Tag: 4@4

1. The Washington Post reports the EPA allowing more polllution-forming ozone than advised. “The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday limited the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 parts per billion, a level significantly higher than what the agency’s scientific advisers had urged for this key component of unhealthy air pollution.”

   “Administrator Stephen L. Johnson also said he would push Congress to rewrite the nearly 37-year-old Clean Air Act to allow regulators to take into consideration the cost and feasibility of controlling pollution when making decisions about air quality, something that is currently prohibited by the law. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to base the ozone standard strictly on protecting public health, with no regard to cost.”

2. According to The Independent, Disillusioned with the US, Navratilova defects again. “Martina Navratilova has regained Czech nationality more than 30 years after fleeing a Communist regime she now compares favourably to that of her adopted country America under… George Bush.” And The Guardian asks Can the US today really compare with Czechoslovakia in 1975? Here are some of their comparisons:

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Free healthcare available to all citizens.

   US, 2008: 47 million Americans (16% of the population) have no health insurance. Another 16 million are “underinsured”.

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Despite an increased standard of living and the widespread availability of material goods, consumerism is failing to placate a population fed up with draconian political controls.

   US, 2008: Despite a rise in the cost of living, consumerism continues to placate a population largely oblivious to the curtailment of its freedoms…

   Czechoslovakia, 1975: Torture, though not officially sanctioned, has become a covert tool of state policy.

   US, 2008: Torture officially sanctioned.

3. The Christian Science Monitor reports China’s human rights rating is upgraded by the U.S. State Department. China is no longer on the State Department’s list of the world worst countries for human rights violations.

   The State Department did not wipe China’s slate clean, saying in the report that “China’s overall human rights record remains poor.” But instead of placing it among the world’s worst offenders, it shifted China’s listing to: “authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform [and] have experienced rapid social change but have not undertaken democratic political reform and continue to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

   Ironic, eh? When “asked at a press conference Tuesday to explain why China was no longer on the list of worst offenders, Jonathan Farrar, acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, skirted the question.”

4. Finally, McClatchy Newspapers reports that it isn’t just running up the cost of food to make biodiesel and ethanol, but Energy and water demands are on collision course.

   It takes a lot of water to produce energy. It takes a lot of energy to provide water. The two are inextricably linked, and claims on each are rising.

   “The water supply is as critical as oil,” said Charles Groat, a geologist and expert on the problem at the University of Texas in Austin.

   In return, “water use requires a tremendous amount of energy,” said Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, Calif.

   As the United States tries to lower its dependence on foreign oil by producing more energy from domestic sources such as ethanol, however, it’s running low on fresh water.

   Water is needed for mining coal, drilling for oil, refining gasoline, generating and distributing electricity, and disposing waste, Gleick said.

   “The largest use of water is to cool power plants,” he said at a panel of experts on “The Global Nexus of Energy and Water” in Boston last month.

1. USA Today reports Saddam’s spies are back at work in Iraq.

   “Iraq’s government has been quietly bringing back into service Saddam-era intelligence agents who have experience spying on Iranians. The effort is aimed at improving Iraq’s ability to gather intelligence about Iranian-supported networks operating in Iraq, said Dan Maguire, the top U.S. adviser on intelligence.”

   “The practice of hiring former intelligence agents seems to conflict with a new law designed to come to terms with people who worked in Saddam’s ruling Baath Party. The “Accountability and Justice” law, passed this year, bans members of Saddam-era security services from government work because of their brutal reputation… U.S. officials have approved of the practice of bringing back some former agents. Maguire said the hiring of former agents had ‘a lot of logic to it.'” Occupied Iraq just like with Saddam, but now with added DEMOCRACY™!

