Thursday, January 31, 2008

Researchers find that humans are cause of diminishing water flow in the West

Physorg.com:
Mid-latitude glaciers respond quickly and dramatically to fluctuations in climate. Aerial views of South Cascade Glacier Washington in 1928 and 2000 illustrate the magnitude of glacier wastage (negative mass balance) and the terminus retreat that has ...
Mid-latitude glaciers respond quickly and dramatically to fluctuations in climate. Aerial views of South Cascade Glacier, Washington, in 1928 and 2000, illustrate the magnitude of glacier wastage (negative mass balance) and the terminus retreat that has been characteristic of glaciers in the region. Over this time span, the glacier has lost half its volume and retreated 1.5 km. Photo courtesy of USGS

The Rocky Mountains have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The snowpack in the Sierras has dwindled by 20 percent and the temperatures there have heated up by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit.


All could lead to dire consequences for the water supply in the Western United States, including California. Scientists have noted that water flow in the West has decreased for the last 20 to 30 years, but had never explained why it was happening.

Until now. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison in collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, have pinpointed the cause of that diminishing water flow on a regional scale: humans.

The research appears in the Jan. 31 online edition of Science Express. The findings also were presented at last year’s annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

“We looked at whether there is a human-caused climate change where we live, and in aspects of our climate that we really care about,” said Benjamin Santer of LLNL and co-author of the paper. “No matter what we did, we couldn’t shake this robust conclusion that human-caused warming is affecting water resources here in the Western United States.”

By looking at air temperatures, river flow and snowpack over the last 50 years, the team determined that the human-induced increase in greenhouse gases has seriously affected the water supply in the West. And the future brings more of the same.

“It’s pretty much the same throughout all of the Western United States,” said Tim Barnett of Scripps and a co-author of the paper. “The results are being driven by temperature change. And that temperature change is caused by us.”

The team scaled down global climate models to the regional scale and compared the results to observations over the last 50 years. The results were solid, giving the team confidence that they could use the same models to predict the effects of the global scale increase in greenhouse gases on the Western United States in the future.


The projected consequences are bleak.


By 2040, most of the snowpack in the Sierras and Colorado Rockies would melt by April 1 of each year because of rising air temperatures. The earlier snow melt would lead to a shift in river flows.

The shift could lead to flooding in California’s Central Valley. Currently, state reservoirs are filled during the rainy season. As the water is drawn down, the reservoirs are replenished with snow melt from the Sierras.

If that snow melts earlier, as predicted in the climate models, the reservoirs could overflow.

“We are headed for a water crisis in the Western United States that has already started,” Barnett said. “A couple of decades ahead, we might not have that snowpack, making us more susceptible to flooding.”

Santer said the increase in predicted river flow should be a wake- up call to officials that the water supply infrastructure needs to be updated now, as opposed to waiting until the situation is urgent.

As for the warming, with the existing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, the Earth will continue to warm for the next 80-100 years.

“For someone who has seven grandchildren, that scares the hell out of me,” Barnett said. “I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it.”

Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

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What is an "issue"?

George Lakoff explains the difference between the Clintons' idea of "issues" and Obama's.


Huffingtonpost.com:

Political endorsements rarely make interesting reading. But this year is different. Take the endorsements of Hillary Clinton by the New York Times [NY Times, January 25, 2008] and Barack Obama by Caroline Kennedy [NY Times, January 27, 2008].

To the editors of the New York Times, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agree on policy goals:

"On the major issues, there is no real gulf separating the two. They promise an end to the war in Iraq, more equitable taxation, more effective government spending, more concern for social issues, a restoration of civil liberties and an end to the politics of division of George W. Bush and Karl Rove."

What matters to the editors is experience in "tackling ... issues" -- in mastering details of policy and carrying them out one by one. "The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work."

To Caroline Kennedy, policy is not the real issue:

"Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates' goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

"I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved."

The difference is striking. To the editors of the New York Times, the quality of leadership seems not to be an "issue." The ability to unite the country is not an "issue." What Obama calls the empathy deficit -- attunement to the experience and needs of real people -- is not an "issue." Honesty is not an "issue." Trust is not an "issue." Moral judgment is not an "issue." Values are not "issues." Adherence to democratic ideals -- rather than political positioning, triangulation, and incrementalism -- are not "issues." Inspiration, a call to a higher purpose, and a transcendence of interest-based politics are not "issues."

