Dump the database
by Rachel Neumann
If you're between 16 and 25 years-old, you've probably heard that the U.S. Army wants you, but did you know how bad? The Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies (JAMRS) Recruiting Database is a Department of Defense project that collects tons of previously private information from schools, Internet service providers, and private information collection agencies, and stores it in one place with the sole purprose of helping military recruiters.
The database would contain Social Security Numbers, race, religion, income status, and educational information on up to 25 million people as young as 16 years old. According to Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of the hundred organizations opposing JAMRS, the database would be operated by a commercial data marketing company, and individuals would not be able to opt-out.
The Dump the DOD Database Coalition is asking the Department of Defense to drop the database and is asking Congress to review whether the database is in violation of the Privacy Act.
If you want to find out if you or your child is in this database, you can write a letter requesting access to your file under the Privacy Act. This letter must contain your full name, Social Security Number, date of birth, current address, and telephone number. Send your request to "The Department of Defense, Defense Human Resources Activity, c/o JAMRS, Direct Marketing Program Officer, Defense Human Resources Activity, 4040 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 200, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1613.
Of course, writing a letter to the Department of Defense requesting information is probably just anti-patriotic enough to get you listed on another database, the infamous "no-fly" list.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Duncan Black and Graham Allison discuss nuclear terrorism.
The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.
... DUNCAN BLACK: Tell us about Dragonfire . That was actually news to me. Remember after September 11th, Vice President Cheney went to his famous or infamous ‘undisclosed location’, and we never really were given a clear reason why that happened or what purpose that would serve aside from general security concerns. But in your book you talked about this Dragonfire , can you tell us what that was about?
GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, this was an actual incident, and as you say it motivated the President to decide to have Cheney evacuate Washington and with him almost a thousand people from various agencies of the U.S. government on the proposition that the U.S. government thought Al Qaeda may, might have succeeded in acquiring a nuclear bomb out of the former Soviet arsenal and might have that bomb in the U.S. already. The Dragonfire story goes like this. It was actually coincidental. One month to the day after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Tenet, the director of CIA, George Tenet walks into the Oval Office for the president’s morning daily intelligence briefing and informs President Bush that Dragonfire , a CIA agent, has reported that Al Qaeda has gotten a small nuclear bomb out of the former Soviet arsenal and now has that bomb in New York City. So there’s a couple of minutes …
DUNCAN BLACK: Of panic.
GRAHAM ALLISON: … to catch your breath and then actually a very good interrogatory that goes something like the following. Did the former Soviet arsenal include weapons of that description, what Dragonfire had said? Yes. Were all those weapons adequately accounted for? Tenet’s answer: No. Could Al Qaeda have acquired one of these weapons? Yes. Could Al Qaeda have brought that weapon to New York and have it now ready to detonate in New York City without our otherwise knowing anything about it? Answer: Yes. So, bottom line from that interrogation was no basis for dismissing Dragonfire’s report that there was now a live nuclear bomb in New York City about to be exploded. So Bush I think rightly said, Wait a minute, well, it could be in Washington. They could have two bombs. So Cheney and this group of people left and they were gone from Washington for quite a lot of time, if you remember back, you know, after 9/11. Actually the nuclear NEST teams, which are a group of nuclear ninjas or experts from the labs were dispatched to New York City to look for any sign of radioactivity, and I tell in the story Giuliani was not informed about any of this, so he was an unhappy camper, you know, after, I mean, after a week it was determined that this was most likely a false alarm, because some of the other things that Dragonfire had reported about the way that bomb had been brought to the U.S. turned out not to be confirmed. But in any case I think the reason for us to take this into account is that there was no basis, and there is no basis, in science or technology or logic for dismissing a report if we got a good intelligence report today that Al Qaeda had a nuclear bomb in New York or DC or LA or Boston.
DUNCAN BLACK: All right, so this was a completely plausible scenario, given the fact that these weapons exist, they are not all accounted for, and they are relatively easily transportable.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Right, it kind of worked, and that we know that there’s somebody who seems pretty motivated.
DUNCAN BLACK: Right.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Especially after 9/11, if you had any doubts before that, to kill a lot of Americans...
DUNCAN BLACK: So, I mean about how many of these roughly sized warheads, you know, the suitcase nukes or their equivalents, I mean, how many of them exist and how many of them have rather poor security guarding them?
GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, it’s a complicated story, and the answer is we don’t really know. In fact I quote in the book the testimony of a director of CIA who says, “It’s not what I know that worries me so much, it’s what I know that I don’t know”. So here, to give the broad picture, there were created in the high cold war some 50 or 60 thousand nuclear warheads, the U.S. about half, the Soviet Union about half. From that peak, both parties have come down, been demobilizing and even abolishing a significant number of these weapons. So as today you would think that there are probably 40 or 45 thousand nuclear warheads globally.
DUNCAN BLACK: Okay.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Of those warheads, about half would be strategic and about half would be tactical. And tactical weapons go from something like an artillery shell, which is only this big, to something that would be a tactical nuclear warhead that would go in a rocket launcher, that could be this big. All right? So they go in various sizes. And then in addition there’s the kind of miniature versions, and the miniature versions, referred to sometimes in the past as backpack or suitcase nuclear bombs, were mainly designed to be small, have a pretty substantial blast, and as I mentioned before, they were to be used by a group of two men who would parachute in behind enemy lines to try to blow up, you know, the command and control structures or to blow up an airport, or to blow up a bridge, or otherwise. And both the U.S. and Russia, or the Soviet Union, had such weapons, and indeed had such weapons that were to be deployed by special forces or intelligence operatives. So it was a mission for doing something that looks rather like blowing up a building or blowing up a, you know, a city, parts of a city, or blowing up a political leader, and there was a means for doing that. That was these nuclear bombs. Now, there then comes to be a long story about what happened to all these weapons.
DUNCAN BLACK: Right.
GRAHAM ALLISON: And I try to advance that story a little bit in the book on nuclear terrorism. Basically I would say at this stage that we don’t, we never pinned it down adequately. The Russians currently say that all those weapons – first they said no such weapons ever existed. Then they said all of them had been destroyed. Then they said all of them were under control. So there’s been a kind of series of, Well, I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there, Well, I didn’t hit her that hard, or you know, all these inconsistent stories. But they, my current thought about it is that there is no question, 100% in my view that they had such weapons...
... DUNCAN BLACK: Tell us about Dragonfire . That was actually news to me. Remember after September 11th, Vice President Cheney went to his famous or infamous ‘undisclosed location’, and we never really were given a clear reason why that happened or what purpose that would serve aside from general security concerns. But in your book you talked about this Dragonfire , can you tell us what that was about?
GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, this was an actual incident, and as you say it motivated the President to decide to have Cheney evacuate Washington and with him almost a thousand people from various agencies of the U.S. government on the proposition that the U.S. government thought Al Qaeda may, might have succeeded in acquiring a nuclear bomb out of the former Soviet arsenal and might have that bomb in the U.S. already. The Dragonfire story goes like this. It was actually coincidental. One month to the day after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Tenet, the director of CIA, George Tenet walks into the Oval Office for the president’s morning daily intelligence briefing and informs President Bush that Dragonfire , a CIA agent, has reported that Al Qaeda has gotten a small nuclear bomb out of the former Soviet arsenal and now has that bomb in New York City. So there’s a couple of minutes …
DUNCAN BLACK: Of panic.
GRAHAM ALLISON: … to catch your breath and then actually a very good interrogatory that goes something like the following. Did the former Soviet arsenal include weapons of that description, what Dragonfire had said? Yes. Were all those weapons adequately accounted for? Tenet’s answer: No. Could Al Qaeda have acquired one of these weapons? Yes. Could Al Qaeda have brought that weapon to New York and have it now ready to detonate in New York City without our otherwise knowing anything about it? Answer: Yes. So, bottom line from that interrogation was no basis for dismissing Dragonfire’s report that there was now a live nuclear bomb in New York City about to be exploded. So Bush I think rightly said, Wait a minute, well, it could be in Washington. They could have two bombs. So Cheney and this group of people left and they were gone from Washington for quite a lot of time, if you remember back, you know, after 9/11. Actually the nuclear NEST teams, which are a group of nuclear ninjas or experts from the labs were dispatched to New York City to look for any sign of radioactivity, and I tell in the story Giuliani was not informed about any of this, so he was an unhappy camper, you know, after, I mean, after a week it was determined that this was most likely a false alarm, because some of the other things that Dragonfire had reported about the way that bomb had been brought to the U.S. turned out not to be confirmed. But in any case I think the reason for us to take this into account is that there was no basis, and there is no basis, in science or technology or logic for dismissing a report if we got a good intelligence report today that Al Qaeda had a nuclear bomb in New York or DC or LA or Boston.
DUNCAN BLACK: All right, so this was a completely plausible scenario, given the fact that these weapons exist, they are not all accounted for, and they are relatively easily transportable.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Right, it kind of worked, and that we know that there’s somebody who seems pretty motivated.
DUNCAN BLACK: Right.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Especially after 9/11, if you had any doubts before that, to kill a lot of Americans...
DUNCAN BLACK: So, I mean about how many of these roughly sized warheads, you know, the suitcase nukes or their equivalents, I mean, how many of them exist and how many of them have rather poor security guarding them?
GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, it’s a complicated story, and the answer is we don’t really know. In fact I quote in the book the testimony of a director of CIA who says, “It’s not what I know that worries me so much, it’s what I know that I don’t know”. So here, to give the broad picture, there were created in the high cold war some 50 or 60 thousand nuclear warheads, the U.S. about half, the Soviet Union about half. From that peak, both parties have come down, been demobilizing and even abolishing a significant number of these weapons. So as today you would think that there are probably 40 or 45 thousand nuclear warheads globally.
DUNCAN BLACK: Okay.
GRAHAM ALLISON: Of those warheads, about half would be strategic and about half would be tactical. And tactical weapons go from something like an artillery shell, which is only this big, to something that would be a tactical nuclear warhead that would go in a rocket launcher, that could be this big. All right? So they go in various sizes. And then in addition there’s the kind of miniature versions, and the miniature versions, referred to sometimes in the past as backpack or suitcase nuclear bombs, were mainly designed to be small, have a pretty substantial blast, and as I mentioned before, they were to be used by a group of two men who would parachute in behind enemy lines to try to blow up, you know, the command and control structures or to blow up an airport, or to blow up a bridge, or otherwise. And both the U.S. and Russia, or the Soviet Union, had such weapons, and indeed had such weapons that were to be deployed by special forces or intelligence operatives. So it was a mission for doing something that looks rather like blowing up a building or blowing up a, you know, a city, parts of a city, or blowing up a political leader, and there was a means for doing that. That was these nuclear bombs. Now, there then comes to be a long story about what happened to all these weapons.
DUNCAN BLACK: Right.
GRAHAM ALLISON: And I try to advance that story a little bit in the book on nuclear terrorism. Basically I would say at this stage that we don’t, we never pinned it down adequately. The Russians currently say that all those weapons – first they said no such weapons ever existed. Then they said all of them had been destroyed. Then they said all of them were under control. So there’s been a kind of series of, Well, I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there, Well, I didn’t hit her that hard, or you know, all these inconsistent stories. But they, my current thought about it is that there is no question, 100% in my view that they had such weapons...
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Deep Field
Or, Why the TheoCons Hate the Hubble
A little information courtesy of the Wikipedia:
The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region of the sky, based on the results of a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area 144 arcseconds across, equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres, lying in the constellation Ursa Major. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and December 28, 1995.
The field is so small that only a few foreground stars in the Milky Way lie within it; thus, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are galaxies, some of which are among the youngest and most distant known. By revealing such large numbers of very young galaxies, the HDF has become a landmark image in the study of the early universe, and it has been the source of almost 400 scientific papers since it was created.
Three years after the HDF observations were taken, a region in the south celestial hemisphere was imaged in a similar way and named the Hubble Deep Field South. The similarities between the two regions strengthened the belief that the universe is uniform over large scales and that the Earth occupies a typical region in the universe (the cosmological principle). In 2004 a deeper image, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, was constructed from a total of eleven days of observations.
The field selected for the observations needed to fulfil several criteria. It had to be at a high galactic latitude, because dust and obscuring matter in the plane of the Milky Way's disc prevents observations of distant galaxies. The target field had to avoid known bright sources of visible light (such as foreground stars), and infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray emissions, to facilitate later studies at many wavelengths of the objects in the deep field, and also needed to be in a region with a low background infrared 'cirrus', the diffuse, wispy infrared emission believed to be caused by warm dust grains in cool clouds of hydrogen gas (H I regions)...
The field that was eventually selected is located at a right ascension of 12h 36m 49.4s and a declination of +62° 12′ 48″[1]...
Images of the target area in the chosen filters were taken over ten consecutive days, during which Hubble orbited the Earth about 150 times. The total exposure times at each wavelength were 42.7 hours (300 nm), 33.5 hours (450 nm), 30.3 hours (606 nm) and 34.3 hours (814 nm), divided into 342 individual exposures to prevent significant damage to individual images by cosmic rays, which cause bright streaks to appear when they strike CCD detectors...
The final images revealed a plethora of distant, faint galaxies. About 3,000 distinct galaxies could be identified in the images, with both irregular and spiral galaxies clearly visible, although some galaxies in the field are only a few pixels across. In all, the HDF is thought to contain fewer than ten galactic foreground stars; by far the majority of objects in the field are distant galaxies.
There are about fifty blue point-like objects in the HDF. Many seem to be associated with nearby galaxies, which together form chains and arcs: these are likely to be regions of intense star formation. Others may be distant quasars. Astronomers initially ruled out the possibility that some of the point-like objects are white dwarfs, because they are too blue to be consistent with theories of white dwarf evolution prevalent at the time. However, more recent work has found that many white dwarfs become bluer as they age, lending support to the idea that the HDF might contain white dwarfs [2].
The HDF data provided extremely rich material for cosmologists to analyse and as of 2005, almost 400 papers based on the HDF have appeared in the astronomical literature. One of the most fundamental findings was the discovery of large numbers of galaxies with high redshift values.
As the universe expands, more distant objects recede from the Earth faster, in what is called the Hubble Flow. The light from very distant galaxies is significantly affected by doppler shifting, which reddens the radiation that we receive from them. While quasars with high redshifts were known, very few galaxies with redshifts greater than 1 were known before the HDF images were produced. The HDF, however, contained many galaxies with redshifts as high as 6, corresponding to distances of about 12 billion light years [3]. (Due to redshift the most distant objects in the HDF are not actually visible in the Hubble images; they can only be detected in images of the HDF taken at longer wavelengths by ground-based telescopes.)
The HDF galaxies contained a considerably larger proportion of disturbed and irregular galaxies than the local universe; galaxy collisions and mergers were more common in the young universe as it was much smaller than today. It is believed that giant elliptical galaxies form when spirals and irregular galaxies collide.
The wealth of galaxies at different stages of their evolution also allowed astronomers to estimate the variation in the rate of star formation over the lifetime of the universe. While estimates of the redshifts of HDF galaxies are somewhat crude, astronomers believe that star formation was occurring at its maximum rate 8–10 billion years ago, and has decreased by a factor of about 10 since then [4].
Another important result from the HDF was the very small number of foreground stars present. For years astronomers had been puzzling over the nature of so-called dark matter, mass which seems to be undetectable but which observations implied made up about 90% of the mass of the universe. One theory was that dark matter might consist of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) — faint but massive objects such as red dwarfs and planets in the outer regions of galaxies. The HDF showed, however, that there were not significant numbers of red dwarfs in the outer parts of our galaxy...
