Singularity
Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
This weekend, sometime, I'll be 50 years old.
The Northern Gold Coast calls. If Al Gore's right, I'd best see it again before the rush starts.
Don't make any bad choices in the mean time!
¶ 9:50 PM 4 comments
links to this post
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
This weekend, sometime, I'll be 50 years old.
The Northern Gold Coast calls. If Al Gore's right, I'd best see it again before the rush starts.
Don't make any bad choices in the mean time!
¶ 9:50 PM 4 comments
links to this post
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Straw Men
As mentioned below, the current diversionary hoopla streaming from Dear Leader concerns the traitorous act of the New York Pravda to remind us of what he'd already told us.
It's posted on the White House website.
The whole methodology behind it, including the use of the SWIFT database, is outlined in an unclassified report to the United Nations [.pdf format].
Nevertheless, Dear Leader is now making statements like this:
"Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn...
Bu$hie'd brand 'em and burn 'em at the stake, too, if he could. If he wasn't a-skeered of fire. Anything for the spectacle for his base. Anything to push up his own polls.
Koppelman has it right:
Today, the Republicans will reportedly introduce a resolution condeming the New York Times for revealing the existence of a "secret" program to monitor international banking transactions. Sen. Jim Bunning is even calling for a grand jury to consider charges of treason. (Left out of the resolution and the call for indictment, of course, will be the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal, which published a story the same day as the Times -- consistency is not, after all, the hallmark of this attack. The narrative demands that the traitorous journalists must be effete atheistic Manhattan liberals who are, you know, in league with religious extremists who target Manhattan, and the Journal simply doesn't fit. )
The Republicans are following the siren call of their right-wing media base, who, like the National Review, are calling for sanctions against the Times. The cry is always the same: the Times (though again, not the Journal) has harmed our national security by the disclosure of this double super secret program.
Well, then. If that's their argument, let's use the word the mainstream press is so scared to apply: liars.
From now on, remember this: anyone who tries to claim that the Times exposed a secret program and helped the terrorists (I'd mention the Journal, but hey, they won't) is a liar.
From today's Boston Globe:
"A search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.
'There have been public references to SWIFT before,' said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. 'The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before.'
From Victor Comras, a counterterrorism expert formerly with the State Department and United Nations:
Reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:
'The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.'
This isn't about whether the Times (but, uh, not the Journal) violated national security, not really. It's about changing the subject, about diverting attention, once again, from an administration that has systematically been bending and breaking the law and the Constitution in order to assemble ever more information about all of us.
If the main$tream only had a brain, you might think they'd remember. But it's not a case of forgetfullness. It's not like no one remembers what they've already said.
It's denial, and lies, and manipulation of the data for the Faithful.
It's about their own justification for the draconian days ahead they're planning on. ¶ 5:07 PM 0 comments links to this post
It's posted on the White House website.
The whole methodology behind it, including the use of the SWIFT database, is outlined in an unclassified report to the United Nations [.pdf format].
Nevertheless, Dear Leader is now making statements like this:
"Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn...
Bu$hie'd brand 'em and burn 'em at the stake, too, if he could. If he wasn't a-skeered of fire. Anything for the spectacle for his base. Anything to push up his own polls.
Koppelman has it right:
Today, the Republicans will reportedly introduce a resolution condeming the New York Times for revealing the existence of a "secret" program to monitor international banking transactions. Sen. Jim Bunning is even calling for a grand jury to consider charges of treason. (Left out of the resolution and the call for indictment, of course, will be the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal, which published a story the same day as the Times -- consistency is not, after all, the hallmark of this attack. The narrative demands that the traitorous journalists must be effete atheistic Manhattan liberals who are, you know, in league with religious extremists who target Manhattan, and the Journal simply doesn't fit. )
The Republicans are following the siren call of their right-wing media base, who, like the National Review, are calling for sanctions against the Times. The cry is always the same: the Times (though again, not the Journal) has harmed our national security by the disclosure of this double super secret program.
Well, then. If that's their argument, let's use the word the mainstream press is so scared to apply: liars.
From now on, remember this: anyone who tries to claim that the Times exposed a secret program and helped the terrorists (I'd mention the Journal, but hey, they won't) is a liar.
From today's Boston Globe:
"A search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.
'There have been public references to SWIFT before,' said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. 'The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before.'
From Victor Comras, a counterterrorism expert formerly with the State Department and United Nations:
Reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:
'The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.'
This isn't about whether the Times (but, uh, not the Journal) violated national security, not really. It's about changing the subject, about diverting attention, once again, from an administration that has systematically been bending and breaking the law and the Constitution in order to assemble ever more information about all of us.
If the main$tream only had a brain, you might think they'd remember. But it's not a case of forgetfullness. It's not like no one remembers what they've already said.
It's denial, and lies, and manipulation of the data for the Faithful.
It's about their own justification for the draconian days ahead they're planning on. ¶ 5:07 PM 0 comments links to this post
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Bait and SWIFT
"Congress was briefed," Mr. Bush said. "And what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America..."
In his remarks during a brief photo session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr. Bush appeared irritated, at times leaning forward for emphasis, though he did not mention any newspaper by name.
Mr. Cheney, who had earlier said he was offended by news accounts of the financial tracking program, on Monday went a step further, singling out The Times for criticism in a separate appearance at a fundraising luncheon for a Republican candidate for Congress, Adrian Smith, in Grand Island, Neb.
The executive editor of The Times, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement on Monday evening that the decision to publish had been "a hard call." But Mr. Keller noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has "embarked on a number of broad, secret programs aimed at combating terrorism, often without seeking new legal authority or submitting to the usual oversight..."
Administration officials had argued strongly that in reporting on the financial tracking operation, The Times would endanger national security by prompting the Belgian banking consortium that maintains the financial data to withdraw from the program. On Sunday, Mr. Keller, the paper's executive editor, posted a letter on The New York Times Web site saying that the newspaper "found this argument puzzling," partly because the banking consortium is compelled by subpoena to comply...
On Capitol Hill, the financial-tracking program itself has not generated much criticism, even from Democrats, since its existence was disclosed. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Reid was briefed on the program several weeks ago and had concluded that "it does not appear to be based on the same shaky and discredited legal analysis the vice president and his allies invoked to underpin the N.S.A. domestic spying program."
An exception has been Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has made privacy a signature issue and who said in an interview Monday that the Bush administration was adopting a strategy of "shoot the messenger" in trying to avoid Congressional oversight of the financial tracking program.
"There are very serious constitutional and legal questions that have been raised," Mr. Markey said, "and they're being obscured by this almost ad hominem attack on The New York Times."
Administration officials have held classified briefings about the banking program for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, intelligence and law enforcement officials said, and more lawmakers were briefed after the administration learned that The Times was making inquiries for an article about the program.
It's no surprise Harry Reid doesn't want to rock the finance investigation boat. Neither of course does the D.L.C. Of course the Rethuglicans back their Dear Leader entirely on this, and now their echo chamber is fully engaged in accusations of treason.
So what's so special about the finance transactions discussed in The New York Pravda last week?
...The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database...
The program... is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.
That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.
"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous..."
Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions...
While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said...
Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution...
Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.
The cooperative's message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a "24-7" operation. Customers' names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said...
Swift's 25-member board of directors, made up of representatives from financial institutions around the world, was previously told of the program. The Group of 10's central banks, in major industrialized countries, which oversee Swift, were also informed. It is not clear if other network participants know that American intelligence officials can examine their message traffic.
Because Swift is based overseas and has offices in the United States, it is governed by European and American laws. Several international regulations and policies impose privacy restrictions on companies that are generally regarded as more stringent than those in this country. United States law establishes some protections for the privacy of Americans' financial data, but they are not ironclad. A 1978 measure, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, has a limited scope and a number of exceptions, and its role in national security cases remains largely untested.
Several people familiar with the Swift program said they believed that they were exploiting a "gray area" in the law and that a case could be made for restricting the government's access to the records on Fourth Amendment and statutory grounds. They also worried about the impact on Swift if the program were disclosed.
"There was always concern about this program," a former official said...
The idea for the Swift program, several officials recalled, grew out of a suggestion by a Wall Street executive, who told a senior Bush administration official about Swift's database. Few government officials knew much about the consortium, which is led by a Brooklyn native, Leonard H. Schrank, but they quickly discovered it offered unparalleled access to international transactions. Swift, a former government official said, was "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" for financial data.
Intelligence officials were so eager to use the Swift data that they discussed having the C.I.A. covertly gain access to the system, several officials involved in the talks said. But Treasury officials resisted, the officials said, and favored going to Swift directly.
At the same time, lawyers in the Treasury Department and the Justice Department were considering possible legal obstacles to the arrangement, the officials said.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for their records held by banks or other financial institutions. In response, Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act two years later, restricting government access to Americans' banking records. In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target...
If there are broad powers to abuse, this crowd will abuse them.
There are funny things happening to money associated with Al Qaeda and National Security and the War on Terra. Funny things happened to buildings associated with these fund transfers- buildings that went down even though they weren't hit by airliners. The extent of these funny transfers?
Enquiring minds want to know, because a lot of money moved on the day before 9/11/2001. The only problem is, when you look where it goes, you might be a little surprised.
Some of it- quite a lot of it on our government's end, just disappears.
Quite a lot of funny money has passed between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal family over the years.
Quite a few people know about it.
So much of it in fact that the whole classified SWIFT database search may be something of a red herring: Al Qaeda knew about it, because Dear Leader announced he was doing it years ago, and it may give the Administration the excuse it needs to abolish the story completely from the main$tream media.
If not the tools to abolish all anti-Administration reports from any main$tream news source anywhere. ¶ 9:51 PM 0 comments links to this post
In his remarks during a brief photo session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr. Bush appeared irritated, at times leaning forward for emphasis, though he did not mention any newspaper by name.
Mr. Cheney, who had earlier said he was offended by news accounts of the financial tracking program, on Monday went a step further, singling out The Times for criticism in a separate appearance at a fundraising luncheon for a Republican candidate for Congress, Adrian Smith, in Grand Island, Neb.
The executive editor of The Times, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement on Monday evening that the decision to publish had been "a hard call." But Mr. Keller noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has "embarked on a number of broad, secret programs aimed at combating terrorism, often without seeking new legal authority or submitting to the usual oversight..."
Administration officials had argued strongly that in reporting on the financial tracking operation, The Times would endanger national security by prompting the Belgian banking consortium that maintains the financial data to withdraw from the program. On Sunday, Mr. Keller, the paper's executive editor, posted a letter on The New York Times Web site saying that the newspaper "found this argument puzzling," partly because the banking consortium is compelled by subpoena to comply...
On Capitol Hill, the financial-tracking program itself has not generated much criticism, even from Democrats, since its existence was disclosed. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Reid was briefed on the program several weeks ago and had concluded that "it does not appear to be based on the same shaky and discredited legal analysis the vice president and his allies invoked to underpin the N.S.A. domestic spying program."
An exception has been Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has made privacy a signature issue and who said in an interview Monday that the Bush administration was adopting a strategy of "shoot the messenger" in trying to avoid Congressional oversight of the financial tracking program.
"There are very serious constitutional and legal questions that have been raised," Mr. Markey said, "and they're being obscured by this almost ad hominem attack on The New York Times."
Administration officials have held classified briefings about the banking program for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, intelligence and law enforcement officials said, and more lawmakers were briefed after the administration learned that The Times was making inquiries for an article about the program.
It's no surprise Harry Reid doesn't want to rock the finance investigation boat. Neither of course does the D.L.C. Of course the Rethuglicans back their Dear Leader entirely on this, and now their echo chamber is fully engaged in accusations of treason.
So what's so special about the finance transactions discussed in The New York Pravda last week?
...The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database...
The program... is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.
That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.
"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous..."
Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions...
While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said...
Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution...
Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.
The cooperative's message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a "24-7" operation. Customers' names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said...
Swift's 25-member board of directors, made up of representatives from financial institutions around the world, was previously told of the program. The Group of 10's central banks, in major industrialized countries, which oversee Swift, were also informed. It is not clear if other network participants know that American intelligence officials can examine their message traffic.
Because Swift is based overseas and has offices in the United States, it is governed by European and American laws. Several international regulations and policies impose privacy restrictions on companies that are generally regarded as more stringent than those in this country. United States law establishes some protections for the privacy of Americans' financial data, but they are not ironclad. A 1978 measure, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, has a limited scope and a number of exceptions, and its role in national security cases remains largely untested.
Several people familiar with the Swift program said they believed that they were exploiting a "gray area" in the law and that a case could be made for restricting the government's access to the records on Fourth Amendment and statutory grounds. They also worried about the impact on Swift if the program were disclosed.
"There was always concern about this program," a former official said...
The idea for the Swift program, several officials recalled, grew out of a suggestion by a Wall Street executive, who told a senior Bush administration official about Swift's database. Few government officials knew much about the consortium, which is led by a Brooklyn native, Leonard H. Schrank, but they quickly discovered it offered unparalleled access to international transactions. Swift, a former government official said, was "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" for financial data.
Intelligence officials were so eager to use the Swift data that they discussed having the C.I.A. covertly gain access to the system, several officials involved in the talks said. But Treasury officials resisted, the officials said, and favored going to Swift directly.
At the same time, lawyers in the Treasury Department and the Justice Department were considering possible legal obstacles to the arrangement, the officials said.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for their records held by banks or other financial institutions. In response, Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act two years later, restricting government access to Americans' banking records. In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target...
If there are broad powers to abuse, this crowd will abuse them.
There are funny things happening to money associated with Al Qaeda and National Security and the War on Terra. Funny things happened to buildings associated with these fund transfers- buildings that went down even though they weren't hit by airliners. The extent of these funny transfers?
Enquiring minds want to know, because a lot of money moved on the day before 9/11/2001. The only problem is, when you look where it goes, you might be a little surprised.
Some of it- quite a lot of it on our government's end, just disappears.
Quite a lot of funny money has passed between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal family over the years.
Quite a few people know about it.
So much of it in fact that the whole classified SWIFT database search may be something of a red herring: Al Qaeda knew about it, because Dear Leader announced he was doing it years ago, and it may give the Administration the excuse it needs to abolish the story completely from the main$tream media.
If not the tools to abolish all anti-Administration reports from any main$tream news source anywhere. ¶ 9:51 PM 0 comments links to this post
Through a Scanner, Truthiness
Nature 441, 918-919 (22 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/441918a
Bioethicists and civil-rights activists are calling into question plans by two US companies to single out liars by sliding them into a brain scanner and searching their brains for give-away patterns of deception.
The two firms say that they will give the accused a chance to prove their innocence using a technique more accurate than the discredited polygraph. No Lie MRI will start offering services out of Philadelphia this summer. Those behind the second company, Cephos, based in Pepperell, Massachusetts, say they hope to launch their technology later this year. Likely clients include people facing criminal proceedings and US federal government agencies, some of which already use polygraphs for security screening.
Critics say that the science underlying the companies' technique is shaky and that the premature commercialization of the method raises ethical concerns about its eventual use in interrogation. This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) entered the debate by organizing a 20 June briefing on the issues for scientists, the public, the press and policy-makers in Washington DC.
The field of lie detection is littered with dubious devices. The polygraph relies on the idea that lying is stressful, and so measures changes in heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. But because it can be duped by countermeasures and there is little hard evidence that it actually works, it is rarely admitted as evidence in court.
Rather than relying on indirect measures of anxiety, assessing brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) goes to the very source of the lie. In one of the earliest studies, a team led by Daniel Langleben of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues offered students sealed envelopes containing a playing card and $20. The students were told they could keep the money if they could conceal which card they held when questioned in an MRI machine (D. D. Langleben et al. NeuroImage 15, 727–732; 2002).
These and other studies revealed that particular spots in the brain's prefrontal cortex become more active when a person is lying. Some of these areas are thought to be involved in detecting errors and inhibiting responses, backing the idea that suppressing the truth involves additional areas of the brain to telling it.
The early studies showed that it was possible to make out subtle changes in brain activity caused by deception using pooled data from a group of subjects. But to make a useful lie detector, researchers must be able to tell whether an individual is lying; when only one person is assessed it is much harder to tease out a signal from background noise. Langleben, who advises No Lie MRI, says he is now able to tell with 88% certainty whether individuals are lying (see Nature 437, 457; 2005). A group working with Cephos, led by Andrew Kozel, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, makes a similar claim.
Kozel and his colleagues asked 30 subjects to take either a watch or a ring, hide it in a locker and then fib about what they had hidden when they were questioned inside a scanner. Using the results of this study, the team devised a computer model that focuses on three regions of the brain and calculates whether the shift in brain activity indicates lying. When the model was tested on a second batch of 31 people, the team reported that it could pick up lies in 90% of cases (F. A. Kozel et al. Biol. Psychiatry 58, 605–613; 2005)
But critics of the technology urge restraint. "Until we sort out the scientific, technological and ethical issues, we need to proceed with extreme caution," says Judy Illes of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, California.
One problem is that there is no standard way to define what deception is or how to test it. Scientists also say that some of the statistical analyses used in the fMRI studies are questionable or give results that are perilously close to the thresholds of significance. "On individual scans it's really very difficult to judge who's lying and who's telling the truth," says Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield, UK, who was one of the first to publish on the use of MRI in the study of deception. "The studies might not stand up to scrutiny over the long term."
Another concern raised by scientists and bioethicists is that the contrived testing protocols used in the laboratory — in which subjects are told to lie — cannot necessarily be extrapolated to a real-life scenario in which imprisonment or even a death sentence could be at stake. They say there are no data about whether the technique could be beaten by countermeasures, and that data collected from healthy subjects reveal little about the mindset of someone who genuinely believes they are telling the truth or someone who is confused, delusional or a pathological liar.
"If I'm a jihadist who thinks that Americans are infidels I'll have a whole different state of mind," says Gregg Bloche, an expert in biomedical ethics and law at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC, and a member of the ACLU panel. "We don't know how those guys' brains are firing."
Because of these concerns, legal experts say that the technology is unlikely to pass the standards of scientific accuracy and acceptance required for it to be admissible in a US court. But even if it is not sufficiently accurate and reliable today, it may well be tomorrow, as more and more people are tested and techniques refined. That raises a second set of concerns that revolve around who should be allowed to use the technique and under what circumstances.
Bioethicists worry that fMRI lie detection could quickly pass from absolving the innocent to extracting information from the guilty — in police questioning, immigration control, insurance claims, employment screening and family disputes. Their concerns are fuelled by other emerging lie-detection technologies, such as those that measure the brain's electrical activity (see Nature 428, 692–694; 2004).
Particularly in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, they worry that fMRI and other devices might be misused in the hands of the military or intelligence agencies. "There's enormous pressure coming from the government for this," says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe at the University of Pennsylvania. "There is reason to believe a lot of money and effort is going into creating these technologies."
On top of this, ethicists say there is something deeply intrusive about peering into someone's brain in search of the truth; some even liken it to mind-reading. In future, they say, a suspect might be betrayed by their prefrontal cortex before they even open their mouth — if, for example, the brain recognizes a particular photo or foreign word. "This is the first time that we have ever been able to get information directly from the brain. People find the idea extraordinarily frightening," Wolpe says... ¶ 1:32 PM 0 comments links to this post
Bioethicists and civil-rights activists are calling into question plans by two US companies to single out liars by sliding them into a brain scanner and searching their brains for give-away patterns of deception.
The two firms say that they will give the accused a chance to prove their innocence using a technique more accurate than the discredited polygraph. No Lie MRI will start offering services out of Philadelphia this summer. Those behind the second company, Cephos, based in Pepperell, Massachusetts, say they hope to launch their technology later this year. Likely clients include people facing criminal proceedings and US federal government agencies, some of which already use polygraphs for security screening.
Critics say that the science underlying the companies' technique is shaky and that the premature commercialization of the method raises ethical concerns about its eventual use in interrogation. This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) entered the debate by organizing a 20 June briefing on the issues for scientists, the public, the press and policy-makers in Washington DC.
The field of lie detection is littered with dubious devices. The polygraph relies on the idea that lying is stressful, and so measures changes in heart rate, breathing and blood pressure. But because it can be duped by countermeasures and there is little hard evidence that it actually works, it is rarely admitted as evidence in court.
Rather than relying on indirect measures of anxiety, assessing brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) goes to the very source of the lie. In one of the earliest studies, a team led by Daniel Langleben of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues offered students sealed envelopes containing a playing card and $20. The students were told they could keep the money if they could conceal which card they held when questioned in an MRI machine (D. D. Langleben et al. NeuroImage 15, 727–732; 2002).
These and other studies revealed that particular spots in the brain's prefrontal cortex become more active when a person is lying. Some of these areas are thought to be involved in detecting errors and inhibiting responses, backing the idea that suppressing the truth involves additional areas of the brain to telling it.
The early studies showed that it was possible to make out subtle changes in brain activity caused by deception using pooled data from a group of subjects. But to make a useful lie detector, researchers must be able to tell whether an individual is lying; when only one person is assessed it is much harder to tease out a signal from background noise. Langleben, who advises No Lie MRI, says he is now able to tell with 88% certainty whether individuals are lying (see Nature 437, 457; 2005). A group working with Cephos, led by Andrew Kozel, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, makes a similar claim.
Kozel and his colleagues asked 30 subjects to take either a watch or a ring, hide it in a locker and then fib about what they had hidden when they were questioned inside a scanner. Using the results of this study, the team devised a computer model that focuses on three regions of the brain and calculates whether the shift in brain activity indicates lying. When the model was tested on a second batch of 31 people, the team reported that it could pick up lies in 90% of cases (F. A. Kozel et al. Biol. Psychiatry 58, 605–613; 2005)
But critics of the technology urge restraint. "Until we sort out the scientific, technological and ethical issues, we need to proceed with extreme caution," says Judy Illes of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, California.
One problem is that there is no standard way to define what deception is or how to test it. Scientists also say that some of the statistical analyses used in the fMRI studies are questionable or give results that are perilously close to the thresholds of significance. "On individual scans it's really very difficult to judge who's lying and who's telling the truth," says Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield, UK, who was one of the first to publish on the use of MRI in the study of deception. "The studies might not stand up to scrutiny over the long term."
Another concern raised by scientists and bioethicists is that the contrived testing protocols used in the laboratory — in which subjects are told to lie — cannot necessarily be extrapolated to a real-life scenario in which imprisonment or even a death sentence could be at stake. They say there are no data about whether the technique could be beaten by countermeasures, and that data collected from healthy subjects reveal little about the mindset of someone who genuinely believes they are telling the truth or someone who is confused, delusional or a pathological liar.
"If I'm a jihadist who thinks that Americans are infidels I'll have a whole different state of mind," says Gregg Bloche, an expert in biomedical ethics and law at Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC, and a member of the ACLU panel. "We don't know how those guys' brains are firing."
Because of these concerns, legal experts say that the technology is unlikely to pass the standards of scientific accuracy and acceptance required for it to be admissible in a US court. But even if it is not sufficiently accurate and reliable today, it may well be tomorrow, as more and more people are tested and techniques refined. That raises a second set of concerns that revolve around who should be allowed to use the technique and under what circumstances.
Bioethicists worry that fMRI lie detection could quickly pass from absolving the innocent to extracting information from the guilty — in police questioning, immigration control, insurance claims, employment screening and family disputes. Their concerns are fuelled by other emerging lie-detection technologies, such as those that measure the brain's electrical activity (see Nature 428, 692–694; 2004).
Particularly in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, they worry that fMRI and other devices might be misused in the hands of the military or intelligence agencies. "There's enormous pressure coming from the government for this," says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe at the University of Pennsylvania. "There is reason to believe a lot of money and effort is going into creating these technologies."
On top of this, ethicists say there is something deeply intrusive about peering into someone's brain in search of the truth; some even liken it to mind-reading. In future, they say, a suspect might be betrayed by their prefrontal cortex before they even open their mouth — if, for example, the brain recognizes a particular photo or foreign word. "This is the first time that we have ever been able to get information directly from the brain. People find the idea extraordinarily frightening," Wolpe says... ¶ 1:32 PM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, June 26, 2006
Corporatism isn't Capitalism
For-profit government doesn't work, as Frank Rich points out:
...Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House's chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called "competitive sourcing." Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative's objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver "high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost."
The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the well-connected, Mr. Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty reconnaissance for Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.
The Department of Homeland Security, in keeping with the Bush administration's original opposition to it, isn't really a government agency at all so much as an empty shell, a networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays. Thanks to an investigation by The Times's Eric Lipton, we know that some two-thirds of the top department executives, including Tom Ridge and his principal deputies, have cashed in on their often brief service by becoming executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that have received billions of dollars in government contracts. Even John Ashcroft, the first former attorney general in American history known to immediately register as a lobbyist, is selling his Homeland Security connections to interested bidders. "When you got it, flaunt it!" as they say in "The Producers."
To see the impact of such revolving-door cronyism, just look at the Homeland Security process that mandated those cutbacks for New York and Washington. The official in charge, the assistant secretary for grants and training, is Tracy Henke, an Ashcroft apparatchik from the Justice Department who was best known for trying to politicize the findings of its Bureau of Justice Statistics. (So much so that the White House installed her in Homeland Security with a recess appointment, to shield her from protracted Senate scrutiny.) Under Henke math, it follows that St. Louis, in her home state (and Mr. Ashcroft's), has seen its counterterrorism allotment rise by more than 30 percent while that for the cities actually attacked on 9/11 fell. And guess what: the private contractor hired by Homeland Security to consult on Ms. Henke's handiwork, Booz Allen Hamilton, now just happens to employ Greg Rothwell, who was the department's procurement chief until December. Booz Allen recently nailed a $250 million Homeland Security contract for technology consulting.
The continuing Katrina calamity is another fruit of outsourced government. As Alan Wolfe details in "Why Conservatives Can't Govern" in the current Washington Monthly, the die was cast long before the storm hit: the Bush cronies installed at FEMA, first Joe Allbaugh and then Michael Brown, had privatized so many of the agency's programs that there was little government left to manage the disaster even if more competent managers than Brownie had been in charge.
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the gulf, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away some $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an M.B.A. claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.
Of the favored companies put in charge of our supposed good works in Iraq, Halliburton is the most notorious. But it is hardly unique. As The Los Angeles Times reported in April, it is the Parsons Corporation that is responsible for the "wholesale failure in two of the most crucial areas of the Iraq reconstruction - health and safety - which were supposed to win Iraqi good will and reduce the threat to American soldiers."
Parsons finished only 20 of 150 planned Iraq health clinics, somehow spending $60 million of the budgeted $186 million for its own management and administration. It failed to build walls around 7 of the 17 security forts it constructed to supposedly stop the flow of terrorists across the Iran border. Last week, reported James Glanz of The New York Times, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered Parsons to abandon construction on a hopeless $99.1 million prison that was two years behind schedule. By the calculation of Representative Waxman, some $30 billion in American taxpayers' money has been squandered on these and other Iraq boondoggles botched by a government adhering to the principle of competitive sourcing... ¶ 9:03 AM 1 comments links to this post
...Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House's chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called "competitive sourcing." Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative's objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver "high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost."
The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the well-connected, Mr. Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty reconnaissance for Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.
The Department of Homeland Security, in keeping with the Bush administration's original opposition to it, isn't really a government agency at all so much as an empty shell, a networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays. Thanks to an investigation by The Times's Eric Lipton, we know that some two-thirds of the top department executives, including Tom Ridge and his principal deputies, have cashed in on their often brief service by becoming executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that have received billions of dollars in government contracts. Even John Ashcroft, the first former attorney general in American history known to immediately register as a lobbyist, is selling his Homeland Security connections to interested bidders. "When you got it, flaunt it!" as they say in "The Producers."
To see the impact of such revolving-door cronyism, just look at the Homeland Security process that mandated those cutbacks for New York and Washington. The official in charge, the assistant secretary for grants and training, is Tracy Henke, an Ashcroft apparatchik from the Justice Department who was best known for trying to politicize the findings of its Bureau of Justice Statistics. (So much so that the White House installed her in Homeland Security with a recess appointment, to shield her from protracted Senate scrutiny.) Under Henke math, it follows that St. Louis, in her home state (and Mr. Ashcroft's), has seen its counterterrorism allotment rise by more than 30 percent while that for the cities actually attacked on 9/11 fell. And guess what: the private contractor hired by Homeland Security to consult on Ms. Henke's handiwork, Booz Allen Hamilton, now just happens to employ Greg Rothwell, who was the department's procurement chief until December. Booz Allen recently nailed a $250 million Homeland Security contract for technology consulting.
The continuing Katrina calamity is another fruit of outsourced government. As Alan Wolfe details in "Why Conservatives Can't Govern" in the current Washington Monthly, the die was cast long before the storm hit: the Bush cronies installed at FEMA, first Joe Allbaugh and then Michael Brown, had privatized so many of the agency's programs that there was little government left to manage the disaster even if more competent managers than Brownie had been in charge.
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the gulf, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away some $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an M.B.A. claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.
Of the favored companies put in charge of our supposed good works in Iraq, Halliburton is the most notorious. But it is hardly unique. As The Los Angeles Times reported in April, it is the Parsons Corporation that is responsible for the "wholesale failure in two of the most crucial areas of the Iraq reconstruction - health and safety - which were supposed to win Iraqi good will and reduce the threat to American soldiers."