It is time to understand what counts as an "issue," to whom, and why.

In Thinking Points, the handbook for progressives that the Rockridge Institute staff and I wrote last year, we began by analyzing Ronald Reagan's strengths as a politician. According to his chief strategist, Richard Wirthlin, Reagan realized that most voters do not vote primarily on the basis of policies, but rather on (1) values, (2) connection, (3) authenticity, (4) trust, and (5) identity. That is, Reagan spoke about his values, and policies for him just exemplified values. He connected viscerally with people. He was perceived as authentic, as really believing what he said. As a result, people trusted him and identified with him. Even if they had different positions on issues, they knew where he stood. Even when his economic policies did not produce a "Morning in America," voters still felt a connection to him because he spoke to what they wanted America to be. That was what allowed Reagan to gain the votes of so many independents and Democrats.

There is a reason that Obama recently spoke of Reagan. Reagan understood that you win elections by drawing support from independents and the opposite side. He understood what unified the country so that he could lead it according to his vision. His vision was a radical conservative one, a vision devastating for the country and contradicted by his economic policies.

Obama understands the importance of values, connection, authenticity, trust, and identity.

But his vision is deeply progressive. He proposes to lead in a very different direction than Reagan. Crucially, he adds to that vision a streetwise pragmatism: his policies have to do more than look good on paper; they have to bring concrete material results to millions of struggling Americans in the lower and middle classes. They have to meet the criteria of a community organizer.

The Clintonian policy wonks don't seem to understand any of this. They have trivialized Reagan's political acumen as an illegitimate triumph of personality over policy. They confuse values with programs. They have underestimated authenticity and trust.

So do the pundits who pose the questions in the debates.

This nomination campaign is about much more than the candidates. It about a major split within the Democratic party. The candidates are reflecting that split. Here are three of the major "issues" dividing Democrats.

First, triangulation: moving to the right -- adopting right-wing positions -- to get more votes. Bill Clinton did it and Hillary believes in it. It is what she means by "bipartisanship." Obama means the opposite by "bipartisanship." To Obama, it is a recognition that central progressive moral principles are fundamental American principles. For him, bipartisanship means finding people who call themselves "conservatives" or "independents," but who share those central American values with progressives. Obama thus doesn't have to surrender or dilute his principles for the sake of "bipartisanship."

The second is incrementalism: Hillary believes in getting lots of small carefully crafted policies through, one at a time, step by small step, real but almost unnoticed. Obama believes in bold moves and the building of a movement in which the bold moves are demanded by the people and celebrated when they happen. This is the reason why Hillary talks about "I," I," "I" (the crafter of the policy) and Obama talks about "you" and "we" (the people who demand it and who jointly carry it out).

The third is interest group politics: Hillary looks at politics through interests and interest groups, seeking policies that satisfy the interests of such groups. Obama's thinking emphasizes empathy over interest groups. He also sees empathy as central to the very idea of America. The result is a positive politics grounded in empathy and caring that is also patriotic and uplifting.

For a great many Democrats, these are the real issues. These real differences between the candidates reflect real differences within the party. Whoever gets the nomination, these differences will remain.

It is time for the press, the pundits, the pollsters, and the political scientists to take these issues seriously.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Something so Simple

Checklists could save the healthcare system hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lives. Here's a quite fascinating eight-page article in the New Yorker.

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A Political Prisoner in America

This story is nothing short of mind-boggling...


donsiegelman.org

Today, Don Siegelman, former governor of the state of Alabama, sits in a federal prison, sentenced to a seven year term for bribery.

Every day that Siegelman remains in prison every American citizen who openly dissents from the policies and protests the criminality of the Bush/Cheney regime is less free and more vulnerable to politically motivated prosecution.

For the plain fact of the matter is that Don Siegelman is, in effect, a political prisoner. The formal charge against him was bribery. But, practically speaking, his offense was his political success as a Democrat in a “red” Republican state. When Siegelman indicated an interest in reviving his political career, one of his accusers was heard to say, “[We’re] going to take care of Siegelman.” And so they did.

Read the rest.