2. The Los Angeles Times reports some Guantanamo Bay prisoners to be allowed family phone calls.

   The change in a policy that has kept the 275 foreign men still held here in isolation for as long as six years remains in the early planning phase, said Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush, a spokesman for the Joint Task Force that runs the prison and interrogation compound…

   The decision to allow the prisoners to speak with relatives — most for the first time since they were arrested abroad and moved here — was the result of pressure from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside humanitarian observation of the prisoners allowed by the Pentagon…

   In New York, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights that represents most Guantanamo prisoners in their U.S. court challenges to their detention called the disclosure “a public relations stunt.”

   “I am frankly skeptical and won’t believe it until I see it,” said Dixon Wells. “This is an attempt to draw attention away from conditions of confinement designed to destroy these men physically and mentally.”

   This is an actual picture of the phone the Guantanamo Bay inmates will be allowed to use.

3. Well according to Threat Level blog at Wired, House Democrats are proposing a commission to investigate warrantless spying and still reject telecom amnesty. “Not only shouldn’t companies that helped the government’s warrantless spying on American citizens be given retroactive amnesty, the government should establish a national commission — similar to the 9/11 Commission — to subpoena documents and testimony in order to find out — and publish — what exactly the nation’s spies were up to during their five year warrantless, domestic surveillance program.

   “In other words, House Democrats aren’t planning a compromise on telecom amnesty and are actually going on offense to find a way to learn more about President Bush’s five-year secret ‘Total Information Awareness’ program. At least that’s what’s suggested by a 119-page draft bill being circulated by the leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees as answer to the Administration-backed Senate spying bill.” If it’s similar to the 9/11 Commission, then it’ll be just another… ahh what’s the use? However, TPMmuckraker reports, Senate intelligence committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-Telecom) isn’t keen on the House bill.

   Well this will surely uncover something… not. TPMmuckraker also reports CREW asks FBI to probe missing White House emails. “It’s the burning question of the Bush Administration: malfeasance or incompetence? … CREW, which has been pursuing a lawsuit over the lost emails, wants to know. And today the group wrote (pdf) FBI Director Robert Mueller to request that he investigate whether White House officials deleted emails relevant to the Valerie Plame investigation.”

4. Finally, maybe our houses are just too damned big? In his column for the Seattle Times, Danny Westneat asks Who says tiny house cramps our style?

   Renting for $800 a month, it may not be the cheapest house in Seattle. But I bet it’s the tiniest.

   At 230 square feet, it’s no bigger than some tool sheds. In fact, that’s what it was before someone converted the wedge-shaped shack into a stand-alone home, complete with amenities of houses 10 times the size. It has a bathroom with a shower, a dishwasher, a four-burner stove, a pantry, built-in dressers. Even a closet…

   The house I live in now is 2,500 square feet – the U.S. average, but 11 times larger than Seattle’s Smallest. Yes, I’m now married with two kids. But it’s also true we have rooms nearly 230 square feet that we scarcely use.

   When I was peeking in at Seattle’s Smallest and its 3-foot-wide bathroom, I wondered: What if I moved back here, family in tow? Would we go crazy? Or could we fit?

   I guess I’d go crazy. But there’s a guy in California, Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., who sells and lives in 100-square-foot houses. He says that while micro is not exactly the new mega, the space you need truly is a state of mind.

   According to a 2006 story on NPR, Behind the Ever-Expanding American Dream House. “The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s; it now stands at 2,349 square feet. Whether it’s a McMansion in a wealthy neighborhood, or a bigger, cheaper house in the exurbs, the move toward ever large homes has been accelerating for years.” How much is enough and not too much?

   According to Housing: Then, Now, and in the Future by Moya K. Mason, the first houses built by Europeans in America “had less than 450 square feet of space”. “At the beginning of the last century, the average home was 700 to 1,200 square feet. In 1950 the average home was 1,000 square feet growing to an average size of 2,000 square feet in 2000.”

1. While it will come as no surprise to anyone who doesn’t watch Fox News, McClatchy Newspapers reports that an Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida. “An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network. The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.” But, then we knew that back before Bush decided to invade. The report officially comes out tomorrow.

