In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

Their women cluck like starved pullets,

Dying for love.

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In celebration of the renewal for a third season of Friday Night Lights, one of the best shows about many things, but particularly rural poverty, to grace television screens in America.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

According to Bloomberg, FARC has now said that it will not allow France’s medical mission to treat its most famous hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, whom it has held hostage for more than six years:

Colombia’s biggest rebel group refused to allow a French-led medical mission to help former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a dual citizen held captive more than six years.

“The French medical mission isn’t appropriate and much less so when it’s not the result of an agreement,” the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said in the statement posted today on the Web site of Venezuela’s Agencia Bolivariana de Prensa.

The FARC said the French made no contact with them to negotiate sending doctors to help Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen who is suffering from hepatitis B, and reiterated its demand that the government pull troops from two towns in western Colombia to swap about 40 high-profile captives, including Betancourt, for 500 jailed guerrillas. The French mission will leave Colombia, Efe cited the French foreign ministry as saying.

“If President Uribe had withdrawn troops from Pradera and Florida for 45 days at the beginning of the year, Ingrid Betancourt, military officials and jailed guerrillas would have been freed,” the FARC statement said.

The FARC statement is here (Bloomberg’s link is wrong).  And, obviously, freeing Betancourt and other hostages is something FARC also rejects.

Pardon me.  This is barbarian.  FARC has not given an adequate, humanitarian answer to concerns about Betancourt and its other hostages.  Its denial of access shows that it persists in using civilian hostages in its attempts to further its political goals.  That is disgraceful.  It is simply a human rights violation.

Betancourt, and the hundreds of other, less well known hostages should be released. They should not be permitted to continue to be pawns in FARC’s four decade long struggle with corrupt Colombian governments.  Yes, the Colombian governments are awful.  Yes, they are the US puppets in the region.  But, FARC’s refusal to permit the medical mission to reach Betancourt is unexcusable.  

And what, you might wonder, is anyone in the US or Europe or anywhere else going to do about this?  Answer: nothing.   To the contrary, the US is going to reward Colombia. The US is going to give Colombia a free trade agreement even though it kills unionists, even though its paramilitaries participate in the cocaine industry, even though it has ceded huge amounts of land to FARC, even though it receives billions of dollars in “insurgency” aid, even though its “drug war” has impoverished peasants, even though it is powerless to control its own territory.  And the EU?  Nothing.  And France?  Its mission is finished:

“Keeping the medical mission in place is no longer justifiable,” the French said in a statement released by the ministry, according to Efe.

This is simply disgraceful.

I got nuthin’ but Charley Patton tunes.  If you can’t quite make out the words, it’s not you, it’s Charley.

http://blueslyrics.tripod.com/…

There is only one known photo of CP, and some people have doubts that it is CP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

http://www.elijahwald.com/patt…

Revenue Man

Spoonful

Shake it

Moon Going Down  

1. Today before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Sen. John McCain, and their supporters will sell more war. They undoubtedly will claim the “surge” has worked, which it hasn’t, and that the “relative calm” in Iraq, which there isn’t, is “fragile and reversable”, which is code for stay forever. The reality is the “surge” bought Bush’s ego about five months.

   The reality is this. The fighting in Iraq continues and people are still being killed. The Bush administration and their Congressional enablers keep borrowing and spending billions, trillions of dollars we Americans cannot afford on building an empire for the corporate ruling class.

   ^Continues…

The first story continues below the fold with a look at what is happening in Iraq as the warmongers go before Congress. Plus stories about mapping U.S. CO2 emissions, a dire warning out our CO2 emissions, and Calderón’s plan to privatize PEMEX, Mexico’s oil industry.

Item #1 continues:

1. The reality is this. From The Guardian on March 20, 2008, ‘We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere’ Ali, Baghdad resident.

   Ali is a painter and a student at the academy of art in north Baghdad. A few years ago he moved to the Baghdad suburb of Karrada, where many artists live because of its art market.

   When I meet him, Ali is limping slightly. A white bandage protrudes from the sleeve of his striped jumper, and he frequently drops his left shoulder so that his arm rests on his thigh. These are the only outward signs of the injuries he sustained in the previous week.

   In a shy, soft voice Ali tells me how he had been standing with a friend in Karrada when a bomb went off at the side of the road. “I heard an explosion very close by,” he says. “I saw smoke and chaos and people screaming. I saw my friend Hassan, who was running and carrying a child who had lost an arm. I saw a nice-looking girl – the Karrada girls, you know how beautiful they are. She was dead. And I saw a girl who had only one eye.

   “I couldn’t bear it,” he tells me. “I started to scream and cry.

   The reality is this. The Los Angeles Times reports Fighting intensifies in Iraq’s capital.

   Three more U.S. troops were killed Monday as Iraqis struggled to bury their dead amid fierce street battles between Shiite Muslim militias and Iraqi and American soldiers in the nation’s capital.