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Really Help America Vote

A 12-Step Program to Save US Democracy from Mark Crispin Miller:
  • 1. Repeal the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
  • 2. Replace all electronic voting with hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB).
  • 3. Get rid of computerized voter rolls.
  • 4. Keep all private vendors out of the election process.
  • 5. Make it illegal for the TV networks to declare who won before the vote-count is complete.
  • 6. Set up an exit polling system, publicly supported, to keep the vote-counts honest.
  • 7. Get rid of voter registration rules, by having every citizen be duly registered on his/her 18th birthday.
  • 8. Ban all state requirements for state-issued ID's at the polls.
  • 9. Put all polling places under video surveillance, to spot voter fraud, monitor election personnel, and track the turnout.
  • 10. Have Election Day declared a federal holiday, requiring all employers to allow their workers time to vote.
  • 11. Make it illegal for Secretaries of State to co-chair political campaigns (or otherwise assist or favor them).
  • 12. Make election fraud a major felony, with life imprisonment--and disenfranchisement--for all repeat offenders.
Here's an approximately half hour video of Mark Crispin Miller in Los Angeles last week, giving his 12 point Election Reform Program. Miller is well worth seeing.

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Sibel Edmunds Names Names

Or rather, she posts photos. Someone else puts the names to the photos.

What this is all about is explained a bit below, in reference to an article that came out in the Sunday Times a few weeks back, on January 6, and that I blogged about on January 14.

Keep in mind that the FBI admitted that Edmonds is on the level. She's been under a gag order for years. No one here would touch her story, so she gave it to the Times.

For some reason this all reminds me of another blogged entry from 2006 about the American-Turkish Council...

Sibel Edmonds:

Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5521#comments: (January 6, 2008)


Sibel maven, Luke Ryland, has done us the favor of putting names to the faces, adding that "we can reasonably presume that they are the 21 guilty people in her case."

Here are those names, sectioned into three groups, as Edmonds has grouped the photos in her own "Gallery":

Current and former Pentagon and State Department officials...

  • Richard Perle
  • Douglas Feith
  • Eric Edelman
  • Marc Grossman
  • Brent Scowcroft
  • Larry Franklin

Current and former congressmen...

  • Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Ex-House Speaker
  • Roy Blount (R-MO)
  • Dan Burton (R-IN)
  • Tom Lantos (D-CA)
  • ? (Photo simply a box with question mark in it)
  • Bob Livingston (R-LA), Ex-House Speaker
  • Stephen Solarz (D-NY)

The 3rd group includes people who all appear to work at think tanks - primarily WINEP, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy


_________________________________________________________________

Here's a bit more about this stuff, also from BradBlog: (this from the previous day, Jan. 6, 2008)

Among the newly disclosed information from Edmonds, in the extraordinary front-page Times article tonight:

● Foreign intelligence agents from Turkey, Israel and Pakistan enlisted the support of high-level US officials in order to acquire a network of moles deep inside of sensitive American military and nuclear agencies, including "PhD students – with security clearance [at] Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent."

● Members of the diplomatic community were given lists of potential "moles" at the sensitive installations. Edmonds tells the Times: "the lists contained all their 'hooking points', which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to."

● Well-known US officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal US nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a wiretap discussing "nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama," in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: "We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000."

● Nuclear secrets were then subsequently sold by foreign agents to America's enemies, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

● Pakistani officials involved in the nuclear black market network have significant cross-over with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Officials such as the chief of ISI, Pakistan's spy agency, allegedly sent $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, and aides of A.Q. Kahn --- who had used the stolen secrets to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan --- met with Osama bin Laden "weeks before 9/11...to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device."

● Elements of the US government have repeatedly shut down investigations into these crimes under the guise of protecting "certain diplomatic relations."

● The US government has been aware of all of the above information since at least 2001.

[. . .]

● As usual, Luke Ryland offers tons of info, analysis, links and background in his dKos coverage (cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak). Just a couple of the notable passages offering additional context on the story, from his coverage today:

The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks - including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: "We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans." Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation.

...and this...

high-level Pentagon officials were maintaining 'dossiers' on the sexual and financial proclivities of their underlings in order to be able to blackmail them.

I know that many of you have been (rightly) concerned about FISA, and many of you have (rightly) been confused by the inexplicable behaviour of Democrats in Congress, and wonder why they behave as though they are being blackmailed.

