Years ago when I was young and broke, I used to work my way through music festivals that interested me because I could never afford the tickets. I always enjoyed the Mariposa Folk Festival held in various locations near and around Toronto. As a kid, I was dragged there by my semi-hippie Mama.
As a young adult, I worked my way through college as a bartender and waitress, so I always go stuck in food services when I volunteered. One year, my job was to organize on foot delivery of food to the performers, a most excellent assignment because the performers were quite happy not to have to stand in a line up. They tended to invite the food workers in to whatever party they were having.
One year our shower facilities on site were two tents. A boy tent. A girl tent. And a garden hose. Spray and wash.
So I always had some affection for dirty, smelly, music festivals marked by debauchery, crowds and sunburns.
But a funny thing happened this year. Even though the crowds at the Beale Street Music festival were pretty well behaved and it did not rain the entire time, I lost the love. I might take a break next year and go to an actual blues or jazz fest.
In the past some of the headliners have caused public finger wagging. Three Six Mafia local boys from the Frayser area in Memphis, a once thriving now somewhat blighted area of town were accused of encouraging nudity and drug use when they did their shows. The thing is nobody huffed and puffed when the smell of herbal cocktails wafted around during Parliament or KC and the Sunshine Band in past years, or at Santana this year. My guess: because the people doing the grooving were old folks and they didn’t whip off their clothes to show off expanded waist lines and beer bellies. So. For some reason in the south the young ones engaging in illegal substances and flashing their hot bodies is way more offensive than Mom and Dad stepping out.
I do have a word to the Tall people of the universe. In my case, that means almost everybody. I like Tall people. I socialize with them regularly. But…..
In crowded social situations, elbowing the shorties in the head and stepping on their feet just to create some space and pass by is fucking rude. On the off chance that I am reincarnated as a sumo wrestler, I will remember you. And if you actually notice I am trying to take a picture, deliberately standing in front of me just because you can is also very fucking annoying. Thank you.
I did not take many pictures. My cheap camera died twice and they did not allow cameras with detachable lenses on the grounds. So. These are not exactly award winning.
Hey OTB, I bet you know who Michael Franti and Spearheadare since they are from the bay area. They were great, kinda reggae conscious raising soul, party music. I have most of their CDs…
Crowd shots….
Long distance Buddy Guy….
The ultimate test for any citizen’s toleration for democracy…..
Thanks for looking. Please don’t rec pony party, hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.
(hosted by kos, though as far as I know, he doesn’t know it).
What is the Economics of Freedom?
The Economics of Freedom from Want?
The Economics of Freedom from Despair?
The Economics of Freedom from Tyranny?
The Economics of Freedom for our Children and Grandchildren to Enjoy the Same?
What the Economics of Freedom Is Not
Clearly, it is not what is commonly peddled in the name of Economics.
Sometimes what is peddled is the traditional marginalist economics, with the only deception involved the pretense that the traditional marginalist economics is adequate for any and all questions about the material provisioning of our societies.
Sometimes what is peddled is a bastardized version of traditional marginalist economics, retaining a surface similarity but playing shell games with meanings.
Sometimes what is peddled is naked pandering to the wealthy and powerful, with only the barest pretense to intellectual respectability, trying to hide naked grabs for more wealth to the wealthy and more power to the powerful behind smoke and more smoke accompanied by divinations of what “the markets” want in order to be sated.
So, a little simple truth-telling to cut through the smoke and mirrors:
What we, as a nation, can do, can be done.
“Financial limits” are rules we impose on ourselves.
If “financial limits” tell the truth about what we as a nation can do, they are a useful tool.
If “financial limits” lie about what we as a nation can do, then we can change the rules.
There are no financial rules we can impose that can repeal the fact that oil is a non-renewable resource: drill, pump it from the ground, burn it, then its gone, and it won’t be coming back. Gasoline will just cost more five years from now than it does today, and it will just cost more ten years from now than it will five years from now.
Wishing it different will not make it so.
Refusing to solve problems by pretending they cannot be solved
On the other hand, we have in excess of 9% unemployment in this country … the so-called “U6” measure, or full measure of unemployment. Things that can be accomplished by more people working at a task, can be accomplished. “We cannot afford to build wind generators”, “we cannot afford to build an electric freight rail system”, “we cannot afford to build dedicated transport corridors.”
Big steaming piles of horseshit, each and every one of them.
All of these activities require people working, and material resources. And for the material resources, they each either save or harvest more resources than they consume. So as far as material resources go, they are not net users … instead, they free up material resources to do more things.
“But we don’t have the productive capacity.” Productive capacity requires people working, and material resources. Start ordering the output, and provide an assured market for producing the output over the long haul, and businesses will invest in the productive capacity.
“We don’t have the productive capacity” is like a couch potato saying that they cannot climb two flights of stairs. Well, no, not until they climb one flight of stairs enough times that they get back into good enough shape to climb two. Not investing in sustainable energy independence “because we don’t have productive capacity” is exactly the same as someone not exercising because they are out of shape … if they start exercising closer to the edge of their capacity, their capacity will improve.
If we start producing what we need to come closer to Energy Independence, then our ability to produce will improve.
Even worse is “we cannot afford to finance” …
… well, anything that would put us closer to Sustainable Energy Independence. “We”, in the sense of our government, can produce as many dollars as it wishes to. The limit is not an ability to clear Treasury checks. The limit is that spending without restraint will throw too much purchasing power at a limited number of goods, leading businesses to raise prices to allocate limited productive capacity among buyers … and when everyone raises prices, its called inflation.
But which is worse … 5% or 6% inflation, or surrendering our nation’s economic independence?
There are two risks of serious costs due to inflation.
The first is stagflation … economic stagnation combined with moderately high inflation, where people low down on the income ladder face depressed wages in tough job markets while they are being hammered by price increases.
The second is runaway demand-driven inflation, where a currency loses its ability to act as money, and we lose many of the advantages of living in a modern industrial economy.
Are either a serious risk of the government spends to invest in Sustainable Energy Independence? In the first case, the most serious risk of stagflation over the next twenty years will be from the escalating cost of energy. The more and sooner we invest in Sustainable Energy Independence, the less we have to worry about stagflation.
And as far as runaway demand-drive inflation … over the last “recovery”, unemployment fell as low as 7.9%. More than 1 in 12 available labor hours idle. So we are far from the total limits of our human resources. And investments in Sustainable Energy Independence free up or harvest material resources.
Runaway demand-drive inflation happens when a country pushes up against the limits of its ability to produce, and then just keeps pushing. And investing in Sustainable Energy Independence will increase our ability to produce.
So, are people just stupid?
I go on the working assumption that people may be creatures of habit, and people may work on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate information … but over the long haul, “stupidity” is a very weak explanation for why people persist in pretending that we face limits that we do not in fact face.
Especially on this question, because in the Great Depression, in World War II, we tackled these kinds of problems and when financial rules said “we cannot afford to do this”, we changed the rules. Even currently, when a political decision is made to do something that we really cannot afford to do over the long haul, which is establish a police-station state on top of the Iraqi Oil Reserves … the financial rules are simply waved aside.