References
[1] Williams RE et al. (1996), The Hubble Deep Field: Observations, data reduction, and galaxy photometry, Astronomical Journal, 112:1335
[2] Ferguson HC (2000), The Hubble Deep Fields, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems IX, ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 216, N Manset, C Veillet, and D Crabtree (eds). Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ISBN 1-58381-047-1, p.395
[3] Hansen BMS (1998), Observational signatures of old white dwarfs, 19th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology, J Paul, T Montmerle, and E Aubourg (eds)
[4] Hornschemeier A et al.. (2000), X-Ray sources in the Hubble Deep Field detected by Chandra, Astrophysical Journal, 541:49–53
[5] Connolly AJ et al. (1997),. The evolution of the global star formation history as measured from the Hubble Deep Field, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 486:L11
More on how they do it here.
More on what they see here and what they zoom in on in the .mpeg here.
The universe is infinitely larger and older than we can imagine. The known age of the universe and its size are limited by the distances we can observe. Or understand. This fact, in and of itself, gives us no information about what any Creator might be. But it strongly suggests any Creator isn't the jealous, petty, small fantasy overtly worshipped by the TheoCons who would rule us all.
A little information courtesy of the Wikipedia:
The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region of the sky, based on the results of a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area 144 arcseconds across, equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres, lying in the constellation Ursa Major. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and December 28, 1995.
The field is so small that only a few foreground stars in the Milky Way lie within it; thus, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are galaxies, some of which are among the youngest and most distant known. By revealing such large numbers of very young galaxies, the HDF has become a landmark image in the study of the early universe, and it has been the source of almost 400 scientific papers since it was created.
Three years after the HDF observations were taken, a region in the south celestial hemisphere was imaged in a similar way and named the Hubble Deep Field South. The similarities between the two regions strengthened the belief that the universe is uniform over large scales and that the Earth occupies a typical region in the universe (the cosmological principle). In 2004 a deeper image, known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, was constructed from a total of eleven days of observations.
The field selected for the observations needed to fulfil several criteria. It had to be at a high galactic latitude, because dust and obscuring matter in the plane of the Milky Way's disc prevents observations of distant galaxies. The target field had to avoid known bright sources of visible light (such as foreground stars), and infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray emissions, to facilitate later studies at many wavelengths of the objects in the deep field, and also needed to be in a region with a low background infrared 'cirrus', the diffuse, wispy infrared emission believed to be caused by warm dust grains in cool clouds of hydrogen gas (H I regions)...
The field that was eventually selected is located at a right ascension of 12h 36m 49.4s and a declination of +62° 12′ 48″[1]...
Images of the target area in the chosen filters were taken over ten consecutive days, during which Hubble orbited the Earth about 150 times. The total exposure times at each wavelength were 42.7 hours (300 nm), 33.5 hours (450 nm), 30.3 hours (606 nm) and 34.3 hours (814 nm), divided into 342 individual exposures to prevent significant damage to individual images by cosmic rays, which cause bright streaks to appear when they strike CCD detectors...
The final images revealed a plethora of distant, faint galaxies. About 3,000 distinct galaxies could be identified in the images, with both irregular and spiral galaxies clearly visible, although some galaxies in the field are only a few pixels across. In all, the HDF is thought to contain fewer than ten galactic foreground stars; by far the majority of objects in the field are distant galaxies.
There are about fifty blue point-like objects in the HDF. Many seem to be associated with nearby galaxies, which together form chains and arcs: these are likely to be regions of intense star formation. Others may be distant quasars. Astronomers initially ruled out the possibility that some of the point-like objects are white dwarfs, because they are too blue to be consistent with theories of white dwarf evolution prevalent at the time. However, more recent work has found that many white dwarfs become bluer as they age, lending support to the idea that the HDF might contain white dwarfs [2].
The HDF data provided extremely rich material for cosmologists to analyse and as of 2005, almost 400 papers based on the HDF have appeared in the astronomical literature. One of the most fundamental findings was the discovery of large numbers of galaxies with high redshift values.
As the universe expands, more distant objects recede from the Earth faster, in what is called the Hubble Flow. The light from very distant galaxies is significantly affected by doppler shifting, which reddens the radiation that we receive from them. While quasars with high redshifts were known, very few galaxies with redshifts greater than 1 were known before the HDF images were produced. The HDF, however, contained many galaxies with redshifts as high as 6, corresponding to distances of about 12 billion light years [3]. (Due to redshift the most distant objects in the HDF are not actually visible in the Hubble images; they can only be detected in images of the HDF taken at longer wavelengths by ground-based telescopes.)
The HDF galaxies contained a considerably larger proportion of disturbed and irregular galaxies than the local universe; galaxy collisions and mergers were more common in the young universe as it was much smaller than today. It is believed that giant elliptical galaxies form when spirals and irregular galaxies collide.
The wealth of galaxies at different stages of their evolution also allowed astronomers to estimate the variation in the rate of star formation over the lifetime of the universe. While estimates of the redshifts of HDF galaxies are somewhat crude, astronomers believe that star formation was occurring at its maximum rate 8–10 billion years ago, and has decreased by a factor of about 10 since then [4].
Another important result from the HDF was the very small number of foreground stars present. For years astronomers had been puzzling over the nature of so-called dark matter, mass which seems to be undetectable but which observations implied made up about 90% of the mass of the universe. One theory was that dark matter might consist of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) — faint but massive objects such as red dwarfs and planets in the outer regions of galaxies. The HDF showed, however, that there were not significant numbers of red dwarfs in the outer parts of our galaxy...
References
[1] Williams RE et al. (1996), The Hubble Deep Field: Observations, data reduction, and galaxy photometry, Astronomical Journal, 112:1335
[2] Ferguson HC (2000), The Hubble Deep Fields, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems IX, ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 216, N Manset, C Veillet, and D Crabtree (eds). Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ISBN 1-58381-047-1, p.395
[3] Hansen BMS (1998), Observational signatures of old white dwarfs, 19th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology, J Paul, T Montmerle, and E Aubourg (eds)
[4] Hornschemeier A et al.. (2000), X-Ray sources in the Hubble Deep Field detected by Chandra, Astrophysical Journal, 541:49–53
[5] Connolly AJ et al. (1997),. The evolution of the global star formation history as measured from the Hubble Deep Field, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 486:L11
More on how they do it here.
More on what they see here and what they zoom in on in the .mpeg here.
The universe is infinitely larger and older than we can imagine. The known age of the universe and its size are limited by the distances we can observe. Or understand. This fact, in and of itself, gives us no information about what any Creator might be. But it strongly suggests any Creator isn't the jealous, petty, small fantasy overtly worshipped by the TheoCons who would rule us all.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Don't Uncork the Champagne
Yet.
Like chicago dyke says over at Correntewire:
...I’m not one of the champagne drinking crowd. I’d add “yet,” but I’m not convinced I should.
Here are a few names for you: Bush v. Gore. Thomas White. Ken Lay. Ahmed Chalabi. The Anthrax Killer. Katrina Leung. Bill Frist. “Bugman” DeLay. If I knew how to get to Findlaw or Nexis/Lexis, I’d make that list longer. Much, much longer...
Fitz seems like a good guy, and from what I understand, he’s taken on Big Dogs in the past and won. The Mob. The other mob. Various gov’t officials. He’s a republican. People talk about him like he’s an Untouchable. All I know is that he’s no Ken Starr, and has been pretty good controlling leaks and keeping all of us guessing.
But the facts are bleak to me. Do you expect a Republican-controlled Congress to call for impeachment? I don’t. Do you expect the ~22 Dems voting for Roberts to step up with the noo-kwoo-lar option if this proves to touch Bush and Cheney directly? I don’t. Do you expect CNN and the NYT to offer daily, in-depth, factually based coverage of this in ways most time-pressed Americans can understand? Again, me- not so much. Do you think that this administration will waver from its pattern of obfuscation, denial, and subject changing, and focus on responding to these (as yet only speculative) indictments honestly? Hahahahahahaha…. Did I mention Roberts, Bush v. Gore and expensive lawyers yet?
Anyway, this isn’t a TV show. Jack isn’t going to swoop in like a hawk and grab a fat, quivering mass of obviously guilty prey that Lenny has just broken in the LT’s conference room. More importantly, this case represents a set of threads that, if pulled firmly, would unravel practically the entire empowered Federal gov’t. There’s hardly a Republican in DC today who isn’t somehow connected to this scandal and cover-up.
Dems are included in the list of lying, guilty parties...
Plame’s outing may be have been against the reality-based Intel community. Recall that Poppy, ex-CIA head under Ford himself, represents one big faction of the Company. The Company itself while uniform at the bottom line (Power, Money, and Hegemony) differs in the world vision of it’s faction members.
Call one faction the Dominionists. Call another the Economists. For convenience, realizing these are overlapping oversimplifications and hence mislabels.
The Economists realize they live in a dynamic world. Soros, a founding member of the Carlyle Group, represents this. Their underlying philosophy is that given a large degree of individual freedom, the average person will produce and consume enough, with the proper guidance by the Company, to enrich everyone, including the individual.
Call their philosophy: “A place for every man”.
The Dominionists don’t like that dynamic world unless they own it. They are willing to use religion, fascism, whatever it takes to ensure that everyone is in their place. With the Company on top.
The Empire’s functioning credo was summarized by Herbert, of course:
“A place for every man, and every man in his place”.
What of the Fitzgerald findings?
I submit that if Cheneyburton is to be brought down, it will only be because the Economists check the Dominionists in the Company.
Any change in the system, when change does occur, will be superficial, and will be to allow for a more profitable business structure for the Company.
Like chicago dyke says over at Correntewire:
...I’m not one of the champagne drinking crowd. I’d add “yet,” but I’m not convinced I should.
Here are a few names for you: Bush v. Gore. Thomas White. Ken Lay. Ahmed Chalabi. The Anthrax Killer. Katrina Leung. Bill Frist. “Bugman” DeLay. If I knew how to get to Findlaw or Nexis/Lexis, I’d make that list longer. Much, much longer...
Fitz seems like a good guy, and from what I understand, he’s taken on Big Dogs in the past and won. The Mob. The other mob. Various gov’t officials. He’s a republican. People talk about him like he’s an Untouchable. All I know is that he’s no Ken Starr, and has been pretty good controlling leaks and keeping all of us guessing.
But the facts are bleak to me. Do you expect a Republican-controlled Congress to call for impeachment? I don’t. Do you expect the ~22 Dems voting for Roberts to step up with the noo-kwoo-lar option if this proves to touch Bush and Cheney directly? I don’t. Do you expect CNN and the NYT to offer daily, in-depth, factually based coverage of this in ways most time-pressed Americans can understand? Again, me- not so much. Do you think that this administration will waver from its pattern of obfuscation, denial, and subject changing, and focus on responding to these (as yet only speculative) indictments honestly? Hahahahahahaha…. Did I mention Roberts, Bush v. Gore and expensive lawyers yet?
Anyway, this isn’t a TV show. Jack isn’t going to swoop in like a hawk and grab a fat, quivering mass of obviously guilty prey that Lenny has just broken in the LT’s conference room. More importantly, this case represents a set of threads that, if pulled firmly, would unravel practically the entire empowered Federal gov’t. There’s hardly a Republican in DC today who isn’t somehow connected to this scandal and cover-up.
Dems are included in the list of lying, guilty parties...
Plame’s outing may be have been against the reality-based Intel community. Recall that Poppy, ex-CIA head under Ford himself, represents one big faction of the Company. The Company itself while uniform at the bottom line (Power, Money, and Hegemony) differs in the world vision of it’s faction members.
Call one faction the Dominionists. Call another the Economists. For convenience, realizing these are overlapping oversimplifications and hence mislabels.
The Economists realize they live in a dynamic world. Soros, a founding member of the Carlyle Group, represents this. Their underlying philosophy is that given a large degree of individual freedom, the average person will produce and consume enough, with the proper guidance by the Company, to enrich everyone, including the individual.
Call their philosophy: “A place for every man”.
The Dominionists don’t like that dynamic world unless they own it. They are willing to use religion, fascism, whatever it takes to ensure that everyone is in their place. With the Company on top.
The Empire’s functioning credo was summarized by Herbert, of course:
“A place for every man, and every man in his place”.
What of the Fitzgerald findings?
I submit that if Cheneyburton is to be brought down, it will only be because the Economists check the Dominionists in the Company.
Any change in the system, when change does occur, will be superficial, and will be to allow for a more profitable business structure for the Company.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
When Are Capitalism and Free Enterprise, Not?
Answer: when the Government supports it.
NEW YORK - Farmers in rich countries get $1 billion per day in subsidies. To be fair, we've rounded up the numbers, counted agribusinesses and small farmers, and defined subsidies broadly to include tariffs, export credits and other supports. But, give a million or two a day, the order of magnitude is right.
By that measure, agriculture is the most protected industry. And that is the single biggest reason that the current round of world trade talks under the World Trade Organization (WTO) is stalled. Not surprisingly, farmers don't want to give up that sort of money.
Farmers and agribusinesses such as Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra Foods, General Mills and the privately owned Cargill, which in the U.S. get 80% of farm subsidies, have tremendous political clout--as do their counterparts in Europe and Japan--way beyond their numbers or economic size...
Cheneyburton is another great example.
There is nothing like Free Enterprise, and what these people do is nothing like free enterprise.
NEW YORK - Farmers in rich countries get $1 billion per day in subsidies. To be fair, we've rounded up the numbers, counted agribusinesses and small farmers, and defined subsidies broadly to include tariffs, export credits and other supports. But, give a million or two a day, the order of magnitude is right.
By that measure, agriculture is the most protected industry. And that is the single biggest reason that the current round of world trade talks under the World Trade Organization (WTO) is stalled. Not surprisingly, farmers don't want to give up that sort of money.
Farmers and agribusinesses such as Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra Foods, General Mills and the privately owned Cargill, which in the U.S. get 80% of farm subsidies, have tremendous political clout--as do their counterparts in Europe and Japan--way beyond their numbers or economic size...
Cheneyburton is another great example.
There is nothing like Free Enterprise, and what these people do is nothing like free enterprise.
Business is Booming
Microwaves, Lasers, Retired Generals For Sale
William M. Arkin
Friend's tell me that this week's Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition at the Washington Convention Center was all that an orgy of self-congratulation can be. Contractors galore, beltway bandits, luncheons, awards, howitzers, all topped off with a speech by Dick Cheney.
The buzz on the floor was "directed energy" laser, high-powered microwaves, and acoustic weapons that are getting a boost from the prolonged fighting in Iraq. Supporters are hoping that these new exotic technologies will help in the battle against improvised explosive devices and in countering snipers and hidden insurgents.
Directed energy is also the star of this week's Air Force Futures Game 05, being held at Booz Allen Hamilton in Herndon. The game, which posits a major war in the 2025 time frame, has high powered microwave and laser weapons zapping the bad guys.
Highly controversial directed energy weapons have been pushed for almost two decades as the next silver bullet. It's been two decades because along the way, they have run into complications, some having to do with the technology itself -- aim and controllable effects, compact power sources, military ruggedness -- but mostly their problem has been moral principles. Military leaders have been concerned about legality. Commanders have been hesitant or skeptical about new technologies with uncertain effects.
Those concerns are being brushed aside as the weapons advance along the familiar development path of boosters and patrons feeding information to war gamers who feed study participants who feed researchers who feed manufactures. At the end of the day, it is hard to tell whether high powered microwaves and laser came into being because someone conceived it out of need or because its existence in the laboratory created the need.