Parsons finished only 20 of 150 planned Iraq health clinics, somehow spending $60 million of the budgeted $186 million for its own management and administration. It failed to build walls around 7 of the 17 security forts it constructed to supposedly stop the flow of terrorists across the Iran border. Last week, reported James Glanz of The New York Times, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered Parsons to abandon construction on a hopeless $99.1 million prison that was two years behind schedule. By the calculation of Representative Waxman, some $30 billion in American taxpayers' money has been squandered on these and other Iraq boondoggles botched by a government adhering to the principle of competitive sourcing... ¶ 9:03 AM 1 comments links to this post
Sunday, June 25, 2006
What Economic Problems?
None to speak of if you're in the top 10% of moneymakers who take home almost half of the money, and even less if you're in the top 0.1% of the economy who make almost one dollar out of every 10 in the economy.
No wonder the Dominionists want another Great Depression to return America to the right moral values- the values being those of the robber baron and plantation owner. ¶ 2:41 PM 1 comments links to this post
None to speak of if you're in the top 10% of moneymakers who take home almost half of the money, and even less if you're in the top 0.1% of the economy who make almost one dollar out of every 10 in the economy.
No wonder the Dominionists want another Great Depression to return America to the right moral values- the values being those of the robber baron and plantation owner. ¶ 2:41 PM 1 comments links to this post
Sowing the Wind
More on Entrapped, from Empire Burlesque:
As usual, wise man Juan Cole has the skinny on the latest mendacious manipulation of America's carefully-stoked fears of terrorism: this time, a bunch of down-and-out, non-Muslim fringe cultists reduced to begging for water and boots, utterly incapable of carrying out any of the strikes they were allegedly planning -- dreams of violence which were encouraged and cultivated by an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda operative. Every law enforcement agency now says the group posed no real threat, had no weapons or material to make weapons -- unlike, say, the many white supremacists nabbed over the past few years with their bristling arsenals and ready-made bombs. So why was the raid on this minor collection of wretched, self-deluded chumps trumpeted to the skies by the Bush Regime? Do you really have to ask?
Cole also touches on a larger point. The relentless and savage class war waged by the American elite against the nation's poor (and, increasingly, the middle class) during the past 30 years is creating the kind of societal rot that breeds ignorance, extremism and violence. As Cole notes, the same resentments, the same oppression and hopelessness is beginning to link the slums of Cairo, Nairobi, Manila, Rio, Mexico City and elsewhere around the world to the ghettos of Miami and Los Angeles and the ruins of New Orleans. The fire building under these ash-heaps -- seething and subterranean for now -- is like the lava that swelled for years beneath Pompeii before it blew. When the inevitable explosion comes, it's not going to be pretty, or neatly contained; it's going to be a hard rain that falls on the just and unjust alike...
And it's going to fit right into their Operation Northwoods plans.
as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week, not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with – and ultimately undermine – existing terrorist groups.
Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. These secret operations will be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American people, of course, will never know what's being done in their name.
The covert units – including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads – will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.
Incredibly, as Hersh notes, the Bushists are now openly citing a sinister role model for their campaign: Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups and killed thousands of innocent civilians in putting down an "insurgency" against their colonial rule. And in fact, Rumsfeld and other Bush officials increasingly talk of combating not just terrorism but a "global insurgency" – as if the whole world is now an American colony, filled with recalcitrant "natives" rising up against their rightful masters...
They've done it to Iraq. They want to do it here. The only problem is that the fraction of the American public most prone to violence is their base, and while they might start a shooting war against yankees, brown folks, and "foreigners", they don't see the profit in shooting themselves.
A technicality Don Negroponte will resolve doubtless. ¶ 7:28 AM 0 comments links to this post
As usual, wise man Juan Cole has the skinny on the latest mendacious manipulation of America's carefully-stoked fears of terrorism: this time, a bunch of down-and-out, non-Muslim fringe cultists reduced to begging for water and boots, utterly incapable of carrying out any of the strikes they were allegedly planning -- dreams of violence which were encouraged and cultivated by an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda operative. Every law enforcement agency now says the group posed no real threat, had no weapons or material to make weapons -- unlike, say, the many white supremacists nabbed over the past few years with their bristling arsenals and ready-made bombs. So why was the raid on this minor collection of wretched, self-deluded chumps trumpeted to the skies by the Bush Regime? Do you really have to ask?
Cole also touches on a larger point. The relentless and savage class war waged by the American elite against the nation's poor (and, increasingly, the middle class) during the past 30 years is creating the kind of societal rot that breeds ignorance, extremism and violence. As Cole notes, the same resentments, the same oppression and hopelessness is beginning to link the slums of Cairo, Nairobi, Manila, Rio, Mexico City and elsewhere around the world to the ghettos of Miami and Los Angeles and the ruins of New Orleans. The fire building under these ash-heaps -- seething and subterranean for now -- is like the lava that swelled for years beneath Pompeii before it blew. When the inevitable explosion comes, it's not going to be pretty, or neatly contained; it's going to be a hard rain that falls on the just and unjust alike...
And it's going to fit right into their Operation Northwoods plans.
as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh revealed last week, not only will U.S.-directed agents infiltrate existing terrorist groups and provoke them into action; the Pentagon itself will create its own terrorist groups and "death squads." After establishing their terrorist "credentials" through various atrocities and crimes, these American-run groups will then be able to ally with – and ultimately undermine – existing terrorist groups.
Top-level officials in the Pentagon, the U.S. intelligence services and the Bush administration confirmed to Hersh that the plan is going forward, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – just as we noted here in November 2002. Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into "a global free-fire zone," a top Pentagon adviser says. These secret operations will be carried out with virtually no oversight; in many cases, even the top military commanders in the affected regions will not be told about them. The American people, of course, will never know what's being done in their name.
The covert units – including the Pentagon-funded terrorist groups and hit squads – will be operating outside all constraints of law and morality. "We're going to be riding with the bad boys," one insider told Hersh. Another likened it to the palmy days of the Reagan-Bush years: "Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." Indeed, we reported here last summer that Bush has already budgeted $500 million to fund local paramilitaries and guerrilla groups in the most volatile areas of the world, a measure guaranteed to produce needless bloodshed, destruction and suffering for innocent people already ravaged by conflict.
Incredibly, as Hersh notes, the Bushists are now openly citing a sinister role model for their campaign: Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups and killed thousands of innocent civilians in putting down an "insurgency" against their colonial rule. And in fact, Rumsfeld and other Bush officials increasingly talk of combating not just terrorism but a "global insurgency" – as if the whole world is now an American colony, filled with recalcitrant "natives" rising up against their rightful masters...
They've done it to Iraq. They want to do it here. The only problem is that the fraction of the American public most prone to violence is their base, and while they might start a shooting war against yankees, brown folks, and "foreigners", they don't see the profit in shooting themselves.
A technicality Don Negroponte will resolve doubtless. ¶ 7:28 AM 0 comments links to this post
Left Behind- On Your Computer, That Is
It figures.
Watchers of right-wing Christian groups in the States say a new apocalyptic videogame released by cultish Revelations-based fiction series Left Behind is riddled with spyware.
Developers have incorporated software from an Israeli firm called Double Fusion. It incorporates video advertising and product placement into the game, and reportedly records players' behaviour, location, and other data to be uploaded to Left Behind's Bible-powered marketing machine...
With plans to distribute 1 million copies in evangelical "megachurches" nationwide pre-Christmas, Eternal Forces has attracted criticism from religious and secular commentators for its pushing of a violent brand of Christian supremacy. Christian anti-videogame violence campaigner Jack Thompson said: "It's absurd. You can be the Christians blowing away the infidels, and if that doesn't hit your hot button, you can be the Antichrist blowing away the Christians..."
Can you be the Dominionist snoop keeping tally of who's naughty or nice, too? ¶ 7:19 AM 0 comments links to this post
Watchers of right-wing Christian groups in the States say a new apocalyptic videogame released by cultish Revelations-based fiction series Left Behind is riddled with spyware.
Developers have incorporated software from an Israeli firm called Double Fusion. It incorporates video advertising and product placement into the game, and reportedly records players' behaviour, location, and other data to be uploaded to Left Behind's Bible-powered marketing machine...
With plans to distribute 1 million copies in evangelical "megachurches" nationwide pre-Christmas, Eternal Forces has attracted criticism from religious and secular commentators for its pushing of a violent brand of Christian supremacy. Christian anti-videogame violence campaigner Jack Thompson said: "It's absurd. You can be the Christians blowing away the infidels, and if that doesn't hit your hot button, you can be the Antichrist blowing away the Christians..."
Can you be the Dominionist snoop keeping tally of who's naughty or nice, too? ¶ 7:19 AM 0 comments links to this post
Saturday, June 24, 2006
What Helen Says
Democrats need a new script
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- When are the Democrats going to get their act together?
Surely, they are not going to let President Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, snooker them in the mid-term November election campaign as he did in the past two presidential elections.
What is he going to pull out of the hat? Soft on terrorism? Gay marriage? Flag burning? 9/11?
Are the Democrats going to be such easy prey again, neutralized by phony wedge issues and neglectful of the real issue, which is the administration's flagrant use of falsehoods to justify a war of choice?
It could happen again. The leaderless Democrats, speaking in a cacophony, are being outgunned by the conservatives and members of their own party representing the Democratic Leadership Council who are at heart "Republican lite."
There are a handful, including Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Vietnam veteran who is calling for a speedy U.S. pullout from Iraq. He also took a swipe at Rove on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday for pushing the war while "sitting in his big air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying 'Stay the course.' "
He was responding to Rove's speech in New Hampshire last week in which Rove attacked Democrats for what he called "that party's old pattern of cutting and running."
Rove -- who prides himself on being a history buff -- obviously did not remember when President Ford ordered U.S. troops out of Vietnam in April 1975. They departed -- some clinging by their fingertips to helicopters -- as North Vietnamese forces advanced on Saigon.
At that time Ford said at Tulane University: "We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina.
"But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."
Summing up, he added: "The fate of responsible men and women everywhere, (meaning the South Vietnamese) rests in their own hands, not in ours."
Amen.
On the contrary, Helen, Rove remembers this quite well- and he's trusting that almost everyone else doesn't.
Thanks for the reminder.
Polls show that the American people -- including many Republicans -- are beginning to turn against the war.
In addition to an endless war for no known U.S. objective, there are a host of other issues that Democrats should embrace to hit home to every American
They could shout from the rooftops against the chipping away at the Bill of Rights and expansion of presidential power.
Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.
The administration also has detained hundreds of suspected terrorists in limbo without charges or trials.
And then there are the shameful alleged secret prisons abroad where prisoners may be subjected to torture under interrogation.
The fact that millions of Americans lack health insurance is a theme Democrats should campaign on. The Democrats should support universal health care. When the administration lays down the law in the prescription drug program that drug prices are not negotiable, who is it working for?
Another rich target for Democrats: Bush and the Republican Congress cut taxes for the richest people in the country while fighting to keep the 10-year-old minimum wage at $5.15.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said last week that the "divide between rich and poor in this country has reached outrageous proportions." He urged passage of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy's bill to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three stages.
And how about the cuts in homeland security funding for vulnerable New York and Washington?
The Democrats also could hit upon our diminished image around the world and loss of credibility.
As Bush prepared to visit Europe this week, Die Zeit, a German weekly, declared that Americans have "lost their moral credibility in Iraq."
The newspaper also said "America's entire Iraq policy is out of control."
That's what the Democrats should be saying.
Let me add to that the Democrats should be shouting this from every website, camera, microphone, radio, newspaper and soapbox they can find:
Apparently rushing to lock in a long-sought goal before the fall elections, GOP congressional leaders may bring to a vote within weeks a proposal that could literally wipe out any federal program that protects public health or the environment--or for that matter civil rights, poverty programs, auto safety, education, affordable housing, Head Start, workplace safety or any other activity targeted by anti-regulatory forces...
And this:
... Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an estate-tax cut that is a repeal in everything but name. The so-called compromise would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates from tax, slash the tax rates on the rest and cost at least $760 billion during its first full decade. Of that, $600 billion is the amount the government would have to borrow to make up for lost revenue from the cuts, which would benefit the heirs of America's wealthiest families, like the Marses of Mars bar and the Waltons of Wal-Mart Stores. The remaining $160 billion is the interest on that borrowing, which would be paid by all Americans.
No lawmaker who voted for the compromise gets any points for moderation. Like the earlier full repeal bill, this one is unfair and grounded in intellectual dishonesty. The goal is not to pass good legislation, but to get this top priority for big-shot constituents nailed into law before the November elections produce a legislature that's more responsible on fiscal matters.
In an attempt to rally support, House lawmakers have included in the bill another, totally unrelated, tax cut - for timber companies, worth $900 million over the next three years. The measure, based on the theory that American timber companies are at a disadvantage in the global marketplace, is essentially a special-interest giveaway that would encourage every business with international competitors to demand its own tax break. There is much to reform on the competitiveness front, but it should be done comprehensively, not on the basis of who has the senators best positioned to carve out a special deal.
The timber provision is a blatant attempt to extort "yes" votes out of four Democratic senators who have supported the timber industry in the past, but who have opposed estate-tax repeal: Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both of Washington, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana...
At the same time that Republicans are fighting to exempt the richest estates from taxes, they are blocking a raise for the nation's poorest workers.
Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully this week to raise the federal minimum wage, which stands at just $5.15 an hour. It has not been increased in nearly a decade, and at its current stingy level, the rate flies in the face of Americans' belief that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded. A minimum-wage worker earns just $10,700 a year, nearly $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Since the minimum wage was first adopted, there has been a long tradition of bipartisan support for regular raises. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush all signed increases into law. Americans across the political spectrum strongly support the minimum wage, and believe it should be significantly higher. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Americans favored increasing the minimum wage by $2.
Nevertheless, since 1997 minimum-wage increases have regularly been blocked in Congress...
At the same time, Congress is doing this:
They get a raise.
Nobody else does, though.
It's not like we don't have issues.
It is like many of the people who should be raising the issues the loudest aren't. ¶ 10:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- When are the Democrats going to get their act together?
Surely, they are not going to let President Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, snooker them in the mid-term November election campaign as he did in the past two presidential elections.
What is he going to pull out of the hat? Soft on terrorism? Gay marriage? Flag burning? 9/11?
Are the Democrats going to be such easy prey again, neutralized by phony wedge issues and neglectful of the real issue, which is the administration's flagrant use of falsehoods to justify a war of choice?
It could happen again. The leaderless Democrats, speaking in a cacophony, are being outgunned by the conservatives and members of their own party representing the Democratic Leadership Council who are at heart "Republican lite."
There are a handful, including Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Vietnam veteran who is calling for a speedy U.S. pullout from Iraq. He also took a swipe at Rove on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday for pushing the war while "sitting in his big air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside, saying 'Stay the course.' "
He was responding to Rove's speech in New Hampshire last week in which Rove attacked Democrats for what he called "that party's old pattern of cutting and running."
Rove -- who prides himself on being a history buff -- obviously did not remember when President Ford ordered U.S. troops out of Vietnam in April 1975. They departed -- some clinging by their fingertips to helicopters -- as North Vietnamese forces advanced on Saigon.
At that time Ford said at Tulane University: "We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina.
"But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world."
Summing up, he added: "The fate of responsible men and women everywhere, (meaning the South Vietnamese) rests in their own hands, not in ours."
Amen.
On the contrary, Helen, Rove remembers this quite well- and he's trusting that almost everyone else doesn't.
Thanks for the reminder.
Polls show that the American people -- including many Republicans -- are beginning to turn against the war.
In addition to an endless war for no known U.S. objective, there are a host of other issues that Democrats should embrace to hit home to every American
They could shout from the rooftops against the chipping away at the Bill of Rights and expansion of presidential power.
Bush has asserted the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on any American without a warrant in the name of fighting terrorism. He has asserted presidential power beyond stated constitutional rights and there is no Republican gutsy enough to call his hand.
The administration also has detained hundreds of suspected terrorists in limbo without charges or trials.
And then there are the shameful alleged secret prisons abroad where prisoners may be subjected to torture under interrogation.
The fact that millions of Americans lack health insurance is a theme Democrats should campaign on. The Democrats should support universal health care. When the administration lays down the law in the prescription drug program that drug prices are not negotiable, who is it working for?
Another rich target for Democrats: Bush and the Republican Congress cut taxes for the richest people in the country while fighting to keep the 10-year-old minimum wage at $5.15.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said last week that the "divide between rich and poor in this country has reached outrageous proportions." He urged passage of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy's bill to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three stages.
And how about the cuts in homeland security funding for vulnerable New York and Washington?
The Democrats also could hit upon our diminished image around the world and loss of credibility.
As Bush prepared to visit Europe this week, Die Zeit, a German weekly, declared that Americans have "lost their moral credibility in Iraq."
The newspaper also said "America's entire Iraq policy is out of control."
That's what the Democrats should be saying.
Let me add to that the Democrats should be shouting this from every website, camera, microphone, radio, newspaper and soapbox they can find:
Apparently rushing to lock in a long-sought goal before the fall elections, GOP congressional leaders may bring to a vote within weeks a proposal that could literally wipe out any federal program that protects public health or the environment--or for that matter civil rights, poverty programs, auto safety, education, affordable housing, Head Start, workplace safety or any other activity targeted by anti-regulatory forces...
And this:
... Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an estate-tax cut that is a repeal in everything but name. The so-called compromise would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates from tax, slash the tax rates on the rest and cost at least $760 billion during its first full decade. Of that, $600 billion is the amount the government would have to borrow to make up for lost revenue from the cuts, which would benefit the heirs of America's wealthiest families, like the Marses of Mars bar and the Waltons of Wal-Mart Stores. The remaining $160 billion is the interest on that borrowing, which would be paid by all Americans.
No lawmaker who voted for the compromise gets any points for moderation. Like the earlier full repeal bill, this one is unfair and grounded in intellectual dishonesty. The goal is not to pass good legislation, but to get this top priority for big-shot constituents nailed into law before the November elections produce a legislature that's more responsible on fiscal matters.
In an attempt to rally support, House lawmakers have included in the bill another, totally unrelated, tax cut - for timber companies, worth $900 million over the next three years. The measure, based on the theory that American timber companies are at a disadvantage in the global marketplace, is essentially a special-interest giveaway that would encourage every business with international competitors to demand its own tax break. There is much to reform on the competitiveness front, but it should be done comprehensively, not on the basis of who has the senators best positioned to carve out a special deal.
The timber provision is a blatant attempt to extort "yes" votes out of four Democratic senators who have supported the timber industry in the past, but who have opposed estate-tax repeal: Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both of Washington, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana...
At the same time that Republicans are fighting to exempt the richest estates from taxes, they are blocking a raise for the nation's poorest workers.
Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully this week to raise the federal minimum wage, which stands at just $5.15 an hour. It has not been increased in nearly a decade, and at its current stingy level, the rate flies in the face of Americans' belief that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded. A minimum-wage worker earns just $10,700 a year, nearly $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. Since the minimum wage was first adopted, there has been a long tradition of bipartisan support for regular raises. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush all signed increases into law. Americans across the political spectrum strongly support the minimum wage, and believe it should be significantly higher. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Americans favored increasing the minimum wage by $2.
Nevertheless, since 1997 minimum-wage increases have regularly been blocked in Congress...
At the same time, Congress is doing this:
They get a raise.
Nobody else does, though.
It's not like we don't have issues.
It is like many of the people who should be raising the issues the loudest aren't. ¶ 10:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
Entrapped in Miami
Quite possibly.
They'll be more like this coming as we approach November.
If you've not blogged you wouldn't believe the kinds of suggestions, come-ons, and illegal/ immoral/ unethical propositions a liberal progressive gets from trolls in cyberspace.
Entrapment. You can bet your bottom dollar it happens. ¶ 9:57 PM 0 comments links to this post
They'll be more like this coming as we approach November.
If you've not blogged you wouldn't believe the kinds of suggestions, come-ons, and illegal/ immoral/ unethical propositions a liberal progressive gets from trolls in cyberspace.
Entrapment. You can bet your bottom dollar it happens. ¶ 9:57 PM 0 comments links to this post
Cheneyburton: They are hungry? Let them eat yellowcake...
...and drink Texas tea.
Polls, Pundits and Pols
You'd never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.
By Greg Mitchell
(June 22, 2006) -- The new efforts by Republicans in Congress, and in the media, to use Iraq to their advantage by branding Democrats as favoring a "cut-and-run'" policy, has received wide coverage in the past week. Often pundits, and even reporters, have suggested that this is working, because Americans are not in favor of a "hasty" withdrawal. Democrats are in shambles, they report, as they fear that proposals for setting a timetable for withdrawal put forward by Sen. John Kerry and Rep. John Murtha will prove disastrous for the party in the November elections, due to the alleged unpopularity of this stance.
This conclusion, however, flies in the face of surveys by all major polling firms, as E&P has chronicled over the past two years.
It's one thing when polls are dismissed, ignored or twisted by political or media spinmeisters. But when journalists in their news stories do it, it is downright misleading.
Take Jim Rutenberg and Adam Nagourney in The New York Times today.
They produced a front-pager on the Republicans' unexpected confidence on this issue, and declared: "Some polls show a majority of Americans continue to think that entering Iraq was a mistake, and pollsters say independent voters are particularly open to the idea of setting some sort of timetable for withdrawal, the very policy Democrats have embraced and Republicans are now fighting."
The fact is, not "some" polls, but virtually every major poll shows that American have long declared that going to war against Iraq was a mistake.
And far more than "independent voters" are drawn to withdrawal. Every major poll reveals that a majority of Americans advocate withdrawals from Iraq, with large numbers wanting this to be quite speedy, and most wanting a full pullout in a year or so (Kerry's idea) or by the end of next year.
This is hardly a "some" position. A CNN poll, for example, conducted June 14-15 found that 53% favored a timetable for withdrawal, while 41% opposed it. Yet newspaper editorials, as usual, remain mute on this and the Senate today soundly trounced the Democrats' withdrawal pleas, even a wishy-washy one put forward by Sen. Carl Levin...
And how is this for a bottom line poll result? The CBS News poll taken less than two weeks ago asked if what has transpired in Iraq was "worth the loss of American life and other costs." The result: 62% said "no." ...
...a full printout of a detailed NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey completed 10 days ago... shows, among other things, that 57% of respondents support reducing troop levels now, with only 35% favoring current levels. The vast majority of those backing withdrawal favor setting a timellne. The same poll finds just 35% supporting the job President Bush is doing on Iraq.
But here's the key finding. The pollsters stated a series of positions, ranging from opposing gay marriage to repealing the estate tax, and asked if a candidate running for congress who embraced such a position was more or less likely to gain their vote. One position was: "Favors pulling all American troops out of Iraq within the next 12 months."
That couldn't be more simple and clear. The result? Some 54% said they would be "more likely" to vote for such a candidate and only 32% said "less likely..."
Polls? Elections? Or $elections and $elective Company policy? Who needs voters to maintain power when you've got Diebold? ¶ 11:32 AM 0 comments links to this post
Polls, Pundits and Pols
You'd never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.
By Greg Mitchell
(June 22, 2006) -- The new efforts by Republicans in Congress, and in the media, to use Iraq to their advantage by branding Democrats as favoring a "cut-and-run'" policy, has received wide coverage in the past week. Often pundits, and even reporters, have suggested that this is working, because Americans are not in favor of a "hasty" withdrawal. Democrats are in shambles, they report, as they fear that proposals for setting a timetable for withdrawal put forward by Sen. John Kerry and Rep. John Murtha will prove disastrous for the party in the November elections, due to the alleged unpopularity of this stance.
This conclusion, however, flies in the face of surveys by all major polling firms, as E&P has chronicled over the past two years.
It's one thing when polls are dismissed, ignored or twisted by political or media spinmeisters. But when journalists in their news stories do it, it is downright misleading.
Take Jim Rutenberg and Adam Nagourney in The New York Times today.
They produced a front-pager on the Republicans' unexpected confidence on this issue, and declared: "Some polls show a majority of Americans continue to think that entering Iraq was a mistake, and pollsters say independent voters are particularly open to the idea of setting some sort of timetable for withdrawal, the very policy Democrats have embraced and Republicans are now fighting."
The fact is, not "some" polls, but virtually every major poll shows that American have long declared that going to war against Iraq was a mistake.
And far more than "independent voters" are drawn to withdrawal. Every major poll reveals that a majority of Americans advocate withdrawals from Iraq, with large numbers wanting this to be quite speedy, and most wanting a full pullout in a year or so (Kerry's idea) or by the end of next year.
This is hardly a "some" position. A CNN poll, for example, conducted June 14-15 found that 53% favored a timetable for withdrawal, while 41% opposed it. Yet newspaper editorials, as usual, remain mute on this and the Senate today soundly trounced the Democrats' withdrawal pleas, even a wishy-washy one put forward by Sen. Carl Levin...
And how is this for a bottom line poll result? The CBS News poll taken less than two weeks ago asked if what has transpired in Iraq was "worth the loss of American life and other costs." The result: 62% said "no." ...
...a full printout of a detailed NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey completed 10 days ago... shows, among other things, that 57% of respondents support reducing troop levels now, with only 35% favoring current levels. The vast majority of those backing withdrawal favor setting a timellne. The same poll finds just 35% supporting the job President Bush is doing on Iraq.
But here's the key finding. The pollsters stated a series of positions, ranging from opposing gay marriage to repealing the estate tax, and asked if a candidate running for congress who embraced such a position was more or less likely to gain their vote. One position was: "Favors pulling all American troops out of Iraq within the next 12 months."
That couldn't be more simple and clear. The result? Some 54% said they would be "more likely" to vote for such a candidate and only 32% said "less likely..."
Polls? Elections? Or $elections and $elective Company policy? Who needs voters to maintain power when you've got Diebold? ¶ 11:32 AM 0 comments links to this post
Friday, June 23, 2006
Badlands
With two posts, Chris Floyd has described what the Company has done and wants to do in Iraq.
In Mission Accomplished: The American Record in Iraq, we have a summary of the current situation in the quest for hearts and minds (and livers and spleens and other organs) in Iraq.
Which brings us to this post:
The Alchemists: Turning Blood Into Gold
This week an interesting story appeared in the Washington Post – buried on page 16, of course, lest anyone think it was of the slightest importance. It revealed that documentary proof has now emerged confirming the fact that in the spring of 2003, the Bush Regime – flush with its illusory "victory" in Iraq – spurned a wide-ranging peace feeler from Iran which offered "full cooperation" on every issue that the Bushists claim to be concerned about in regard to Tehran: "nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups..."
...The unprecedented initiative was approved by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Mohammad Khatami – the moderate whose attempts at dialogue were mocked and undercut at every turn by the Bush Regime, helping to discredit the entire reformist movement in Iran and leading to Khatami's replacement by the militant hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In other words, everything that George W. Bush says he wants from the Iranians now, he could have had for the asking – three years ago. What then can we conclude from the rejection of this extraordinary initiative? The answer is obvious: that the Bush Faction is not really interested in curbing nuclear proliferation or defusing the powder keg of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the regional and global terror that it spawns...
What are they interested in? This answer too is obvious, to anyone who's been paying the slightest attention to the Faction's words and actions over the years: they are interested in loot and dominion. What they want from Iran is nothing less than its return to quasi-colonial control by the crony conquistadors of the West. And they're willing to play a (reasonably) long game to get it.
In the meantime, it serves their interests well for the entire Middle East to seethe and boil. War and rumors of war are engines of limitless profits for the crony-cons. It sends oil prices sky-high and keeps those pork-laden contracts for weapons and "military servicing" rolling in. And the terrorism that thrives in this deliberately created chaos is another massive money-maker, as vast armies of "security consultants" ply their political connections to gobble up tons of insider grease. Bush Regime minions have led the way in this alchemical transmutation of fear into gold: more than 90 officials from the Department of Homeland Security have stampeded through the revolving door from government service to lucrative private posts with companies seeking – and getting – fat deals from, er, the Department of Homeland Security, the New York Times reports.
Billions of dollars are being generated for the fortunate few by war and terror; why kill the golden goose of chaos by pursuing Middle East peace?
It's the Oil and Dominion for the Company or for Arioch, and sometimes in the multiverse there's a very thin line between them. ¶ 6:23 PM 0 comments links to this post
In Mission Accomplished: The American Record in Iraq, we have a summary of the current situation in the quest for hearts and minds (and livers and spleens and other organs) in Iraq.
Which brings us to this post:
The Alchemists: Turning Blood Into Gold
This week an interesting story appeared in the Washington Post – buried on page 16, of course, lest anyone think it was of the slightest importance. It revealed that documentary proof has now emerged confirming the fact that in the spring of 2003, the Bush Regime – flush with its illusory "victory" in Iraq – spurned a wide-ranging peace feeler from Iran which offered "full cooperation" on every issue that the Bushists claim to be concerned about in regard to Tehran: "nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups..."
...The unprecedented initiative was approved by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Mohammad Khatami – the moderate whose attempts at dialogue were mocked and undercut at every turn by the Bush Regime, helping to discredit the entire reformist movement in Iran and leading to Khatami's replacement by the militant hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In other words, everything that George W. Bush says he wants from the Iranians now, he could have had for the asking – three years ago. What then can we conclude from the rejection of this extraordinary initiative? The answer is obvious: that the Bush Faction is not really interested in curbing nuclear proliferation or defusing the powder keg of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the regional and global terror that it spawns...