We can afford to invest in Sustainable Energy Independence, because it is in our nation’s capability, and because it increases, rather than reduces, the material resources available to our nation.
No matter what sophistry dressed up as economic theories or financial wizardry is trotted out to dress up the argument, when you encounter it, boil it down to its essence.
Can a business “afford” to devote assets it has on an activity that will yield a profit? Of course it can … indeed, that’s the only way it will ever be able to “afford” anything at all, including, in the long run, the essential exorbitant CEO salary.
So can the United States “afford” to devote human and material resources we have on investments in Sustainable Energy Independence that will increase our nation’s productive capacity? Of course we can … it is, indeed, the only way we will be able to “afford” to regain and then maintain a reasonable standard of living for the large majority of Americans.
The Economics of Freedom
The Economics of “We Cannot Afford To Do What We Must” … that is the Economics of a Downward Spiral for our Children and Grandchildren … the Economics of Oil Addiction … the Economics of Despair.
The Economics of Freedom from Want? The Economics of Freedom from Despair? That must at least in part be the Economics of having the capability to take care of our own. Which means, in part, Energy Self-Sufficiency.
The Economics of Freedom from Tyranny? We cannot be free of tyranny if we must tyrannize other nations for resources we need. We cannot grant our power elites the capability to be tyrants abroad while denying them the capability to be tyrants at home. Which means the the Economics of Freedom from Tyranny is, in part, the Economics of Energy Self-Sufficiency.
And the Economics of Freedom for our Children and Grandchildren to Enjoy the Same? This cannot be done on the foundation of exchanging Peak Oil in this generation for Peak Coal for our Children or Grand-Children. It must be the Economics of Sustainable Energy Self-Sufficiency or else we are consuming our children’s inheritance.
Now, it won’t be easy, but sometimes you’ve got to take the hardest line. As a consolation, at least we won’t have time to be bored.
I’m a happy clam today folks. A new poll was released showing Jeff Merkley within three points of Republican Gordon Smith. Now I understand why Republican Gordon Smith just unveiled an attack ad on Jeff Merkley. He doesn’t want to face Merkley in the general election because Merkley will beat him! Here’s a snippet from Rasmussen:
Gordon Smith, United States Senator from Oregon, remains below the 50% level of support for the third straight month in Rasmussen Reports polling. Any incumbent who polls below 50% is considered potentially vulnerable and this month’s polling contains even more bad news for Smith-support for his potential Democratic challengers is increasing.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Oregon voters finds Smith leading Jeff Merkley by just three percentage points, 45% to 42%. In late March, he enjoyed a thirteen point lead. In February, he was ahead of Merkley by eighteen points.
In the new poll, Merkley’s primary opponent Steve Novick trails Smith by six points, lending weight to the argument that Merkley is the most electable Democrat. The fact that Merkley is in a statistical dead heat with Smith this early in the race shows that we have a huge opportunity in Oregon. The more Oregonians learn about Jeff and what he has been able to accomplish in our state, the more confident I am that we’ll pick this seat up. IMO, Jeff Merkley is not only a very strong progressive, he’s the most well rounded Democratic candidate we have running for Senate.
I know I’ve been writing a ton here and elsewhere about Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley. I can’t help it, this election in Oregon is very important and the primary is just ten days away! It’s not just that we have a chance to pick up a Senate seat, we have a chance to fill it with a progressive candidate who shares our values. Jeff Merkley is not just a dependable progressive vote either, he’s a leader. He led on conservation, fighting climate change, equal rights, funding public education, ethics reform, payday lending regulation, and the Employee Free Choice Act. I sure hope we have his progressive voice in the Senate for many years to come.
HLEGU, Myanmar – Myanmar held a referendum Saturday that likely will solidify the ruling junta’s hold on power, even as it appeared overwhelmed by a devastating cyclone that killed tens of thousands of people.
Human rights organizations and anti-government groups have bitterly accused the government of neglecting cyclone victims to advance its political agenda, and have criticized its proposed constitution as designed to perpetuate military rule.
Local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country.
WASHINGTON – The military command overseeing the nation’s most elite forces has moved away from a contentious plan that gave it broad control over anti-terrorism operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots around the globe.
The expanded authority for U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., was hammered through by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld well before he resigned in November 2006. The shift caused friction among leaders at other warfighting organizations who saw it an intrusion into their geographic domains.
Navy Adm. Eric Olson, the command’s senior officer since July 2007, has steered clear of micromanaging specific missions against al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. The command’s primary focus is to ensure these plans are fused into a broader strategy for defeating extremist ideologies. That reflects Olson’s position that the troops closest to the action know best how to handle it.
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is recommending changes in the handling of troops’ remains, after it was revealed that a crematorium contracted by the military handles both human and animal cremations.
A military official said there have been no instances or charges that human and pet remains were mixed. But officials are now recommending that troops’ remains be incinerated only at facilities that are dedicated entirely to humans, in order to avoid any appearance of a problem. Or, officials said, families can opt to have a relative’s remains sent to a local funeral home for cremation, which would be paid for by the military.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed the earlier situation was “insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Shi’ite factions on Saturday reached a deal to end fighting between militia and security forces in the Baghdad bastion of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that has killed hundreds of people, officials said.
The violence has trapped the 2 million residents of Sadr City in a battle zone for around seven weeks and prompted aid workers to warn of a humanitarian crisis.
But it is unclear how much control the anti-American Sadr has over many of the militiamen who claim allegiance to him in Sadr City, stronghold of his Mehdi Army militia.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah on Saturday began withdrawing gunmen from Beirut and handed control of the streets to the Lebanese army, after seizing much of the city in gunbattles with supporters of the U.S.-backed government.
Hezbollah, a political group backed by Iran and Syria with a guerrilla army, said it was ending its armed presence in Beirut after the army overturned government measures against the group.
Hezbollah took over much of Beirut on Friday after fighters loyal to the group routed gunmen loyal to the anti-Damascus governing coalition.
YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar held a rare election to approve a new army-drafted constitution on Saturday while many of the 1.5 million survivors of a devastating cyclone waited in vain for a concerted aid effort to bring them food and medicine.
Though nervous voters were under orders to vote “yes” to a constitution that will enshrine a dominant role for the ruling military, it was the first real election in nearly two decades.
Army-controlled MRTV ran a final Burmese-style “get the vote out” propaganda blitz featuring jaunty actresses singing “Let’s go voting” and “Come along for voting” to a boppy disco beat.
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Darfur rebels fought with Sudanese government troops in a western suburb of the capital on Saturday and said their aim was to take power in Khartoum, but the government said their attack had been defeated.
Heavy gunfire and artillery was heard in Omdurman, across the River Nile from the heart of Khartoum, capital of Africa’s biggest country. Helicopters and armored vehicles headed for the fighting and an overnight curfew was declared.
