Tag: 4@4

1. An hour ago, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming had a briefing by James Hansen, a climate scientist and the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, on the 20th anniversary of his Senate hearing where he said he was “’99 percent’ certain that humans were already warming the climate.” The NY Times reports that now, two decades later, the Climatologist renews his call for action.

   Hansen planned briefing would state “it is almost, but not quite, too late to start defusing what he calls the ‘global warming time bomb.'” He planned to present “a plan for cuts in emissions and also a warning about the risks of further inaction.”

   The Guardian reports he will tell the committee to Put oil firm chiefs on trial. He will “call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.”

   Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

   In an interview with the Guardian he said: “When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that’s a crime.”

   He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.

   Congress will not like his ideas, but I do.

2. Spiegel Online reports German politicians want nukes out of Europe.

   Following the release of confidential information from a US Air Force report claiming that US nuclear weapons in Europe are not properly taken care of, German politicians from across the political spectrum are calling for the weapons’ removal…

   The information, included in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), states that most nuclear weapons sites in Europe fail to meet US Department of Defense security standards and that several of the sites required “significant additional resources.” …

   Although the number and location of nuclear weapons in Europe is not public knowledge, FAS estimates put their number at between 200 and 350 weapons stored in underground vaults at bases in Belgium, Holland, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom and at Büchel Air Base in southwestern Germany.

   Stars and Stripes reported on Saturday, Air Force investigators: Most European bases with nukes lacking in security. “At some places, the duty of protecting nuclear weapons fell upon foreign conscripts with as little as nine months of military experience, the report said… Problems with nuclear safety at bases in Europe was unknown until Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists obtained a declassified version of the full report and posted it on his blog earlier this week.” Kristensen’s blog entry is here.

Four at Four continues with stories from the Supreme Court and the war and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

1. The Washington Post reports House passes compromise wiretapping bill. The only thing compromised is our Bill of Rights.

   The House today overwhelmingly approved a sweeping new surveillance law that effectively would shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program…

   The House approved, 293 to 129, a re-write of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that extends the government’s ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecommunication firms. The companies face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers’ privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

   Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, writes:

   No matter how often the opposition calls this bill a ‘compromise,’ it is not a meaningful compromise, except of our constitutional rights. The bill allows for mass, untargeted and unwarranted surveillance of all communications coming in to and out of the United States. The courts’ role is superficial at best, as the government can continue spying on our communications even after the FISA court has objected. Democratic leaders turned what should have been an easy FISA fix into the wholesale giveaway of our Fourth Amendment rights.

2. I think Condoleezza Rice has forgotten what was done at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and secret prisons by those interrogators following the torture directives of the Bush administration.

   The LA Times reports the U.N. Security Council says sexual violence akin to war crimes. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice introduced the U.S.-sponsored resolution at a special session attended by diplomats from 60 nations. Rice said the resolution brought an end to a debate about whether sexual violence was a security issue and belonged on the council’s agenda.”

   “We affirm that sexual violence profoundly affects not only the health and safety of women, but the economic and social stability of their nations,” Rice said.

   The thing is, Condi seems to have forgotten sexual violence can happen to men too. From Seymour Hersh’s 2004 article for The New Yorker, “Torture at Abu Ghraib“.

   The photographs tell it all… Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

   Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other-it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.

   Or as Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba wrote, “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes… The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

   So while this is good Madam Secretary, I ask — what did you know about the administration’s advocation of torture and when did you know it? And, why still to this day, have you not spoken out against Bush administration sanctioned torture?

Four at Four continues with oil output and swim records.

1. Just in case you missed it. McClatchy Newspapers now joins Meteor Blades, buhdydharma, and others in reporting the General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes.

   The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

   The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

   “After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.“

   Impeach, convict, imprison, throw away the key. Speaker Pelosi, your Constitutional and legal duty urgently calls. You must put impeachment back on the table.

Four at Four continues below the fold.