What are they interested in? This answer too is obvious, to anyone who's been paying the slightest attention to the Faction's words and actions over the years: they are interested in loot and dominion. What they want from Iran is nothing less than its return to quasi-colonial control by the crony conquistadors of the West. And they're willing to play a (reasonably) long game to get it.
In the meantime, it serves their interests well for the entire Middle East to seethe and boil. War and rumors of war are engines of limitless profits for the crony-cons. It sends oil prices sky-high and keeps those pork-laden contracts for weapons and "military servicing" rolling in. And the terrorism that thrives in this deliberately created chaos is another massive money-maker, as vast armies of "security consultants" ply their political connections to gobble up tons of insider grease. Bush Regime minions have led the way in this alchemical transmutation of fear into gold: more than 90 officials from the Department of Homeland Security have stampeded through the revolving door from government service to lucrative private posts with companies seeking – and getting – fat deals from, er, the Department of Homeland Security, the New York Times reports.
Billions of dollars are being generated for the fortunate few by war and terror; why kill the golden goose of chaos by pursuing Middle East peace?
It's the Oil and Dominion for the Company or for Arioch, and sometimes in the multiverse there's a very thin line between them. ¶ 6:23 PM 0 comments links to this post
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Some things are just wrong.
LONDON (Reuters) - A musical version of "The Lord of the Rings" is to open in London next year but the production has been reworked and cut after its world premiere in Toronto received some damning reviews...
Indeed.
The Shadow, once defeated, always assumes a different shape and grows again. ¶ 8:04 PM 0 comments links to this post
Indeed.
The Shadow, once defeated, always assumes a different shape and grows again. ¶ 8:04 PM 0 comments links to this post
Pot Meets Kettle and Calls It Dark
American kids are fed Big Time's dream machine's program, shipped to a killing field, and treated just like they're 'pozed to be according to the script.
So nobody here complains (much at least on cable prime time) when we do it too.
Other kidnappers wear police uniforms.
Which brings me to an old post archived here from this person:
Friday 03 March 2006
John Negroponte, the US National Intelligence Director, provided testimony on Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "global threats."
Negroponte, who was the US ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005, was immediately promoted to his current position after his presence in Iraq. Ironically, he warned the committee on Tuesday, "If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world."
Warning of the outcome of a possible civil war in Iraq, Negroponte said sectarian civil war in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to the global war on terror. Note - he did not say it would be a "serious setback" to the Iraqi people, over 1,400 of whom have been slaughtered in sectarian violence touched off by the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week in Samarra.
No, the violence and instability in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to the global "war on terror."
But it's interesting for him to continue, "The consequences for the people of Iraq would be catastrophic," whilst feigning his concern. Because generating catastrophic consequences for civilian populations just happens to be his specialty.
If we briefly review the political history of John Negroponte, we find a man who has had a career bent toward generating civilian death and widespread human rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and ethnic violence.
Remember when Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, from 1981 to 1985? While there he earned the distinction of being accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights while he worked as "a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy," according to cables sent between Negroponte and Washington during his tenure there.
The human rights violations carried out by Negroponte were described as "systematic."
These violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA. Records document his "special intelligence units," better known as "death squads," comprised of CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Victims also included US missionaries (similar to Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq) who happened to witness many of the atrocities.
Negroponte had full knowledge of these activities, while he made sure US military aid to Honduras increased from $4 million to $77.4 million a year during his tenure, and the tiny country became so jammed with US soldiers it was dubbed the "USS Honduras."
It is also important to remember that Negroponte oversaw construction of the air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US. This air base, El Aguacate, was also used as a secret detention and torture center during his time in Honduras.
While Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, civilian deaths sky-rocketed into the tens of thousands. During his first full year, the local newspapers carried no less than 318 stories of extra-judicial attacks by the military.
He has been described as an "old fashioned imperialist" and got his start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's Phoenix program, which assassinated some 40,000 Vietnamese "subversives."
Negroponte's death squads used electric shock and suffocation devices in interrogations, kept their prisoners naked, and when a prisoner was no longer useful he was brutally executed.
Outraged at the human rights abuses by the Reagan-Bush administration, in 1984 Nicaragua took its case to the World Court in The Hague. The decision of the court was for the Reagan-Bush administration to terminate its "unlawful use of force" in international terrorism and pay substantial reparations to the victims. The White House responded by brushing off the court's findings and vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions that affirmed the judgment that all states must observe international law.
In the middle of Negroponte's tenure in Iraq, the Pentagon (read Donald Rumsfeld) openly considered using assassination and kidnapping teams there, led by the Special Forces.
Referred to not-so-subtly as "the Salvador option," the January 2005 rhetoric from the Pentagon publicized a proposal that would send Special Forces teams to "advise, support and possibly train" Iraqi "squads." Members of these squads would be hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga militia and Shia Badr militiamen used to target Sunni resistance fighters and their sympathizers.
What better man to make this happen than John Negroponte? His experience made him the perfect guy for the job. What a nice coincidence that he just happened to be in Baghdad when the Pentagon/Rumsfeld were discussing "the Salvador option."
Fast forward to present day Iraq, which is a situation described by the Washington Post in this way: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday - blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound."
The Independent newspaper from London recently reports that hundreds of Iraqis each month are tortured to death or executed by death squads working out of the Shia-run Ministry of Interior.
During the aforementioned committee hearing, Negroponte said that the US is concerned about the purchasing of arms by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Negroponte accused Chavez of using funds generated from the sale of oil to purchase weaponry, saying, "It's clear that he is spending hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign policy at the expense of the impoverished Venezuelan population."
Coincidentally, on the exact same day he said this, the US State Department announced that the only new rebuilding money in its latest budget request for Iraq is for prisons.
With no other big building projects scheduled for Iraq in the next year, the State Department coordinator for Iraq is asking Congress for $100 million for prisons, while the Iraqi people languish with 3.2 hours of electricity daily in the average home, staggering unemployment and horrendous security, with most still dependent upon a monthly food ration.
Meanwhile John Pace, the Human Rights Chief for the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq until last month, recently stated that he believes the US has violated the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and is fueling the violence via raiding Iraqi homes and detaining thousands of innocent Iraqis. Pace estimates that between 80-90% of Iraqi detainees are innocent.
During an interview on Democracy Now!, when asked to described the role of the militias in Iraq, Pace said "they first started as a kind of militia, sort of organized armed groups, which were the military wing of various factions. And they have - they had a considerable role to play in the [security] vacuum that was created by the invasion."
He went on to describe their actions: "So you have these militias now with police gear and under police insignia basically carrying out an agenda which really is not in the interest of the country as a whole. They have roadblocks in Baghdad and other areas, they would kidnap other people. They have been very closely linked with numerous mass executions ..."
Pace, when asked if there were death squads in Iraq, replied, "I would say yes, there are death squads," and "my observations would confirm that at least at a certain point last year and in 2005, we saw numerous instances where the behavior of death squads was very similar, uncannily similar to that we had observed in other countries, including El Salvador."
What we're witnessing in Iraq now with these death squads and escalating sectarian violence is the product of policies implemented by Negroponte when he was the US Ambassador in Iraq.
But let us remove the covert operations factor for a moment.
For over a year now, Shia death squads have been killing Sunni en masse.
Thus, at first glance, the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week as Sunni retaliation makes sense.
However, what doesn't make sense is the immediate showing of solidarity between Shia and Sunni clerics following the bombing.
Let us now reinsert the covert operations factor into this equation.
Along with the showing of religious solidarity, there is widespread belief by Shiite religious clerics both in and outside Iraq, as well as belief in the Arab media, that US covert operations were behind the bombing:
* Shiite Cleric Muqtada Al Sadr blamed the United States occupation for the current violence. He recently stated, "My message to the Iraqi people is to stand united and bonded, and not to fall into the Western trap. The West is trying to divide the Iraqi people. As God is my witness, I hereby demand an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq."
* In another interview, Sadr stated, "We say that the occupiers are responsible for such crisis [Golden Mosque bombing] ... there is only one enemy. The occupier."
* Adel Abdul Mehdi, the Iraqi Vice President, held the American Ambassador [Zalmay Khalilzad] responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque, "especially since occupation forces did not comply with curfew orders imposed by the Iraqi government."
He added, "Evidence indicates that the occupation may be trying to undermine and weaken the Iraqi government."
* At a major demonstration in Beirut, prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric and Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said America and Israel are to blame for the sectarian divisions in Iraq, claiming that the violence will offer further justifications for maintaining the occupation of Iraq.
* According to the Saudi-based Arab News editorial, a civil-war scenario may serve the interests of the Bush administration: "This may in the end be what Washington wants, because if Iraq plunges into chaos, it could be the Bush ticket out of the Iraq debacle, albeit paid for in rivers of Iraqi blood as well the utter humiliation of the president's administration and its neo-con agenda."
* Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, urged Iraqi Shia not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunni," and blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque.
* Hoseyn Shari'atmadarit wrote in the Keyhan newspaper of Iran on February 25 of several instances of documented covert operations carried out by occupation forces in Iraq, including: "In Shahrivar two British intelligence officers were arrested [in September 2005] at an inspection post while carrying a considerable amount of explosives, detonators and other equipment necessary to build a bomb. This event certainly shows the direct involvement of the English intelligence service in the bombings in Iraq ... The commander of the English military deployed in Basra [then] issued an order to attack the police centre and release two English saboteurs."
In the recent committee meeting, Negroponte told US senators he was seeing progress in Iraq. He said, "And if we continue to make that kind of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq."
Evidently the kind of progress John Negroponte sees in Iraq is not the kind that benefits the Iraqi people. Because the only progress in Iraq, apart from building prisons, is for the situation to continue growing progressively worse by deepening sectarian divides, despite the best efforts of religious leaders to create peace and unity.
Would civil war in Iraq be a "serious setback" for John Negroponte? Because the sectarian violence happening in Iraq right now is already a "serious setback" for the Iraqi people.
Thus, does Negroponte really care if there is civil war? Does he really concern himself with the wellbeing of the Iraqi people? Or is his main concern creating the catastrophe which keeps them divided?
Obviously no one's ever explained the Theory of Thaumic Imponderability to Negroponte, who clearly has the covert smirk of a great psychopath.
Yes, Don Negroponte. You will win. You always do. But do your Company masters realize exactly what prize you bring them? ¶ 8:51 AM 0 comments links to this post
So nobody here complains (much at least on cable prime time) when we do it too.
Other kidnappers wear police uniforms.
Which brings me to an old post archived here from this person:
Friday 03 March 2006
John Negroponte, the US National Intelligence Director, provided testimony on Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "global threats."
Negroponte, who was the US ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005, was immediately promoted to his current position after his presence in Iraq. Ironically, he warned the committee on Tuesday, "If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world."
Warning of the outcome of a possible civil war in Iraq, Negroponte said sectarian civil war in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to the global war on terror. Note - he did not say it would be a "serious setback" to the Iraqi people, over 1,400 of whom have been slaughtered in sectarian violence touched off by the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week in Samarra.
No, the violence and instability in Iraq would be a "serious setback" to the global "war on terror."
But it's interesting for him to continue, "The consequences for the people of Iraq would be catastrophic," whilst feigning his concern. Because generating catastrophic consequences for civilian populations just happens to be his specialty.
If we briefly review the political history of John Negroponte, we find a man who has had a career bent toward generating civilian death and widespread human rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and ethnic violence.
Remember when Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, from 1981 to 1985? While there he earned the distinction of being accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights while he worked as "a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy," according to cables sent between Negroponte and Washington during his tenure there.
The human rights violations carried out by Negroponte were described as "systematic."
These violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA. Records document his "special intelligence units," better known as "death squads," comprised of CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Victims also included US missionaries (similar to Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq) who happened to witness many of the atrocities.
Negroponte had full knowledge of these activities, while he made sure US military aid to Honduras increased from $4 million to $77.4 million a year during his tenure, and the tiny country became so jammed with US soldiers it was dubbed the "USS Honduras."
It is also important to remember that Negroponte oversaw construction of the air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US. This air base, El Aguacate, was also used as a secret detention and torture center during his time in Honduras.
While Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, civilian deaths sky-rocketed into the tens of thousands. During his first full year, the local newspapers carried no less than 318 stories of extra-judicial attacks by the military.
He has been described as an "old fashioned imperialist" and got his start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's Phoenix program, which assassinated some 40,000 Vietnamese "subversives."
Negroponte's death squads used electric shock and suffocation devices in interrogations, kept their prisoners naked, and when a prisoner was no longer useful he was brutally executed.
Outraged at the human rights abuses by the Reagan-Bush administration, in 1984 Nicaragua took its case to the World Court in The Hague. The decision of the court was for the Reagan-Bush administration to terminate its "unlawful use of force" in international terrorism and pay substantial reparations to the victims. The White House responded by brushing off the court's findings and vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions that affirmed the judgment that all states must observe international law.
In the middle of Negroponte's tenure in Iraq, the Pentagon (read Donald Rumsfeld) openly considered using assassination and kidnapping teams there, led by the Special Forces.
Referred to not-so-subtly as "the Salvador option," the January 2005 rhetoric from the Pentagon publicized a proposal that would send Special Forces teams to "advise, support and possibly train" Iraqi "squads." Members of these squads would be hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga militia and Shia Badr militiamen used to target Sunni resistance fighters and their sympathizers.
What better man to make this happen than John Negroponte? His experience made him the perfect guy for the job. What a nice coincidence that he just happened to be in Baghdad when the Pentagon/Rumsfeld were discussing "the Salvador option."
Fast forward to present day Iraq, which is a situation described by the Washington Post in this way: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday - blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound."
The Independent newspaper from London recently reports that hundreds of Iraqis each month are tortured to death or executed by death squads working out of the Shia-run Ministry of Interior.
During the aforementioned committee hearing, Negroponte said that the US is concerned about the purchasing of arms by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Negroponte accused Chavez of using funds generated from the sale of oil to purchase weaponry, saying, "It's clear that he is spending hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign policy at the expense of the impoverished Venezuelan population."
Coincidentally, on the exact same day he said this, the US State Department announced that the only new rebuilding money in its latest budget request for Iraq is for prisons.
With no other big building projects scheduled for Iraq in the next year, the State Department coordinator for Iraq is asking Congress for $100 million for prisons, while the Iraqi people languish with 3.2 hours of electricity daily in the average home, staggering unemployment and horrendous security, with most still dependent upon a monthly food ration.
Meanwhile John Pace, the Human Rights Chief for the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq until last month, recently stated that he believes the US has violated the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and is fueling the violence via raiding Iraqi homes and detaining thousands of innocent Iraqis. Pace estimates that between 80-90% of Iraqi detainees are innocent.
During an interview on Democracy Now!, when asked to described the role of the militias in Iraq, Pace said "they first started as a kind of militia, sort of organized armed groups, which were the military wing of various factions. And they have - they had a considerable role to play in the [security] vacuum that was created by the invasion."
He went on to describe their actions: "So you have these militias now with police gear and under police insignia basically carrying out an agenda which really is not in the interest of the country as a whole. They have roadblocks in Baghdad and other areas, they would kidnap other people. They have been very closely linked with numerous mass executions ..."
Pace, when asked if there were death squads in Iraq, replied, "I would say yes, there are death squads," and "my observations would confirm that at least at a certain point last year and in 2005, we saw numerous instances where the behavior of death squads was very similar, uncannily similar to that we had observed in other countries, including El Salvador."
What we're witnessing in Iraq now with these death squads and escalating sectarian violence is the product of policies implemented by Negroponte when he was the US Ambassador in Iraq.
But let us remove the covert operations factor for a moment.
For over a year now, Shia death squads have been killing Sunni en masse.
Thus, at first glance, the bombing of the Golden Mosque last week as Sunni retaliation makes sense.
However, what doesn't make sense is the immediate showing of solidarity between Shia and Sunni clerics following the bombing.
Let us now reinsert the covert operations factor into this equation.
Along with the showing of religious solidarity, there is widespread belief by Shiite religious clerics both in and outside Iraq, as well as belief in the Arab media, that US covert operations were behind the bombing:
* Shiite Cleric Muqtada Al Sadr blamed the United States occupation for the current violence. He recently stated, "My message to the Iraqi people is to stand united and bonded, and not to fall into the Western trap. The West is trying to divide the Iraqi people. As God is my witness, I hereby demand an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq."
* In another interview, Sadr stated, "We say that the occupiers are responsible for such crisis [Golden Mosque bombing] ... there is only one enemy. The occupier."
* Adel Abdul Mehdi, the Iraqi Vice President, held the American Ambassador [Zalmay Khalilzad] responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque, "especially since occupation forces did not comply with curfew orders imposed by the Iraqi government."
He added, "Evidence indicates that the occupation may be trying to undermine and weaken the Iraqi government."
* At a major demonstration in Beirut, prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric and Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said America and Israel are to blame for the sectarian divisions in Iraq, claiming that the violence will offer further justifications for maintaining the occupation of Iraq.
* According to the Saudi-based Arab News editorial, a civil-war scenario may serve the interests of the Bush administration: "This may in the end be what Washington wants, because if Iraq plunges into chaos, it could be the Bush ticket out of the Iraq debacle, albeit paid for in rivers of Iraqi blood as well the utter humiliation of the president's administration and its neo-con agenda."
* Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, urged Iraqi Shia not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunni," and blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being responsible for the bombing of the Golden Mosque.
* Hoseyn Shari'atmadarit wrote in the Keyhan newspaper of Iran on February 25 of several instances of documented covert operations carried out by occupation forces in Iraq, including: "In Shahrivar two British intelligence officers were arrested [in September 2005] at an inspection post while carrying a considerable amount of explosives, detonators and other equipment necessary to build a bomb. This event certainly shows the direct involvement of the English intelligence service in the bombings in Iraq ... The commander of the English military deployed in Basra [then] issued an order to attack the police centre and release two English saboteurs."
In the recent committee meeting, Negroponte told US senators he was seeing progress in Iraq. He said, "And if we continue to make that kind of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq."
Evidently the kind of progress John Negroponte sees in Iraq is not the kind that benefits the Iraqi people. Because the only progress in Iraq, apart from building prisons, is for the situation to continue growing progressively worse by deepening sectarian divides, despite the best efforts of religious leaders to create peace and unity.
Would civil war in Iraq be a "serious setback" for John Negroponte? Because the sectarian violence happening in Iraq right now is already a "serious setback" for the Iraqi people.
Thus, does Negroponte really care if there is civil war? Does he really concern himself with the wellbeing of the Iraqi people? Or is his main concern creating the catastrophe which keeps them divided?
Obviously no one's ever explained the Theory of Thaumic Imponderability to Negroponte, who clearly has the covert smirk of a great psychopath.
Yes, Don Negroponte. You will win. You always do. But do your Company masters realize exactly what prize you bring them? ¶ 8:51 AM 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
DINOcracyJournal.Org
Via Buzzflash, who really ought to know better:
Hoping to emulate conservative success, Dem young guns launch journal of ideas. DemocracyJournal.org debuts. 6/21
MoDo has it exactly right today.
Mr. Cherny and his fellow editor, Kenneth Baer, former Gore speechwriters, introduced their journal, Democracy — it's sort of like Foreign Affairs without the glitz — at a panel at the National Press Club with Francis Fukuyama and Bill Kristol. Mr. Fukuyama's big idea was The End of History. But a couple of little things like religion and nationalist ideology, not to mention history, got in the way.
Mr. Kristol was a key backer of the neocon push to knock out Saddam and create a model democracy in the Middle East. As he pointed out ruefully yesterday, big ideas cannot survive "contact with politicians, unbruised," and are sometimes "applied inappropriately." That was no doubt a veiled shot at Donald Rumsfeld, whom Mr. Kristol faults for the slide in Iraq.
"And since my relations with conservatives these days are so bad — with Rumsfeld and immigration and other things — I'd just as soon hang out with you guys," the Weekly Standard editor told the room of liberals, bloggers and journalists. "You're less mean."
You'd think that incorrectly predicting history is over would get you banished from the intelligentsia forever, but Mr. Fukuyama proffered another big idea, warning that the pendulum was not making its customary swing left because "values" voters were clutching it.
"There's a guy I buy my barbecue from who says, 'I think we're in a class war and my class is losing,' " he shared. (Is this The End of Barbecue?) In Europe, he said, such brisket purveyors would be voting for the left, but in America, "the values issues have been much more prominent, and so people who for economic reasons ought to be voting on the left are held still in the Republican column precisely because they don't trust the left on all the issues having to deal with family, and identity, and this sort of thing."
People on the left voting Reptilican? People on the left against social, economic, and scientific progress but pro-fundamentalism and pro-nationalism. Mr. Fukuyama seems to be a bit politically dyslexic, unable to tell his left from his right. He's either that, or a bald-faced liar.
With input from the likes of William Kristol and Francis Fukyama, this is more likely a source of disinformation and discord for progressives everywhere.
Of course, this also lets The New York Pravda continue with its own chaos disinformation campaign for the weak minded.
"Democrats who wished their nominee would take a firm stand in 2004 now oppose his call for a fixed date for the withdrawal of troops." Not unless they're supporters of the DLC. Not unless they're George Soros- who isn't really a Democrat at all, only a major shareholder of the DINOcrats.
Lords of Chaos, you win again.
¶ 7:11 AM 1 comments
links to this post
Hoping to emulate conservative success, Dem young guns launch journal of ideas. DemocracyJournal.org debuts. 6/21
MoDo has it exactly right today.
Mr. Cherny and his fellow editor, Kenneth Baer, former Gore speechwriters, introduced their journal, Democracy — it's sort of like Foreign Affairs without the glitz — at a panel at the National Press Club with Francis Fukuyama and Bill Kristol. Mr. Fukuyama's big idea was The End of History. But a couple of little things like religion and nationalist ideology, not to mention history, got in the way.
Mr. Kristol was a key backer of the neocon push to knock out Saddam and create a model democracy in the Middle East. As he pointed out ruefully yesterday, big ideas cannot survive "contact with politicians, unbruised," and are sometimes "applied inappropriately." That was no doubt a veiled shot at Donald Rumsfeld, whom Mr. Kristol faults for the slide in Iraq.
"And since my relations with conservatives these days are so bad — with Rumsfeld and immigration and other things — I'd just as soon hang out with you guys," the Weekly Standard editor told the room of liberals, bloggers and journalists. "You're less mean."
You'd think that incorrectly predicting history is over would get you banished from the intelligentsia forever, but Mr. Fukuyama proffered another big idea, warning that the pendulum was not making its customary swing left because "values" voters were clutching it.
"There's a guy I buy my barbecue from who says, 'I think we're in a class war and my class is losing,' " he shared. (Is this The End of Barbecue?) In Europe, he said, such brisket purveyors would be voting for the left, but in America, "the values issues have been much more prominent, and so people who for economic reasons ought to be voting on the left are held still in the Republican column precisely because they don't trust the left on all the issues having to deal with family, and identity, and this sort of thing."
People on the left voting Reptilican? People on the left against social, economic, and scientific progress but pro-fundamentalism and pro-nationalism. Mr. Fukuyama seems to be a bit politically dyslexic, unable to tell his left from his right. He's either that, or a bald-faced liar.
With input from the likes of William Kristol and Francis Fukyama, this is more likely a source of disinformation and discord for progressives everywhere.
Of course, this also lets The New York Pravda continue with its own chaos disinformation campaign for the weak minded.
"Democrats who wished their nominee would take a firm stand in 2004 now oppose his call for a fixed date for the withdrawal of troops." Not unless they're supporters of the DLC. Not unless they're George Soros- who isn't really a Democrat at all, only a major shareholder of the DINOcrats.
Lords of Chaos, you win again.
¶ 7:11 AM 1 comments
links to this post
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Cops or Robbers?
Like the CIA has a soft spot for cocaine cartels, it seems the Feds have a soft spot for the spammers trying to hack your credit data.
WASHINGTON - Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.
These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.
The law enforcement agencies include offices in the
Homeland Security Department and Justice Department — including the
FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.
"We are requesting any and all information you have regarding the above cell phone account and the account holder ... including account activity and the account holder's address," Ana Bueno, a police investigator in Redwood City, Calif., wrote in October to PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.
An agent in Denver for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anna Wells, sent a similar request on March 31 on Homeland Security stationery: "I am looking for all available subscriber information for the following phone number," Wells wrote to a corporate alias used by PDJ.
Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies any price.
PDJ said it always provided help to police for free. "Agencies from all across the country took advantage of it," said PDJ's lawyer, Larry Slade of Los Angeles...
For free. Sure. All the cops have to do is look the other way. ¶ 8:49 PM 0 comments links to this post
WASHINGTON - Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.
These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.
The law enforcement agencies include offices in the
Homeland Security Department and Justice Department — including the
FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.
"We are requesting any and all information you have regarding the above cell phone account and the account holder ... including account activity and the account holder's address," Ana Bueno, a police investigator in Redwood City, Calif., wrote in October to PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.
An agent in Denver for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anna Wells, sent a similar request on March 31 on Homeland Security stationery: "I am looking for all available subscriber information for the following phone number," Wells wrote to a corporate alias used by PDJ.
Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies any price.
PDJ said it always provided help to police for free. "Agencies from all across the country took advantage of it," said PDJ's lawyer, Larry Slade of Los Angeles...
For free. Sure. All the cops have to do is look the other way. ¶ 8:49 PM 0 comments links to this post
Coalition of the Willing
How nice of North Korea to co-operate with the Company and allow Darth Rumsfeld a Star Wars test opportunity.
...“It’s good to be ready,” the official told Reuters news agency. The step was first reported late Monday by NBC News and was reported in Tuesday's Washington Times newspaper.
U.S. officials say evidence such as satellite pictures suggests Pyongyang may have finished fueling a Taepodong-2 missile, which some experts said could reach the United States...
Now who needs that stale ol' World Cup?
Big Time and Bu$hCo have the real thing!
...As tensions grew, meanwhile, the U.S. staged war games in the western Pacific on Tuesday with 22,000 troops, 280 aircraft and three aircraft carriers.
U.S. officials have said the missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, has a firing range of 9,300 miles and could reach as far as the U.S. West Coast. Most analysts, however, say North Korea is still a long way from perfecting technology that would make the missile accurate and capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
Oh well. Maybe better luck next time.
[Thanks to Leah for the heads-up!] ¶ 7:51 PM 0 comments links to this post
...“It’s good to be ready,” the official told Reuters news agency. The step was first reported late Monday by NBC News and was reported in Tuesday's Washington Times newspaper.
U.S. officials say evidence such as satellite pictures suggests Pyongyang may have finished fueling a Taepodong-2 missile, which some experts said could reach the United States...
Now who needs that stale ol' World Cup?
Big Time and Bu$hCo have the real thing!
...As tensions grew, meanwhile, the U.S. staged war games in the western Pacific on Tuesday with 22,000 troops, 280 aircraft and three aircraft carriers.
U.S. officials have said the missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, has a firing range of 9,300 miles and could reach as far as the U.S. West Coast. Most analysts, however, say North Korea is still a long way from perfecting technology that would make the missile accurate and capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
Oh well. Maybe better luck next time.
[Thanks to Leah for the heads-up!] ¶ 7:51 PM 0 comments links to this post
Fair Use
It's a good thing there are the disclaimers you see on the front page of this site, where they bring the progressive reporting out from behind Pravda's fire wall for everyone to see.
Since Singularity is primarily an educational site too let me repeat the legal invocation here:
Fair Use Notice: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, economic, democratic, and social justice issues, etc. Here at Singularity a major focus is also education about the natural world, too, so you're going to see a lot of science education too. Incidently, most of this science was funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
It's important to have this tool to get around The New York Pravda's firewall. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to read reviews like this:
...So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. That's the lesson of an important new book, "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches," by Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, Keith Poole of the University of California, San Diego, and Howard Rosenthal of New York University.
"Polarized America" is a technical book written for political scientists. But it's essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening to America.
What the book shows, using a sophisticated analysis of Congressional votes and other data, is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business — as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America's middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970's, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep partisan divide re-emerged.
Both the decline of partisanship after World War II and its return in recent decades mainly reflected the changing position of the Republican Party on economic issues.
Before the 1940's, the Republican Party relied financially on the support of a wealthy elite, and most Republican politicians firmly defended that elite's privileges. But the rich became a lot poorer during and after World War II, while the middle class prospered. And many Republicans accommodated themselves to the new situation, accepting the legitimacy and desirability of institutions that helped limit economic inequality, such as a strongly progressive tax system. (The top rate during the Eisenhower years was 91 percent.)
When the elite once again pulled away from the middle class, however, Republicans turned their back on the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower and returned to a focus on the interests of the wealthy. Tax cuts at the top — including repeal of the estate tax — became the party's highest priority.
But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.
Thus in 2004, President Bush basically ran as America's defender against gay married terrorists. He waited until after the election to reveal that what he really wanted to do was privatize Social Security.
Pre-New Deal G.O.P. operatives followed the same strategy. Republican politicians won elections by "waving the bloody shirt" — invoking the memory of the Civil War — long after the G.O.P. had ceased to be the party of Lincoln and become the party of robber barons instead. Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, was defeated in part by a smear campaign — burning crosses and all — that exploited the heartland's prejudice against Catholics...