“The main aim of this failed terrorist sabotage attack was to provoke media coverage and let people imagine that they had the ability to enter Khartoum,” Mandour al-Mahdi, the political secretary from the dominant ruling National Congress Party told state television.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration appears set to offer Israel a powerful radar system that could greatly boost Israeli defenses against enemy ballistic missiles while tying it directly into a growing U.S. missile shield.
President George W. Bush is expected to discuss the matter during a visit to Israel on Wednesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state amid mounting U.S. concerns about perceived threats from Iran, people familiar with the matter said.
This is “probably the No. 2 issue” on Bush’s agenda for the visit, second only to the Middle East peace process, said Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who has spearheaded calls in Congress for tighter U.S. missile-defense ties with Israel.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AFP) – Zimbabwe’s opposition leader said Saturday he would return home to face Robert Mugabe in a presidential runoff poll despite the risk of “more violence, more gloom, more betrayal.”
Morgan Tsvangirai had previously refused to say whether he would take part in the runoff — even though failure to do so would have handed victory to Mugabe — amid evidence of a campaign of terror against his supporters.
The former trade union leader, who beat veteran incumbent Mugabe in a first round of voting in March, set international peacekeepers, election monitors and an end to violence in the country as conditions for the ballot.
WASHINGTON – Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.
Researchers date the seaweed found at Monte Verde to more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than the well-studied Clovis culture.
And the report comes just a month after other scientists announced they had found coprolites – fossilized human feces – dating to about 14,000 years ago in a cave in Oregon.
HOUSTON – A woman who said she was raped by co-workers while employed by a contractor in Iraq can take her claims to trial, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Jamie Leigh Jones filed a federal lawsuit last year, saying she was attacked while working for a Halliburton Co. subsidiary at Camp Hope, Baghdad, in 2005. Her lawsuit claims that after she endured harassment from some of the men where she lived in coed barracks, she was drugged and raped by Halliburton and KBR firefighters.
Jones, a former Conroe resident, said a KBR representative imprisoned her in a shipping container for a day so she wouldn’t report the assault.
YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar’s military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week’s devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.
The United Nations sent in three more planes and several trucks loaded with aid, though the junta took over its first two shipments. The government agreed to let a U.S. cargo plane bring in supplies Monday, but foreign disaster experts still were being barred entry.
Despite international appeals to postpone a referendum on a controversial proposed constitution, voting began Saturday in all but the hardest hit parts of the country. With voters going to the polls, state-run television continuously ran images of top generals including junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, handing out boxes of aid at elaborate ceremonies.
WASHINGTON – The cost of mailing a letter goes up a penny to 42 cents on Monday, the latest in what are expected to be annual price adjustments by the Postal Service.
A new law regulating the post office makes it easier to raise rates as long as the agency doesn’t exceed the rate of inflation. Rates are to be adjusted each May.
But the post office also has introduced a way for people to save money when the price goes up, the Forever stamp, which remains valid for first-class postage regardless of any increases.
BANGKOK, Thailand – Military-ruled Myanmar, among the globe’s poorest and most authoritarian nations, is reeling from a natural disaster of such magnitude that both the people’s suffering and political aftershocks are certain to persist long after the last emergency aid has been doled out.
As bloated bodies are counted and survivors face disease and hunger in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, dramatic scenarios are foreseen in a country that has changed little since an army coup 46 years ago.
These range from a revolt led by disenchanted army officers to the specter of the entrenched, xenophobic junta allowing thousands more to perish rather than risk its grip on power by opening gates to the outside world.
WASHINGTON – Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s seizure Friday of large swaths of Muslim Beirut in a blow against the U.S.-backed Lebanese government is the latest in a string of setbacks to U.S. allies in the Middle East and the latest bad news for President Bush from a region that he set out to remake five years ago.
Less than two years ago, in the summer of 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bet that an Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon would weaken Hezbollah and its foreign patrons and described the resulting war as “the birth pangs of a new Middle East .”
Three years ago, when Beirut erupted in pro-democracy demonstrations that were dubbed the “Cedar Revolution,” Bush and Rice made it a showcase in their drive for Arab democracy.
BELGRADE , Serbia- Serbians head to the polls Sunday for crucial parliamentary elections, still bitterly divided between nationalist anger and tentative optimism about a European future.
With the breakaway province of Kosovo’s Feb. 17 declaration of independence still a fresh wound, however, the fragile pro-democracy forces that have governed this remnant of the former Yugoslavia since 2000 could be swept out of power by a nationalist coalition led by a party once allied with former strongman Slobodan Milosevic .
There’s a sense of deja vu among Serbians, who are participating in their third election in 18 months, each of them billed as a crucial referendum on the country’s future. In January, Serbs narrowly returned their pro-Western president, Boris Tadic , to office. A year before that, parliamentary elections produced a fragile coalition between Tadic’s party and that of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica , a constitutional lawyer and former hero of pro-democracy forces turned fierce nationalist.
The last thing on Min Soe’s mind was casting a vote. Cyclone Nargis had just razed his house and ravaged the rice paddies that were to provide half of his yearly income. Nearly all the other wooden shacks in his village of Too Chaung had also been annihilated by the storm. Then, on May 10, representatives from Burma’s repressive military junta descended on the village. Were they coming to bring badly needed food, water and building materials to the people of Too Chaung? Hardly. Instead, the government men forced villagers to participate in a constitutional referendum that critics have labeled a sham dedicated to legitimizing the military’s grip on power. Two days earlier, Min Soe shook his head when I asked whether the plebiscite, which Burma experts believe will be rigged if the results aren’t to the ruling generals’ liking, would go ahead in Too Chaung. “No, they cannot do so,” he said, incredulous at my ridiculous question. “We can’t vote when everything has been destroyed.”
The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.
With no word on a date for a second round of voting in Zimbabwe’s general election election, further evidence is emerging of President Robert Mugabe’s program of wholesale repression in advance of a run-off in the presidential race.
NEW YORK – A CNN reporter who left Myanmar Friday was chased by authorities as he reported on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis but escaped primarily because of the incompetence of the people after him.
Dan Rivers hid under a blanket at one police checkpoint and casually covered up his name on a passport to avoid detection another time. He may ultimately have gotten out of the country due to a stewardess’ impatience.
“I was amazed at the lengths they apparently went just to catch me,” Rivers told The Associated Press by telephone from Thailand on Saturday.
(WASHINGTON) – The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.
By AP/MATT APUZZO AND LARA JAKES JORDAN, Time Magazine
Fri May 9, 7:10 PM ET
(WASHINGTON) – Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor blamed by an angry Iraqi government for the shooting deaths of 17 civilians, is not expected to face criminal charges – all but ensuring the company will keep its multimillion-dollar contract to protect U.S. diplomats.