This week, for example, one of my favorite directed energy patrons -- retired General Ron Fogleman -- received appointments at two corporations, as a "senior advisor" to the Galen Capital Group, LLC; and as a member of the board of advisors of Novastar Resources.
The former chief of staff of the Air Force is a military-industrial legend, head of his own consulting company Durango Aerospace Inc. with a client list that includes Boeing, FMC, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and RSL Electronics.
A quick check on the web shows that Fogleman also serves on the boards of no few than 14 corporations: AAR Corp, Alliant Techsystems, IDC, Mesa Air Group, MITRE Corporation, Rolls-Royce North America, Thales-Raytheon Systems, First National Bank of Durango, International Airline Service Group, ICN Pharmaceuticals, DERCO Aerospace, EAST Inc., World Airway, and North American Airlines. He is also Senior Vice President of something called Projects International, a DC consultancy and is or was a partner in Laird and Company, LLC. And he is a member of Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, on the NASA Advisory Council, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Board, chairs the Falcon Foundation and the Airlift/Tanker Association. This guy is busy!
Fogleman gave up the job as the most powerful man in the Air Force on principle when he could no longer serve Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Since leaving, however, he has dispensed so much wisdom one wonders how much principle could be left.
One of Fogleman's first jobs upon leaving the Air Force was to chair the 1998 Directed Energy Applications for Tactical Airborne Combat study (known as "DE ATAC") which identified 65 concepts, particularly microwave weapons, selecting 20 for further analysis. The laboratory then awarded short-term concept development contracts for the five most promising to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Coherent Technologies, and Sanders.
All during the 1990's, money flowed into continued development of directed energy weapons, but frankly not much happened. Everyone talked about an E-bomb being used in Iraq in 2003, but once again for a variety of technical and ethical reasons, and because the real world intervened, the silver bullets remained on laboratory benches or in the world of "black" super-secret contracts, waiting for an opportunity.
And with the quagmire in Iraq, that opportunity came. So it just a coincidence that Fogleman's company Alliant Techsystems was awarded a contract earlier this year to develop the Scorpion II high powered microwave weapon "capable of defeating … improvised explosive devices (IEDs) currently threatening U.S. and allied troops in Iraq." Maybe Fogleman had nothing to do with the directed energy work already flowing to Boeing and Raytheon.
The introduction of a completely new weapon -- particularly one that could cause excruciating pain, blindness, and hearing loss -- requires the most deliberate process, and the unintended consequences -- humanitarian, public relations, the possibility of the same weapon ending up in the hands of our enemies -- needs to be carefully weighed. The United States may indeed have within technological reach the ability to disperse rioters with a beam and not a bullet, and it might be able to cripple a modern society with the push of a button, but then again, so too does the United States possess the technology to turn Baghdad into a radiating ruin.
More on the efforts to develop energy weapons here and here.
Even if the jubilation in Left Blogistan is justified (see here and here) and this is the beginning of the end for Cheneyburton- something I doubt given the state of the $upreme Court- the damage these pirates have done to this nation won't go away.
One of the worse things they've done is re-made War into the biggest business America has.
Make no mistake: if we catch the big fish, there's still an ocean full of sharks out there.
William M. Arkin
Friend's tell me that this week's Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition at the Washington Convention Center was all that an orgy of self-congratulation can be. Contractors galore, beltway bandits, luncheons, awards, howitzers, all topped off with a speech by Dick Cheney.
The buzz on the floor was "directed energy" laser, high-powered microwaves, and acoustic weapons that are getting a boost from the prolonged fighting in Iraq. Supporters are hoping that these new exotic technologies will help in the battle against improvised explosive devices and in countering snipers and hidden insurgents.
Directed energy is also the star of this week's Air Force Futures Game 05, being held at Booz Allen Hamilton in Herndon. The game, which posits a major war in the 2025 time frame, has high powered microwave and laser weapons zapping the bad guys.
Highly controversial directed energy weapons have been pushed for almost two decades as the next silver bullet. It's been two decades because along the way, they have run into complications, some having to do with the technology itself -- aim and controllable effects, compact power sources, military ruggedness -- but mostly their problem has been moral principles. Military leaders have been concerned about legality. Commanders have been hesitant or skeptical about new technologies with uncertain effects.
Those concerns are being brushed aside as the weapons advance along the familiar development path of boosters and patrons feeding information to war gamers who feed study participants who feed researchers who feed manufactures. At the end of the day, it is hard to tell whether high powered microwaves and laser came into being because someone conceived it out of need or because its existence in the laboratory created the need.
This week, for example, one of my favorite directed energy patrons -- retired General Ron Fogleman -- received appointments at two corporations, as a "senior advisor" to the Galen Capital Group, LLC; and as a member of the board of advisors of Novastar Resources.
The former chief of staff of the Air Force is a military-industrial legend, head of his own consulting company Durango Aerospace Inc. with a client list that includes Boeing, FMC, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and RSL Electronics.
A quick check on the web shows that Fogleman also serves on the boards of no few than 14 corporations: AAR Corp, Alliant Techsystems, IDC, Mesa Air Group, MITRE Corporation, Rolls-Royce North America, Thales-Raytheon Systems, First National Bank of Durango, International Airline Service Group, ICN Pharmaceuticals, DERCO Aerospace, EAST Inc., World Airway, and North American Airlines. He is also Senior Vice President of something called Projects International, a DC consultancy and is or was a partner in Laird and Company, LLC. And he is a member of Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, on the NASA Advisory Council, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Board, chairs the Falcon Foundation and the Airlift/Tanker Association. This guy is busy!
Fogleman gave up the job as the most powerful man in the Air Force on principle when he could no longer serve Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Since leaving, however, he has dispensed so much wisdom one wonders how much principle could be left.
One of Fogleman's first jobs upon leaving the Air Force was to chair the 1998 Directed Energy Applications for Tactical Airborne Combat study (known as "DE ATAC") which identified 65 concepts, particularly microwave weapons, selecting 20 for further analysis. The laboratory then awarded short-term concept development contracts for the five most promising to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Coherent Technologies, and Sanders.
All during the 1990's, money flowed into continued development of directed energy weapons, but frankly not much happened. Everyone talked about an E-bomb being used in Iraq in 2003, but once again for a variety of technical and ethical reasons, and because the real world intervened, the silver bullets remained on laboratory benches or in the world of "black" super-secret contracts, waiting for an opportunity.
And with the quagmire in Iraq, that opportunity came. So it just a coincidence that Fogleman's company Alliant Techsystems was awarded a contract earlier this year to develop the Scorpion II high powered microwave weapon "capable of defeating … improvised explosive devices (IEDs) currently threatening U.S. and allied troops in Iraq." Maybe Fogleman had nothing to do with the directed energy work already flowing to Boeing and Raytheon.
The introduction of a completely new weapon -- particularly one that could cause excruciating pain, blindness, and hearing loss -- requires the most deliberate process, and the unintended consequences -- humanitarian, public relations, the possibility of the same weapon ending up in the hands of our enemies -- needs to be carefully weighed. The United States may indeed have within technological reach the ability to disperse rioters with a beam and not a bullet, and it might be able to cripple a modern society with the push of a button, but then again, so too does the United States possess the technology to turn Baghdad into a radiating ruin.
More on the efforts to develop energy weapons here and here.
Even if the jubilation in Left Blogistan is justified (see here and here) and this is the beginning of the end for Cheneyburton- something I doubt given the state of the $upreme Court- the damage these pirates have done to this nation won't go away.
One of the worse things they've done is re-made War into the biggest business America has.
Make no mistake: if we catch the big fish, there's still an ocean full of sharks out there.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Having a Chip on Your Shoulder
It's one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials, the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time, the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking the path of a big rig.
''Why are you blocking the road?" the driver asks. ''Because you're going the wrong way," replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ''Your cargo told me so." It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn.
It's clever, all right -- and creepy. Because the technology needn't be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.
If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ''shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc." An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn't really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn't intend to pursue. Still, it's clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.
And it's not just IBM. A host of other companies are looking at ways to embed surveillance chips into practically everything we purchase -- and even into our bodies. It's a prospect that infuriates Harvard graduate student Katherine Albrecht.
''I think the shocking part is they've spent the past three years saying, oh no, we'd never do this," Albrecht said. But instead of taking their word for it, Albrecht and her colleague, former bank examiner Liz McIntyre, began reading everything they could find on the subject. Now they're serving up the scary results of their research in a scathing new book, ''Spychips."
That's Albrecht's preferred name for a technology called radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. If you use a Mobil Speedpass to pay for gasoline, you're already using RFID. Your Speedpass contains a microchip and a small antenna that allows it to broadcast information to a receiver. The chip has no power source of its own. Instead, it picks up radio signals from an RFID chip reader, turns these radio waves into electricity, and uses the power to broadcast data to the reader.
Because they need no batteries, RFID chips can be made small enough to attach invisibly to practically anything. One company is even working on a way to print RFID chips onto newspapers, using electrically conductive ink.
Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers.
''Spychips" reveals a US government plan to order RFID chips embedded in all cars sold in America. No big deal -- until you realize the police could then track your comings and goings by putting inexpensive RFID readers at key intersections.
Then there are the RFID pajamas from a California maker of children's clothing. It's a clever way to prevent kidnapping: Just put RFID readers in your home, to alert you if Junior's taking an unauthorized trip. It's easy to imagine parents buying into this idea, but they'll now have to install RFID readers in their homes. ''There's the nose in the camel's tent," said Albrecht. At first, companies will just scan your kids' jammies. But later they'll ask permission to scan the tags on your groceries and your clothes. The consulting company Accenture has patented a design that builds an RFID reader into a household medicine cabinet, to make sure you're taking all your medications.
There are countless applications for RFID, and viewed in isolation, some are downright appealing. It would be nice for the medicine cabinet to send you an e-mail -- ''Time to buy more Viagra."...
Speak for yourself, sir. Spam I have too much of. Viagra is not a drug for healthy people.
... But what if it's also sending that data to consumer marketing companies, eager to bombard you with unwanted advertising? Worse yet, what if they're sending the data to government investigators, or to hackers who've figured out how to break into the system?
Thanks to Defense Tech for the tip.
''Why are you blocking the road?" the driver asks. ''Because you're going the wrong way," replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ''Your cargo told me so." It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn.
It's clever, all right -- and creepy. Because the technology needn't be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.
If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ''shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc." An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn't really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn't intend to pursue. Still, it's clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.
And it's not just IBM. A host of other companies are looking at ways to embed surveillance chips into practically everything we purchase -- and even into our bodies. It's a prospect that infuriates Harvard graduate student Katherine Albrecht.
''I think the shocking part is they've spent the past three years saying, oh no, we'd never do this," Albrecht said. But instead of taking their word for it, Albrecht and her colleague, former bank examiner Liz McIntyre, began reading everything they could find on the subject. Now they're serving up the scary results of their research in a scathing new book, ''Spychips."
That's Albrecht's preferred name for a technology called radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. If you use a Mobil Speedpass to pay for gasoline, you're already using RFID. Your Speedpass contains a microchip and a small antenna that allows it to broadcast information to a receiver. The chip has no power source of its own. Instead, it picks up radio signals from an RFID chip reader, turns these radio waves into electricity, and uses the power to broadcast data to the reader.
Because they need no batteries, RFID chips can be made small enough to attach invisibly to practically anything. One company is even working on a way to print RFID chips onto newspapers, using electrically conductive ink.
Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers.
''Spychips" reveals a US government plan to order RFID chips embedded in all cars sold in America. No big deal -- until you realize the police could then track your comings and goings by putting inexpensive RFID readers at key intersections.
Then there are the RFID pajamas from a California maker of children's clothing. It's a clever way to prevent kidnapping: Just put RFID readers in your home, to alert you if Junior's taking an unauthorized trip. It's easy to imagine parents buying into this idea, but they'll now have to install RFID readers in their homes. ''There's the nose in the camel's tent," said Albrecht. At first, companies will just scan your kids' jammies. But later they'll ask permission to scan the tags on your groceries and your clothes. The consulting company Accenture has patented a design that builds an RFID reader into a household medicine cabinet, to make sure you're taking all your medications.
There are countless applications for RFID, and viewed in isolation, some are downright appealing. It would be nice for the medicine cabinet to send you an e-mail -- ''Time to buy more Viagra."...
Speak for yourself, sir. Spam I have too much of. Viagra is not a drug for healthy people.
... But what if it's also sending that data to consumer marketing companies, eager to bombard you with unwanted advertising? Worse yet, what if they're sending the data to government investigators, or to hackers who've figured out how to break into the system?
Thanks to Defense Tech for the tip.
Monday, October 10, 2005
The Great Game: Why Halliburton Doesn't Care If the Poles Melt
[Bold emphasis mine]
CHURCHILL, Manitoba - It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming.
Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7.
By Mr. Broe's calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season.
With major companies and nations large and small adopting similar logic, the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Even before the polar ice began shrinking more each summer, countries were pushing into the frigid Barents Sea, lured by undersea oil and gas fields and emboldened by advances in technology. But now, as thinning ice stands to simplify construction of drilling rigs, exploration is likely to move even farther north.
Last year, scientists found tantalizing hints of oil in seabed samples just 200 miles from the North Pole. All told, one quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lies in the Arctic, according to the United States Geological Survey...
In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. But after challenges by other nations, including the United States, Russia sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather more geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first ship ever to do so...
Increasingly, big corporations, the eight countries with Arctic footholds and other nations farther south are betting on the possibility of a great transformation. Energy-hungry China has set up a research station on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and twice deployed its icebreaker Snow Dragon, which normally works in Antarctica, to northern waters to conduct climate research.
Interest in Arctic-hardy vessels has picked up so much that in January, Aker Finnyards, a giant shipbuilder based in Helsinki, created a subsidiary just to develop ice-hardened ships. Its new double-ended tanker slips smoothly through open water bow first but can spin around and use an icebreakerlike stern to smash through heavy floes. A Finnish energy company bought two for about $90 million apiece, and after buying one Russia licensed the design and is building two more.
In January, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research held a closed two-day meeting to hear from experts on the implications of a warming, opening Arctic...
Just like Bu$hCo, to try to classify something everyone else already knows.
Back to the story:
...A look at a map of the globe with the North Pole at its center explains why a new frontier matters. Some countries that one might think of as being half a world part appear as startlingly close neighbors, and relatively speaking, they are.
In the days of empire, Rudyard Kipling called jockeying among world powers in Central Asia the Great Game. Christopher Weafer, an energy analyst with Alfa Bank in Moscow, says this new Arctic rush is "the Great Game in a cold climate."
...Charlie Lean easily recalls when he realized that big changes were sweeping the fish stocks along the northern shores of Alaska.
Just over 10 years ago, when Mr. Lean was the state's fisheries manager for the northwest region, a call came in from the tiny Eskimo outpost of Kivalina, on the Chukchi Sea 150 miles northeast of the Bering Strait. A village elder was reporting "a massive fish kill" in the Wulik River, Mr. Lean said. Everyone assumed it was from some toxic spill upriver at the giant Red Dog zinc mine.
"I rounded up a plane and blasted off and flew up there," he said. "Flying overhead I could see right away it was the end of a pink salmon run. They were dying of natural causes as they always do once they spawn."
The elders had never seen a run of this salmon species. But they have shown up every year since.
The colonization of new rivers by pink salmon is just one of many changes in fish and crab stocks that appear linked to retreating sea ice and warming waters in the Chukchi Sea and, farther south, the Bering Sea. The changes are important because the Bering is rich with pollock, salmon, halibut and crab, already yielding nearly half of America's seafood catch and a third of Russia's.
Recent studies have projected that in a few decades there could be lucrative fishing grounds in waters that were largely untouched throughout human history.
