Cutting through the machinations and effects of the US empire
High flow rate
Spring-like flow at the Veazie Dam
After three more inches of rain during a wild wind/rain storm last Tuesday & Wednesday, the river is high. Sugarloaf mountain received four feet of snow during the storm. Meanwhile in the garden, frost has shut everything down for good. Not much left to do except dig out the last carrots.
Gotta watch the Daily Show
The fake news teaches us more than the real news. Take Stewart's clips of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's former deputy, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, broadcast on the Wednesday 10/26 edition of the Daily Show. Where else could a big section of the general public become informed of Wilkerson's angry dissent from Bush administration policy given in a talk on October 19? (Video/audio links here, transcript here, additional links here, excerpts from follow-up oped piece here)
Many candid bombshells dropped in Wilkerson's speech, for example, former Pentagon Policy planner, neocon Doug Feith, was ``the dumbest man I ever knew...'' and Feith got to ``tell the State Department to screw itself in a closet....'' Go download and listen to the actual speech to get the full flavor.
I just wanted to point out some insights Wilkerson communicated, mainly in the q&a portion of the October 19 program. At one point during the speech, Wilkerson gave this provocative remark:We can’t leave Iraq. We simply can’t. I can make that case. No one in this administration has made that case. They have simply pontificated. That’s all they’ve done. Now, I’m not evaluating the decision to go to war. That’s a different matter. But we’re there, we’ve done it, and we cannot leave. I would submit to you that if we leave precipitously or we leave in a way that doesn’t leave something there we can trust, if we do that, we will mobilize the nation, put 5 million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade. That’s what we’ll have to do.
Later in the q&a, Wilkerson explains one of the reasons this is true:The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption and, as one little girl said yesterday at the Yoshiyama Awards, do you know that we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources? We do; we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources. Well, we have an economy and we have a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation – and I don’t see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind – or we better be ready to take those assets. We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That’s how serious we thought about it.
Wow. That's the most candid policy statement you are likely to hear directly from a high-level planner. Despite Wilkerson's care in explaining oil field seizure would occur under international auspices, neocon policy planning would have envisioned no such thing. Furthermore, even if the UN was to be involved, the US would exert far greater control than anyone else. So original Deep Blade Analysis concerning the background motivations behind the Iraq war is confirmed by Wilkerson's remarks.
If you want those resources and you want governments that aren’t inimical to your interests with regard to those resources, then you better pay attention to the area and you better not leave it in a mess. Now, people will say, maybe you, well, it won’t be a mess that they won’t handle themselves in the area. I don’t trust that to be a good outcome.
Post by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Republican of Texas
I'll let the honorable Ms. Hutchinson post for me on this topic -- by example.
From Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's closed-door January 7, 1999 impeachment statement, released into the Congressional Record, February 12, 1999:If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of 'lying,' but would not be guilty of 'perjury.'
Fast forward to Sunday October 23, 2005, when the senator responds to questions from Tim Russert on Meet the Press about possible perjury indictments of administration officials:
If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be 'perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.
Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.
The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.
Nearly every child in America believes that President Washington, as a child himself, did in fact cut down the cherry tree and admitted to his father that he did it, saying simply: 'I cannot tell a lie.'
I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences to a successor President who may choose to ignore it.SEN. HUTCHISON: Tim, you know, I think we have to remember something here. An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty. And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.
Huh? ``...some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime''???!!! Is not that the most amazing duplicity and double standard you've ever heard in your life?
I think we should be very careful here, especially as we are dealing with something very public and people's lives in the public arena. I do not think we should prejudge. I think it is unfair to drag people through the newspapers week after week after week, and let's just see what the charges are. Let's tone down the rhetoric and let's make sure that if there are indictments that we don't prejudge.
MR. RUSSERT: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. And I'm not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process--and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that.[emphasis added]
Wilma, Alpha join forcesHigh Wind Warning
And I'll be out driving this afternoon. Joy. The good thing is they seem to have dialed down the rainfall forecast for us. However, an accompanying flood watch says ``the east facing mountains of Penobscot and Piscataquis Counties'' can expect more than two inches.
URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
415 AM EDT TUE OCT 25 2005
...STRONG WINDS EXPECTED TODAY INTO TONIGHT...
.THE COMBINATION OF THE REMNANTS OF WILMA MOVING SOUTHEAST OF NOVA SCOTIA AND STRONG LOW PRESSURE MOVING FROM THE MID ATLANTIC COAST TO THE GULF OF MAINE WILL PRODUCE STRONG NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS ACROSS THE AREA TODAY INTO TONIGHT.
...HIGH WIND WARNING IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO MIDNIGHT EDT TONIGHT...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CARIBOU HAS ISSUED A HIGH WIND WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TODAY TO MIDNIGHT EDT TONIGHT. THE HIGH WIND WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
EXPECT NORTHEAST WINDS TO INCREASE TO 25 TO 35 MPH BY NOON WITH GUSTS OVER 50 MPH. THE RECENT BOUT OF WET WEATHER HAS MADE MANY TREES VULNERABLE TO STRONG WINDS AND DOWNED TREES AND POWER OUTAGES CAN BE EXPECTED. WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO SLOWLY DECREASE LATER TONIGHT. CONTINUE TO MONITOR NOAA WEATHER RADIO ALL HAZARDS OR YOUR LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE LATEST FORECASTS.
Coming Downeast?
Lower-probability track lands Wilma in Maine on Wednesday
We haven't had a hurricane or tropical storm since Bob in August 1991. Before that, it was Gloria in 1985. Both of these came with 80+ mph winds and caused quite large messes.
One of these is not needed around here now. We are saturated as it is. Somehow, today's rainstorm is missing the immediate area, but some areas to the north and east have received two or three more inches of rain with nowhere to go except except over the banks.
I'm hoping that whatever rain Wilma would bring stays well out to sea, as most of the weather people have been saying is most likely. But the map above makes me a tad bit nervous.