On the Saturday before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Hillary Clinton stood on the back of a vintage pickup truck in Gastonia, N.C., and let fly in the most impressive fashion – a woman transformed from Eleanor Roosevelt into Huey Long in two short months. Spotting a big yellow placard that said GAS TAX HOLIDAY IS BLATANT PANDERING – a sign she would have ignored in her earlier, less feisty incarnations – she went after the young Obamish sign-holders: Why wasn’t the Federal Reserve accused of pandering when it bailed out the Bear Stearns investment bank to the tune of $30 billion? Why shouldn’t the oil companies pay the federal gasoline tax this summer instead of the people who “hold their breath” every time they pull up to the gas pump? “I know that some people don’t have to worry when they go to the supermarket,” she said, staring accusingly at the placard bearers, but “there are people who count their pennies as they walk down the aisle,” trying to figure out what they can afford. “Don’t they deserve a break every once in a while? They haven’t done anything wrong … The oil companies have had it their way for too long,” she said. “I’m tired of being a patsy.”
Even a road trip can feel like a luxury when it costs $75 to fill the fuel tank. That’s why Ronelle Scardina, 39, scrapped plans to drive 400 miles to Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., this July and decided instead to rent a cabin on a lake just two hours from her home in San Rafael. “Prices are going up on everything, and we have a mortgage and a family to support,” says the working mom, who expects to scrimp even more by packing her family of four into her 1994 Honda Civic instead of taking her roomier–but gas-slurping–SUV.
WASHINGTON – Embattled and embarrassed by the confession he fathered a child from an extramarital affair, New York Rep. Vito Fossella is facing public calls for his resignation. Secluded with his family, he must decide if he wants to keep his job badly enough to grapple with the lingering questions and fallout from the scandal.
In admitting the affair and a secret child Thursday, the Republican lawmaker indicated he planned to stay in Congress for months to come, but there are signs he could be out much sooner: House Minority Leader John Boehner pointedly said he expected Fossella to make a decision about his future this weekend.
Fossella’s personal life came apart at the seams after police stopped him for running a red light last week and charged him with drunken-driving. The arrest fueled scrutiny which led to revelations of an affair with a former Air Force officer, and a 3-year-old daughter with her.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Did U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain vote for President George W. Bush in 2000?
Liberal Internet blogger Arianna Huffington says McCain told her he did not. But the Arizona senator says he did vote for Bush, a fellow Republican, in 2000 and campaigned for him all over the country after his own attempt to win the party’s nomination failed.
The claims and counterclaims may provide an entertaining distraction from the day-to-day battle for votes for this November’s presidential election, when McCain will face one of two Democratic contenders, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Friday set out terms for a possible deal on a housing market rescue plan, as a sweeping package backed by the House of Representatives was on its way to an uncertain greeting in the Senate.
The House approved a package of bills on Thursday that would let the Federal Housing Administration offer $300 billion in new guarantees to refinance the mortgages of an estimated 500,000 distressed borrowers.
The Bush administration, which has threatened to veto the legislation, said taxpayers should not have to pay for the new lending program, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would cost taxpayers up to $2.7 billion.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of senior U.S. senators urged President George W. Bush on Friday to visit Tibet when he travels to China in August to attend the Beijing Olympics.
In their letter to Bush, the senators also urged the president to make it his priority to set up a U.S. consulate in the Tibetan regional capital, Lhasa, and push China to reopen Tibet to outside media and non-governmental organizations following its closure in the wake of unrest there in March.
Visiting Tibet during the August 8-24 games “would allow you to demonstrate support for American athletes as you also send a strong message of respect for the fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people,” the letter said.
MOSCOW (AFP) – A senior US State Department official arrived in Abkhazia on Saturday to try to help to restore dialogue between the breakaway region and Georgia, Russian news agencies reported.
Matthew Bryza, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, was quoted by the Ria Novsoti news agency as describing the situation as tense but not beyond a solution.
Bryza spoke to journalists ahead of meetings with leaders of the breakaway territory where tensions have been mounting and where neighbouring Russia — seen as backing the separatists — has military forces.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Navy has raised the profile of its operations in Latin America, reviving the US Fourth Fleet after nearly a 60-year slumber.
And some, beginning with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, are asking why.
The ailing Castro raised the question in a column published Monday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, suggesting it signaled a return to gunboat diplomacy.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – FedEx Corp. cut its fourth-quarter earnings expectations Friday, blaming continuing increases in fuel costs.
The Memphis-based shipping company said it expects profits of $1.45 to $1.50 per share for the three months ended May 31, down from its previous prediction of $1.60 to $1.80 per share.
…
“Since we provided earnings guidance for the fourth quarter in March when the crude oil price was slightly above $100 per barrel, our estimated fuel costs for the quarter have increased more than 7 percent, or $100 million from our previous estimate,” said FedEx Chief Financial Officer Alan B. Graf Jr.
NEW YORK – Wall Street ended the week with a big decline as investors grappled with two of the biggest threats to the economy: fallout from turmoil in the credit market and surging energy prices. All three major indexes suffered losses for the week.
Insurer American International Group Inc. helped send the Dow Jones industrial average down about 120 points after posting a wider-than-expected first-quarter loss that rekindled anxiety about the strained state of the global financial system.
AIG reported it lost $7.81 billion – its second straight quarterly loss – and revealed plans to raise $12.5 billion in the coming months. The world’s largest insurer, like many of its peers in the financial services sector, has seen its investments in the credit markets plunge in value.
NEW YORK – Oil rose above $126 a barrel for the first time Friday, bringing its advance this week to nearly $10, as investors questioned whether a possible confrontation between the U.S. and Venezuela could cut exports from the OPEC member. Gas prices, meanwhile, rose above an average $3.67 a gallon at the pump, following oil’s recent path higher.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published a report that suggested closer ties between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and rebels attempting to overthrow Colombia’s government. Chavez has been linked to Colombian rebels previously, but the paper reported it had reviewed computer files indicating concrete offers by Venezuela’s leader to arm guerillas. That appears to heighten the chances that the U.S. could impose sanctions on one of its biggest oil suppliers.
“If we put on sanctions, I’m sure Chavez would threaten to cut off our oil supply,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. “Obviously that would have a major impact on oil prices.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSa.N) on Saturday dropped its $580 million bid for Tribune Co’s Newsday newspaper, just days after Murdoch said a deal was imminent, leaving cable television operator Cablevision (CVC.N) as the likely winner of the Long Island daily.
News Corp was unable to justify outbidding Cablevision’s $650 million offer from an economic perspective. A News Corp spokesman said the deal was “uneconomical.”
The decision leaves two known contenders for Newsday. Besides Cablevision, Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News, a rival city tabloid to Murdoch’s New York Post, also bid $580 million for the paper.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc said on Friday it plans to shed $400 billion of assets within three years and boost revenue by up to 10 percent annually, in a bid to restore profitability after huge losses tied to flagging mortgage and credit markets.
Vikram Pandit, who became chief executive of the largest U.S. bank in December, revealed the plans at a much-anticipated presentation to investors and analysts. He has faced growing demands to slash costs, shed poor-performing businesses, and reinvigorate a stock price down by more than half in the last year.
