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March 31, 2007

The Post-Peak Path Of Least Resistance

Energy  Environment  Peak Oil

I don't think the end of cheap oil will mean that things completely grind to a halt à la James Kunstler. But what seems like good news may actually be bad news. Very bad news. Why?

Humans, like other organisms, generally take the path of least (short-term) resistance. It's our nature. In the Peak Oil context, the path of least resistance won't be to change how we organize cities and suburbs; or to switch to public transportation; or even to drive significantly smaller, more efficient vehicles. Nor will it be most of the other alternatives that could meaningfully reduce the demand for liquid fuels.

Instead, the path of least resistance will be to substitute other liquid fuels for gasoline and diesel, those other fuels probably being ethanol made from plant matter and, most alarmingly, synthetic fuel made from coal. There is an enormous amount of coal remaining, and if we put all of that carbon in the atmosphere the results will be deadly.

As people flail about for ways to cope with increasing shortfalls in oil production, they will act hurriedly, thoughtlessly, and they will almost certainly exacerbate global warming, perhaps catastrophically. That will be the path of least resistance.

In a BBC op-ed, author David Strahan makes a similar point. Excerpts:

[I]t is quite possible to run out of oil and pollute the planet to destruction simultaneously.

In fact peak oil could even make emissions worse if it drives us to exploit the wrong kinds of fuel.

Burning rainforest and peatlands to create palm oil plantations for biofuels releases vast amounts of CO2, and has already made Indonesia, according to some ways of calculating it, the world's third biggest emitter after the US and China.

Synthetic transport fuels made from natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch process emit even more carbon on a well-to-wheels basis than conventional crude; and when the feedstock is coal, the emissions double.

None of these alternatives are likely to fill the gap left by conventional crude — at least, not in time.

But because they are so much more carbon intensive, it is quite easy to conjure scenarios in which we still suffer fuel shortages while emitting even more CO2 than in the current business-as-usual forecast — the worst of all possible worlds.

Although these fuels are likely to prove inadequate, we may be driven to use them because cleaner alternatives are even more inadequate, for a variety of reasons.

Biofuels can be produced sustainably and with real CO2 reductions, but in the industrialised world there simply isn't the land.

In the developing world, however, there are vast swathes of land which could be put to sugar cane in a sustainable fashion; but the scale of the task of replacing crude oil would still be monumental.

I calculate that to substitute the fuel lost through a post-peak oil production annual decline of 3% would mean planting about 200,000 sq km — equivalent to the land area of Cuba, Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea — every year.

Alternatively, if we decided to run Britain's road transport system, say, on cleanly produced hydrogen — electrolysing water using non-CO2-emitting forms of generation — our options would be:

67 Sizewell B nuclear power stations

a solar array covering every inch of Norfolk and Derbyshire combined

or a wind farm bigger than the entire southwest region of England.

When oil production starts to fall, the economic impacts could well be devastating.

Soaring crude prices could tip the world into a depression deeper than that of the 1930s, and collapsing stock markets cripple our ability to finance the expensive clean energy infrastructure we need.

As the unemployment lines grow, the political will to tackle climate change may be sapped by the need to keep the lights burning as cheaply as possible.

Many environmentalists seem to dismiss or ignore peak oil because they simply cannot see it as significant when compared to climate change.

But this is to miss the point.

Oil depletion is deadly serious in its own right, but it also has the capacity both to worsen emissions and destroy the wealth needed to fight global warming.

For this reason - among others - it too has the power to destroy our civilisation. [Emphasis added]

Desperate people do desperate things. Fuel shortages will be an immediate, concrete problem staring people in the face. Global warming will seem, by comparison, an abstraction somewhere off in the future. And it will be easy for people to rationalize that their little contribution to global warming is an insignificant drop in a very big bucket; meanwhile, they need a way to get to work, to shop, to heat their homes. They are going to want fuel; they're not going to care much where it comes from.

Of course, there are significant wild cards in any attempts to project the future. Biotechnology and nanotechnology, especially, have the potential to radically transform the equation. (And also to create their own brand of havoc.) But the next couple of decades are pivotal, and the sheer scale of the problem means that new technologies may arrive too late. Enormous damage is already being done, right now, in the race to produce biofuels. The colossal scale of the world's thirst for fuel pretty much guarantees that in the race for profits all sorts of bad ideas will be pushed into large-scale use without due regard for the consequences. We suffer from a kind of technological monoculture and a monoculture of the mind that causes us to risk way too much on a few throws of the dice.

