawi. American troop drawdowns were said to be in the offing. But reality doesn't watch Fox News. AP:

The deteriorating security situation — especially in Baghdad — has alarmed U.S. officials, who had hoped that the new national unity government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would be able to ease tensions so that the U.S. and its international partners could begin removing troops this year.
But the situation has gotten worse since al-Maliki took office May 20. Security is likely to top the agenda when al-Maliki visits the White House this coming week.

The Baghdad area recorded an average of 34 major bombings and shootings [daily] for the week ending July 13, the U.S. military said. That was up 40 percent from the daily average of 24 registered between June 14 and July 13.

Much of the violence was due to sectarian attacks. Months of worsening violence has deepened the distrust between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.

Instead of cutbacks, a senior U.S. defense official said the Pentagon was moving ahead with scheduled deployments to Iraq next month and was moving one battalion to Baghdad from Kuwait, where it was in reserve, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. command had drawn up plans to reduce the number of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq from 14 to 12 by September. But that plan has been shelved for the time being because of the security crisis in the capital. [Emphasis added]

The invasion of Iraq didn't work out as planned. So what do they do? They widen the war. Lunatics.

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Sunday Gumpagraph

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Today's Bush Joke

The stem cell research bill passed both houses of Congress, but yesterday, the president vetoed the bill surrounded by the so-called snowflake children. So named because no two are alike, and they're all white...Snowflake children are the product of frozen embryos that were adopted rather than discarded. They were there to illustrate why embryonic stem cell research is wrong — even though those children wouldn't exist if not for intensive embryonic research, but let's not think about it. — Jon Stewart

On White House press secretary Tony Snow classifying civilian casualties as a lamentable side effect of war: "It's not murder, it's a lamentable side effect. The upset stomach and diarrhea of freedom, if you will. — Jon Stewart

Posted by Jonathan at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

July 22, 2006

Centripetal Force