Pentagon Plans to Turn Baghdad’s Green Zone into Resort

(9:30AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

This is how the Pentagon envisions the Green Zone of Baghdad after a $5 billion tourist and development scheme.

Tigris Woods

A plan by US military planners for the “Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club” in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq.

Picture: U.S. Army/AP

There’s nothing like playing a relaxing 18 holes of golf for U.S. generals and big oil executives after a tough day in oil-rich, occupied Iraq. Or as The Guardian describes it in Luxury hotels and golf: welcome to the Green Zone:

Picture… a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad’s International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel… Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Unbelievable.

Or, maybe golf isn’t your thing? Maybe some nice shopping at the “International Village” at the U.S. embassy in tranquil Baghdad?

International Village at U.S. Embassy

Planners envision an international village inside the U.S. embassy complex in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq.

Picture: U.S. Army/AP)

According to the AP story:

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Potential investors are already being signed up. Marriott International has been inked to build a new hotel in the Green Zone and more are in line. A $1 billion investment from MBI International, a hotel and resorts specialist led by Saudi sheikh, Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber is possible according Karnowski.

“If you talk to people at the State Department, they still believe a hotel isn’t going up. But it is a done deal,” Karnowski said of the Marriott project.

Other potential developments are from C3, a Los Angeles-based company, that wants “build an amusement park on the Green Zone’s outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.”

The Guardian adds:

The US military released the first tentative artists’ impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks. “This is at the end of the day an Iraqi-owned area and we will give it back to them with added value,” said the source, who requested anonymity.

Efforts are under way to obtain the necessary land. “Air Force Lt. Col. Monte Harner leads the effort to discover who owns the titles and consolidate the areas held by the U.S. military.”

While the Pentagon’s dream of transforming Baghdad’s Green Zone into a world class resort may be the stuff of make believe, but then so is the belief that the “surge” is working. According to Harner:

“You have to stake a goal in the sand before you can begin to move toward it… Without a vision of what could be, you’re just treading water.”

Clap louder America!

A Baltimore Herald Update

As some of you may have observed I’ve been working out my proposal for the Baltimore Herald.

The part I’ve been working on with the Morning and Evening Editions is news gathering and story formatting.

Now the news gathering part has been a rip roaring success from my standpoint- 80 stories today!  And it is somewhat easier and less time consuming to visit frequently and harvest just a little bit at a time.

It has proven somewhat harder than I thought to slot the stories into their correct categories, but a large part of that involves the difficulty of moving around in and testing a large diary at all.  Today in the Morning Edition there were 49 stories.  The Evening Edition had 31.  The largest diary in the broken up categories I envision, Asia, would have had 21, and you would only be adding to the bottom each time and not hopping around.

Not being able to rely on the square bracket link shortcuts is going to be a huge issue for me unless pacified fixes it before production.

The Intro Section is highly unreliable, links that end in ‘/’ never, ever work top or bottom, Wikipedia only about 50% of the time.

The reason that this is particulary a pain in the ass is because it makes your cut and paste operations hard.

When they work it’s very simple-

Grab the Title, the publication info, and the 3 graphs you’ve selected- bang copy and paste into your notepad document.

Take out the ADVERTISEMENT place holder (or any other crap) and fix up the info (put the date on the bottom, make sure you have the organization).

Bang your Brackets around your [Title ], go back and grab your link, and pop it in there.

Then slap some <blockquotes> around your graphs and you should be good to go.

Headline (with a link)

Author, Organization

Date or Time

  • <blockquote>Representative quote containing no more than 20% of the total article (and stuff that doesn’t have more than six graphs in total is pretty freaking useless) not to exceed 5 paragraphs (3 preferred) in length in total in any event.</blockquote>

Your snide comments here.

Copy and paste it at the bottom of your diary.  Individual updates could hardly be easier, of course you would actually batch them.

If on the other hand you went with the <a href=””></a> format you would now have to batch them because of the inconvenience of reversing the link order (from Label Link to Link Label which is also much harder to read when you’re checking for duplicates) and search replacing the brackets.

If you don’t have a text editor with macros and I don’t, it’s about 4 or 5 extra keystrokes for each link.  You can’t do it while you’re story picking because that’s the order your cut and pasted text comes in.

Other idiosyncracies include no double quotes ‘”‘ in links, you have to replace them with &quot;, and you have to put a literal character ‘\' before the ‘$’ symbol.  Trust me on this, I’ve done thousands of links.

Now the Body of a diary is not nearly as picky as the Intro section so this may not be that big an issue for the most part, the problem is when you start adding interesting links at the top, say a set of headine only links at the top of each category diary.

A Typical Category Diary-

Africa (date) == Title

Tags: Africa, World

Intro

[All Africa Stories tag]

[All World Stories tag]

[Daily Editions tag] (Main)

Today’s Headlines

[Headline 1 link]

[Headline 2 link]



[Headline n link]

Body

Headline (with a link)

Author, Organization

Date or Time

  • <blockquote>Representative quote containing no more than 20% of the total article (and stuff that doesn’t have more than six graphs in total is pretty freaking useless) not to exceed 5 paragraphs (3 preferred) in length in total in any event.</blockquote>

Your snide comments here.

Because of pre-publishing you should be able to put up a week of templates at a time and fill them out as needed.  Any that didn’t get stories you would delete at the end of the day when the new set was up (that way anyone can contribute by comment at any time).

After all your categories were up you put up the Main Edition for the day-

Main Edition

Front Page (date) == Title

Tag: FP

Intro

News Categories

[World tag] #

 [Africa tag] #, [Asia tag] #, [Australia tag] #, [Europe tag] #,

 [North America tag] #, [South America tag] #, [Antarctica tag] #

[U.S. tag] #

 [News & Politics tag] #, [Media tag] #, [Entertainment tag] #

[Business tag] #

[Science tag] #

[Health tag] #

[Sports tag] #

[Bloglines tag] #

[Not News! tag] #

Body

(note: this was originally above the fold, but 80 is a long way to scroll)

Today’s Headlines

World-

[Africa diary] (linky links, use pre whoring feature)

Headline 1

Headline 2



Headline n

(note: not as links to avoid linking problem.  Boldface only.)

[Asia diary]

Headline 1

Headline 2



Headline n

This way you can get to the stories you want to check out without scrolling through 16 diaries.

By using the tags, users have onother way to contribute too.  They can gather 3 or 4 stories about Science or the Environment (which I generally include in Science) and post them in a properly tagged diary.

Any way, that’s what the outline looks like now.

I’ve dropped the 2 a day concept, only one set of diaries updated Overnight, 10 am to noonish, 6 pm to 10 pm ish.

Still looking for CEs and Admins.  Still in desperate need of someone who knows Soapblox blog setup like OTB to help me get the site running so I can continue testing some of the concepts.

This is not a competitive thing.  I’m hoping this tool will make news gathering for aggregators easier and more comprehensive.

Iran and Superclass

http://www.amazon.com/Supercla…

It came.  It’s painful.  Written by the enemy it reveals the mindset of the rich and super powerful, much like the movie “American Psycho” they are.

I am only on page 76 and fuming.  What is needed is a genetically specific ebola virus targeting all with an income above 2 million.

Rothkopf also names Armedinijad as a member of what he termed anti-globalists and does shed a blinding white light on the real reasons the US is now picking Iranian targets.  Thing gas is expensive?  It is going to be gone and you can bet before the selection process in November.

wallmart

They justify and dismiss the consequences of their Satanic decisions by intellectualizing any combination of religion, history, profit margins, the policies of past elite shitheads and their own personally owned “economists”.