If we act without thinking, we're guaranteed to follow the path of least (short-term) resistance. But it's the wrong path. It remains to be seen if humans are smart enough to forego short-term convenience to gain long-term survival. Are we?

[Thanks, Jason]

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Saturday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

You know those correspondents' dinners that they have in Washington? The media gets a chance for one night to put aside its cozy relationship with the government for one that is instead nauseatingly sycophantic. You'll recall from last year they don't like it much when the entertainment — what's the word I'm looking for — pisses on them. Anyway, they had another dinner last night and this time the entertainment was much more to their liking [on screen: Karl Rove rapping]. Let's say Jeffrey Dahmer came to your bar mitzvah, and it turned out that he was a great dancer. He's still Jeffrey Dahmer. I wonder if I could do something like that. Chuck, can you give me a beat? [music starts]. From the West Wing to the Crawford Ranch, Karl Rove has destroyed the executive branch. He has no scruples and I don't mean maybe. He said John McCain had a secret black baby. F**k that guy. — Jon Stewart

(Video here)

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March 30, 2007

How Dumb Is Homeland Security?

Politics

This dumb. The mind boggles.

Update: Looks like I'm the dumb one. April Fool's came early this year. Serves me right for posting in a hurry.

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Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

During an appearance before the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, or MOOBLA, President Bush denounced setting a specific date for withdrawal [on screen: Bush saying, 'If the House bill becomes law, our enemies in Iraq will simply have to mark their calendars']. It's not quite that simple, Mr. President. Remember they're on the Islamic calendar. By contrast, the president is saying our commitment is more open-ended [on screen: Bush saying, 'Iraq's leaders know that our commitment is not open-ended']. So we can't set a deadline, but our commitment is not open-ended? Basically, what he's saying is we are definitely leaving Iraq sometime between now and — the end of time. Wait, not the end of time. I don't want to give a date. — Jon Stewart

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March 29, 2007

Today's Biofuels Are A Disaster

Energy  Environment

If you run your car on recycled fry oil or biofuel generated from waste, awesome. But growing food crops to turn them into fuel (and ripping up rainforests to do it) is out and out lunacy. Nothing shows our addiction to fossil fuels more starkly than our willingness to bid up the price of food crops — so we can price the world's poor out of the market, take food out of their mouths, and set fire to it.

It's simple really. There's a finite amount of corn and other crops in the world. They go to the highest bidder. There isn't enough to feed the world as it is. But now we in the First World want to take a big piece of that pie and pour it into our gas tanks. Every bushel that goes for fuel is a bushel that cannot go for food. People must go hungry so we can drive our SUVs to Wal-Mart.

But it's actually worse than even that. Many of today's biofuels are an environmental disaster, too, worse for the planet than petroleum. George Monbiot explains:

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless.

In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow – it is released again when the fuel is burnt. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.

In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants — if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.

So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 this column warned that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are, by definition, richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats....Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn’t materialise for many years. They are happening already.

Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world....According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from both maize and wheat.

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang utan in the wild. But it gets worse. As the forests are burnt, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or ten times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes TEN TIMES as much climate change as ordinary diesel. [...]

The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram.

In February the European Commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel.

The British government says it "will require transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply." But it will not require them to do anything. It can't: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules. And even "sustainable" biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a "second generation" of biofuels, made from straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have been done.

We need a moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugarcane. Even then, the targets should be set low and increased only cautiously. I suggest a five-year freeze. [...]

You can join the campaign at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk. [Emphasis added]

Like addicts everywhere, we pretend not to see the damage our addiction does. And biofuels make denial easy. They seem so green. And who really knows what's going on in Indonesia or the Amazon, anyway? Out of sight, out of mind. Out of our minds is more like it.

We do what we do because we are too lazy and too greedy to increase fuel efficiency, drive smaller vehicles, use public transportation. It's too much trouble. We'd rather starve the world's poor, strip off the last remaining rainforests, use the atmosphere for our sewer.