In a 2002 report for the Navy on climate change and the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic Research Commission, a panel appointed by the president, concluded that species were moving north through the Bering Strait. "Climate warming is likely to bring extensive fishing activity to the Arctic, particularly in the Barents Sea and Beaufort-Chukchi region where commercial operations have been minimal in the past," the report said. "In addition, Bering Sea fishing opportunities will increase as sea ice cover begins later and ends sooner in the year."
...physical features matter enormously to nations seeking to expand their undersea territory under a murky clause, Article 76, in the Law of the Sea. With only fragments of the Arctic ever surveyed, by icebreaker or nuclear submarine, various countries are mounting new mapping expeditions to claim the most territory they can.
The exclusive economic zone controlled by a country generally extends 230 miles from its shores. But under Article 76, that zone can expand if a nation can convince other parties to the treaty that there is a "natural prolongation" of its continental shelf beyond that limit.
The shelf is the relatively shallow extension of a landmass to the point where the bottom drops into the oceanic abyss. But in many places, the drop-off is a gentle slope or is connected to long-submerged ridges that, if precisely mapped, might add thousands of square miles to a country's exploitable seabed.
Claims of expanded territory are being pursued the world over, but the Arctic Ocean is where experts foresee the most conflict. Only there do the boundaries of five nations - Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States - converge, the way sections of an orange meet at the stem. (The three other Arctic nations, Iceland, Sweden and Finland, do not have coasts on the ocean.)
"The area does get to be a bit crowded," said Peter Croker, chairman of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which assesses claims. It is composed of experts appointed by countries that ratified the treaty.
Disputes over overlapping claims must be worked out by the countries involved, but the commission weighs control over areas that would otherwise remain international waters.
Countries that ratified the treaty before May 13, 1999, have until May 13, 2009, to make claims. Other countries have 10 years from their date of ratification.
Russia adopted the treaty in 1997, and four years later laid claim to nearly half the Arctic Ocean. The commission's technical panel rejected the claim, and now Russia hopes the recent voyage of its research ship Akademik Fyodorov to the North Pole will yield mapping data in its favor.
In June, Denmark and Canada announced that they would conduct a joint surveying project of uncharted parts of the Arctic Ocean near their coasts.
Denmark is particularly interested in proving that a 1,000-mile undersea mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge, is linked geologically to Greenland, which is semiautonomous Danish territory. If it finds such a link, Denmark could make a case that the North Pole belongs to the Danes, Danish officials have said.
Canada could also claim a huge area, and then face challenges from the other Arctic nations. The United States could petition for a swath of Arctic seabed larger than California, according to rough estimates by Dr. Mayer and other scientists. But while the government financed Dr. Mayer's survey, it has not made a definitive move toward staking a claim.
American ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty has repeatedly been blocked by a small group of Republican senators, now led by Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. They say, among other things, that the treaty would infringe on American sovereignty.
In a Senate hearing last year, Mr. Inhofe said, "I'm very troubled about implications of this convention on our national security." The deadlock has persisted even though the Bush administration in 2002 described ratification of the Law of the Sea and four other treaties as an "urgent need."
Many proponents of the treaty, including the Pentagon, the American Petroleum Institute and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, say this paralysis leaves the United States on the sidelines while others carve up an ocean.
"We need to be in the game, at the table, talking about fisheries management, mineral extraction, freedom of navigation," said Adm. James D. Watkins, a retired chief of naval operations who is chairman of the United States Commission on Ocean Policy.
Mr. McCain said, "I think what it would require really is a hard push from the president."
Treaty or no, territorial disputes ultimately imply questions about a country's ability to defend its interests. Here, too, the United States has shown less urgency while Canada has acted more aggressively to ensure sovereignty over a fast-changing domain it had long neglected...
Once again, Poppy's son is a day late, a dollar short, and slow on the draw. All hat and no cattle, he takes a side on a treaty his own military tells him he's going to lose with. No wonder the Saudis love this guy.
Back to the story:
... The advantage of maritime shortcuts across the top of the world can be startling. For example, shipments from Murmansk to midcontinental North America by the well-worn route through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes to Thunder Bay, in western Ontario, typically take 17 days. The voyage from Murmansk to Churchill is only 8 days under good conditions, and from Churchill, rail links snake down through Manitoba, the American Midwest and points south all the way to Monterrey, Mexico.
For Murmansk, an extended shipping season in Arctic ports that are now frozen much of the year could mean a boon in traffic - to the west and, perhaps once again, to the Far East.
The city was once the anchor of the Soviet Union's Northern Sea Route, which stretched to nearly 3,500 miles to the rich nickel mines at Norilsk and on to newly established Arctic colonies at Dikson, Khatanga, Tiksi and Pevek before reaching the Bering Sea.
At its height, in 1987, more than seven million tons of cargo traversed the icy route. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the Northern Sea Route. Today it handles only 1.5 million tons.
The Murmansk Shipping Company, newly privatized, now uses its icebreakers for tourist cruises to the North Pole - $15,000 to $20,000 a ticket, depending on the cabin.
The same way an Arctic Bridge could drastically cut the distance to Canada, a revived Northern Sea Route could shorten the journey for goods and raw materials from Northeast Asia to Europe by 40 percent.
Vladimir M. Chlenov, the transportation minister from the Siberian republic of Sakha, a vast region that borders the Laptev Sea, envisions dozens of ships carrying gold, timber and other resources up the Lena River to the port of Tiksi, and from there through ice-free seas to Europe and Asia.
...some Canadian officials, eyeing what will happen in 20 years, say it is all the more justification for investing in the rebirth of Churchill.
"We're gearing up for the future," said Mr. Lemieux, the Manitoba transportation minister. "We look to be the gateway, the logistical hub of the world for circumpolar navigation."
A lucky winner would be Pat Broe, the American who bought the Port of Churchill in 1997 almost as an afterthought, for a token $10 Canadian. Looking to expand his railroad company, OmniTrax, he had already paid $11 million for 810 miles of denationalized tracks in Manitoba. He acquired the port at auction, figuring he would rather own it than have someone else use it as a "toll booth" for his railroad.
Mr. Broe, a private man, declined to be interviewed for this article.
Since his acquisitions, OmniTrax estimates it has spent $50 million modernizing the port to accommodate big ships carrying exports like grain and farm machinery to Murmansk, and incoming Russian products, including fertilizer and steel. By some hopeful estimates, Churchill's shipping season could eventually grow to 8 or even 10 months a year, compared with the current 4.
Michael J. Ogborn, OmniTrax's managing director, said he could see a future for Churchill when "the activity at the port will be as busy as an anthill, with machines, people, freight and ships at dock."
For now, though, there is a problem. While the port has continued to ship grain to Europe and North Africa, it is still waiting for its ship to come in - any ship from Russia, to demonstrate the advantages of the Arctic Bridge.
"There is still a huge marketing effort needed to educate shippers why they should ship through Churchill," Mr. Ogborn conceded.
And in an arena where sharp elbows are often the norm, there is great cooperation between Canada and Russia, not least through Russia's ambassador to Canada, Georgy E. Mamedov. A spreader of good will, the ambassador has even suggested using decommissioned nuclear submarines to transport cargo under the ice. On a visit to Churchill last year, he appointed his local driver honorary Russian consul, and stopped at the "jail" for polar bears that wander into town, laying his hand on the big black nose of one anesthetized inmate and addressing it fondly in Russian.
In the months since, Mr. Mamedov has talked ebulliently of the Arctic Bridge in meetings with Canadian officials, business groups and reporters. "Go to Churchill," he said in one interview. "Go there."
CHURCHILL, Manitoba - It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming.
Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7.
By Mr. Broe's calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season.
With major companies and nations large and small adopting similar logic, the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Even before the polar ice began shrinking more each summer, countries were pushing into the frigid Barents Sea, lured by undersea oil and gas fields and emboldened by advances in technology. But now, as thinning ice stands to simplify construction of drilling rigs, exploration is likely to move even farther north.
Last year, scientists found tantalizing hints of oil in seabed samples just 200 miles from the North Pole. All told, one quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lies in the Arctic, according to the United States Geological Survey...
In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. But after challenges by other nations, including the United States, Russia sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather more geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first ship ever to do so...
Increasingly, big corporations, the eight countries with Arctic footholds and other nations farther south are betting on the possibility of a great transformation. Energy-hungry China has set up a research station on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and twice deployed its icebreaker Snow Dragon, which normally works in Antarctica, to northern waters to conduct climate research.
Interest in Arctic-hardy vessels has picked up so much that in January, Aker Finnyards, a giant shipbuilder based in Helsinki, created a subsidiary just to develop ice-hardened ships. Its new double-ended tanker slips smoothly through open water bow first but can spin around and use an icebreakerlike stern to smash through heavy floes. A Finnish energy company bought two for about $90 million apiece, and after buying one Russia licensed the design and is building two more.
In January, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research held a closed two-day meeting to hear from experts on the implications of a warming, opening Arctic...
Just like Bu$hCo, to try to classify something everyone else already knows.
Back to the story:
...A look at a map of the globe with the North Pole at its center explains why a new frontier matters. Some countries that one might think of as being half a world part appear as startlingly close neighbors, and relatively speaking, they are.
In the days of empire, Rudyard Kipling called jockeying among world powers in Central Asia the Great Game. Christopher Weafer, an energy analyst with Alfa Bank in Moscow, says this new Arctic rush is "the Great Game in a cold climate."
...Charlie Lean easily recalls when he realized that big changes were sweeping the fish stocks along the northern shores of Alaska.
Just over 10 years ago, when Mr. Lean was the state's fisheries manager for the northwest region, a call came in from the tiny Eskimo outpost of Kivalina, on the Chukchi Sea 150 miles northeast of the Bering Strait. A village elder was reporting "a massive fish kill" in the Wulik River, Mr. Lean said. Everyone assumed it was from some toxic spill upriver at the giant Red Dog zinc mine.
"I rounded up a plane and blasted off and flew up there," he said. "Flying overhead I could see right away it was the end of a pink salmon run. They were dying of natural causes as they always do once they spawn."
The elders had never seen a run of this salmon species. But they have shown up every year since.
The colonization of new rivers by pink salmon is just one of many changes in fish and crab stocks that appear linked to retreating sea ice and warming waters in the Chukchi Sea and, farther south, the Bering Sea. The changes are important because the Bering is rich with pollock, salmon, halibut and crab, already yielding nearly half of America's seafood catch and a third of Russia's.
Recent studies have projected that in a few decades there could be lucrative fishing grounds in waters that were largely untouched throughout human history.
In a 2002 report for the Navy on climate change and the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic Research Commission, a panel appointed by the president, concluded that species were moving north through the Bering Strait. "Climate warming is likely to bring extensive fishing activity to the Arctic, particularly in the Barents Sea and Beaufort-Chukchi region where commercial operations have been minimal in the past," the report said. "In addition, Bering Sea fishing opportunities will increase as sea ice cover begins later and ends sooner in the year."
...physical features matter enormously to nations seeking to expand their undersea territory under a murky clause, Article 76, in the Law of the Sea. With only fragments of the Arctic ever surveyed, by icebreaker or nuclear submarine, various countries are mounting new mapping expeditions to claim the most territory they can.
The exclusive economic zone controlled by a country generally extends 230 miles from its shores. But under Article 76, that zone can expand if a nation can convince other parties to the treaty that there is a "natural prolongation" of its continental shelf beyond that limit.
The shelf is the relatively shallow extension of a landmass to the point where the bottom drops into the oceanic abyss. But in many places, the drop-off is a gentle slope or is connected to long-submerged ridges that, if precisely mapped, might add thousands of square miles to a country's exploitable seabed.
Claims of expanded territory are being pursued the world over, but the Arctic Ocean is where experts foresee the most conflict. Only there do the boundaries of five nations - Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States - converge, the way sections of an orange meet at the stem. (The three other Arctic nations, Iceland, Sweden and Finland, do not have coasts on the ocean.)
"The area does get to be a bit crowded," said Peter Croker, chairman of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which assesses claims. It is composed of experts appointed by countries that ratified the treaty.
Disputes over overlapping claims must be worked out by the countries involved, but the commission weighs control over areas that would otherwise remain international waters.
Countries that ratified the treaty before May 13, 1999, have until May 13, 2009, to make claims. Other countries have 10 years from their date of ratification.
Russia adopted the treaty in 1997, and four years later laid claim to nearly half the Arctic Ocean. The commission's technical panel rejected the claim, and now Russia hopes the recent voyage of its research ship Akademik Fyodorov to the North Pole will yield mapping data in its favor.
In June, Denmark and Canada announced that they would conduct a joint surveying project of uncharted parts of the Arctic Ocean near their coasts.
Denmark is particularly interested in proving that a 1,000-mile undersea mountain range, the Lomonosov Ridge, is linked geologically to Greenland, which is semiautonomous Danish territory. If it finds such a link, Denmark could make a case that the North Pole belongs to the Danes, Danish officials have said.
Canada could also claim a huge area, and then face challenges from the other Arctic nations. The United States could petition for a swath of Arctic seabed larger than California, according to rough estimates by Dr. Mayer and other scientists. But while the government financed Dr. Mayer's survey, it has not made a definitive move toward staking a claim.
American ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty has repeatedly been blocked by a small group of Republican senators, now led by Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma. They say, among other things, that the treaty would infringe on American sovereignty.
In a Senate hearing last year, Mr. Inhofe said, "I'm very troubled about implications of this convention on our national security." The deadlock has persisted even though the Bush administration in 2002 described ratification of the Law of the Sea and four other treaties as an "urgent need."
Many proponents of the treaty, including the Pentagon, the American Petroleum Institute and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, say this paralysis leaves the United States on the sidelines while others carve up an ocean.
"We need to be in the game, at the table, talking about fisheries management, mineral extraction, freedom of navigation," said Adm. James D. Watkins, a retired chief of naval operations who is chairman of the United States Commission on Ocean Policy.
Mr. McCain said, "I think what it would require really is a hard push from the president."
Treaty or no, territorial disputes ultimately imply questions about a country's ability to defend its interests. Here, too, the United States has shown less urgency while Canada has acted more aggressively to ensure sovereignty over a fast-changing domain it had long neglected...
Once again, Poppy's son is a day late, a dollar short, and slow on the draw. All hat and no cattle, he takes a side on a treaty his own military tells him he's going to lose with. No wonder the Saudis love this guy.
Back to the story:
... The advantage of maritime shortcuts across the top of the world can be startling. For example, shipments from Murmansk to midcontinental North America by the well-worn route through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes to Thunder Bay, in western Ontario, typically take 17 days. The voyage from Murmansk to Churchill is only 8 days under good conditions, and from Churchill, rail links snake down through Manitoba, the American Midwest and points south all the way to Monterrey, Mexico.
For Murmansk, an extended shipping season in Arctic ports that are now frozen much of the year could mean a boon in traffic - to the west and, perhaps once again, to the Far East.
The city was once the anchor of the Soviet Union's Northern Sea Route, which stretched to nearly 3,500 miles to the rich nickel mines at Norilsk and on to newly established Arctic colonies at Dikson, Khatanga, Tiksi and Pevek before reaching the Bering Sea.
At its height, in 1987, more than seven million tons of cargo traversed the icy route. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the Northern Sea Route. Today it handles only 1.5 million tons.
The Murmansk Shipping Company, newly privatized, now uses its icebreakers for tourist cruises to the North Pole - $15,000 to $20,000 a ticket, depending on the cabin.
The same way an Arctic Bridge could drastically cut the distance to Canada, a revived Northern Sea Route could shorten the journey for goods and raw materials from Northeast Asia to Europe by 40 percent.