Read it for your education only. ¶ 9:30 AM 0 comments links to this post
Since Singularity is primarily an educational site too let me repeat the legal invocation here:
Fair Use Notice: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, economic, democratic, and social justice issues, etc. Here at Singularity a major focus is also education about the natural world, too, so you're going to see a lot of science education too. Incidently, most of this science was funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
It's important to have this tool to get around The New York Pravda's firewall. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to read reviews like this:
...So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. That's the lesson of an important new book, "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches," by Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, Keith Poole of the University of California, San Diego, and Howard Rosenthal of New York University.
"Polarized America" is a technical book written for political scientists. But it's essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening to America.
What the book shows, using a sophisticated analysis of Congressional votes and other data, is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business — as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America's middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970's, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep partisan divide re-emerged.
Both the decline of partisanship after World War II and its return in recent decades mainly reflected the changing position of the Republican Party on economic issues.
Before the 1940's, the Republican Party relied financially on the support of a wealthy elite, and most Republican politicians firmly defended that elite's privileges. But the rich became a lot poorer during and after World War II, while the middle class prospered. And many Republicans accommodated themselves to the new situation, accepting the legitimacy and desirability of institutions that helped limit economic inequality, such as a strongly progressive tax system. (The top rate during the Eisenhower years was 91 percent.)
When the elite once again pulled away from the middle class, however, Republicans turned their back on the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower and returned to a focus on the interests of the wealthy. Tax cuts at the top — including repeal of the estate tax — became the party's highest priority.
But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.
Thus in 2004, President Bush basically ran as America's defender against gay married terrorists. He waited until after the election to reveal that what he really wanted to do was privatize Social Security.
Pre-New Deal G.O.P. operatives followed the same strategy. Republican politicians won elections by "waving the bloody shirt" — invoking the memory of the Civil War — long after the G.O.P. had ceased to be the party of Lincoln and become the party of robber barons instead. Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, was defeated in part by a smear campaign — burning crosses and all — that exploited the heartland's prejudice against Catholics...
Read it for your education only. ¶ 9:30 AM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, June 19, 2006
Noam Chomsky Speaks at West Point on Just War
Watch it here.
If your free QuickTime geeks, open it with the free version of RealPlayer, it's an hour, slow at the start. Noam speaks as always with massive but pointed prose. It's interesting that the educated military intelligensia feels an oxymoronic need for Just War.
One wonders whether the future Robert E. Lees and Ulysses S. Grants were comatose at the end of the hour.
Or felt the need for a stiff drink and a slow cigar afterwards.
For instant gratification, watch him show his hidden speed capability as he politely and thoroughly educates a cadet about Saddam's early support here.
Thanks to Red State Son for the link. ¶ 10:19 PM 0 comments links to this post
If your free QuickTime geeks, open it with the free version of RealPlayer, it's an hour, slow at the start. Noam speaks as always with massive but pointed prose. It's interesting that the educated military intelligensia feels an oxymoronic need for Just War.
One wonders whether the future Robert E. Lees and Ulysses S. Grants were comatose at the end of the hour.
Or felt the need for a stiff drink and a slow cigar afterwards.
For instant gratification, watch him show his hidden speed capability as he politely and thoroughly educates a cadet about Saddam's early support here.
Thanks to Red State Son for the link. ¶ 10:19 PM 0 comments links to this post
Expendables
NASA is to launch the space shuttle Discovery on 1 July, despite warnings from senior safety officials and engineers that it is not safe to fly.
A meeting held to set the launch date was split on whether the problem of foam chunks breaking away - which brought down the Columbia - was fixed.
Safety officials said modifications carried out since the problem recurred a year ago were still not enough.
But managers decided to go ahead, insisting the crew was not at risk.
"There were very different viewpoints on the issue of whether we were ready to fly or not," US space agency (Nasa) administrator Michael Griffin told a news conference.
"I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree..."
Agree with what his CSC/DynCorp and In-Q-Tel clients want, anyway. ¶ 5:35 PM 0 comments links to this post
A meeting held to set the launch date was split on whether the problem of foam chunks breaking away - which brought down the Columbia - was fixed.
Safety officials said modifications carried out since the problem recurred a year ago were still not enough.
But managers decided to go ahead, insisting the crew was not at risk.
"There were very different viewpoints on the issue of whether we were ready to fly or not," US space agency (Nasa) administrator Michael Griffin told a news conference.
"I can't possibly accept every recommendation given to me by every member of my staff, especially when they all don't agree..."
Agree with what his CSC/DynCorp and In-Q-Tel clients want, anyway. ¶ 5:35 PM 0 comments links to this post
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Corporatista TIA
Pravda speaks to all of you proles:
All good things must come to an end, including the chance to post lascivious photographs and diary entries on the Internet without repercussions. A generation that has come of age with blogging, Webcams and social networking sites is waking up to the fact that would-be employers are looking over their shoulders — and adjusting their job offers.
Alan Finder reported in The Times last week that companies have moved from putting applicants' names through Google to checking sites like Facebook and MySpace. There are ethical concerns about corporate officers snooping through registration-only sites designed for students. But the first order of business is for the indiscreet to think twice...
The Internet feels private in certain ways that it isn't. Sharing posts with friends, fellow hobbyists or potential dates, a user could be forgiven for overlooking the possibility that a human resources executive might be zeroing in as well. So much attention has been focused on sexual predators and swindlers that it's easy to forget that businesses and the government want to retain the right to peruse our correspondence as well.
A recent survey found that more than a third of large American companies read their employees' outbound e-mail, and just under a third fired someone as a result. We are only just beginning to wake up to the wider ramifications of the Internet on the personal and the confidential. In the meantime, don't leave a digital trail. That photograph from your friend's party could be more than just embarrassing. It might cost you your dream job.
And of course all of the dream jobs require you to be an upright citizen according to the moral norms of the Company.
Take it from one surviving in the belly of the beast: one person's dream is another's nightmare.
Just wait until these guys start subcontracting their systems to the most politically correct corporate bidders. ¶ 11:02 AM 0 comments links to this post
All good things must come to an end, including the chance to post lascivious photographs and diary entries on the Internet without repercussions. A generation that has come of age with blogging, Webcams and social networking sites is waking up to the fact that would-be employers are looking over their shoulders — and adjusting their job offers.
Alan Finder reported in The Times last week that companies have moved from putting applicants' names through Google to checking sites like Facebook and MySpace. There are ethical concerns about corporate officers snooping through registration-only sites designed for students. But the first order of business is for the indiscreet to think twice...
The Internet feels private in certain ways that it isn't. Sharing posts with friends, fellow hobbyists or potential dates, a user could be forgiven for overlooking the possibility that a human resources executive might be zeroing in as well. So much attention has been focused on sexual predators and swindlers that it's easy to forget that businesses and the government want to retain the right to peruse our correspondence as well.
A recent survey found that more than a third of large American companies read their employees' outbound e-mail, and just under a third fired someone as a result. We are only just beginning to wake up to the wider ramifications of the Internet on the personal and the confidential. In the meantime, don't leave a digital trail. That photograph from your friend's party could be more than just embarrassing. It might cost you your dream job.
And of course all of the dream jobs require you to be an upright citizen according to the moral norms of the Company.
Take it from one surviving in the belly of the beast: one person's dream is another's nightmare.
Just wait until these guys start subcontracting their systems to the most politically correct corporate bidders. ¶ 11:02 AM 0 comments links to this post
Protection Racket for Conflicted Interests
WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.
At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.
More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials...
Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Laws are obviously for the working classes only. ¶ 6:42 AM 0 comments links to this post
At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.
More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials...
Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Laws are obviously for the working classes only. ¶ 6:42 AM 0 comments links to this post
Saturday, June 17, 2006
A Timely Announcement
Now here's something you might not have heard before:
At least among those with a mind for such things, it's fairly well-remembered that on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld made the shocking announcement that the Pentagon "couldn't track" $2.3 trillion of its transactions. "Iroquois" observes, "What's interesting to me is that he made his press release on a Monday. In DC, I always see bad news given on a Friday, usually late in the afternoon on Friday. The exception, of course, would be when someone happens to know that there is a far bigger story coming out."
And we know that Flight 77, allegedly piloted by an incompetent, made an aerobatic, spiralling descent over Washington, effecting a 270-degree turn to strike the Pentagon from a western approach at ground level. The side struck was the only one with an exterior wall hardened against attack, and was relatively empty while renovation continued...
From The Pittsburg Post Gazette, December 20, 2001: "One Army office in the Pentagon lost 34 of its 65 employees in the attack. Most of those killed in the office, called Resource Services Washington, were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. They were at their desks when American Airlines Flight 77 struck."
The Arlington County After-Action Report noted that the "impact area included both the Navy operations center and the office complex of the National Guard and Army Reserve. It was also the end of the fiscal year and important budget information was in the damaged area." And Insight Magazine editorialized that "the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse [for not making a full accounting]. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a "stand-alone" financial statement for 2001 because of "the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack..."
Everything changed, right? ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments links to this post
At least among those with a mind for such things, it's fairly well-remembered that on September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld made the shocking announcement that the Pentagon "couldn't track" $2.3 trillion of its transactions. "Iroquois" observes, "What's interesting to me is that he made his press release on a Monday. In DC, I always see bad news given on a Friday, usually late in the afternoon on Friday. The exception, of course, would be when someone happens to know that there is a far bigger story coming out."
And we know that Flight 77, allegedly piloted by an incompetent, made an aerobatic, spiralling descent over Washington, effecting a 270-degree turn to strike the Pentagon from a western approach at ground level. The side struck was the only one with an exterior wall hardened against attack, and was relatively empty while renovation continued...
From The Pittsburg Post Gazette, December 20, 2001: "One Army office in the Pentagon lost 34 of its 65 employees in the attack. Most of those killed in the office, called Resource Services Washington, were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. They were at their desks when American Airlines Flight 77 struck."
The Arlington County After-Action Report noted that the "impact area included both the Navy operations center and the office complex of the National Guard and Army Reserve. It was also the end of the fiscal year and important budget information was in the damaged area." And Insight Magazine editorialized that "the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse [for not making a full accounting]. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a "stand-alone" financial statement for 2001 because of "the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack..."
Everything changed, right? ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments links to this post
First, Do No Harm
Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure
Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Saturday June 17, 2006
The Guardian
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.
Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.
But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.
Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year.
Although Nice's role is to look at cost-effectiveness, it says it cannot appraise a drug and pass it for use in the NHS unless the drug is referred to it by the Department of Health. The department says its hands are tied.
"The drug company hasn't applied for it to be licensed for this use. It wouldn't be referred to Nice until they have made the first move," said a Department of Health spokeswoman. "They need to step up and get a licence. If they are not getting it licensed, why aren't they?"
Virtually every biotechnology product on the market has had most of its development costs paid for by the NIH. That's you and me, people. Don't give me any song and dance about how hard drug companies work to develop new drugs.
There's not a drug company that doesn't spend far more on advertising and merchandising than on research and development. ¶ 2:37 PM 1 comments links to this post
Company will only seek licence for medicine that costs 100 times more
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Saturday June 17, 2006
The Guardian
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.
Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.
But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.
Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year.
Although Nice's role is to look at cost-effectiveness, it says it cannot appraise a drug and pass it for use in the NHS unless the drug is referred to it by the Department of Health. The department says its hands are tied.
"The drug company hasn't applied for it to be licensed for this use. It wouldn't be referred to Nice until they have made the first move," said a Department of Health spokeswoman. "They need to step up and get a licence. If they are not getting it licensed, why aren't they?"
Virtually every biotechnology product on the market has had most of its development costs paid for by the NIH. That's you and me, people. Don't give me any song and dance about how hard drug companies work to develop new drugs.
There's not a drug company that doesn't spend far more on advertising and merchandising than on research and development. ¶ 2:37 PM 1 comments links to this post
Friday, June 16, 2006
"... the most successful information campaign to date."
You had better read the whole thing.
But here's something you really ought to realize even if you can't:
Nicholas Berg... was remarkably unlucky. More of an idealist than a chest-thumping corporate predator like ex-CEOs Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Berg, 26, had developed a method for helping underdeveloped areas build safe, affordable structures where steel is hard to come by, as Wikipedia reports. Progress, not profit, was his motivating force. He was also an idealist in another way: he believed in his government. The president said Iraq had been liberated – "mission accomplished" – and that American companies needed to help the Iraqi people rebuild their land. Berg didn't realize that the president was a liar. Iraq had not been liberated but delivered into a new hell. Mass deaths, house raids, airstrikes, societal collapse and torture had spawned a fierce armed resistance. Bush's invasion had also loosed the most brutal, ignorant religious extremists – like Zarqawi – to prey upon the land. Meanwhile, "reconstruction" was a sick joke: it was just a pipeline for Bush cronies to drain Iraq, and the U.S. Treasury, bone-dry.
Berg came alone: no bodyguard of bristling mercenaries, no Halliburton subcontracts, no Beltway cronies. Work was promised, but without that insider grease, fell through. He decided to go home. Six days before his scheduled departure, he was suddenly seized by Iraqi police and turned over to U.S. forces. For reasons still unclear, he was held for 13 days – during which time the Abu Ghraib revelations ignited the land, and the tinderbox of Fallujah exploded when four mercenaries were killed in retaliation for the American shooting of Iraqi protestors a few days before.
Berg was released into this heightened turmoil one day after his family filed a lawsuit against his illegal detention; he disappeared four days later. His remains were found one month later near a Baghdad highway; the gruesome video appeared three days after that. Abu Ghraib disappeared from the front pages; it was not an issue in the presidential election that year...
It was this video – which featured five surprisingly chubby terrorists, masked, one wearing a gold ring forbidden by extremist Islam, another reading in halting Arabic – that made Zarqawi the Pentagon poster boy for the insurgency...
Don't forget the white lawn chairs, identical to the ones in the Abu Ghraib pics.
Don't forget the paint on the walls, the same institutional green two-tone identical to the ones in the Abu Ghraib pics.
Most of all, don't forget, and don't believe: think. ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments links to this post
But here's something you really ought to realize even if you can't:
Nicholas Berg... was remarkably unlucky. More of an idealist than a chest-thumping corporate predator like ex-CEOs Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Berg, 26, had developed a method for helping underdeveloped areas build safe, affordable structures where steel is hard to come by, as Wikipedia reports. Progress, not profit, was his motivating force. He was also an idealist in another way: he believed in his government. The president said Iraq had been liberated – "mission accomplished" – and that American companies needed to help the Iraqi people rebuild their land. Berg didn't realize that the president was a liar. Iraq had not been liberated but delivered into a new hell. Mass deaths, house raids, airstrikes, societal collapse and torture had spawned a fierce armed resistance. Bush's invasion had also loosed the most brutal, ignorant religious extremists – like Zarqawi – to prey upon the land. Meanwhile, "reconstruction" was a sick joke: it was just a pipeline for Bush cronies to drain Iraq, and the U.S. Treasury, bone-dry.
Berg came alone: no bodyguard of bristling mercenaries, no Halliburton subcontracts, no Beltway cronies. Work was promised, but without that insider grease, fell through. He decided to go home. Six days before his scheduled departure, he was suddenly seized by Iraqi police and turned over to U.S. forces. For reasons still unclear, he was held for 13 days – during which time the Abu Ghraib revelations ignited the land, and the tinderbox of Fallujah exploded when four mercenaries were killed in retaliation for the American shooting of Iraqi protestors a few days before.
Berg was released into this heightened turmoil one day after his family filed a lawsuit against his illegal detention; he disappeared four days later. His remains were found one month later near a Baghdad highway; the gruesome video appeared three days after that. Abu Ghraib disappeared from the front pages; it was not an issue in the presidential election that year...
It was this video – which featured five surprisingly chubby terrorists, masked, one wearing a gold ring forbidden by extremist Islam, another reading in halting Arabic – that made Zarqawi the Pentagon poster boy for the insurgency...
Don't forget the white lawn chairs, identical to the ones in the Abu Ghraib pics.
Don't forget the paint on the walls, the same institutional green two-tone identical to the ones in the Abu Ghraib pics.
Most of all, don't forget, and don't believe: think. ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments links to this post
Tipping Points
With the advent of "An Inconvenient Truth" comes an upsurge in paid trolling, a perpetual problem, across the progressive blogsphere. You can't resist the savory treat of of vaporizing such comments into the Blogger ether before they emerge to blight common discourse. Other perhaps more genuinely liberal hosts allow the trolls to have their say.
Which offers a perfect opportunity to refute them with facts and figures. This is something that has to be done again and again. If for no other reason, it's because Google and even Dogpile have gotten so they won't dig up links to previously posted but older data. This isn't just the entropic link decay of a constantly changing internet, because when crosschecked against my own files to directly assess the site, the original links will usually still be there.
Despite the drain on the expense accounts of the oil barons, despite their best attempts at green posturing, despite monkeying with search algorithms, reality and the perception of reality continues to belie them.
Nature 441, 802-805 (15 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/441802a
Climate change: The tipping point of the iceberg
Gabrielle Walker
...The idea that passing some hidden threshold will drastically worsen man-made climate change has been around for decades, normally couched in technical terms such as 'nonlinearity', 'positive feedback' and 'hysteresis'. Now it has gained new prominence under a new name. In 2004, 45 newspaper articles mentioned a 'tipping point' in connection with climate change; in the first five months of this year, 234 such articles were published. "Warming hits tipping point," one UK newspaper recently warned on its front page; "Climate nears point of no return," asserted another. The idea is spreading like a contagion...
A tipping point usually means the moment at which internal dynamics start to propel a change previously driven by external forces. The idea raises two questions. First, when will that moment be reached? Second, after it has been passed, is the system now destined to run its course regardless of what goes on elsewhere — is a tipping point a point of no return?
...Although there's no strong evidence that the climate as a whole has a point beyond which it switches neatly into a new pattern, individual parts of the system could be in danger of changing state quickly, and perhaps irretrievably. And perhaps the most striking of these vulnerable components are in the Arctic. Farthest north is the carapace of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean. South of that is the vast ice sheet that covers Greenland. And then there is the ocean conveyor belt, which originates in a small region of the Nordic seas and carries heat and salt around the world.
On thin ice
All three seem to have inbuilt danger zones that may deserve to be called tipping points. And the outside forces pushing them towards those points are gathering. "There is near-universal agreement that we are now seeing a greenhouse effect in the Arctic," says Mark Serreze from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado...
Serreze studies sea ice, the member of the arctic triumvirate that has had most recent attention. In the winter, sea ice more or less covers the Arctic Ocean basin. Summer sun nibbles at the pack ice, shrinking it at the edges and creating patches of open water within. Open water reflects much less sunlight than ice — it has what is known as a lower albedo — so the greater the area of dark open water, the more summer warmth the ocean stores. More stored heat means thinner ice in the next winter, which is more vulnerable to melting the next summer — meaning yet more warmth being stored in the open water in the following year, a cycle known as the 'ice–albedo feedback'. "Once you start melting and receding, you can't go back," says Serreze.
It seems that some of this process is under way. Serreze and his colleagues have found that the summer sea ice has shrunk by an average of 8% a decade over the past thirty years (Stroeve, J. C. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L04501 (2005)). The past four years have seen record lows in the extent of September sea ice, and in 2005 there was 20% less ice cover than the 1979–2000 average, a loss of about 1.3 million square kilometres, which is more than the area of France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. It was this finding that triggered a raft of alarming headlines.
The ice's volume, rather than its extent, would be a more useful figure, but this is hard to estimate. Radar measurements showing how proud the ice sits with respect to nearby water would help, but the European Cryosat mission intended to provide these data was lost on launch in October 2005. A reflight is planned, but at present the only way to determine the pack thickness is from below. In 2003 Andrew Rothrock and Jinlun Zhang of the University of Washington in Seattle analysed results from a series of submarine cruises from 1987–97 and concluded that the ice thinned by about one metre during that period (Rothrock, D. A. et al. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 3083 (2003))...
Compared with the overall scale of human-induced climate change, the additional warming expected if the ice–albedo feedback goes all the way would not be immense. The 4.5% of the Earth's surface above the Arctic Circle is simply too small to make a radical difference to the planet's energy balance. There are, however, some hints that the loss of sea ice may have more far-reaching effects beyond the simple number of watts absorbed per square metre. Tim Lenton, an Earth-systems scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, points out that our current, relatively stable pattern of winds, which is caused by three circulatory air systems in each hemisphere, depends in part on a white and cold North Pole.
Sinking air in the Arctic is an integral part of an air system called a Hadley cell; there is another Hadley cell over the tropics. Between these two cells are the fierce westerlies and the high-altitude jet streams that drive storms around the middle latitudes. "If any part of the current structure broke down, that would be profound," says Lenton. "If the system starts to switch seasonally between three cells and a less stable structure, you change the position of the jet streams, you change everything." Models of this possibility are scarce, but Jacob Sewall and Lisa Sloan of the University of California, Santa Cruz, have shown that an ice-free Arctic could shift winter storm tracks over North America, drying the American west (Sewall, J. O. & Sloan, L. C. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L06209 (2004)).
The local warming caused by less sea ice could also affect the second tipping point, the size of the Greenland ice sheet. Here the effects could be dramatic, although delayed by centuries; there is enough ice on Greenland to raise sea levels by seven metres. "After hurricane Katrina, the deepest water in New Orleans was six metres," says glaciologist Richard Alley from Penn State University. "Greenland is more than that for all the coasts of the world. Do you move cities, do you build seven-metre walls and hope they stay, or what?"
Until recently, nobody had painted a convincing portrait of how Greenland is responding to Arctic warming. A glacier here may recede while one over there grows; ice may be accumulating inland and eroding near the coast. But in the past couple of years, almost all of the indicators have started to point in the same direction. Greenland is melting.
Although satellite measurements of Greenland's interior suggest that snow has recently been accumulating there, the margins are receding (Johannessen, O. M. et al. Science 310, 1013–1016 (2005)). Laser measurements taken from planes suggest that this coastal melting is probably enough to outweigh the build-up of snow inland (Krabill, W. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L24402 (2004)). Also, Greenland's glaciers seem to have been speeding up. A few months ago, Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, published satellite evidence that between 1996 and 2000, Greenland's more southerly glaciers had begun to accelerate, and that by 2005 the northerly ones had followed suit (Rignot, E. & Kanagaratnam, P. Science 311, 986–990 (2006)). They estimate that over the past decade this lurching has more than doubled Greenland's annual loss of ice, from 90 to 220 cubic kilometres per year.
"In the past decade there has been a lot of warming," says Alley. "There's plenty of room to argue whether that's a natural fluctuation or not, but there's a clear relation between Greenland getting warmer and Greenland getting smaller."
Modelling by Jonathan Gregory from the University of Reading and his colleagues suggests that it would require an average warming worldwide of 3.1 °C to drive this shrinking to its ultimate conclusion of an ice-free Greenland (Gregory, J. M. & Huybrechts, P. Phil Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A (in the press)). This climatic point of no return is around the middle of the range foreseen by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but is higher than a previous estimate made by the same group (Gregory, J. M. et al. Nature 428, 616 (2004)). Their revision is a measure of how quickly the field is changing. "It's not just Greenland that is going fast," says Alley. "The rate of publications, the rate of new papers, and the rate of disagreement have multiplied amazingly."
But these models do not take into account the dynamism of Greenland's glaciers. In 2002 Jay Zwally from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, found that as soon as summer meltwater appeared on the surface of west-central Greenland, the ice began to slip more quickly (Zwally, H. J. et al. Science 297, 218–222 (2002)). This is surprising, as slip rates should depend on processes at the base of the ice rather than at its surface. But Zwally points out that the great lakes of water produced by the melting could slip down conduits in the ice and be delivered directly to the bed.
This result doesn't necessarily make a big difference to the fate of Greenland, as the increase in the ice's speed was relatively small. But it points to a new way in which the ice sheet could react to climate change quicker than anyone had realized. "In places inland where the ice is frozen to its bedrock, if you warm the surface and wait for heat to get conducted to the bottom it takes 10,000 years," says Alley. "But if you send water down through a crack it takes maybe 10 minutes, maybe 10 seconds." If this process started to move inland, even the interior of Greenland's ice sheet could be vulnerable to warmer air. That could point to the sort of self-sustaining feedback that tipping points are made of... ¶ 2:14 PM 0 comments links to this post
Which offers a perfect opportunity to refute them with facts and figures. This is something that has to be done again and again. If for no other reason, it's because Google and even Dogpile have gotten so they won't dig up links to previously posted but older data. This isn't just the entropic link decay of a constantly changing internet, because when crosschecked against my own files to directly assess the site, the original links will usually still be there.
Despite the drain on the expense accounts of the oil barons, despite their best attempts at green posturing, despite monkeying with search algorithms, reality and the perception of reality continues to belie them.
Nature 441, 802-805 (15 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/441802a
Climate change: The tipping point of the iceberg
Gabrielle Walker
...The idea that passing some hidden threshold will drastically worsen man-made climate change has been around for decades, normally couched in technical terms such as 'nonlinearity', 'positive feedback' and 'hysteresis'. Now it has gained new prominence under a new name. In 2004, 45 newspaper articles mentioned a 'tipping point' in connection with climate change; in the first five months of this year, 234 such articles were published. "Warming hits tipping point," one UK newspaper recently warned on its front page; "Climate nears point of no return," asserted another. The idea is spreading like a contagion...
A tipping point usually means the moment at which internal dynamics start to propel a change previously driven by external forces. The idea raises two questions. First, when will that moment be reached? Second, after it has been passed, is the system now destined to run its course regardless of what goes on elsewhere — is a tipping point a point of no return?
...Although there's no strong evidence that the climate as a whole has a point beyond which it switches neatly into a new pattern, individual parts of the system could be in danger of changing state quickly, and perhaps irretrievably. And perhaps the most striking of these vulnerable components are in the Arctic. Farthest north is the carapace of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean. South of that is the vast ice sheet that covers Greenland. And then there is the ocean conveyor belt, which originates in a small region of the Nordic seas and carries heat and salt around the world.
On thin ice
All three seem to have inbuilt danger zones that may deserve to be called tipping points. And the outside forces pushing them towards those points are gathering. "There is near-universal agreement that we are now seeing a greenhouse effect in the Arctic," says Mark Serreze from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado...
Serreze studies sea ice, the member of the arctic triumvirate that has had most recent attention. In the winter, sea ice more or less covers the Arctic Ocean basin. Summer sun nibbles at the pack ice, shrinking it at the edges and creating patches of open water within. Open water reflects much less sunlight than ice — it has what is known as a lower albedo — so the greater the area of dark open water, the more summer warmth the ocean stores. More stored heat means thinner ice in the next winter, which is more vulnerable to melting the next summer — meaning yet more warmth being stored in the open water in the following year, a cycle known as the 'ice–albedo feedback'. "Once you start melting and receding, you can't go back," says Serreze.
It seems that some of this process is under way. Serreze and his colleagues have found that the summer sea ice has shrunk by an average of 8% a decade over the past thirty years (Stroeve, J. C. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L04501 (2005)). The past four years have seen record lows in the extent of September sea ice, and in 2005 there was 20% less ice cover than the 1979–2000 average, a loss of about 1.3 million square kilometres, which is more than the area of France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. It was this finding that triggered a raft of alarming headlines.
The ice's volume, rather than its extent, would be a more useful figure, but this is hard to estimate. Radar measurements showing how proud the ice sits with respect to nearby water would help, but the European Cryosat mission intended to provide these data was lost on launch in October 2005. A reflight is planned, but at present the only way to determine the pack thickness is from below. In 2003 Andrew Rothrock and Jinlun Zhang of the University of Washington in Seattle analysed results from a series of submarine cruises from 1987–97 and concluded that the ice thinned by about one metre during that period (Rothrock, D. A. et al. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 3083 (2003))...
Compared with the overall scale of human-induced climate change, the additional warming expected if the ice–albedo feedback goes all the way would not be immense. The 4.5% of the Earth's surface above the Arctic Circle is simply too small to make a radical difference to the planet's energy balance. There are, however, some hints that the loss of sea ice may have more far-reaching effects beyond the simple number of watts absorbed per square metre. Tim Lenton, an Earth-systems scientist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, points out that our current, relatively stable pattern of winds, which is caused by three circulatory air systems in each hemisphere, depends in part on a white and cold North Pole.
Sinking air in the Arctic is an integral part of an air system called a Hadley cell; there is another Hadley cell over the tropics. Between these two cells are the fierce westerlies and the high-altitude jet streams that drive storms around the middle latitudes. "If any part of the current structure broke down, that would be profound," says Lenton. "If the system starts to switch seasonally between three cells and a less stable structure, you change the position of the jet streams, you change everything." Models of this possibility are scarce, but Jacob Sewall and Lisa Sloan of the University of California, Santa Cruz, have shown that an ice-free Arctic could shift winter storm tracks over North America, drying the American west (Sewall, J. O. & Sloan, L. C. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L06209 (2004)).
The local warming caused by less sea ice could also affect the second tipping point, the size of the Greenland ice sheet. Here the effects could be dramatic, although delayed by centuries; there is enough ice on Greenland to raise sea levels by seven metres. "After hurricane Katrina, the deepest water in New Orleans was six metres," says glaciologist Richard Alley from Penn State University. "Greenland is more than that for all the coasts of the world. Do you move cities, do you build seven-metre walls and hope they stay, or what?"