1. Mixed reports about the situation in the Arghandab distrct are coming from Afghanistan. Reuters reports the Taliban win tactical success near Kandahar. “The infiltration of hundreds of Taliban militants this week into an area close to Afghanistan’s second city was a tactical success for them and a setback for NATO, a NATO general said on Wednesday.”

   While in follow-on fighting, the Washington Post reports Afghan and NATO troops move against the Taliban. “Hundreds of Afghan and Canadian troops launched a major attack Wednesday against Taliban fighters who have moved into several southern Afghanistan villages in recent days”. The Canadian Press reports that according to the Afghan Defense Ministry, the joint offensive killed at least 36 Taliban fighters with no NATO casualities. And, according to the report in the NY Times, the operation against the Taliban is just beginning.

   The operation, which NATO officials said would last several days, is to clear out Taliban insurgents who have swarmed into the northwestern part of the district, causing villagers to flee and threatening government control. The security of the district is critical to that of Kandahar city, the capital of southern Afghanistan…

   Helicopters flying high over the Argandab River valley fired rockets at Taliban positions just a mile or so west of the river, indicating that insurgents were much closer to the district center than NATO and Afghan officials have admitted.

   In related news, The Guardian reports the First female British soldier has been killed in Afghanistan. Her name has not yet been released, but she was killed by an explosion that hit a British convoy and killed three other soldiers.

Four at Four continues with a deadly bombing in Baghdad, the five men behind the Bush administration’s use of torture, and an op-ed on bananas.

1. The Taliban is gaining in Afghanistan. There has been a massive offensive by the Taliban that seized seven villages. According to the Washington Post, “an estimated 500 Taliban fighters swept into several villages in the Arghandab district… The Taliban’s seizure of the villages comes three days after an audacious prison break at a Kandahar jail, in which an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners, many of them Taliban fighters, escaped.”

   The Associated Press reports that in preparation for their offensive, the Taliban mined villages and destroyed bridges. “More than 700 families — meaning perhaps 4,000 people or more — had fled the Arghandab district 10 miles northwest of Kandahar city”, according to Afghan police. The Arghandab district is “a lush region filled with grape and pomegranate groves that the Soviet army could never conquer”. The NY Times notes that “control of Arghandab is considered critical to control of the city of Kandahar and has been the source of forces that have seized the city in the past.”

   Over the past year, NATO commanders on the ground in Afghanistan have pleaded for additional troops, but with the U.S. tied up in Iraq the occupation is still undermanned to counter the Taliban and hold territorial gains. Additional NATO forces are being shifted from Kabul to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city, because, according to the Canwest News Service, Taliban forces massing on Kandahar doorstep.

2. In Militants found recruits among Guantanamo’s wrongly detained, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers reports that the Bush administration has fueled Islamic jihad.

   Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

   U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however – after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers – he’d made connections to high-level militants.

   In fact, he’d become a Taliban leader.

   In the McClatchy investigation, they “found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam – thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them – and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.”

Four at Four continues with evidence that Rumsfeld planned for the use of torture and the CIA advised the military how to torture, Iqbal v Ashcroft is now before the Supreme Court, and a bonus story about the Mundaneum. Oh, in case you missed this over at Daily Kos, Kagro X writes:

There will be no accounting for this “administration.” Not now, not in the 111th Congress, and not under President Obama.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases. “The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.”

   The extent of the mistreatment eclipses the alleged abuse previously revealed. “Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida’s 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida.”

   Since “Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishments have been administered, even in the cases of two detainees who died after American guards beat them.”

2. The New York Times reports that Officials fear Pakistani nuclear bomb design went to others.

   Four years after Abdul Qadeer Khan, the leader of the world’s largest black market in nuclear technology, was put under house arrest and his operation declared shattered, international inspectors and Western officials are confronting a new mystery, this time over who may have received blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon found on his network’s computers.