2. The Washington Post reports that Blackwater is under investigation. “House oversight committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman expanded his effort yesterday to investigate private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, calling for a wide-ranging federal inquiry into the company’s employment practices. In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration and the Labor Department, Waxman (D-Calif.) questioned Blackwater’s classification of its workers as ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees. That designation, which the government has questioned in the past, has allowed the company to obtain $144 million in contracts set aside for small businesses and to avoid paying as much as $50 million in withholding taxes under State Department contracts, he said.” Blackwater, of course, claims the allegations are “completely without merit”.

3. The New York Times reports Pollution is called a byproduct of a ‘clean’ fuel. People living in Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, began to notice “an oily, fetid substance… fouling the Black Warrior River”. The source of the pollution “turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.” “The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams… According to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, but scientists say that position understates its potential environmental impact.”

4. Rob Shaw writing for Time magazine, tells How Google Earth ate our town.

   When they hear the telltale sirens of a fire truck bursting out of the station in Nanaimo, the locals don’t need to look out of the window or tune in to newscasts to find out where the action is. Instead, they can simply log on to Google Maps or Google Earth and track the firefighters in real time as they tear down the streets of this Vancouver Island port community. The Google-enabling of Nanaimo’s fire service, launched just weeks ago, is the latest venture in a British Columbia town that has been dubbed the capital of Google Earth…

   [This] is a big deal for an old coal mining city of only around 78,000 people, nestled about an hour north of Victoria. What Nanaimo lacks for in size, it has tried to make up in sheer volume of raw electronic data.

   The city’s planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearing house of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program.

   Sad that my first reaction to reading this was not ‘how cool!’, but ‘how could this be used by terrorists?’

1. The Guardian reports that the U.S. warned any economic ray of hope unlikely to brighten sluggish trend. “America’s economic downturn is likely to be “W-shaped” with the occasional ray of hope failing to shift a sluggish trend lasting throughout 2009, according to a gloomy forecast by HSBC. The bank’s economists say that a loss of confidence in the financial system is diminishing the impact of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve – and that US interest rates may fall as low as 1%… As the credit crunch bites into the banking system and consumer spending weakens, HSBC predicts that US growth will slow from last year’s 2.2% to 1.5% in 2008 and to 1.2% in 2009.”

   The Boston Globe adds Surging costs of groceries hit home. “American families, already pinched by soaring energy costs, are taking another big hit to household budgets as food prices increase at the fastest rate since 1990… Wholesale food prices, an indicator of where supermarket prices are headed, rose last month at the fastest rate since 2003, with egg prices jumping 60 percent from a year ago, pasta products 30 percent, and fruits and vegetables 20 percent, according to the Labor Department… Several factors contribute to higher food prices, analysts say, but none more than record prices for oil, which last week closed above $105 a barrel. Oil is not only driving up production and transportation costs, but also adding to demand for corn and soybeans, used to make alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel… Meanwhile, with poor harvests in major wheat-producing regions, wheat prices have more than tripled.”

2. The Los Angeles Times reports Senate panel critiques prewar claims by White House. “The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a detailed critique of the Bush administration’s claims in the buildup to war with Iraq… The findings are likely to be a source of political discomfort for the White House by reviving the controversy over the Bush administration’s case for war… The report could also become political fodder for the presidential race, which has focused on the differing positions of the remaining candidates on the decision to invade Iraq… Dissatisfied with the scope of the report, Republicans on the panel are expected to attach a section outlining their objections and calling attention to prewar claims by prominent Democrats, including [Sen. Hillary] Clinton.”

   And while Congress squabbles, The New York Times reports that Five American soldiers were killed in Baghdad and three others wounded by a bomb on Monday at about 3 p.m. in the Mansour neighnorhood. “The soldiers were on a dismounted patrol when they were attacked… Earlier Monday, one of the most important leaders of local Sunni Arab forces in Diyala Province, just north of Baghdad, who are working with the Americans against insurgents in Iraq, was killed by a female suicide bomber who blew herself up at his home. The leader of the neighborhood forces, Sheik Thaer al-Ghadhban al-Karkhy , was killed in the province, along with a child and a police guard, according to a police official.”