Until recently, nobody had painted a convincing portrait of how Greenland is responding to Arctic warming. A glacier here may recede while one over there grows; ice may be accumulating inland and eroding near the coast. But in the past couple of years, almost all of the indicators have started to point in the same direction. Greenland is melting.
Although satellite measurements of Greenland's interior suggest that snow has recently been accumulating there, the margins are receding (Johannessen, O. M. et al. Science 310, 1013–1016 (2005)). Laser measurements taken from planes suggest that this coastal melting is probably enough to outweigh the build-up of snow inland (Krabill, W. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L24402 (2004)). Also, Greenland's glaciers seem to have been speeding up. A few months ago, Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, published satellite evidence that between 1996 and 2000, Greenland's more southerly glaciers had begun to accelerate, and that by 2005 the northerly ones had followed suit (Rignot, E. & Kanagaratnam, P. Science 311, 986–990 (2006)). They estimate that over the past decade this lurching has more than doubled Greenland's annual loss of ice, from 90 to 220 cubic kilometres per year.
"In the past decade there has been a lot of warming," says Alley. "There's plenty of room to argue whether that's a natural fluctuation or not, but there's a clear relation between Greenland getting warmer and Greenland getting smaller."
Modelling by Jonathan Gregory from the University of Reading and his colleagues suggests that it would require an average warming worldwide of 3.1 °C to drive this shrinking to its ultimate conclusion of an ice-free Greenland (Gregory, J. M. & Huybrechts, P. Phil Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A (in the press)). This climatic point of no return is around the middle of the range foreseen by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but is higher than a previous estimate made by the same group (Gregory, J. M. et al. Nature 428, 616 (2004)). Their revision is a measure of how quickly the field is changing. "It's not just Greenland that is going fast," says Alley. "The rate of publications, the rate of new papers, and the rate of disagreement have multiplied amazingly."
But these models do not take into account the dynamism of Greenland's glaciers. In 2002 Jay Zwally from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, found that as soon as summer meltwater appeared on the surface of west-central Greenland, the ice began to slip more quickly (Zwally, H. J. et al. Science 297, 218–222 (2002)). This is surprising, as slip rates should depend on processes at the base of the ice rather than at its surface. But Zwally points out that the great lakes of water produced by the melting could slip down conduits in the ice and be delivered directly to the bed.
This result doesn't necessarily make a big difference to the fate of Greenland, as the increase in the ice's speed was relatively small. But it points to a new way in which the ice sheet could react to climate change quicker than anyone had realized. "In places inland where the ice is frozen to its bedrock, if you warm the surface and wait for heat to get conducted to the bottom it takes 10,000 years," says Alley. "But if you send water down through a crack it takes maybe 10 minutes, maybe 10 seconds." If this process started to move inland, even the interior of Greenland's ice sheet could be vulnerable to warmer air. That could point to the sort of self-sustaining feedback that tipping points are made of... ¶ 2:14 PM 0 comments links to this post
Thursday, June 15, 2006
So why does the DLC sound like Rethuglican Lite?
As Russ Baker says, with great detail, it's because they work for the same people.
If you can call 'em people. ¶ 8:31 PM 0 comments links to this post
If you can call 'em people. ¶ 8:31 PM 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Very Interesting
Google watch.
Don't be evil.
Among other interesting links from this page:
...The CIA had to stop using a comparatively innocent log-analysis cookie that expired in 10 years, and their document search site isn't even used by many people. Google handles 200 million searches per day, and their cookie expires in 2038. One of Google's leading software engineers, Matt Cutts, had a top-secret clearance and used to work for the National Security Agency. Google doesn't even feel the need to defend their cookie policy; they merely laugh off anyone who inquires about it.
A cult of geeky blogging Google pundits joins in, and ridicules the notion that you'll be using the same computer in 2038. That's not the point. Google's expiration date is a barometer of its insensitivity to privacy issues. When we noticed this in year 2000 (it was the first time we had ever seen such a long-lived cookie), the idea of Google Watch was born. Google's response to other privacy issues since then tells us that we were right.
The purpose of the unique ID is to record your search terms for present or future profiling. Google says that the cookie is needed to set preferences. At the CIA, Google's cookie story would be termed a cover story, because the unique ID is completely superfluous for this function, even when the rest of the cookie is used to do this. In fact, you can set preferences without any sort of cookie at all... ¶ 10:59 PM 0 comments links to this post
Don't be evil.
Among other interesting links from this page:
...The CIA had to stop using a comparatively innocent log-analysis cookie that expired in 10 years, and their document search site isn't even used by many people. Google handles 200 million searches per day, and their cookie expires in 2038. One of Google's leading software engineers, Matt Cutts, had a top-secret clearance and used to work for the National Security Agency. Google doesn't even feel the need to defend their cookie policy; they merely laugh off anyone who inquires about it.
A cult of geeky blogging Google pundits joins in, and ridicules the notion that you'll be using the same computer in 2038. That's not the point. Google's expiration date is a barometer of its insensitivity to privacy issues. When we noticed this in year 2000 (it was the first time we had ever seen such a long-lived cookie), the idea of Google Watch was born. Google's response to other privacy issues since then tells us that we were right.
The purpose of the unique ID is to record your search terms for present or future profiling. Google says that the cookie is needed to set preferences. At the CIA, Google's cookie story would be termed a cover story, because the unique ID is completely superfluous for this function, even when the rest of the cookie is used to do this. In fact, you can set preferences without any sort of cookie at all... ¶ 10:59 PM 0 comments links to this post
Ask a Silly Question
Did the U.S. invade Iraq to tap its oil reserves or to make sure they stayed under the sand?
World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves the question, Why this war?
Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?
It wouldn't be the first time. If oil is what we're looking for, there are, indeed, extra helpings in Iraq. On paper, Iraq, at 112 billion proven barrels, has the second largest reserves in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. That does not make Saudi Arabia happy. Even more important is that Iraq has fewer than three thousand operating wells... compared to one million in Texas.
That makes the Saudis even unhappier. It would take a decade or more, but start drilling in Iraq and its reserves will about double, bringing it within gallons of Saudi Arabia's own gargantuan pool. Should Iraq drill on that scale, the total, when combined with the Saudis', will drown the oil market. That wouldn't make the Texans too happy either...
Greg Palast asks some really good questions, and goes into the history to explain it.
The answer: with peak oil attained, that's money in the bank for Someone. ¶ 10:00 PM 0 comments links to this post
World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves the question, Why this war?
Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?
It wouldn't be the first time. If oil is what we're looking for, there are, indeed, extra helpings in Iraq. On paper, Iraq, at 112 billion proven barrels, has the second largest reserves in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. That does not make Saudi Arabia happy. Even more important is that Iraq has fewer than three thousand operating wells... compared to one million in Texas.
That makes the Saudis even unhappier. It would take a decade or more, but start drilling in Iraq and its reserves will about double, bringing it within gallons of Saudi Arabia's own gargantuan pool. Should Iraq drill on that scale, the total, when combined with the Saudis', will drown the oil market. That wouldn't make the Texans too happy either...
Greg Palast asks some really good questions, and goes into the history to explain it.
The answer: with peak oil attained, that's money in the bank for Someone. ¶ 10:00 PM 0 comments links to this post
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
"Highly Classified Planes"
Discussed for you on CNN.
Great kool-aid they're serving...
But it seems like the Masters of Homeland Security are buying it so that means we are, too.
Maj. Gen. Scott Mayes: “If a national disaster is declared, we will be able to use unmanned aerial systems such as Predator and Global Hawk over a disaster area.”
Lovely. I'm sure after the next hurricane all those New Orleans looters will be treated just as fairly as any other citizens of emerging democracies. Of course, some looters will be treated more equally than others. ¶ 10:01 PM 1 comments links to this post
Great kool-aid they're serving...
But it seems like the Masters of Homeland Security are buying it so that means we are, too.
Maj. Gen. Scott Mayes: “If a national disaster is declared, we will be able to use unmanned aerial systems such as Predator and Global Hawk over a disaster area.”
Lovely. I'm sure after the next hurricane all those New Orleans looters will be treated just as fairly as any other citizens of emerging democracies. Of course, some looters will be treated more equally than others. ¶ 10:01 PM 1 comments links to this post
Enquiring Minds Want to Know- Ready for What?
Why is it the Dominionistas get all fluttery about a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women but don't say a word about a marketing ploy to sell a pill-a-day habit to young men so they'll always be "ready"?
¶ 9:10 PM 1 comments
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Ghost Dance
To paraphrase a very old quote the Dominionistas have forgotten, those who sow the winds of war, reap the whirlwinds.
¶ 11:54 AM 0 comments
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This is precisely the thing nobody believes when you tell them.
Chop shop.
...It was Mastromarino who built a business that took from the dead and gave to the living. There are many legitimate businesses that do this, but authorities say Mastromarino’s company, Biomedical Tissue Services, was not one of them.
BTS, they say, secretly carved up hundreds of cadavers without the families of the deceased knowing about it, then peddled the pieces on the lucrative non-organ body parts market.
Even scarier: They say BTS doctored paperwork to hide the inconvenient fact that some of the dead were old and diseased. As a result, they say, the market was flooded with potentially tainted tissue, and an untold number of patients across the country may have received infections along with their dental implants and hip replacements...
...Femurs. Tendons. Heart valves. Swatches of skin from the thighs, stomach and back.
The body parts, though no longer of any value to their owners, became big business for Mastromarino. His lawyer said he was among the first in the industry to figure out that one way to meet the high demand for donated human tissue — traditionally procured in the controlled environment of hospitals — was to turn to funeral homes.
Deals were cut with funeral directors in New York City, Rochester, N.Y., Philadelphia and New Jersey: BTS would pay a $1,000 “facility fee” to harvest body parts on their premises.
Three-man teams were dispatched to mortuaries. Two workers would extract the parts. A third would bag them and put them on ice until they could be stored in a freezer at BTS headquarters.
What’s been portrayed as a gruesome exercise was purely clinical, Cruceta said.
“We took our time with what we did,” Cruceta said. “We never made fun of any of these donors. We always treated everyone with respect.”
Internal documents from BTS suggest the company had, at least on paper, a strict set of rules for obtaining signed consent for the procedures. A script instructed interviewers to tell family members, “We are about to proceed with the medical social history questionnaire. I have about 40 questions and this interview should take about 20 minutes...”
Unfortunately, it seems that no questions were asked in hundreds of cases.
Family members have told investigators no one sought permission for body-part donations. The signatures at the bottom of the questionnaires, they said, were forged.
Mastromarino, through his lawyer, has blamed funeral home directors, insisting it was their job to get consent. The directors say it was the other way around.
As early as September 2003, the FDA detected trouble at BTS.
In a routine inspection, an investigator found evidence the company had failed to properly sterilize its equipment, and had no records of how it had disposed of tissue that failed screening for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.
But nothing came of it. The FDA backed off after Mastromarino insisted he had voluntarily cleaned up his operation. In a letter, he told officials he would “look forward to your agency revisiting our facility...”
I'm sure no money was exchanged. After all, we're talking about the Federal Government, right?
...The case, said the prosecutor, is like a “cheap horror movie.” But few scary flicks offer the gruesome and gory details of the BTS scandal.
Authorities released photos of exhumed corpses that were boned below the waist like a freshly caught fish. The defendants, they alleged, had made a crude attempt to cover their tracks by sewing PVC pipe back into the bodies in time for open-casket wakes.
It also was alleged that the body of the British-born host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” Alistair Cooke, was among those abused by BTS.
Mastromarino, Cruceta, another cutter and a former mortician have been charged. “What you have before you is nothing short of a case of medical terrorism,” prosecutor Michael Vecchione said at an arraignment.
Lawsuits filed by implant patients accuse BTS of exposing plaintiffs to hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Families of the dead have sued too, claiming the biomedical firm caused distress by desecrating the dead for profit.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration shut down BTS amid its own investigation. The agency said it had uncovered evidence the firm failed to screen for contaminated tissue. Parts were recovered from people who had diseases which may have been “exclusionary,” an FDA report said.
Death certificates in the company’s files, the report said, were at odds with those on file with the state: The company’s version made people younger than they actually were, and altered the cause and time of the deaths.
The culprits “were just some irresponsible crooks who were doing this and slipped through the cracks,” said Dr. Stuart Youngner, a Case Western Reserve University medical ethicist and head of the ethics committee at Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, a large nonprofit tissue bank. “The good tissue banks ... don’t do that.”
Well. That settles it.
Still one wonders. If human trafficking is the international problem that continues, one wonders what is done with the merchandise after it's past its prime. It gives a whole new dimension to the problem of what to do with inconvenient bodies.
Unthinkable? Now that's pre-9/11 thinking. ¶ 8:38 AM 0 comments links to this post
...It was Mastromarino who built a business that took from the dead and gave to the living. There are many legitimate businesses that do this, but authorities say Mastromarino’s company, Biomedical Tissue Services, was not one of them.
BTS, they say, secretly carved up hundreds of cadavers without the families of the deceased knowing about it, then peddled the pieces on the lucrative non-organ body parts market.
Even scarier: They say BTS doctored paperwork to hide the inconvenient fact that some of the dead were old and diseased. As a result, they say, the market was flooded with potentially tainted tissue, and an untold number of patients across the country may have received infections along with their dental implants and hip replacements...
...Femurs. Tendons. Heart valves. Swatches of skin from the thighs, stomach and back.
The body parts, though no longer of any value to their owners, became big business for Mastromarino. His lawyer said he was among the first in the industry to figure out that one way to meet the high demand for donated human tissue — traditionally procured in the controlled environment of hospitals — was to turn to funeral homes.
Deals were cut with funeral directors in New York City, Rochester, N.Y., Philadelphia and New Jersey: BTS would pay a $1,000 “facility fee” to harvest body parts on their premises.
Three-man teams were dispatched to mortuaries. Two workers would extract the parts. A third would bag them and put them on ice until they could be stored in a freezer at BTS headquarters.
What’s been portrayed as a gruesome exercise was purely clinical, Cruceta said.
“We took our time with what we did,” Cruceta said. “We never made fun of any of these donors. We always treated everyone with respect.”
Internal documents from BTS suggest the company had, at least on paper, a strict set of rules for obtaining signed consent for the procedures. A script instructed interviewers to tell family members, “We are about to proceed with the medical social history questionnaire. I have about 40 questions and this interview should take about 20 minutes...”
Unfortunately, it seems that no questions were asked in hundreds of cases.
Family members have told investigators no one sought permission for body-part donations. The signatures at the bottom of the questionnaires, they said, were forged.
Mastromarino, through his lawyer, has blamed funeral home directors, insisting it was their job to get consent. The directors say it was the other way around.
As early as September 2003, the FDA detected trouble at BTS.
In a routine inspection, an investigator found evidence the company had failed to properly sterilize its equipment, and had no records of how it had disposed of tissue that failed screening for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.
But nothing came of it. The FDA backed off after Mastromarino insisted he had voluntarily cleaned up his operation. In a letter, he told officials he would “look forward to your agency revisiting our facility...”
I'm sure no money was exchanged. After all, we're talking about the Federal Government, right?
...The case, said the prosecutor, is like a “cheap horror movie.” But few scary flicks offer the gruesome and gory details of the BTS scandal.
Authorities released photos of exhumed corpses that were boned below the waist like a freshly caught fish. The defendants, they alleged, had made a crude attempt to cover their tracks by sewing PVC pipe back into the bodies in time for open-casket wakes.
It also was alleged that the body of the British-born host of “Masterpiece Theatre,” Alistair Cooke, was among those abused by BTS.
Mastromarino, Cruceta, another cutter and a former mortician have been charged. “What you have before you is nothing short of a case of medical terrorism,” prosecutor Michael Vecchione said at an arraignment.
Lawsuits filed by implant patients accuse BTS of exposing plaintiffs to hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Families of the dead have sued too, claiming the biomedical firm caused distress by desecrating the dead for profit.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration shut down BTS amid its own investigation. The agency said it had uncovered evidence the firm failed to screen for contaminated tissue. Parts were recovered from people who had diseases which may have been “exclusionary,” an FDA report said.
Death certificates in the company’s files, the report said, were at odds with those on file with the state: The company’s version made people younger than they actually were, and altered the cause and time of the deaths.
The culprits “were just some irresponsible crooks who were doing this and slipped through the cracks,” said Dr. Stuart Youngner, a Case Western Reserve University medical ethicist and head of the ethics committee at Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, a large nonprofit tissue bank. “The good tissue banks ... don’t do that.”
Well. That settles it.
Still one wonders. If human trafficking is the international problem that continues, one wonders what is done with the merchandise after it's past its prime. It gives a whole new dimension to the problem of what to do with inconvenient bodies.
Unthinkable? Now that's pre-9/11 thinking. ¶ 8:38 AM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, June 12, 2006
Surprising They Weren't Relocated to New Orleans
NOAA Blocks Moving Pacific Tsunami Center above Sea Level
Warning Center May Be Unable to Function After First Wave Hits
WASHINGTON - June 12 - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is vetoing an effort to move its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to high ground that would enable it to function in the aftermath of a tsunami, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). NOAA opposes plans to co-locate the tsunami warning center with Hawaiian state and local civil defense offices 300 feet above sea level on the high slopes of Diamond Head Crater and instead wants to put it in a new office building slated for construction on an island in the middle of Pearl Harbor.
NOAA is insisting that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center be included within a new $242 million complex it plans to build on Ford Island, a U.S. Navy-owned site in Pearl Harbor on the south coast of Oahu. Hawaii, which has a history of tsunamis, is among the areas with the highest tsunami danger.
The Ford Island site is reachable only by a single, partly floating bridge that must be raised to allow the Navy vessels to escape the harbor. Ford Island would also have to be evacuated in the event of a tsunami, if NOAA followed its own protocols, but if the bridge is raised evacuation may not be possible. By contrast, the Diamond Head Crater location would be sufficiently elevated so as to continue to operate throughout any foreseeable tsunami-related event... ¶ 10:00 PM 0 comments links to this post
Warning Center May Be Unable to Function After First Wave Hits
WASHINGTON - June 12 - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is vetoing an effort to move its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to high ground that would enable it to function in the aftermath of a tsunami, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). NOAA opposes plans to co-locate the tsunami warning center with Hawaiian state and local civil defense offices 300 feet above sea level on the high slopes of Diamond Head Crater and instead wants to put it in a new office building slated for construction on an island in the middle of Pearl Harbor.
NOAA is insisting that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center be included within a new $242 million complex it plans to build on Ford Island, a U.S. Navy-owned site in Pearl Harbor on the south coast of Oahu. Hawaii, which has a history of tsunamis, is among the areas with the highest tsunami danger.
The Ford Island site is reachable only by a single, partly floating bridge that must be raised to allow the Navy vessels to escape the harbor. Ford Island would also have to be evacuated in the event of a tsunami, if NOAA followed its own protocols, but if the bridge is raised evacuation may not be possible. By contrast, the Diamond Head Crater location would be sufficiently elevated so as to continue to operate throughout any foreseeable tsunami-related event... ¶ 10:00 PM 0 comments links to this post
Notice That Some Sites are Slowiinngg Down?
Even though the traffic isn't so great?
Net Neutrality.
The House has canned it. More here and here. Josh Marshall is counting heads for the Senate vote.
Corporatism isn't capitalism. ¶ 8:55 PM 0 comments links to this post
Net Neutrality.
The House has canned it. More here and here. Josh Marshall is counting heads for the Senate vote.
Corporatism isn't capitalism. ¶ 8:55 PM 0 comments links to this post
Making Enemies Faster Than They Can Kill Them Off
The United States' global energy-control strategy, it's now clear to most, was the actual reason for the highly costly regime change in Iraq, euphemistically dubbed "democracy" by Washington. But while it is preoccupied with implanting democracy in the Middle East, the United States is quietly being outflanked in the rush to secure and control major energy sources of the Persian Gulf, the Central Asian Caspian Basin, Africa and beyond.
The quest for energy control has informed Washington's support for high-risk "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan in recent months. It lies behind US activity in West Africa, as well as in Sudan, source of 7% of China's oil imports. It lies behind US policy vis-a-vis President Hugo Chavez' Venezuela and President Evo Morales' Bolivia.
In recent months, however, this strategy of global energy dominance has shown signs of producing just the opposite: a kind of "coalition of the unwilling", states that increasingly see no other prospect, despite traditional animosities, but to cooperate to oppose what they see as a US push to control the future security of their energy...
Contrary to advice from older China hands, including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, architect of president Richard Nixon's 1972 opening to China, the White House denied visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao the honor of a full state dinner when he visited in April, serving instead a short "state lunch". Hu was publicly humiliated by a well-known Falungong heckler at the White House press conference.
A few weeks later, Vice President Dick Cheney slapped Russian President Vladimir Putin with the most open attack on Russia's internal human-rights policy as well as its energy policy in a speech in the Baltic state of Lithuania. There, Cheney declared of Russia, "The government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people." He accused Russia of energy "intimidation and blackmail". Some days later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated that Russia should be "pressed" on democratic reforms. Rice also slapped China in the face in March during a trip to Southeast Asia, calling China a "negative force" in Asia.
Curiously, Washington has repeatedly accused China of "not playing by the rules", in terms of its oil politics, declaring that China is guilty of "seeking to control energy at the source", as though that had not been US energy policy for the past century.
The significance of taking aim simultaneously at both Russia and China, the two Eurasian giants, the one the largest investor in US Treasury bonds, the other the world's second-most-developed military nuclear power, reflects the realization in Washington that all may not be as seamless in the quest for global domination as originally promised by various strategists in and around the administration of President George W Bush.
Next Thursday, member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by China and Russia, will reportedly invite Iran, currently an observer, into full membership. Even if full membership is postponed, as has been mooted, the fact remains that Russia and China both want to seal closer cooperation with Iran in Eurasian energy cooperation.
The SCO was founded in June 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its stated goal was to facilitate "cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields". Recently, however, the SCO is beginning to look like an energy-financial bloc in Central Asia consciously being developed to serve as a counter-pole to US hegemony...
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Putin announced that Russia is planning to make the ruble convertible into other major currencies and to use it in its oil and gas transactions.
A convertible ruble is to be introduced, according to latest Russian statements, on July 1, six months earlier than originally planned. Russia also has stated it plans to shift a share of its now considerable dollar reserves away from the US currency and that it will use 40 billion US dollars to purchase gold reserves.
Russia's state-owned natural-gas transport company, Transneft, has consolidated its pipeline control to become the sole exporter of Russian natural gas. Russia has by far the world's largest natural-gas reserves and Iran the second-largest. With Iran inside, the SCO would control the vast majority of the world's natural-gas reserves, as well as a significant portion of its oil reserves, not to mention the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow corridor for a majority of Persian Gulf oil-tanker shipment to Japan and the West.
Late last month Russia and Algeria, the two largest gas suppliers to Europe, agreed to increase energy cooperation. Algeria has given Russian companies exclusive access to Algerian oil and gas fields, and Gazprom and Sonatrach will cooperate in delivery to France. Putin has canceled Algeria's US$4.7 billion debt to Russia and, for its part, Algeria will buy $7.5 billion worth of Russian advanced jet fighters, air defense systems and other weapons.
On May 26 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also announced that his country would definitely supply Iran with sophisticated Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles, reportedly as a prelude to supplying even more sophisticated weapons.
Then, in one of the more fascinating examples of geopolitical chutzpah, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly entered quiet negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through his billionaire friend, Benny Steinmetz, to secure Russian natural-gas supplies to Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey to Israel.
According to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, Olmert's office has said it will support the Gazprom proposal. In several years Israel faces a shortage of gas from Tethys Sea drilling and soon from Egypt. Tethys Sea gas is projected to run dry in a few years. British Gas is in talks to supply gas from Gaza but Israel disputes BG's right to drill.
But even with Egypt and Gaza, gas shortages are expected by 2010 unless Israel is able to find new sources. Enter Gazprom and Putin. The gas would be diverted from the under-used Russia-Turkey Bluestream Pipeline, which Russia built to increase its influence over Turkey two years ago. Putin clearly seeks to gain a lever inside Israel over the one-sided US influence on Israeli policy...
Got that straight, Dear Leader? Even the Israelis are starting to bug out...
...China became a net importer of oil in 1993. By 2045, China will depend on imported oil for 45% of its energy needs.
On May 26, crude oil began to flow into China through a newly completed pipeline from Atasu, Kazakhstan, to the Alataw Pass in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, a 1,000-kilometer route announced only last year. It marked the first time oil is being pumped directly into China. Kazakhstan is also a member of the SCO, but had been regarded by Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union as in its sphere of influence, with ChevronTexaco, Rice's former oil company, the major oil developer.
By 2011 the pipeline with extend some 3,000km to Dushanzi, where the Chinese are building their largest oil refinery, due to completed by 2008. China financed the entire $700 million pipeline and will buy the oil. Last year the China National Petroleum Corp bought PetroKazakhstan for $4.2 billion and will use it to develop oilfields in Kazakhstan.
China is also in negotiations with Russia for a pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to northeastern China, a project that could be completed by 2008, and a natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Heilongjiang province in China's northeast. China just passed Japan to rank as world's second-largest oil importer behind the United States.
Beijing and Moscow are also integrating their electricity grids. Late last month the China State Grid Corp announced plans to increase imports of Russian electricity fivefold by 2010...
Indicative of the way China is doing an end-run around the Western-controlled International Monetary Fund among African states, China's Export-Import Bank recently gave a $2 billion soft loan to Angola. In return, the Luanda government gave China a stake in oil exploration in shallow waters off the coast. The loan is to be used for infrastructure projects. In contrast, US interest in war-torn Angola has rarely gone beyond the well-fortified oil enclave of Cabinda, which ExxonMobil along with Shell Oil have dominated until recently. That is apparently about to change with the growing Chinese interest.
Chinese infrastructure projects under way in Angola include railways, roads, a fiber-optic network, schools, hospitals, offices and 5,000 units of housing developments. A new airport with direct flights from Luanda to Beijing is also planned.
Indirectly, through its support of the Sudanese government, China is also a contender in a high-stakes game of potential regime change in neighboring, oil-rich Chad. This year, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz was forced to back down from plans to cut off World Bank aid because of the threat of an oil-export cutoff by Chad. ExxonMobil is currently the major oil company active in Chad. But Sudan backs Chadian rebels, who were only prevented from toppling the notoriously corrupt and unpopular regime of President Idriss Deby by the 1,500 French soldiers propping up the regime. Washington has joined with Paris in backing Deby.
Sudan has involved Chinese, rather than Western, corporations in exploiting its oilfields, largely as a result of misconceived US sanctions imposed in 1997, which blocked US oil companies from doing business in Sudan. A new Sudan-backed regime in Chad would jeopardize the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and Western oil firms. One can imagine China just might be willing to step into such a vacuum and help Chad develop its oil, especially if the lion's share went to China.
Immediately after his humiliating diplomatic visit to Washington in April, President Hu went on to Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and long regarded by Washington as in its "oil sphere of interest". In Nigeria, Hu signed a deal whereby the African country will give China four oil-drilling licenses in exchange for a commitment to invest $4 billion in infrastructure...
It's little wonder that some Washington hawks are getting alarmed. Suddenly, the world of potential "enemies" is no longer restricted to the Islam-centered "war on terror". Leading neo-conservative ideologue Robert Kagan wrote a prominent opinion article recently in the Washington Post...
"Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism. If, instead, China and Russia are going to be sturdy pillars of autocracy over the coming decades, enduring and perhaps even prospering, then they cannot be expected to embrace the West's vision of humanity's inexorable evolution toward democracy and the end of autocratic rule."
Unless there's a War on Terra to fight, that is.
Kagan charged that China and Russia have emerged as the protectors of "an informal league of dictators" that, according to Kagan, currently includes the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran and Angola, among others around the world, who, like the leaders of Russia and China themselves, resist any efforts by the West to interfere in their domestic affairs, either through sanctions or other means...
Obviously, anyone resisting Dear Leader and the IMF must be a dictatorial scourge.
That's true whether the scapegoat du jour is in Eastasia, Eurasia, or Oceania. ¶ 3:44 PM 0 comments links to this post
The quest for energy control has informed Washington's support for high-risk "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan in recent months. It lies behind US activity in West Africa, as well as in Sudan, source of 7% of China's oil imports. It lies behind US policy vis-a-vis President Hugo Chavez' Venezuela and President Evo Morales' Bolivia.
In recent months, however, this strategy of global energy dominance has shown signs of producing just the opposite: a kind of "coalition of the unwilling", states that increasingly see no other prospect, despite traditional animosities, but to cooperate to oppose what they see as a US push to control the future security of their energy...
Contrary to advice from older China hands, including former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, architect of president Richard Nixon's 1972 opening to China, the White House denied visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao the honor of a full state dinner when he visited in April, serving instead a short "state lunch". Hu was publicly humiliated by a well-known Falungong heckler at the White House press conference.
A few weeks later, Vice President Dick Cheney slapped Russian President Vladimir Putin with the most open attack on Russia's internal human-rights policy as well as its energy policy in a speech in the Baltic state of Lithuania. There, Cheney declared of Russia, "The government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people." He accused Russia of energy "intimidation and blackmail". Some days later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated that Russia should be "pressed" on democratic reforms. Rice also slapped China in the face in March during a trip to Southeast Asia, calling China a "negative force" in Asia.