Economics is just like statistics, so you can “prove” your point with either one.  They look upon you as a bar of Soylent Green.

Oh and forget the Lexus these guys have Gulfstreams, 737s and helicopters to get around, never having to stand in airport lines like cattle.  Instead the Swiss army, toting machine guns politely say Good Morning to the incoming “Davos” men all with photo IDs hanging from their necks.

It is insight into the mindset of the enemy, people like Bill Kristol and his ilk can be understood.

There are many facts and statistics clearly allowing anyone with reasonable intelligence to read between the lines on the daily lamestream “news” din.  Soon I hope to be able to pinpoint which minion of Satan think tank each meme came out of.

From deep within the anti-globalist secret HQ

Lasthorseman, over and out.

Evening Edition

Africa 3, Asia 7, South America 1, News & Politics 5, Business 4, Science 5, Health 2, Sports 2, Blogline 2

Stories collected from 6 pm to 8 pm

So I think this proves for sure that the material is out there to do this.  This is 80 stories today.

World-

Africa

1 Ban discussing U.N. help for Zimbabwe re-run

By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters

Mon May 5, 3:41 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday he was talking to African states about how the world body could help ensure an election run-off in Zimbabwe is credible and voiced concern at growing violence.

Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC has yet to say whether its leader Morgan Tsvangirai would contest a second round against President Robert Mugabe, but has said one condition for doing so might be a U.N.-led observer mission.

The opposition rejects results showing Tsvangirai failed to beat Mugabe by a big enough margin in the March 29 vote to avoid a run-off and accuses his supporters of a campaign of violence.

2 14 Darfur civilians killed in government air raids

AFP

Mon May 5, 12:33 PM ET

KHARTOUM (AFP) – Sudanese government air strikes killed at least 14 civilians in three days of bombardment in North Darfur, including a raid on a busy market, the rebel Justice and Equality Movement said on Monday.

“There has been continuous bombardment by Antonov aircraft for three days,” London-based JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam told AFP by telephone.

“Yesterday (Sunday) morning they bombarded a village in the area of Al-Ain and killed three children of the local leader Sheikh Mahmud Bakr and injured one. They also destroyed wells and other water resources,” he said.

3 Mugabe’s Strategy for Victory

By ALEX PERRY, Time Magazine

Mon May 5, 12:00 PM ET

More than a month after Zimbabwe went to the polls, electoral authorities on Friday finally announced a result in the presidential race: a do-over. The Zimbabwe Election Commission said opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won 47.9% of the vote to President Robert Mugabe’s 43.2%. That means that, officially, no candidate has won an outright victory of more than 50%, a scenario which, under Zimbabwean electoral law, mandates a second round run-off within three weeks. “Since no candidate has received the majority of the valid vote cast… a second election shall be held on a date to be advised by the commission,” chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi told reporters in Harare.

Asia

4 U.S. says Iran will get incentives “very quickly”

By Sue Pleming, Reuters

Mon May 5, 2:22 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – World powers very soon will present Iran with a revised package of incentives to give up its sensitive nuclear work, U.S. officials said on Monday, but expectations for a positive response are low.

“I think this will move very quickly,” said a senior U.S. official, when asked when the incentives package agreed on by major powers in London last Friday would be formally offered to the Iranians.

Top government officials in China, Russia, the United States, France, Britain — the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — and Germany are now reviewing the decision made in London and an approach would be made soon to Tehran, the official said. France has said it could be within days.

5 Iran rejects nuclear inspections unless Israel allows them

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 32 minutes ago

GENEVA – An Iranian envoy said Monday his government will not submit to extensive nuclear inspections while Israel stays outside the global treaty to curb the spread of atomic weapons.

“The existing double standard shall not be tolerated anymore by non-nuclear-weapon states,” Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told a meeting of the 190 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Nuclear safeguards are far from universal, he said, adding that more than 30 countries are still without a comprehensive safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure full cooperation with that U.N. body.

6 Baghdad park is an oasis from conflict

By Shashank Bengali and Laith Hammoudi, McClatchy Newspapers

Mon May 5, 3:43 PM ET

BAGHDAD – There’s a place in this city, amid the snarled checkpoints and mazes of blast walls and general anxiety, where families still gather for picnics, teenage boys kick around soccer balls, young couples canoodle furtively under trees and children bury their faces in cotton candy.

Zawra Park , a sprawling, 250-acre public park in central Baghdad , is one of the few open spaces left in the capital. It’s seeing a resurgence of visitors, thanks to improved security in central Baghdad , even as car bombings and mortar attacks continue to strike just a few blocks away.

“I come to Zawra because it’s the only place we have in Baghdad ,” said Anas Abo Yousif , a 27-year-old taxi driver who brought his wife and two children to the park on a recent, sun-baked Saturday afternoon.

7 2 more U.S. soldiers’ deaths in Iraq raise doubts about MRAP vehicle

By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers

50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – The deaths of two U.S. soldiers in western Baghdad last week have sparked concerns that Iraqi insurgents have developed a new weapon capable of striking what the U.S. military considers its most explosive-resistant vehicle.

The soldiers were riding in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protective vehicle, known as an MRAP, when an explosion sent a blast of super-heated metal through the MRAP’s armor and into the vehicle, killing them both.

Their deaths brought to eight the number of American troops killed while riding in an MRAP, which was developed and deployed to Iraq last year after years of acrimony over light armor on the Army’s workhorse vehicle, the Humvee.

8 Is Beijing Softening on Tibet?

By SIMON ELEGANT/BEIJING, Time Magazine

1 hour, 35 minutes ago

Monday yielded one clear clue when Chinese media carried stories on the meeting the previous day between representatives of the Dalai Lama and envoys from Beijing. Although the talks have been going on since 2002, this was the first time the Chinese public had heard about them, a sign for many analysts that Beijing was softening its previously hardline stance regarding the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. It was also noted that President Hu Jintao had said he expected “positive results” from the talks, another first. Other analyses dwelled on the language used in the official media reports, some of which spoke of the “Dalai Lama group” rather than using phrases such as the “Dalai clique” or “splittist clique” that are usually employed.

9 Japan’s Butter Meltdown

By COCO MASTERS/TOKYO, Time Magazine

1 hour, 36 minutes ago

The world’s second largest economy is now crying over spilled milk – and its delicious by-product, butter. Japan, insulated from rice shortages that plague other parts of Asia, is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of the household staple – and discovering that it is not as immune from the growing global food crisis as it wants to be.

10 Iraqi alleges Abu Ghraib torture, sues US contractors

By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 42 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES – An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors Monday, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi’s federal lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as “Big Steve.” The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

South America

11 Official results confirm Bolivian province’s autonomy win

By Boris Heger and Jack Chang, McClatchy Newspapers

30 minutes ago

SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA , Bolivia – Official election results released Monday showed a controversial statute that would grant autonomy to this country’s richest province had built an overwhelming lead in Sunday’s violence-marred referendum and was on its way to victory.

The results thrilled leaders in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz , who had defied President Evo Morales by putting the statute up for a vote. If implemented, the statute would give the province powers equivalent to that of a U.S. state, such as the right to form its own police, set tax and land-use policies and elect a governor and legislature. Most state functions are now centralized in Bolivia’s federal government.