Vladimir M. Chlenov, the transportation minister from the Siberian republic of Sakha, a vast region that borders the Laptev Sea, envisions dozens of ships carrying gold, timber and other resources up the Lena River to the port of Tiksi, and from there through ice-free seas to Europe and Asia.
...some Canadian officials, eyeing what will happen in 20 years, say it is all the more justification for investing in the rebirth of Churchill.
"We're gearing up for the future," said Mr. Lemieux, the Manitoba transportation minister. "We look to be the gateway, the logistical hub of the world for circumpolar navigation."
A lucky winner would be Pat Broe, the American who bought the Port of Churchill in 1997 almost as an afterthought, for a token $10 Canadian. Looking to expand his railroad company, OmniTrax, he had already paid $11 million for 810 miles of denationalized tracks in Manitoba. He acquired the port at auction, figuring he would rather own it than have someone else use it as a "toll booth" for his railroad.
Mr. Broe, a private man, declined to be interviewed for this article.
Since his acquisitions, OmniTrax estimates it has spent $50 million modernizing the port to accommodate big ships carrying exports like grain and farm machinery to Murmansk, and incoming Russian products, including fertilizer and steel. By some hopeful estimates, Churchill's shipping season could eventually grow to 8 or even 10 months a year, compared with the current 4.
Michael J. Ogborn, OmniTrax's managing director, said he could see a future for Churchill when "the activity at the port will be as busy as an anthill, with machines, people, freight and ships at dock."
For now, though, there is a problem. While the port has continued to ship grain to Europe and North Africa, it is still waiting for its ship to come in - any ship from Russia, to demonstrate the advantages of the Arctic Bridge.
"There is still a huge marketing effort needed to educate shippers why they should ship through Churchill," Mr. Ogborn conceded.
And in an arena where sharp elbows are often the norm, there is great cooperation between Canada and Russia, not least through Russia's ambassador to Canada, Georgy E. Mamedov. A spreader of good will, the ambassador has even suggested using decommissioned nuclear submarines to transport cargo under the ice. On a visit to Churchill last year, he appointed his local driver honorary Russian consul, and stopped at the "jail" for polar bears that wander into town, laying his hand on the big black nose of one anesthetized inmate and addressing it fondly in Russian.
In the months since, Mr. Mamedov has talked ebulliently of the Arctic Bridge in meetings with Canadian officials, business groups and reporters. "Go to Churchill," he said in one interview. "Go there."
Weather Report
Lambert sees this on his radar:
According to the Republican Playbook, the first step in privatizing is you always underfund and trash a government agency. Then, you can privatize the agency—and hand out the contracts to your contributors! Nice work if you can get it…
But you’d think the Republicans would have some stopping points; some ethical constraints; some limit where they’d say, “We can’t do this, it’s just not decent. Money’s one thing, but people’s lives could depend on this!”
But n-o-o-o-o-o!
After Katrina—or Andrew, for that matter—you’d think the Republicans, as the governing ruling party, would be doing their best to defend American citizens at risk from hurricanes. Think again:
While hurricanes relentlessly pound America’s coastlines, breakdowns in crucial weather-observing equipment are thwarting forecasters at the National Hurricane Center … a Miami Herald Investigation has found.
”It’s almost like we’re forecasting blind,” said Pablo Santos, who has pressed for years for more buoys as science officer at the National Weather Service’s Miami office, which supports the Hurricane Center during storms.
(Miami)
During Katrina, a smoking gun:
NOAA’s high-flying Gulfstream jet is … important because it swiftly relays information to forecasters about weather conditions in the environment around hurricanes. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, forecasters used the jet to resolve a complex steering flow pattern, and with dead-on precision, predicted Isabel’s North Carolina landfall. The Gulfstream is so effective that NOAA scientists say it has improved storm-track prediction in the computer models as much as 25 percent.
But the jet is budgeted to fly only 250 hours this season, not nearly enough to get a continuous read on shifty storms. In fact, as Katrina bore down on Florida on Aug. 25, researchers were riled over the Hurricane Center’s decision not to fly the jet in the hours before landfall.
”I didn’t want to break the bank,” [Hurricane Center Director Max] Mayfield, said.
Researcher Black said the reluctance to fly likely weakened the forecast. ”The jet,” he said, “might have made a difference.”
Beyond the Florida forecast, Mayfield acknowledges he may have been able to give New Orleans greater advance warning had the [Gulfstream] been flown more than once in the early stages of Katrina to detect steering currents.
It wasn’t until Aug. 26 — about 2 ½ days before the storm’s landfall — that New Orleans was included in the potential strike zone.
But how could this be? How could it be that nobody has brought this state of affairs to Dear Leader’s attention?
Going public with such problems would have consequences, said former Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank. ”Woe be to me if I phoned a senator,” said Frank, now a television meteorologist in Houston. ‘There was all this internal pressure. I wasn’t free to call and say, `We need more money down here.’ ”
A 2004 agency memo drives the point home: NOAA chief Conrad Lautenbacher told employees not to talk with lawmakers about budget issues without explicit approval, saying the agency must provide “a unified message.”
Mayfield, a 33-year NOAA employee, said he has been told repeatedly to work within the bureaucracy’s budget process. He’s chosen his words carefully, at times drawing criticism from some who say he should have been more outspoken.
”I could be fired,” Mayfield said.
And, as the Republicans like to remind us ad nauseum, actions have consequences:
”They didn’t have a chance with those bad forecasts,” said former Hurricane Center Director Jerry Jarrell, who retired in 2000. “It’s frustrating. You’re seeing people die because what you did was not good.”
Assuming The Clenis—isn’t to blame… Who could be?
Next summer in the height of hurricane season, one of NOAA’s hurricane hunter planes heads to Texas — to study air pollution.
And who’s at the forefront of the effort to privatize the National Weather Service? Why, our own Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum, of course! Small world….
With very small people. Who don't want the government warning you about things like hurricanes or tornados, either. Seems like the people get a little agitated about things like that, and the Department of Commerce says it's bad for business.
Forget the Weather Channel, go to the Weather Underground for the hard geek stuff anyway.
According to the Republican Playbook, the first step in privatizing is you always underfund and trash a government agency. Then, you can privatize the agency—and hand out the contracts to your contributors! Nice work if you can get it…
But you’d think the Republicans would have some stopping points; some ethical constraints; some limit where they’d say, “We can’t do this, it’s just not decent. Money’s one thing, but people’s lives could depend on this!”
But n-o-o-o-o-o!
After Katrina—or Andrew, for that matter—you’d think the Republicans, as the governing ruling party, would be doing their best to defend American citizens at risk from hurricanes. Think again:
While hurricanes relentlessly pound America’s coastlines, breakdowns in crucial weather-observing equipment are thwarting forecasters at the National Hurricane Center … a Miami Herald Investigation has found.
”It’s almost like we’re forecasting blind,” said Pablo Santos, who has pressed for years for more buoys as science officer at the National Weather Service’s Miami office, which supports the Hurricane Center during storms.
(Miami)
During Katrina, a smoking gun:
NOAA’s high-flying Gulfstream jet is … important because it swiftly relays information to forecasters about weather conditions in the environment around hurricanes. During Hurricane Isabel in 2003, forecasters used the jet to resolve a complex steering flow pattern, and with dead-on precision, predicted Isabel’s North Carolina landfall. The Gulfstream is so effective that NOAA scientists say it has improved storm-track prediction in the computer models as much as 25 percent.
But the jet is budgeted to fly only 250 hours this season, not nearly enough to get a continuous read on shifty storms. In fact, as Katrina bore down on Florida on Aug. 25, researchers were riled over the Hurricane Center’s decision not to fly the jet in the hours before landfall.
”I didn’t want to break the bank,” [Hurricane Center Director Max] Mayfield, said.
Researcher Black said the reluctance to fly likely weakened the forecast. ”The jet,” he said, “might have made a difference.”
Beyond the Florida forecast, Mayfield acknowledges he may have been able to give New Orleans greater advance warning had the [Gulfstream] been flown more than once in the early stages of Katrina to detect steering currents.
It wasn’t until Aug. 26 — about 2 ½ days before the storm’s landfall — that New Orleans was included in the potential strike zone.
But how could this be? How could it be that nobody has brought this state of affairs to Dear Leader’s attention?
Going public with such problems would have consequences, said former Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank. ”Woe be to me if I phoned a senator,” said Frank, now a television meteorologist in Houston. ‘There was all this internal pressure. I wasn’t free to call and say, `We need more money down here.’ ”
A 2004 agency memo drives the point home: NOAA chief Conrad Lautenbacher told employees not to talk with lawmakers about budget issues without explicit approval, saying the agency must provide “a unified message.”
Mayfield, a 33-year NOAA employee, said he has been told repeatedly to work within the bureaucracy’s budget process. He’s chosen his words carefully, at times drawing criticism from some who say he should have been more outspoken.
”I could be fired,” Mayfield said.
And, as the Republicans like to remind us ad nauseum, actions have consequences:
”They didn’t have a chance with those bad forecasts,” said former Hurricane Center Director Jerry Jarrell, who retired in 2000. “It’s frustrating. You’re seeing people die because what you did was not good.”
Assuming The Clenis—isn’t to blame… Who could be?
Next summer in the height of hurricane season, one of NOAA’s hurricane hunter planes heads to Texas — to study air pollution.
And who’s at the forefront of the effort to privatize the National Weather Service? Why, our own Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum, of course! Small world….
With very small people. Who don't want the government warning you about things like hurricanes or tornados, either. Seems like the people get a little agitated about things like that, and the Department of Commerce says it's bad for business.
Forget the Weather Channel, go to the Weather Underground for the hard geek stuff anyway.
No Hell Below Us, Above Us Only Sky
There is No God (And You Know It)
Sam Harris
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings.
The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheistdoes not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
This is an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto, to be published at www.truthdig.com in December.
Sam Harris
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings.
The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheistdoes not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
This is an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto, to be published at www.truthdig.com in December.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Beware of Presidents Who Drink Their Own Kool-Aid
For educational purposes only:
The Faith-Based President Defrocked
New York Times, The (NY)
October 9, 2005
Author: FRANK RICH
TO understand why the right is rebelling against Harriet Miers, don't waste time boning up on her glory days with the Texas Lottery Commission. The real story in this dust-up is not the Supreme Court candidate, but the man who picked her. The Miers nomination, whatever its fate, will be remembered as the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate American majority...
"The president's 'argument' for her amounts to: Trust me," George Will wrote in the op-ed column that last week galvanized conservative opposition to the nomination. He then went on to list several reasons why he doesn't trust Mr. Bush. As if to prove the point, the president went out to the Rose Garden and let loose with one whopper after another in his first press conference in four months...
BUT Mr. Bush's dissembling wasn't limited to his Supreme Court nominee. Asked how he was going to pay for Katrina recovery, the president twice said he'd proposed $187 billion in budget cuts over 10 years -- but failed to factor in his tax proposals and other budget increases. The real net total for proposed Bush cuts is $103 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and even less according to some independent number crunchers. Turning to Iraq, Mr. Bush once again fudged our "progress" there with a numerical bait-and-switch, bragging about "30 Iraqi battalions in the lead." (Translation: in the lead with American military support.) Less than a week earlier his own commanders had told Congress that the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting unaided had dropped from 3 to 1 since June. (Translation: 750 soldiers are now ready to stand up on their own should America's 140,000 troops stand down.) For good measure, Mr. Bush then flouted credibility one more time to set the stage for the next administration fiasco. In the event of a bird flu epidemic, he said, one option for effecting a quarantine would be to use the military. What military? Last week The Army Times reported that the Pentagon, its resources already overstretched by Iraq, would try to bolster sagging recruitment by tapping "a demographic long deemed off limits: high school dropouts who don't have a General Educational Development credential."
Like most Bush fictions, the latest are driven less by ideology than by a desire to hide incompetence. But there's a self-destructive impulse at work as well. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president told Brit Hume of Fox News two years ago. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Thus does the White House compound the sin of substituting propaganda for effective action by falling for the same spin it showers on the public.
Beware of leaders who drink their own Kool-Aid. The most distressing aspect of Mr. Bush's press conference last week was less his lies and half-truths than the abundant evidence that he is as out of touch as Custer was on the way to Little Bighorn. The president seemed genuinely shocked that anyone could doubt his claim that his friend is the best-qualified candidate for the highest court. Mr. Bush also seemed unaware that it was Republicans who were leading the attack on Ms. Miers. "The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," he said, confusing his antagonists this time much as he has Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Such naked presidential isolation from reality was a replay of his response to Hurricane Katrina. When your main "objective sources" for news are members of your own staff, you can actually believe that the most pressing tragedy of the storm is the rebuilding of Trent Lott's second home. You can even believe that Brownie will fix it. The truth only began to penetrate four days after the storm's arrival -- and only then, according to Newsweek, because an adviser, Dan Bartlett, asked the president to turn away from his usual "objective sources" and instead watch a DVD compilation of actual evening news reports.
Mr. Bartlett's one desperate effort to prick his boss's bubble notwithstanding, the White House as a whole is so addicted to its own mythmaking prowess that it can't kick the habit. Seventy-two hours before Ms. Miers was nominated, federal auditors from the Government Accountability Office declared that the administration had violated the law against "covert propaganda" when it repeatedly hired fake reporters (and one supposedly real pundit, Armstrong Williams) to plug its policies in faux news reports and editorial commentary produced at taxpayers' expense. But a bigger scandal is the legal propaganda that the White House produces daily even now -- or especially now.
As always, much of it pertains to the war in Iraq. On Sept. 28, to take one recent instance, the president announced the smiting of a man he identified as "the second most wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq" and the "top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad." As New York's Daily News would quickly report, the man in question "may not even be one of the top 10 or 15 leaders." The blogger Blogenlust chimed in, documenting 33 "top lieutenants" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been captured, killed or identified in the past two and a half years, with no deterrent effect on terrorist violence in Iraq, Madrid or London. No wonder the nation shrugged at the largely recycled and unsubstantiated list of 10 foiled Qaeda plots that Mr. Bush unveiled in Thursday's latest stay-the-course Iraq oration...
This Saturday is supposed to bring new victories on both these troubled fronts: Oct. 15 is the day that Iraqis vote on their constitution and the day that the president set as a deadline for all hurricane victims to be moved out of shelters. Chances are that the number of Americans who still have faith that the light is at the end of either of these tunnels is identical to the number who believe Harriet Miers is the second coming of Antonin Scalia and that Tom Cruise has found true love.
The Faith-Based President Defrocked
New York Times, The (NY)
October 9, 2005
Author: FRANK RICH
TO understand why the right is rebelling against Harriet Miers, don't waste time boning up on her glory days with the Texas Lottery Commission. The real story in this dust-up is not the Supreme Court candidate, but the man who picked her. The Miers nomination, whatever its fate, will be remembered as the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate American majority...
"The president's 'argument' for her amounts to: Trust me," George Will wrote in the op-ed column that last week galvanized conservative opposition to the nomination. He then went on to list several reasons why he doesn't trust Mr. Bush. As if to prove the point, the president went out to the Rose Garden and let loose with one whopper after another in his first press conference in four months...