Curiously, Washington has repeatedly accused China of "not playing by the rules", in terms of its oil politics, declaring that China is guilty of "seeking to control energy at the source", as though that had not been US energy policy for the past century.
The significance of taking aim simultaneously at both Russia and China, the two Eurasian giants, the one the largest investor in US Treasury bonds, the other the world's second-most-developed military nuclear power, reflects the realization in Washington that all may not be as seamless in the quest for global domination as originally promised by various strategists in and around the administration of President George W Bush.
Next Thursday, member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by China and Russia, will reportedly invite Iran, currently an observer, into full membership. Even if full membership is postponed, as has been mooted, the fact remains that Russia and China both want to seal closer cooperation with Iran in Eurasian energy cooperation.
The SCO was founded in June 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its stated goal was to facilitate "cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields". Recently, however, the SCO is beginning to look like an energy-financial bloc in Central Asia consciously being developed to serve as a counter-pole to US hegemony...
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Putin announced that Russia is planning to make the ruble convertible into other major currencies and to use it in its oil and gas transactions.
A convertible ruble is to be introduced, according to latest Russian statements, on July 1, six months earlier than originally planned. Russia also has stated it plans to shift a share of its now considerable dollar reserves away from the US currency and that it will use 40 billion US dollars to purchase gold reserves.
Russia's state-owned natural-gas transport company, Transneft, has consolidated its pipeline control to become the sole exporter of Russian natural gas. Russia has by far the world's largest natural-gas reserves and Iran the second-largest. With Iran inside, the SCO would control the vast majority of the world's natural-gas reserves, as well as a significant portion of its oil reserves, not to mention the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow corridor for a majority of Persian Gulf oil-tanker shipment to Japan and the West.
Late last month Russia and Algeria, the two largest gas suppliers to Europe, agreed to increase energy cooperation. Algeria has given Russian companies exclusive access to Algerian oil and gas fields, and Gazprom and Sonatrach will cooperate in delivery to France. Putin has canceled Algeria's US$4.7 billion debt to Russia and, for its part, Algeria will buy $7.5 billion worth of Russian advanced jet fighters, air defense systems and other weapons.
On May 26 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also announced that his country would definitely supply Iran with sophisticated Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles, reportedly as a prelude to supplying even more sophisticated weapons.
Then, in one of the more fascinating examples of geopolitical chutzpah, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly entered quiet negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through his billionaire friend, Benny Steinmetz, to secure Russian natural-gas supplies to Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey to Israel.
According to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, Olmert's office has said it will support the Gazprom proposal. In several years Israel faces a shortage of gas from Tethys Sea drilling and soon from Egypt. Tethys Sea gas is projected to run dry in a few years. British Gas is in talks to supply gas from Gaza but Israel disputes BG's right to drill.
But even with Egypt and Gaza, gas shortages are expected by 2010 unless Israel is able to find new sources. Enter Gazprom and Putin. The gas would be diverted from the under-used Russia-Turkey Bluestream Pipeline, which Russia built to increase its influence over Turkey two years ago. Putin clearly seeks to gain a lever inside Israel over the one-sided US influence on Israeli policy...
Got that straight, Dear Leader? Even the Israelis are starting to bug out...
...China became a net importer of oil in 1993. By 2045, China will depend on imported oil for 45% of its energy needs.
On May 26, crude oil began to flow into China through a newly completed pipeline from Atasu, Kazakhstan, to the Alataw Pass in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, a 1,000-kilometer route announced only last year. It marked the first time oil is being pumped directly into China. Kazakhstan is also a member of the SCO, but had been regarded by Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union as in its sphere of influence, with ChevronTexaco, Rice's former oil company, the major oil developer.
By 2011 the pipeline with extend some 3,000km to Dushanzi, where the Chinese are building their largest oil refinery, due to completed by 2008. China financed the entire $700 million pipeline and will buy the oil. Last year the China National Petroleum Corp bought PetroKazakhstan for $4.2 billion and will use it to develop oilfields in Kazakhstan.
China is also in negotiations with Russia for a pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to northeastern China, a project that could be completed by 2008, and a natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Heilongjiang province in China's northeast. China just passed Japan to rank as world's second-largest oil importer behind the United States.
Beijing and Moscow are also integrating their electricity grids. Late last month the China State Grid Corp announced plans to increase imports of Russian electricity fivefold by 2010...
Indicative of the way China is doing an end-run around the Western-controlled International Monetary Fund among African states, China's Export-Import Bank recently gave a $2 billion soft loan to Angola. In return, the Luanda government gave China a stake in oil exploration in shallow waters off the coast. The loan is to be used for infrastructure projects. In contrast, US interest in war-torn Angola has rarely gone beyond the well-fortified oil enclave of Cabinda, which ExxonMobil along with Shell Oil have dominated until recently. That is apparently about to change with the growing Chinese interest.
Chinese infrastructure projects under way in Angola include railways, roads, a fiber-optic network, schools, hospitals, offices and 5,000 units of housing developments. A new airport with direct flights from Luanda to Beijing is also planned.
Indirectly, through its support of the Sudanese government, China is also a contender in a high-stakes game of potential regime change in neighboring, oil-rich Chad. This year, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz was forced to back down from plans to cut off World Bank aid because of the threat of an oil-export cutoff by Chad. ExxonMobil is currently the major oil company active in Chad. But Sudan backs Chadian rebels, who were only prevented from toppling the notoriously corrupt and unpopular regime of President Idriss Deby by the 1,500 French soldiers propping up the regime. Washington has joined with Paris in backing Deby.
Sudan has involved Chinese, rather than Western, corporations in exploiting its oilfields, largely as a result of misconceived US sanctions imposed in 1997, which blocked US oil companies from doing business in Sudan. A new Sudan-backed regime in Chad would jeopardize the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and Western oil firms. One can imagine China just might be willing to step into such a vacuum and help Chad develop its oil, especially if the lion's share went to China.
Immediately after his humiliating diplomatic visit to Washington in April, President Hu went on to Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and long regarded by Washington as in its "oil sphere of interest". In Nigeria, Hu signed a deal whereby the African country will give China four oil-drilling licenses in exchange for a commitment to invest $4 billion in infrastructure...
It's little wonder that some Washington hawks are getting alarmed. Suddenly, the world of potential "enemies" is no longer restricted to the Islam-centered "war on terror". Leading neo-conservative ideologue Robert Kagan wrote a prominent opinion article recently in the Washington Post...
"Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism. If, instead, China and Russia are going to be sturdy pillars of autocracy over the coming decades, enduring and perhaps even prospering, then they cannot be expected to embrace the West's vision of humanity's inexorable evolution toward democracy and the end of autocratic rule."
Unless there's a War on Terra to fight, that is.
Kagan charged that China and Russia have emerged as the protectors of "an informal league of dictators" that, according to Kagan, currently includes the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran and Angola, among others around the world, who, like the leaders of Russia and China themselves, resist any efforts by the West to interfere in their domestic affairs, either through sanctions or other means...
Obviously, anyone resisting Dear Leader and the IMF must be a dictatorial scourge.
That's true whether the scapegoat du jour is in Eastasia, Eurasia, or Oceania. ¶ 3:44 PM 0 comments links to this post
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Predicting the Weather on the Rhythm Method
...officially because the Church of Dear Leader sez so.
The NOAA released its annual hurricane season predictions last week.
As Thomas Crowley points out at RealClimate, along with its now-standard explanation that there is a natural cycle of multidecadal (40-60 year) length in the North Atlantic circulation (often referred to as the "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation"--see Figure), that is varying the frequency of Atlantic tropical cyclones, and that the present high level of activity is due to a concurrent positive peak in this oscillation.
Which is true, as Crowley points out- and which is also likely exacerbated by the global warming conditions.
The NOAA's press release cited above says:
..."For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher," added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator...
Warmer ocean water combined with lower wind shear, weaker easterly trade winds, and a more favorable wind pattern in the mid-levels of the atmosphere are the factors that collectively will favor the development of storms in greater numbers and to greater intensity. Warm water is the energy source for storms while favorable wind patterns limit the wind shear that can tear apart a storm's building cloud structure.
This confluence of conditions in the ocean and atmosphere is strongly related to a climate pattern known as the multi-decadal signal, which has been in place since 1995. Since then, nine of the last 11 hurricane seasons have been above normal...
I hate to bring this up to Dr. Lautenbacher, but
Global Warming Slows the Winds
By Betsy Mason
ScienceNOW Daily News
3 May 2006
Climate models predict that global warming will upset the delicately balanced atmospheric circulation that controls global climate and weather patterns. Now scientists are finding evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions may already be tipping the equilibrium, which could have severe repercussions, including altered weather patterns and a decline in important fishing grounds.
A key feature of Earth's atmospheric circulation is a steady flow of tropical air known as the Walker circulation. Warm air rises over the equatorial western Pacific and cools and sinks in the east. This sets up a flow of air over the ocean from high pressure in the east to low pressure in the west. The winds push water from east to west, which causes an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water in the eastern Pacific. Simple climate theories predict that global warming will weaken this circulation.
But is it actually happening? A team led by climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration examined historical weather records from the equatorial Pacific Ocean dating back to 1861. They found that the difference in pressure between the east and west Pacific has declined since that time, suggesting a weakening Walker circulation...
This was also covered in detail in a recent Nature publication (Nature 441, 73-76 (4 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04744). I'm not going to go into details: it's behind their firewall and highly technical. Suffice to say it shows a steady decrease in this wind pattern over the last century.
In that same publication (although a differnt citation:Nature 441, 11 (4 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/441011a), the strife among the NOAA climate scientists is noted:
At issue is whether the historical record of cyclones is complete enough for accurate conclusions to be drawn about changes from past patterns. Many researchers called for the databases to be brought up to date by including modern assessments of past storms, including their intensities. It is a daunting task that, for now, is being done only for the Atlantic basin by Landsea and his colleagues.
Even given the gaps in the database, several new studies suggested that rising sea surface temperatures are having a noticeable effect on cyclones. Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, co-author of one of last year's papers, presented data hinting that not only are hurricanes growing more intense over time, but that the length of the storm season has increased as well. Starting from 1950, he told the meeting, the storm season has grown longer in the Atlantic by about five days per decade, in the northeastern Pacific by eight days per decade, and in the northwestern Pacific by ten days per decade.
In Britain, researchers at the Benfield Hazard Research Centre in Surrey have run climate simulations suggesting that half the recent rise in hurricane activity in the North Atlantic can be explained by the observed increase in sea surface temperature in the region where these hurricanes develop. A warmer ocean would, in theory, provide more fuel for hurricanes to intensify.
And in Japan, a team has used the Earth Simulator supercomputer to run high-resolution simulations of global climate, both in today's conditions and in a world warmed by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Preliminary results suggest that, in the latter scenario, the number of tropical cyclones would drop by about 30% worldwide. But the number would rise in the Atlantic, and storm intensity would increase worldwide (K. Oouchi et al. J. Meteorol. Soc. Jap. 84, 259–276; 2006).
Now what do you suppose the NOAA has also predicted for this summer?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today released its 2006 east Pacific hurricane season outlook — predicting a below average season with 12 to 16 tropical storms, of which six to eight could become hurricanes, including one to three major hurricanes of category 3 strength or greater.
An average east Pacific hurricane season features 15 to 16 tropical storms, with nine becoming hurricanes, including four to five major hurricanes...
So it's nice to know even though officially NOAA is saying Al Gore is a very wrong man, and nobody should listen to Jim Hansen, the guys actually handling the data are actually looking at the data- and predicting it the way the global warming models do. ¶ 6:33 PM 0 comments links to this post
The NOAA released its annual hurricane season predictions last week.
As Thomas Crowley points out at RealClimate, along with its now-standard explanation that there is a natural cycle of multidecadal (40-60 year) length in the North Atlantic circulation (often referred to as the "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation"--see Figure), that is varying the frequency of Atlantic tropical cyclones, and that the present high level of activity is due to a concurrent positive peak in this oscillation.
Which is true, as Crowley points out- and which is also likely exacerbated by the global warming conditions.
The NOAA's press release cited above says:
..."For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher," added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator...
Warmer ocean water combined with lower wind shear, weaker easterly trade winds, and a more favorable wind pattern in the mid-levels of the atmosphere are the factors that collectively will favor the development of storms in greater numbers and to greater intensity. Warm water is the energy source for storms while favorable wind patterns limit the wind shear that can tear apart a storm's building cloud structure.
This confluence of conditions in the ocean and atmosphere is strongly related to a climate pattern known as the multi-decadal signal, which has been in place since 1995. Since then, nine of the last 11 hurricane seasons have been above normal...
I hate to bring this up to Dr. Lautenbacher, but
Global Warming Slows the Winds
By Betsy Mason
ScienceNOW Daily News
3 May 2006
Climate models predict that global warming will upset the delicately balanced atmospheric circulation that controls global climate and weather patterns. Now scientists are finding evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions may already be tipping the equilibrium, which could have severe repercussions, including altered weather patterns and a decline in important fishing grounds.
A key feature of Earth's atmospheric circulation is a steady flow of tropical air known as the Walker circulation. Warm air rises over the equatorial western Pacific and cools and sinks in the east. This sets up a flow of air over the ocean from high pressure in the east to low pressure in the west. The winds push water from east to west, which causes an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water in the eastern Pacific. Simple climate theories predict that global warming will weaken this circulation.
But is it actually happening? A team led by climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration examined historical weather records from the equatorial Pacific Ocean dating back to 1861. They found that the difference in pressure between the east and west Pacific has declined since that time, suggesting a weakening Walker circulation...
This was also covered in detail in a recent Nature publication (Nature 441, 73-76 (4 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04744). I'm not going to go into details: it's behind their firewall and highly technical. Suffice to say it shows a steady decrease in this wind pattern over the last century.
In that same publication (although a differnt citation:Nature 441, 11 (4 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/441011a), the strife among the NOAA climate scientists is noted:
At issue is whether the historical record of cyclones is complete enough for accurate conclusions to be drawn about changes from past patterns. Many researchers called for the databases to be brought up to date by including modern assessments of past storms, including their intensities. It is a daunting task that, for now, is being done only for the Atlantic basin by Landsea and his colleagues.
Even given the gaps in the database, several new studies suggested that rising sea surface temperatures are having a noticeable effect on cyclones. Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, co-author of one of last year's papers, presented data hinting that not only are hurricanes growing more intense over time, but that the length of the storm season has increased as well. Starting from 1950, he told the meeting, the storm season has grown longer in the Atlantic by about five days per decade, in the northeastern Pacific by eight days per decade, and in the northwestern Pacific by ten days per decade.
In Britain, researchers at the Benfield Hazard Research Centre in Surrey have run climate simulations suggesting that half the recent rise in hurricane activity in the North Atlantic can be explained by the observed increase in sea surface temperature in the region where these hurricanes develop. A warmer ocean would, in theory, provide more fuel for hurricanes to intensify.
And in Japan, a team has used the Earth Simulator supercomputer to run high-resolution simulations of global climate, both in today's conditions and in a world warmed by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Preliminary results suggest that, in the latter scenario, the number of tropical cyclones would drop by about 30% worldwide. But the number would rise in the Atlantic, and storm intensity would increase worldwide (K. Oouchi et al. J. Meteorol. Soc. Jap. 84, 259–276; 2006).
Now what do you suppose the NOAA has also predicted for this summer?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today released its 2006 east Pacific hurricane season outlook — predicting a below average season with 12 to 16 tropical storms, of which six to eight could become hurricanes, including one to three major hurricanes of category 3 strength or greater.
An average east Pacific hurricane season features 15 to 16 tropical storms, with nine becoming hurricanes, including four to five major hurricanes...
So it's nice to know even though officially NOAA is saying Al Gore is a very wrong man, and nobody should listen to Jim Hansen, the guys actually handling the data are actually looking at the data- and predicting it the way the global warming models do. ¶ 6:33 PM 0 comments links to this post
Just when you thought it couldn't get weirder...
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) expects to run for president in 2008 if the contest for the Republican nomination still seems wide open late next year, he said yesterday.
¶ 2:37 PM 0 comments
links to this post
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Priorities
NASA shelves climate satellites
Environmental science may suffer
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | June 9, 2006
NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment.
The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.
And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.
The changes come as NASA prioritizes its budget to pay for completion of the International Space Station and the return of astronauts to the moon by 2020 -- a goal set by President Bush that promises a more distant and arguably less practical scientific payoff. Ultimately, scientists say, the delays and cancellations could make hurricane predictions less accurate, create gaps in long-term monitoring of weather, and result in less clarity about the earth's hydrological systems, which play an integral part in climate change...
They have money to look for black holes in our solar system (of course, if there were black holes nearby we wouldn't have our solar system), but not enough to monitor what the Company's doing to the planet.
Science and the Company clearly don't mix. Take for example the recent push to throw money at Gulf War Syndrome. For those of you that can't get past the wall at Science:
Scientists usually bristle when U.S. legislators mandate a project that benefits their constituents. But Gulf War illness researchers are especially troubled by such a funding provision inserted by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) in this year's budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The $15 million earmark to the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas not only avoids the traditional peer-review process, but it also marks the rare--and possibly first ever--VA funding of a program outside its research network, and to a researcher whose theory of the debilitating illness hasn't won much scientific support.
"The particular avenue of research being pursued is not one that has found much favor with the scientific community," says Simon Wessely, director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research at King's College London. Adds John Feussner, a former head of VA research now at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, "This takes money directly out of the VA research portfolio. … I can't think of any advantage" from the new Gulf War research program...
...epidemiologist Robert Haley, who for years has reported a strong link between exposure to neurotoxins, such as nerve gas and pesticides, and the puzzling cluster of symptoms that struck thousands of veterans after the 1990-'91 Gulf War.
Haley was initially funded by former presidential candidate and businessman Ross Perot and later by the Department of Defense. He believes that Gulf War illness is "an encephalopathy" marked by abnormalities in brain structures and in the nervous system. Many troops, he believes, were exposed to low levels of nerve gas during the first Gulf War.
Now, Haley expects to pin down how these toxins affect the brain, and how to ease their effects, once and for all. Certainly, there's no shortage of funds: Hutchison expects the center--which Haley says will be called the Gulf War Illness and Chemical Exposure Research Center--will receive $75 million from VA over 5 years. Haley says it will initially focus on brain imaging, a survey of veterans from the first Gulf War, animal studies, and a Gulf War illness research and treatment clinic at the Dallas VA Medical Center...
Haley's Gulf War theories, however, put him in the minority. Animal studies disagree on whether low-dose neurotoxin exposure is deleterious in the long term, and the neurotoxin theory has come up short in expert reviews. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in Washington, D.C., concluded that "there is inadequate/insufficient evidence" to forge a link between exposure to low levels of sarin gas and the memory loss, muscle and joint pain, and other symptoms that characterize Gulf War illness. Wessely argues that British troops, which have the same rates of Gulf War illness as seen in Americans, were nowhere near the Khamisayah weapons depot in Iraq, the most cited example of suspected nerve gas exposure during the war. The IOM report notes that an attempt to replicate Haley's findings of genetic susceptibility to nerve gas proved unsuccessful.
A VA committee that included Haley came to a different conclusion. It reported in 2004 that neurotoxin exposure was a "probable" explanation for Gulf War illness and recommended that VA spend at least $60 million over 4 years on Gulf War illness research...
Facts have no bearing on the issue as usual. Facts are messy things to be avoided in all aspects of the war on Terra. Blame everything except the toxic compound the troops are routinely exposed to in this war. And if the world's warming due to human activity, do everything except address the issue responsible, and make it more difficult to actually measure or deal with. ¶ 9:55 PM 1 comments links to this post
Environmental science may suffer
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | June 9, 2006
NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment.
The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.
And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.
The changes come as NASA prioritizes its budget to pay for completion of the International Space Station and the return of astronauts to the moon by 2020 -- a goal set by President Bush that promises a more distant and arguably less practical scientific payoff. Ultimately, scientists say, the delays and cancellations could make hurricane predictions less accurate, create gaps in long-term monitoring of weather, and result in less clarity about the earth's hydrological systems, which play an integral part in climate change...
They have money to look for black holes in our solar system (of course, if there were black holes nearby we wouldn't have our solar system), but not enough to monitor what the Company's doing to the planet.
Science and the Company clearly don't mix. Take for example the recent push to throw money at Gulf War Syndrome. For those of you that can't get past the wall at Science:
Scientists usually bristle when U.S. legislators mandate a project that benefits their constituents. But Gulf War illness researchers are especially troubled by such a funding provision inserted by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) in this year's budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The $15 million earmark to the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas not only avoids the traditional peer-review process, but it also marks the rare--and possibly first ever--VA funding of a program outside its research network, and to a researcher whose theory of the debilitating illness hasn't won much scientific support.
"The particular avenue of research being pursued is not one that has found much favor with the scientific community," says Simon Wessely, director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research at King's College London. Adds John Feussner, a former head of VA research now at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, "This takes money directly out of the VA research portfolio. … I can't think of any advantage" from the new Gulf War research program...
...epidemiologist Robert Haley, who for years has reported a strong link between exposure to neurotoxins, such as nerve gas and pesticides, and the puzzling cluster of symptoms that struck thousands of veterans after the 1990-'91 Gulf War.
Haley was initially funded by former presidential candidate and businessman Ross Perot and later by the Department of Defense. He believes that Gulf War illness is "an encephalopathy" marked by abnormalities in brain structures and in the nervous system. Many troops, he believes, were exposed to low levels of nerve gas during the first Gulf War.
Now, Haley expects to pin down how these toxins affect the brain, and how to ease their effects, once and for all. Certainly, there's no shortage of funds: Hutchison expects the center--which Haley says will be called the Gulf War Illness and Chemical Exposure Research Center--will receive $75 million from VA over 5 years. Haley says it will initially focus on brain imaging, a survey of veterans from the first Gulf War, animal studies, and a Gulf War illness research and treatment clinic at the Dallas VA Medical Center...
Haley's Gulf War theories, however, put him in the minority. Animal studies disagree on whether low-dose neurotoxin exposure is deleterious in the long term, and the neurotoxin theory has come up short in expert reviews. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in Washington, D.C., concluded that "there is inadequate/insufficient evidence" to forge a link between exposure to low levels of sarin gas and the memory loss, muscle and joint pain, and other symptoms that characterize Gulf War illness. Wessely argues that British troops, which have the same rates of Gulf War illness as seen in Americans, were nowhere near the Khamisayah weapons depot in Iraq, the most cited example of suspected nerve gas exposure during the war. The IOM report notes that an attempt to replicate Haley's findings of genetic susceptibility to nerve gas proved unsuccessful.
A VA committee that included Haley came to a different conclusion. It reported in 2004 that neurotoxin exposure was a "probable" explanation for Gulf War illness and recommended that VA spend at least $60 million over 4 years on Gulf War illness research...
Facts have no bearing on the issue as usual. Facts are messy things to be avoided in all aspects of the war on Terra. Blame everything except the toxic compound the troops are routinely exposed to in this war. And if the world's warming due to human activity, do everything except address the issue responsible, and make it more difficult to actually measure or deal with. ¶ 9:55 PM 1 comments links to this post
Friday, June 09, 2006
Score One For Reality-Based Science
FDA Approves Cervical Cancer Vaccine
By Jennifer Couzin
ScienceNOW Daily News
8 June 2006
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved the first vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer. The vaccine targets human papillomavirus (HPV), which is widespread in the population. Roughly 500,000 women worldwide develop cervical cancer each year, and supporters hope the preventative will make a dent in the cancer's prevalence.
FDA was under pressure from women's groups to green-light the vaccine, made by Merck and sold under the brand name Gardasil. Last summer, the agency declined to allow Plan B, the morning-after pill, to be sold over the counter, a decision conservative groups endorsed but one that outraged reproductive rights organizations (ScienceNOW, 15 March).
Gardasil targets four strains of HPV, two of which cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases, and two of which cause roughly 90% of genital warts. The vaccine was tested in more than 30,000 women worldwide, most between 16 and 26 years of age. Among those free of HPV, it kept the virus at bay in nearly all of them. Merck has done some studies testing the immune response of males to the vaccine, says Janet Skidmore, a Merck spokesperson, and trials to test the vaccine's ability to prevent genital warts in boys are ongoing.
FDA approved Merck's vaccine for girls and young women aged 9 to 26, with the goal of reaching youngsters before they risk exposure to the virus during sex. Three doses are recommended over six months. Gardisil, which has also been approved in Mexico, doesn't come cheap; according to the company, it costs roughly $120 per dose. "It's low-income women who don't have good access to [HPV] screening and treatment who need this the most, but they may have the most difficulty getting it," says Susan Wood, the former head of FDA's Office of Women's Health. She resigned last year in protest over the agency's handling of Plan B and is pleased with today's approval.
The real test now, says Wood, is how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will rule. The committee sets recommendations for vaccinations, such as whether schools should require children to receive particular vaccines before enrollment, and is used as a guide by many states. "We should turn attention to ensuring that states take this up as part of a public health strategy to really eliminate cervical cancer in this country, which we now have the ability to do," says Wood. The committee meets next on 29 June.
Glaxo-Smith Kline is also developing a cervical cancer vaccine and has applied for approval in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia and Latin America. It plans to submit an FDA application late this year. Last week, Glaxo presented data at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, suggesting that its vaccine might be effective in women over 25, based on their immune responses.
Related sites
# Information on Gardasil from FDA
# Questions and answers on HPV
# More on HPV from CDC ¶ 10:09 PM 1 comments links to this post
By Jennifer Couzin
ScienceNOW Daily News
8 June 2006
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved the first vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer. The vaccine targets human papillomavirus (HPV), which is widespread in the population. Roughly 500,000 women worldwide develop cervical cancer each year, and supporters hope the preventative will make a dent in the cancer's prevalence.
FDA was under pressure from women's groups to green-light the vaccine, made by Merck and sold under the brand name Gardasil. Last summer, the agency declined to allow Plan B, the morning-after pill, to be sold over the counter, a decision conservative groups endorsed but one that outraged reproductive rights organizations (ScienceNOW, 15 March).
Gardasil targets four strains of HPV, two of which cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases, and two of which cause roughly 90% of genital warts. The vaccine was tested in more than 30,000 women worldwide, most between 16 and 26 years of age. Among those free of HPV, it kept the virus at bay in nearly all of them. Merck has done some studies testing the immune response of males to the vaccine, says Janet Skidmore, a Merck spokesperson, and trials to test the vaccine's ability to prevent genital warts in boys are ongoing.
FDA approved Merck's vaccine for girls and young women aged 9 to 26, with the goal of reaching youngsters before they risk exposure to the virus during sex. Three doses are recommended over six months. Gardisil, which has also been approved in Mexico, doesn't come cheap; according to the company, it costs roughly $120 per dose. "It's low-income women who don't have good access to [HPV] screening and treatment who need this the most, but they may have the most difficulty getting it," says Susan Wood, the former head of FDA's Office of Women's Health. She resigned last year in protest over the agency's handling of Plan B and is pleased with today's approval.
The real test now, says Wood, is how the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will rule. The committee sets recommendations for vaccinations, such as whether schools should require children to receive particular vaccines before enrollment, and is used as a guide by many states. "We should turn attention to ensuring that states take this up as part of a public health strategy to really eliminate cervical cancer in this country, which we now have the ability to do," says Wood. The committee meets next on 29 June.
Glaxo-Smith Kline is also developing a cervical cancer vaccine and has applied for approval in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia and Latin America. It plans to submit an FDA application late this year. Last week, Glaxo presented data at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, suggesting that its vaccine might be effective in women over 25, based on their immune responses.
Related sites
# Information on Gardasil from FDA
# Questions and answers on HPV
# More on HPV from CDC ¶ 10:09 PM 1 comments links to this post
Al-Zarqawi Gets His Pink Slip
The heroic killing of Al-Zarqawi may have happened indeed due to poor ratings:
1. Zarqawi was replaced as the head of Iraq’s insurgency months ago. Recall the news from earlier this spring that Zarqawi had been replaced as the leader in Iraq by Abdullah bin Rashed Al-Baghdadi (a nom de guerre). Al Qaeda’s Iraq cells had already reorganized before this happened and will readjust again.
2. Al Qaeda’s global leadership was getting sick of their partner in Zarqawi. Last year, Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy Ayman Zawahiri sent a letter to Zarqawi that contained a “striking critique” of Zarqawi’s insurgency strategy. “He comes down like a ton of bricks on what has happened tactically,” one U.S. analyst said describing the letter. Even Iraqis sympathetic with the goals of the insurgency have grown to disapprove of al Qaeda’s actions. Over the last year, there were several instances in which the local population turned on Zarqawi’s followers and attacked them.
In other words, Zarqawi’s star had fallen over the last six months, and there is reason to believe that his falling from favor was a key ingredient in this operation. Someone gave up details on him because they wanted him out...
Retirement has very few benefits when you're a private contractor for the CIA. ¶ 12:19 PM 0 comments links to this post
1. Zarqawi was replaced as the head of Iraq’s insurgency months ago. Recall the news from earlier this spring that Zarqawi had been replaced as the leader in Iraq by Abdullah bin Rashed Al-Baghdadi (a nom de guerre). Al Qaeda’s Iraq cells had already reorganized before this happened and will readjust again.