Now you know.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Suharto


President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (far left)
at an arrival ceremony in Jarkarta with Indonesian President Suharto,
December 5, 1975

Chris Floyd:
Singing for Suharto: The Lasting Values of the Great and Good



Monday, 28 January 2008
1.
One of the most bloodthirsty dictators of the 20th century -- who killed up to a million of his own people, then ruthlessly raped a defenseless country, took it over and killed 200,000 more -- died last week. The Bush Administation's reaction was swift, and entirely characteristic of a government that has devoted itself to the advancement of human liberty across the globe:

They sang the mass murderer a hymn of praise.

As Australia's Herald Sun reports:

THE United States hailed former Indonesian president Suharto as a "historic figure" who "achieved remarkable economic development", in a statement released by its embassy in Jakarta.

“President Suharto led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development,” ambassador Cameron Hume said in the release....

Offering his condolences on behalf of the United States, Mr Hume praised Suharto for his close ties to the United States and his role in creating the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

But we wouldn't like to leave the impression that the Bush response was nothing more than a big wet kiss from one bloodstained tyrant to another. No, in the midst of his laudatory statement, Ambassador Hume suddenly lashed out with a daring verbal blow for the cause of freedom, going so far as to say that "there may be some controversy" over Suharto's legacy. "Some controversy!" Boy, that's telling it like it is. Say on, brother!

He quickly tempered this rash outburst, however, by noting that "President Suharto was a historic figure who left a lasting imprint on Indonesia and the region." In much the same way that, oh, say, Adolf Hitler left a lasting impression in his neck of the woods.

What exactly did this remarkable historic figure do to earn such paens? John Pilger tells the tale in his fond remembrance of Suharto in The Guardian:

Here lies a clue as to why Suharto, unlike Saddam Hussein, died not on the gallows but surrounded by the finest medical team his secret billions could buy. Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s, describes the terror of Suharto's takeover in 1965-6 as "the model operation" for the US-backed coup that got rid of Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. "The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders," he wrote, "[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965." The US embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a "zap list" of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. Roland Challis, BBC south-east Asia correspondent at the time, told me how the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter. "British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust," he said. "I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time ... There was a deal, you see."

The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called "the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia". In November 1967 the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens, US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suharto's US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia's bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on "a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened". Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a "model pupil".

The holocaust in East Timor -- like the maniacal frenzy of Suharto's original coup -- was of course greenlighted and abetted by Washington, as I noted in an earlier piece marking the death of another bagman of empire: "The Enduring Legacy of Gerald Ford."

But Ford's enduring legacy is in no way exhausted by the glories of his bloodthirsty political progeny [his top staffers Dick Cheney and Don Rumseld]. For the sad occasion of the statesman's death is certainly a most appropriate time to recall what is probably his greatest geopolitical masterstroke: the green-lighting of Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor -- an act of state-sponsored terrorism that killed more than 200,000 people...

...The documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act – in June 2001, before George W. Bush gutted the law – but only reported in December of that year by the Washington Post. Kissinger and Ford had long denied any prior knowledge of the murderous assault, even though they'd been feasting with the genocidal Indonesian tyrant Suharto the day before the troops went in. However, in a secret State Department cable, Ford and Kissinger actually told Suharto before the attack that "we understand the problem you have and the intentions you have" and "we will not press you on the issue."

Kissinger, ever mindful of the media angle, added in another love note: "We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned."

The murders were carried out with U.S. weaponry. Congress had restricted their use to defensive purposes only, but Kissinger blithely brushed this aside, assuring Suharto that America would "construe" the invasion as "self-defense rather than a foreign operation." Kinda like Hitler did with Poland.

Naturally, the December 2001 story was buried by the usual bull-roaring of Bush praise in the media. In fact, in the same issue of the Post in which news of the declassification first appeared, you might have been diverted from its revelations by a fascinating piece on the editorial page, a long disquisition on the new ordering of the world, penned by one of our most revered elder statesmen:

Henry Kissinger.

[I should also note] that on September 21, 1999, Sander Thoenes, a former colleague of mine at The Moscow Times, was murdered in East Timor, almost certainly by Indonesian military forces, while covering the last throes of Jakarta's fury before East Timor won its independence -- another fact to be recorded with the high and mighty deeds of Gerald R. Ford.

2.
But how does such blood and filth come to be countenanced by the great and the good of the West, the defenders and embodiments of the values of civilization? Pilger and Jon Schwarz provide two excellent glimpses into the mindset of the Establishment grandees who create government policy and shape the public discourse.

