[click image]... if we had any left.
07 June 2009
eagleton mops the floor with dawkins and hitchens
[click image]I am finding this series of lectures riveting, and not just because I'm having so much trouble hearing him. I don't know if you have limitations similar to mine at your desk, but I found that the best way to hear him since I have no external speakers and can't get the volume up any higher, was to go take the links from the Yale site and link them such that the newest version of Real Player will play the lectures. Seems to work much better sound-wise that way. Plus, when you get them from the Yale links you get to hear him in Q&A after each.
I don't know. He speaks sort of softly and mumbly and it clashes with the white noise from the waterfall not far out my window and it was a problem for me. So it was really worth my trouble to optimize this however I could. If you find yourself similarly handicapped, try using the links I made here.
It's really worth all the hours of listening carefully. He just creams them, especially Dawkins, who really is completely insufferable on the subject of religion, thoroughly obnoxious, so bad it almost puts me off my admiration for The Selfish Gene, and that's hard to do. This is an extremely worthwhile exercise in patience and attention because it is forever smacking us in the face, this polemic between religion and atheism, and religion and religion, and science and superstition, and, personally, I became terrified by Obama's address in Cairo in part because of how much religious mumbo-jumbo was in it. So Terry Eagleton is doing the most outstanding job of putting all these consequential squabbles in their proper perspective. Truly, it's well worth your time.
If anyone knows how to put these lectures into mp3 form so I can listen on my iTunes, where I have vastly better control of the volume, I would LOVE that. I feel as though I'm still missing chunks of it, even having succeeded in making a way with better sound. Anyway, already you have three options for it, any of which might do, depending on your hearing and your hardware and your background noise levels....
no, really, this is extremely serious
[click image]I know I already posted most of this, but it needs scrutinizing. It needs beating off the mindscapes of the sentators and president involved. It is in outright breach of their oaths of office. Outright. Naked. Not to be borne.
I'm suffering from some digestive insurgency today and running to the bathroom and clutching my waste basket to my breast in case I puke... so I think I done et something not so good for me. I believe it will pass, so to speak, soon, but, well, ugh, I don't feel so good. Otherwise, I'd linger here and scream some more. Maybe I'll come back and do it when I feel a little stronger.
06 June 2009
i love this haircut
[click image]Point being: Women don't look like this without unremitting work. So unless you feel you simply must look like Gwyneth Paltrow, you should figure out what is the right size and tone for your feeling of wellbeing, and do what it takes. The other point being: You don't lose weight and become fit without actually taking charge of what you eat and actually maintaining enough activity for strength and wellness.
restless natives
[click image]The Russian people are not taking this "recession" very well. There are again rumors of massive protests, but no confirmation from reliable sources on that front. The UK press is even more rabid against them than sources in the US. I made the rounds of all my not pro-Putin translation sources and don't see anything about protests. Grousing, yes; protests, no. The CFR is calling this move by Putin theater for the masses. If you choose to believe that, okay, but, damn, wouldn't it be nice if Obummer were doing a little of this kind of "theater"?
How about if he'd have called, say, Tim Geithner a "cockroach" instead of hiring him?
I'm sorry. Putin is fifty times better in statesmanship.
are we just paranoid, now, or reading the writing on the wall?
[click image]And why aren't I hearing more about the problem of putting a sixth Catholic on the Supremes?
I'm getting the willies.
marja-leena is back from her trip bearing gifts
[click image]I'm warm for this guy. I'm warm for museums. I too am torn about the provenance of their artifacts, but it can't overcome my love of communing with them. There are good arguments on either side of the issue, and it's true that nothing can be preserved forever, against everything, but insofar as we have been able, whether in its rightful place or not, I would love to spend the rest of my life wandering through the great museums of the world.
stain removal
[click image]We could fill the oceans with whitewash and this stain could not be removed.
you know, i just said this the other day
[click image]Only not nearly as clearly.... I have this problem of a baseline assumption that you grok this stuff already, and that isn't always necessarily true. Maybe not even usually. If not, I'm sorry. I have this awful handicap sometimes referred to as "a finely tuned high performance vehicle with a loose steering wheel"... to wit: me.
i think this is trumped up to screw with lifting the embargo
[click image]The timing is too creepy, and it looks very low key and like something they were going to ignore until they found a reason not to ignore it anymore. Don't forget those exiled Cuban oligarchs are pretty powerful and can't be liking the warming of relations.