Update: Sunday evening...HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
says the Weather Service.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
415 PM EDT SUN OCT 23 2005
THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR NORTHERN AND EASTERN MAINE.
.DAY ONE...TONIGHT
A GALE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE COASTAL WATERS UNTIL 10 PM THIS EVENING.
.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...MONDAY THROUGH SATURDAY
AN INTENSE STORM SYSTEM ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANTS OF HURRICANE WILMA IS EXPECTED TO BRING WIND SWEPT HEAVY RAIN TO THE REGION DURING TUESDAY....
American Conservative: ``Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets''
This is far from a new story. Deep Blade Journal has for a long time been pointing out the enormous theft of Iraq's oil-wealth surrounding the US occupation since 2003 (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). But the outright criminal taking of billions of dollars during the operation of the Coalition Provisional Authority from April 2003 to June 2004, followed by continuing pervasive corruption that today is ``irreversible'', is brightly illuminated by CIA veteran Philip Giraldi.
Giraldi writes in the October 24, 2005 issue of The American Conservative:The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.
If the scale of corruption surrounding the long gone Oil-for-Food program is of such concern to the likes of Senator Norm Coleman, Fox News, and Claudia Rosett of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, should not this be too?
Especially true, because the pervasive American-inspired looting of Iraq continues to this day:A recent high-level investigation of the Iraqi interim government concluded that the corruption is now so pervasive as to be irreversible. One prominent businessman estimates that 95 percent of all business activity involves some form of bribery or kickback.
How is this different than the operations of Saddam that Coleman, Rosett et. al. so righteously decry?
You'll just have to read Giraldi's tales about how billions in the form of bales of cash have been thrown in and out of Iraq -- all without the slightest attempt at recording the transactions or any accounting at all.
Powell lied
Meanwhile, let's contrast pre-war administration pronouncements suggesting the good care that would be taken of the wealth that once rightly belonged to the Iraqi people. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered such remarks to reporters on January 21, 2003. In light of the complete and total looting of all accounts containing Iraq's oil money that came after March 2003, it is amazing and instructive to review some highlights from the transcript of this press event.QUESTION: Let me ask you about oil, which is of interest people --
These utterly disingenuous remarks by Colin Powell certainly make the voracious looting that came with the occupation all the more damning.
SECRETARY POWELL: Oil?
QUESTION: Oil, from Houston. There has been some reports there's a dissension in the administration over what to do, say, after a war with the oil fields, with some people, such as yourself, saying, well, it should be under a UN guidance and --
SECRETARY POWELL: I said that?
QUESTION: Well, there have been some reports that you were on that side versus Eliot Abrams and others who want the US to take control and privatize them.
SECRETARY POWELL: No, no, no. There is no disagreement. This is speculation that has no foundation. If there is a conflict with Iraq and we and the leadership of the coalition take control of Iraq, the oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. And whatever form of custodianship there is, initially in the hands of, you know, the power that went in, or under international auspices at some point, it will be held for and used for the people of Iraq. It will not be exploited for the United States' own purpose. We will follow religiously international law, which gives clear guidance with respect to the responsibilities of an occupying power, if it comes to that. Everybody speculates about what my views are, what Eliot's views are, what somebody else's views are. What I've just told you, you can take to the bank.
...
QUESTION: Who would operate the oil fields, I guess he's asked?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I don't --
QUESTION: Chevron-Texaco, or would the Iraqi National Oil Company continue?
SECRETARY POWELL: We don't have an answer to that question yet. It will be held. If we are the occupying power, it will be held for the benefit of the Iraqi people and it will be operated for the benefit of the Iraqi people. How will we operate it? How best to do that? We are studying different models. But the one thing I can assure you of is that it will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have.
...
QUESTION: Could oil revenues be used to finance some of the costs of the occupation?
SECRETARY POWELL: In order not to split hairs or pretend that I'm an expert, let me just rest on the argument, on the simple statement, that whatever we do will be consistent with international law with respect to the responsibilities of an occupying power.
And the oil belongs to the Iraqi people. How it will be used, how the funds generated by the oil will be fed back into the Iraqi economy, I can't get into all of those issues. Whether or not it can be used to assist the occupying power in conducting activities that support the Iraqi people -- for example, their humanitarian relief efforts, what it might cost us to deliver humanitarian relief to them -- these are all issues that I just don't have the expertise to get into.
But I know that in our conversations, and a lot of work is being done, in our conversations the overarching, guiding principle is we will be consistent with the requirements of international law. [emphasis added]
New Iraq constitution makes it legal?
And here is where the American-driven constitutional process in Iraq comes into play -- the idea that it will stamp an imprimatur of legality under international law upon the looting that has taken place is a driving force behind the eagerness of US officials to get the document in force. It's a bit out of date now, but Naomi Klein did a fine piece on these machinations last year for Harpers.
Today, the piece-by-piece privatization of Iraq's national oil company is already underway. With the US wielding massive unaccountable power behind this looting process, it is no wonder that Fox News and most of the rest of the US-based media need the Saddam-era Oil-for-Food program to kick around. That way, everybody's attention is distracted from the man behind the curtain.
First frost
Only a light nip, but these are the very last tomatoes anyway
Finally, some color
Last weekend rain amounted to 3 inches more. Guess what? Yep, Saturday night through Sunday our Weather Service forecast calls for another 2-inch drenching.
Nixon fired his Watergate special prosecutor 32 years ago this week
As members of the American public were snuggling in front of their televisions to new episodes of Emergency!, Mash, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Saturday October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon was busy engineering a silencing of independent Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Because Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus had the conscience to refuse Nixon's order to fire Cox, they resigned. The duty was left to the third in line, Solicitor General Robert Bork. In 1987, Bork finally was rewarded with a Supreme Court nomination -- even though it was rejected by a Democratically-controlled US Senate.