First, Schwarz offers this "funny little story about Suharto":

When Suharto was falling from power during 1998, I listened to an NPR show on Indonesia. It was hosted by the father of someone with whom I went to high school. The guests and the host spoke about Indonesian history, but made no mention of the "staggering mass slaughter" after Suharto took over in 1965, nor of the US support for all of it. Then someone called in and asked why they hadn't. Specifically the caller spoke of how the US embassy had given the Indonesian military lists of thousands of members of the communist party, so they could be more efficiently killed.

The host found all this preposterous and scoffed. In particular he wanted to know how the caller had gotten the ridiculous idea that the US had handed over death lists.

I don't know where the caller had gotten that idea, but I know where I'd gotten it: from a book on Indonesia I checked out from a library THREE BLOCKS AWAY FROM THE HOST'S HOUSE.

Of course, you can't really fault the host for not knowing about this. He was only a New York Times reporter and graduate of Harvard, so no one had ever taught him how to read.

Also, if I remember correctly, Lyndon Johnson had attended his wedding...which must have been during the same period as the coup, when Johnson was making decisions that led to the hundreds of thousands of people being shot and hacked to death with machetes. You can see how you might not want to find out you're the kind of person who has friends like that.

Then Pilger offers this chilling -- and telling -- conclusion to his piece on Suharto's death:

Shortly before the death of Alan Clark, who under Thatcher was the minister responsible for supplying Suharto with most of his weapons, I interviewed him, and asked: "Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering?"

"No, not in the slightest," he replied. "It never entered my head."

"I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and are seriously concerned with the way animals are killed."

"Yeah?"

"Doesn't that concern extend to humans?"

"Curiously not."

When it comes to the great and the good, never forget this one fact: they hate you, and they don't care if you suffer and die, just as long as they can keep gorging on the perks of loot and power.

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Audacity Of Hopefully Strangling More Palestinians

Jonathan Schwarz at a Tiny Revolution.com:

January 26, 2008

Here's an excerpt of Barack Obama's letter on Gaza to US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad:

Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel...

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this... Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians...

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

Ali Abunimah has some pictures of Obama and his wife with Edward Said at a 1999 event in Chicago, along with this:

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood...As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

And here's a section about Zalmay Khalilzad from the book Leo Strauss and the American Empire:

At [the University of] Chicago, one pursued the life of the mind. There was nothing higher, there was nothing else...

Albert Wohlstetter belonged to another world: the world of the policymaking coasts: the world of Washington and Rand. He flew between Chicago and Washington, between Chicago and various think tanks...

Wohlstetter invited the class to a reception at his house. He didn't live, as most of the professors did, in Hyde Park, an old, integrated neighborhood of four-flats and apartments. He lived at the edge of Lincoln Park in an elegant and lavish apartment, where we drank champagne and ate strawberries. This wasn't the life of the mind. This was the life of the privileged and powerful. I don't know why Paul Wolfowitz entered it. I do know how and why Zalmay Khalilzad did.

He is a protege of Wolfowitz, who worked with him on the war with Iraq and the occupation...When I knew him, he was an Afghani graduate student and a radical. He boasted of the demonstrations he had organized in Beirut, of the fedayin he knew and had worked with, and of his friends who regularly visited Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi. He went to pro-Palestinian meetings. His room had a poster of Nasser in tears. He and I had taken Wohlstetter's course on nuclear war together. He didn't seem, at the time, particularly interested in the course. He was, however, enthralled by Wohlstetter's party. In the elevator, in the apartment, he kept saying how much it all cost, how expensive it was, how much money Wohlstetter must have. Later, he borrowed my copy of Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel. When he returned it, one sentence was underlined. "The bourgeois intellectual neither fights nor works." The next summer, Wohlstetter got Khalilzad a job at Rand. I don't know what happened to the poster of Nasser.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

935 False statements Preceded Iraq War

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 23, 6:43 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Solar Hydrogen Gets Funding


Solar Hydrogen Company Secures $4.7M in Series A Round

Greencarcongress.com:

16 January 2008

Nanoptek
Second-generation prototype Solar Hydrogen Generator with solar concentrator.

Nanoptek Corporation, a renewable energy company that produces hydrogen directly from water using sunlight and its proprietary photocatalyst, has closed a $4.7 million Series A equity financing round led by The Quercus Trust, a California fund with multiple investments in clean technology and renewable energy.

[. . .]