News about U.S. troops deployed to South Korea, polar bears, and CO₂ is beneath the fold.

1. Now this is interesting. Viktor Bout, the arms dealer that was arrested in Thailand yesterday, had ties to the United States’ occupation of Iraq. The Los Angeles Times reports Long-sought arms dealer caught. “The long hunt for a man regarded as one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers climaxed Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, where an eight-month sting operation by a team of U.S. agents.”

   U.S. authorities said they would move quickly to secure Bout’s extradition. But his controversial role in supplying the American military effort in Iraq and possible Russian interest in returning him to Moscow could complicate efforts to put him on trial in New York…

   But Bout’s role in aiding the Bush administration’s reconstruction effort in Iraq poses thorny hurdles to any effort to construct a legal case against him. A public trial, which would most likely be held in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, could lead to uncomfortable revelations for the administration about Bout’s business relationships with U.S. military agencies and private contractors.

   “An American trial would be interesting because a lot of the Bush engagement with Bout will come out,” said Witney Schneidman, a former assistant secretary of State who pressed for foreign support in pursuing Bout at the end of the Clinton administration…

   Lee S. Wolosky, a former National Security Council deputy who led the effort against Bout for the Clinton and Bush administrations, warned that Bout “really needs to come into U.S. custody quickly. Otherwise, there’s ample opportunity for others to mess around.”

   It looks to me like Bout is going to be silenced by the Bush administration. Mother Jones has more and markthshark has more background in an August 2007 diary on Daily Kos.

2. Continuing on with my fascination this week with the Grand Canyon. The Washington Post reports the Grand Canyon nearly three times older than previously thought. The Grand Canyon “is more like 17 million years old, according to a study published today in the journal Science. And the Colorado River may not be the only river involved in its formation. The study contends that a smaller river cut the older, western part of the canyon. Gradually the canyon formed from west to east on westward-flowing river. Then something happened about 5 or 6 million years ago — what, exactly, is unclear — to accelerate dramatically the rate of the canyon-carving.” And while this is cutting edge science, there is still plenty of evidence to point to the 5-6 million year age of the canyon. It will be interesting to see if more scientific evidence will be discovered to support this new hypothesis.

3. According to NASA, the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan suggests that Saturn’s moon Rhea also may have rings. “NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn’s second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon. A broad debris disk and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons. ‘Until now, only planets were known to have rings, but now Rhea seems to have some family ties to its ringed parent Saturn,’ said Geraint Jones, a Cassini scientist”.

   “This is an artist concept of the ring of debris that may orbit Saturn’s second-largest moon, Rhea. The suggested disk of solid material is exaggerated in density here for clarity.” — Source: NASA

Four at Four continues below the fold…

1. The Los Angeles Times reports Dean argues against new Florida and Michigan primaries. “The national Democratic Party won’t pay for two states to hold a second set of presidential primaries, National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said this morning. ‘We can’t afford to do that,’ Dean said on CBS’ ‘The Early Show,’ one of several media appearances he made this morning. ‘That’s not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race‘… Elected officials in Florida and Michigan have mentioned the prospect of holding new primaries, estimated to cost $25 million in Florida alone… ‘The rules were set a year and a half ago,’ Dean said. ‘Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn’t need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states.'”

2. The New York Times reports that the Torrent in the Colorado River is unleashed to aid fish.

   A torrent of water was released into the Colorado River from the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona on Tuesday, in a disputed effort to improve the environment for fish in the Grand Canyon…

   The water poured out of the dam as if pumped through a gigantic fire hose, at the rate of 41,500 cubic feet per second – enough to fill the Empire State Building in 20 minutes. This release, which engineers call “high flow,” was meant to scour the river bottom and deposit silt and sediment to rebuild and extend sandbars and create new, calm backwater areas where the fish can spawn.