Morales, who’s a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez , has called the statute separatist and illegal and warned Santa Cruz leaders not to implement it. His spokesman, Ivan Canelas , however, took a softer approach Monday by inviting Santa Cruz’s prefect, who’s the equivalent of a governor, and other prefects from the country’s nine provinces to discuss the idea of provincial autonomies.

U.S.

News & Politics

12 AP IMPACT: More than 3.5 million new voters, AP survey finds

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer

54 minutes ago

DURHAM, N.C. – Voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof so far this year – with more than 3.5 million people rushing to join in the historic balloting, according to an Associated Press survey that offers the first national snapshot.

Figures are up for blacks, women and young people. Rural and city. South and North.

Overall, the AP found that nearly one in 65 adult Americans signed up to vote in just the first three months of the year. And in the 21 states that were able to provide comparable data, new registrations have soared about 64 percent from the same three months in the 2004 campaign.

13 UN kicks off long-delayed headquarters renovation

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

33 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations kicked off the long-delayed renovation of its landmark headquarters complex Monday led by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wearing a hard hat and wielding a shovel to break ground for a temporary conference building.

Ban was joined by 16 others with shovels who represented the U.N.’s many constituencies for the ceremony on the U.N.’s north lawn.

“Today we turn the soil which the United Nations stands on to mark the rebirth, or renovation, of our headquarters,” the secretary-general said before lining up for the groundbreaking. “Over the next five years, we will make our facilities safer, greener, and more modern and efficient.”

14 Soldier suicides could trump war tolls: US health official

AFP

Mon May 5, 1:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Suicides and “psychological mortality” among US soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could exceed battlefield deaths if their mental scars are left untreated, the head of the US Institute of Mental Health warned Monday.

Of the 1.6 million US soldiers who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 18-20 percent — or around 300,000 — show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression or both, said Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health.

An estimated 70 percent of those at-risk soldiers do not seek help from the Department of Defense or the Veterans Administration, he told a news conference launching the American Psychiatric Association’s 161st annual meeting here.

15 Republican evangelical support has peaked: analyst

By Ed Stoddard, Reuters

24 minutes ago

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain will almost certainly garner less of the evangelical vote in November than the almost 80 percent that President George W. Bush took in 2004, a former top Bush aide said on Monday.

Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter and adviser who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, predicted at a conference on religion and politics in Key West, Florida, that Bush’s 2004 totals among this key voting bloc won’t be matched by the Republican Party for a long time.

He pointed among other factors to “a candidate like John McCain who doesn’t have a specifically religious appeal.”

16 U.S. moving ahead on urgent student loan programs

By Kevin Drawbaugh, Reuters

34 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration said on Monday it will be ready to accept requests for emergency student loans from state guaranty agencies by June 1 under a program to stabilize the $85 billion student loan industry.

With fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis threatening to trigger a student loan shortage this summer, an official of the U.S. Education Department said it is moving to implement the stabilization plan approved last week by Congress.

“Millions of students could potentially benefit from this legislation,” David Dunn, the department’s chief of staff, told reporters on a conference call.

Business

17 Gasoline price at new record, diesel falls: EIA

By Tom Doggett, Reuters

1 hour, 58 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. average retail price for gasoline rose a penny over the last week to a new high of $3.61 a gallon, while the price of diesel fuel fell, the federal Energy Information Administration said on Monday.

The national price for regular, self-service gasoline is up 56 cents from a year ago because of expensive crude oil prices. U.S. crude on Monday hit a record $120.36 a barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The price of crude oil accounts for about 72 percent of the cost for making gasoline.

18 Stocks end lower after Microsoft pulls Yahoo bid

By TIM PARADIS, AP Business Writer

9 minutes ago

NEW YORK – Wall Street pulled back Monday following Microsoft Corp.’s decision to withdraw its bid for Yahoo Inc. and as oil prices rose to a new record over $120 a barrel.

Microsoft had offered $47.5 billion to buy Yahoo Inc., but scrapped the bid late Saturday after the software maker and the Internet provider could not agree on a sale price. The failed deal came as a disappointment to Wall Street, as merger-and-acquisition activity tends to boost shareholder value, and also signals to the broader market that corporate America is optimistic about the future.

A jump in oil prices raised concerns that inflation could force consumers, who account for more than two-thirds of the economy, to cut their spending on discretionary items. Crude oil futures for June delivery surged to a new trading high of $120.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before pulling back to settle up $3.65 at a record $119.97. The jump followed worries over supply disruptions in areas such as Nigeria, Iran and Iraq.

19 Federal Reserve reports tighter bank lending standards

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve reported Monday that more banks are tightening lending standards on home mortgages, other types of consumer loans and business loans in response to a spreading credit crisis.

The Fed said t the percentage of banks reporting tighter lending standards was near historic highs for nearly all loan categories.

The survey, conducted in April, found that nearly two-thirds of banks surveyed had tightened lending standards on traditional home mortgages with 15 percent saying those standards had been tightened considerably.

20 Prosecutors in NY form subprime task force

By Martha Graybow, Reuters

Mon May 5, 3:22 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in New York have formed a task force together with other government agencies to examine the collapse of the market for risky home loans, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said on Monday.

The group is being run out of the federal prosecutors’ office in Brooklyn, said Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the office, formally known as the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.

The task force is working with representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Nardoza said.

Science

21 Tropical insects risk extinction with global warming: study

by Jean-Louis Santini, AFP

1 hour, 48 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Global warming could pose a greater risk to tropical insects and other species sensitive to the slightest shifts in temperature than to creatures living in the world’s tundra, US scientists warned Monday.

While cold weather animals are used to huge temperature changes, tropical species live under a much smaller temperature range and face a bigger risk of extinction with an increase of just two or four degrees Celsius, according to a team led by University of Washington scientists.

“In the tropics many species appear to be living at or near their thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive,” said Joshua Tewksbury, an assistant professor of biology at the Seattle, Washington university.

22 How to Fight Global Warming at Dinner

LiveScience Staff, LiveScience.com

Mon May 5, 12:10 PM ET

Substituting chicken, fish or vegetables for red meat can help combat climate change, a new study suggests.

In fact, putting these foods on the dinner table does more to reduce carbon emissions than eating locally grown food, researchers report in the May 15 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Environmental advocates and retailers urge customers to purchase goods from local sources to minimize environmental impacts. The idea is that food grown locally requires less fuel for shipping to the store. The new study does not argue that point. Yet few studies have compared greenhouse gas emissions from food production to those of transportation.

23 House Panel Second Guesses NASA’s Zero-G Contract Award

Brian Berger and Becky Iannotta, Space News Staff Writers

Mon May 5, 12:15 PM ET

WASHINGTON – U.S. congressional investigators are scrutinizing NASA’s decision to give Zero Gravity Corp. (Zero-G) a shot at conducting the type of weightless flights for researchers and astronauts the space agency traditionally has conducted aboard its own aircraft.

According to a congressional staffer involved in the investigation, lawmakers are questioning Zero-G’s commitment to NASA, and sources familiar with the matter said the committee is skeptical that commercial flights are cheaper than NASA continuing to use its own plane.

Zero-G, which has flown around 5,000 private citizens aboard a specially equipped Boeing 727 aircraft since launching its parabolic flight service in 2004, signed NASA as a customer in January following an open competition in which the Las Vegas-based company was the sole bidder.

24 How the Wealthy Medici Changed the World

Heather Whipps, LiveScience’s History Columnist

Mon May 5, 10:46 AM ET

Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today.