Nanoptek has developed an improved titania photocatalyst by developing a process that coats a thin film of titania semiconductor onto a plastic nano-structured surface that induces large local nano-scale stresses in the titania. These stresses stretch the titania crystal lattice so that electrons are held less tightly in the lattice and so can be knocked out of the titania with light of lower energy. These electrons then drive the hydrogen production.

This bandgap engineering enables Nanoptek’s titania photocatalyst to be photoactive well into the visible blue, and so is six times more efficient in sunlight than native titania, which requires the sparse ultraviolet (UV) part of the solar spectrum, according to the company.

The performance of Nanoptek’s titania improves with heat, so heat from the sun can be used to further increase the efficiency of the photolysis process, and solar concentrators can be used for better economics. The manufacturing process is scalable, low cost, and requires less energy than other processes.

The first-generation prototype in 2004 had an effective area of 0.25m2 and produced hydrogen at the rate of 3 liters/hour or 720 liters/month. Light harvest efficiency was 37% and photon conversion efficiency was 9.6%

Nanoptek developed the technology over 5 years with funding from NASA, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and a SEED (Sustainable Energy Economic Development) loan from the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust totaling over $1.3M.

Nanoptek expects to sell the carbon-free, locally-produced hydrogen to customers with high value industrial applications, and plans to also make it available for applications including transportation, backup power, electricity for municipalities, and off-grid off-pipe power generation.

Ultimately, Nanoptek envisions the possibility of “ultra-distribution” of production, where many homeowners would be able to produce most of the hydrogen required for their vehicles right at home. A rooftop area of about 50 ft by 50 ft would supply enough hydrogen for the driving needs of an average family of 4, according to Nanoptek.

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the March of Science

Press Release

SSRC 2-2008

Monday, January 14, 2008

3:10 pm

New Climate Change Theory Gains Influential Support

In just its first days of activation, the newly created Space and Science Research Center in Orlando, Florida and its Director, John Casey have received accolades and direct support from around the world both for its start-up and for his theory of the sun’s influence on climate change.

In today’s release, the SSRC makes important strides in establishing its credibility and support for its predictions of the next climate change. Casey explains, “It is extremely gratifying that the support for the SSRC has been so quick in coming in the earliest days after our announcement of our intent to set up the Center. I am honored to have the support of those who are so highly respected for their judgment.”


Sounds pretty impressive...


[. . .]

In addition to that recommendation, well known scientists who have many years in the analysis of solar activity have now joined the consulting staff at the SSRC. In acknowledging their teaming with the SSRC, Casey expressed his gratitude of their commitment by saying, “I am honored to announce that the first members have been added to the Consulting Scientists staff. They are Dr. Ernest Njau and Dr. Boris Komitov. These gentlemen are among a select group of researchers globally who believe that we are about to enter our next climate era, one with a long lasting deep cold period. They are highly respected scholars who have helped lead the way in their own countries in conducting in-depth research that has identified solar activity behavior as integral to the prediction of the Earth’s climate variations. These talented scientists are both now engaged in unique research that may lead to even more important discoveries in the sun’s behavior. They honor the SSRC by their pledge to assist the Center in its important mission.”


Ah. I see now. An institute consisting of three of the "select group" of scientitsts in the world who think the world is getting colder...


It's good to see folks researching the effects of the sun on climate. I trust they'll also take a close look at Venus to see how the effects of solar radiation compares with those of greenhouse gasses.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Scales Fall From My Eyes

Greg Palast:
Bush needs the Saudis to charge us big bucks for oil. The Saudis can’t lend the US Treasury and Citibank hundreds of billions of US dollars unless they first get these US dollars from the US. The high price of oil is, in effect, a tax levied by Bush but collected by the oil industry and the Gulf kingdoms to fund our multi-trillion dollar governmental and private debt-load.
Ah. I see. Don't blame the oil companies for the high oil prices, which is what I'd heard just last week. Don't even blame OPEC or the Saudis. Blame BUSH. Without $100/barrel oil our spigot 'o cash runs dry.

Palast continues:
The US Treasury is not alone in its frightening dependency on Arabian loot. America’s private financial institutions are also begging for foreign treasure. Yesterday, King Abdullah’s nephew, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, already the top individual owner of Citibank, joined the Kuwait government’s Investment Authority and others to mainline a $12.5 billion injection of capital into the New York bank. Also this week, the Abu Dhabi government and the Saudi Olayan Group are taking a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill-Lynch. It’s no mere coincidence that Bush is in Abdullah’s tent when the money-changers made the deal just outside it.

