When Bar Harbor is under water, it's too late

Not fit to print in the Bangor Daily News

Sad to have had to hear this story on Democracy Now!

Maine TV Stations Stops Covering Global Warming
In media news, journalists at two TV stations in Maine have been ordered not to cover stories related to global warming. The policy affects both the ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor Maine. Michael Palmer, the general manager of the stations said in a memo when "Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories… Until then no more." Palmer said that he placed global warming stories in the same category as 'the killer African bee scare' from the 1970s or, the Y2K scare.

The original story seems to have come from Monday's New York Times Media & Advertising section. The reporter did an excellent job in receiving comments from a real climate scientist:

Dr. James Hansen, the director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, said in an interview yesterday that the station’s policy on coverage was irresponsible.

``If you wait until Bar Harbor is underwater, it’s too late,'' Dr. Hansen said. ``It won’t be just Bar Harbor that is underwater, but many places around the globe including parts of Florida, Bangladesh and the Nile Delta.''

Cut and run, yes

I second what the Lieutenant General says...

Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

But reality can no longer be avoided....

The author is Lt. Gen. WILLIAM E. ODOM (Ret.), senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. [alternate link to the oped]

Minimum deterrence

Constraints on American/Israeli nuclear weapons


Ritter & Hersh

Right now I'm watching a fascinating program on C-SPAN 2 featuring Scott Ritter (author of ``Target Iran: The Truth about the White House Plan for Regime Change'') and New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh. It was recorded two weeks ago at a meeting of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. I posted links to the full podcast here.

Perhaps appropriate for Halloween is the truly frightening discussion in this program is the prospect for nuclear war in the Middle East. Ritter goes so far as to say that if the US initiates a nuclear strike on Iran,

the genie ain’t going back into the bottle until at least one American city is taken out. So tell me—which one do you want gone? Seattle? Los Angeles? Boston? New York? Pick one, because at least one is going.

Let's back up on that. The way Ritter presents this case, he comes off as being a bit hyperbolic.

However, I believe the prospect of an Islamic country at some point in the future having the ability to deliver a retaliatory nuke to an American (or Israeli) city is the crux of current US policy toward Iran.

Hersh lays out during the discussion an absolutely crucial point about the balance of nuclear power in the Middle East--but a point that never is found in US reporting on attempts to punish Iran for its uranium enrichment program. That point is, as I have been writing since before the first Gulf War, the US and Israel are the ``advanced regional nuclear terrorists,'' while countries like Iran (and then Iraq) were and are ``nuclear infants.''

Hersh says,

Israel does have 600 or so nuclear weapons... It's all so, so overwhelming. You've got all these countries in the Middle East that have nada. And you have this one country that has 600. And we're not even beginning to talk about some rational disarmament program... [Even if regional problems including the Palestinian issue could be solved] you would still be confronted with an overwhelmingly difficult issue, which is one country in the Middle East is bristling with nuclear arms and the others don't have any, with the exception of Pakistan... We aren't even getting to the core issue with all this stuff we're doing now, and of course this administration has moved us even farther along off the path.... It's a really lousy world we're leaving for our children.

But, despite all that utterly dominating nuclear firepower the US and Israel wield, the nuclear infants still could constrain American/Israeli action if they managed to acquire even one nuke that could be detonated in just one of their enemy's (our) soft spots.

Ritter discussed a path to escalation in a conflict with Iran,

There will be war with Iran ... If we start bombing Iran, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to work ... What will happen is that the Iranians will respond and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will cause the Bush administration to go to Phase 2, which will be boots on the ground.

And those troops could end up trapped in Iraq [Iran? sic?]. And there is no reserve to pull them out! And my concern at that point is that we might resort to the use of nuclear weapons to try to break the backbone of Iranian resistance.

Presumably what would follow, if Iran had the ability, is it would direct a retaliatory nuking of an American city, perhaps as Ritter was quoted above.

Let me summarize. The US wants to control Iran so that utilization of it's resources can be directed politically from Washington, as Iraq's now are. Regime change will be required. Conventional bombing can't accomplish it, so troops would be sent in, followed by nukes when the troops fail. The likelihood of failure of conventional force against Iran was amply illustrated when the Israeli attempt to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon did so last summer. The only thing that could stop Washington from carrying out such brazen aggression is the prospect of a nuke coming back at it.

As do Ritter and Hersh, I fear that the lame duck Bush administration will behave in its last two year like a dying monster with nothing to lose. It will accept the prospect of a temporary disruption of the oil economy in order to try to clean up Iran into a puppet more to its liking. No Democrat will stand in the way.

Like Hersh says, it's a really lousy world we're leaving for our children.

Friday Garden Blogging

Boo!


Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor

Friday Garden Blogging

Foliage


Rain today on the bush in front of the house


Best quiet-water paddle in the state is in Milford, Maine


Mattawamkeag, Maine


Mount Washington in New Hampshire as seen from Mount Cutler in Hiram, Maine

I thought you'd all be banging down the door trying to get your Friday Garden Blogging the last three weeks. Alas, no one seemed to miss it, or at least let me know this.

I snapped hundreds of photos in the last three weeks with the Finepix S9000. This is just a tiny sample.

Readings on government run amuck

Accessible law blog: Balkanization

I find the arguments written by the stable of lawyers at Balkanization to be cogent and readable. These recent posts tell a lot about what is happening in our govenment while it rapidly engorges itself with wartime powers.

