1. The flooding in eastern Iowa is Worse than ’93 according to Iowa City’s newspaper, The Press-Citizen. “Local officials are now predicting that the Flood of ’08 will be worse than the Flood of ’93. In a news release, the city of Iowa City is warning those with properties next to those that were flooded in 1993 should also now prepare for flooding and for possible evacuation.”

   The Des Moines Register reports on the flooding along a 250-mile stretch of the Mississippi River. In addition to the human suffering and property damage brough on by the disaster, crops are threatened — a ‘Miracle’ needed for good yields from wet fields. Farmers are planting corn in mud, hoping that the crop will survive Iowa’s wet spring.

   “Corn planted in the mud doesn’t grow as well, and farm machinery can damage the soil’s potential for producing good yields… Time is running out for a good crop, which is necessary to fulfill growing demand for food, livestock feed, exports and ethanol… Lower yields of corn and soybeans, which are used in hundreds of products in the grocery store, could add up to higher food costs for consumers who are already seeing higher prices at their supermarket checkout counters. Higher corn prices could also mean hard times for Iowa’s ethanol industry.”

Four at Four continues with FISA, vitamin D, an Atlas of Africa, and Blackwater’s growing power made possible by the “war on drugs”.

1. In Canada, the Globe and Mail reports 97 years later, apology at last.

   Marguerite Wabano, 104, is known as Granny Wabano to everyone in Moosonee, Ont. On Wednesday, she and five other residential school survivors will be seated on the floor of the House of Commons to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologize on behalf of all Canadians.

   It will be a historic and personal moment for Ms. Wabano and tens of thousands other indigenous people who were taken from their families and sent to church-run boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their own languages. Many were sexually and physically abused.

   Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said that if the opposition parties agree, the House of Commons will set aside all other business on Wednesday for the formal apology for Canada’s Indian residential schools policy, which will start at 3 p.m. Church and native leaders are urging Canadians across the country to stop in their tracks on Wednesday afternoon and turn on the nearest TV.

   Constrast with the news in the U.S. According to the LA Times, Oglala Sioux could regain Badlands national parkland.

   The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see.

   Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape. On a plateau, a solitary makeshift hut sits ringed by empty Coke cans and shaving cream canisters. It is the only remnant of a three-year occupation by militant tribal activists who had demanded that the land be returned.

   Now the National Park Service is contemplating doing just that: giving the 133,000-acre southern half of Badlands National Park back to the tribe. The northern half, which has a paved road and a visitor center, would remain with the park system.

   The story also notes, “Many of the most renowned national parks — Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon — were formed after the federal government forced tribes from the land.”

Four at Four continues with stories of torture and Guantánamo Bay, the military’s new super computer, and saving the Inca’s language.

1. U.S. Economy Continues Plunge Into the Abyss

   The bottomless pit?

   First up, the Los Angeles Times reports Monthly growth in unemployment rate is biggest in over 20 years. “The nation’s unemployment rate took a sharp turn for the worse in May, jumping to 5.5% from 5% a month earlier — the largest one-month increase in more than two decades and a further sign that the ailing economy is not yet on the mend.”

   “Altogether, the economy lost 49,000 jobs in May and 324,000 jobs since the beginning of the year — five straight months of contraction, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The economy must create about 100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.”

   The Washington Post adds that Despite interest rate cuts, foreclosures hit a record high. More than 1 million homeowners face foreclosure. Nearly 9 percent of mortgages nationally are in trouble with the bulk of the foreclosures in California and Florida.

   What began as a mortgage crisis focused largely on subprime borrowers has spread and is being fed by the slowing economy it helped create. Borrowers once considered the most creditworthy have been hamstrung by declining home prices, making it difficult to refinance their home to dodge a financial crunch.

   Americans have been living on home-equity and credit and now, with rising food and gas prices combined with declining property values, many people are heading towards financial ruin.