   But the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Steve Martin, argued that if such high flows were not repeated several times in the next five years, the overall water management plan was very likely to impair rather than improve the fish environment.

Four at Four continues below the fold with an update on Wikileaks and a story on Big Brother.

1. On behalf of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Decider would like you to meet your next president.

   The New York Times reports McCain wins Bush’s endorsement. A triumphant Senator John McCain on Wednesday received the political blessing of a man with whom he once feuded bitterly, President Bush, and said he would welcome the president’s campaigning on his behalf. “I’m honored and humbled,” Mr. McCain said outside the White House, declaring that he felt both “respect and affection” for Mr. Bush. The senator emphasized that he would welcome Mr. Bush’s personal appearances by his side “in keeping with the president’s heavy schedule.” For the moment, at least, his comments dispelled any impression that Mr. McCain would prefer that Mr. Bush, whose ratings have been slumping, keep his distance.

   The Los Angeles Times adds that Bush gaves McCain veep advice. “When the two were asked about one of the crucial decisions facing McCain — the choice of a running mate — Bush referred to his own selection of Dick Cheney, who had run the search for qualified candidates after Bush had locked up the GOP nomination. He joked that McCain should ‘be careful who he names to be head of his selection committee.’ Regardless of the choice, the president said, ‘people don’t vote for vice presidents,’ but for the candidate who will sit in the Oval Office.”

2. The Associated Press is reporting that More FBI privacy violations have been confirmed. “The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller… told the Senate Judiciary Committee” today. Muller offered no additional details, but said that a forthcoming report “will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March”. That report found “the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.”

3. The Guardian reports Moses was stoned when he set Ten Commandments, researcher claims. “According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times. Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared. ‘The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness,’ writes Shanon. ‘In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings.'” Certainly would give a new meaning to burning bush.

4. The New York Times reports Gary Gygax, game pioneer, dies at 69. “Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69… As co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the seminal role-playing game introduced in 1974, Mr. Gygax wielded a cultural influence far broader than his relatively narrow fame among hard-core game enthusiasts.”

   The Pioneer Press reports that Gaming enthusiasts mourning a role model. “‘Another giant has fallen,’ murmured Nick Postiglione. It wasn’t a hill giant, fire giant or storm giant he was talking about. Nobody had whipped out their Hammer of Thunderbolts. ‘How many guys change the fundamental nature of gaming? Now he’s gone,’ said Postiglione, vice president of The Source Comics & Games in Falcon Heights.”

   Paul La Farge wrote a decent overview of Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and his career for Believer in September 2006 called “Destroy All Monsters“. It’s worth your time to read.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports that a Plan to ‘flush’ Grand Canyon stirs concerns.

   The Grand Canyon is about to take a bath, and National Park Service officials who oversee the natural wonder are worried.

   Federal flood control managers, led by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, this week plan to unleash millions of cubic feet of water from behind Glen Canyon Dam to “flush” the huge canyon bottom with a simulated springtime flood…

   The flows begin today, and a massive release is set for Wednesday in a media event with Kempthorne…

   National park officials said that 10 years of research at a cost of $80 million had shown that the flooding as planned could irreparably harm the national park’s ecology and resources.

   Grand Canyon National Park Supt. Steve Martin said he was given a day to formulate comments to a cursory environmental assessment of the project. In those comments, he wrote that statements by the Bureau of Reclamation used to justify the flows’ timing were “unsubstantiated.” Far from restoring crucial sand banks and other areas, the flows could destroy habitat, Martin said.