Citigroup shares were down 60 cents, or 2.5 percent, at $23.70 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
LONDON (Reuters) – Oil major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has pulled out of a planned gas project in Iran, after coming under pressure not to participate from U.S. lawmakers who were concerned about Iran’s nuclear programme.
A spokeswoman said on Saturday that the world’s second-largest non government-controlled oil company by market capitalisation was pulling out of Phase 13 of the giant South Pars gas field but may yet join later stages of the field’s development.
Shell, Spain’s Repsol (REP.MC) and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in January 2002 to develop Phase 13 in a project to be known as Persian LNG.
TOKYO (AFP) – Nissan Motor Co and NEC Corp will join forces in the world’s first mass production of lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles, a newspaper said Saturday.
The two companies plan to spend 20 billion yen (194 million dollars) to build a plant in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, the Nikkei business daily said.
Production will begin early next year under Automotive Energy Supply Corp. (AESC), an equally owned joint venture Nissan and NEC established in April 2007, the newspaper said.
WASHINGTON – Daniel Suson has a doctorate in astrophysics and has worked on the superconducting super collider and a forthcoming NASA probe. Now he’s heading back to school to take on an even trickier task – getting elected to public office.
He is among a growing number of scientists who feel slighted and abused in the public debate in recent years and are mobilizing for a new effort to inject “evidence-based decision making” into public policy.
On Saturday, Suson, dean of engineering, mathematics and science at Purdue University Calumet, will join more than 70 other scientists, engineers and students at a hotel at Georgetown University for a crash course on elective politics.
PUERTO MONTT, Chile (Reuters) – A towering plume of ash from an erupting volcano in Chile’s remote Patagonia could rain down on the surrounding area and cause devastating damage, a volcano expert warned on Friday.
Luis Lara, a scientist with the government’s geology and mining agency, said the column, which has soared 7.5 miles (12 km) into the air, was at a critical stage.
An abrupt descent would blanket vast areas with deadly hot gas, ash and molten rock, he said.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan cleared the way for a law allowing non-aggressive military use of space on Friday, overturning a decades-old policy of limiting space development to peaceful uses.
The move comes during a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao aimed at warming long-fraught bilateral ties.
A lower house committee approved the bill, which is to be submitted to a full session of parliament in the next few weeks, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker’s secretary said.
ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Researchers in Ivory Coast are asking $1 million for a three-headed hybrid coconut tree they believe could substantially boost the tropical nut’s yield.
Scientists at Ivory Coast’s National Agronomic Research Centre (NARC) discovered the tree after mixing different strains of coconut palm in an effort to build disease resistance.
“We still don’t have a buyer, but we are hopeful because we remain in talks with certain partners to buy this hybrid,” said Jean Louis Konan, head of NARC’s coconut research program.
SINGAPORE (AFP) – Shark’s fin consumption more than doubled in Singapore last year from 2006, with demand driven by an economic boom and an increase in wedding celebrations, a report said Saturday.
Singapore consumed more than 470 tonnes in 2007, up from 182 tonnes the previous year and reversing a four-year decline, the Straits Times reported.
Strong economic growth in 2007 and a rise in the number of people getting married drove demand despite a 30-percent rise in shark’s fin soup prices and appeals by environmental groups to ease consumption, it said.
PRAGUE (AFP) – The Prague zoo has launched a test programme to save the Indian crocodile-like gharial from the brink of extinction with a million-dollar pavilion for the animals to bask, and hopefully reproduce, in.
There are only between 150 and 200 of this species, the Gavialis gangeticus also known as the gavial, living in the wild along India’s rivers today. Another 20 or so are in captivity in India, Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the United States, according to figures from the Prague zoo.
“All of the conservation plans launched in the world have failed up until now. The gharial is one of the most threatened species on the planet,” said Petr Veselsky, in charge of reptiles at the zoo.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Sahara became the world’s biggest hot desert some 2,700 years ago after a very slow fade from green, according to a new study which clashes with the theory that desertification came abruptly.
Six thousand years ago, the massive arid region dominating northern Africa was quite green, a patchwork of trees and savannas as well as many sparkling lakes.
The region, larger than Australia, also was inhabited, according to the European-US-Canadian team of scientists behind a study in Science dated May 9.
GENEVA (AFP) – Myanmar could suffer another major storm this season even as it braces for more bad weather after the devastating impact of Cyclone Nargis, a UN weather expert warned Friday.
“It’s not rare if they have another (cyclone),” said Yuichi Ono, a programme officer for the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR).
The Bay of Bengal generally sees two cyclone ‘peaks’ either side of the monsoon season which is likely to start by the end of May, Ono told AFP.
SRINAGAR, India (AFP) – Kashmir’s endangered red deer faces extinction without a captive breeding programme that will start this summer in the scenic Himalayan region, Indian wildlife officials said Friday.
The antlered deer, known as the hangul, were once a major attraction in the mountain-ringed forests of Dachigam near Srinagar, summer capital of Kashmir and the focus of an 18-year old insurrection against Indian rule.
“The population of hangul as per the latest census has come down from 228 to 160 in the past four years,” Kashmir’s wildlife warden Rashid Naqash told AFP.
A prototype module for a private space station has passed an orbital milestone after completing its 10,000th trip around the Earth.
Genesis 1, an inflatable module built by the Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm Bigelow Aerospace, passed the 10,000-orbit mark as it nears the beginning of its third year of unmanned operations, its builders announced late Thursday.
Bigelow Aerospace launched Genesis 1 atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile on July 12, 2006 to test its ability to self-inflate and operate in Earth orbit.
Leonard David, Space News Correspondent, SPACE.com
Fri May 9, 12:45 AM ET
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – International planning is under way to reinvigorate plans for a Mars sample return mission, with researchers assessing science priorities and strategies to maximize the scientific output from such an undertaking.
Over the last several years, an armada of orbital and surface missions has revealed Mars to be surprisingly more complex than once thought, imbued with a variety of distinct environments – each of value in terms of possible scientific payback given a sample return effort.
Mars samples returned to state-of-the-art Earth laboratories are considered by many to be the only way to unravel a host of unresolved questions about the red planet. A sample return mission also is viewed by many as a key tool to help space agencies prepare for future human expeditions to Mars.
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – A Darfur rebel commander said on Saturday his JEM group had entered Khartoum and was aiming to take power in Sudan.
Khartoum was placed under an overnight curfew after fighting in the west of the capital on Saturday. It would be the first time a rebel group has entered Khartoum …
The Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels said they had taken control of Omdurman which lies on the opposite bank of the River Nile from Khartoum.
“We are now trying to control Khartoum. God willing we will take power, it’s just a matter of time,” senior JEM commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Ashr told Reuters by telephone.
“We have support from inside Khartoum even from within the armed forces.”
Is the claim of support from within the Sudanese army true? Or bluster? Can the rebels really topple the government and seize power?
In any event there is heavy fighting and the Sudanese army is responding. Of course this means only more misery for the people of Darfur as Khartoum responds, as reported in The Telegraph.