   [UPDATED 4:30 EDT] Things won’t be getting any better for small retirement investors trapped in their IRAs and 401ks on Wall Street. The New York Times reports the Dow plunges more than 400 points, while oil rockets nearly $11. “Wall Street suffered its worst losses in more than two months… At the close, the Dow was off 3.13 percent, at 394.64…”

   “Shares opened lower after the government reported that the unemployment rate in May had its highest monthly increase in 22 years. But the decline accelerated as investors confronted a $10.75 jump in the price of crude oil, the biggest one-day climb ever… A report by Morgan Stanley on Friday said that oil prices could reach $150 a barrel by July 4… The dollar declined against other currencies, a move that makes each barrel of oil more expensive. Gold prices rose.”

2. John McCain continues to embrace George W. Bush’s, um, policies. From The New York Times, Adviser says McCain backs Bush wiretaps. Those would be the illegal, warrantless wiretaps that Bush is demanding telco immunity for.

   A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that… Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

   Despite a 1978 federal statute that requires court oversight of surveillance, McCain promises to continue with Bush’s lawlessness. Of course, McCain has altered his “straight talk” on what his position. Once upon a time (last year), McCain said “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law”. The more McCain agrees to take on Bush’s positions, the more apparent it becomes that McCain is running for Bush’s third term.

Four at Four continues with Israel threating Iran and the U.S. blackmailing Iraq.

1. After “enhanced interrogation” by the CIA, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confressed to being the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and 30 other plots.

   Today, at Guantánamo, he appeared before a military judge and, as the Miami Herald reports, Mohammed asked for the death sentence. “In Allah I put my trust,” he told the court in both Arabic and in English. When asked if he ‘understood that the crimes for which he was accused are punishable by a death sentence.’

   “This is what I wish — to be martyred,” Mohammed answered.

   The LA Times adds “Mohammed also told the judge… that he regarded the military proceedings against them as “an inquisition, not a trial,” and that he rejected all U.S. laws as ‘evil.'”

   Mohammed also rejected representation by Navy Capt. Prescott Prince, because “he wore the uniform of his American enemies and had pledged allegiance to President Bush, ‘who wages systemic war against the Islamic world.'”

   I get the feeling that somehow, this “trial” may not go according to the the Bush administration’s plan.

2. Two news items about the Bush administration’s pack of lies about Iraq.

   • McClatchy Newspapers report Bush knew Iraq claims weren’t true. “A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.”

     “Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced… There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate,” said committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV).

   • While, The Independent contributes with Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control. Bush is demanding 50 military bases in Iraq, control of Iraqi airspace, and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors.

     The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

     The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

     Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month.

     “Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.”

   Prediction: Americans will sleep. Congress will do nothing. This is Bush’s attempt to sandbag the next administration. Can anyone explain to me why such an agreement would not have to be ratified by the Senate?

Four at Four continues with stories about record number of home foreclosures and a possible return of Zeppelins to our sky.

1. In “Slogging to Victory“, the Washington Post looks at Obama’s campaign strategy that allowed him to win the necessary delegates for the Democratic nomination. It’s an interesting read and will likely tick off a few people and not just Clinton supporters.

   Much of Obama’s strategy is already apparent. For example, Obama focused on the caucus states, avoided head-to-head match-ups with Clinton in battleground states while trying to limit her delegate counts, and concentrated on states where Democrats rarely visited.

   But, there is more than what’s already common knowledge. For instance, I think this move by his campaign was brilliant:

   The campaign leadership had wanted no distractions before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, so the planning in Chicago was done in secret. But on the night of Jan. 4, as Obama’s Iowa staff staggered into his Des Moines campaign headquarters, still ragged from celebrating the senator’s improbable victory there, field director Paul Tewes took it public.

   Everyone on the payroll in Iowa would be assigned to another state, he announced. Hotels had already been booked and rooms in the homes of volunteers arranged. Marygrace Galston, who had helped oversee the ground-game deployments, gave staff members until 6 p.m. to say whether they were accepting their new assignments.

   While necessary for Obama’s campaign to win, the way they maneuvered on Florida and Michigan is likely to raise ire.