2. Okay, Bush is an idiot. Here’s more proof from Bush’s press conference today with King Abdullah of Jordan. When asked about OPEC not having plans of increasing oil output, Bush responded:

   I think it’s a mistake to have your biggest customer’s economy slow down, or your biggest customers’ economies slowing down as a result of high energy prices. It’s not the only result — our economy is slowing down. I mean, obviously we’ve got a housing issue and some credit issues. But no question, the high price of gasoline has hurt economic growth here in the United States. And if I were a member of OPEC, I’d be concerned about high energy prices causing people to buy less energy over time.

   And the other thing high energy prices of course does, which is stimulate alternative fuels, which we’re doing a lot here in America. We’re spending a lot of money on biofuels and ethanols and new ways to make ethanol. My advice to OPEC — of course they haven’t listened to it — but my advice to OPEC is to understand the consequences of high energy prices, because I do, and I understand this is affecting our American citizens. It’s making it harder for people to be able to drive, and it’s making it tough for families to save.

   And so not only is it — high energy prices having an effect on — a macro effect on our economy, it’s affecting a lot of our families, which troubles me, as well. And by the way, the higher energy prices stay, the more likely it is countries will quickly diversify. And that’s part of our strategy.

   Bush is concerned that America might be motivated to find an alternative to Middle Eastern oil.

A story of the coming salmon disaster this year and Oregon’s new, replacement weather buoys are in the waters below the fold.

1. BBC News reports that the UN Security Council approves new sanctions on Iran. “Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of measures including asset freezes and travel bans for Iranian officials. Indonesia abstained.” It is the third UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

   Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news… The New York Times reports Oil prices pass record set during ’80s energy crisis. “Setting an all-time record, oil prices rose to nearly $104 a barrel on Monday morning, exceeding their inflation-adjusted high reached in the early 1980s during the second oil shock, before pulling back… That level tops the record set in April 1980 of $39.50 a barrel, which would translate to $103.76 a barrel in today’s money.” Why the jump? As AP reports Oil jumps to new record on dollar’s fall.

2. Here is yet another way Wall Street is stealing money from American tax payers. According to The New York Times, Wall Street underrates state and municipal bonds and some states and cities are starting to rebel. “Billions of taxpayers’ dollars – money that could be used to build schools, pave roads and repair bridges – are being siphoned off in the financial markets… A complex system of credit ratings and insurance policies that Wall Street uses to set prices for municipal bonds makes borrowing needlessly expensive for many localities… Because of their relatively weak credit scores, more than half of all municipal borrowers buy insurance policies that safeguard their bonds in the unlikely event that they fail to pay the debt… Ratings agencies… are paid a second time to evaluate the insured bonds.” Need a school built, a bridge repaired, or any other kind of public investment in public infrastructure? Wall Street is going to drive up the costs. As long as we give private banks the ability create money, then the people will always be on the losing end of the class war.

3. The Defense War Department announced this morning that “American naval forces fired missiles into southern Somalia” and The New York Times dutifully reported that “residents reached by telephone said the only casualties were three wounded civilians, three dead cows, one dead donkey and a partly destroyed house.” The attack came around 3:30 a.m. and “was not the first time that American forces have fired missiles into Somalia in pursuit of what the Pentagon has called terrorist operatives in the country. They did it at least three times last year.” The Guardian has a slightly differing account. “The strike was carried out early this morning, destroying a home and seriously injuring eight people, including four children, residents and police said… A police officer who gave only his first name, Siyad, said the eight wounded were hit by shrapnel. An aid worker… said up to six people were still trapped in the rubble by midday… It was not clear if these victims were included in the police officer’s tally.”

4. I do not see this ending well. The Guardian reports US to train Pakistan troops hunting militants. “The United States will send dozens of military advisers to Pakistan to train soldiers who are fighting extremist groups in the country’s restive tribal areas, it emerged today, the first meaningful deployment of American troops in the country.”

   “A squad of American trainers will arrive later this year to teach soldiers how to handle counter insurgency operations… Although the original plan sees a deployment that stretches until 2015, the current forecast is that the trainers will be in Pakistan for up to two years. Initially the US military advisers would not be allowed out of their training camps. However, a widely discussed 40-page memo circulating in Washington eventually sees US troops accompanying Pakistani soldiers on missions against the militants.”