Not always intentionally, perhaps. Many people want to do the right thing (at least if it's not too inconvenient), and fuel from plants sounds like it ought to be the right thing. But just because something sounds green doesn't mean it is. Good intentions alone are worth nothing. We are responsible for the consequences of our actions. We have to realistically assess (take a fearless inventory of) the net effect of whatever steps we take from here on out. We have to determine if they do more harm than good. We have to stop kidding ourselves. We no longer have a lot of room for error.

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Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

President Bush held a news conference where he accused the Democrats of playing politics with the firing of U.S. attorneys. You know, the attorneys he fired for not playing politics. — Jay Leno

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March 28, 2007

"Show Of Force"

Iran

The US Navy is staging a huge "show of force" in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran. But what they're really doing, whether they acknowledge it to themselves or not, is positioning a whole bunch of sitting duck targets where any nut with a missile can start World War III. AP:

The U.S. Navy on Tuesday began its largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a pair of aircraft carriers and backed by warplanes flying simulated attack maneuvers off the coast of Iran.

The maneuvers bring together two strike groups of U.S. warships and more than 100 U.S. warplanes to conduct simulated air warfare in the crowded Gulf shipping lanes. [...]

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl said the U.S. maneuvers were not organized in response to the capture of the British sailors - nor were they meant to threaten the Islamic Republic, whose navy operates in the same waters. [...]

Overall, the exercises involve more than 10,000 U.S. personnel on warships and aircraft making simulated attacks on enemy shipping with aircraft and ships, hunting enemy submarines and finding mines.

"What it should be seen as by Iran or anyone else is that it's for regional stability and security," Aandahl said. "These ships are just another demonstration of that. If there's a destabilizing effect, it's Iran's behavior." [Emphasis added]

"It's for regional stability and security." They think we're idiots.

Meanwhile, the Navy seems to be proving it's not immune to the sort of self-aggrandizement that led the other services to think they could crush Iraq like a bug. We see how that's working out.

The truth is that surface navies are an anachronism in a world where missiles are freely available on the international black market and non-State actors have learned that First World militaries are like big, blind, and very stupid elephants. Look what Hezbollah did to Israel, and what the Taliban in Afghanistan and a mixed bag of insurgents in Iraq are doing to the US. It's the Navy's turn now largely because that's about the only thing the US has left in reserve.

And what happens if some US ships get sunk? Nuclear war? Is that what they want, at the end of the day? Let us hope not, but one thing is certain — by positioning all those ships as sitting ducks they've created a hair-trigger that could cause things to ratchet up very, very quickly. It's madness.

Dems in Congress, take notice. Quickly.

[Thanks, Miles]

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At It Since Eisenhower

Humor & Fun

LOL.

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Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Dick Cheney again this week was in the hospital. He was experiencing discomfort in his leg. And the doctor asked Cheney if he stretches. Cheney said, "Are you kidding? I linked 9/11 with Saddam Hussein." — Bill Maher

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March 27, 2007

Bolton On BBC

Iraq

Things you won't hear on American tv:

[Via BuzzFlash]

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Root Cause

Palestine/Middle East

I linked to these maps on Sunday, but Sunday's a little slow here at PastPeak so you may have missed them. They're stunning.

American media maintain the fiction that Palestinian hostility toward Israel is baseless, fanatical anti-Semitism. But you can't look at those maps and not realize instantly that Palestinians have a legitimate grievance. Which is why you'll never see those maps in the New York Times.

Native Americans didn't hate Europeans until Europeans came and stole their land. It wasn't anti-Europeanism. It was anti-having-their-land-stolen.

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Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Commenting on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq this week, President Bush said, "It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home." He then added, "But we need to stay crazy and not do that." — Amy Poehler

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March 26, 2007

Stacking The Deck

Environment  Politics

A Maryland paper reports that Republicans who want to serve on the global warming subcommittee have to have decided in advance that humans don't cause global warming. Otherwise, the Republican leadership won't let them on the committee:

House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming — but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.

"I said, 'John, I can't do that,'" Gilchrest, R-1st-Md., said in an interview. "He said, 'Come on. Do me a favor. I want to help you here.'"

Gilchrest didn't make the committee. [...]

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a research scientist from Maryland, and Michigan's Rep. Vern Ehlers, the first research physicist to serve in Congress, also made cases for a seat, but weren't appointed, he said.

"Roy Blunt said he didn't think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming," Gilchrest said. "Right there, holy cow, there's like 9,000 scientists to three on that one." [Emphasis added]

Hey, here's an idea. How about we actually look at the science and try to come up with constructive public policy solutions. You know, like grownups.