2. Al Qaeda’s global leadership was getting sick of their partner in Zarqawi. Last year, Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy Ayman Zawahiri sent a letter to Zarqawi that contained a “striking critique” of Zarqawi’s insurgency strategy. “He comes down like a ton of bricks on what has happened tactically,” one U.S. analyst said describing the letter. Even Iraqis sympathetic with the goals of the insurgency have grown to disapprove of al Qaeda’s actions. Over the last year, there were several instances in which the local population turned on Zarqawi’s followers and attacked them.
In other words, Zarqawi’s star had fallen over the last six months, and there is reason to believe that his falling from favor was a key ingredient in this operation. Someone gave up details on him because they wanted him out...
Retirement has very few benefits when you're a private contractor for the CIA. ¶ 12:19 PM 0 comments links to this post
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The Company Checks Itself Yet Again, Running as Hard as Possible to Stay in Place
What happens when the bad guys become the Company's kind of people?
What do they say about this in the chocolate-making countries? You know, the kind of people who tried to advise us against our latest land war in Asia.
As the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to dominate headlines, a new front in the war on terrorism has opened in Somalia. At a brutal cost to Mogadishu's civilian population, once-discredited warlords have reinvented themselves as "counter-terrorists", seeking and apparently gaining US support by characterizing their Islamist opponents as agents of al-Qaida. The warlords have grouped together as the Anti-Terrorism Alliance (ATA) and insist they are dedicated to expelling foreign al-Qaida members they allege are sheltered by the Islamic Court Union (ICU). Although nearly all the ATA warlords are cabinet ministers in the new Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) located in Baidoa, they have abandoned the TFG to pursue an unauthorized war against their Islamist rivals in Mogadishu. Allegations of US funding for the unpopular ATA leaders are undermining US efforts to stabilize the region.
Thus far, the efforts of the ATA have not been met with success. No "terrorists" have been detained, and ATA forces have not fared well in combat against the Islamists who continue to control most of Mogadishu...
Former CIA Director Porter Goss is alleged to have visited Kenya in February to coordinate a campaign against al-Qaida with Somali warlords (the US embassy in Nairobi simply states that it has "no information" about such a visit). According to the TFG and Kenyan security sources, this visit was followed by a CIA mission to Mogadishu that distributed as much as US$2 million in funding to ATA warlords (Daily Nation, Nairobi, 11 May). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer stated that she did not know if the ATA warlords were receiving US assistance, but made clear that "We will work with those elements that will help us to root out al-Qaida and to prevent Somalia becoming a safe haven for terrorists, and we are doing it in the interests of protecting America" (Reuters, 13 May).
TFG frustration with the United States is growing...
Indeed:
WASHINGTON, June 7 — A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize.
The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords' hold on the capital, Mogadishu.
The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding there.
Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American troops...
Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report...
Don't you love it when a CIA effort that's "covert" in Pravda on June 7th is openly discussed in a Swiss e-zine on June 1st?
At TomPaine.com Jim Lobe take's a little different view than Bu$hCo's. Let's call this the Maddy Albright wing of the Company's perspective:
...The takeover of Mogadishu this week by Islamic militias marks a major defeat for the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which had secretly backed a coalition of warlords that has reportedly been routed from the Somali capital.
While the victors, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), sought to assure the international community that they have no intention of setting up a Taliban-style fundamentalist state, U.S. officials have expressed strong concerns about their possible ties to al Qaeda associates believed to be in Mogadishu, including at least one individual who allegedly helped organize the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
"We do have real concerns about the presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia and that informs an important aspect of our policy with regard to Somalia," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormick on Monday. U.S. officials say their biggest fear is that the UIC will offer safe haven to al Qaeda and other radical Islamists as the Taliban did after it took control of Afghanistan.
Some independent analysts, on the other hand, said the outcome could actually contribute to Somalia's stabilization after 15 years of rule by rival warlords, and even make way for the transitional national government that has been based in Baidoa since its formation in 2004 as part of a national reconciliation process to set up shop in Mogadishu.
"The so-called Islamists provided a sense of stability in Somalia, education and other social services, while the warlords maimed and killed innocent civilians," Ted Dagne, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, told The New York Times. He said radical Islamists within the UIC were unlikely to wrest control from more-moderate factions...
The warlords, who since the outset of the U.S. "global war on terror" have reportedly been paid by the U.S. to monitor and help "snatch" suspected terrorists in Somalia, began receiving more cash—100,000-150,000 dollars a month, according to the International Crisis Group—to challenge the UIC's militias that were expanding their control over the capital earlier this spring, just as the transitional government in Baidoa was to convene parliament for the first time.
While the operation was reportedly organized by the CIA, the cash reportedly was funneled through the Pentagon's Joint Combined Task Force (JCTF), a 1,800-troop force based in neighbouring Djibouti since shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Defence Department. The JCTF is apparently charged with carrying out surveillance, "snatch", and related operations against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and the Horn.
"Support for the warlords came at a really bad time and made a lot of people, particularly the Europeans who were trying to support the government, very angry," noted the diplomat, who asked not to be identified. "Convening the parliament was a big objective for everyone, but then it's overshadowed by the fighting in Mogadishu that followed the injection of money for the warlords."
The U.S. move also provoked some controversy within the U.S. government, although at relatively low levels that did not gain the attention of senior policy-makers.
In one case, a Kenya-based U.S. diplomat, Michael Zorick, reportedly submitted a dissent paper to both his State Department bosses and the Pentagon in which he complained that support for the warlords was counter-productive to U.S. aims in Somalia. He was subsequently transferred to the U.S. embassy in Chad.
Indeed, State Department officials and independent analysts have long argued that Washington's single-minded focus on catching suspected terrorists in Somalia, combined with its failure to support efforts to rebuild state institutions and, most recently, to provide real support to the transitional government, would prove self-defeating. But they were overruled by hawks in the White House and the Pentagon.
"The U.S. now has nothing to show for three years of investing in these warlords as the sole element of their counterterrorism strategy in Somalia," noted John Prendergast, a Horn expert at the International Crisis Group here. "It's a travesty that this has been the only strategy Washington has followed after 15 years of no government, no state, in Somalia."
"There simply hasn't been a U.S. comprehensive policy on Somalia; just a counterterrorism policy that takes no account of the political context," noted the foreign diplomat. "Do you give priority to snatching individuals by any means necessary, including backing warlords, at the expense of a wider political process? That's essentially what the U.S. has done. One would hope that this could get them to broaden their thinking, but I think that may be a naïve."
The broad mind might wonder if the real policy might be chaos for Somalia and others in the Empire's real playbook.
[Thanks to jomama for the link.]
Bulletin:Emmanuel Goldstein killed yet again. Stay tuned for updates right after a message from our sponsors.
¶ 9:56 PM 0 comments
links to this post
What do they say about this in the chocolate-making countries? You know, the kind of people who tried to advise us against our latest land war in Asia.
As the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to dominate headlines, a new front in the war on terrorism has opened in Somalia. At a brutal cost to Mogadishu's civilian population, once-discredited warlords have reinvented themselves as "counter-terrorists", seeking and apparently gaining US support by characterizing their Islamist opponents as agents of al-Qaida. The warlords have grouped together as the Anti-Terrorism Alliance (ATA) and insist they are dedicated to expelling foreign al-Qaida members they allege are sheltered by the Islamic Court Union (ICU). Although nearly all the ATA warlords are cabinet ministers in the new Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) located in Baidoa, they have abandoned the TFG to pursue an unauthorized war against their Islamist rivals in Mogadishu. Allegations of US funding for the unpopular ATA leaders are undermining US efforts to stabilize the region.
Thus far, the efforts of the ATA have not been met with success. No "terrorists" have been detained, and ATA forces have not fared well in combat against the Islamists who continue to control most of Mogadishu...
Former CIA Director Porter Goss is alleged to have visited Kenya in February to coordinate a campaign against al-Qaida with Somali warlords (the US embassy in Nairobi simply states that it has "no information" about such a visit). According to the TFG and Kenyan security sources, this visit was followed by a CIA mission to Mogadishu that distributed as much as US$2 million in funding to ATA warlords (Daily Nation, Nairobi, 11 May). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer stated that she did not know if the ATA warlords were receiving US assistance, but made clear that "We will work with those elements that will help us to root out al-Qaida and to prevent Somalia becoming a safe haven for terrorists, and we are doing it in the interests of protecting America" (Reuters, 13 May).
TFG frustration with the United States is growing...
Indeed:
WASHINGTON, June 7 — A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize.
The criticism was expressed privately by United States government officials with direct knowledge of the debate. And the comments flared even before the apparent victory this week by Islamist militias in the country dealt a sharp setback to American policy in the region and broke the warlords' hold on the capital, Mogadishu.
The officials said the C.I.A. effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to secular warlords inside Somalia with the aim, among other things, of capturing or killing a handful of suspected members of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding there.
Officials say the decision to use warlords as proxies was born in part from fears of committing large numbers of American personnel to counterterrorism efforts in Somalia, a country that the United States hastily left in 1994 after attempts to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his aides ended in disaster and the death of 18 American troops...
Among those who have criticized the C.I.A. operation as short-sighted have been senior Foreign Service officers at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. Earlier this year, Leslie Rowe, the embassy's second-ranking official, signed off on a cable back to State Department headquarters that detailed grave concerns throughout the region about American efforts in Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the report...
Don't you love it when a CIA effort that's "covert" in Pravda on June 7th is openly discussed in a Swiss e-zine on June 1st?
At TomPaine.com Jim Lobe take's a little different view than Bu$hCo's. Let's call this the Maddy Albright wing of the Company's perspective:
...The takeover of Mogadishu this week by Islamic militias marks a major defeat for the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which had secretly backed a coalition of warlords that has reportedly been routed from the Somali capital.
While the victors, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), sought to assure the international community that they have no intention of setting up a Taliban-style fundamentalist state, U.S. officials have expressed strong concerns about their possible ties to al Qaeda associates believed to be in Mogadishu, including at least one individual who allegedly helped organize the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.
"We do have real concerns about the presence of foreign terrorists in Somalia and that informs an important aspect of our policy with regard to Somalia," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormick on Monday. U.S. officials say their biggest fear is that the UIC will offer safe haven to al Qaeda and other radical Islamists as the Taliban did after it took control of Afghanistan.
Some independent analysts, on the other hand, said the outcome could actually contribute to Somalia's stabilization after 15 years of rule by rival warlords, and even make way for the transitional national government that has been based in Baidoa since its formation in 2004 as part of a national reconciliation process to set up shop in Mogadishu.
"The so-called Islamists provided a sense of stability in Somalia, education and other social services, while the warlords maimed and killed innocent civilians," Ted Dagne, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service, told The New York Times. He said radical Islamists within the UIC were unlikely to wrest control from more-moderate factions...
The warlords, who since the outset of the U.S. "global war on terror" have reportedly been paid by the U.S. to monitor and help "snatch" suspected terrorists in Somalia, began receiving more cash—100,000-150,000 dollars a month, according to the International Crisis Group—to challenge the UIC's militias that were expanding their control over the capital earlier this spring, just as the transitional government in Baidoa was to convene parliament for the first time.
While the operation was reportedly organized by the CIA, the cash reportedly was funneled through the Pentagon's Joint Combined Task Force (JCTF), a 1,800-troop force based in neighbouring Djibouti since shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Defence Department. The JCTF is apparently charged with carrying out surveillance, "snatch", and related operations against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and the Horn.
"Support for the warlords came at a really bad time and made a lot of people, particularly the Europeans who were trying to support the government, very angry," noted the diplomat, who asked not to be identified. "Convening the parliament was a big objective for everyone, but then it's overshadowed by the fighting in Mogadishu that followed the injection of money for the warlords."
The U.S. move also provoked some controversy within the U.S. government, although at relatively low levels that did not gain the attention of senior policy-makers.
In one case, a Kenya-based U.S. diplomat, Michael Zorick, reportedly submitted a dissent paper to both his State Department bosses and the Pentagon in which he complained that support for the warlords was counter-productive to U.S. aims in Somalia. He was subsequently transferred to the U.S. embassy in Chad.
Indeed, State Department officials and independent analysts have long argued that Washington's single-minded focus on catching suspected terrorists in Somalia, combined with its failure to support efforts to rebuild state institutions and, most recently, to provide real support to the transitional government, would prove self-defeating. But they were overruled by hawks in the White House and the Pentagon.
"The U.S. now has nothing to show for three years of investing in these warlords as the sole element of their counterterrorism strategy in Somalia," noted John Prendergast, a Horn expert at the International Crisis Group here. "It's a travesty that this has been the only strategy Washington has followed after 15 years of no government, no state, in Somalia."
"There simply hasn't been a U.S. comprehensive policy on Somalia; just a counterterrorism policy that takes no account of the political context," noted the foreign diplomat. "Do you give priority to snatching individuals by any means necessary, including backing warlords, at the expense of a wider political process? That's essentially what the U.S. has done. One would hope that this could get them to broaden their thinking, but I think that may be a naïve."
The broad mind might wonder if the real policy might be chaos for Somalia and others in the Empire's real playbook.
[Thanks to jomama for the link.]
Bulletin:
Move Along, These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For
Bradblog via Shystee on San Diego's $election:
Well, guess what? Poll workers in San Diego County had much more than just “a few seconds of physical access to the machines” when they stored the voting machines at their own homes on the night prior to yesterday’s election!
You read that correctly. The most vulnerable voting machines ever created and used in an American election were given to random, volunteer poll workers in San Diego to keep in their houses overnight to do with as they please. The systems were “guarded” by little more than a thin strip of plastic “tamper tape” over some, but not all, of each machines’ dozens of vulnerable physical access points.
A spokesperson this morning from the San Diego Registrar of Voters office confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that “Yes, the machines were sent home with poll workers the night before the election.”
Turns out, according to the New York Pravda:
...Ken Mehlman, said Wednesday that Republicans had 160 people in this district helping to get out the vote.
"They made 164,000 phone calls," Mr. Mehlman said.
Democrats said the Democratic National Committee had no similar effort on the ground here...
I wonder what the reaction of the Vegas kossacks will be to this?
I know what the reaction of the DLC or the DNC will be: none whatsoever.
I wonder if Harry Reid (D-MGM Mirage Casino) will mention this when he talks? ¶ 9:18 AM 0 comments links to this post
Well, guess what? Poll workers in San Diego County had much more than just “a few seconds of physical access to the machines” when they stored the voting machines at their own homes on the night prior to yesterday’s election!
You read that correctly. The most vulnerable voting machines ever created and used in an American election were given to random, volunteer poll workers in San Diego to keep in their houses overnight to do with as they please. The systems were “guarded” by little more than a thin strip of plastic “tamper tape” over some, but not all, of each machines’ dozens of vulnerable physical access points.
A spokesperson this morning from the San Diego Registrar of Voters office confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that “Yes, the machines were sent home with poll workers the night before the election.”
Turns out, according to the New York Pravda:
...Ken Mehlman, said Wednesday that Republicans had 160 people in this district helping to get out the vote.
"They made 164,000 phone calls," Mr. Mehlman said.
Democrats said the Democratic National Committee had no similar effort on the ground here...
I wonder what the reaction of the Vegas kossacks will be to this?
I know what the reaction of the DLC or the DNC will be: none whatsoever.
I wonder if Harry Reid (D-MGM Mirage Casino) will mention this when he talks? ¶ 9:18 AM 0 comments links to this post
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
What She Said
Statement of September 11th Advocates
Response to "Godless"
We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens. Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?
We are forced to respond to Ms. Coulter’s accusations to set the record straight because we have been slandered.
Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.
It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11.
We are continuously reminded that we are still a nation at risk. Therefore, the following is a partial list of areas still desperately in need of attention and public outcry. We should continuously be holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire to fix these shortcomings.
1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain under-protected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.
4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.
5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world – particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.
6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.
7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.
8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President’s NSA Surveillance Program and the re-instatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights.
September 11th Advocates
Kristen Breitweiser
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
Brave women.
You realize that by now these women realize at the very least Dear Leader let it happen. ¶ 10:14 PM 0 comments links to this post
Response to "Godless"
We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens. Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?
We are forced to respond to Ms. Coulter’s accusations to set the record straight because we have been slandered.
Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.
It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11.
We are continuously reminded that we are still a nation at risk. Therefore, the following is a partial list of areas still desperately in need of attention and public outcry. We should continuously be holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire to fix these shortcomings.
1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.
3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain under-protected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.
4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.
5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world – particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.
6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.
7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.
8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President’s NSA Surveillance Program and the re-instatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights.
September 11th Advocates
Kristen Breitweiser
Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken
Brave women.
You realize that by now these women realize at the very least Dear Leader let it happen. ¶ 10:14 PM 0 comments links to this post
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
ExxonMobil: A Midieval Take on the World's Energy Challenges
Think Progress:
Ian Murray, senior fellow at the Exxon-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes for the National Review on global warming issues. Today, he excerpts some promotional material from a horror movie that he says “mirrors Al Gore’s views” on global warming:
"[G]lobal warming is caused by the widespread sin, immorality, and materialism of our current society. The looting and murders after these disasters struck are further evidence of the Antichrist’s coming. The Bible’s revelation predicts that it will be under these conditions that the mark of the Beast will come upon us."
Corporate greed cynically manipulating society has nothing to do with it.
Apocalypse is very good for those oilmen, however:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Monday after Iran warned Washington that a "wrong move" in the standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions would endanger flows from the Gulf, which pumps nearly a quarter of the world's crude.
The remarks from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei raised concerns growing tension between the West and Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, could disrupt crude shipments from the region. Iranian officials previously had said Tehran would not use oil as a weapon.
"The threat, whilst remote, would be serious in the context of global oil markets operating with little more than 2 million barrels per day of spare capacity," a Citigroup report said.
U.S. crude settled 27 cents higher at $72.60 a barrel after jumping to $73.84 earlier in the day. London Brent rose 34 cents to $71.37... ¶ 9:59 PM 0 comments links to this post
Ian Murray, senior fellow at the Exxon-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes for the National Review on global warming issues. Today, he excerpts some promotional material from a horror movie that he says “mirrors Al Gore’s views” on global warming:
"[G]lobal warming is caused by the widespread sin, immorality, and materialism of our current society. The looting and murders after these disasters struck are further evidence of the Antichrist’s coming. The Bible’s revelation predicts that it will be under these conditions that the mark of the Beast will come upon us."
Corporate greed cynically manipulating society has nothing to do with it.
Apocalypse is very good for those oilmen, however:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Monday after Iran warned Washington that a "wrong move" in the standoff over Tehran's nuclear ambitions would endanger flows from the Gulf, which pumps nearly a quarter of the world's crude.
The remarks from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei raised concerns growing tension between the West and Iran, the world's No. 4 oil exporter, could disrupt crude shipments from the region. Iranian officials previously had said Tehran would not use oil as a weapon.
"The threat, whilst remote, would be serious in the context of global oil markets operating with little more than 2 million barrels per day of spare capacity," a Citigroup report said.
U.S. crude settled 27 cents higher at $72.60 a barrel after jumping to $73.84 earlier in the day. London Brent rose 34 cents to $71.37... ¶ 9:59 PM 0 comments links to this post
Monday, June 05, 2006
Renaissance in Reverse
The 500 million people who live in the world's desert regions can expect to find life increasingly unbearable as already high temperatures soar and the available water is used up or turns salty, according to the United Nations.
Desert cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day.
Twentieth-century modernist dreams of greening deserts by diverting rivers and mining underground water are wholly unrealistic, it warns.
But the report also proposes that deserts become the powerhouses of the next century, capturing the world's solar energy and potentially exporting electricity across continents. For instance, a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could, with today's technology, generate enough electricity for the whole world.
Think about that. It could be done with existing technology. What was your heating bill last winter?
The problem now facing many communities on the fringes of deserts, says the UN environment programme report, is not the physical growth of deserts but that rising water tables beneath irrigated soils are leading to more salinisation - a phenomenon already taking place across large tracts of China, India, Pakistan and Australia. The Tarm river basin in China, it says, has lost more than 5,000 square miles of farmland to salinisation in a period of 30 years...
Consider this:
Collapse Happens by Andrew Bard Schmookler
From Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, Americans of today should learn one main thing: that a civilization whose leadership chooses a wrong-headed course on the basis of defective ways of thinking can destroy itself.
America’s present leadership has sought to cultivate our fears-- and indeed we should be afraid. But our fear should be directed much less toward the terrorists against whom our leaders have made their much-heralded war than toward the possible disasters toward which these leaders themselves are taking us.
We should not delude ourselves, in our complacency, that history can give us nothing worse than gasoline at $5 a gallon, or too many people in our midst who do not speak our language.
No, we should recognize that our civilization, mighty as it now is, is not immune from the kind of catastrophe that, as Collapse shows, obliterated the societies of the Norse on Greenland and of the inhabitants of Easter Island.
Indeed, with today’s America –as the dominant nation in this much more shrunken and interdependent world—the catastrophes with which we should be most concerned could entail the collapse not only of our own society but of the entire civilized system of humankind.
For there are two great threats that now endanger the human species at our point in history: 1) environmental catastrophe as the result of reckless human activity in the biosphere; and 2) the perpetuation of the system of war –of might makes right rather than law—in the intersocietal system in an era when weapons of mass destruction are spreading among nations...
One of the most vivid images in Diamond’s book, Collapse, involves the island of Hispanola. This is the island whose eastern half consists of the Dominican Republic while the western half is the nation of Haiti.
From the air, one can see the border, the Dominican side being largely forested and the Haiti side being practically stripped bare. Same island, but the historical difference in the governance of the two halves shows how nations choose their fates. And the divergent fates of the forests mirrors the fates of the peoples.
The poor, afflicted people of Haiti can just look at the other side of their island to behold a palpable image of a better course things might have taken had the powers in their society made different choices.
Now in America, under the Bushite regime, our history has taken a Haiti-like turn toward disaster. But for us, when it comes to envisioning how much better our course might have been, there is no equivalent of the Dominican Republic to give us a palpable embodiment of “it might have been” had the tally of votes in Florida in 2000 gone the other way.
Envision it we must, however. For perhaps this better, alternative future is not just an “it might have been” but remains an “it still might be.”
This regime has greased the skids of our civilization’s plunge into environmental upheaval, but the extent of the disorder and our readiness to cope with it are not yet beyond our capacity to effect.
The Bushites have inflicted profound damage on the international order, as well as on the standing of the United States to lead in its mending, but here too the possibilities for choosing a more constructive course and working to repair the damage remain open.
The first step in repairing all this damage, however, is for the American people to recognize how profoundly wrong –how deeply destructive—have been the choices of the current ruling regime in America on those two vital challenges on which the future of human civilization depends.
Yes, but the question is, which American people? The two thirds of us that supported Clinton even while the Congress was trying to impeach him, or the 20% of voters that actually voted for Dear Leader? Twice?
Because if we leave it to the Rethuglicans or the DINOcrats, it's hello, Dark Age. ¶ 10:09 PM 2 comments links to this post
Desert cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day.
Twentieth-century modernist dreams of greening deserts by diverting rivers and mining underground water are wholly unrealistic, it warns.
But the report also proposes that deserts become the powerhouses of the next century, capturing the world's solar energy and potentially exporting electricity across continents. For instance, a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could, with today's technology, generate enough electricity for the whole world.
Think about that. It could be done with existing technology. What was your heating bill last winter?
The problem now facing many communities on the fringes of deserts, says the UN environment programme report, is not the physical growth of deserts but that rising water tables beneath irrigated soils are leading to more salinisation - a phenomenon already taking place across large tracts of China, India, Pakistan and Australia. The Tarm river basin in China, it says, has lost more than 5,000 square miles of farmland to salinisation in a period of 30 years...
Consider this:
Collapse Happens by Andrew Bard Schmookler
From Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, Americans of today should learn one main thing: that a civilization whose leadership chooses a wrong-headed course on the basis of defective ways of thinking can destroy itself.
America’s present leadership has sought to cultivate our fears-- and indeed we should be afraid. But our fear should be directed much less toward the terrorists against whom our leaders have made their much-heralded war than toward the possible disasters toward which these leaders themselves are taking us.
We should not delude ourselves, in our complacency, that history can give us nothing worse than gasoline at $5 a gallon, or too many people in our midst who do not speak our language.
No, we should recognize that our civilization, mighty as it now is, is not immune from the kind of catastrophe that, as Collapse shows, obliterated the societies of the Norse on Greenland and of the inhabitants of Easter Island.
Indeed, with today’s America –as the dominant nation in this much more shrunken and interdependent world—the catastrophes with which we should be most concerned could entail the collapse not only of our own society but of the entire civilized system of humankind.
For there are two great threats that now endanger the human species at our point in history: 1) environmental catastrophe as the result of reckless human activity in the biosphere; and 2) the perpetuation of the system of war –of might makes right rather than law—in the intersocietal system in an era when weapons of mass destruction are spreading among nations...
One of the most vivid images in Diamond’s book, Collapse, involves the island of Hispanola. This is the island whose eastern half consists of the Dominican Republic while the western half is the nation of Haiti.
From the air, one can see the border, the Dominican side being largely forested and the Haiti side being practically stripped bare. Same island, but the historical difference in the governance of the two halves shows how nations choose their fates. And the divergent fates of the forests mirrors the fates of the peoples.
The poor, afflicted people of Haiti can just look at the other side of their island to behold a palpable image of a better course things might have taken had the powers in their society made different choices.
Now in America, under the Bushite regime, our history has taken a Haiti-like turn toward disaster. But for us, when it comes to envisioning how much better our course might have been, there is no equivalent of the Dominican Republic to give us a palpable embodiment of “it might have been” had the tally of votes in Florida in 2000 gone the other way.
Envision it we must, however. For perhaps this better, alternative future is not just an “it might have been” but remains an “it still might be.”
This regime has greased the skids of our civilization’s plunge into environmental upheaval, but the extent of the disorder and our readiness to cope with it are not yet beyond our capacity to effect.
The Bushites have inflicted profound damage on the international order, as well as on the standing of the United States to lead in its mending, but here too the possibilities for choosing a more constructive course and working to repair the damage remain open.
The first step in repairing all this damage, however, is for the American people to recognize how profoundly wrong –how deeply destructive—have been the choices of the current ruling regime in America on those two vital challenges on which the future of human civilization depends.
Yes, but the question is, which American people? The two thirds of us that supported Clinton even while the Congress was trying to impeach him, or the 20% of voters that actually voted for Dear Leader? Twice?
Because if we leave it to the Rethuglicans or the DINOcrats, it's hello, Dark Age. ¶ 10:09 PM 2 comments links to this post
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Bought Judges Buying Bad Science
Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science
By Eric Schaeffer
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor? Last fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. It turns out that two of the jurists who helped decide the case -- Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge David B. Sentelle -- attended a six-day global warming seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a free-market foundation and featuring presentations from companies with a clear financial interest in limiting regulation.
According to documents released by a watchdog law firm last week, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other large businesses contribute to conservative think tanks to help "educate" federal judges through seminars like the one at Yellowstone. At least one major funder of these judicial junkets has said that the D.C. Circuit is targeted because of its jurisdiction over important environmental cases.
...The Code of Conduct for federal judges does not prohibit attending such seminars -- as long as participation does not "cast reasonable doubt on the capacity to decide impartially issues that may come before them." But if appearances count, then Ginsburg and Sentelle may have fallen short. And Sentelle did violate the law by not listing on his financial disclosure forms the value of the Yellowstone trip.
Many experts in the scientific community agree that global warming is approaching a tipping point where action must be taken to avoid irreversible consequences. But bowing to the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself in September 2003 by ruling that carbon dioxide was not subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. (Administration efforts to soften enforcement rules led several other career officials and me to leave the agency a year before this case.) Convinced that the EPA had misinterpreted the law, a coalition of states and environmentalists sued the agency at the end of 2003, and the case was assigned to the D.C. Circuit.
Sentelle was the deciding vote in the 2 to 1 ruling last fall backing the EPA's decision not to regulate, and he and Ginsburg were part of the 4 to 3 majority on the full court that rejected a request by states and environmental groups to reconsider. The Supreme Court will decide on June 15 whether to hear an appeal.
Well before the issue hit the appeals court, those opposed to carbon dioxide regulation got an early start by persuading Ginsburg and Sentelle to participate in the 2002 Yellowstone conference on climate change, sponsored by the corporate-funded Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. As documented by the Community Rights Counsel, a nonprofit judicial watchdog group, FREE has for more than a decade hosted seminars for federal judges at Montana resorts. Until last year, Ginsburg was a member of FREE's board. Ginsburg, Sentelle and 10 other federal judges at this particular conference were warned about deep scientific uncertainties, according to FREE's John Downen, who, in writing about the seminar, suggested that people adapt to higher temperatures through economic growth, rather than by cutting emissions.
While relaxing in beautiful surroundings, the judges heard from Caterpillar Inc., the largest U.S. manufacturer of greenhouse-gas-producing construction and mining equipment, and Temple-Inland, a major forest products company. The Caterpillar representative lectured on "the environmental and economic impact of regulation by litigation," which must have been particularly interesting; the company has paid huge fines for rigging its heavy-duty diesel engines to bypass emission controls. Caterpillar and Temple-Inland both belong to industry associations that filed briefs opposing global warming regulation in the case heard later by Ginsburg and Sentelle.