This week rumors have been flying over possible indictments coming down from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame investigation. One rumor has it -- as promulgated by US News and World Report -- that Vice President Dick Cheney will resign as a result of the probe. (Can you say, ``Vice President Rice''??)
In Thursday's edition of Counterpunch, former intelligence professional Ray McGovern has an excellent, concise summary of the entire probe. (See 16 Fatal Words: Chickens Come Home to Roost on Cheney) McGovern adds this salient point that I do not see too many indictment-salivators in the blogosphere making:Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald's dismissal.
This Bush impunity constitutes a huge difference with the Clinton prosecution engineered by the untouchable Kenneth Starr. And it's laughable to think that current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has one-tenth the conscience either Elliot Richardson or William Ruckelshaus had in 1973.
Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?
So the question is, will the plug be pulled on Fitzgerald before the veep goes down? Chances are good it will, McGovern thinks, if the investigation begins to reach that high -- towards Bush himself.
Was intelligence ``exaggerated or misused'' by U.S. government officials? Republican burial of answer not total, yet.
Beyond the Plame investigation -- always framed in terms of the ``outing of a CIA agent'', even on our media, like Democracy Now! -- always there has existed a much bigger scandal about just how the Bush administration's Iraq weapons of mass destruction fraud was generated. It appears the Fitzgerald investigation may be reaching beyond the narrow issue of revealing an agent's name to a panoply of possible illegalites surrounding the Iraq weapons propaganda operation. I say good, but I am not drooling over narrow Plame-outing indictments like much of the rest of the blogosphere.
In the midst of all this, thanks to A Tiny Revolution for refocusing on the bigger picture and reminding us of just how badly the Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has failed in its job of oversight with respect to the weapons fraud. Deep Blade carried an item on the official whitewashes underway last spring.
So, since last spring, what has happened to that Senate ``Phase II'' report on intelligence exaggerated and misused by Bush, Cheney, and other administration officials? Jonathan links to a new piece at The American Prospect Online (Laura Rozen, "The Report They Forgot", The American Prospect Online, Oct 19, 2005). This piece offers some explanations about what is now happening given the pressure surrounding the Fitzgerald investigation.
Rosen includes this juicy detail about the late-2001 operations of Cheney operative Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin (who recently plead guilty in another investigation), and former Pentagon policy deputy Douglas Feith, a key player in the rogue Pentagon intelligence shop called the Office of Special Plans, among others:a cable the CIA station chief in Rome sent to Langley expressing concern that members of Feith’s office were involved in an unauthorized covert action. The committee also has Franklin’s Rome report, which, according to sources, revealed that the meeting included the discussion of possibilities for engaging a network of Ghorbanifar associates to pursue action against Tehran.
Of course, besides plotting the next war with Iran, these guys also appear to have concocted the now-infamous Iraq-Niger-uranium forgeries.
And yep, that's Manucher Ghorbanifar, a long-time US-friendly arms dealer who played a big role in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Senator Pat Roberts is Chairman of the SSCI. He exudes Kansas credibility but in fact has played the role of Chief Whitewasher. (Our own Olympia Snowe, SSCI committee member, is a player in this coverup too.) Rosen's posting in her own blog explains Robert's role:Roberts has literally been coordinating with Senate majority leader Frist and Cheney's office very closely on many aspects of the Senate Intelligence committee's supposed investigation of the intelligence, and in particular, working closely with Cheney's office on crafting the language defining the terms for the as-yet unfinished Phase II report.
Again, I'm not holding my breath that these Republicans will be able to investigate themselves to the point that any justice is done at all. It will be to my surprise if the near-dead Phase II report revives, and if Fitzgerald brings forth any truth while proceeding with prosecutions of the rogue officials that lied us into war.
He's often wrong about all matters economic, but he has backhandedly acknowledged peak oil.
How money is created, where it goes
The New York Times says the stash in oil exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela is enormous...
This analysis is the kicker:As more of the oil money is spent, the American economy may be left in a precarious position. Maurice Obstfeld, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said, ``If oil exporters lower their current account surplus, we will have to reduce our current account deficit.''
Odd to think that a result of Bush's Jacksonian, Boltonist, anti-cooperative foreign policy is that America is at the mercy of financial decisions made in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
A new podcast has been posted at peacecast.us: ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN MAINE — a talk by Russ Libby, Executive Director of MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) given Saturday October 15, 2005 at the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine’s 16th annual Harvest Supper in Bangor, Maine.
Alexander Cockburn unhinged?
I have benefited greatly from being a regular reader of Beat the Devil and Counterpunch for 22 years. But check out parts of Cockburn's Oct. 15/16 weekend diary. They seem to read a little crazy:The Virtues of Gas Guzzling:
Looks a bit scandalous from the point of view of a person who cares about the environment. But realize that I pulled these quotes out of context. When I look at his whole argument (go over to Counterpunch and do that), I'm going to agree with and defend Cockburn a bit.
Why I Don't Believe in ``Peak Oil''
Since I don't believe in ``peak oil'' (the notion that world production is peaking and will soon slide, plunging the world into economic chaos) and regard oil "shortages" as contrivances by the oil companies and allied brokers and middlemen to run up the price, I fill my aging fleet of 50s and 60s era Chryslers with a light heart, although for longer trips these days I fill an 82 Mercedes 240D with diesel....Part of my light-heartedness comes from the fact that gas guzzling these days can be a revolutionary duty....guzzling keeps up overall oil demand, and hence oil prices, thus helping not only Venezuela but also Russia, which needs every rouble it can get....
While I do find his disbelief in peak oil unpersuasively argued -- in large measure because he appears not to understand what he says he does not believe in -- I take his point about buying fuel from Citgo stations in order to lend ``revolutionary'' support to Venezuela. The Pat Robertson quotes woven into this discussion are, well, brilliant in a way only Cockburn can be.
And I do see what he is doing in part -- needling peak oil believers and the liberal environmentalists that he has a long history of reviling.