Like a medieval ATM, one family bankrolled the cultural movement that dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages and into modernity.

With their love for art, science and culture, the Medici of Florence catalyzed the Renaissance that began in the 14th century, making household names of da Vinci, Michelangelo and Galileo in the process.

25 Volcano in 1600 Caused Global Disruption, Study Suggests

Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer, LiveScience.com

Mon May 5, 10:46 AM ET

The effects of a massive volcanic eruption in Peru more than 400 years ago might have significantly impacted societies and agriculture world-wide, according to a new study of historic records.

Huaynaputina erupted in southern Peru on Feb. 19, 1600, driving volcanic mudflows that destroyed villages for many miles around and spewing a huge column of smoke and ash into the atmosphere.

The eruption of Huaynaputina represents the largest known eruption in South America in the past 500 years, said study leader Ken Verosub of the University of California, Davis.

Health

26 Hospital ERs overwhelmed, one-day study finds

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, Reuters

52 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A one-day snapshot of emergency room conditions at 34 U.S. hospitals shows they are all overwhelmed and none is prepared to handle a big event like a disaster or attack.

The report from the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released to coincide with a hearing on Monday, shows emergency rooms in Washington and Los Angeles operating over capacity on an ordinary day. None could have handled a surge of new patients.

Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the committee, used the report to illustrate why he opposes President George W. Bush’s proposed cuts to the federal Medicaid program.

27 Needle-free device delivers pain-free analgesia

Reuters

19 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A new needle-free device that delivers a local anesthetic to the skin promises to help make delivering drugs and drawing blood less painful for children.

The system involves a sterile, prefilled, disposable device that dispenses lidocaine powder into the epidermis, the cells that make up the outer layer of the skin, lead author Dr. William T. Kempsky, from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, and colleagues explain.

In the study, investigators randomly assigned a group of children to the powder lidocaine system or to a sham placebo system 1 to 3 minutes before a procedure known as venipuncture, during which a small needle is inserted into a vein in the back of the hand to collect blood, or a procedure called venous cannulation, which is used to drain blood or fluid or administer medications.

Sports

28 At Olympics, drug testers and athletes will square off over doping

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers

Mon May 5, 2:12 PM ET

BEIJING – When some 11,000 athletes arrive in Beijing for the Summer Olympic Games in August, a few will be playing cat-and-mouse games to avoid random anti-drug tests.

The organizers of the Beijing Games say they’ll test a record 4,500 athletes and operate 41 anti-doping stations at the Olympic Village and competition sites. Chaperones will ensure that athletes submit genuine blood and urine samples.

But drug testing is far from foolproof, and some athletes will get off the hook.

“You can still dope like mad, get the benefits, and go to the games and test clean,” said Peter H. Sonksen , a British endocrinologist and developer of a test to detect usage of human growth hormone.

29 China’s athletes test clean even as nation pumps out the steroids

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers

Mon May 5, 2:21 PM ET

CHANGCHUN, China – Barely a decade ago, allegations that China juiced its top athletes flourished. After all, dozens tested positive in the 1990s, and when new anti-doping procedures arrived before the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, China suddenly decided to leave 40 athletes at home.

The mood is different now. China pledges to host the cleanest Olympic Games ever this summer, and a state-of-the-art anti-doping lab is set up to enforce the pledge.

These days, China’s elite athletes don’t flinch at anti-doping tests. If there were a competition for cleaning up athletic programs, China could vie for a gold medal. Rarely has a national sports program appeared to turn around so dramatically.

Bloglines 5/5

Digby

30 The Thugs Are Out by dday

Read the whole thing. You’d think there was some kind of Nixon’s plumbers’ reunion tour or something.

You’ve got election theft, destruction of evidence (5 million emails), violation of subpoenas, perversion of the instruments of justice, railroading Democratic officials into jail, and now intimidation of witnesses, arson and burglary. It’s all wrapped up with a nice little bow if any Woodwards and Bernsteins want to take a whack at it. Even, you know, Woodward, or Bernstein.

31 Sexual Politics by digby

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this theory. In fact, several correspondents have shared with me the supposedly hilarious observation that Clinton is the “Joan of Arc of the dry pussy demographic” and her “neck looks like a badly folded quilt.” We are all familiar with Rush Limbaugh’s memorable statement that nobody wants to see a woman age before their eyes. (Those last weren’t explicitly sexual observations, but one can assume they refer in some way to the phenomenon that Wolf says he and his friends can’t stop talking about.)

It’s tiresome and, frankly, kind of jarring to have to deal with this. I yearn for the days (a few months ago) when I foolishly believed that even though I knew the culture was full of creepy sexual hypocrites, that we had gone beyond the point where this kind of thing was acceptable in the public discourse. I certainly didn’t think I’d read such things blithely bandied about in a mainstream magazine that, judging by the advertisements, is mainly aimed at women. I admit that I’m a little bit gobsmacked at the sheer casualness of the ageist misogyny that’s bubbled up in this campaign. My bad. I’m fairly sure I just wasn’t paying proper attention.

The republican war on voting rights

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

It’s long past time to talk about this whole “election integrity/voter fraud/voter ID/election fraud/ballot fraud” matter in a very different way. Consider the following hurdles that have not been overcome when talking about the need for wholesale election reform:

 

  • Talking about the hackability of voting machines doesn’t work because you can’t prove that they were, in fact, hacked in a manner that would show not just beyond-a-reasonable doubt but beyond-any-doubt-whatsoever (not fair, but true);
  • Talking about “voter ID”, actually, more like anti-voter laws isn’t working because, well, for starters, the SCOTUS just affirmed this, despite there being no documented case of this type of fraud occurring;
  • Talking about stolen elections hasn’t worked because either “it always happens anyway”, or the same “you can’t prove it” rebuttal;
  • Talking about the US Attorney firings or the redistricting or the stacking of the DOJ with partisan hacks is too complicated to put on a bumper sticker;
  • Talking about the thousands of anecdotes of vote machine flipping went nowhere either; and
  • Talking about exit poll discrepancies has led to the amazing argument that exit polls are not reliable, even though they are used pretty much everywhere else in the entire world as a measure of whether elections were fixed and they have never been as far off as they have so consistently been the past 8 years.

It seems like the whole “War On [insert boogyman here]” theme works well, and the fact is, all of the above – not to mention the few other matters that have come to light over the past few years with respect to election-related issues and questionable vote suppression laws and actions.

And the fact is, the Indiana voter ID anti-voter law is just one of many, many pieces to the bigger picture, all done in the name of “protecting voters” but are really intended to legally give republicans an Election Day headstart of at least 10 million potential votes.

Don’t believe me? OK, fair enough.

According to the National Council of State Legislators, half of the states have voter ID anti-voter laws more strict than the federal requirements:

Twenty-five states have broader voter identification requirements than what HAVA mandates. In these states, all voters are asked to show identification prior to voting. Seven of these states specify that voters must show a photo ID; the other eighteen states accept additional forms of identification that do not necessarily include a photo.

Oh, wait – my mistake. Kansas legislators just agreed on provisions for a voter ID anti-voter law, so make that 26 states by the 2010 elections.

So, now that this is out of the way, I’ll refer to a 2006 DOJ memo that I discussed over the weekend:

the US Department of Justice put out a release regarding the “massive” voter fraud that they have uncovered and investigated. And there was lots to be “proud” of:

As a result of the Initiative, nationwide enforcement of election crimes has increased dramatically. At present, 195 investigations are pending throughout the country. Moreover, since the start of the Initiative in 2002 over 300 investigations of possible election crime have been opened, and over 125 election crime matters have been closed after investigation; 119 individuals have been charged with ballot fraud offenses and 86 individuals have been convicted of these crimes; and 48 individuals have been charged with campaign financing fraud and 42 individuals have been convicted of these offenses.