05 June 2009
i wrote this over a year ago
[click image]It's much worse now. He's completely dotty and has bad problems with movement and balance. We're hoping L-dopa will give him back some ability to get in and out of bed and get the fork to his mouth, but it's not looking good.
obama: old wine in a new bottle
[click image, video 16 minutes]I WISH HE'D HAD THE WHOLE HOUR.
It's the job of experienced, knowledgeable investigative reporters to throw a monkey wrench into the spin machine and try to make some sense of all this. They're an endangered species, but one of the best in the business is Jeremy Scahill, who's been digging into Pentagon documents and thick congressional hearings for several years now. He's twice winner of the George Polk Award for special achievement in journalism, and author of this best selling book, BLACKWATER: THE RISE OF THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MERCENARY ARMY. Jeremy now runs the new Web site, RebelReports. Jeremy Scahill, welcome back to the JOURNAL...
JEREMY SCAHILL: It's great to be with you Bill.
BILL MOYERS: How do explain this spike in private contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world, but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era. Right now there are 250 thousand contractors fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's about 50 percent of the total US fighting force. Which is very similar to what it was under Bush. In Iraq, President Obama has 130 thousand contractors. And we just saw a 23 percent increase in the number of armed contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan there's been a 29 percent increase in armed contractors. So the radical privatization of war continues unabated under Barack Obama.
Having said that, when Barack Obama was in the Senate he was one of the only people that was willing to take up this issue. And he put forward what became the leading legislation on the part of the Democrats to reform the contracting industry. And I give him credit for doing that. Because he saw this as an important issue before a lot of other political figures. And spoke up at a time when a lot of people were deafeningly silent on this issue. I've been critical of Obama's position on this because I think that he accepts what I think is a fundamental lie. That we should have a system where corporations are allowed to benefit off of warfare. And President Obama has carried on a policy where he has tried to implement greater accountability structures. We now know, in a much clearer way than we did under Bush, how many contractors we have on the battlefield. He's attempted to implement some form of rules governing contractors. And it has suggested that there should be greater accountability when they do commit crimes.
All of these things are a step in the right direction. But, ultimately, I think that we have to look to what Jan Schakowsky, the congresswoman from Illinois, says. We can no longer allow these individuals to perform what are inherently governmental functions. And that includes carrying a weapon on U.S. battlefields. And that's certainly not where President Obama is right now.
BILL MOYERS: But many people will say of course, the truth, which is he inherited a quagmire from the Bush administration. What's he to do?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, there's no question that Obama inherited an absolute mess from President Bush. But the reality is that Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan right now. And is maintaining the occupation of Iraq. If Obama was serious about fully ending the occupation of Iraq, he wouldn't allow the U.S. to have a colonial fortress that they're passing off as an embassy in Baghdad. Bill, this place is the size of 80 football fields. Who do you think is going to run the security operation for this 80 football field sized embassy? Well, it's mercenary contractors.
BILL MOYERS: So we're supposed to be withdrawing from Iraq. But you're suggesting, in all that you've written, that I've read lately, that we will be leaving a large mercenary force there.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Absolutely. In fact, you're going to have a sizable presence, not only of U.S. forces, certainly in the region, but also in Iraq. These residual forces... I mean, Bill, you remember, during Vietnam, the people who were classified as military advisors. Or analysts. And, in reality, the U.S. was fighting an undeclared war. So, in Iraq, I think that we've seen reports from Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News' Pentagon correspondent. He's quoting military sources saying that they expect to be in Iraq 15 to 20 years in sizable numbers. Afghanistan, though, really is going to become Obama's war. And, unfortunately, many Democrats are portraying it as the good war.
BILL MOYERS: Let me show you a snippet of what he said in Cairo on Thursday. Take a look:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Make no mistake. We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, we have two parallel realities here. We have the speeches of President Obama. I'm not questioning his sincerity. And then you have the sort of official punditry that's allowed access to the corporate media. And they have one debate. On the ground though, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you hear the stories of the people that are forced to live on the other side of the barrel of the gun that is U.S. foreign policy. And you get a very different sense. If the United States, as President Obama says, doesn't want a permanent presence in Afghanistan, why allocate a billion dollars to build this fortress like embassy, similar to the one in Baghdad, in Islamabad, Pakistan? Another one in Peshawar. Having an increase in mercenary forces. Expanding the US military presence there.