I'll make public this friendly message I just sent him:Dear Alex,
Naturally I agree completely with your call for mass action behind the revolutionary vanguard of Venezuelan fuel pumps.
But you make a common error concerning peak oil on one main account. ``Peak oil'' theory is often misunderstood to mean that the world is running out of petrol sometime soon. You see this misconception everywhere, from the film The Oil Factor to the question you asked, ``And what of `peak oil', the theory that oil is about to run out?''
In fact, just the opposite is true. ``Peak oil'' theory says that more oil is available worldwide today than there ever has been. We are, as Yergin and the folks at CERA say, awash in the stuff. However, whether an abiotic component exists or not, oil is depletable. An era will arise -- my belief is that it will within a couple of decades -- when there will be a permanent condition that not everyone gets as much of it as they want.
My feeling is that no accessible quantity of abiotic oil ever will replace the resource extracted from current major fields -- all discovered no less than two and mostly at least four decades ago. Gold notwithstanding, I believe it is magical thinking to believe oil fields somehow refill from below. Every major exploration success of these last few decades has followed from the standard biotic theory instead. I think the score for abiotic oil is something like 80 very questionable barrels in a costly late-1980s Swedish experiment.
Beliefs aside, I do not know when a peak oil downslope condition will become permanent. So you are quite right to charge that recent price run-up has more to do with monopoly practices than genuine shortage. Remember, ``peak'' means we have a lot of the stuff around. But I will add that for whatever reason, the world currently appears to have zero spare oil production capacity. Take your pick of the reason-of-the-day from the business pages. The public data on production capacity is very poor, treated like state secrets in most countries. But would not this appearance be easier to maintain with at least an element of truth to the existence of a nearer-term ``peak'' condition? I would argue that such truth enables and enhances these monopoly practices, expressed after the giant Exxon-Mobil, BP-Amoco, and more recent Valero-Premcor mergers.
Another point of possible disagreement I have with your column is the potential for economic waves not unlike the 1970s shocks that followed US peak oil. Without some kind of un-destructive demand control and international cooperation, this condition could become economically devastating over time. I refer to food production specifically, now running at 10 fossil fuel calories per 1 food calorie produced. Use your imagination on the possible harms here.
Furthermore, it's not hard to imagine competition of powerful states for their desired piece of a slowly shrinking pie. Popular policy pieces, like one by Robert D. Kaplan in the June 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly openly discuss the coming war with China and how the US is planning for it. Don't we see in Iraq the beachhead of this policy for a coming era of resource competition? Quite obviously US planners have chosen raw force against the weakest targets for forward base-building -- in a region well-endowed with the fuel the military itself needs -- as the preferred strategic option. You've even written about this yourself in the summer of 2003, right?
On Brazil, are you serious? ``Ethanol is an attractive alternative, as Brazil is proving'' demands your immediate re-examination. Attractive for who? The cane growers or the destitute migrant workers they pay a couple dollars a day to do the cutting? The Brazillian ethanol model -- while evidently returning more energy than it costs in energy to produce, a rare feat for ethanol production -- is totally unsustainable and unscalable on a global basis. Corn ethanol cannot even make back the fossil energy used in its production. Ethanol is a big loser, energetically, socially, and environmentally, when it is viewed as a whole.
One more thing on Brazil -- while it has a vigorous and technically advanced off-shore oil industry, it is a net oil importer. Despite the hype about ethanol Brazil uses a rather large 3 million barrels per day of oil, importing at least 1/3 of its consumption.
Finally, I do agree with you about the notion that the price of oil could drop, and drop sharply. A little thing called demand destruction could do this. That's why it is so important for American screens to be filled with demand-generating pictures of mighty trucks and SUVs all the time. Unfortunately, this situation could be accompanied by a general recession that really could get quite nasty if the real estate bubble bursts in an environment of sharply higher interests rates, as petrodollars disappear from the deficit financing system.
Eric
PS. You wrote this just to bring a phalanx of peak oilers out of the woodwork so you could laugh at them, right?
Update 10/17: I slightly misquoted the oil production/consumption figures for Brazil. According to 2004 figures, Brazil consumes 2.2 million barrels per day (no. 7 in the world) and produces 1.1 million barrels per day. So the actual figure is that Brazil imports 1/2 of its oil.
Inundation
Heavy rain last Saturday and Sunday throughout the NE
Weather today is dank, keeping these open all day
The rain cup is overflowing
Can we do this again and not go crazy?FLOOD WATCH NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU ME
Considering soil saturation, I figure two more inches outside will fill the basement office of Deep Blade Journal with 1/4 inch of water. The pumps, the wet vac, the mops, and the dehumidifier are ready....
233 PM EDT FRI OCT 14 2005
...HEAVY RAIN POSSIBLE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH EARLY SUNDAY...
.A TROUGH OF LOW PRESSURE DEVELOPING OVER THE REGION FRIDAY WILL SPREAD HEAVY RAIN OVER DOWNEAST AND CENTRAL MAINE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY...AND ACROSS NORTHERN MAINE SATURDAY NIGHT INTO SUNDAY.
A discussion on a pro-war blog I foolishly got into (yep, I started it) is found here.
It's reasonably intelligent over there, even if the reactionaries are rather arrogant. I didn't pull too many punches either, so when they're not calling me a traitor or crazy, surely they would say the same about me.
They have a very common kind of military fantasist view... ``only America could deal with Big Bad Saddam''... and they are quite informed on some of the operational aspects of the war. That's worthwhile stuff. But especially they follow the pronouncements ostensibly by (link to Kurt Nimmo, who doubts the pedigree) Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups with Cold-War level hysteria. They eagerly salivate for the next Zawahiri or Zarqawi ``statement''. Guess it makes it easier to love the ``gloves off'' Terror War.
I find it rather amusing that they have zero grasp of the US economic plans for Iraq, the Downing Street memos, or any of the official documents -- while making me out as some sort of unsubstantiated whacko.