   For those historically minded — on November 1, 1955, President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the South Vietnamese Army. That date marks the official U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

A bonus story about beeswax is beneath the fold…

1. 

   Ruh-roh. The Financial Times reports Bernanke predicts bank failures. “Some small US banks are likely to fail as a result of the housing crisis, Ben Bernanke said yesterday, warning that his country faced a more difficult situation than in the aftermath of the dotcom bust in 2001. ‘There will probably be some bank failures,’ the Fed chairman told the Senate banking committee in his second day of biannual testimony to Congress. He said the banks at risk were ‘small and in many cases de novo [new] banks that are heavily invested in real estate in localities where prices have fallen’.”

   And seven years of conservative economic policies and governance has left the United States in a “weaker position to respond to the negative growth shock today than it was in 2001.” The U.S. had one war in Afghanistan in 2001, it has two today. The dollar was strong in 2001, it is weak today. The price of oil was $20 a barrel in 2001, it is is over $100 a barrel today. George W. Bush, the Republicans, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have destroyed the U.S. ecnonomy. Don’t worry about them though, they’re making out like bandits. Oh, and when those small banks fail, guess who will be doing the bailout? Yup, poor and middle class taxpayers.

2. Another result of conservative military policy under George W. Bush. The Guardian reports that the Afghanistan mission is close to failing.

   After six years of US-led military support and billions of [dollars] in aid, security in Afghanistan is ‘deteriorating’ and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.

   Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control…

   A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and – twice as many as in 2004 – while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

   Nato commanders paint the suicide bombs and ambushes as signs of a disheartened enemy… But analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well.

   Earlier in the week Sen. Joe Biden warned of failure in Afghanistan. Biden called on NATO to bail out the Bush administration’s failed policy in Afghanistan. “NATO must be ‘fully in the fight’ in Afghanistan – nothing less than the future of the alliance is at stake, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told a luncheon crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘Many of our NATO allies thought they were signing up for a peacekeeping mission, not counter-insurgency operations,’ said Biden, D-Del. ‘Many are fighting with incredible bravery in the south. But the so-called ‘national caveats’ are making a mockery of NATO – and the notion of a unified mission.'” If Bush didn’t have the military distracted in Iraq, things would have gone differently in Afghanistan.

3. The New York Times reports Turkey withdraws troops from Northern Iraq. “Turkey’s military announced it had withdrawn all of its troops from northern Iraq by Friday morning, bringing an eight-day ground offensive against Kurdish guerrillas to a close… Reports differed on the extent of the withdrawal, with an American military official in Iraq and a representative for the Kurdish fighters saying some troops were still in the country. The Turkish military… said that the ground campaign in which 24 Turkish soldiers and as many as 243 Kurdish fighters were killed had simply run its course as its goals had been met.”

There are bonus stories about space soot and Maya blue beneath the fold.

1. There is a Record-high ratio of Americans in prison reports the Washington Post. “More than one in 100 adult Americans is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving even far more populous China a distant second, noted the report by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.”

2. The Los Angeles Times reports $4 gasoline? It’s news to Bush.

   President Bush said today he was unaware of predictions by some analysts that gasoline could reach $4 a gallon by this spring because of strong demand and reformulation.

   “That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that,” Bush said after a reporter asked about the prospect. “I know it’s high now.” …

   Bush again touted the benefits of alternative fuels and conservation. But he chastised Congress for talking about an $18-billion tax increase for large oil companies.

   “All that’s going to do is make the price even higher,” he said.

3. The Washington Post reports the ‘Virtual wall’ along U.S.-Mexican border fails and is to be delayed. The completion of the project’s first phase is delayed at least three years. “Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.” The project built by Boeing “did not work as planned” nor “meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol… Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.” The total cost of the project is unknown, because the DHS does “not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed, the materials to be used, or the cost to acquire the land.”