Meanwhile, the Republicans seem to revel in being the Flat Earth party. They diverge farther and farther from reality. It's weird. And dangerous.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:25 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

UK Ministry Of Defence Concluded Lancet Methodology Was Sound

Iraq

When a peer-reviewed study published last October in the Lancet concluded that the war had already killed 655,000 Iraqis, the number was dismissed out of hand by US and British authorities, who publicly bad-mouthed the study's methodology. Internal documents obtained by the BBC, however, show that UK's ministry of defence was advised that the study's methodology was sound. BBC:

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet.

But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".

Another expert agreed the method was "tried and tested". [...]

The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October.

It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.

The researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people.

In nearly 92% of cases family members produced death certificates to support their answers. The survey estimated that 601,000 deaths were the result of violence, mostly gunfire.

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate.

He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report."

But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

One of the documents just released by the Foreign Office is an e-mail in which an official asks about the Lancet report: "Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies."

The reply from another official is: "We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate."

In the same e-mail the official later writes: "However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones."

Asked how the government can accept the Lancet's methodology but reject its findings, the government has issued a written statement in which it said: "The methodology has been used in other conflict situations, notably the Democratic republic of Congo.

"However, the Lancet figures are much higher than statistics from other sources, which only goes to show how estimates can vary enormously according to the method of collection.

"There is considerable debate amongst the scientific community over the accuracy of the figures."

In fact some of the British government criticism of the Lancet report post-dated Sir Roy's comments.

Speaking six days after Sir Roy praised the study's methods, British foreign office minister Lord Triesman said: "The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern...." [...]

If the Lancet survey is right, then 2.5% of the Iraqi population - an average of more than 500 people a day - have been killed since the start of the war. [Emphasis added]

Most people don't understand statistical sampling, so they tend to form an opinion based on a sort of rough average of all the comments they happen to hear. If pretty much everybody who gets on tv says one kind of number, a study like the Lancet study can't make much of a dent in how people think. It seems like too much of an outlier. No matter that most of the numbers being thrown around have little scientific basis, certainly not the kind of scientific basis the Lancet number has: the Lancet number gets shouted down.

It may be that the Lancet figure is too high. But a rough head count of what statistically-illiterate pundits and spin doctors say is not the way to make that determination. Especially when they have already lied about everything else.

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Army Deploys Seriously Injured Troops

Iraq

Salon reports that the Army has been sending seriously injured troops to its desert training base to inflate unit readiness stats. Some seriously injured troops have even been deployed to Iraq. Excerpts:

Last November, Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, a communications specialist with a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had surgery on an ankle he had injured during physical training. After the surgery, doctors put his leg in a cast, and he was supposed to start physical therapy when that cast came off six weeks later.

But two days after his cast was removed, Army commanders decided it was more important to send him to a training site in a remote desert rather than let him stay at Fort Benning, Ga., to rehabilitate. In January, Hernandez was shipped to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., where his unit, the 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, was conducting a month of training in anticipation of leaving for Iraq in March.

Hernandez says he was in no shape to train for war so soon after his injury. "I could not walk," he told Salon. ..."I was told by my doctor and my physical therapist that this was crazy." [...]

[W]hen he got to California, he was led to a large tent where he would be housed. He was shocked by what he saw inside: There were dozens of other hurt soldiers. Some were on crutches, and others had arms in slings. Some had debilitating back injuries. And nearby was another tent, housing female soldiers with health issues ranging from injuries to pregnancy.

Hernandez is one of a dozen soldiers who stayed for weeks in those tents who were interviewed for this report, some of whose medical records were also reviewed by Salon. All of the soldiers said they had no business being sent to Fort Irwin given their physical condition. In some cases, soldiers were sent there even though their injuries were so severe that doctors had previously recommended they should be considered for medical retirement from the Army.

Military experts say they suspect that the deployment to Fort Irwin of injured soldiers was an effort to pump up manpower statistics used to show the readiness of Army units. With the military increasingly strained after four years of war, Army readiness has become a critical part of the debate over Iraq. Some congressional Democrats have considered plans to limit the White House's ability to deploy more troops unless the Pentagon can certify that units headed into the fray are fully equipped and fully manned.