BILL MOYERS: Walter Pincus is an old friend of mine, an investigative reporter at "The Washington Post" for, you know, 30 or more years now. A very respected man. He reported in "The Washington Post" last fall that these contracts indicate how long the United States intends to remain in Afghanistan. And he pointed, for example, to a contract given by the Corps of Engineers to a firm in Dubai to build to expand the prison, the U.S. prison at Bagram in Afghanistan. What does that say to you?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Look, we have President Obama making it a point, regularly, to say, "We're going to have Guantánamo closed by early next year." The fact is that, at Bagram, we see an expansion. They're spending $60 million to expand that prison. You have hundreds of people held without charges. You have people that are being denied access to the Red Cross in violation of international law. And you have an ongoing position, by the Obama administration, formed under Bush, that these prisoners don't have right to habeas corpus. There are very disturbing signals being sent with Afghanistan as a microcosm. Not to mention these regular attacks that we're seeing inside of Pakistan that have killed upwards of 700 civilians using these robotic drones since 2006. Including 100 since Obama took power.
BILL MOYERS: Some people have suggested that the increasing reliance on military contractors in Afghanistan underscores the fact that the military is actually stretched very thin. General McChrystal said, this week, he admitted that he doesn't even know if we have enough troops there to deal with the situation as it is now. Does that surprise you?
JEREMY SCAHILL: No. It doesn't surprise me. Because this is increasingly turning into a war of occupation. That's why General McChrystal is making that statement. If this was about fighting terrorism, it would be viewed as a law enforcement operation where you are going to hunt down criminals responsible for these actions and bring them in front of a court of law. This is turning into a war of occupation. If I might add about General McChrystal, what message does it send to the Afghan people when President Obama chooses a man who is alleged to have been one of the key figures running secret detention facilities in Iraq, and working on these extra judicial killing squads. Hunting down, quote unquote, insurgents, and killing them on behalf of the U.S. military. This is a man who's also alleged to have been at the center of the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death, who was killed by U.S. Army Rangers.
BILL MOYERS: But he apologized for that this week be before Congress.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, it's easy to apologize when your new job is on the line. It's a different thing to take responsibility for it when you realize that the mistake was made, or that you were involved with what the family of Pat Tillman says was a cover-up.
BILL MOYERS: You know, you talk about military contractors. Do you think the American people have any idea how their tax dollars are being used in Afghanistan?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Absolutely no idea whatsoever. We've spent 190 million dollars. Excuse me, $190 billion on the war in Afghanistan. And some estimates say that, within a few short years, it could it could end up at a half a trillion dollars. The fact is that I think most Americans are not aware that their dollars being spent in Afghanistan are, in fact, going to for-profit corporations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These are companies that are simultaneously working for profit and for the U.S. government. That is the intricate linking of corporate profits to an escalation of war that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. We live in amidst the most radical privatization agenda in the history of our country. And it cuts across every aspect of our society.
BILL MOYERS: You recently wrote about how the Department of Defense paid the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for contracts to install what proved to be very defective electrical wiring in Iraq. Senator Byron Dorgan himself, called that wiring in hearings, shoddy and unprofessional. So my question is why did the Pentagon pay for it when it was so inferior?
JEREMY SCAHILL: This is perhaps one of the greatest corporate scandals of the past decade. The fact that this Halliburton corporation, which was once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, was essentially given keys to the city of U.S. foreign policy. And allowed to do things that were dangerous for U.S. troops. Provide then with unclean drinking water. They were the premier company responsible for servicing the US military occupation of Iraq. In fact, they were deployed alongside the U.S. military in the build up to the war. This was a politically connected company that won its contracts because of its political connections. And the fact is that it was a behemoth that was there. It was it was the girl at the dance, and they danced with her.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah. The Army hired a master electrician, I read, in some congressional testimony, to review electrical work in Iraq. He's now told congress that KBR's work in Iraq was, quote, "The most hazardous, worst quality work he'd ever seen." And that his own investigation, this is not a journalist, this is an employee of the Army, had found improper wiring in every building that KBR had wired in Iraq.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. And we're talking about thousands of buildings. And so we've had, U.S. troops that have died from electrocution in Iraq as a result of the faulty work of KBR. This should be an utter scandal that should outrage every single person in this country. And, yet, you find almost no mention of this in the corporate media.