BUT Mr. Bush's dissembling wasn't limited to his Supreme Court nominee. Asked how he was going to pay for Katrina recovery, the president twice said he'd proposed $187 billion in budget cuts over 10 years -- but failed to factor in his tax proposals and other budget increases. The real net total for proposed Bush cuts is $103 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and even less according to some independent number crunchers. Turning to Iraq, Mr. Bush once again fudged our "progress" there with a numerical bait-and-switch, bragging about "30 Iraqi battalions in the lead." (Translation: in the lead with American military support.) Less than a week earlier his own commanders had told Congress that the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting unaided had dropped from 3 to 1 since June. (Translation: 750 soldiers are now ready to stand up on their own should America's 140,000 troops stand down.) For good measure, Mr. Bush then flouted credibility one more time to set the stage for the next administration fiasco. In the event of a bird flu epidemic, he said, one option for effecting a quarantine would be to use the military. What military? Last week The Army Times reported that the Pentagon, its resources already overstretched by Iraq, would try to bolster sagging recruitment by tapping "a demographic long deemed off limits: high school dropouts who don't have a General Educational Development credential."
Like most Bush fictions, the latest are driven less by ideology than by a desire to hide incompetence. But there's a self-destructive impulse at work as well. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president told Brit Hume of Fox News two years ago. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Thus does the White House compound the sin of substituting propaganda for effective action by falling for the same spin it showers on the public.
Beware of leaders who drink their own Kool-Aid. The most distressing aspect of Mr. Bush's press conference last week was less his lies and half-truths than the abundant evidence that he is as out of touch as Custer was on the way to Little Bighorn. The president seemed genuinely shocked that anyone could doubt his claim that his friend is the best-qualified candidate for the highest court. Mr. Bush also seemed unaware that it was Republicans who were leading the attack on Ms. Miers. "The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," he said, confusing his antagonists this time much as he has Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Such naked presidential isolation from reality was a replay of his response to Hurricane Katrina. When your main "objective sources" for news are members of your own staff, you can actually believe that the most pressing tragedy of the storm is the rebuilding of Trent Lott's second home. You can even believe that Brownie will fix it. The truth only began to penetrate four days after the storm's arrival -- and only then, according to Newsweek, because an adviser, Dan Bartlett, asked the president to turn away from his usual "objective sources" and instead watch a DVD compilation of actual evening news reports.
Mr. Bartlett's one desperate effort to prick his boss's bubble notwithstanding, the White House as a whole is so addicted to its own mythmaking prowess that it can't kick the habit. Seventy-two hours before Ms. Miers was nominated, federal auditors from the Government Accountability Office declared that the administration had violated the law against "covert propaganda" when it repeatedly hired fake reporters (and one supposedly real pundit, Armstrong Williams) to plug its policies in faux news reports and editorial commentary produced at taxpayers' expense. But a bigger scandal is the legal propaganda that the White House produces daily even now -- or especially now.
As always, much of it pertains to the war in Iraq. On Sept. 28, to take one recent instance, the president announced the smiting of a man he identified as "the second most wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq" and the "top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad." As New York's Daily News would quickly report, the man in question "may not even be one of the top 10 or 15 leaders." The blogger Blogenlust chimed in, documenting 33 "top lieutenants" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been captured, killed or identified in the past two and a half years, with no deterrent effect on terrorist violence in Iraq, Madrid or London. No wonder the nation shrugged at the largely recycled and unsubstantiated list of 10 foiled Qaeda plots that Mr. Bush unveiled in Thursday's latest stay-the-course Iraq oration...
This Saturday is supposed to bring new victories on both these troubled fronts: Oct. 15 is the day that Iraqis vote on their constitution and the day that the president set as a deadline for all hurricane victims to be moved out of shelters. Chances are that the number of Americans who still have faith that the light is at the end of either of these tunnels is identical to the number who believe Harriet Miers is the second coming of Antonin Scalia and that Tom Cruise has found true love.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
"evidence the enemy is inside the U.S. perimeter"
Request for Domestic Covert Role Is Defended
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 8, 2005; Page A04
As part of the expanding counterterrorism role being taken on by the Pentagon, Defense Intelligence Agency covert operatives need to be able to approach potential sources in the United States without identifying themselves as government agents, George Peirce, the DIA's general counsel, said yesterday.
"This is not about spying on Americans," Peirce said in an interview in which he defended legislative language approved last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The provision would grant limited authority for DIA agents to clandestinely collect information about U.S. citizens or emigres in this country to help determine whether they could be recruited as sources of intelligence information.
"We are not asking for the moon," Peirce said. "We only want to assess their suitability as a source, person to person" and at the same time "protect the ID and safety of our officers." The CIA and the FBI already have such authority, he added, and the DIA needs it "to develop critical leads" because "there is more than enough work for all of us to do."
The legislative proposal has been controversial on Capitol Hill and has drawn criticism from groups concerned with privacy and civil liberties. The House's intelligence authorization bill, which passed in June, does not include the provision, which is similar to a proposal that was eliminated last year from the legislation.
The Senate intelligence panel approved the new authority for the DIA last week and forwarded it to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which reviews sections related to the Defense Department. One senior Armed Services Committee staff member said yesterday that the DIA provision "will get close review here."
"I'm pretty alarmed" by the proposal, said Timothy Edgar, the American Civil Liberties Union's national security policy counsel, saying it could conceivably be used by Pentagon intelligence officers "as a loophole to attend political or other meetings as part of an initial assessing contact."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Securities Studies, said the language in the Senate intelligence committee bill is part of a Pentagon effort to loosen already weak legal restrictions that "are meant to ensure that Americans' privacy is not threatened by Pentagon spying." Martin said she is concerned that the language was approved without hearings that could explore "the actual practices and necessity and justification for the program."
In the interview, Peirce said the new authority "would not be used very often and only on an exceptional basis." He pointed out there are requirements in the Senate committee language that the intelligence sought be "significant" and that it "cannot be reasonably obtained by overt means." It also dictates that collecting the information may not be undertaken "for the purpose of acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of any U.S. person."
Noting that there are large emigre and expatriate populations in the United States, Peirce described as a hypothetical case a situation in which the DIA learns that a new U.S. citizen is about to be visited by close relatives who are high-ranking officers in a foreign military service. To assess whether the new citizen would serve as a source of information obtained from the relatives, or even to attempt to recruit him, the DIA might feel that an open approach, in which an intelligence officer identifies himself as such, would not work. "We want to protect the identity and assess his willingness to help," he said.
The DIA and other Pentagon agencies are increasing their human intelligence activities in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and threats to U.S. military bases and facilities at home and abroad. Peirce said one reason the new authority is needed is that there is "evidence the enemy is inside the U.S. perimeter."
Indeed.
Although perhaps the Nemesis of the Republic, Democracy, and the Constitution of the United States is not the same entity Rumsfeld, Negroponte, or Cheney might name to their DynCorp mercenaries operating in the United States.
[Thanks to Lambert for the tip.]
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 8, 2005; Page A04
As part of the expanding counterterrorism role being taken on by the Pentagon, Defense Intelligence Agency covert operatives need to be able to approach potential sources in the United States without identifying themselves as government agents, George Peirce, the DIA's general counsel, said yesterday.
"This is not about spying on Americans," Peirce said in an interview in which he defended legislative language approved last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The provision would grant limited authority for DIA agents to clandestinely collect information about U.S. citizens or emigres in this country to help determine whether they could be recruited as sources of intelligence information.
"We are not asking for the moon," Peirce said. "We only want to assess their suitability as a source, person to person" and at the same time "protect the ID and safety of our officers." The CIA and the FBI already have such authority, he added, and the DIA needs it "to develop critical leads" because "there is more than enough work for all of us to do."
The legislative proposal has been controversial on Capitol Hill and has drawn criticism from groups concerned with privacy and civil liberties. The House's intelligence authorization bill, which passed in June, does not include the provision, which is similar to a proposal that was eliminated last year from the legislation.
The Senate intelligence panel approved the new authority for the DIA last week and forwarded it to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which reviews sections related to the Defense Department. One senior Armed Services Committee staff member said yesterday that the DIA provision "will get close review here."
"I'm pretty alarmed" by the proposal, said Timothy Edgar, the American Civil Liberties Union's national security policy counsel, saying it could conceivably be used by Pentagon intelligence officers "as a loophole to attend political or other meetings as part of an initial assessing contact."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Securities Studies, said the language in the Senate intelligence committee bill is part of a Pentagon effort to loosen already weak legal restrictions that "are meant to ensure that Americans' privacy is not threatened by Pentagon spying." Martin said she is concerned that the language was approved without hearings that could explore "the actual practices and necessity and justification for the program."
In the interview, Peirce said the new authority "would not be used very often and only on an exceptional basis." He pointed out there are requirements in the Senate committee language that the intelligence sought be "significant" and that it "cannot be reasonably obtained by overt means." It also dictates that collecting the information may not be undertaken "for the purpose of acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of any U.S. person."
Noting that there are large emigre and expatriate populations in the United States, Peirce described as a hypothetical case a situation in which the DIA learns that a new U.S. citizen is about to be visited by close relatives who are high-ranking officers in a foreign military service. To assess whether the new citizen would serve as a source of information obtained from the relatives, or even to attempt to recruit him, the DIA might feel that an open approach, in which an intelligence officer identifies himself as such, would not work. "We want to protect the identity and assess his willingness to help," he said.
The DIA and other Pentagon agencies are increasing their human intelligence activities in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and threats to U.S. military bases and facilities at home and abroad. Peirce said one reason the new authority is needed is that there is "evidence the enemy is inside the U.S. perimeter."
Indeed.
Although perhaps the Nemesis of the Republic, Democracy, and the Constitution of the United States is not the same entity Rumsfeld, Negroponte, or Cheney might name to their DynCorp mercenaries operating in the United States.
[Thanks to Lambert for the tip.]
Predictable Chaos
Often what appears chaotic depends on the template.
Tom Englehardt asks: has the Age of Chaos begun?
Much of this is spurred from an American Geophysical Union report highlighted by the Guardian:
...Satellite pictures show that the extent of Arctic sea ice this month dipped some 20% below the long term average for September - melting an extra 500,000 square miles, or an area twice the size of Texas. If current trends continue, the summertime Arctic Ocean will be completely ice-free well before the end of this century.
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the Colorado centre, said melting sea ice accelerates warming because dark-coloured water absorbs heat from the sun that was previously reflected back into space by white ice. "Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold. We could see changes in Arctic ice happening much sooner than we thought and that is important because without the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean we have to expect big changes in Earth's weather."
The Arctic sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent each September at the end of the summer melting season. On September 21 the mean sea ice extent dropped to 2.05m square miles, the lowest on record. This is the fourth consecutive year that melting has been greater than average and it pushed the overall decline in sea ice per decade to 8%, up from 6.5% in 2001.
Walt Meier, also at the Colorado centre, said: "Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It clearly indicates a downward trend, not just a short term anomaly."
Surface air temperatures across most of the Arctic Ocean have been 2-3C higher on average this year than from 1955 to 2004.
The notorious northwest passage through the Canadian Arctic from Europe to Asia - where entire expeditions were lost in earlier centuries as their crews battled thick ice and bitter cold - was completely open this summer, except for a 60 mile swath of scattered ice floes. The northeast passage, north of the Siberian coast, has been ice free since August 15.
Springtime melting in the Arctic has begun much earlier in recent years; this year it started 17 days earlier than expected. The winter rebound of ice, where sea water refreezes, has also been affected. Last winter's recovery was the smallest on record and the peak Arctic ice cover failed to match the previous year's level...
Just Sayin'.
Tom Englehardt asks: has the Age of Chaos begun?
Much of this is spurred from an American Geophysical Union report highlighted by the Guardian:
...Satellite pictures show that the extent of Arctic sea ice this month dipped some 20% below the long term average for September - melting an extra 500,000 square miles, or an area twice the size of Texas. If current trends continue, the summertime Arctic Ocean will be completely ice-free well before the end of this century.
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the Colorado centre, said melting sea ice accelerates warming because dark-coloured water absorbs heat from the sun that was previously reflected back into space by white ice. "Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold. We could see changes in Arctic ice happening much sooner than we thought and that is important because without the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean we have to expect big changes in Earth's weather."
The Arctic sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent each September at the end of the summer melting season. On September 21 the mean sea ice extent dropped to 2.05m square miles, the lowest on record. This is the fourth consecutive year that melting has been greater than average and it pushed the overall decline in sea ice per decade to 8%, up from 6.5% in 2001.
Walt Meier, also at the Colorado centre, said: "Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It clearly indicates a downward trend, not just a short term anomaly."
Surface air temperatures across most of the Arctic Ocean have been 2-3C higher on average this year than from 1955 to 2004.
The notorious northwest passage through the Canadian Arctic from Europe to Asia - where entire expeditions were lost in earlier centuries as their crews battled thick ice and bitter cold - was completely open this summer, except for a 60 mile swath of scattered ice floes. The northeast passage, north of the Siberian coast, has been ice free since August 15.
Springtime melting in the Arctic has begun much earlier in recent years; this year it started 17 days earlier than expected. The winter rebound of ice, where sea water refreezes, has also been affected. Last winter's recovery was the smallest on record and the peak Arctic ice cover failed to match the previous year's level...
Just Sayin'.
To the DINOcrat Leadership
A Blank Slate And A Crony
(posted Oct. 3 11:30 PM ET)
Bush, concluding that a right-wing nominee must have hidden views to get on the Supreme Court, followed the Roberts Model and put up Harriet Miers.
Yet the first 24 hours of the Miers nomination didn’t go as smoothly as the Roberts nomination, as elements of the conservative base expressed disappointment.
Does it mean that Miers isn’t as conservative as Roberts? Does it mean liberals should get behind Miers?
No, and No.
With Roberts, you had a nominee that was part of the Reagan Administration and was well known in the Beltway GOP Establishment – and yet, the Bushies still had to stroke the social conservatives far in advance of the nomination to ensure a smooth roll-out.
With Miers, they apparently tried to do similar advance outreach, putting her name out as a trial balloon.
But the base was eager to get an out-of-the-closet conservative, so they pushed hard for someone else.
Part of it is a lack of trust. They want to know for sure that the next judge won’t disappoint them like David Souter did.
The other part is they want to win on the merits. They want to win because the person has a right-wing judicial philosophy, not despite of it.
Because that will grease the path for the next generation of right-wing judges. They don’t want the best and brightest to feel obliged to refrain from writing down their views in order to succeed.
Bush obviously concluded differently, that going for an overt right-winger wasn’t a politically feasible option.
But he had a dearth of candidates like Roberts that lacked a paper trail and were pre-accepted by the base (despite Bush’s best efforts to stroke).
Of course, picking a real moderate judge does not serve the Bush/Rove vision.
They are thinking long-term GOP majority, and they have longed believe they need a strong base to get it.
Kicking the base in the teeth on its number one issue doesn’t help the cause.
Temporary agita? That's more palatable than a serious kick. The base's whining will fade once the judge starts voting on cases.
So he had no choice but to pick a conservative that lacked a paper trail. Miers was one of the few options available that fit the profile.
That just requires some post-nomination stroking so things don’t get totally out of hand.
(The stroking is in full effect, and is starting to work. During Fox News’ 6 PM show, Dr. James Dobson said “The more we know about her and find out about her, the more we are impressed with her” including “things I’m not prepared to talk about here.”)
And that’s why “disappointed base” does not equal “moderate judge.”
And should not equal “Dem support.”
Amazingly, the initial spasm of conservative consternation did to Miers what was not done not to Roberts, give her a bad first 24 hours.
Dems never got their footing against Roberts because they stood down during that critical period, while GOPers spun hard how “brilliant” Roberts was.
With Miers, both sides stood down on the spin war, and the line on Miers is “blank slate” and “crony.”
That “blank slate” frame is exactly what you need to defeat a stealth pick. The “crony” tag helps to drive home the importance of nominees with stellar records, not more of the Bush practice of picking political pals with no experience.