In over four years, only 42 individuals have been convicted, and under 50 have been charged with campaign finance fraud – now if we think of those who have been heavily lined to campaign finance fraud, one party comes to mind in a big way – and that isn’t the one who keeps pushing “voter fraud” laws. Only 86 people were convicted of “ballot fraud” (of course, Ann Coulter was cleared after calling in a favor from her well connected boyfriend), out of 300 investigations.

The issue of the voter going to the polling place in order to personally cast a vote that is fraudulent is, based on the DOJ’s own numbers – basically nonexistent. And the one high profile case was that of Ann Coulter, someone who conveniently wasn’t charged.

But the issue of voters without proper ID is one that is potential gold for the party that (1) wouldn’t likely get these votes anyway and (2) can eliminate a possible 10 million plus registered voter (or vote) advantage.

Still don’t believe me? OK, fine. Let’s just look at the tens of thousands of Floridians who were disenfranchised in 2000, or the hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters in 2004 who were disenfranchised for a contrast to the 150 or so individuals who the DOJ is touting.

So how am I getting the 10 million plus number that is central to the republican war on voting rights? Well, let’s just forget the 2002 NH phone jamming, or the voter roll purges in Florida that I mention above, or the illegal TX redistricting or the voter roll management lawsuits in New Jersey, Missouri, Maine and Pennsylvania for a minute.

According to The League of Women Voters, close to 11% of Americans (21 million) have no photo identification. They break this down a bit further:

he following statistics reflect those individuals who do not have photo identification:

 

  • 11% or as many as 21 million Americans
  • 36% of voters in Georgia over the age of 75;
  • 18% of Americans over 65 (6 million);
  • 25% of African Americans;
  • 10% or 40 million people with disabilities;
  • 15% of low income voters

Here are a few more numbers:

 

  • 650,000 registered voters in Georgia have no photo-ID (law recently passed);
  • 200,000 Missourians of voting age, including 16% of seniors, have no photo-id;
  • 5.5 million African American voting age citizens have no photo-ID;
  • 6 million senior citizens have no photo-id

And just for good measure, here are a few other breakdowns:

People with disabilities:

According to disability advocates, nearly ten percent of the 40 million Americans with disabilities do not have any form of state-issued photo identification. Source: Center for Policy Alternatives

Low income people: Citizens earning less than $35,000 per year are more than twice as likely to lack current government-issued photo identification as those earning more than $35,000. Indeed, the survey indicates that at least 15 percent of voting-age American citizens earning less than $35,000 per year do not have a valid government-issued photo ID. Source: NYU and Brennen Center Survey

Other than the “we know that older Americans, African Americans, low income Americans are more likely to vote Democratic”, let’s look at a few stats on these demographics. All of these were derived from the tables at the University of Berkeley’s “Quick Tables”.

For Americans between the ages of 56-89, there is a roughly 47% – 39% advantage of “Near Dem – Strong Dem” over “Near rep – Strong rep”. If we break down the numbers by race, even independents outnumber “Near rep – Strong rep” by an amount of 18% – 9% for African Americans. And by the way, “Near Dem – Strong Dem” gets a whopping 73%. If we look at “Other race”, then the “Near Dem – Strong Dem”/”Independent”/”Near rep – Strong rep” breakdown is 52%/27%/20%.

And what about the families earning less than $25,000? Their average breakdown is 47% for “Near Dem – Strong Dem”, 23% independent and 26% for “Near rep” – “Strong rep”.

One more “obvious statistic” can be found to show the disparity. 88% of African Americans voted for Kerry, and 90% voted for Gore.

The real basic take away here is that if you are going to tip elections, you aren’t going to be able to do it “one vote at a time” as these voter id, anti-voter laws purport to combat.

You do it by rigging the system from the inside – by massive voter roll purges that are designed to purge the very demographics that are most likely to hurt the other party, by challenging districting in order to “make it more fair for people’s votes to be reflective of the district”, by implementing laws that are meant to keep millions of people who are likely to vote for the other party from voting and by stacking the deck in the positions where the voting machines are selected and monitored, where the federal and state election laws are “interpreted”, where the decisions are made with respect to voter registration and how the elections are run and even having cousins in the very media outlets who are calling the races for their candidate-cousins.

Make no mistake – this is a more than just a major partisan initiative. This is an all out assault on the voting rights of millions of potential Democratic voters and therefore, votes. This is a premeditated, long term, wide ranging attack against millions of Americans’ voting rights. But it isn’t just an assault on Democratic voters. It is an assault on the most basic right that a democracy affords.

And it should be referred to accordingly.

Elitistism: The Beer Drinkers Guide To The White Hosue

The Birth of Elitistism

It’s taken over 200 years, but American politics is finally evolving into a mature process that reflects the inherent nature of her people. This experiment in Democracy has taken innumerable turns and tumbles over the years, most often relying on the dominant presence of an elite ruling class to steady the ship of state. Despite the egalitarian ring of our founding principles, a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people,” still seemed more obeisant to the privileged. But no more.

Brought to you by…

News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

A new breed of populism has spread like a rash across the land. Its mission is to dismantle the doctrine of elitism and advance the rule of the common man and/or woman. This crusade promises to forever alter the complexion of American government and deserves a closer examination.

First and foremost, anyone who purports to be a leader in this environment, must be an avid consumer of beer. This is important to establish one’s credentials as a down to earth representative of commonality and humility. It is also necessary so that voters have a way of indicating their preference for drinking companions.
Education is a key component in this new paradigm. It is absolutely critical that you not have too much of it. And never, ever use the word paradigm. Once the American people get the impression that you know more than they do about issues like economics or foreign policy, you’re disqualified from service. Achievement and expertise only spotlight how different you are from ordinary Americans.
A show of strength will give any candidate a boost. You must not be timid about threatening enemies, advocating torture, or bombing busy population centers of third world countries. And once having taken a position, it is political suicide to change it, regardless of changing circumstances. Americans demand stubborn certitude from their barely educated leaders.
A vocal commitment to family values is mandatory. Not an actual commitment, mind you. Just a vocal one. Speaking frequently of the sanctity of marriage, no matter how many times you have violated it, will shield you from any detrimental impact. Conversely, life-long faithfulness holds no advantage unless accompanied by a virulent denunciation of same-sex marriage.
It is easy to be distracted by trivialities when engaged in a competitive campaign. But you must not let the appeal of junk food politics knock you off course. Stay focused on the issues that matter most to the people and you will always prevail. Those issues include flag lapel pins, ex-pastors, and quail hunting.
Two words: Go bowling. [Note: Take a few practice frames first]

Two more words: Don’t windsurf.
Immigration has taken a prominent role in public policy. No issue inflames the emotions of citizens like who gets to be a citizen. The Statue of Liberty notwithstanding, America is an exclusive club that can’t let just anybody in. Even the most disadvantaged, undereducated alien represents a risk to American workers, whom we’ve already established have a low regard for education, lest it turn them into the elite.
Finally, a foundation of faith is required of any seeker of high office. Submission to an unseen authority may be the single best evidence of a candidate’s refusal to be submissive. So long as you pronounce your allegiance to God, all of your other pronouncements are divinely inspired. Unless, of course, you are Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, or Allah forbid, Muslim. You may also want to steer clear of quirky, ethnic Baptist’s.