Government forces closed bridges leading to Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city.
As violence between the two sides has escalated in recent weeks, the rebels have pushed east from Darfur through North Kordofan province towards Khartoum.
Sudanese forces have responded by stepping up airstrikes in Darfur.
Today the streets of Khartoum were filled by people rushing to their houses.
I don’t know terribly much about the conflict, although I have been reading more and more, and am now finishing Gerard Prunier‘s Darfur: Ambiguous Genocide. I hope others more knowledgeable here can provide more analysis of these recent developments. All I know for sure is that for the people of Darfur, and Sudan, the violence and suffering will only increase.
Whenever overwhelmed or confronted with violence horrifying, the metta sutta soothes self and world, imho.
The point isn’t biofuels. It’s that there are people wholly committed to the belief that we are on the edge of environmental disaster. Nor is it about those who don’t believe it and those who haven’t been brave enough to take a position.
Rather, this is about the disparity among the tribal truth. It’s all about perspective. Where you’re standing. In Manhattan, Kansas or Manhattan, New York.
E. J. Dionne has a bit of good news today in his editorial in today’s Daily News Record, “Issues This Year ‘Moving the Democrats’ Way.” He supports Barack Obama’s new political voice by pointing out the recent election success of Democrat Don Cazayoux in Louisiana. It seems that the Republican Party has had the 6th District in their pockets for 33 years. They ran the usually successful campaign of “slash and burn,” “guilt by association,” and “tax and spend.” They lost.
In a district that Republicans had held for 33 years, the party and its candidate Woody Jenkins ran a campaign straight from their tattered playbook. Republicans tried to persuade voters that Cazayoux was really pronounced “Tax You” and were unrelenting in trying to tie Cazayoux to Obama and the Democratic House speaker.
“A Vote for Don Cazayoux is a vote for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi,” one ad declared. “If Don Tax You gets to Washington, he’ll do what they tell him to do.” Another ad cast the stakes this way: “Is Obama right for Louisiana? Is Pelosi? You decide.” Decide the voters did, not so much for Obama and Pelosi as against the very concept of the Republican campaign. Cazayoux ran as a conservative on guns and abortion, but relied on national Democratic themes in advocating for “middle-class families” and the proposition that “every family should have health care.”
Senator Obama has regained his balance after the recent media broadsides about race and religion, has taken the body blows from Senator Clinton, and has engaged the debate with Senator McCain in anticipation of the fall presidential campaign. It appears that the “change” that Obama has been proclaiming since the beginning of the campaign is taking root. In Louisiana, the voters voted against the Republicans as much as they voted for Cazayoux. This is especially significant in that a Democrat won for the first time in 33 years. Could the political landscape be turning? Is this perhaps an indication that the divisive politics of the past might give way to the uniting politics of change?
In his speech Tuesday night, Obama predicted that his opponents would “play on our fears and exploit our differences.” He would face “the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along.” And then he promised “to make this year different.”
The best thing for America right now is a hard turn away from political business as usual. The Republicans have enjoyed 28 years of being the top dog. Bloggers are still reminding us that what they’ve accomplished during their reign of error is still better than “Carter Malaise”, the “Great Depression”, “Stagflation”, and “Hoovervilles.” That two of those four are on the Republican Party doesn’t seem to matter in the attack dog right wing blogosphere.
The War Party has a tired and worn platform. They are still running against the New Deal, the 60’s, and are still trying to justify the Vietnam debacle and the Watergate scandals of the 70’s. They’ve pushed too hard, divided the country to the point that they’ve finally isolated themselves and are reduced to lobbing rhetorical mortar shots from behind their safe ideological walls. These are OLD ideas that have little relevance to today’s political climate. Democrats have the pulse of the nation, the Republicans are mired in the past.
Newt Gingrich said it best in a recent issue of Human Events Magazine.
The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.
This model has already been tested with disastrous results.
In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.
But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: “Not you.” No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, “Not you.”
The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, “Not the Republicans.
He goes on to say:
The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.
Folks the tide is turning. I’m more encouraged by this news than I have been in this whole political season. It ain’t over till it’s over, but hope is abounding. The dogs of the war party are losing the scent, the Great American Hypocrites are being exposed finally as political frauds. Their true aims of Empire and Monarchy have been exposed. The choice between Empire and Republic is clear. Republicans have chosen Empire, Democrats will return us to a Republic. President Barack Obama…I like the sound of that!
Despite my mother’s sincere efforts to introduce me to culture, I was fairly apathetic about the whole exercise until I went to the Prado in Madrid. Going back there is on my list of things to do before becoming too old and arthritic and addled to enjoy it again.
At the time some Goya paintings were on display, some of his paint for the royals stuff.
Given my limited knowledge about painters, I will soon run out of artists I have actually heard of or artists whose paintings I have actually seen.
One thing I really like about this next poetry piece is the way it makes you want to frolic with puppies in green dewy fields…..
I am the sentimental type, I guess.
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires – and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forest were set on fire but hour by hour
They fell and faded and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremolous; and vipers crawl’d
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless, they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress, he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies;
They met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Makes you sorta ponder the fact that Grand Theft Auto might owe a debt to Byron.
Share some poetry if you so desire.
Please don’t rec pony party. Hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and red’c list.
So, John McCain claims Hamas wants Barack Obama elected our next President.
Never mind that the political advisor to Hamas who remarked how he, “liked Barack Obama,” could have been saying so because he knew it to be a political kiss of death and therefore John McCain NOT Barack Obama would ascend to this country’s highest office.
Never mind as well that Hamas is a foreign organization and therefore its “opinion” is as functionally relevant as the opinion of… say… the society of ticket-takers at Euro-Disney.
We won’t really know the motivations or mental gyrations of the entity that is Hamas, but apparently John McCain is willing to speculate for his own political gain.
And if John McCain thinks it fair to project endorsements onto anthropomorphized entities, he shouldn’t mind it when I suggest… CANCER would prefer he was the next POTUS.
See, John McCain doesn’t see any urgency in getting affordable health care to Americans and without routine access to doctors all sorts of diseases that might be discovered early and treated will go undiagnosed and become fatal.
So if cancer cells could vote their self-interest… certainly they’d support Senator McCain.
Same with heart disease and infant mortality and diabetes and… given John McCain’s need to pander to the save-every-embryo crowd… I’m confident a number of hideous genetic disorders such as the Alzheimer’s that took my grandfather’s life and the Huntington’s that may prevent my close friend from being steady enough to lift a grandchild in his arms would surely volunteer to phone bank for the Republican Party if they could.
And once we start down the road of assigning points of view to politically impotent entities… I’d say coffins are surely staunch supporters of the Arizona Senator.
I mean, what with the the proliferation of the above diseases and the refusal to even consider withdrawing from Iraq and all that “bomb, bomb Iran” shit… coffins and American flags and graves and grief are all part of the GOP’s new big tent.