News Dissector dissects last week's New York subway scare
Plot was a fraud emanating from an unreliable informant in Iraq. Imagine that! The Dissector also examines the ``whois'' question of the Iraqi resistance and more talk about a US attack on Iran, among other items. Thanks Danny, and thanks for plugging peacecast.us.
Please visit peacecast.us for a newly available podcast, PEAK OIL: ARE ENERGY CRISES, MORE WARS, AND BREAKDOWN OF CAPITALISM COMING SOON? Yes, it's my own talk, but some people tell me it was actually okay.
Voting blind
Washington Post, As Talks Continue, Many Iraqis Lack Copy of Charter:As outraged would-be voters protested at still not being shown copies of Iraq's proposed constitution, U.S. and Arab diplomats bore down on Sunnis, Shiites and Kurdish leaders Monday in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone to make last-ditch changes to the charter that would overcome Sunni opposition.
Not unlike the parliamentary election last January when names of candidates were not revealed to the electorate & fear was pervasive, Iraqis are being asked to vote for a new constitution most have not seen, in a climate of fear and violence. Meanwhile U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad from his post in Saddam's old fortress conducts insider ``consultations'' during ``a sit-down dinner to break the daily fast of the holy month of Ramadan'' and ``gatherings where Arab leaders exerted behind-the-scenes pressure.''
The process is deeply flawed. At once it is tragic and hilarious that Khalilzad and collaborators think they can keep on writing provisions just a few days ahead of the vote. Saddam could be having this election.
The situation cannot be corrected unless the Americans do what they will never do, give up their war spoils and butt out. But of course the people of Iraq so deeply want to take control of their own destiny -- and many will display this by voting in the referrendum anyway -- whether anybody understand what they are voting on or not.
The Sy Hersh article revealing the truth about the American hand in the process that inevitably will be published -- like this one from July concerning the January election -- will be ignored by main US media.
A week of destroying Iraq in order to save it...
Refugees from Alqaim, Western Iraq -- recently under US assault. Voting will be the first thing on their minds.
The notion that there is a large flow of insurgent ``foreign fighters'' from Syria to Iraq has been disputed, even in very conservative quarters. So why is it the official US military stance that recent destruction of Euphrates River bridges in western Iraq is for the purpose of disrupting the flow of such insurgents eastward towards the capital? This language is stenographically repeated across the media, including in today's Guardian:The Euphrates sweep was the latest effort to disrupt the flow of fighters and arms from the Syrian border to the capital. Major General Rick Lynch, a military spokesman, said warplanes had bombed eight bridges. ``There were 12 bridges from the Syrian border to Ramadi. Were is the operative term. There are now four. Those four that remain are under the control of the Iraqi security forces and coalition forces.''
Infrastructure destruction in Iraq by the US occupiers is in fact an incredible development. According to this post on Daily Kos,Why is this a big deal? Because we are actually destroying infrastructure in a country we occupy. We are saying that the military value of the bridges to the insurgancy is greater than the value to us in either a military or economic/social way. This can be compared to the use of chemicals to destroy the jungle in Vietnam. Not because it caused cancer but because it was the long term destruction of some portion of the country.
Last week Juan Cole posted a Gilbert Achcar piece quoting sources that at the very least call the US military justifications for these actions into serious doubt. Achcar first refers to reports questioning the prevalence of ``foreign fighters'' (though one has a self-interested Saudi pedigree) and then offers an alternate analysis of the unspoken motivations behind the US attacks, an analysis that agrees with that of yesterday's Deep Blade post:The [Saudi Kingdom's] campaign also included the release of a Saudi-sponsored (and co-written) study by the CSIS, an unofficial think-tank in Washington, titled ``Saudi Militants in Iraq: Assessment and Kingdom’s Response.'' (Much case was made of this study because it said that foreign fighters were only a minority of the ``insurgents,'' as if it were a scoop.) It ``estimated'' (more a guessing-game than anything else) the proportion of foreign fighters in Iraq at 4-6% of a total of ``insurgents'' put at 30 000, of whom 12% from the Saudi Kingdom (1-2% of the total).
The CSIS report (pdf here), co-authored by hard-right military realist Anthony Cordesman states that,
Al-Hayat for 9/28 reports figures given by Iraqi officials on the foreigners detained in Iraq: according to the officials quoted, US forces in Iraq hold in detention over 10,000 persons, of whom only 210 are foreigners. Of those, the largest group by far is made up of Saudis (35%). Syrians, Tunisians and Libyans together amount to 15%, Palestinians and Jordanians are 10%, and Egyptians and Sudanese 5%.By all reports, the [Iraqi] insurgency is largely homegrown. This is not simply the view of US experts, based on estimates emanating from Iraq, at least 90% of the fighters are Iraqi, in contrast to some allegations that the insurgency is being mainly fueled from abroad.
Achcar goes on to compare the present pre-vote situation with that of last November, when the US created chaos in Falluja in order to ``diminish the legitimacy of the outcome of the January 30 elections.'' In support of this notion, Achcar provides quotes by important Sunni leaders:...Al-Hayat reports that two main figures of the Arab Sunni community in Iraq, Saleh al-Mutlak, the man leading the campaign against the draft constitution, and Issam al-Rawi, a member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, have accused US occupation forces and Iraqi governmental forces of trying — by the full-fledged offensive they launched in the Arab Sunni province of Al-Anbar, starting with the assault on Tal Afar — to prevent the participation of Arab Sunnis in the referendum, thus pushing them to call for a boycott.
I recommend reading of the entire Achcar piece. It seems to me that the US military is creating a climate of fear, intimidation, and clamp-down against movement of the ordinary residents in areas under attack. There is little hope that any of these actions will for very long suppress opposition fighters, but opposition voters surely will be suppressed. There is even more support for this notion...