Salon recently uncovered another troubling development in the Army's efforts to shore up troop levels, reporting earlier this month that soldiers from the 3rd Brigade had serious health problems that the soldiers claimed were summarily downgraded by military doctors at Fort Benning in February, apparently so that the Army could send them to Iraq. Some of those soldiers were among the group sent to Fort Irwin to train in January.

After arriving at Fort Irwin, many of the injured soldiers did not train. "They had all of us living in a big tent," confirmed Spc. Lincoln Smith, who spent the month there along with Hernandez and others....His records list his problems as "permanent" and recommend that he be considered for retirement from the Army because of his health. [...]

The soldiers who were at Fort Irwin described a pitiful scene. "You had people out there with crutches and canes," said an Army captain who was being considered for medical retirement himself because of serious back injuries sustained in a Humvee accident during a previous combat tour in Iraq. [...]

Military experts point to the brigade's readiness statistics, including "unit status reports" that carefully track personnel numbers and are sent up through the Army's chain of command. "There are a number of factors used to establish whether a unit is mission-capable," explained John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent organization that studies military and security issues. "One of them is the extent to which it is fully manned," he said. Pike says he suspects the injured soldiers were camped out at Fort Irwin so that on paper, at least, "the unit would have a sufficient head count to be mission-capable." [...]

But injured soldiers from the brigade were not just shuttled to California; some were sent on to Iraq. Earlier this month Salon reported that on Feb. 15, shortly after returning from Fort Irwin to Fort Benning, 75 injured soldiers from the 3rd Brigade lined up for screenings at the troop medical clinic. Some of the soldiers there that day described cursory meetings with a division surgeon — meetings designed to downgrade their health problems, the soldiers said, so that they could be deployed to the war zone. Records for some of those soldiers show doctors had previously concluded that those soldiers could not wear body armor because of serious skeletal and other injuries.

A military official knowledgeable about the training in California in January and the medical processing of the injured soldiers at Fort Benning in February told Salon that commanders were taking desperate actions to meet an accelerated deployment schedule dictated by President Bush's so-called surge plan for securing Baghdad. [...]

The New York Times reported on March 20 that of the 20 Army brigades not currently deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, only one has enough equipment or soldiers to be sent quickly into combat. [Emphasis added]

Unbelievably grotesque, and a real sign of desperation.

All to protect the egos of the fools at the top.

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Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 10:11 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

I love when they say this is a constitutional crisis. Oh, please. We haven't used the Constitution in years. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 09:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 25, 2007

Conspirators

Black Ops

The argument you alway hear against conspiracy theories is that if a conspiracy involved a large number of people then surely someone would talk. But the truth is that people do talk, and no one believes them.

Consider E. Howard Hunt, the CIA officer, Bay of Pigs veteran, and Watergate "plumber" who has often been mentioned in connection with the JFK assassination, and about whom Richard Nixon said, "This fellow Hunt, he knows too damn much." Hunt died in January at age 88. Now two of his sons say Hunt told them, in the years before he died, details of the conspiracy to kill JFK.

First, the LA Times:

[B]efore his death at age 88 in January, E. Howard Hunt...left [his] sons one last tantalizing story, they say. The story, which he planned to detail in a memoir and could be worth big money — was that rogue CIA agents plotted to kill President Kennedy in 1963, and that they approached Hunt to join the plot but he declined. [...]

Hunt had been preparing for publication of "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond," released this month.

[Son] St. John says it was he who suggested the idea of a memoir when he convinced his father that it was time to reveal anything he knew about the Kennedy assassination.

It had always been suspected that Hunt shared his Cuban exile friends' hatred of Kennedy, who refused to provide air cover to rescue the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that Hunt helped organize.

"He told me in no uncertain terms about a plot originating in Miami, to take place in Miami," said St. John. He said his father identified key players and speculated that then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible for moving the venue to Dallas, where the Texan could control the security scene.

But the memoir's published passages about the assassination have an equivocal tone. Hunt provides only a hypothetical scenario of how events in Dallas might have unfolded, with Johnson atop a pyramid of rogue CIA plotters.

The brothers insist their father related to them a detailed plot to assassinate Kennedy. Hunt told them he was approached by the conspirators to join them but declined, they say.

That information was cut from the memoir, the brothers say, because Hunt's attorney warned he could face perjury charges if he recanted sworn testimony. Hunt also had assured Laura before they married in 1977 that he had nothing to do with the assassination. [...]