   Working in secret for two years, investigators have tracked the digitized blueprints to Khan computers in Switzerland, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. The blueprints are rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide, making it potentially attractive to terrorists…

   The design is electronic …. making it easy to copy – and they have no idea how many copies, if any, are circulating.

Four at Four continues with flooding in the Midwest and in China, and bloggers being arrested.

1. Flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa forces evacuations and closes roads, reports the Associated Press.

   Rising water from the Cedar River forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 400 city blocks were under water.

   Cedar Rapids was the hardest-hit city in Iowa, where Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state’s 99 counties as state disaster areas and nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. Elsewhere in the upper Midwest, rivers and streams tipping their banks forced evacuations, closed roads, and even threatened drinking water…

   Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet. It was at 30.9 feet early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst flood in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet. At least 438 city blocks in downtown were under water, Koch said. There was more flooding outside of downtown, but authorities don’t know what widespread it is.

   Does Cedar Rapids, Iowa remind you of any thing?

   The New York Times adds The city that ‘Would Never Flood’ goes 12 feet under. “They said this city would never flood. They talked about 1993, and 1966 and 1851, years when the Cedar River swelled and hissed but mostly stayed within its banks. They thought they were safe. They were wrong. Cedar Rapids is experiencing the worst flooding in the city’s history… 12 feet higher than the previous record, set in 1851”

   8,000 people have evacuated and 5,500 homes are without electricity. More rain is forecasted for the weekend. The AP reports I-80 is closed due to flooding between Iowa City and Davenport. Flooding has halted the California Zephyr in Iowa too.

   There is flooding across the Upper Midwest. “Violent thunderstorms Thursday and Friday brought widespread flooding to Michigan’s Lower Peninsula that authorities say left some roads and bridges unstable or impassable… In Wisconsin, amphibious vehicles that carry tourists on the Wisconsin River were used to evacuate homes and businesses in Baraboo, north of Madison.”

   As the flood waters flow down to the Gulf, communities along the Mississippi river are bracing for a “significant rise” that is expected on Wednesday.

2. The New York Times reports Iraq says talks on pact with U.S. are at an impasse. Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “explicitly detailed the main points of contention between the United States and the Iraqi government in the negotiations for the security agreement.”

   “Iraq rejects Washington’s insistence on granting their forces immunity from Iraqi laws and courts,” he said. “We reject Washington’s demand to have a free hand in undertaking military operations without cooperation with the Iraqi government.”

   He added: “We cannot give permission to the American forces independent right to arrest Iraqis or execute operations against terrorism. We cannot allow them to use the Iraqi skies and waters at all times.”

   The question of immunity for American contractors accused of killing a number of Iraqi civilians unprovoked is a particularly sensitive point with Iraqis who want to be able to bring the wrongdoers to trial in Iraqi courts.

Four at Four continues with stories about 4000 years and 2000 years.

1. The United States has a New criminal record: 7.2 Million, reports the Washington Post. “The number of people under supervision in the nation’s criminal justice system rose to 7.2 million in 2006, the highest ever, costing states tens of billions of dollars to house and monitor offenders as they go in and out of jails and prisons.” America spent about $45 billion in 2006 to keep two million people in jail or prison , another 4.2 million people on probation, and 800,000 people on parole. States are opting for privately run prisons to alleviate overcrowding.

   Black men, about one in 15, were most affected, and Hispanics, one in 35, were well represented among offenders. The number of women in prison “rose faster in 2006 than over the previous five years,” mostly in Hawaii, North Dakota, Wyoming and Oklahoma, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report said.

   In 1980, about the time that tough sentencing laws, particularly for drug offenses, began to be passed by federal and state legislators, 1.8 million people were in the system and $11 billion was spent on corrections.

2. The Los Angeles Times reports Guest workers in U.S. say they are being exploited. “On Wednesday, … a dozen workers from India ended a four-week hunger strike that was meant to highlight their allegations that a guest worker program is abusing foreign laborers and shutting Americans out of decent jobs. The workers… came to the U.S. to work in a Mississippi shipyard, lured by assurances of permanent residency. Instead, they said, they ended up in substandard living conditions, with reduced wages and promises of a green card that never came. Their protest was designed to illuminate a guest worker program that critics say is rife with exploitation and can be repaired only with congressional action.” Guest workers are the slaves of the 21st century.