Why, via maverick McCain’s intellectual dishonesty, we’ll doubtless see teenage pregnancy handing out McCain fliers along with global warming, unexploded land mines and illegal back-room abortions.
How’d you like it, sir Senator, if the soon-to-be-Democratic-nominee were to casually remark how bullet casings and gas masks and prosthetic limbs and anti-depression pills were most likely 100% in favor of your candidacy?
Or how “bankruptcy”… descending on the families of soldiers who have been forced into three or four or five tours of duty… no doubt toasts your name with “foreclosure”, both fantasizing about your salad days to come?
This all of course ridiculous projection… bullets do not vote and coffins cannot pull a lever and diseases will never punch a chad… but then again the same is true of Hamas.
It seems the Democratic primary is over, Senator McCain.
As Burma’s junta spurns the world’s offers of aid, Andrew Buncombe finds a landscape flooded with corpses – and a people begging for help
For the people living alongside the Payapon river – a branch of the mighty Irrawaddy – the slow-moving waters have always been a sustainer of life. The river has provided irrigation for their crops, as well as clean, sweet water for washing and bathing, and the fish from which so many of them make their livelihoods.
Now the same river is delivering the dead. The corpses of hundreds of people swept away and killed by the surging tidal wave of Cyclone Nargis are now being washed back.
They lie on the river’s edge, snagged in the roots of the mangrove swamps, bloated and burnt by the sun. Many of the corpses have already been buried by family or friends but there are plenty more that lie floating and abandoned, as anonymous in death as they must have been named and known in life.
Support disaster relief in Myanmar (Burma)Through the UN
USA
Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback
Last fall, Blackwater Worldwide was in deep peril.
Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and led to a criminal investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional hearings.
But after an intense public and private lobbying campaign, Blackwater appears to be back to business as usual.
The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq for at least another year.
FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases
Cooperation Lags Despite Merger
In the five years since the FBI and ATF were merged under the Justice Department to coordinate the fight against terrorism, the rival law enforcement agencies have fought each other for control, wasting time and money and causing duplication of effort, according to law enforcement sources and internal documents.
Their new boss, the attorney general, ordered them to merge their national bomb databases, but the FBI has refused. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has long trained bomb-sniffing dogs; the FBI started a competing program.
Middle East
Hizbullah success in west Beirut replaces impasse with uncertainty
· Attacks described as coup and as show of force
· At least 11 dead after worst clashes since civil war
Lebanon’s western-backed government was reeling yesterday after Hizbullah guerrillas seized control of Muslim west Beirut in a significant victory for the Iran-supported Shia movement.
Security sources said at least 11 people had been killed and 30 wounded in three days of battles between pro-government forces and fighters loyal to Hizbullah, in the worst internal clashes since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990.
The Hizbullah takeover – described by some as a coup and others as a “show of force” – broke months of political deadlock that reflects Lebanon’s deep internal divisions and the ambitions of neighbours such as Syria and Israel, as well as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US. But, as an uneasy calm returned to Beirut yesterday, it was unclear what the change would mean.
Turkish strikes ‘kill 19 rebels’
Turkey’s military says its has killed at least 19 Kurdish rebels in air strikes in the south-east.
The raids took place in Hakkari province, which borders Iraq and Iran.
The military says it bombed positions of the PKK rebel group in response to an attack in the area in which two of its soldiers were killed on Friday.
The PKK, which is seeking autonomy for Kurds in south-eastern Turkey, is designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and EU.
Europe
Part of Guinness’s Dublin brewery to close
The home of Guinness for the past 250 years got a reprieve yesterday when Diageo said it would continue to brew the black stuff in Dublin. But the drinks group will close half its famous brewery as part of a £520m modernisation plan that will cost hundreds of jobs.
After a year of uncertainty, the drinks group announced yesterday that it plans to build a new factory on the outskirts of Dublin. Two smaller breweries, in Kilkenny and Dundalk, will close, as will 50% of the St James’s Gate site. The rest of the plant will be revamped. The brewery will continue to produce the popular stout for sale in Ireland and Britain.
Paul Walsh, Diageo’s chief executive, said that the plan reaffirmed the group’s commitment to Guinness and to its “spiritual home” in Dublin.
He said: “We will rejuvenate St James’s Gate and also build a world class, state-of-the-art brewery.
Tanks return to Red Square as Russia flaunts military might
By Shaun Walker in Moscow
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Missile launchers and tanks rolled across Red Square yesterday for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Russia flexed its military muscles at the annual celebration of its triumph over Nazi Germany.
Fighter jets tore through the sky, and more than 8,000 soldiers goose-stepped across the vast expanse in the heart of Moscow, saluting the Russian flag under the watchful eye of the new President, Dmitry Medvedev, and – just behind his shoulder – his predecessor and now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.
Asia
Chinese factories, flouting labor laws, hire children from poor, distant villages
LIANGSHAN, China: The mud and brick schoolhouses in the lush mountain villages of this remote part of southwestern China are dark and barebones in the best of times. These days, they also lack students. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Du Bin for The New York Times Ji Ke Ri Sha, 15, with his mother in Liangshan, China. He says he has spent more than a year working in factories in several provinces, including Shandong and Shanxi.
Residents say children as young as 12 have been recruited by child labor rings, equipped with fake identification cards, and transported hundreds of miles across the country to booming coastal cities, where they work 12-hour shifts to produce much of the world’s toys, clothes and electronics.
S. Koreans Abuzz Over Their Obsession With the Office
SEOUL – South Koreans are working up a lather over working too much
They put in far more time on the job than citizens of any other free-market democracy. Compared to Americans, they average 560 more hours at work a year — the equivalent of 70 more eight-hour days. And that is down significantly from the go-go 1990s.
These numbers come from the 2008 Factbook of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 30 developed countries. And they have been bouncing around in the hyperactive local media for several weeks.
Africa
Tsvangirai to run in second round
Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will contest a presidential run-off, despite fears of widespread poll violence.
Speaking in South Africa, he said people would feel “betrayed” if he did not run, and vowed to return shortly.
Mr Tsvangirai called for an end to violence, as well as full access by international monitors and media.
Official first-round results put him ahead of President Robert Mugabe, but not by enough votes to win outright.
Mr Tsvangirai had earlier insisted he had secured more than 50% of the vote, and that there was therefore no need for a second round.
Pollution in paradise: Flamingos vs the factory
The headlong rush to exploit Africa’s natural resources is threatening to destroy one of nature’s most spectacular breeding grounds. Steve Bloomfield reports
It is one of the world’s greatest natural spectacles. More than 500,000 flamingos congregate on the salty shores of Lake Natron in the north of Tanzania every year to breed. And it could be about to end.
That is the dire warning from a coalition of 32 environmental groups in east Africa if a company backed by the Indian conglomerate Tata Chemicals gets the go-ahead to build a soda ash factory at the lake. The factory would produce 500,000 tonnes of soda ash, also known as sodium carbonate, every year. Tanzania’s state-owned National Development Corporation, which will jointly run the factory with Tata, said that it has moved the proposed site 22 miles away from the shore after opposition was first raised. But conservationists say it will make little difference.