Yes, it’s taken over 200 years, but American politics is finally evolving into a mature process that honors the mediocrity of its people. In doing so it has laid the groundwork for electoral victory for anyone who understands and respects the new reality

George W. Bush understands, and he has provided a working model for success: You don’t have to be like ordinary Americans, you just have to be able to pretend you’re like them. How else could this son of Connecticut aristocracy; this progeny of senators and presidents; this oil baron and sports magnate, pass himself off as Texas bumpkin who enjoys clearing brush? This inarticulate, draft-dodging, C-, dynastic runt actually validates the American dream. As the first remedial president he has proven that you can grow up to be the Commander-in-Chief, in America, no matter how stupid you are. What other country can say that?

The presidential campaign of 2008 is shaping up as a testament to Elitistism: the practice of discriminating against those who are, or are perceived to be, elite. The goal of Elitistism (aka Simpsonism) is to drive from public life anyone who diverges from the sacred visage of American Averagism.

From an electoral perspective, the highest attainable ambition is ordinariness. Of the three remaining candidates we have: 1) A millionaire lawyer/senator, who is married to a former president, with decades on the government teat; 2) Another millionaire son of Admirals with a trophy wife and even more decades of being supported by the public; 3) A mixed-race child of a single mother who has spent years as a community activist and organizer.

For the record, number three is regraded by the media as the Elitist. Go figure.

The Serendipitous ‘Suicide’ of the D.C. Madame



“Death solves all problems – no man, no problem.”

-Joseph Stalin

You can add D.C. Madame Deborah Jeane Palfrey to that long list of marvelously convenient mysterious deaths, ‘accidents’ and ‘suicides’ that have for so long been a fixture of the hijacked by fascist American political system. The dead giveaway on the importance of Palfrey and the threat that she represents is that ordinarily such an incident would be flogged to death 24/7 on the corporate media machine given the sexual sleaze factor and the celebrity allure. Well that insipid blathering sow Nancy Grace spent about ten or fifteen minutes on it on Thursday and was then on to something ridiculous involving actor Rob Lowe, as much as I hate cable ‘news’ programs I tuned again the night after and she was talking about some kidnapped or murdered pregnant teenager, you know, the same local news that is trumped up and manufactured into a national crisis.

Palfrey was really big trouble for a lot of folks with serious clout and the cover story of her hanging herself is in my opinion just more of the same easily digestible lemming food that is usually spoon-fed to the masses of asses when such things occur so as not to induce even the slightest doubt in the legitimacy of the good and wise people who are running their government while they can stay in their narcotized state in front of their beloved television sets.

Now I just happen to live in the same county where Palfrey’s body was found and after being front page news in the major area newspaper on Friday the next day’s follow up story was very small, below the fold in the local and state section not about Palfrey but rather one that was dismissive of so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ who found the ‘suicide’ to be as suspicious as I do. It has not been covered in depth by any of the major websites to my knowledge, you know the same ones that gave us all of that wonderful detail on the Natalee Holloway disappearance, Anna Nicole Smith’s O.D., the amazing adventures of Laci and the fetus and the great in depth coverage of the sex offender or pederast of the week at the expense of say the crimes of the Bushreich, the war, real economic news absent the numbers massaging to obfuscate and obscure the real picture and the accompanying dismantling of America by the Wall Street looters as the oligarchy locks in the gains and offshores the rest of the country.

Every and I mean EVERY piece that I saw in the mainstream media accepted and sold at face value that this was a suicide even though Palfrey’s prostitution operation was so tied in to the most integral parts of the fascist establishment and that she had given interviews on radio programs that she was NOT going to commit suicide. The one story that I did see in the Orlando Sentinel had this little tidbit that wasn’t picked up anywhere else but should have been for a very obvious reason:

On Monday, Palfrey arrived at her two-bedroom, two-bath corner condominium at Park Lake Towers, where she often stayed on trips to visit her mother, Strizack said. She had owned the Orlando home since 1996, but it was up for sale.

Palfrey was a pleasant, meticulous person, Strizack recalled. She treasured her privacy so much that she once sued the condominium association because it kept a key to her unit.

She did not draw attention to herself, but when she talked to you, she was clearly well-organized and in control, he said.

On Monday, Palfrey seemed no different. She carried clothing, briefcases and suitcases down the stairs from her second-floor apartment to a rented car in the parking lot, stopping to chat as usual.

She told Strizack she was taking her property to her mother’s home in preparation for prison. Contrary to the U.S. Attorney’s Office estimate, she told the condo manager she thought she might spend six or seven years behind bars.

On one trip down the stairs, she lugged a 2-foot-wide box she suggested carried materials related to her infamous court case.

“This is my evidence,” she told Strizack before carrying it out the door.

Now I personally would find it strange that the women was found swinging from a rope shortly after making a comment like that. But Florida being what it is which is the diseased penis of America, a sweltering cesspool of crime, corruption, black ops and depravity where elections go to be stolen there is no chance in hell that any sort of legitimate follow up investigational work be done into Palfrey’s death. Not with Jeb Bush’s people still dug in like ticks in the state bureaucracy and with sitting Governor Charlie Crist rumored to be on the list as John McCain’s running mate.

Regarding the client list Republican diaper baby David Vitter (who still sits in Congress) was the one main name came out but dark rumors abounded that heavy hitters like one Richard B. Cheney may have at one time used the service while in the employ of Haliburton. Of course now we’ll never know will we?

Palfrey is just the latest but there have been so many others, the lesser minded and the deniers will of course accuse me of being a ‘tin-foil hatter’ but they are intellectually barren and content to lay warmly inside their warm security blanket of denial and suck their thumbs rather than acknowledge that this government is run (and has been for a long time) by a criminal syndicate far worse than the mafia itself.

Here are just a few of the others whose deaths were marvelously serendipitous for the prevailing status quo that I personally find to be very interesting.

Danny Casolaro: Was working on a book about a far-reaching global criminal syndicate with roots in the U.S. government that he had called The Octopus that tied together elements of the Reagan-Bush administration, an old boy CIA network, the theft of the legendary PROMIS software, international gangsters, BCCI figures and government contractors. He was found dead in a bathtub with his wrists sliced open in a West Virginia motel after telling friends that he was going to “bring back” the head of the Octopus.

Steve Kangas: Critic of the American extreme right and the Central Intelligence Agency Kangas wrote the marvelous piece The Origins of the Overclass and was rumored to be working on a book on CIA covert operations when he was shot dead in get this – the home of Hillary Rodham-Clinton buddy Richard Mellon Scaife.

Gary Caradori: During the Franklin Coverup involving allegations of child prostitution against Republican officials including rising GOP star Lawrence King and leading up to the White House itself investigator Caradori along with his young son perished in yet another of those small plane crashes that seem to occur with great frequency when the occupants are a threat to the establishment

Gary Webb: investigative reporter who wrote the famous Dark Alliance on the CIA-Contra crack cocaine connection series for the San Jose Mercury news and then had his life and career destroyed. He was found dead in 2004.

James Hatfield: Wrote a book called Fortunate Son about then presidential candidate George W. Bush alleging that Dubya had been busted for cocaine in 1972 and that his father had intervened to have the arrest covered up. Hatfield was then smeared, slimed and publicly vilified. He was found dead of an overdose in an Arkansas motel room in 2001.