BILL MOYERS: Do you get discouraged writing about corruption that never gets cured?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I don't believe that it necessarily doesn't get cured. I think that I'm very heartened by the fact that we have a very vibrant independent media landscape that's developing right now. You know, to me, I once put on the tagline of an article that I wrote early on in the Obama administration that I pledge to be the same journalist under Barack Obama that I was under President Bush. And the reason I felt that it was necessary to say that is that I feel like we have a sort of blue-state-Fox culture in the media. Where people are willing to go above and beyond the call of partisan politics to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. This is a man- it's time to take off the Obama t-shirts. This is a man who's in charge of the most powerful country on earth. The media in this country, we have an obligation to treat him the way we treated Bush in terms of being critical of him. And, yet, I feel like many Democrats have had their spines surgically removed these days, as have a lot of journalists. The fact is that this man is governing over a policy that is killing a tremendous number of civilians.
BILL MOYERS: You mentioned you mentioned drones a moment ago. I was impressed to hear our new commander of our troops in Afghanistan admit this week that the United States cannot go on killing civilians. He said, in fact, this is creating a dangerous situation for our own country.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, that that I mean, on the one hand, that those words are true. I think that the fact is that, when you are killing civilians, in what is perceived to be an indiscriminate way certainly by the people of Pakistan you're going to give rise to more people that want to attack the United States. They view themselves as fighting a defensive war. But never are the statistics cited that come out of Pakistan. 687 people are documented to have been killed. That the Pakistani authorities say are civilians since 2006. In the first 99 days of this year over 100 people were killed. And the fact is...
BILL MOYERS: By American military action?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. By American military action with these robotic drones.
BILL MOYERS: 60 Minutes, on CBS News, recently got some very special access to the military. And came out with a report on drones. Let me show you a few excerpts from that.
LARA LOGAN: Right now, there are dozens of them over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hunting down insurgents every minute of every day. The fight for the pilot is on the video screen. Here a truck full of insurgents in Afghanistan is being tracked by the pilot. When the ground commander gives the order-he first, hitting his target. The trigger is pulled in Nevada. Inside these cramped single white trailers of small offices.
COL. CHRIS CHAMBLISS: And that white spot that this guy is carrying is actually a hot gun. It's been fired and already know that it's been used. We've met positive identification criteria that these are bad guys. And so now we can go ahead and strike these targets.
BILL MOYERS: Now, many people are like that fellow. They say that these drones are new miracle weapons that enable the United States military to kill the bad guys, as he said, without exposing Americans to danger. There's truth in that, right?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Now, I have a lot of respect for Lara Logan, the CBS correspondent. She's really put her neck on the line and been in the thick of battle, and has been injured in battle. But I think that this piece was propaganda. She allowed the military to make claims about the effectiveness of their weapons that are being contested passionately by the people on the ground in Pakistan itself. I recently did an article about "Time" magazine's coverage of this. They said that the Taliban are using civilians as human shields. And that's why so many civilians have been killed. Their source for that was an Air Force intelligence officer who was allowed to speak on as though it was a Pentagon press release. I think that this is sick. Where you turn war, essentially, into a videogame that can be waged by people half a world away. What this does, these drones, is they it sanitizes war. It means that we increase the number of people that don't have to see that war is hell on the ground. And it means that wars are going to be easier in the future because it's not as tough of a sell.
BILL MOYERS: You will find agreement on people who say war is hell. But you'll also find a lot of people in this country, America a lot of Democrats and Republicans, who say Jeremy Scahill is wrong. That we need to be doing what we're doing in Afghanistan because, if we don't, there'll be another attack like 9/11 on this country.
JEREMY SCAHILL: I think that what we're doing in Afghanistan increases the likelihood that there's going to be another attack.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Because we're killing innocent civilians regularly. When the United States goes in and bombs Farah province in Afghanistan, on May 4th, and kills civilians, according to the Red Cross and other sources, 13 members of one family, that has a ricochet impact. The relatives of those people are going to say maybe they did trust the United States. Maybe they viewed the United States as a beacon of freedom in the world. But you just took you just took that guy's daughter. You just killed that guy's wife. That's one more person that's going to line up and say, "We're going to fight the United States." We are indiscriminately killing civilians, according to the UN Human Rights Council. A report that was just released this week by the UN says that the United States is indiscriminately killing civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. That should be a collective shame that we feel in this society. And yet we have people calling it the good war.