   In one of the most intense days of fighting here involving U.S. troops in recent months, American helicopters fired at least four Hellfire missiles and an Air Force jet dropped a bomb on a suspected militia target. Rockets and missiles launched from militia strongholds pounded U.S. bases around the city, where U.S. troops also came under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Targets included the Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and most Iraqi government buildings are located.

   The latest American casualties brought to nine the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq since Sunday. At least 18 U.S. service members have been killed in and around Baghdad since March 25, when fighting spread to the capital after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s decision to launch an offensive against Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra.

   The reality is this. From Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes writing at Alternet, Cost of Occupation in Iraq: $3 Trillion Estimate Was Too Low.

   President Bush has tried to give the impression that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost of the war that we provide in our new book may be exaggerated.

   We believe that it is, in fact, conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.

   The reality is this. From Rob Coniglio, a student at Cornell University, who writes in an opinion piece for The Cornell Daily Sun, Four Million More: The forgotten plight of Iraq’s refugees:

   Five years. 4,000 dead Americans. But there is yet another number that has been widely overlooked and that is the about 4.5 million refugees from the war in Iraq. They have for the most part been swept under the rug and forgotten, and it is far past time that we do more to help them piece together their lives out of ruins. Not only is this is a humanitarian responsibility, but is in fact a moral necessity to aid those whose lives have been destroyed through our war. Whether anti-war or for its continuation, it should not be controversial to recognize that we owe the Iraqis. It was our invasion that set off events that killed family members, destroyed homes and livelihoods, and forced these millions to leave their homeland.

   And from the Washington Post, Senators Urge Bush to Appoint Official for Iraq Refugee Policy.

   Two leading Democratic senators have called for the Bush administration to appoint a senior official to coordinate overall U.S. policy for the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Iraq during the war and are now in Jordan, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

   After receiving a staff report on Iraqi refugees that found “a startling lack of American leadership in a crisis that much of the international community considers a result of our intervention in Iraq,” Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), sent copies to colleagues, along with a letter calling for “appropriate action” by President Bush to create a White House position overseeing policy on refugees and persons who have been displaced within Iraq.

   The senators, citing the report, concluded that “the war in Iraq has resulted in one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the post-Cold War era.”

   Two million Iraqis have fled their country plus another two million people are displaced within Iraq. The world’s greatest humanitarian crisis is the creation of one man’s administration: George W. Bush. John McCain wants us to continue in his footsteps. End the war for oil. Start healing and repairing the damage we have done.

2. Jessica Aldred of The Guardian reports CO2 map zooms in on emissions.

   US scientists have unveiled a new, high-resolution interactive map which tracks patterns of CO2 emissions coming from fossil fuels burned daily across the country.

   The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions in more than 100 times greater detail than was previously available. Until now, scientists say, data on carbon dioxide emissions was reported monthly at a statewide level…

   Researchers say the maps are more accurate than previous data because they are based on greenhouse gas emissions instead of estimates based on population in areas of the United States.

   The new Vulcan model, however, can map CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis. It can drill down to individual factories, power plants, roads, commercial districts and neighbourhoods, and identify the level of fuel type, economic sector and country/state.

   Check-out the video:

   The research team has plans to extend the map to include Canada and Mexico too.

3. Hopefully the type of CO2 visualization from the previous story will help Americans develop plans to eliminate CO2 sources, because in another story from The Guardian, NASA scientist James Hansen warns that existing Climate targets are not radical enough. Hansen said we “must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.”

   Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 – the most stringent in the world – should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if “humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed”. A final version of the paper Hansen co-authored with eight other climate scientists, is posted today on the Archive website. Instead of using theoretical models to estimate the sensitivity of the climate, his team turned to evidence from the Earth’s history, which they say gives a much more accurate picture…

   Hansen said that he now regards as “implausible” the view of many climate scientists that the shrinking of the ice sheets would take thousands of years. “If we follow business as usual I can’t see how west Antarctica could survive a century. We are talking about a sea-level rise of at least a couple of metres this century.”

   The revised target is likely to prompt criticism that he is setting the bar unrealistically high. With the US administration still acting as a drag on international efforts, climate campaigners are struggling even to get a 450ppm target to stick.

4. A story that has been bubbling up in Mexico for weeks now, finally makes its way into the U.S. news. The New York Times reports State oil industry’s future sets off tussle in Mexico. “A bitter debate over what to do about Mexico’s ailing state oil monopoly has dominated national politics here in recent weeks, tapping strong emotions on both sides and resurrecting the political fortunes of the leftist leader who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election.” Just in case you were wondering, here’s why it made it into the NY Times — “At stake in the debate is not only the future of the Mexican economy but also the supply of oil to the United States.”

   Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s rightwing president, wants to privatize PEMEX or Petróleos Mexicanos, Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company. “Ever since President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the oil industry in 1938, Pemex has been politically sacrosanct. Taking the oil fields back from foreign companies marked a high point in Mexican history. It was one of the few times Mexico’s leaders stood up to business interests here and in the United States on behalf of the Mexican public.”