Cliff Baxter: Enron executive and potential witness found shot dead in his car, death was ruled a suicide.

Kenneth Lay: Kenny Boy, a buddy of George W. Bush and the biggest kahuna of them all with Enron died of a heart attack after his conviction and before he could potentially cut a deal for sentencing leniency. Dead men tell no tales do they?

There are of course a multitude of others, and each of the above merits and entire post on their own all though could have caused serious problems to the existing establishment. Just a bit of research into the plethora of similary convenient and suspicious deaths related to both Bush administrations and the Clinton administration build a circumstantial case that this is no longer a government of the people for the people but one that has long become a criminal enterprise that serves the elite, the corporations, the defense industry and the financiers and will use any method at its disposal to terminate those who threaten it with extreme prejudice. A good piece that I recommend reading is L.F. Prouty’s An Introduction to the Assassination Business.

The trail of prematurely dead reporters, politicians, bureaucrats, former CIA directors and witnesses who are connected to government and corporate scandals is something that bears more serious scrutiny or at least the same amount of scrutiny that the missing teenager or pervert of the week is afforded by our pathetically deficient and corrupt mainstream media.

None other than old Joe Stalin himself put it best, “Death solves all problems – no man, no problem”.

Pony Party: Pupdate

That’s correct – this is an update about my pups. They’re both doing better – they finally have appetites. We’ve been giving them roasted chicken – that’s all they would eat. And they’ve been on a combination of medicines, including an antibiotic, phosphate chelator and a vitamin supplement (which is a lovely opaque, brownish-orange concoction). We’ve had tried to give them sub-cutaneous fluids, which are administered by poking the scruff of their necks with a needle. Not for the pickle household faint of heart. Now they’re eating carrots, pasta and other goodies. With a bit of luck, they’ll actually eat some dog food for a balanced diet, but we had to give them anything that they’d eat just so they could start putting on some weight, as they’re currently scrawny little things. This has been a long, arduous two weeks.

Four at Four

  1. Over the weekend, The Observer reported Rainforest seeds revive lost paradise. The land around Samboja, Borneo resembled a “moonscape” when Dr. Willie Smits, an Indonesian forestry expert, first visited it six years ago. “The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.”

    But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world. The secret was to use more than 1,300 species of local tree and a fertiliser made with cow urine…

    Smits raised money to buy 5,000 acres and six years ago set about planting seeds collected from more than 1,300 species of tree, more even than would have lived in the original forest. These were planted with a special ‘micro-biological agent’ made from sugar, excrement, food waste and sawdust – and cow urine.

    Planting finishes this year, but already Smits and his team from the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is ‘mature’, with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orang-utans. ‘If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me.’

    Some more info is available at BOS’s Create Rainforest website.

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories about air pollution and bees, 66 deaths in U.S. immigration prisons, the U.S. military base in Ecuador, and fat cells.

  1. The Washington Post reports Air pollution impedes bees’ ability to find flowers. “Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests.”

    “Their findings may help unlock part of the mystery surrounding the current pollination crisis that is affecting a wide variety of crops. Scientists are seeking to determine why honeybees and bumblebees are dying off in the United States and in other countries, and the new study indicates that emissions from power plants and automobiles may play a part in the insects’ demise.”

  2. The New York Times reports there are Few details provided for immigrants who died in U.S. custody. 66 people between January 2004 to November 2007 died in immigration custody according to a list of deaths provided by the government. The list is the “fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration.”

    The list has few details, and they are often unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previously unreported cases…

    No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

  3. The Miami Herald reports the U.S. military base is no longer welcome in Ecuador.

    With 18 months left on its decade-long contract, the U.S. Forward Operating Location in Manta has few friends in this South American nation — and fewer still who believe that the agreement has any hope of being extended.

    Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has vowed not to renew the base’s contract beyond its November 2009 expiration. And politicians drafting a new constitution have proposed banning the base or any other foreign military presence in the country.

    If the Manta base closes, it would leave the United States shopping for a new airstrip for the radar-mounted AWAC E3s, and P-3 spy planes that ply the Eastern Pacific, looking for drug runners…

    Responding to the opposition, the United States has said it is willing to abandon the airstrip and move its operations to the remaining Forward Operating Locations, or to new locations in either Colombia or Peru.

    At the same time, however, Manta’s command is in the midst of an aggressive charm offensive to win supporters and — just maybe — the chance to stay.

  4. The New York Times reports a study published in Nature has found Fat cells die and are replaced. “Every year, whether you are fat or thin, whether you lose weight or gain, 10 percent of your fat cells die. And every year, those cells that die are replaced with new fat cells… The result is that the total number of fat cells in the body remains the same, year after year throughout adulthood. Losing or gaining weight affects only the amount of fat stored in the cells, not the number of cells.”

Through the Darkest of Nights: Testament XII

Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11.  Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption.  It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.  But most of all, it is a search for identity and meaning in an empty world.

Naked and alone we came into exile.  In her dark womb, we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.  Which of us has known his brother?  Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?  Which of us has not remained prison-pent?  Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?      ~Thomas Wolfe

All installments are available for reading here on Docudharma’s Series page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.

Through the Darkest of Nights

Highway 8 (II)

    “You’d better start listening to me, Sergeant Chiles.   You’re a soldier, man your weapon.

    “Shit.  We’re not soldiers, sir.  We’re pawns.  I’m a pawn, you’re a pawn, everyone in this army is a pawn. Pawns in uniforms, that’s all we are.”   But Chiles grabbed the handles of his M240 and swiveled it towards the southbound lanes of Highway 8.  He had no choice.   Fuming, Travis grabbed his field glasses and watched the soldiers spraying the burning Abrams with fire extinguishers.   “What the hell . . . just leave it!”

     For fifteen agonizing minutes, the entire armored column sat motionless on Highway 8, under heavy fire from both flanks until the decision was finally made to abandon the burning tank.  Travis watched the crew climb into the lead Bradley and the column started moving again.   Charging the roadblock, the lead tanks blasted the truck and buses blocking the highway with 120 mm rounds as a barrage of Bradley chain gun fire killed the fedayeen on the overpass and in the embankment trenches.

    As it approached the burning wreckage in front of the overpass, the lead tank accelerated, shoved it aside with its mine plow, and the column sped through.   But the chaos was far from over.  Travis trained his M2 on a black truck barreling towards them in the southbound lane and shattered the windshield of the cab with a burst of 12.7 mm fire. The truck careened out of control and slammed into a bridge abutment, hurling the driver through the smashed windshield and out onto the shoulder of the highway.

    Finding themselves in the middle of a war zone, some Iraqi commuters slowed down and pulled off onto the shoulder, but most sped up and fled down the nearest exit ramp.  Across the median in the southbound lanes, some vehicles braked to a stop but most of them turned around and raced back towards Baghdad on the shoulder, passing pickups, vans and buses filled with fedayeen and militia heading towards the fighting.

    Under such conditions, it was impossible to avoid inflicting civilian casualties.  Civilian vehicles were everywhere. Some were filled with families and some were filled with fedayeen.  There was no way to tell the difference between panicked drivers weaving through the traffic trying to get away from the killing and suicide drivers targeting a tank or a Bradley to smash into.