   To avoid the danger zone, two things had to happen: Obama would have to win Indiana to augment an expected victory that day in North Carolina, and Michigan and Florida could not be allowed to vote in June. He did not win Indiana, but he got the next-best thing…

   Obama caught a break in Florida. When the Florida Democratic Party drafted a detailed plan for a revote, largely by mail, the entire Florida Democratic House delegation — Clinton and Obama supporters alike — recoiled, their memories of the 2000 election debacle still too fresh to risk it. Obama’s Florida backers did not have to lift a finger…

   Michigan was different… Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer drafted a lengthy memo on March 19, raising a series of questions about the revote but stopping short of opposing it…

   In short, Obama ran out the clock.

Four at Four continues with stories about Homeland Security declaring all foreigners as terrorists, Yucca Mountain, and the discovery that bees translate the dances of foreign species.

The Washington Post reports Lawyers fear for detainee’s sanity. The Bush administration says five years of solitary confinement without trial is A-OK.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is obsessed with the noise variations in an industrial fan, the buzzing of fluorescent lights overhead and the preparation of his dinners. He has stuffed his air vents with food to prevent what he believes are noxious fumes from streaming into his cell, and he worries at times that his lawyers are part of a government conspiracy against him.

Hrmmm. Let’s see. The man has been held without a trial for 6½ years by a government that has lied about Iraq’s WMDs, has secret prisions, has used noise and loud music as torture… What part of “government conspiracy” is in question? The noxious fumes part?

1. Nobody other than Hillary Clinton knows what her plans are now that Barack Obama may win the delegates needed for the nomination today. Reuters reports Clinton campaign says she’s not conceding as race nears end. There is a “flurry of speculation that Hillary Clinton will quickly drop her White House bid.” But, her campaign is denying reports that she will “say on Tuesday night that Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.” Terry McAuliffe said Clinton was “absolutely not” conceding the campaign.

   What I think is likely is the Clinton campaign will spend the next week trying to convince the superdelegates she remains the Democratic Party’s best candidate to face John McCain in the 2008 general election.

   The Obama campaign, for their part, are keeping subdued. The Hill reports of an Obama memo to surrogates: No victory yet. He “telling his surrogates not to make that assertion just yet, according to an internal campaign memo.” Despite having enough delegates to win the nomination, “his campaign is telling his supporters that the senator will not claim victory in his speech in Minnesota.”

   I suspect Clinton’s run is all but over. In his column today, Dana Milbank wrote about Bill Clinton’s campaign stop in Milbank, South Dakota — “A No-Name Town Looks Like Waterloo“. The former president told the people of Milbank:

   “I want to say,” he told about 500 Milbankians — about 15 percent of the town’s population — “that this may be the last day that I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics until Hillary decided to run, but it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to be able to go around and campaign for her for president.”

   “Last day”? Past tense? It was the first time either Clinton had allowed the pervasive pessimism to infiltrate a public utterance.

   Lastly, I’m reminded of what Bill Clinton said last April 2007 in an interview with Larry King:

   “You know she’s not — some people who run for president can’t wait to get out of the Senate, or out of whatever other job she’s got. She loves it. She’s still doing it. She’s still going to her committee meetings, going to upstate New York and trying to run for president as well,” Clinton told CNN’s Larry King. “So, for her personally she’s going to be fine regardless. I think it’d be best for the country if she were elected president, but if voters make another choice, she’s a great senator, and she loves her job, and we’ll have a great life.”

   I think the best thing we can do now is give Clinton space to make her decision that will be best for the country and the Democratic Party. She’s fought hard and we wanted a fighter.

Four at Four continues with probe news from NASA, China’s latest move against Tibet, and the Medal of Honor.

1. Arghhh!

   The Associated Press reports Bush weighs in against Senate climate bill.

   Bush weighed in Monday against a Senate bill that would require dramatic cuts in climate-changing greenhouse pollution, cautioning senators “to be very careful about running up enormous costs for future generations of Americans.”