   Meanwhile, The New York Times reports a Border patrol agent’s trial in the killing of a migrant starts in Arizona. “In a patch of desert just north of Mexico, what began as a relatively routine interception a year ago ended when a Border Patrol agent shot and killed an illegal immigrant at close range… The agent, Nicholas W. Corbett, 40, was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide for a shooting that prosecutors say was unprovoked as the immigrant, Francisco Javiér Domínguez, 22, was surrendering… The prosecutor, Grant Woods, a former state attorney general, said Wednesday at the trial that Agent Corbett had lied to supervisors about what occurred… ‘We all respect the Border Patrol and law enforcement, but you don’t kill somebody who is trying to surrender,’ he told the jury.

4. The Guardian reports Adopt defence system or face disaster, warns US official.

   Failure by the European allies to adopt a missile defence system could lead to the break up of Nato, the top US official responsible for promoting the controversial project warned today.

   Lt Gen Henry Obering, director of the US Missile Defence Agency, painted almost apocalyptic scenarios at a conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London today. He said that Iran could simultaneously block the Straits of Hormuz and provoke terrorist attacks in Europe, and that al-Qaida could acquire nuclear weapons…

   “The decisions we make today, right now, will shape the future,” he said. Europe could not wait until Iran possessed long-range missiles.

   There remains widespread scepticism in Nato about Washington’s claims regarding the need and capability of a missile defence system and the intentions of the Iranians, alliance officials admitted today.

1. The Exxon Valdez oil spill has finally reached the Supreme Court. Bloomberg News reports The Damage award amount is questioned. “U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned the $2.5 billion punitive damage award assessed against Exxon Mobil Corp. for the 1989 Valdez oil spill, the largest in American history.” Not unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly Chief Justice John Roberts said “I don’t see what more a corporation can do,” indicating Exxon’s “prohibition on alcohol use by on-duty vessel officers.” Of course, I doubt it occurred to Roberts that Exxon could have used double-hulled oil tankers, for example.

   Exxon is arguing, according to Reuters, that “it should not be punished for the mistakes of the ship’s captain. But the lawyer for about 33,000 commercial fishermen and others harmed by the nation’s worst tanker spill replied that Exxon Mobil for three years had overlooked reports that Captain Joseph Hazelwood had a drinking problem. Attorney Walter Dellinger said the record award was necessary to punish the huge Texas-based oil company, which earlier this month reported the highest-ever quarterly profit for a U.S. company of $11.7 billion.” Obviously, at $11.7 billion a quarter, Exxon is about to go out of business.

   The Los Angeles Times reports the Exxon Valdez oil spill lingers in Alaska.

   When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in March 1989, the world saw images of blackened seabirds and otters and seals, of bloated whale carcasses and once-pristine beaches covered with crude. Hardly anything was said about the herring.

   No one at the time understood the fish’s central place in the ecosystem, nor did anyone know the herring’s demise would lead to years of hardship for the people here…

   The herring disappeared four years after the spill — long after intense public scrutiny had faded and the story line had devolved into squabbling between lawyers.

   Exxon claimed the region recovered quickly. Government scientists, however, said oil remained and was still working its way through the ecosystem in a process that would last decades. At the back of a local tavern, hand-scrawled graffiti expresses a common sentiment here: “Oil spills are forever.”

   In December, nearly 19 years after the spill, scientists published the most definitive study of its kind linking Exxon oil with the collapse of the herring population. Oil killed adult herring, but more significantly, it damaged eggs and larvae.

   Surviving fish developed lesions in their livers. Larvae hatched prematurely and never grew to their full 8 or 9 inches. They showed depressed immune systems, which made them susceptible to disease.

   The population, which used to be scooped up by the millions of tons, never recovered and, from indications, may never return.

   $2.5 billion in punitive damages is too small of a fine against this eco-terrorist company and environmental mass-murderer.