Dems and liberal activists got all that without even trying, despite just confirming a guy who was pretty much a blank slate.
But will they realize the gift that conservatives just gave them?
Doesn’t look like it.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid signaled his support for Miers in advance, for reasons that are not adequately explained.
And some liberals are already assuming that anything that right-wingers whine about must be good for us.
Without leadership at the top, and without energy from the grassroots, we will likely have the same floundering, ineffectual opposition that we saw in the Roberts process – if we have any opposition at all.
Some may say, so what? Miers is probably the best we can do. If we defeat Miers, whoever comes next would have to be worse.
This is faulty, short-sighted logic.
If there’s enough criticism coming from the left and right to sink the nominee (a coalition David Corn suggests putting together), Bush ends up in his weakest political position ever.
If he then feels compelled to pick an overt right-winger to rehab his base, then that pick can be beat with a unified Democratic party backed by public opinion, completely boxing Bush in – unable to get a stealth pick or a overt right-wing pick.
Dems then would have the political leverage to force a real moderate pick.
Of course, it is highly doubtful that there will be enough conservative opposition in the Senate, despite the whining from parts of the base, to block Miers in the first place.
The point is simply that a Miers defeat does not strengthen Bush’s ability to confirm an overt right-winger, so it is not dangerous to make that an ideal goal.
And there is a larger strategic goal as well.
To articulate to the public why this nomination is so important; how our workplaces, our environment and our privacy will be impacted by this one vote; and how Democrats and liberals would do a better job in shaping our judiciary and protecting our rights.
To stand down on Miers, as was done on Roberts, is to fail in explaining to the public what Democrats and liberals stand for.
(posted Oct. 3 11:30 PM ET)
Bush, concluding that a right-wing nominee must have hidden views to get on the Supreme Court, followed the Roberts Model and put up Harriet Miers.
Yet the first 24 hours of the Miers nomination didn’t go as smoothly as the Roberts nomination, as elements of the conservative base expressed disappointment.
Does it mean that Miers isn’t as conservative as Roberts? Does it mean liberals should get behind Miers?
No, and No.
With Roberts, you had a nominee that was part of the Reagan Administration and was well known in the Beltway GOP Establishment – and yet, the Bushies still had to stroke the social conservatives far in advance of the nomination to ensure a smooth roll-out.
With Miers, they apparently tried to do similar advance outreach, putting her name out as a trial balloon.
But the base was eager to get an out-of-the-closet conservative, so they pushed hard for someone else.
Part of it is a lack of trust. They want to know for sure that the next judge won’t disappoint them like David Souter did.
The other part is they want to win on the merits. They want to win because the person has a right-wing judicial philosophy, not despite of it.
Because that will grease the path for the next generation of right-wing judges. They don’t want the best and brightest to feel obliged to refrain from writing down their views in order to succeed.
Bush obviously concluded differently, that going for an overt right-winger wasn’t a politically feasible option.
But he had a dearth of candidates like Roberts that lacked a paper trail and were pre-accepted by the base (despite Bush’s best efforts to stroke).
Of course, picking a real moderate judge does not serve the Bush/Rove vision.
They are thinking long-term GOP majority, and they have longed believe they need a strong base to get it.
Kicking the base in the teeth on its number one issue doesn’t help the cause.
Temporary agita? That's more palatable than a serious kick. The base's whining will fade once the judge starts voting on cases.
So he had no choice but to pick a conservative that lacked a paper trail. Miers was one of the few options available that fit the profile.
That just requires some post-nomination stroking so things don’t get totally out of hand.
(The stroking is in full effect, and is starting to work. During Fox News’ 6 PM show, Dr. James Dobson said “The more we know about her and find out about her, the more we are impressed with her” including “things I’m not prepared to talk about here.”)
And that’s why “disappointed base” does not equal “moderate judge.”
And should not equal “Dem support.”
Amazingly, the initial spasm of conservative consternation did to Miers what was not done not to Roberts, give her a bad first 24 hours.
Dems never got their footing against Roberts because they stood down during that critical period, while GOPers spun hard how “brilliant” Roberts was.
With Miers, both sides stood down on the spin war, and the line on Miers is “blank slate” and “crony.”
That “blank slate” frame is exactly what you need to defeat a stealth pick. The “crony” tag helps to drive home the importance of nominees with stellar records, not more of the Bush practice of picking political pals with no experience.
Dems and liberal activists got all that without even trying, despite just confirming a guy who was pretty much a blank slate.
But will they realize the gift that conservatives just gave them?
Doesn’t look like it.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid signaled his support for Miers in advance, for reasons that are not adequately explained.
And some liberals are already assuming that anything that right-wingers whine about must be good for us.
Without leadership at the top, and without energy from the grassroots, we will likely have the same floundering, ineffectual opposition that we saw in the Roberts process – if we have any opposition at all.
Some may say, so what? Miers is probably the best we can do. If we defeat Miers, whoever comes next would have to be worse.
This is faulty, short-sighted logic.
If there’s enough criticism coming from the left and right to sink the nominee (a coalition David Corn suggests putting together), Bush ends up in his weakest political position ever.
If he then feels compelled to pick an overt right-winger to rehab his base, then that pick can be beat with a unified Democratic party backed by public opinion, completely boxing Bush in – unable to get a stealth pick or a overt right-wing pick.
Dems then would have the political leverage to force a real moderate pick.
Of course, it is highly doubtful that there will be enough conservative opposition in the Senate, despite the whining from parts of the base, to block Miers in the first place.
The point is simply that a Miers defeat does not strengthen Bush’s ability to confirm an overt right-winger, so it is not dangerous to make that an ideal goal.
And there is a larger strategic goal as well.
To articulate to the public why this nomination is so important; how our workplaces, our environment and our privacy will be impacted by this one vote; and how Democrats and liberals would do a better job in shaping our judiciary and protecting our rights.
To stand down on Miers, as was done on Roberts, is to fail in explaining to the public what Democrats and liberals stand for.
Lords of War
Statistics
* Value of Conventional Arms Transfers in 2004 (Deliveries, Worldwide): $34.75 billion
(Source: Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997-2004, Congressional Research Service, 29 August 2005)
* Top Five Arms Exporters (Worldwide, 2004)
o #1 - United States ($18.55 billion)
o #2 - Russia ($4.6 billion)
o #3 - France ($4.4 billion)
o #4 - United Kingdom ($1.9 billion)
(Source: Congressional Research Service)
* Authorized Small Arms Sales (Worldwide, Annual): $4 billion (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 100)
* Illicit Small Arms Sales (Worldwide, Annual): 10-20% of the total trade in small arms (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2001, p. 167-168)
* Number of Known Small Arms-Producing Countries (Worldwide, 2003): 92 (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 9)
* Number of Known Small Arms-Producing Companies (Worldwide, 2003): 1,249 (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 10)
America produces more small arms than every other country in the business, over half of those made every year.
That would be a stack of $100 bills over 9 miles high. Every year. For American companies alone.
Almost 80% of the arms sold are not authorized by any government, sold to private groups.
Almost 20% of the arms deals are illegal.
Terra'ism is a good business, and what's good for business is good for America, right?
* Value of Conventional Arms Transfers in 2004 (Deliveries, Worldwide): $34.75 billion
(Source: Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997-2004, Congressional Research Service, 29 August 2005)
* Top Five Arms Exporters (Worldwide, 2004)
o #1 - United States ($18.55 billion)
o #2 - Russia ($4.6 billion)
o #3 - France ($4.4 billion)
o #4 - United Kingdom ($1.9 billion)
(Source: Congressional Research Service)
* Authorized Small Arms Sales (Worldwide, Annual): $4 billion (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 100)
* Illicit Small Arms Sales (Worldwide, Annual): 10-20% of the total trade in small arms (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2001, p. 167-168)
* Number of Known Small Arms-Producing Countries (Worldwide, 2003): 92 (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 9)
* Number of Known Small Arms-Producing Companies (Worldwide, 2003): 1,249 (estimate)
(Source: Small Arms Survey 2004, p. 10)
America produces more small arms than every other country in the business, over half of those made every year.
That would be a stack of $100 bills over 9 miles high. Every year. For American companies alone.
Almost 80% of the arms sold are not authorized by any government, sold to private groups.
Almost 20% of the arms deals are illegal.
Terra'ism is a good business, and what's good for business is good for America, right?
Friday, October 07, 2005
May I Suggest RICO, Mr. Fitzgerald?
How Rotten Are These Guys?
By Robert Parry
October 5, 2005
The separation of the Bush political machine from organized crime is often like the thin layer of rock between a seemingly ordinary surface and volcanic activity rumbling below. Sometimes, the lava spews forth and the illusion of normalcy is shattered.
In the weeks ahead, a dangerous eruption is again threatening to shake the Bush family’s image of legitimacy, as the pressure from intersecting scandals builds.
So far, the mainstream news media has focused mostly on the white-collar abuses of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering corporate donations to help Republicans gain control of the Texas legislature, or on deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove for disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer to undercut her husband’s criticism of George W. Bush’s case for war in Iraq.
Both offenses represent potential felonies, but they pale beside new allegations linking business associates of star GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff – an ally of both DeLay and Rove – to the gangland-style murder of casino owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001.
These criminal cases also are reminders of George H.W. Bush’s long record of unsavory associations, including with a Nicaraguan contra network permeated by cocaine traffickers, Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s multi-million-dollar money-laundering operations, and anti-communist Cuban extremists tied to acts of international terrorism. [For details on these cases, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
Now, George W. Bush is faced with his own challenge of containing a rupture of scandals – involving prominent conservatives Abramoff, DeLay and potentially Rove – that have bubbled to the surface and are beginning to flow toward the White House.
Mobbed Up
On Sept. 27, 2005 – in possibly the most troubling of these cases – Fort Lauderdale police charged three men, including reputed Gambino crime family bookkeeper Anthony Moscatiello, with Boulis’s murder. Boulis was gunned down in his car on Feb. 6, 2001, amid a feud with an Abramoff business group that had purchased Boulis’s SunCruz casino cruise line in 2000.
As part of the murder probe, police are investigating payments that SunCruz made to Moscatiello, his daughter and Anthony Ferrari, another defendant in the Boulis murder case. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly collaborated with a third man, James Fiorillo, in the slaying. [For more on the case, see Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 28, 2005.]
The SunCruz deal also led to the August 2005 indictment of Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud over a $60 million loan for buying the casino company in 2000. Prosecutors allege that Abramoff and Kidan made a phony $23 million wire transfer as a fake down payment.
In pursuing the casino deal, the Abramoff-Kidan group got help, too, from DeLay and Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio, the Washington Post reported. Abramoff impressed one lender by putting him together with DeLay in Abramoff’s skybox at FedEx Field during a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys.
Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record criticizing Boulis and later praising the new Abramoff-Kidan ownership team. [Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2005]
After the SunCruz sale, tensions boiled over, as Boulis and Kidan got into a fistfight. Kidan claimed that Boulis threatened his life. Two months later, however, Boulis was the one who was shot to death when a car pulled up next to him and a gunman opened fire. Lawyers for Abramoff and Kidan say their clients know nothing about the murder.
Police, however, are investigating financial ties between the Abramoff-Kidan group and Moscatiello and Ferrari.
In a 2001 civil case, Kidan testified that he had paid $145,000 to Moscatiello and his daughter, Jennifer, for catering and other services, although court records show no evidence that quantities of food or drink were provided. SunCruz also paid Ferrari’s company, Moon Over Miami, $95,000 for surveillance services.
Kidan told the Miami Herald that the payments had no connection to the Boulis murder. “If I’m going to pay to have Gus killed, am I going to be writing checks to the killers?” Kidan asked. “I don’t think so. Why would I leave a paper trail?”
Kidan also said he was ignorant of Moscatiello’s past. In 1983, Moscatiello was indicted on heroin-trafficking charges along with Gene Gotti, brother of Gambino crime boss John Gotti. Though Gene Gotti and others were convicted, the charges against Moscatiello – identified by federal authorities as a former Gambino bookkeeper – were dropped.
White House Ties
Abramoff’s influence has reached into Bush’s White House, too, where chief procurement officer David H. Safavian resigned last month and then was arrested on charges of lying to authorities and obstructing a criminal investigation into Abramoff’s lobbying activities.
Rep. Ney and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed were among influential Republicans who joined Safavian and Abramoff on an infamous golf trip to Scotland in 2002. Safavian is a former lobbying partner of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, another pillar of right-wing politics in Washington and another longtime Abramoff friend. [Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2005]
Abramoff also has boasted of his influence with Bush’s top political adviser Karl Rove.
While helping the scandal-plagued conglomerate Tyco International Ltd. fend off new taxes and insure continued federal contracts, Abramoff cited his influence with Rove as well as powerful congressmen, including DeLay, according to a written statement by Tyco general counsel Timothy E. Flanigan.
Abramoff told Tyco officials that “he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove” about Tyco’s concerns, said Flanigan, who made the disclosures to the Senate during his confirmation hearing as Bush’s nominee to be deputy attorney general.
A White House spokesman said Rove had no recollection of a discussion with Abramoff about Tyco, but Rove’s personal assistant Susan Ralston had previously worked as Abramoff’s secretary. [Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2005]
College Republicans
The roots of these latest scandals reach back a quarter century to the early days of the Reagan Revolution. During that heady period for young conservatives, Abramoff and Norquist won control of the College Republicans organization in Washington, with Abramoff as chairman and Norquist as executive director.
In the book, Gang of Five, author Nina Easton wrote that the Abramoff-Norquist leadership transformed the College Republicans into a “right-wing version of a communist cell – complete with purges of in-house dissenters and covert missions to destroy the enemy left.”
Under Abramoff and Norquist, the College Republicans also allegedly began tapping into Rev. Moon’s mysterious well of nearly unlimited cash. In 1983, Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, then chairman of the GOP’s moderate Ripon Society, released a study saying the College Republican National Committee “solicited and received” money from Moon’s Unification Church in 1981.
Leach said the Korean-based Unification Church has “infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well.”
Before Leach could finish the press conference, Norquist disrupted the meeting with accusations that Leach was lying. For its part, Moon’s Washington Times dismissed Leach’s charges as “flummeries” and mocked the Ripon Society as a “discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party.”
To this day, largely through lavish spending on right-wing causes, Moon has made his cult-like movement a political powerhouse within conservative circles. However, evidence has continued to mount that Moon’s operation is a complex web of secretive businesses and groups that launder millions of dollars from suspicious sources in Asia and South America into the U.S. political system.
Moon has subsidized not only media outlets, such as the pro-Republican Washington Times, but conservative infrastructure, including direct-mail operations, think tanks and political conferences. Moon’s organization also has funneled money directly into the pockets of former President Bush and other leading politicians. [For details, see Secrecy & Privilege.]
Abramoff and Kidan, the co-defendants in the SunCruz fraud case, also became friends from their time with the College Republicans.
After leaving the College Republicans, Abramoff and Norquist moved over to a Reagan-support organization called Citizens for America, which sponsored a 1985 “summit meeting” of anti-communist “freedom fighters” from around the world.
The Nicaraguan contras – who were gaining a reputation for brutality, corruption and drug trafficking – were represented at the summit, as was Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, who was condemned by human rights groups for gross abuses, including widespread murders, rapes and mutilations.
As the Cold War was ending in 1989, Abramoff tried his hand at movie producing, churning out an anti-communist action thriller called “Red Scorpion,” which was subsidized by South Africa’s white-supremacist regime. [For details, see Salon.com’s “The Tale of Red Scorpion.”]
In Power
The Republican conquest of the U.S. Congress in 1994 gave Abramoff’s career another twist as he found himself in position to exploit his close ties to hard-line conservatives, such as DeLay and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Abramoff signed up with the lobbying firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds before moving to Greenberg Traurig.