According to FREE, some of its funding has come from the M.J. Murdock Foundation, which also donated $250,00,000 to the conservative Washington Legal Foundation in 2003. WLF filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the D.C. Circuit case... ¶ 8:49 PM 0 comments links to this post
By Eric Schaeffer
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor? Last fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. It turns out that two of the jurists who helped decide the case -- Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge David B. Sentelle -- attended a six-day global warming seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a free-market foundation and featuring presentations from companies with a clear financial interest in limiting regulation.
According to documents released by a watchdog law firm last week, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other large businesses contribute to conservative think tanks to help "educate" federal judges through seminars like the one at Yellowstone. At least one major funder of these judicial junkets has said that the D.C. Circuit is targeted because of its jurisdiction over important environmental cases.
...The Code of Conduct for federal judges does not prohibit attending such seminars -- as long as participation does not "cast reasonable doubt on the capacity to decide impartially issues that may come before them." But if appearances count, then Ginsburg and Sentelle may have fallen short. And Sentelle did violate the law by not listing on his financial disclosure forms the value of the Yellowstone trip.
Many experts in the scientific community agree that global warming is approaching a tipping point where action must be taken to avoid irreversible consequences. But bowing to the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself in September 2003 by ruling that carbon dioxide was not subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. (Administration efforts to soften enforcement rules led several other career officials and me to leave the agency a year before this case.) Convinced that the EPA had misinterpreted the law, a coalition of states and environmentalists sued the agency at the end of 2003, and the case was assigned to the D.C. Circuit.
Sentelle was the deciding vote in the 2 to 1 ruling last fall backing the EPA's decision not to regulate, and he and Ginsburg were part of the 4 to 3 majority on the full court that rejected a request by states and environmental groups to reconsider. The Supreme Court will decide on June 15 whether to hear an appeal.
Well before the issue hit the appeals court, those opposed to carbon dioxide regulation got an early start by persuading Ginsburg and Sentelle to participate in the 2002 Yellowstone conference on climate change, sponsored by the corporate-funded Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. As documented by the Community Rights Counsel, a nonprofit judicial watchdog group, FREE has for more than a decade hosted seminars for federal judges at Montana resorts. Until last year, Ginsburg was a member of FREE's board. Ginsburg, Sentelle and 10 other federal judges at this particular conference were warned about deep scientific uncertainties, according to FREE's John Downen, who, in writing about the seminar, suggested that people adapt to higher temperatures through economic growth, rather than by cutting emissions.
While relaxing in beautiful surroundings, the judges heard from Caterpillar Inc., the largest U.S. manufacturer of greenhouse-gas-producing construction and mining equipment, and Temple-Inland, a major forest products company. The Caterpillar representative lectured on "the environmental and economic impact of regulation by litigation," which must have been particularly interesting; the company has paid huge fines for rigging its heavy-duty diesel engines to bypass emission controls. Caterpillar and Temple-Inland both belong to industry associations that filed briefs opposing global warming regulation in the case heard later by Ginsburg and Sentelle.
According to FREE, some of its funding has come from the M.J. Murdock Foundation, which also donated $250,00,000 to the conservative Washington Legal Foundation in 2003. WLF filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the D.C. Circuit case... ¶ 8:49 PM 0 comments links to this post
The Randall-Sundrum 'Braneworld Model
More on the 5th dimension, before Darth Rumsfeld classifies it, from a very smart woman indeed, Lisa Randall, physics professor at MIT:
SW There are several different theories floating around that evoke large extra dimensions. Could you explain what they are and what makes Randall-Sundrum theory special?
Randall: I’ll start by telling you about the theories that aren’t ours. In the simplest type of theory there are extra dimensions, but the extra dimensions are finite in size. Why finite? Well, at long-distance scales we see strong evidence for the existence of only four dimensions: three of space and one of time. One way of explaining the fact that we only see four dimensions is that other dimensions exist but they’re so tiny that we just don’t feel any effect from them. That was the idea in string theory—that these extra dimensions get compactified on some consistent manifold, and the manifold is very tiny. A lot of people still probably believe that.
SW How does your theory differ?
Randall: One of our ideas is that you don’t actually have to compactify the extra dimensions. In other words, instead of saying gravity is forbidden to go beyond a certain length in the extra dimension, suppose instead there was a strong force—I’ll explain why there should be in a moment—such that gravity was sort of attracted to a specific location in space-time. In principle, it could wander far out in the extra dimension, but this external force centers gravity in one place and it looks effectively four dimensional.
What’s interesting is that this precise theory involves something called a brane, which is a lower-dimensional subspace of the higher-dimensional space. Brane is short for "membrane." So, for example, in our theories we imagine that the brane is only four dimensional, even though it lives in this five-dimensional space. There are three space dimensions and one time dimension that we see and one extra dimension that we don’t. We’re not very sensitive to it. Because the brane itself carries energy, it basically applies an attraction acting on gravity so that gravity stays very localized near the brane. Even though there is an infinite extra dimension, gravity extends so little into that dimension that it is almost as if space were compactified and you only see four dimensions. This is really very different from the compactified theory, however, because it says you can consistently have an infinite extra dimension, but still see gravity as only four dimensional.
SW So what exactly does this extra dimension give you?
Randall: According to what I've said so far, it's not giving us anything. It's simply telling us that we don't necessarily have to compactify and we can still have a consistent theory as far as gravity goes. However, there are problems associated with conventional compactification. When you have these compactified scenarios, you don't know what size or shape those manifolds should be. You have too many parameters. It means you have lots of possible theories. If you could avoid all that it would be great. We think we're on the road to accomplishing that.
SW But the idea is eventually to come up with a testable theory? We don’t seem to be there yet.
Randall: Okay. Now I’ll tell you what happens if you have a second brane in the theory. One of the very interesting things about this theory, called warped geometry, is that they have something called a warp factor...
This warp factor basically tells us the strength of gravity as you go out in the extra dimension. To be precise, it is telling us the amplitude of the graviton, or the probability of finding a graviton at any given location at any given time. The idea is that if you live at some distance away from this brane we talked about, you would effectively find that particles look lighter than what you would have very naively anticipated. And the reason is that gravity is weaker because the graviton is strongly attracted to the brane itself and doesn’t venture out from it.
SW Why is this hierarchy a problem?
Randall: It’s just something we don’t understand. Why should these things be so different? As physicists we think we should be able to explain it, but it’s difficult to write a consistent theory where these scales are so far apart. In principle it could happen, but it’s very unlikely. You can, in principle, drop a dime and have it land on its edge, but it won’t do it that often. So we think this should be something that’s likely to happen, and there should be a deeper explanation for why it does. The problem is even worse than this, because the theory tries to force the scales to be the same. So we have to solve this more-technical problem as well. The first large extra dimension evoked the large extra dimensions to explain the weakness of gravity. But in that theory you had to write in the fact that the dimensions are so large. You got rid of one big number but you did it by putting in another one.
In our theory, it turns out that the ratio of masses is very naturally generated because it is actually just the exponential of a number. So we replaced a number that was 106 with a number that’s 30. Its not hard to get extra dimensions that are of size 30 in the units of the Planck Scale. This theory has two branes. There is one brane that is trapping gravity and another brane where gravity is not trapped. On that second brane gravity is weak, and that’s the brane we live on.
SW And the branes are separated from each other in the extra dimensional space? They’re not in contact?
Randall: Exactly.
SW How far apart are they?
Randall: Thirty.
SW Thirty what?
Randall: What’s trapping gravity is the energy on the brane, and that energy sets the scale of all this. It is 30 in terms of that energy scale.
SW Okay. we’ll let it go at that. How was your theory accepted by your colleagues?
Randall: It took a while for people to be convinced of the significance, or even to believe infinite-dimensional theory. It was actually quite a radical idea that you don’t have to compactify space. There was some skepticism, but now it’s accepted as a possible alternative. A lot of theorists, especially those interested in gravity, have been studying the theory and its consequences. Interesting things happen in the presence of this warp factor.
SW What, if any, are the implications for experiment?
Randall:On the one hand, if you ask what are the experimental tests in terms of gravity, this theory really looks as if it’s a four-dimensional theory, which is a shocking statement. That’s saying that you look around and measure anything you want—Newton’s laws, for instance—and you’d normally say that it proves that the universe has only three space dimensions. We’re saying, no, this doesn’t prove that, because we have this other theory that gives the exact same predictions. Because of the warp factor, this theory is perfectly consistent and might well be the world we live in.
On the other hand, with the second brane you naturally have this low energy scale in the theory—namely the scale of particles we see. Because of this physics will change very radically once we get to an energy scale of one trillion electron volts. That, fortuitously, is the scale at which accelerators at Fermilab and CERN will soon be working. At the TeV scale, we predict new particles, coupled somewhat like gravity, but much stronger.
SW How obvious would such particles be?
Randall:These particles should be very obvious. You produce particles that decay in the detector and you actually see particles that look like a heavy version of the graviton. There is a variant of this theory in which there is an infinite extra dimension, with a second brane in it where we live. In this case, the heavy gravitons decay immediately so you don't see them as particles but as missing energy. That is, something has gone through the detector and taken energy with it. You could then reconstruct this missing energy and see if it corresponds with the existence of an extra dimension.
SW You started your career as a phenomenologist and now your ideas are being taken seriously by string theorists. Do you consider yourself a string theorist?
Randall: Well, it is not even clear what precisely either of these terms mean. Phenomenologists try to describe the results of experiments. However, calling someone a phenomenologist can be almost derogatory these days. But you can say the same for string theory in some circles. I just don’t like labels in general, but I certainly don’t object to being called a string theorist if it’s said in a nice way.
Basically, I’m just a theoretical physicist who, like all the rest of us, would like to figure out how the world works. If that involves some string theory, great, but ultimately I think we should be able to connect it to what we see in the world and be able to test it. I’m just trying to put those things together...
A more mathematical discussion of the Braneworld model is discussed here if you can get past the Science magazine wall. Or here, for those not intimidated by raw differential equations from Wikipedia. If there was a math error, I'd never know it.
Why are an ex-CIA, ex-CSC/Dyncorp CEO Head of NASA and Chancellor Rumsfeld so interested they're putting up satellites to look for local mini-black holes?
It's one thing for Darth Griffin to want to build a hyperspace drive. It's a very different thing if Sith Lord Rumsfeld wants a black hole weapon. That would be a Big Mistake indeed. ¶ 1:15 PM 2 comments links to this post
SW There are several different theories floating around that evoke large extra dimensions. Could you explain what they are and what makes Randall-Sundrum theory special?
Randall: I’ll start by telling you about the theories that aren’t ours. In the simplest type of theory there are extra dimensions, but the extra dimensions are finite in size. Why finite? Well, at long-distance scales we see strong evidence for the existence of only four dimensions: three of space and one of time. One way of explaining the fact that we only see four dimensions is that other dimensions exist but they’re so tiny that we just don’t feel any effect from them. That was the idea in string theory—that these extra dimensions get compactified on some consistent manifold, and the manifold is very tiny. A lot of people still probably believe that.
SW How does your theory differ?
Randall: One of our ideas is that you don’t actually have to compactify the extra dimensions. In other words, instead of saying gravity is forbidden to go beyond a certain length in the extra dimension, suppose instead there was a strong force—I’ll explain why there should be in a moment—such that gravity was sort of attracted to a specific location in space-time. In principle, it could wander far out in the extra dimension, but this external force centers gravity in one place and it looks effectively four dimensional.
What’s interesting is that this precise theory involves something called a brane, which is a lower-dimensional subspace of the higher-dimensional space. Brane is short for "membrane." So, for example, in our theories we imagine that the brane is only four dimensional, even though it lives in this five-dimensional space. There are three space dimensions and one time dimension that we see and one extra dimension that we don’t. We’re not very sensitive to it. Because the brane itself carries energy, it basically applies an attraction acting on gravity so that gravity stays very localized near the brane. Even though there is an infinite extra dimension, gravity extends so little into that dimension that it is almost as if space were compactified and you only see four dimensions. This is really very different from the compactified theory, however, because it says you can consistently have an infinite extra dimension, but still see gravity as only four dimensional.
SW So what exactly does this extra dimension give you?
Randall: According to what I've said so far, it's not giving us anything. It's simply telling us that we don't necessarily have to compactify and we can still have a consistent theory as far as gravity goes. However, there are problems associated with conventional compactification. When you have these compactified scenarios, you don't know what size or shape those manifolds should be. You have too many parameters. It means you have lots of possible theories. If you could avoid all that it would be great. We think we're on the road to accomplishing that.
SW But the idea is eventually to come up with a testable theory? We don’t seem to be there yet.
Randall: Okay. Now I’ll tell you what happens if you have a second brane in the theory. One of the very interesting things about this theory, called warped geometry, is that they have something called a warp factor...
This warp factor basically tells us the strength of gravity as you go out in the extra dimension. To be precise, it is telling us the amplitude of the graviton, or the probability of finding a graviton at any given location at any given time. The idea is that if you live at some distance away from this brane we talked about, you would effectively find that particles look lighter than what you would have very naively anticipated. And the reason is that gravity is weaker because the graviton is strongly attracted to the brane itself and doesn’t venture out from it.
SW Why is this hierarchy a problem?
Randall: It’s just something we don’t understand. Why should these things be so different? As physicists we think we should be able to explain it, but it’s difficult to write a consistent theory where these scales are so far apart. In principle it could happen, but it’s very unlikely. You can, in principle, drop a dime and have it land on its edge, but it won’t do it that often. So we think this should be something that’s likely to happen, and there should be a deeper explanation for why it does. The problem is even worse than this, because the theory tries to force the scales to be the same. So we have to solve this more-technical problem as well. The first large extra dimension evoked the large extra dimensions to explain the weakness of gravity. But in that theory you had to write in the fact that the dimensions are so large. You got rid of one big number but you did it by putting in another one.
In our theory, it turns out that the ratio of masses is very naturally generated because it is actually just the exponential of a number. So we replaced a number that was 106 with a number that’s 30. Its not hard to get extra dimensions that are of size 30 in the units of the Planck Scale. This theory has two branes. There is one brane that is trapping gravity and another brane where gravity is not trapped. On that second brane gravity is weak, and that’s the brane we live on.
SW And the branes are separated from each other in the extra dimensional space? They’re not in contact?
Randall: Exactly.
SW How far apart are they?
Randall: Thirty.
SW Thirty what?
Randall: What’s trapping gravity is the energy on the brane, and that energy sets the scale of all this. It is 30 in terms of that energy scale.
SW Okay. we’ll let it go at that. How was your theory accepted by your colleagues?
Randall: It took a while for people to be convinced of the significance, or even to believe infinite-dimensional theory. It was actually quite a radical idea that you don’t have to compactify space. There was some skepticism, but now it’s accepted as a possible alternative. A lot of theorists, especially those interested in gravity, have been studying the theory and its consequences. Interesting things happen in the presence of this warp factor.
SW What, if any, are the implications for experiment?
Randall:On the one hand, if you ask what are the experimental tests in terms of gravity, this theory really looks as if it’s a four-dimensional theory, which is a shocking statement. That’s saying that you look around and measure anything you want—Newton’s laws, for instance—and you’d normally say that it proves that the universe has only three space dimensions. We’re saying, no, this doesn’t prove that, because we have this other theory that gives the exact same predictions. Because of the warp factor, this theory is perfectly consistent and might well be the world we live in.
On the other hand, with the second brane you naturally have this low energy scale in the theory—namely the scale of particles we see. Because of this physics will change very radically once we get to an energy scale of one trillion electron volts. That, fortuitously, is the scale at which accelerators at Fermilab and CERN will soon be working. At the TeV scale, we predict new particles, coupled somewhat like gravity, but much stronger.
SW How obvious would such particles be?
Randall:These particles should be very obvious. You produce particles that decay in the detector and you actually see particles that look like a heavy version of the graviton. There is a variant of this theory in which there is an infinite extra dimension, with a second brane in it where we live. In this case, the heavy gravitons decay immediately so you don't see them as particles but as missing energy. That is, something has gone through the detector and taken energy with it. You could then reconstruct this missing energy and see if it corresponds with the existence of an extra dimension.
SW You started your career as a phenomenologist and now your ideas are being taken seriously by string theorists. Do you consider yourself a string theorist?
Randall: Well, it is not even clear what precisely either of these terms mean. Phenomenologists try to describe the results of experiments. However, calling someone a phenomenologist can be almost derogatory these days. But you can say the same for string theory in some circles. I just don’t like labels in general, but I certainly don’t object to being called a string theorist if it’s said in a nice way.
Basically, I’m just a theoretical physicist who, like all the rest of us, would like to figure out how the world works. If that involves some string theory, great, but ultimately I think we should be able to connect it to what we see in the world and be able to test it. I’m just trying to put those things together...
A more mathematical discussion of the Braneworld model is discussed here if you can get past the Science magazine wall. Or here, for those not intimidated by raw differential equations from Wikipedia. If there was a math error, I'd never know it.
Why are an ex-CIA, ex-CSC/Dyncorp CEO Head of NASA and Chancellor Rumsfeld so interested they're putting up satellites to look for local mini-black holes?
It's one thing for Darth Griffin to want to build a hyperspace drive. It's a very different thing if Sith Lord Rumsfeld wants a black hole weapon. That would be a Big Mistake indeed. ¶ 1:15 PM 2 comments links to this post
Saturday, June 03, 2006
It can't happen here
Of course not.
But it is interesting how it serves as an excuse for the State:
SHANGHAI, June 2 — It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country's most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.
"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," one person wrote, "to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband."
Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.
It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.
In recent instances, people have scrutinized husbands suspected of cheating on their wives, fraud on Internet auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student, an event that dates to 1994 but was revived by curious strangers after word spread that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released.
Even a recent scandal involving a top Chinese computer scientist dismissed for copying the design of an American processor came to light in part because of Internet hunting, with scores of online commentators raising questions about the project and putting pressure on the scientist's sponsors to look into the allegations.
While Internet wars can crop up anywhere, these cases have set off alarms in China, where this sort of crowd behavior has led to violence in the past. Many draw disturbing parallels to the Cultural Revolution, whose 40th anniversary is this year, when mobs of students taunted and beat their professors. Mass denunciations and show trials became the order of the day for a decade...
...there are obvious drawbacks to unfettered discussion, as the Bronze Mustache case illustrates. "What we Internet users are doing is fulfilling our social obligations," said one man who posted a lengthy attack on the college student and his alleged affair. "We cannot let our society fall into such a low state."
Asked how he would react if people began publishing online allegations about his private life, he answered, "I believe strongly in the traditional saying that if you've done nothing wrong, you don't fear the knock on your door at midnight."
It's always interesting how the facsists create environments where there are "obvious drawbacks to unfettered discussion".
In a nation of a billion or more- or a few hundred million on the other side of the globe, it's easy to find a dozen state funded trolls who could post hundreds of times a day to make examples.
Who could create those new realities while the gullible are feeding the buzz. ¶ 6:58 AM 0 comments links to this post
But it is interesting how it serves as an excuse for the State:
SHANGHAI, June 2 — It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country's most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.
"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," one person wrote, "to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband."
Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.
It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.
In recent instances, people have scrutinized husbands suspected of cheating on their wives, fraud on Internet auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student, an event that dates to 1994 but was revived by curious strangers after word spread that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released.
Even a recent scandal involving a top Chinese computer scientist dismissed for copying the design of an American processor came to light in part because of Internet hunting, with scores of online commentators raising questions about the project and putting pressure on the scientist's sponsors to look into the allegations.
While Internet wars can crop up anywhere, these cases have set off alarms in China, where this sort of crowd behavior has led to violence in the past. Many draw disturbing parallels to the Cultural Revolution, whose 40th anniversary is this year, when mobs of students taunted and beat their professors. Mass denunciations and show trials became the order of the day for a decade...
...there are obvious drawbacks to unfettered discussion, as the Bronze Mustache case illustrates. "What we Internet users are doing is fulfilling our social obligations," said one man who posted a lengthy attack on the college student and his alleged affair. "We cannot let our society fall into such a low state."
Asked how he would react if people began publishing online allegations about his private life, he answered, "I believe strongly in the traditional saying that if you've done nothing wrong, you don't fear the knock on your door at midnight."
It's always interesting how the facsists create environments where there are "obvious drawbacks to unfettered discussion".
In a nation of a billion or more- or a few hundred million on the other side of the globe, it's easy to find a dozen state funded trolls who could post hundreds of times a day to make examples.
Who could create those new realities while the gullible are feeding the buzz. ¶ 6:58 AM 0 comments links to this post
Friday, June 02, 2006
The White Knight's Talking Backwards
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small
When men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the doormouse said:
"Feed your Head
Feed your Head!"
-Jefferson AIrplane
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 1 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.
As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country's senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.
In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."
"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.
The denunciation was an unusual declaration for a government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country amid a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency in the west, widespread sectarian violence in Baghdad, and deadly feuding among Shiite militias that increasingly control the south...
If only they'd clap louder, I'm sure they'd cover the noise of the death squads.
It's pretty bad when your men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go. I'd propose the Doormouse's solution. But feeding your head gets increasingly more dangerous to do here.
Generalissimo Gonzales has decided to legally require Google and everyone else- including your internet access provider- to keep records for him about how many times you've frequented Democratic Underground or any other of a variety of sites. Including this one. For your protection, only.
Including the number of times you've clapped, who exactly you clapped for, and how loudly. ¶ 9:21 AM 0 comments links to this post
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small
When men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the doormouse said:
"Feed your Head
Feed your Head!"
-Jefferson AIrplane
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 1 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.
As outrage over reports that American marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year continued to shake the new government, the country's senior leaders said that they would demand that American officials turn over their investigative files on the killings and that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry.
In his comments, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."
"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.
The denunciation was an unusual declaration for a government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country amid a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency in the west, widespread sectarian violence in Baghdad, and deadly feuding among Shiite militias that increasingly control the south...
If only they'd clap louder, I'm sure they'd cover the noise of the death squads.
It's pretty bad when your men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go. I'd propose the Doormouse's solution. But feeding your head gets increasingly more dangerous to do here.
Generalissimo Gonzales has decided to legally require Google and everyone else- including your internet access provider- to keep records for him about how many times you've frequented Democratic Underground or any other of a variety of sites. Including this one. For your protection, only.
Including the number of times you've clapped, who exactly you clapped for, and how loudly. ¶ 9:21 AM 0 comments links to this post
Thursday, June 01, 2006
A Space-Time Twister, Coming to a Dimension Near Yours
An exotic theory, which attempts to unify the laws of physics by proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched in 2007.
Such theories are notoriously difficult to test. But a new study suggests that such hidden dimensions could give rise to thousands of mini-black holes within our own solar system – and the theory could be tested within Pluto’s orbit in just a few years.
Black holes of various masses are thought to have sprung into existence within 1 second of the big bang, as elementary particles clumped together at extreme energies. But Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the smallest of these "primordial" black holes should have already evaporated, through a quantum process called Hawking radiation.
But according to some alternative theories that attempt to unify gravity with quantum mechanics, such as string theory, small black holes could still exist. That is because these theories propose extra spatial dimensions, which alter the way gravity behaves on small scales. The theory of general relativity holds that there are three spatial dimensions plus time.
"That [extra spatial dimension] changes the rate at which black holes radiate, so you can slow down the evaporation quite substantially," says Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US...
Now, Keeton and colleague Arlie Petters at Duke University in North Carolina, US, have calculated how many of these tiny black holes should exist – and how they might be detected – according to an offshoot of string theory.
The theory they use, called the Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, proposes that the 3D universe we live in is floating within a larger universe with an extra spatial dimension.
They based their calculations on black holes that each contain only the mass of a small asteroid. Assuming these objects make up 1% of the mass of nearby dark matter – whose existence can only be detected through its gravitational effects on normal matter – the team says there could be several thousand black holes in the solar system. And not only that: "The nearest ones would lie well inside Pluto's orbit," says Keeton...
And the researchers say these black holes may soon be detected. Their gravity should bend light passing nearby, so that light passing on one side of a black hole should take a different amount of time to go by than light passing on the other side. This time delay should be small, so the only chance of detecting it would come from light waves with a period (the time taken for light to travel one wavelength) shorter than the delay, says the team.
They say fleeting cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have just the right period to provide such a test. GRBs are volleys of energetic gamma-ray photons that are thought to be caused by the violent deaths of massive stars, or the collisions of dense stellar corpses.
Light taking different paths around the black hole would later recombine, producing an interference pattern. This would create a telltale signal in observations of how many photons of different energies were emitted in the burst, says the team.
"The lensing would cause wiggles in the energy spectrum, so in some places there would be an excess of photons and in others, a dearth of photons," Keeton told New Scientist...
Current telescopes do not probe the high-energy gamma rays required to test the theory. But a NASA satellite called the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), due for launch in August 2007, will. "If we do see the signal, then the strongest conclusion we can draw is that primordial black holes exist," says Keeton.
Then, researchers would have to analyse the data to measure the mass of the black hole. "If it is below some limit, you could say such a black hole cannot exist in general relativity because it would have evaporated by now," says Keeton.
"What we think is exciting is that we can make a specific prediction for an astronomical measurement that would open the door to studying the fourth dimension," he says.
Neil Gehrels, deputy project scientist for GLAST and a GRB researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US, says identifying such "wiggles" will not be easy. "It's difficult to pick out small features in the energy spectrum," he told New Scientist. "But it's an interesting suggestion and definitely worth pursuing..."
So in an age where a notoriously science-disinterested NASA is cutting basic science to the bone, and throwing out the bones, why fund a new observational satellite and dedicate it to a theoretical, speculative venture?
Let's look at who's in charge of NASA.
Consider a few rumors.
Be glad that to actually do this requires a set of brains no one in this Administration has- especially an ex-CIA ex-CSC/Dyncorp CEO. ¶ 9:38 PM 0 comments links to this post
Such theories are notoriously difficult to test. But a new study suggests that such hidden dimensions could give rise to thousands of mini-black holes within our own solar system – and the theory could be tested within Pluto’s orbit in just a few years.
Black holes of various masses are thought to have sprung into existence within 1 second of the big bang, as elementary particles clumped together at extreme energies. But Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the smallest of these "primordial" black holes should have already evaporated, through a quantum process called Hawking radiation.
But according to some alternative theories that attempt to unify gravity with quantum mechanics, such as string theory, small black holes could still exist. That is because these theories propose extra spatial dimensions, which alter the way gravity behaves on small scales. The theory of general relativity holds that there are three spatial dimensions plus time.
"That [extra spatial dimension] changes the rate at which black holes radiate, so you can slow down the evaporation quite substantially," says Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US...
Now, Keeton and colleague Arlie Petters at Duke University in North Carolina, US, have calculated how many of these tiny black holes should exist – and how they might be detected – according to an offshoot of string theory.
The theory they use, called the Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, proposes that the 3D universe we live in is floating within a larger universe with an extra spatial dimension.
They based their calculations on black holes that each contain only the mass of a small asteroid. Assuming these objects make up 1% of the mass of nearby dark matter – whose existence can only be detected through its gravitational effects on normal matter – the team says there could be several thousand black holes in the solar system. And not only that: "The nearest ones would lie well inside Pluto's orbit," says Keeton...
And the researchers say these black holes may soon be detected. Their gravity should bend light passing nearby, so that light passing on one side of a black hole should take a different amount of time to go by than light passing on the other side. This time delay should be small, so the only chance of detecting it would come from light waves with a period (the time taken for light to travel one wavelength) shorter than the delay, says the team.
They say fleeting cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have just the right period to provide such a test. GRBs are volleys of energetic gamma-ray photons that are thought to be caused by the violent deaths of massive stars, or the collisions of dense stellar corpses.
Light taking different paths around the black hole would later recombine, producing an interference pattern. This would create a telltale signal in observations of how many photons of different energies were emitted in the burst, says the team.
"The lensing would cause wiggles in the energy spectrum, so in some places there would be an excess of photons and in others, a dearth of photons," Keeton told New Scientist...
Current telescopes do not probe the high-energy gamma rays required to test the theory. But a NASA satellite called the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), due for launch in August 2007, will. "If we do see the signal, then the strongest conclusion we can draw is that primordial black holes exist," says Keeton.
Then, researchers would have to analyse the data to measure the mass of the black hole. "If it is below some limit, you could say such a black hole cannot exist in general relativity because it would have evaporated by now," says Keeton.
"What we think is exciting is that we can make a specific prediction for an astronomical measurement that would open the door to studying the fourth dimension," he says.
Neil Gehrels, deputy project scientist for GLAST and a GRB researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US, says identifying such "wiggles" will not be easy. "It's difficult to pick out small features in the energy spectrum," he told New Scientist. "But it's an interesting suggestion and definitely worth pursuing..."
So in an age where a notoriously science-disinterested NASA is cutting basic science to the bone, and throwing out the bones, why fund a new observational satellite and dedicate it to a theoretical, speculative venture?
Let's look at who's in charge of NASA.
Consider a few rumors.
Be glad that to actually do this requires a set of brains no one in this Administration has- especially an ex-CIA ex-CSC/Dyncorp CEO. ¶ 9:38 PM 0 comments links to this post