   Unlike Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined with his tax cuts to the wealthiest few. Unlike letting climate change and dependence on oil and other fossil fuels will not be “enormous costs” to current and future Americans.

   Bush, during a White House event that focused on keeping taxes low, said the Senate bill “would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy.” The president in the past has expressed opposition to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other pollution linked to global warming…

   Bush did not say how the $6 trillion figure he cited was arrived at.

   His damned war in Iraq has cost us many lives and an estimated $3 trillion in debt and we got squat from it. Now he pulls a number from the “air” and worries about future costs? What are the costs of not addressing climate change? Famine? Water shortages? Mass migration? Wars?

   The members of Congress have sat on their hands for the past 7½ years, they may as well wait 6½ months for a new administration too. Compromising on climate change policy with Bush will accomplish nothing good.

Four at Four continues with microgeneration rivaling nuclear power, the Gaza Fulbright grants, and Bill Clinton’s political mastery.

1. The Defense War Department has replaced the judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback III, in the Guantánamo Bay “show trial” for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. The official reason? He is “ill”. The likely reason? Brownback has made rulings in favor of the defense. The Miami Herald reports Pentagon is silent on Guantánamo judge’s ouster.

   Military prosecutors had been pressing Brownback to set a trial date, but he has repeatedly directed them first to satisfy defense requests for access to potential evidence. At a hearing earlier this month, he threatened to suspend the proceedings altogether unless the detention center provided records of Khadr’s confinement.

   The Bush administration is worried Canada might “demand Khadr’s repatriation.”

2. The LA Times notes that Grandpa McCain’s Web gap is showing. Seems the McCain campaign just can’t keep up with the young whippersnappers these days. “Six of the top 10 videos returned by a “John McCain” YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three… Contrast that with a YouTube search of “Barack Obama.” It’s a swoon fest, with virtually all of the top entries featuring the Illinois senator at his eloquent, uplifting best.”

   “So how do McCain & Co. get into the YouTube game?” asks the LA Times. “It may be time for McCain to play his own, less-menacing Hollywood ace: Wilford Brimley… He’s got those Quaker Oats ads and that stolid, old-man cool.” I guess Grandpa Simpson is already booked?

3. I don’t know if America’s corporate media is going to pick up on this, The Guardian reports McCain is using a picture of himself shaking the hand of a uniformed General David Petraeus in his campaign fundraising material. Both Sen. John Kerry and Wisconsin’s Gov. Jim Doyle said this was an inappropriate politicisation of the military. Just like George W. McBush.

   The pair also leapt on the Arizona senator’s remarks yesterday in Wisconsin that US troop levels had declined to pre-surge levels and that some cities in Iraq are “quiet”.

   “I assume Senator McCain just doesn’t know the facts here,” Doyle said.
   “It’s very disturbing to have John McCain continually raise questions about what he knows and what he bases his judgments on,” said Kerry, a Navy veteran of Vietnam.

   “If you don’t know the number of troops it’s very difficult” to assess if they are overextended. The comments raise “serious questions about his comprehension of this challenge”.

   McCain’s reponse? ‘The surge is a success.’ The reality? “The level of violence has been inching up since January, after a 60% drop in attacks nationwide in the second half of last year, according to U.S. military figures.”

4. Clean coal is a myth and guess what? According to the NY Times, Mounting costs slow the push for coal plant carbon capture. The coal power industry wants “to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground… But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.”

   In fact, viable techniques to pump CO2 underground are practically nonexistant. “Considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.”

   Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.

   Test projects have failed and “in January, the government pulled out after projected costs nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion. The government feared the costs would go even higher.” Clean coal is snake oil.

1. Carbon Footprints

   The New York Times reports Urban areas on the West Coast produce the least emissions per capita. The Brookings Institution has concluded a study that has found metropolitan areas along the West Coast and Hawaii have lower carbon footprints than other parts of the United States. Honolulu was ranked first, or the metropolitan area with the smallest carbon footprint.