Last year, on the tenth anniversary of the Republican takeover, conservative writer Andrew Ferguson lamented Abramoff’s key role in getting Republicans to forsake their rhetorical war on big government and corruption, in favor of dividing up the spoils.
“For 25 years Abramoff has been a key figure in the conservative movement that led to the 1994 Republican Revolution, which once promised ‘to drain the swamp’ in Washington, D.C.,” Ferguson wrote.
But instead, Abramoff became “the first Republican to discover that pretending to advance the interests of conservative small-government could, for a lobbyist, be as insanely lucrative as pretending to advance the interests of liberal big-government,” Ferguson wrote. “The way a winner knows he’s won is by cashing in his chips.”
Abramoff scored big by representing Indian tribes that needed political clout for their gambling operations.
Ferguson wrote, “Abramoff's ingenuity quickly earned him a reputation as the premier lobbyist for Indians in Washington – though he only worked for casino-owning tribes, who were, after all, the only ‘free market laboratories’ that could afford Washington lobbyists. He regularly arranged fact-finding trips for congressmen and their staffs to the casinos, especially those with golf courses.”
Branching out, Abramoff represented the textile industry in the Marianas islands, a U.S. protectorate that could stick “Made in the USA” labels on clothing produced in sweatshops free from U.S. labor regulations. Abramoff flew in congressmen for tours and a chance to play golf at a scenic course. DeLay was so impressed that he hailed the islands as “a perfect Petri dish of capitalism.” [Weekly Standard, Dec. 20, 2004]
Abramoff had learned the flexible ethics of Washington politics during the final days of the Cold War when ideology justified rubbing shoulders with corrupt “freedom fighters.” But he and his legion of protégés managed to adapt those dubious lessons to the “free market” era of Republican rule.
The end result has been a noxious “crony capitalism” that has seeped into nearly all U.S. government policies, from the War on Terror to the Iraq War to the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.
Now the ground under George W. Bush and the Republican congressional majority is beginning to shake as fissures crack the surface, warning of a volcanic eruption that could transform the political landscape of Washington.
We can only hope.
Thanks to the farmer for the heads up.
By Robert Parry
October 5, 2005
The separation of the Bush political machine from organized crime is often like the thin layer of rock between a seemingly ordinary surface and volcanic activity rumbling below. Sometimes, the lava spews forth and the illusion of normalcy is shattered.
In the weeks ahead, a dangerous eruption is again threatening to shake the Bush family’s image of legitimacy, as the pressure from intersecting scandals builds.
So far, the mainstream news media has focused mostly on the white-collar abuses of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering corporate donations to help Republicans gain control of the Texas legislature, or on deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove for disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer to undercut her husband’s criticism of George W. Bush’s case for war in Iraq.
Both offenses represent potential felonies, but they pale beside new allegations linking business associates of star GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff – an ally of both DeLay and Rove – to the gangland-style murder of casino owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001.
These criminal cases also are reminders of George H.W. Bush’s long record of unsavory associations, including with a Nicaraguan contra network permeated by cocaine traffickers, Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s multi-million-dollar money-laundering operations, and anti-communist Cuban extremists tied to acts of international terrorism. [For details on these cases, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
Now, George W. Bush is faced with his own challenge of containing a rupture of scandals – involving prominent conservatives Abramoff, DeLay and potentially Rove – that have bubbled to the surface and are beginning to flow toward the White House.
Mobbed Up
On Sept. 27, 2005 – in possibly the most troubling of these cases – Fort Lauderdale police charged three men, including reputed Gambino crime family bookkeeper Anthony Moscatiello, with Boulis’s murder. Boulis was gunned down in his car on Feb. 6, 2001, amid a feud with an Abramoff business group that had purchased Boulis’s SunCruz casino cruise line in 2000.
As part of the murder probe, police are investigating payments that SunCruz made to Moscatiello, his daughter and Anthony Ferrari, another defendant in the Boulis murder case. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly collaborated with a third man, James Fiorillo, in the slaying. [For more on the case, see Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 28, 2005.]
The SunCruz deal also led to the August 2005 indictment of Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, on charges of conspiracy and wire fraud over a $60 million loan for buying the casino company in 2000. Prosecutors allege that Abramoff and Kidan made a phony $23 million wire transfer as a fake down payment.
In pursuing the casino deal, the Abramoff-Kidan group got help, too, from DeLay and Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio, the Washington Post reported. Abramoff impressed one lender by putting him together with DeLay in Abramoff’s skybox at FedEx Field during a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys.
Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record criticizing Boulis and later praising the new Abramoff-Kidan ownership team. [Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2005]
After the SunCruz sale, tensions boiled over, as Boulis and Kidan got into a fistfight. Kidan claimed that Boulis threatened his life. Two months later, however, Boulis was the one who was shot to death when a car pulled up next to him and a gunman opened fire. Lawyers for Abramoff and Kidan say their clients know nothing about the murder.
Police, however, are investigating financial ties between the Abramoff-Kidan group and Moscatiello and Ferrari.
In a 2001 civil case, Kidan testified that he had paid $145,000 to Moscatiello and his daughter, Jennifer, for catering and other services, although court records show no evidence that quantities of food or drink were provided. SunCruz also paid Ferrari’s company, Moon Over Miami, $95,000 for surveillance services.
Kidan told the Miami Herald that the payments had no connection to the Boulis murder. “If I’m going to pay to have Gus killed, am I going to be writing checks to the killers?” Kidan asked. “I don’t think so. Why would I leave a paper trail?”
Kidan also said he was ignorant of Moscatiello’s past. In 1983, Moscatiello was indicted on heroin-trafficking charges along with Gene Gotti, brother of Gambino crime boss John Gotti. Though Gene Gotti and others were convicted, the charges against Moscatiello – identified by federal authorities as a former Gambino bookkeeper – were dropped.
White House Ties
Abramoff’s influence has reached into Bush’s White House, too, where chief procurement officer David H. Safavian resigned last month and then was arrested on charges of lying to authorities and obstructing a criminal investigation into Abramoff’s lobbying activities.
Rep. Ney and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed were among influential Republicans who joined Safavian and Abramoff on an infamous golf trip to Scotland in 2002. Safavian is a former lobbying partner of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, another pillar of right-wing politics in Washington and another longtime Abramoff friend. [Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2005]
Abramoff also has boasted of his influence with Bush’s top political adviser Karl Rove.
While helping the scandal-plagued conglomerate Tyco International Ltd. fend off new taxes and insure continued federal contracts, Abramoff cited his influence with Rove as well as powerful congressmen, including DeLay, according to a written statement by Tyco general counsel Timothy E. Flanigan.
Abramoff told Tyco officials that “he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove” about Tyco’s concerns, said Flanigan, who made the disclosures to the Senate during his confirmation hearing as Bush’s nominee to be deputy attorney general.
A White House spokesman said Rove had no recollection of a discussion with Abramoff about Tyco, but Rove’s personal assistant Susan Ralston had previously worked as Abramoff’s secretary. [Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2005]
College Republicans
The roots of these latest scandals reach back a quarter century to the early days of the Reagan Revolution. During that heady period for young conservatives, Abramoff and Norquist won control of the College Republicans organization in Washington, with Abramoff as chairman and Norquist as executive director.
In the book, Gang of Five, author Nina Easton wrote that the Abramoff-Norquist leadership transformed the College Republicans into a “right-wing version of a communist cell – complete with purges of in-house dissenters and covert missions to destroy the enemy left.”
Under Abramoff and Norquist, the College Republicans also allegedly began tapping into Rev. Moon’s mysterious well of nearly unlimited cash. In 1983, Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, then chairman of the GOP’s moderate Ripon Society, released a study saying the College Republican National Committee “solicited and received” money from Moon’s Unification Church in 1981.
Leach said the Korean-based Unification Church has “infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well.”
Before Leach could finish the press conference, Norquist disrupted the meeting with accusations that Leach was lying. For its part, Moon’s Washington Times dismissed Leach’s charges as “flummeries” and mocked the Ripon Society as a “discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party.”
To this day, largely through lavish spending on right-wing causes, Moon has made his cult-like movement a political powerhouse within conservative circles. However, evidence has continued to mount that Moon’s operation is a complex web of secretive businesses and groups that launder millions of dollars from suspicious sources in Asia and South America into the U.S. political system.
Moon has subsidized not only media outlets, such as the pro-Republican Washington Times, but conservative infrastructure, including direct-mail operations, think tanks and political conferences. Moon’s organization also has funneled money directly into the pockets of former President Bush and other leading politicians. [For details, see Secrecy & Privilege.]
Abramoff and Kidan, the co-defendants in the SunCruz fraud case, also became friends from their time with the College Republicans.
After leaving the College Republicans, Abramoff and Norquist moved over to a Reagan-support organization called Citizens for America, which sponsored a 1985 “summit meeting” of anti-communist “freedom fighters” from around the world.
The Nicaraguan contras – who were gaining a reputation for brutality, corruption and drug trafficking – were represented at the summit, as was Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, who was condemned by human rights groups for gross abuses, including widespread murders, rapes and mutilations.
As the Cold War was ending in 1989, Abramoff tried his hand at movie producing, churning out an anti-communist action thriller called “Red Scorpion,” which was subsidized by South Africa’s white-supremacist regime. [For details, see Salon.com’s “The Tale of Red Scorpion.”]
In Power
The Republican conquest of the U.S. Congress in 1994 gave Abramoff’s career another twist as he found himself in position to exploit his close ties to hard-line conservatives, such as DeLay and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Abramoff signed up with the lobbying firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds before moving to Greenberg Traurig.
Last year, on the tenth anniversary of the Republican takeover, conservative writer Andrew Ferguson lamented Abramoff’s key role in getting Republicans to forsake their rhetorical war on big government and corruption, in favor of dividing up the spoils.
“For 25 years Abramoff has been a key figure in the conservative movement that led to the 1994 Republican Revolution, which once promised ‘to drain the swamp’ in Washington, D.C.,” Ferguson wrote.
But instead, Abramoff became “the first Republican to discover that pretending to advance the interests of conservative small-government could, for a lobbyist, be as insanely lucrative as pretending to advance the interests of liberal big-government,” Ferguson wrote. “The way a winner knows he’s won is by cashing in his chips.”
Abramoff scored big by representing Indian tribes that needed political clout for their gambling operations.
Ferguson wrote, “Abramoff's ingenuity quickly earned him a reputation as the premier lobbyist for Indians in Washington – though he only worked for casino-owning tribes, who were, after all, the only ‘free market laboratories’ that could afford Washington lobbyists. He regularly arranged fact-finding trips for congressmen and their staffs to the casinos, especially those with golf courses.”
Branching out, Abramoff represented the textile industry in the Marianas islands, a U.S. protectorate that could stick “Made in the USA” labels on clothing produced in sweatshops free from U.S. labor regulations. Abramoff flew in congressmen for tours and a chance to play golf at a scenic course. DeLay was so impressed that he hailed the islands as “a perfect Petri dish of capitalism.” [Weekly Standard, Dec. 20, 2004]
Abramoff had learned the flexible ethics of Washington politics during the final days of the Cold War when ideology justified rubbing shoulders with corrupt “freedom fighters.” But he and his legion of protégés managed to adapt those dubious lessons to the “free market” era of Republican rule.
The end result has been a noxious “crony capitalism” that has seeped into nearly all U.S. government policies, from the War on Terror to the Iraq War to the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.
Now the ground under George W. Bush and the Republican congressional majority is beginning to shake as fissures crack the surface, warning of a volcanic eruption that could transform the political landscape of Washington.
We can only hope.
Thanks to the farmer for the heads up.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Another Front in the War on Terra
Dear Leader apparently gave a stock speech today of the usual fear mongering sort. It was both a prelude for the later announcement (once again) that the Terra'ists are gonna hit New York and a follow-up of the announcement that a lot of folks just might die of the H5N1 flu this year.
Riggsveda does a factual and thorough job discussing what the bird flu is and what it all means.
The Good News: there is a Vaccine.
The Bad News: the Rabble may not get it, since the Federal government is having trouble with the contractors producing even its’ routine vaccine [thanks, Quiddity ].
You can count on Dear Leader, Jenna, and Babs getting the Vaccine, certainly.
Notice Bu$hCo is already trying to get power to “Quarantine” an infected area.
The Cheneyburton never heard of Terra it couldn't exploit for its own agenda.
Obviosuly you can't fight a virus with a gun, but you can count on these people to try it.
If you're one of the Rabble, consider that there are several good things you can do:
1) Get a flu shot if they become available. Even if the most dangerous H5N1 strain isn't covered by the shot, and you do contract it, it will keep you from contracting the other (currently) more common strains. And that might just save your life.
2) Take regular vitamin supplements, particularly those rich in vitamins C, E, and flavonoids, which can keep you healthy and repairing damage the virus and your rattled immune system might do to you.
3) Pay attention to what the doctors say. Wash your hands. Stay active all winter outside as much as you can. Watch who you kiss, what you kiss, and when you kiss it.
4) Consider antivirals. If you can afford them. Keep enough anti-inflammatories and fruit juice or an electrolyte supplement on hand in case you're sick and can't get out of the house for a couple of weeks. Enough for you AND your family. Keep a stock of aspirin- I remember meeting old timers who swore that aspirin was what kept them alive in the pandemic of 1918.
5) Consider flavonoid supplements (like quercetin). These can be toxic if overdone, but may be effective in blocking oxidative damage in acute inflammation. Since much of the damage in influenza is due to your body's own over-reaction, these may have a therapeutic basis. These compounds are also found in green tea.
6) Don't let yourself be talked into moving into the Superdome for shelter this winter if they turn off your heat.
You're really better off roughing it on your own.
Riggsveda does a factual and thorough job discussing what the bird flu is and what it all means.
The Good News: there is a Vaccine.
The Bad News: the Rabble may not get it, since the Federal government is having trouble with the contractors producing even its’ routine vaccine [thanks, Quiddity ].
You can count on Dear Leader, Jenna, and Babs getting the Vaccine, certainly.
Notice Bu$hCo is already trying to get power to “Quarantine” an infected area.
The Cheneyburton never heard of Terra it couldn't exploit for its own agenda.
Obviosuly you can't fight a virus with a gun, but you can count on these people to try it.
If you're one of the Rabble, consider that there are several good things you can do:
1) Get a flu shot if they become available. Even if the most dangerous H5N1 strain isn't covered by the shot, and you do contract it, it will keep you from contracting the other (currently) more common strains. And that might just save your life.
2) Take regular vitamin supplements, particularly those rich in vitamins C, E, and flavonoids, which can keep you healthy and repairing damage the virus and your rattled immune system might do to you.
3) Pay attention to what the doctors say. Wash your hands. Stay active all winter outside as much as you can. Watch who you kiss, what you kiss, and when you kiss it.
4) Consider antivirals. If you can afford them. Keep enough anti-inflammatories and fruit juice or an electrolyte supplement on hand in case you're sick and can't get out of the house for a couple of weeks. Enough for you AND your family. Keep a stock of aspirin- I remember meeting old timers who swore that aspirin was what kept them alive in the pandemic of 1918.
5) Consider flavonoid supplements (like quercetin). These can be toxic if overdone, but may be effective in blocking oxidative damage in acute inflammation. Since much of the damage in influenza is due to your body's own over-reaction, these may have a therapeutic basis. These compounds are also found in green tea.
6) Don't let yourself be talked into moving into the Superdome for shelter this winter if they turn off your heat.
You're really better off roughing it on your own.
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