BILL MOYERS: So, step back to that issue of military contractors. You've been you've been writing about privatization and military contractors for a long time. In the large scheme of things what do you military contractors represent to you?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. Well, I think that what we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war. Where you no longer have to depend exclusively on your own citizens to sign up for the military and say, "I believe in this war, so I'm willing to sign up and risk my life for it." You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars. In the process of doing that you undermine U.S. democratic processes. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, 'cause you're making their citizens in combatants in a war to which their country is not a party. I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it's on. It's happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale.
BILL MOYERS: Jeremy Scahill, thanks for being with me again on the Journal.
JEREMY SCAHILL: It's been an honor Bill.
I'm not kidding, I have been more impressed with his work than any of the others ever since I first heard of him amid the Blackwater horrors. You don't want to miss what he has to say. You want to bookmark or subscribe to Rebel Reports, his new website, so you don't miss any of it, ever.
jeremy scahill will be on moyers journal tonight
[click image]The online version at the link should appear at this link sometime around or soon after air time. I can hardly wait. This guy knows his stuff and is a great journalist. So this evening's show ought to be highly, highly informative.
ann's making a list
[click image]It struck me as I was making my comment there that I ought to be making it here:
What made me stand up on my hind legs and start barking at my monitor was his gall to quote the Qur’an on truth, when he was clearly in the midst of doing what is called in the vernacular “dazzling ‘em with his bullshit”. Then, too, the bit about killing one being equal to killing all mankind was hard to bear from his lips, given the givens.
The one part of his speech I could not fault was the part about women’s equality. This is a weird position to find myself in because I’m pretty much of a jerk on feminism, hate whiners ruining my life and other women’s lives with their glorification of victimhood, hate male feminists making this worse, want to box heads when people speak as though women actually are somehow lesser while purporting to be speaking in favor of remedying that. If I didn’t know that there are so many women in Afghanistan who want education and freedom from the burqa, the power to determine their own lives, I might have found all kinds of fault with his assertions in that section of his speech, but I do know that. So that part trips me up.
I noted that he paid lipservice to every point the Iranians have laid down for conditions of engaging in diplomacy, without seeming to be doing that. The problem still is that he’s only said it. The problem still is that no matter what he says or how impeccably, every single time he gives a speech it is just another batch of mere words to make us waste our time analyzing in place of the action we ought to expect to be analyzing. And his action has, so far, been almost completely at variance with his words.
People go on about how much is on his plate, how much he is doing already, and it is true that he’s got his stamp now on an awful lot of stuff. Virtually indistinguishable from the last administration’s, too. I’m irked that I can’t rid myself of that last grain of hope that he’ll suddenly snap out of it, snap out of his lifelong capitulation to the politically astute moves while, clearly, staying dazzled by his own bullshit… ceding so reliably his own ideals and morals without even knowing that’s what he’s doing because he is SO good with the soaring oratory, even in his thoughts. This is called “hubris”.
People fail to recognize that hubris is not a consciously understood phenomenon in those who err with it. They are so convinced of the practical excuses for it that they completely obscure the brute fact of it from their own realization.
I wish to hell he’d just SHUT UP and start doing a good job. Islam would be won over THAT way. As long as he’s talking, NOBODY should waste their time listening.
I say this after wasting a few hours on this yesterday. I get the transcendental aspects after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it, let my REAL sense weigh in. I’m bugged that I have to be asleep to drop my own idiocy enough to get at the real, but, well, at least I do it at all….
04 June 2009
my annotated transcript of obama cairo address
[click image of burger-widened POTUS]Hamas letter to Obama delivered to U.S. Embassy in Cairo today.
aw jeeze
[click image]Today it was their babies looking for them....
I'm such an asshole.
I put them out of their misery....
i gotta side with ron paul here
[click image]We have no right or business opening our yaps about this.
Plus, he makes a bunch of other good points. Don't get me wrong. I ain't turning into no right wingnut, but, despite some of his awful ideas about how to do things, he still has so many cogent things to say. Ignore him at your own peril.
too much nerve citing the qur'an on truth
[click image, C-SPAN video of entire Cairo address]I wonder if I have the strength to find the transcript and point out the many hypocrisies contained in this address. The worst one may have been his shit about Palestinians bombing babies in their sleep, as though he's not bombing babies in their sleep, as though Israel hasn't bombed uncounted thousands of babies in their sleep, as though his bald faced lies about 9/11 are somehow more meritorious than Gazans fighting for their very lives. I tell you, I have amazing reserves of energy for a better world, but I don't know if I can tackle this without evaporating into a pink mist of utter existential exasperation.