Read here about the ``unconscionab[le] attempt to insulate such Executive `interpretations' [of War Crimes statutes] from any effective judicial and legislative review''

Read here about how, according to FOX/White House mouthpiece Tony Snow, on the Military Commissions Act, ``[T]here won't be a written signing statement! Because, you know, unlike all those other bills that have prompted hundreds of objections and `constructions,' this one is entirely pellucid and unambiguous, and doesn't raise any constitutional questions.''

Read here about ``termination of the writ of habeas corpus with respect to the claims of detainees and its sweeping grant to the Executive of rights to label persons enemy combatants and thereby leave them without legal rights which can be vindicated in courts.''

Finally, read here about ``Rights against torture-- without remedies... Any CIA official who acts in good faith will probably conclude that waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions, and related techniques violate one or more of these features of American law.

``What the new Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) did, however, was to make these legal norms effectively unenforceable.''

Darkness

Tyranny and impunity under the guise of Terror War


Dark Lords: Bush, Gonzales (peeking in background), and Congressional henchmen celebrate the destruction of human rights and justice.

Let's get one thing clear right away, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 signed yesterday has not one thing to do with ``Protecting America.'' This entire episode is about acquisition by the president of heretofore illegal tools designed for intimidation and domination of both foreign and domestic opponents, regardless of the likelihood of these opponents to commit acts of violence.

President Bush says that, ``The Military Commissions Act will also allow us to prosecute captured terrorists for war crimes through a full and fair trial.''

But he leaves out the following: The Act, along with other post-911 travesties like the Patriot Act, allow the president to declare any person an ``enemy combatant'' merely on his own suspicion. That person may then be arrested and permanently disappeared into a dark system of dungeons, in perpetuity, without the legal right to file a petition of habeas corpus.

Bush says that, ``These military commissions will provide a fair trial, in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them. These military commissions are lawful, they are fair, and they are necessary.''

And he says that, ``this bill complies with both the spirit and the letter of our international obligations.''

This is all nonsense. Not one word was mentioned by Bush yesterday, nor does one appear in the accompanying White House fact sheet about the elimination of habeas corpus, the legality of ``coerced'' evidence (obtained through techniques any reasonable person would consider torture), legality of evidence that can be spun from whole cloth and then be immune from ``hearsay'' rules, and the ability of evidence to be declared secret if a senior US official says so.

Furthermore, to great effect, Bush explains how the Act, ``provides legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs.''

This is an unimaginable travesty of justice. These provisions grant impunity to CIA torturers and senior officials who have designed, promoted, and executed horrendous acts upon human beings. Details of these acts are well known to readers of this blog:

· involuntary injection of a prisoner with a tranquilizer

· prisoner put in sensory deprivation garb and blackened goggles

· prisoners shackled in uncomfortable positions for many hours

· prisoners left to soil themselves

· prisoners wrapped in humiliating positions while exposed to blaring music or incessant meowing

· forcible enema

· sleep deprivation

· flashing lights in prisoners' eyes

· preventing visits by the Red Cross

· sexual humiliation, including squeezing of testicles, sexual taunts by female interrogators, sodomizing with a rifle muzzle, forced public masturbation, and piling prisoners into naked human pyramids

· shackling in fetal positions for 24 hours or more

· deprivation of food and water

· forcing prisoners' heads into the dirt

· prisoner placed in a sleeping bag and tied with an electrical cord

· strangulation

· beatings

· burning, including placing lit cigarettes into prisoners' ears and dousing a prisoner with alcoholic liquid and setting on fire

· terrorizing prisoners with military dogs

· rape of a juvenile male prisoner

· chaining in a cold room/hot room

· striking a prisoner with an empty 5 gallon plastic water jug

· administering electric shocks

· use of Taser guns on prisoners

· killing through dragging by the neck and other unknown means

· mock executions

· cuffing and pouring cold water on a subject in an act called the scorpion

· prisoner photographed with a pistol being held to head

· dragging of feet over barbed wire

· hooking wires on the hands and feet of a hooded prisoner who was told to stand on a box or else be electrocuted

All of this violates the ``spirit and letter'' of international law. To wit, the follwing principles embodied in The Universal Declaration for Human Rights:

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11: (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Everything about the Military Commissions Act is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Arrest in the Terror War largely is arbitrary, based on bounty or hearsay. Hundreds of prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay open-air dungeon have zero evidence against them, as this blog has discussed before. The tribunals cannot be ``impartial''. Mostly the president speaks like the guilt of his suspects in the 911 horror is already established, and he offers no evidence for his examples of supposed instances where ``lives were saved''.

The US administration has at no point in the last five years taken one step to insure any sort of just, internationally-recognizable verdict against a surviving 911 criminal can ever be entered. They have rounded up lots of people who had nothing to do with 911. They have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and elsewhere, they have tortured and murdered and granted themselves impunity for these acts. It is a sad, dark time in America.

600,000

New Lancet study of Iraqi war deaths

Of course the pro-war, right-wing holocaust deniers, including the Murderer-in-Chief (``I don't consider it a credible report.'') are out in force.

Thanks to Majikthise (via Atrios) for this story on the reactions of innumerate cowards who ``own this war,'' but ``won't face up to the fact that their little adventure helped kill over half a million people.''