Bush is there to assure Abdullah that, unlike Dubai’s ports purchase debacle, there will be no political impediment to the Saudi’s buying up Citibank nor the isle of Manhattan.

So what? I mean, for the average American about to lose their job and their bungalow it doesn’t matter a twit whether it’s Sheik bin Alwaleed who owns Citibank or Sheik Sanford Weill, Citi’s past Chairman.

It’s the price paid to buy back our money from abroad that’s killing us. Despite the Koranic prohibition on charging interest, the Gulf princes demand their pound of flesh, exacting a 7% payment from Citibank and 9% from Merrill. That hefty interest bill then pushes adjustable rate mortgages into the stratosphere and pushes manufacturing into China by making borrowing and energy costs impossible to overcome. Forget the cost of health care: General Motors’ interest burden quintupled in just two years.

As the great economist Paddy Chayefsky wrote in the film The Network:
“The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. … It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity…. There are no nations, there are no peoples. There is only one vast and immense, interwoven, multi-national dominion of petro-dollars. … There is no America. There is no ‘democracy.’ The world is a business, one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work.”

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Monday, January 14, 2008

The CIA and Abdul Qadeer Khan

This is a looooong analysis of the origin of the A. Q. Khan nuclear supply network:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280

This is an article about the testimony of Sibel Edmonds, which largely corroborates the story:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

If you have the time, they're worth checking out.

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The End of the Road for George W. Bush


Chris Hedges in Truthdig:

Sunday 13 January 2008

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule. Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons. And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency.

Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored. He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance. A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president's inauguration and screech "I'm melting! I'm melting!" as he sinks into a puddle of slime. He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude - cutting down brush with a chain saw.

He may yet rise again to torment us with an attack on Iran, condemning more innocents to slaughter. He and his cigar-smoking soul mate Ehud Olmert would like to go out with one more flash of mayhem and violence. But even this will not ultimately save him. Bush will soon be reduced to the cipher he once was, left to spend the rest of his life trying to salvage a legacy of shame and deceit. In a just world he would be put on trial, if not by the International Criminal Court of Justice then by the U.S. Congress. He would be forced to face up to his lies and wars of aggression. But the moral rot that infects the nation has seeped into the bowels of the legislative as well as the executive branch.

World leaders, including those whom Bush desperately wants to intimidate, now dismiss him. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a few days ago that relations with the United States are of "no benefit to the Iranian nation. The day such relations are of benefit, I will be the first one to approve of that."

Bush will have flown from Israel to Palestine to Kuwait to Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Egypt in search of a legacy, one that he hopes will lift up his name in history. But, isolated and deluded, he has yet to grasp that he and the United States are reviled and detested for our violence, arrogance and greed. The bands played on the tarmac. He was toasted at state dinners. But even our allies, including Kuwait and Egypt, know Bush is a danger to himself and others.

He publicly displayed his inability to connect rhetoric with reality. He promised peace and cooperation, a new era, a Palestinian homeland. He promised solutions that will arise from negotiations that do not exist. Negotiations, in his eyes, are always about to begin. They were about to begin a year ago. They were about to begin with Annapolis. They are about to begin now. The messy issues between the Israelis and Palestinians that he and his administration have never attempted to address - the borders, the expanding Jewish settlements and outposts, the plight of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem - will all be seamlessly solved ... one day. But the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation barrels forward. The Jewish settlements and outposts continue to be expanded. The crisis in Gaza, with the cuts in fuel and electricity, the deadly army incursions and airstrikes, has turned the world's largest walled prison into a swamp of human misery. And huge new settlements, like Har Homa, continue to rise up on Palestinian soil.

When Bush met with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah he blithely defended the patchwork of Israeli roadblocks that have turned the West Bank into a series of ringed Palestinian ghettos. The roadblocks, he told Abbas, are necessary for Israeli security. He announced that the 1949 Green Line, the borders established by the United Nations, would never be restored. There would be no discussion, he said, of the status of Jerusalem. And the plight of Palestinian refugees would be solved by setting up an international fund, meaning, of course, that none would ever return. In short, he offered an unequivocal endorsement of right-wing Israeli policy with not a murmur of dissent. And the Palestinians can either have it rammed down their throat or rot. Bush will be back, he has promised, in May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. Olmert, no doubt, will again be fulsome in his praise, which is probably what Bush's trip to the Middle East is, at its core, really about. Bush desperately wants someone to pretend with him that he is an agent for peace and statesmanship. Olmert, who knows the callow American leader will give him everything he desires, is happy to oblige.