I'll take my vitamins, see what I can do... but I just don't know.
AND WE DAMN WELL BETTER NAIL HIM ON THIS TORTURE PROBLEM....
He just told the entire Muslim world unequivocally we do not torture. Is that right? Now we have two highly credible sources who say that is NOT right. Does he merely intend to lie better than his predecessors? I guess you could call that "change".
battalions of slugs the size of puppies
[click image]... have been marching toward my garden for the past two days, and I have been going out for twice-daily raids. The carnage is breathtaking. Horrifying rivers of slime.
They cannot have my strawberries. Not. Going. To. Happen.
03 June 2009
something in me just wants to laugh
[click image]Stupid herring brains! This is only an ion of how awful it is, how awful we let it be.
six thousand bankruptcies a day
[click image]I'm watching both Zeitgeist movies over again, and suggest you stay up all night and do it too. If you have to pick one, take the second, even though the first rocks pretty damn hard... just a choice right now between fear and love....
environmental double-cross
[click image]Controversial coal mining method gets Obama's OK
Environmentalists decry 'mountaintop removal'
By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten | Tribune Newspapers
June 1, 2009
WASHINGTON -- With the election of Barack Obama, environmentalists expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse" -- their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off of whole mountains.
But in recent weeks, the Obama administration has quietly decided to open the way for at least two dozen more "mountaintop removal" projects.
The decision to clear a path for the controversial projects was never officially announced, but instead conveyed in a letter this month to a West Virginia congressman and coal ally, Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall. The letter said that the Environmental Protection Agency would not block 42 of 48 mine projects that it had reviewed so far, including some of the most controversial mountaintop mines.
In mountaintop removal, explosives blast away a peak and expose coal seams. Coal companies say the practice is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. Critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste, some of it toxic, into streams and valleys.
The administration's decisions are not the final word on the projects -- or on the future of mountaintop removal -- but it removes a major obstacle. And the decision, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice.
What makes the issue politically sensitive is the fact that environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, while his standing among Democratic voters in coal states is tenuous. Halting mountaintop removal could eliminate jobs in those states and put upward pressure on energy prices.
Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and the issue sparked contentious debates among administration officials, including one shouting match in which top officials of two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table.
The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, whose president, Cecil Roberts, has urged administration officials to allow the procedure. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency -- many of them Democrats, I might add -- whose communities depend on those jobs."
Earlier, Obama had won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the procedure. And the EPA announced in March that it would review mountaintop projects.
The EPA has the authority to review and ultimately block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act, but if the agency raises no objections, the final decision is made by the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps previously indicated its intention to approve the 48 permits.
A review of Obama campaign statements showed the presidential candidate expressing concern about the practice without specifically promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act" and added, "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment."
And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said this year that the agency had "considerable concern" about the projects. She pledged that her agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."
Soon afterward, the agency blocked six major mountaintop projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
But this month, after White House meetings with coal companies and advocates such as Rahall and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, the EPA gave the green light to at least two dozen projects.
"It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal.
Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and conduct an open process.
Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said that some of the projects that obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to.
"It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using."
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Coal River Mountain Watch
you know, i've been quasi-defending the governator
[click image]... for being way less bad than I'd thought he would be, but he may be catching up to my worst expectations in the midst of this fiscal meltdown. On the one hand, how can he be held responsible for decades looting and corruption and totally rotten government? But on the other, how can he not have identified these kinds of problems and taken steps to fix them, other than to try to just cut them out, cut us off, for all this time?
[You can tell the Chronicle is pissed at him, too, because that picture of him is uglier than any of the Terminator shots extant. No, seriously, rouge his lips a bit and he'd look like the classic pedophile.]
dark sarcasm in the classroom
[click image]Pink Floyd's Waters: West Bank wall must come down
By KARIN LAUB
AIDA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AP) — Pink Floyd's former frontman Roger Waters said Tuesday he'll take to the stage the minute Israel tears down its West Bank separation wall, just as he did in Berlin two decades ago when another wall came down.
Visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in the shadows of the towering concrete structure, the British rocker who co-wrote the iconic 1970s album "The Wall" said he hopes "this awful thing is destroyed soon."
Waters, 65, said the West Bank wall has been on his mind since he first saw it up close in what he described as an eye-opening visit in 2006, following a concert in Israel.
"People who haven't actually seen this, what's going on here, can't actually imagine the impression that it has on you, the sick, kind of churning feeling that you get in your very heart when you see this, how depressing it is," Waters told The Associated Press in an interview.
Water's comments didn't sit very well with Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, who, quoting The Wall's most famous lyric, said "we don't need no education" from Waters.
Israel began building the barrier — a concrete wall in urban areas and fence with sensors and barbed wire along rural stretches — in 2002 following Palestinian bombings and shooting attacks on Israeli civilians. Israel insists it's a temporary security measure.
Palestinians says it's a land grab because, once the final third is built, it will slice off 10 percent of the West Bank, part of the lands they want for their state.
The stretch of barrier between Jerusalem and the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem consists of graffiti-covered gray slabs, with army watchtowers rising up at intervals. At an Israeli-run wall crossing, large crowds of Palestinians wait in long lines, particularly during morning rush hour, to reach jobs in Israel.
On the northern outskirts of Bethlehem, the Aida refugee camp, home to about 5,000 Palestinians, abuts the wall. Palestinian officials often escort foreign dignitaries to the camp — among them Pope Benedict XVI during his Holy Land pilgrimage last month — to illustrate the disruption of daily life by the barrier.
Waters dismissed Israel's security argument, saying he believes the wall "is not here to stop Israelis being blown up on buses." He said if that was the sole reason, "what's it doing in the occupied territories, surrounding settlements and cutting (Palestinian) farmers off from their olive trees and so on and so forth?"
"This is an exercise of colonialism," said Waters.
Regev said the barrier has sharply reduced Palestinian attacks, which have killed hundreds of Israelis since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2000.
"We don't need no education about suicide bombers coming into Israel and murdering innocent people, and how the security barrier has prevented that by more than 95 percent."
But Waters said he believes the barrier is indefensible.
"When you stand in front of an edifice like this, whether it's here or outside a township in South Africa, or in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War, or in Berlin in the 60s and 70s, it's something you know instinctively that this is wrong. It's a bad thing," he said. "It cannot survive forever."
If it does come down one day, he said, he'll perform at the site, just like he did in 1990, at a spot where the Berlin Wall had fallen just a year earlier. "In fact, I would insist on it," he said.
In the meantime, he's considering performing elsewhere in the West Bank, perhaps in the town of Ramallah, but has not made firm plans. On Monday, Waters visited a refugee camp in the northern town of Jenin to support efforts to reopen a local movie house that closed in 1987.
When he played in Israel in 2006, he was criticized by Palestinian activists trying to organize a cultural boycott of Israel. Waters said he now feels ambivalent about having performed in Israel.
Waters, who left Pink Floyd in 1985, ruled out a reunion with his former band mates; their last joint performance was in 2005, for a Live 8 concert. "We had a great career as Pink Floyd. We all enjoyed it. We all worked together and enjoyed everything and it was brilliant. I think it's over," he said.
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Proposes to do something about it....
02 June 2009
no, really
[click image]Half would stop joining up to kill us if we exposed the crimes to the world and prosecuted for them.
And the other half would stop if we quit bombing them.
completely caved
[click image]Yes, she was teetering toward delinquency. She was among millions of homeowners rapidly sliding toward danger for whom the Obama administration had devised an aid program — some already in foreclosure proceedings, others headed that way as they ran out of means to make their payments. But unlike those in imminent peril of losing their homes, Ms. Ulery had never missed a payment.
“I don’t know who this bailout is helping,” she said. “We’ve given these banks all this money and they’re not doing what they say they’re doing. Something’s not working right. They keep saying they’re doing all this, but we don’t see it down here at this level.”
More than three months after the Obama administration outlined a new program aimed at rescuing millions of distressed homeowners by compensating banks that modify mortgages, Ms. Ulery’s experience illustrates the mixture of confusion, frustration and limited assistance that now reigns.
uh-oh
[click image]I don't like this a bit. Israel pitches a hissy over Russia meeting with a Hamas leader, and up pops a Russian State Newspaper piece that says Ahmadinejad "has repeatedly called for the Jewish state to be 'wiped off the map'." Now I know for sure these guys know that's a crock of shit, so whut is up here?