    Travis fired a burst at a green Datsun racing down an access ramp towards the column.  Raked with machinegun fire, the Datsun veered towards the shoulder, then exploded as tracer rounds ignited the gas in the fuel tank.  On both sides of Highway 8, from trenches, alleyways and rooftops, Iraqis with AK-47’s kept the column under relentless fire, but the high tech firepower of the Abrams and Bradleys was inflicting a lethal toll.   Hundreds of militia and fedayeen were ripped apart by chain gun fire from the Bradleys and main gun rounds from the Abrams’, others fell to the ground as if they’d been wounded, waited until the column passed by, and then opened fire on it from behind.

    So orders went out over the task force radio net to shoot anyone lying beside the highway, and they were raked with machinegun fire by the Abrams and Bradley gunners as the column passed by.  If a body wasn’t mangled, bloody, and dead beyond any doubt, it was stitched with bullets until it was mangled, bloody, and dead beyond any doubt.

    Sickened by the slaughter, Chiles didn’t fire his M240 at anyone unless they were a direct threat, but Travis kept firing away at every armed Iraqi within range of his M2.  Every RPG streaking towards the column enraged him, every bullet snapping past his head stoked his fury.  He was in his element, he was in combat mode, he was in kill the enemy mode, he was in God Bless America and damn all the Muslims mode.

    Chiles just wanted the killing to end, but the killing was only beginning.    Ignorant Americans from beyond the sea, self-righteous avengers of 9/11 who knew nothing of this land or its people, who did not care to know, had unleashed the Angel of Death and he was reaping a bloody harvest.  He had come to call, he had swept into this ancient land on the wings of lies, and had only begun to darken it with horror and stain its soil with blood.

    Travis peered through the smoke, trying to spot the airport exit ramp.  The head of the column was slowing down at a complex junction of exits where northbound traffic heading into Baghdad stayed in the right lanes and traffic heading for the airport exited into a cloverleaf connecting to the Airport Road, which led to Saddam International, several kilometers west of the capital.

    “Can you see the airport exit yet?”

    Travis heard the tension in Sergeant Hewitt’s voice.  Down in the driver’s compartment he could see very little of what was happening, the viewing slots on his hatch limited his vision to the highway ahead and only the forward area of both flanks.  Travis knew his shaken driver needed reassurance, from one man to another, not from a lieutenant to one of his crew, so he offered it.  “The exit’s coming up, Jake, just keep following the Bradley ahead of us.”  

     They both knew it was up to the crew of the lead tank to make sure they didn’t take the wrong exit and lead the entire column into central Baghdad instead of to the safety of the airport.  The briefing had been clear, the maps had been studied, the route had been carefully planned and the proper exit had been identified.  But no one had expected an ordeal like this, nerves were rattled, desperation was mounting, in this cauldron of mind-numbing violence and chaos, finding the right exit meant survival, missing it meant annihilation.   Pointing to it on a briefing map in the safety of a headquarters tent was easy, but out here on Highway 8, death was conducting the briefing and the map was drenched with blood.

    “Is that it?”  Chiles pointed at an exit ramp in the distance, just visible through the drifting smoke from dozens of burning vehicles.  Travis grabbed his field glasses and scanned the interchange.  “I think so . . . but the sign’s been shot up, I can’t read it.”

    It was the airport exit, but the lead tank went right past it and the Abrams and Bradleys behind it followed.  The radio net erupted with warnings from tank commanders further back in the column who could see what the disoriented lead crews could not–that they were heading into Baghdad.  The warnings were heard, Travis saw the lead tank stop, pivot, rumble over a median divider onto the airport exit ramp, turn around, and finally emerge through the smoke rolling west towards the airport.

    As Sergeant Hewitt drove them down the exit ramp towards the safety of the airport, Travis looked down from the turret at a burning Fiat.  He saw a bloody corpse slumped behind the wheel, he saw a sobbing woman curled into a fetal position in the ditch beside the bullet-riddled car, he saw her little daughter lying beside her, bleeding from a bullet wound in her stomach.   On this morning of carnage, on this highway of slaughter, she looked at her dead father, she looked at her dying mother, and then she looked at Travis.  She looked into his eyes.  She did not speak, she could not speak, but her eyes spoke for her, her eyes spoke for every innocent victim of war.  They asked him . . .        

Why?

Bushco’s Politics of Fear, Eternal War, Are Crippling America

A truly enlightening  article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, ‘The Post-American World.’ Chronicling the rise of the rest of the world and the demise of America… as it turned into an imperialist warmonger under Bush after 9/11.

It is a somewhat long, but easy read, so I am taking a few liberties with fair use…and cherry picking a bit to make my point. Zakaria’s emphasis is on the rise of the rest of the world, which other than the implications for Climate Crisis, lol, is very positive and eye opening. My cherry picking point is that by propagandizing the America people into a state of paralytic fear and emphasizing the absolute worst nature of America, destruction over construction…Bushco has has led our nation into grave danger. Not the danger of terrorist attack, but the very real danger of destroying ourselves by bankrupting America financially, morally, and intellectually. We are far down that slippery slope. By the time we can gain our footing and begin to climb back…the world will have passed us by. But other than as a crushing blow to our national pride… which is a HUGE part of how we got here in the first place…is that a bad thing?


Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the “wrong track.” In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month’s response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs.

Snip

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

Out of sequence snippet, to make a point…

Actually, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are tiny-for an American, smaller than drowning in your bathtub. But it doesn’t feel like that.

(It doesn’t feel like that because of the Bushco politics of fear, which has convinced Americans that the Jihadists are swimming to America with knives between their teeth, packing burqhas on their back to dress “our womens” in.)

Snip

But while we argue over why they hate us, “they” have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

Snip

A team of scholars at the University of Maryland has been tracking deaths caused by organized violence. Their data show that wars of all kinds have been declining since the mid-1980s and that we are now at the lowest levels of global violence since the 1950s. Deaths from terrorism are reported to have risen in recent years. But on closer examination, 80 percent of those casualties come from Afghanistan and Iraq, which are really war zones with ongoing insurgencies-and the overall numbers remain small. Looking at the evidence, Harvard’s polymath professor Steven Pinker has ventured to speculate that we are probably living “in the most peaceful time of our species’ existence.”

Except for….Bushco’s imperial resource war.

A final snip as Bushco now rushes us to war with Iran….

Some point to the dangers posed by countries like Iran. These rogue states present real problems, but look at them in context. The American economy is 68 times the size of Iran’s. Its military budget is 110 times that of the mullahs. Were Iran to attain a nuclear capacity, it would complicate the geopolitics of the Middle East. But none of the problems we face compare with the dangers posed by a rising Germany in the first half of the 20th century or an expansionist Soviet Union in the second half. Those were great global powers bent on world domination. If this is 1938, as some neoconservatives tell us, then Iran is Romania, not Germany.

By paranoically chasing those who might attack us in the hahaha GWOT, (another must read essay) and concentrating and investing in only our fear of the boogeymman…..America has lost the world lead on every front but one….bullying militarism. It is now all we have left. The very people who tout America’s Manifest Destiny and superiority over the rest of the world…have succeeded in destroying all that made America great. It’s freedom and creativity, and are reducing it from the worlds only superpower to just another wannabe. Irony drips.

Thanks, Republican Fear Mongers.

And in one sense, I even mean that thanks sincerely! America has shown that, due to its subsidized and enabled corporate greed, it is unwilling to lead on the most important issue of the 21st century. It deserves to be passed by to let the rest of the world have a shot…..once the American model has faded from preeminence….at creating a new world, since Americas leaders are stuck in the old one, a world of war and destruction.

As Zakaria say near the end….”For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to first join it.”

Gas Tax Scam (Dot COM)