But as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in Gaza, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, along with the savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and rage. Bush has spent his time in office bolstering the Middle East's most despotic regimes, including that of Gen. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. He approved a $20-billion arms package for these states. He has backed efforts to crush mainstream Islamic groups that have electoral legitimacy and popular support. He has stood by as these regimes have stifled democratic dissent, and he has, with Israeli encouragement, isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the Palestinian territories.

The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.

"As long as they [Iran] have no nuclear program ... why should we isolate Iran? Why punish Iran now?" Arab League Secretary-General Abu Moussa told The Washington Post.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is in Iran for talks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended December's Gulf Cooperation Council summit. The Iranian president attended the just-completed hajj in Mecca at the invitation of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah. Tehran is exploring the resumption of diplomatic ties with Egypt, cut since the 1979 revolution, and has offered to cooperate with Cairo in the production of nuclear energy. And the Syrian and Lebanese governments have ignored Washington's warnings to sever ties with Hezbollah and Hamas.

It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy. If he wants to redeem his time in office he should kneel before one and ask for forgiveness.

--------

Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author most recently of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, can be found every other Monday on Truthdig.

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Former Prisoners "not Persons"

McClatchy Newspapers:

In Voiding Suit, Appellate Court Says Torture Is To Be Expected
By Greg Gordon

Friday 11 January 2008

Washington - A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.

It appeared to be the first time that a federal appellate court has ruled on the legality of the harsh interrogation tactics that U.S. intelligence officers and military personnel have used on suspected terrorists held outside the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren't recognized as "persons" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from "substantially burdening a person's religion."

The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were "foreseeable."

"It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal' would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants," Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court's main opinion.

Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that "it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not `person(s).'

'`This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human," Brown wrote.

After being held for more than two years, the four men were repatriated to Britain in 2004, where they were freed within 24 hours without facing criminal charges, said Washington lawyer Eric Lewis, who represented them along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Three of the men - Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed - say they traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan in October 2001 to provide humanitarian relief but were seized by an Uzbek warlord in northern Afghanistan the next month and sold to U.S. troops for bounty money. The three said they were unarmed and never engaged in combat against the United States.

The fourth, Jamal al Harith, said he'd planned to attend a religious retreat in Pakistan in October 2001 but was ordered to leave the country because of animosity toward Britons. When he tried to drive a truck home via Iran and Turkey, he says, his truck was hijacked at gunpoint and he was handed over to the Taliban, who jailed him and accused him of being a spy. When the Taliban fell after the U.S.-led invasion, he was detained and transported to Guantanamo.

The detainees filed suit in October 2004 against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, and nine other senior military officers. They allege that the Pentagon officials violated the Alien Tort Statute, the Geneva Conventions, the religious freedom law and the Constitution with their harsh treatment.

In upholding a lower court's rejection of all the claims but those under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the circuit court said that the interrogation tactics, which Rumsfeld first authorized in 2002, were "incidental" to the duties of those who'd been sued.

"It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency," said Lewis, the detainees' attorney, "when a court finds that torture is all in a day's work for the secretary of defense and senior generals. . . . I think the executive is trying to create a black hole so there is no accountability for torture and religious abuse."

Lewis said his clients intended to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.

Friday, January 11, 2008

A First! Snow Falls in Baghdad

By Christopher Chester, Associated Press

posted: 11 January 2008 11:44 am ET

BAGHDAD (AP) — After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they'd pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings — delight.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad,'' said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad,'' Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination.''

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

"I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no,'' said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village 10 kilometers (six miles) southeast of Baghdad.

"This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God,'' Karim said.

Some said they'd seen snow only in movies.

Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said "a friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow.''

"I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a very beautiful scene,'' he said. "I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned to be a very happy one in my life.''

An Iraqi who works for The Associated Press said he woke his wife and children shortly after 7 a.m. to "have a look at this strange thing.'' He then called his brother and sister and found them awake, also watching the "cotton-like snow drops covering the trees.''

For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. As of late afternoon, there were no reports of violence. The snow showed no favoritism as it fell faintly on neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, and (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.

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