   Calderón contraversally became president in 2006 over Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City and a leftest. He “has called any private investment in Pemex a threat to national security and has accused Mr. Calderón of secretly seeking to sell off the industry to private investors”. Calderón is arguing PEMEX is broke and he needs to privatize PEMEX to increase production and exploit deepwater oil fields.

   But according to López Obrador, “The government, for 25 years, has acted in a deliberate manner, on purpose, to ruin Pemex because they have only one goal, to make Pemex into booty to be plundered and privatize the oil business.”

   According to a story in the People’s Weekly World, Mexico readies for battle on oil privatization, privatization has already begun.

   It appears that the shell of the state oil company, PEMEX, would be preserved while one function after another is contracted out to major international monopolies. This way Calderon could claim he is not privatizing PEMEX, just partnering with outside private enterprise to expand and modernize its operations – while in reality privatization goes ahead full blast.

   Earlier, Mexicans were shocked to hear that huge contracts to carry out central functions of PEMEX have been contracted out to the U.S. monopoly Halliburton, including drilling of new wells and maintaining pipelines. One reason Mexican public opinion has opposed privatizing PEMEX is the fear that this would be the foot in the door for yet more foreign interference. The entry into Mexican oil business of such a politicized corporation as Halliburton is bound to heighten those fears.

   Of course international investors and U.S. and European oil interests keenly back Calderón’s plans to take the oil away from the people and give it to the corporations. And according to the Catholic News Service, Calderón’s government is busy at work on the Roman Catholic Church as Mexican bishops pulled into controversial oil debate. “Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino met behind closed doors with senior church officials… Both the bishops and Mourino’s office reported that the secretary said energy reform was urgent for Mexico’s future prosperity… In the meeting between Mourino and the church officials, the secretary also discussed the issue of religious freedom, according to the bishops and the government.” It seems Calderón is offereing “to give clerics greater rights in the public sphere, overturning Mexican laws dating back to the revolution that ban the church in public education” in exchange for their support for privatization of the nation’s oil industry.

(why not a patent for a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich??? – promoted by pfiore8)

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of the court brief today urging a federal court to uphold the denial of a patent that would, if awarded, violate freedom of speech. In the brief, the ACLU argues that Bernard L. Bilski is seeking a patent for an abstract idea, and that abstract ideas are not patentable under the First Amendment.

“The court must ensure that any test it uses in determining whether to award a patent is in line with the Constitution,” said Christopher Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, who filed the brief. “If the government had the authority to grant exclusive rights to an idea, the fundamental purpose of the First Amendment – to protect an individual’s right to thought and expression – would be rendered meaningless.”

ACLU

Privatizing damn near everything has long been the goal of the 1%ers and their lackeys in the Republican Party.

More from the ACLU on this:

In 2006, Bilski sought a patent for his idea that the weather risk involved in buying and selling commodities could be minimized if sellers had conversations with two buyers instead of one. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied his request and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences affirmed the denial. Bilski appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the court has agreed to hear the case in a single joint session in May.

“Patent law prohibits the patenting of abstract ideas, but recently the courts and the patent office have been granting patents that consist essentially of speech or thought,” said Hansen. “If the government continues to allow patents of speech or thought it risks violating the First Amendment. No one can have a monopoly on an idea or prohibit speech on a particular subject.”

ACLU

A link to the brief is here.

Because the patent at issue consists soley of speech or thought, the ACLU argues that it cannot be granted without violating the First Amendment.

We have seen how the privitizing regime has distorted patent law to the point that life, itself, is patentable:

You can’t patent snow, eagles or gravity, and you shouldn’t be able to patent genes, either. Yet by now one-fifth of the genes in your body are privately owned.

The results have been disastrous. Ordinarily, we imagine patents promote innovation, but that’s because most patents are granted for human inventions. Genes aren’t human inventions, they are features of the natural world. As a result these patents can be used to block innovation, and hurt patient care.

NY Times: Patenting Life

A dangerous wave of privatisation of all biological diversity is presently taking place under the label of ‘intellectual property rights’, i.e. patenting of plants, animals and individual parts of DNA.

snip

Patenting allows industry to take control of and exploit organisms and genetic material as exclusive private property that can be sold to or withheld from farmers, breeders, scientists and  doctors. “Technology agreements” and fees on seeds deprive farmers of their generations-old right to replant and exchange their seeds. Vast, unsubstantiated patent claims on DNA deter scientists from research in areas that have already been “claimed” by big companies with large legal budgets. Patents on life create Bio-Piracy and a new form of colonialism: In the South, where most global food crops originate from,  freely available seeds and specimens are analysed by genetic engineering companies and then patented to be sold back at high prices to those, who originally maintained and developed these varieties over generations.

Greenpeace opposes all patents on genes, plants, humans and parts of the human body and regards the biodiversity of this planet the common heritage of humankind.

Greenpeace: Patenting Life

Progress marches on.  Stop thinking: someone else owns that idea.

I’m glad the ACLU is fighting this.