St. John, who sports a mustache and longish graying coif combed back from a receding hairline, has a more personal reason to believe in his father's disclosures. He said he was instructed by Hunt in 1974 to back up an alibi for his whereabouts on the day Kennedy died, 11 years earlier.

"I did a lot of lying for my father in those days," St. John said. [Emphasis added]

Rolling Stone's account names names:

E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."

So there it was, according to E. Howard Hunt. LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had long been speculated upon. But now E. Howard was saying that's the way it was. And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only shooter in Dallas. There was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the Corsican Mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in other assassination theories.

"By the time he handed me the paper, I was in a state of shock," Saint says. "His whole life, to me and everybody else, he'd always professed to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he would have made something up about the Mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn't like Johnson. But you don't falsely implicate your own country, for Christ's sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, and that's the last thing he would do."

Later that week, E. Howard also gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord Meyer, then goes on: "Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee] Phillips who brings in Wm. Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with Oswald in Mexico City. . . . Then Veciana meets w/ Frank Sturgis in Miami and enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons."

David Atlee Phillips, the CIA's Cuban operations chief in Miami at the time of JFK's death, knew E. Howard from the Guatemala-coup days. Veciana is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint's father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and he is a man whom E. Howard, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not met until Watergate, so to Saint the mention of his name was big news.

In the next few paragraphs, E. Howard goes on to describe the extent of his own involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended, in 1963, with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room. Here's what happens:

Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a "Big Event" and asks E. Howard, "Are you with us?"

E. Howard asks Sturgis what he's talking about.

Sturgis says, "Killing JFK."

E. Howard, "incredulous," says to Sturgis, "You seem to have everything you need. Why do you need me?" In the handwritten narrative, Sturgis' response is unclear, though what E. Howard says to Sturgis next isn't: He says he won't "get involved in anything involving Bill Harvey, who is an alcoholic psycho." [Emphasis added]

Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing whether any of this is true. St. John Hunt says he's got notes in his father's handwriting, but there's no external corroboration. He and his brother David are looking to sell the story. So maybe they made the whole thing up. Or maybe they didn't.

Also in the news this week, professional hitman Charles Harrelson, father of Woody Harrelson, died in the Supermax prison where he was serving a life sentence for the assassination of a federal judge. When Harrelson was arrested, he confessed to a role in the JFK assassination, saying he was the shooter on the Grassy Knoll. He later recanted. Was he telling the truth when he confessed or when he recanted? Who knows. (By the way, when Harrelson was tried for a different contract killing in 1968, Wikipedia says his attorney was Percy Foreman, who also represented James Earl Ray, the reputed assassin of Martin Luther King.)

The notion that conspiracies can never remain secret seems silly on its face. Covert operatives and special forces personnel carry out any number of operations that never see the light of day. Loose-lipped people don't get invited to participate in the first place. And when the operation is of a particularly ruthless, high-stakes nature, you'd have every incentive in the world to keep your mouth shut. But it almost doesn't matter, because when someone does talk, unless they've got home movies or something — not exactly likely — nobody believes them. Hunt and Harrelson are both plausible as participating in or having knowledge of the JFK killing. But without corroboration, nothing they say makes a dent — and people go right on saying that none of the conspirators has ever talked. Are you sure?

It reminds me of the time I called a software company's tech support number to report a bug. When I finished explaining the symptoms I'd encountered, the person on the other end told me that it couldn't be a bug because no one had ever reported it. Right.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:02 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Root Cause

Palestine/Middle East

Probably the most illuminating maps I've ever seen. Stunning.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Sunday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

With the fired lawyers controversy here in the United States showing no signs of abating, President Bush gave an impromptu press conference in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room. Presumably because the Petulant Tantrum Room was booked. — Jon Stewart

Posted by Jonathan at 05:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 24, 2007

Gates: Close Gitmo — Cheney: No

9/11, "War On Terror"  Politics

When Robert Gates started as Secretary of Defense, he wanted to close the Guantanamo prison. Bush himself has said that he'd like to close Guantanamo. But Cheney says no. NYT:

In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gates's appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush's publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo's continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.

Mr. Gates's arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said. [Emphasis added]

In case you were wondering who's really in charge.