Latin America
Mexico vows to continue war on organized crime
Top officials mourn a colleague allegedly killed by a drug cartel. ‘We will not be intimidated,’ one says.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials vowed Friday to press their war on organized crime despite the brazen killing a day earlier of a top federal police official by a gunman believed to be working for a drug cartel.
“We will not be intimidated,” federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said during an official memorial service in Mexico City for Edgar Millan Gomez, who was acting chief of a federal police agency.
President Felipe Calderon, visiting the violence-plagued northern border town of Reynosa later in the day, said organized crime groups were striking back against the federal government “because they know we are hitting their criminal structure.”
“We are determined to recover streets that never should have ceased being ours,” said Calderon, who had attended the memorial.
Last month’s Petraeus – Crocker, progress in Iraq, dog and pony show provided a forum which allowed them to tell us how well we are progressing in our endeavors to provide peace and stability in Iraq. The format was such that few hard questions were asked and few meaningful answers were given.
General Petraeus informs us:
“There has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq.”
The gains, however, are “fragile and reversible,” he says, as he begins to outline a plan for a 45-day “period of consolidation and evaluation” to follow the end of the “surge” of extra American forces in July, before any more troops would be withdrawn.
“This process will be continuous, with recommendations for further reductions made as conditions permit,” he added. “This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable.”
There were no major surprises from Petraeus and Crocker, more wait and see, stall and delay. However there was something new and very significant from the Senators doing the questioning.
Several senators took advantage of their allotted time to make the point that Iraq is, in their words, getting “a free ride” and that they should be more appreciative of what we are doing for them.
The issue of Baghdad’s contribution to the costs of the war jumped to the forefront early in April during testimony to Congress of the Iraq war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Noting that the soaring price of oil is likely to give Iraq a revenue bonanza this year of up to $70 billion, senators quizzed the two on why Iraq isn’t using its rising oil income to pay more of the costs of reconstruction.
Senator Ben Nelson D-Nebraska is drafting legislation with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Evan Bayh, R-Ind. that would, among other things, require that Baghdad pay for the fuel used by American troops and take over U.S. payments to predominantly Sunni fighters in the Awakening movement.
If Michigan Democrat Carl Levin has his way the Iraqi Government will be required to spend its own oil revenues to rebuild the country before US Dollars are spent. Joe Lieberman wants Iraq to start paying some of US combat costs. Senator Lindsey Graham suggested the possibility that an anticipated Iraqi surplus could be used to support US efforts in Afghanistan.
Senator Barbara Boxer laments:
“After all we have done, the Iraqi government kisses the Iranian leader.”
“America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,” said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq’s Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. “This is an immoral request because we didn’t ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn’t have all these needs.”
What a deal. The victim pays, not only for the unwanted occupation of it’s own country but to help defray US expenses in its occupation of Afghanistan.
We shall no doubt be hearing much more of this in the future as it now looks like Iraq’s oil revenue in 2008 should exceed $70 billion, twice as much as had been forecast just a few months ago.
This is a bi-partisan effort, as Jim Lobe writes for AlterNet:
…The Senate Armed Services Committee voted unanimously last week to approve a bill that would ban the Pentagon from funding any reconstruction or infrastructure project in Iraq that costs more than two million dollars. Similar legislation is expected to be taken up by the House.
“This is the first significant bipartisan change in our policy toward Iraq,” declared Republican Sen. Susan Collins, one of the sponsors of the legislation after last week’s vote, while the committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin said Iraq’s failure to pay reconstruction costs was “unconscionable (and) inexcusable” given the windfall it has received from the stunning rise in world oil prices.
In the same article Lobe points out that:
one of the surge’s architects, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said that legislation would “do catastrophic damage to our image in the world, particularly the Muslim world … The argument that Iraq should use its oil revenues to pay the United States sounds like the ultimate proof that we invaded Iraq for mercenary reasons.”
Indeed Mr. Kagan, the fact that we invaded Iraq for mercenary reasons has been obvious to much of the world since the days before shock and awe. The damage to our image has been done.
Colby Buzzell, author of My War: Killing Time in Iraq one of the best Iraq memoirs out there–has been called up from the IRR and will be returning to Iraq. For reasons that I’ve specified in the past, this is utter horseshit. Our country is in sad shape when cowards like Matthew Continetti and Jason Mattera are allowed to refuse to serve–instead choosing to cheer from the bench–while people like Colby Buzzell are forced to go involuntarily again and again.
This is nothing less than a backdoor draft. And it’s wrong. We need to either have a draft or not have a draft. But one way or the other, these IRR mobilizations need to stop.
Here’s part of Buzzell’s take on his own situation (though you should go read the whole thing in the San Francisco Chronicle:
As far back as I could remember, I wanted to be in the Army. I don’t know where it came from (my dad was a Navy veteran, after all), but I was enthralled by military history. I couldn’t get enough of it. But it wasn’t enough to simply read about the military. I wanted to be a part of it as soon as I could.
…I really was looking forward to applying my GI Bill to photography classes so I could learn how to take pictures. But now, thanks to not enough Americans volunteering for military service, I now have to worry about my picture appearing on the second or third page of my hometown paper with the words, “it was his second deployment” in my obituary.
That’s at the very end of the article that deserves to be read in full by every single breathing American citizen. Buzzell expresses a sentiment felt by nearly every veteran I know: Americans have not only failed to pick up the slack of a two front war, but they’ve dumped all the hardship, responsibility, guilt, heartbreak and exhaustion onto less than %1 of the population – service members and their families. There’s a word for that: serfdom.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls it “insensitive,” I call it something else:
The Pentagon is recommending changes in the handling of troops’ remains, after it was revealed that a crematorium contracted by the military handles both human and animal cremations.
For weeks, the US Army had a blockade around Sadr City to keep vehicles from entering or leaving the dangerous area. Residents of the besieged district complained of skyrocketing food prices, trash piling up in the streets, and claustrophobia from being trapped indoors. Several lawmakers staged sit-ins to protest the blockade. That blockade has been lifted, and residents are now being asked to leave.
SNIP
Now back to some of my own thoughts:
I Still Want To Know
Why neither one of these youngsters is Serving, and any of their young guests for this weekends ceremony??
Daughters do look for the ‘daddy feature’, come from a ‘chickenhawk’ marry a ‘chickenhawk’!!
Manufacturing Obedience
The greatest lie in American history was the Vietnam War.
The Iraq War is rapidly gaining ground.
Once you see the truth, you are reborn.
I did not serve in Vietnam with the U.S. Army,
I served in Vietnam with the R.C. Army,
The Ruling Class Army.
Thank God, I don’t live in a gingerbread house anymore.
Excerpted from
As a mother would risk her life
Folks the tide is turning. I’m more encouraged by this news than I have been in this whole political season. It ain’t over till it’s over, but hope is abounding. The dogs of the war party are losing the scent, the 