US attacks hospital in Haditha
Real reporting on these US attacks is scarce. But here is a gem from an interesting October 4 Washington Post story:Mohammed Hadithi, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Haditha, charged the U.S. troops violated the rights of residents during the assault. The Marines ``neglected the humanitarian standards,'' he said. ``If the American people come and see the army they are proud of doing that to unarmed women and children, they would have disowned the army because those they are looking for have escaped hours before they came and attacked.''
Like during its Falluja atrocities of November 2004, the US military appears to be targeting hospitals (in abject contravention of Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention). They are always careful to make accusations that hospitals they attack support fighters, thus giving them an Article 19 case that such facilities are not in fact protected. But Article 19 requires fair warning, and proof is never offered. And the fact that a hospital treats wounded fighters does not automatically remove its protection under international law.
His accusation could not independently verified.
At Haditha Hospital, Dr. Abdul Qaider Obaidi, said the [US] Marines also broke into the hospital and searched the facility, arresting the director, Waleed Hadeethi and his assistant. Obaidi said the Marines accused the two men of treating al Qaeda fighters. ``They are using the hospital as a base for the combat operations,'' he added. Obaidi said he had no information about civilian casualties.
This then begs the question -- Why it is so important for the Americans to target hospitals? The real reason is that the Pentagon does not want them to become a source of news about heavy civilian casualties. This lesson learned by the military was quite shamelessly annunciated in the New York Times on November 8, 2004, during last year's destruction of Falluja.
But if you read this CNN report, you'd think that most residents of Haditha during this year's raids were on friendly terms with the American invaders:``The U.S. forces said they were here to free us from Saddam, but now I am a prisoner in my own home,'' said one resident. Marines assured him it was OK to leave his house if he wanted.
I am highly skeptical of this kind of reporting. I suspect that while most residents of the towns subject to the American sweeps would remain frightened in their homes and would not resist the invaders with violence, most would in fact support guerrilla forces opposing the Americans. Meanwhile, however, the true military objective is to keep residents so scared and immobilized -- through attacks on hospitals and the blowing up of bridges -- that their ``no'' votes on the constitution will be supressed. It's an ideal Bush-type election strategy.
The Marines said they hope that the new Iraqi army can follow them into Haditha, a town the U.S. military has said has been a crossroads for insurgent fighters coming into Iraq. Another resident, a one-time Iraqi army officer under Saddam, said he would welcome a permanent Marine and army presence in the city. ``There is slaughter here by men in black masks,'' he said.
Most civilians appeared to be cooperating with Marines who are searching some houses. In one instance, residents were pointing out bombs to the Marines.
Heartbreak
Please read this for story and photos of the refugee situation caused by the US attacks. Shame on the mainstream media for failing to analyze US motivations behind the assaults -- beyond the military's own self-serving propaganda -- and then ignoring the consequences.
Change is coming
These old broccoli blossoms attract lots of bees on warm days.
Great year for carrots, but some are too big to come out whole.
The last week has been incredibly warm and summer-like. Humidity has been too high for comfort. Fall foliage is just getting started -- at least two weeks late -- and there still hardly exists a changed leaf in the yard. But a big soaker rain (flood watch in effect) and much cooler temperatures are said to be in store, rain partly due to the remnant of Tropical Storm Tammy.
US deeply involved in suppression of Iraq ethnic groups opposed to neoliberal constitution
Through a series of deadly operations throughout Iraq west of Baghdad with catchy names like ``Iron Fist'' and ``Saratoga'', the US military has been for over one month cleaning out the provinces of Iraq most likely to reject the neoliberal constitutional process now being imposed on the country.
It is easy for these named operations to be promoted as ``protection'' for people:In north-central Iraq, Iraqi security forces and U.S. Task Force Liberty soldiers began Operation Saratoga in advance of the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum and to protect people during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Officials said Iraqi forces and Task Force Liberty soldiers will be much more visible across all the regions of north-central Iraq to act on recent information developed by the Iraqi police and army and coalition forces.
But many posts by the essential Juan Cole have cast much doubt on the military happy talk surrounding its ops. and the Constitution. Here, Cole describes how people living in the areas now under US attack perceive the Americans and sense what they will lose in the constitutional process:In recent months, the Sunni Arabs came to feel that the new constitution deeply disadvantaged them, and it occurred to them they might be able to deploy the 3-province veto, themselves. They became galvanized at the thought that they might be able to derail the accursed constitution invented by the Kurdish warlords and Shiite ayatollahs to deprive them of their fair share of Iraq's resources. This mobilization of Sunnis to vote in the referendum was even cited by Washington's Iraq boosters as a positive sign! But as with all the hype of the boosters, their balloon has been shot down only a couple of weeks after they came up with their glib talking points. It was never very likely that the Sunnis could have derailed the constitution at the polls, though it was just possible if they could have gotten out enough votes in Ninevah (Mosul). Now, having watched their country taken over by foreigners, watched their women humiliated with foreign troops searching their underwear drawers, having watched their army dissolved, their relatives fired from government jobs in the tens of thousands, they have even been explicitly informed that they are not as good as the Kurds (who would never have put up with their own 3-province veto being subjected to a stealth veto if they had not liked the new constitution). (For a glimpse of what educated, middle class young Sunni Arab women think of the constitution, see Riverbend).
As for the hidden, underlying purposes of the current American operations (shrouded in newspeak and propaganda), I do not think we should dismiss the strong editorial opinion given by Robert Knight on the KPFA Flashpoints program last night:DENNIS BERNSTEIN: Robert, this is a very important analysis and story, reporting you have just put together for us. Let's just very quickly sum this up. In essence, we're seeing sort of a textbook disinformation campaign to that which you're accusing the others of doing.
Key provisions of the proposed Iraqi Constitution
ROBERT KNIGHT: Oh, it's magnificent the way which newspeak is being applied for this anti-democratic military operation of the Bush administration in Iraq. Not everybody is falling for it. For instance the Iraqi member of Parliament Mashaan al-Jaburi said today, ``What we fear most in the governance that contain mixed residence is the targeting of Sunni Arab neighborhoods -- in order to prevent Sunnis from attaining the 2/3 of the consensus required to vote down the Constitution at the referendum.''