3. The Bush administration wants to expand their so-called “missile defense” system in Europe. According to The New York Times, Defense War Secretary Robert Gates is pressing NATO on missile defense expansion. An anonymous official claims “the United States would press alliance members to agree on options for a defensive system against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. That future NATO missile defense system would cover territory across the southeastern rim of the alliance Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey. Portions of those nations – including almost all of Turkey – would not be covered by the longer-range missile defense system the United States hopes to install in Poland and the Czech Republic”. There is no gaurantee this M-I-C boondoggle will do anything other than enrich Republican doners and escalate tensions with the Russians. This article is a classic example of NYT propaganda.

4. Bay Windows reports With love and pride, Governor Deval Patrick’s daughter comes out publicly.

   On June 14, 2007, the day that lawmakers finally voted down an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution, Katherine Patrick stood outside the State House and looked up at her father. Gov. Deval Patrick was standing on the front steps, surrounded by a jubilant crowd of hundreds that mobbed the brick sidewalk and spilled halfway across Beacon Street. As they cheered the defeat of the amendment – an effort led by the governor, Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Sal DiMasi – Katherine had never before felt more proud of her father.

   “Because, of course, he didn’t know that I was gay then,” the 18-year-old recalls. “So, for someone so publicly to fight for something that doesn’t even affect him was just like, ‘That’s my dad,’ you know?” she says with a laugh. “That’s all I could think. I was very, very proud to be part of this family, and this state in general.” …

   “As private of an issue as it is, we’ve sort of had to come to terms with the fact that we are a public family and there you give a part of yourself away,” says Katherine. “And we also … wanted people to know that it’s not only something that we accept, but it’s something that we’re very proud of. It’s a great aspect of our lives and there’s nothing about it that is shameful or that we would want to hide.”

   Gov. Patrick is worrying how much his daughter’s wedding is going to cost. Grin.

1. Winning hearts and minds in Iraq. Iraqis condemn American demands, reports the Washington Post. Iraqi politicians are denouncing Bush’s “demands to maintain nearly 60 bases in their country indefinitely. Top Iraqi officials are calling for a radical reduction of the U.S. military’s role here after the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence expires at the end of this year.”

   “The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament’s foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “If we can’t reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, ‘Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don’t need you here anymore.‘ “

   Elsewhere in Iraq, the BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions. “A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.” Using “US and Iraqi government sources to research how much some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies. While Presdient George W Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.”

2. Winning hearts and minds in Pakistan. The Washington Post reports that Pakistan is blaming the U.S. for killing 11 soldiers.

   At least 11 Pakistani soldiers and 10 other people were killed in northwest Pakistan in a border clash that erupted during a military operation led by U.S.-supported Afghan forces, Pakistani military officials said Wednesday.

   The Pakistani army blamed the troop deaths on a U.S. airstrike and condemned an attack it said “had hit at the very basis of cooperation” in the countries’ joint battle against terrorism.

   The army statement called the airstrike “unprovoked and cowardly” and said that Pakistan’s army maintained “the right to protect our citizens and soldiers against aggression.”

   Meanwhile the LA Times reports Michael Mullen says action unlikely against militants in Pakistan. “Any future terrorist attack on the United States probably would originate in Pakistan’s western tribal regions, where Al Qaeda leaders have set up their most secure haven since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said Tuesday. But Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said action to forcibly disrupt the militants’ planning effort is unlikely for now.”

   Whoops! It looks like Adm. Mullen spoke a day too soon. Good thing we’re pissing of the Pakistanis and occupying Iraq.

Four at Four continues winning hearts and minds of American rockers and championing democracy around the world. Plus a bonus story about gardening to mitigate rising food costs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   The bottomless pit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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