   “The region’s mild climates, hydropower and aggressive energy-reduction policies give its residents smaller carbon footprints, on average, than those of their counterparts in the East and Midwest.”

   The Associated Press adds “Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitans areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average”. But, the top 100 cities account for 56% of America’s carbon dioxide pollution.

2. The Oregonian reports Geothermal prospector hopes to tap central Oregon’s Newberry Crater.

   For more than 30 years, geologists have boasted about the fiery depths of central Oregon’s Newberry Crater, a geothermal resource said to be one of the best in the world. And public and private prospectors have drilled, measured and poked the landscape.

   Still, no one has ever built a power plant near the volcano, an area of high-desert forests, shrub and obsidian flows. Money demands and environmental concerns always have proved insurmountable. A large portion of the storied natural setting came under the protections of the federally designated Newberry National Volcanic Monument in 1990.

   This go-round, it may be different. High energy prices and the West’s search for clean, renewable power have returned Newberry Crater to the spotlight, where it’s viewed as a potential mother lode of geothermal.

   The modern-day miner is Davenport Power, a young renewable-energy company with offices in Connecticut and Bend, just 25 miles northwest of the crater. It began exploratory drilling on the volcano’s western flank in April, and by year’s end, executives should know whether there’s a sufficient brew of heat and water in deep underground fissures to justify full-on pursuit.

3. The Guardian reports General Electric believes Water shortages and drought are the next scourge. To meet the coming challenges brought by water shortages, General Electric claimed “it would cut its own use of water by 20% by 2012 and export water-saving and recycling technology to countries – often emerging economies – hit by shortages… The move by GE comes as scientists are warning that 50% of the world’s nations will be hit by water shortages by 2025 and 75% by 2050.”

4. The Associated Press brings news that For centuries Stonehenge was a burial site. “England’s enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates. Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday. And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.”

1. Resources Scarce, Homelessness Persists in New Orleans
   By Shaila Dewan, The New York Times

   Mayor C. Ray Nagin recently suggested a way to reduce this city’s post-Katrina homeless population: give them one-way bus tickets out of town.

   Mr. Nagin later insisted the off-the-cuff proposal was just a joke. But he has portrayed the dozens of people camped in a tent city under a freeway overpass near Canal Street as recalcitrant drug and alcohol abusers who refuse shelter, give passers-by the finger and, worst of all, hail from somewhere else.

   While many of the homeless do have addiction problems or mental illness, a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

   Not far from the French Quarter, flanking Canal Street on Claiborne Avenue, they are living inside a long corridor formed not of walls and a roof but of the thick stench of human waste and sweat tinged with alcohol, crack and desperation.

   Read the whole article. What we’ve let New Orleans become is to our nation’s shame.

Four at Four continues with stories about Democrats, climate change, and the monkeys that will replace us all.

1. $1.85 Fee to See a Doctor? Some Say It’s Too Much

   An interesting story from The New York Times about health care being a basic human right in the Czech Republic and how the right wing wishes to undo this. See if this sounds familiar – “What we want to achieve in the health system is a higher individual responsibility, making the consumers more responsible for what they consume”. No longer are people patients or the sick, instead they are consumers and a profit center.

   In the Czech Republic, you can now see a doctor for about $1.85. A day in the hospital can verge on $4. This is not cause for celebration.

   For Czechs, who visit their doctors more often than anyone else in Europe, it has led to great outrage. In fact, the idea of charging anything at all for health care can generate significant controversy, not to mention abrupt about-faces in policy, here and in other Central European countries…

   For healthy people with jobs, the fees are quite literally pocket change, usually paid with the same 10 and 20 crown coins as streetcar tickets in Prague ($1 is worth around 16 crowns)… But many Czechs see it as a matter of principle that health care should be free — though the system is financed in part through payroll deductions — along with a strong sense of solidarity for the poor.

Four at Four continues with the housing boom, dictatorships being held accountable, and yet another report that Osama bin Laden is dead.