For a detailed examination of what I am talking about, please take a look at what you almost never see in media -- a discussion of the evolution of the actual document Iraqis will be expected to vote on next weekend. Find it here at Foreign Policy in Focus. In this piece, Herbert Docena lays out how most Iraqis, even American collaborators, wanted to, ``at least on paper, to build a Scandinavian-type welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq’s vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi’s right to education, health care, housing, and other social services.''
The Americans have other ideas.
Tragic process
How has this tragic Iraqi constitutional process been run so far? I recommend this guest piece posted by Juan Cole. Excerpt:Both the procedure that produced the constitutional draft that will be voted on this October 15, and its constitutional substance were and are disastrous. As to the procedure, the pathetic rules of the pathetic Transitional Administrative Law [TAL] were violated in a pathetic manner. To start from the beginning, a foreign country, the U.S. has played an unseemly, illegitimate and probably illegal (Hague Convention, 1907) role in the constitution-making process of an occupied country.
No one can know what horrors will result, but Robert Dreyfuss, this morning on Democracy Now!, surmised that after the fissures caused by this US-driven process run their course, ``It's not out of the question that several hundred thousand or a million Iraqis could die over the next two years if this falls into open civil war.''
Next, the TAL’s rules were repeatedly violated: there was no public or parliamentary discussion of the draft, and it was never voted on. The text was repeatedly changed after the only deadline that was (in my view) legally amended. [Then the three-province veto by a two-thirds majority was reinterpreted as a two-thirds majority of registered voters rather than of actual voters.] Only international pressure finally kept the National Assembly from an absurd misinterpretation of the rule of ratification through a mere law, actually a hidden and therefore illegal constitutional amendment.
Investigation trouble? Falling ratings? Push it!
Mayor Bloomberg: ``specific threat'' to New York subways
I did not listen to much news today before posting that last piece on Bush equating the Terror War with the Cold War. Indeed there were some accompanying fright-producers!USA TODAY: Police bolstered security on New York City's subways Thursday after receiving a threat that the mass transit system could be the target of a terrorist attack in coming days.
But,...
``We have never had before a specific threat to our subway system,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference. ``It was more specific as to target. It was more specific as to timing.''Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, cast doubt on the threat. He said the agency ``received intelligence information regarding a specific but non-credible threat to the New York subway system in recent days. The intelligence community found it to be of doubtful credibility.''
We've got vigilance, we've got color levels. Would it take an actual incident to distract the public from ``ongoing'' investigations of the Republicans and boost Mr. Bush's ratings?
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly asked the public to be vigilant and said that the police presence will be increased in and around subway stations and on ferries and buses. Police will pay particular attention to baby strollers, briefcases and other containers, Kelly said. The city's security alert level remained at orange, the second-highest.
911! 911! 911! 911! 911! 911! 911! Communism?PRESIDENT BUSH TODAY: We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire or rest until the war on terror is won.
Sooooo...Are not we the ones staying in Iraq until we've changed it through violence? Is Mr. Bush serious when he confidently states, ``No act of ours invited the rage of the killers''? This notion would be laughable were it not so tragic and so costly in lives and treasure. Everything in dear leader's actions over the past few years -- including before 9/11 -- expounds in the most stark terms of undeniable reality for those under the American killer aircraft and artillery of city-sized destruction -- that war is what America wants. Cannot everything Bush says be perceived in the 180 degrees opposite direction by those who have been under sustained American bombing, conquest, occupation, detention, and torture for years and years now?
The images and experience of September 11 are unique for Americans....
No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence.
Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
Bush puts the struggle against the racially-charged notion of ``Islamic radicalism'', ``militant jihadism'', or ``Islamo-fascism'' (choose your favorite scare-word from these) in Cold-War terms, worthy of NSC-68-like organizing principles. Bush continues:The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century.
Mr. Bush has taken a chapter out of Wolfowitz, and Wolfie's hero, the late Paul Nitze. In the 1950s, fear of the Soviet Union was the organizing principle under which the American public -- for the most part willingly -- gave up astonishing numbers of lives and boatloads of treasure, leaving a legacy of high-technology instruments of death that still may well end current civilization with a cloud of war Bush apparently is insisting be pursued.
Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses.
Osama bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not." And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers.
He assures them that this is the road to paradise, though he never offers to go along for the ride.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. [emphasis added]
Wolfowitz highlighted Nitze's theory of social organization through Cold War in remarks entitled Paul Nitze's Legacy: For a New World and delivered to an Aspen Institute luncheon in Washington, DC on April 15, 2004:As every student of security policy must know, NSC-68 which was signed by President Truman in 1950, was Nitze’s strategic blueprint for the Cold War. Although written before North Korea rolled south, it was a document that people quickly took up in the wake of the Korean invasion. It is a document that has been read and reread over the course of 50 years. It is a model of long-term strategic planning. NSC-68 addressed not only importance of a nuclear armed Soviet Union, but also the importance of the ideological orientation of the Soviet Union. Paul recognized the Soviet ideology as an inherent evil. And when combined with a formidable military capability, that ideology became an existential threat.
Wolfowitz seamlessly weaves the NSC-68 legacy -- a legacy of relentless dumping of public resources into endless production of weapons of planetary destruction in order to stave off the perceived power of the Soviet state -- into the new world evil of Islamic terrorism conducted at random by mostly invisible stateless actors, also requiring an endless American garrison economy.
In its opening analysis, NSC-68 says this, quote: "The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world." As we reflect on these words, it is striking how similar they are to what we face today. Although it is called religious, the fanaticism that we are dealing with has roots that stem much more from the ideological zealotry of the 20th century than from the religious origins on which it claims to draw.