This is from yesterday, or two days ago now, depending on where you are. So now today, or yesterday as it were, they publish that Lieberman is avid to participate in peace talks in Moscow, without mention of the part about Hamas or Hezbollah. Hmmmm...
On the one hand, I am certain the Russians don't like the Israelis. On the other, things are so upside down in this world I can't feel much certainty about anything. Perhaps they want to take Obama's really bad start on it off his hands. I actually think he wouldn't mind a bit. I actually think he's doing most of what he's doing because he's just too fucking overwhelmed to lead... just sticking to his "comfort zone"... politically astute appeaser of fuckheads.
if obama doesn't turn back, it will be worse than before
[click image]That isn't the kind of change any of us had in mind.
It's the kind of hope called "hopelessness".
murder any way you slice it
[click image]Military: Gitmo detainee dies of apparent suicide
By DAVID McFADDEN and DANICA COTO – 10 minutes ago
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay has died of an apparent suicide, U.S. military officials announced Tuesday.
The Joint Task Force that runs the U.S. prison in Cuba said guards found Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih unresponsive and not breathing in his cell Monday night.
His is the fifth apparent suicide at the Guantanamo prison, which President Barack Obama plans to close by January.
In a statement issued from Miami, the U.S. military said the detainee was pronounced dead by a doctor after "extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted."
The Yemeni prisoner, also known as Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al-Hanashi, had been held without charge at Guantanamo since February 2002. Military records show the alleged Taliban fighter was about 31.
The suicide occurred late Monday, but it was not revealed by the military until after a dozen journalists who were covering a military tribunal session left the base near midday Tuesday. A Defense Department official said the reason was that the Yemen government had not yet been notified.
About 100 of the 240 prisoners at Guantanamo are from Yemen, more than from any other nation. Some of the Yemenis at Guantananmo have been approved for release from the prison for several years but they are in limbo because the U.S. is unwilling to release prisoners to Yemen, fearing the weak central government there will be unable to monitor and control them.
The prisoner appears to have joined the long-running hunger strike at Guantanamo, according to medical records previously released by the military in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.
His weight was down to about 86 pounds (39 kilograms) in December 2005. He weighed 124 pounds (56 kilograms) when he was first taken to Guantanamo in February 2002.
A prison spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, confirmed the incident but declined to discuss further details on how the Yemeni man apparently committed suicide and whether any family members have been contacted.
DeWalt declined to say whether procedures have changed at the prison as a result of the apparent suicide. He said al-Hanashi was being held in Camp Delta — a prison complex behind tall fences and coils of razor wire.
Guantanamo critics said the death underscores the urgent need to close the U.S. prison as soon as possible.
"This kind of desperation is caused by the uncertainty of not knowing whether one will ever be released or even charged," said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.
Obama has pledged to close the prison but maintain the controversial military tribunal system to try at least some Guantanamo detainees. Eleven detainees are facing charges, including five men accused of organizing the Sept. 11 attacks.
Scott Allen, senior medical officer for Physicians For Human Rights, an international medical group, said the apparent suicide was likely an act of desperation by the longtime detainee.
"Suicides are often a reflection of a detainee's sense of futility and helplessness in prolonged detention," Allen said during a telephone interview from Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military says the remains will be autopsied by a pathologist from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has launched an investigation of the incident to determine the cause and manner surrounding the Yemeni's death.
The Joint Task Force added that the remains are being treated with "utmost respect."
"A cultural advisor is assisting the Joint Task Force to ensure that the remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner," the JTF said.
U.S. authorities say Al-Hanashi traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 and allegedly admitted to fighting with the Taliban on the front lines. He lived in four different al-Qaida and Taliban-affiliated guest houses, and was captured at Mazar-e-Sharif following the uprising there, they said.
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If it was suicide, it would have been from the despair redoubled by Obama's bumbling, but it's as likely that the bastards still beating prisoners there just finally killed him. I also don't like how this happens a day after things pop up on the web about Fudd mentioning that detainees should just be killed if we can't hold them indefinitely.
the true mind makes an outrageous demand of me
[click image]All I know is it was telling me I have to become a film director. I know this is correct.
But, whoa.
How do I start?
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