Proof that time travel will never be invented: no one came back from the future to strangle Dick Cheney at birth.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Fooling The Eye In The Sky

Future  Iraq

Seven US Marines and a Navy medic are accused of the cold-blooded murder of a disabled Iraqi police officer named Hashim Ibrahim Awad. What's remarkable is the steps they allegedly took to fool surveillance by unmanned aerial vehicles, making the murder look like a firefight. Wired (via Xymphora):

As they carried out the killing of an Iraqi civilian, seven Marines and a Navy medic used their understanding of the military's airborne surveillance technology to spoof their own systems, military hearing testimony charges. [...]

The case is remarkable for the fact that the killers nearly got away with their alleged crime right under the eye of the military's sophisticated surveillance systems. According to testimony, at least three times the warriors took deliberate, and apparently effective, measures to trick the unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVs in military parlance — that watch the ground with heat-sensitive imaging by night, and high-resolution video by day. [...]

The killing took place in the early morning darkness of April 26, when a "snatch party" of three Marines and a medic set out to kill and make an example of a suspected insurgent named Saleh Gowad, who'd been captured and released many times, according to testimony. Not finding him, they went next door and seized the sleeping Awad from his home, while the four remaining squad members waited nearby.

They men allegedly flexicuffed Awad's hands and marched him about a half-mile to a bomb crater, where they bound his feet and positioned him with a stolen shovel and an AK-47. Then they returned to an attack position and shot him.

On the way, according to testimony, the forward party took at least three steps to disguise its actions from aerial surveillance, steps that initially persuaded investigators the killing was justified. One Marine went forward and dug around in the crater. At the same time, the three other troops crouched with Awad behind a low wall in what [an attorney] described as a squad in a typical military posture.

They held that pose as the surveillance UAV passed over, creating an infrared tableau of four troops watching a bomber dig a hole along the road.

After the UAV passed, and they dodged being seen by a U.S. helicopter, the four rose from behind the wall to march Awad to the crater, according to the medic's testimony. While they were moving Awad the final 125 yards to his death, according to Bacos, they heard the UAV return. Cpl. Trent Thomas quickly wrapped himself around Awad so that the two men would appear as a single person on the heat-reactive infrared sensors, according to testimony.

Then they put Awad in the hole where the Marine had posed with the shovel seconds before, backed off and signaled. Six of the eight troops opened fire — staging a firefight with a bomb-planting insurgent.

"Congratulations, we just got away with murder, gents," the squad leader told them, according to Bacos' testimony. [...]

Steps similar to those the alleged killers apparently took may someday be a routine part of planning a crime, as U.S. law enforcement agencies clamor to put UAVs over U.S. airspace for domestic surveillance. [Emphasis added]

Welcome to the future, which is already in progress.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:27 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Global Warming: WWJD?

Environment  Ethics  Religion

Is denial of global warming a Christian thing to do?

Here's what Al Gore told the Senate in reference to Senator Inhofe, who often cites the Bible as the source for his political views:

I say to Senator Inhofe, I don't prostelytize my own beliefs, but all religious traditions hold to the same teachings: That the Earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. That the purpose of life is to glorify God, and you cannot do it while heaping contempt on God's creation.

Not to mention the enormous suffering, especially among the world's poor, that global warming will cause. As Jesus himself said:

What you did to the least of these, you did to Me, and...whatever you neglected to do for the least of these, you neglected to do it for Me.

Jesus wept.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Saturday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

The Democrats are trying to turn these firings of U.S. attorneys into a partisan issue, but the president is above bickering. In fact, he made a generous peace offering. Karl Rove and Harriet Miers would submit to private interviews, but "they would not take oaths nor would a transcript be made available." See, the president is just trying to save this country from another painful perjury trial. — Stephen Colbert

Posted by Jonathan at 03:38 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 23, 2007

Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 09:22 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

After Congress subpoenaed presidential adviser Karl Rove, President Bush said he will allow Rove to answer questions, but not under oath. The president said, "I'm all for him talking as long as he doesn't have to tell the truth." — Conan O'Brien

The White House is adamant that its advisers retain the right, if they so choose, to lie — without consequence. It's executive privilege. If Karl Rove knew he'd one day be forced to testify under oath about the advice he gave the president, he'd have to limit that advice to things that weren't shameful, illegal, or spectacularly bone-headed. — John Oliver

Posted by Jonathan at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 22, 2007

Rove (And Bush) Gave The Order

Politics

Sidney Blumenthal, in Salon:

In the U.S. attorneys scandal, Gonzales was an active though second-level perpetrator. While he gave orders, he also took orders. Just as his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, has resigned as a fall guy, so Gonzales would be yet another fall guy if he were to resign. He was assigned responsibility for the purge of U.S. attorneys but did not conceive it. The plot to transform the U.S. attorneys and ipso facto the federal criminal justice system into the Republican Holy Office of the Inquisition had its origin in Karl Rove's fertile mind.