Secular or religious, the adversaries we face today are ultimately animated by their own will to power, not by any altruism. While there are important differences between the challenge of our time and the one that Nitze and these other wise men faced 50 years ago, there are striking similarities in the character of the enemy—a similarity summarized, perhaps, with a single word: evil.
So none of what Mr. Bush said today is new. For a past example, take the May 25, 2004 speech Mr. Bush gave at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA:We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person, and mind, and soul, a harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free rein. They seek weapons of mass destruction, to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, pursued with consuming zeal, and without conscience.
Does not Bush describe what is actually the US agenda in the Middle East -- imposition of a US-approved neoliberal constitutional client state in Iraq with expanding bases, fuel supplies and hegemonic intentions? Nearly everything he says about them applies to us, 1000-fold.
Bush now continues the process of conflating and amplifying the current perceived threats from this ragtag tapestry of disaffected people who feel their very existence is under attack into a new NSC-68-inspired foundation for permanent war. It's just laughable that such an enemy could form an ``empire'' of global stature. Relative personal wealth of a very few of the ``enemy'' individuals hardly matches even a tiny fraction of the American juggernaut, with its global network of bases -- many on the very soil the so-called ``fanatics'' call home. And there lies the true, unspoken challenge for the criminal Bush regime -- how to reinvigorate the rapidly-decaying public consensus behind American taking and holding of the strategic resources acquired by the Iraq invasion.
A friend recently recommended a radio program offering an alternate interpretation of Islamic politics and the nature of not only Islamic but Christian fundamentalism. From the description at Minnesota Public Radio's Midday (October 4, 2005, click through for audio, requires Real Player):"A militant kind of piety" Best-selling religion writer Karen Armstrong says that the rise of modernity and the rise of religious fundamentalism are linked. In a speech Saturday at St. Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis, the former nun said that fundamentalist religious movements were both enabled by modernity and arose as a backlash against modernity.
Let's start from the deep understanding of humanity and its troubles offered by Karen Armstrong rather than the deep criminality and hyperbolic mendacity offered by Bush. We must form a political force that limits the impunity of the current regime. Only by wresting power from Bush and his failed mandarins can we begin honestly to stop more US-led war and reduce the likelihood of more terrorism against which the Bush-Blair policy of warmaking has been a colossal, destructive, and long-term debilitating failure.
Thanks to King of Zembla for including Deep Blade Journal in the list of ``Blogs we're plugging this week''. Back at you... I'd never read this blog before, but check it out! There is excellent coverage of Katrina malfeasance, the massive and growing Bush-Delay Republican crime scandals, Justice-nominee Harriet "Crony" Miers, and lots of other great cuts into the flesh of corruption -- cuts that Deep Blade appreciates.
Under Bush leadership, Iraqis are ``smoked'' and ``fucked'' for ``amusement''
How depraved is the Bush administration for creating conditions and detention policies leading to this:The soldiers referred to their Iraqi captives as PUCs – persons under control – and used the expressions ``f***ing a PUC'' and ``smoking a PUC'' to refer respectively to torture and forced physical exertion.
How much more of this incredible sickness will the American people stand for? When will a moral authority finally arise with enough power to hold the US military and political leadership accountable for these crimes, for which most certainly they are ultimately responsible? Our souls are close to unredeemable already. At best, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Cambone, and all other responsible US officials would be subject to what probably would be a decades-long tribunal, resulting in conviction, appropriate punishment, and perpetual infamy for the crimes they have committed against peace and humanity.
One sergeant provided graphic descriptions to Human Rights Watch investigators about acts of abuse carried out both by himself and others. He now says he regrets his actions. His regiment arrived at FOB Mercury in August 2003. He said: ``The first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or a heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, `This is what we are allowed to do?''' [emphasis added]
The troops would put sand-bags on prisoners' heads and cuff them with plastic zip-ties. The sergeant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if he was told that prisoners had been found with homemade bombs, ``we would f*** them up, put them in stress positions and put them in a tent and withhold water -- It was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy go before he passes out or just collapses on you?''
He explained: ``To `f*** a PUC'' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To `smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day.
``Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. We did that for amusement.''
Worrying and calming messages mixed
A combination of refinery shutdowns following the hurricanes, decrease in demand for gasoline as people drive less under high prices, and concern about heating oil supply as the weather gets colder have left fuel prices pegged high but unsure about which way to move.
Sep.30.2005, The Daily Times, Maryville, TN: Fuel costs soarDespite a Department of Energy report Wednesday that the nation's stock of gasoline is growing, many East Tennessee drivers experienced sticker shock at the pumps Thursday afternoon.
Sep.30.2005, Bloomberg: Gasoline Futures Drop for Second Day on Signs of Lower Demand
Prices at some stations rose as much as 30 cents, hitting a high of $3.29.Record pump prices and concern about fuel shortages caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are showing signs of denting consumer demand, prompting a second-straight decline for gasoline futures... About 5 percent of the nation's refining capacity has been closed because of Hurricane Katrina.
Volatility of fuel price is enhanced by monopoly practice (desire for maximum profit), delivery system operations near maximum capacity, and the fact that geological supply also is being drawn at near-maximum rate. Without effective swing production, the only way prices are going to be limited is through demand control and reduction. Demand reduction for gasoline finally is showing up at the $3/US gallon threshold. Heating oil and natural gas will be a tougher nuts if we have a cold winter in the Northern US, partly because of the monopoly practices described in the Bloomberg story above. Deja vu 1973. Worry.
``We're still facing some monumental problems getting these refineries back up,'' said Andy Lebow, a trader with Man Financial in New York...
The shutdown of refineries and efforts to maximize gasoline output may lead to higher heating oil prices when the weather cools. Most refiners try to shift production to emphasize heating oil over gasoline in September. High profit margins may have led facilities to put off changing their mix of products.
``With the weather still relatively warm, the market is unlikely to sharply focus on the bullish heating oil market that is in the works,'' said Antonio Szabo, chief executive of Houston-based consultant Stone Bond Technologies. ``Refiners are making gasoline late in the year.''