Just after Bush's reelection and before his second inauguration, as his administration's hubris was running at high tide, Rove dropped by the White House legal counsel's office to check on the plan for the purge. An internal e-mail, dated Jan. 6, 2005, and circulated within that office, quoted Rove as asking "how we planned to proceed regarding the U.S. attorneys, whether we are going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc." Three days later, Sampson, in an e-mail, "Re: Question from Karl Rove," wrote: "As an operational matter we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys — the underperforming ones ...The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc."

The disclosure of the e-mails establishing Rove's centrality suggests not only the political chain of command but also the hierarchy of coverup. Bush protects Gonzales in order to protect those who gave Gonzales his marching orders — Rove and Bush himself.

"Now, we're at a point where people want to play politics with it," Rove declared on March 15 in a speech at Troy University in Alabama. The scene of Rove's self-dramatization as a victim of "politics" recalls nothing so much as Oscar Wilde's remark about Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop": "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."

From his method acting against "politics," Rove went on to his next, more banal talking point: There can be no scandal because everyone's guilty. (This is a variation of the old "it didn't start with Watergate" defense.) "I would simply ask that everybody who's playing politics with this, be asked to comment on what they think of the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration and see if they had the same, superheated political rhetoric then that they've having now." Instantly, this Rove talking point echoed out the squawk boxes of conservative talk radio and through the parrot jungle of the Washington press corps.

Indeed, Presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan replaced the 93 U.S. attorneys at the beginning of their administration as part of the normal turnover involved in the alternation of power. A report issued on Feb. 22 from the Congressional Research Service revealed that between 1981 and 2006, only five of the 486 U.S. attorneys failed to finish their four-year terms, and none were fired for political reasons. Only three were fired for questionable behavior, including one on "accusations that he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case." In brief, Bush's firings were unprecedented, and Rove's talking point was simply one among several shifting explanations, starting with the initial false talking point that those dismissed suffered from "low performance." [...]

Bush's resistance to having Rove placed under oath or even having a transcript of his testimony appears to be a coverup of a series of obstructions of justice. The e-mails hint at the quickening pulse of communications between the White House and the Justice Department. But only sworn testimony can elicit the truth.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee issued five subpoenas, including one for Rove, and on Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to follow suit. With these subpoenas, a constitutional battle is joined. "The moment subpoenas are issued, it means that they have rejected the offer," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. Bush is barricading his White House against the Congress to prevent its members from posing the pertinent question that might open the floodgate: What did Karl Rove know, and when did he know it?

Let's hope the Dems follow the trail as high as it goes. This administration has been guilty of all manner of criminality. Nailing them for this would be like nailing Al Capone for income evasion (or Nixon for the Watergate break-in): not entirely satisfying, but effective.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:20 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 10:49 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

There's another big controversy in Washington over whether or not the Justice Department fired eight United States attorneys for not being malleable enough to this administration. In January, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales addressed the issue [on screen: Gonzales saying, "I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons"]. Never ever! No, wait. Not ever. Wait. What's the word for when you do something periodically? Sometimes. A flat out denial from Gonzales. You know, in the good old days, that would have been the end of the story. The Republican Congress would have said, "Huh? What? You didn't? Okay," and gone back to building bridges in Alaska to save Terry Schiavo from gay flag-burners. But now, the opposition party controls Congress and they can perform a very complicated legal maneuver known as "asking for things." — Jon Stewart

Posted by Jonathan at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

March 21, 2007

"Captain Ahab In Charge Of Saving The Whales"

Humor & Fun  Politics

Jon Stewart interviews John Bolton. Awesome.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Paging Dr. Freud

Humor & Fun  Politics

John McCain accidentally tells the truth, here.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Time To Leave

Iraq