Today's GOP

Goering's Own Party

Select quote:

"Every person who opens the door -- as long as they're white -- I'll say, 'I'm James Hart. I'm running for Congress. My name will be on the ballot in the Aug. 5 Republican primary. I think white children deserve the same rights as everyone else.'"

This guy is a sick puppy.

Zoinks!

Awfully sorry about the lack of updates this past week.
 
I pulled another marathon week at the old lithography mill. We're doing work for Analog Devices.
 
I think that all I would post has already been said by others far more eloquently than I could ever hope.
 
One new and noteworthy item is that the DNC gave Kerry a far bigger boost in the polls than I would have thought...Actually, I did have that thought :)
 
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The only other item is one of a personal nature. An emailer asked me about my political philosophy.
 
In the interest of full disclosure, here it is:
 
Ideologically, I am an anarchist on the order of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. However, pragmatism trumps ideology in my case. Hence by practice I am somewhere in the liberal/libertarian sphere. This is not the neo-liberalism as evidenced by current trade policies which have done nothing to empower the third world. It can easily be shown that neo-liberal policies have been repressive and in fact have insured that the poor remain so..Or that their situations even worsen.
 
I'll expound on this in the near future.
 
One final note. I was in Boston during the past week, and whilst I noticed a increased police presence, this may be due the fact that I was conditioned to notice their increased presence. The big media tells us what to think about. They tell us what's important to their interests. Security issues are big news events in the post 9-11 world. The media insures that this remains so.
 
Corporate/government media(propaganda?) doesn't always tell us how to think, but they do tell us what to think about. The jump to the manipulation of how we think about issues is easily breached. We are indoctrinated at a young age, and fed a steady diet of half-truths, untruths and other assorted distortions. We are raised to be manipulated.

General Stuff

The Dems Bostonian lovefest begins in earnest today. C-SPAN has the goods. Tonight's scheduled speakers include: Fmr. Pres. Bill Clinton, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Fmr. Pres. Jimmy Carter, and Fmr. Vice Pres. Al Gore.

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The housing market checked in with a surprisingly strong performance. Wall Street isn't impressed. It is almost a certainty that June's report will be the high-water mark for home sales(in this cycle). Last week's dismal report on building permits is the forward looking indicator..and it's not pretty.

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Buy Google at IPO? Is Google worth $39.1 Billion?

I won't be amongst the buyers.

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The newly free Iraqis are displaying oddly autonomous behavior. Don't they know that this is a conditional freedom?

Things are as deadly as ever in Iraq.

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Moore's film is in uncharted territory - for a documentary. $103.5 million and counting.

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Poll de jour

In a show of just how undemocratic the electoral process truly is, USA Today has polled 'battleground states.' You know, the few states that get all the money and attention lavished upon them because these states could go to either candidate.

For what it's worth, Kerry is polling better than Gore did in 2000 in the polled states, except for Florida.

The GOP and Science

It is stupefying that some members of the GOP think that there is a magical place where scientific research and politics meet and flourish.
 
From BioMed Central:

WASHINGTON, DC—Members of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel yesterday (July 21) challenged senior Bush administration officials over the propriety of asking the political affiliations and policy positions of scientists being considered for federal government advisory committees.

"Is it inappropriate to ask their party affiliation?" John E. Porter, NAS committee chairman, questioned government witnesses yesterday. "There is no specific prohibition against asking it," replied Robert Flaak, senior policy adviser in the General Service Administration, which oversees laws regarding federal advisory committees. "I see no reason why that would be important. [But] there are cases, in a policy-related committee advising the president, where perhaps it could be of interest."

Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, and Standards, told the NAS panel that political viewpoint questions are indeed appropriate because scientific advisory committees represent "the nexus between politics and science."

"Scientists should not consider themselves to be a privileged class that is somehow above politics," said Ehlers, who is also a research physicist. "Scientists must be in touch, even in tune, with the political realities around them. Only by understanding the political process can scientists fully integrate science into decision-making."

But Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Government Reform Committee who has issued his own allegations of Bush administration interference with government science, disagreed. "When it comes to scientific advisory committees, I don't think that the politics of the president or the administration should play any role in the selection. It ought to be solely on the basis of the competence of the scientists."

The NAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy is seeking ways to encourage greater participation by scientists in government. Yesterday's meeting assumed heavy political overtones, coming amid continuing complaints by research and public interest groups that the Bush administration is politicizing science and science policy. The committee plans to release its recommendations shortly after the November elections.

The Union of Concerned Scientists earlier this month issued a report claiming "new evidence that the Bush administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels." The report cited several instances in which candidates for National Institutes of Health (NIH) councils said they had been asked during interviews if they had voted for President Bush and whether they supported his policies.

Waxman is correct. The GOP has one engineer in the House. There are a couple of physicians, and that's all for those trained in 'hard science.'

The only "nexus between politics and science" should be whether to fund research project A or B. The same rules regarding scientists' voting patterns, and or party affiliations should be applied as religion is in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution wherein it states:

...The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

If you're from Michigan, and in Ehlers' district..send him home for the holidays. I think it's a good message to send :)
 
This is an issue that touches all of us. From real, unfettered research on climate change to stem cell work, there is arguably no more an important long term issue confronting us.

Lack of Updates

Sorry about the recent lack of updates. It is not that I have not read much to comment about, but a combination of home improvements(repairs?) and an awful case of some influenza-ish physical malady have left me without time and energy to post much.
 
I'll make an attempt to update tomorrow.

Housing - Down and Out?

I've held the view that this so-called economic recovery has been a lot weaker than the usual suspects have proclaimed.
 
(a quick search using the form in the LH column will give you a few dozen mentions)
 
This morning the Census Bureau released it's June 2004 numbers concerning new housing activity.
 
It's not pretty.
 
I'll give you the highlights as I see them.

• Construction of new homes in the U. S. slowed in June, falling 8.5 percent from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.802 million.

 

• Starts of new single-family homes declined 9.5 percent in June to 1.489 million seasonally, the lowest level since May 2003.

 

• Building permits, a forward looking indicator, for single-family houses slid 6.2 percent to 1.51 million.

 

• Overall building permits tumbled 8.2 percent to 1.924 million units. It's the sharpest decline in permits in 10 years.

 

• Over the past five months, housing starts have averaged 1.926 million, down from last month's 1.952 million.

The number of homes already in the process of being built remains at high levels, but, and this is a big butt, building permits crashed.
 
As the housing market and consumer spending were the two legs holding this fragile economy together, if these housing start figures prove to be more than an aberration, then this could prove very damaging to the so-called economic recovery.
 
"The recent weak patch of economic news for June, on consumer spending, employment and industrial production, has not dented most economists' view of an economy reaching cruising speed". So reads a snippet of this Reuters' article detailing some poll numbers of economists' expectations for the balance of this year and next.
 
Me, I'm not an economist, but I do watch broad indicators of economic activity. I'd say that the glass is half-full, and someone's treating themself to a quenching drink.
 
The $64,000 question is of course, who is correct? Or are we all wrong?
 
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the University of Michigan's Consumer Confidence Index rose slightly for July. Consumers are slightly more optimistic about the near future than in June, but will they continue to spend? Do they have any more credit with which to continue to spend?
 
Wages have lost money to inflation, and personal debt is at or near all-time record levels. Energy and food costs are way up, and this of course erodes consumers abilities to purchase hard goods - durables.
 
So, I'm less sanguine than the surveyed economists. This is not news. Time will tell if any of us are reading the tea leaves accurately. I use the price of copper as a measure of economic activity. While copper prices remain high, it is off it's peak, and the trend is beginning to turn murky. Copper could go either way at this juncture.
 
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Iran? Show me.
 
So, if some the 9-11 hijackers merely passed through Iran on their way to wherever, that's a lot less aid than the U.S. gave all of them. Now that's ugly.

Town Haller Needs History Lesson

At TownHall.com, where "The Conservative Movement Starts Here"(is conservatism a moving experience?), columnist Paul Jacob opines about Washingtonian hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle(which is really just one side).
 
Unfortunately, Mr. Jacob hits an area that I'm pretty well versed in. The writings of Madison are a special source of intrigue for me, and I know some of his writings quite well.
 
Here's what Jacob claims:

Much of the hypocrisy in Washington politics involves partisanship. It appears that ideas don't matter nearly as much as whether there is an R or a D stitched onto the chest of the idea's advocate.

Partisanship is winning out: Politics has become a football game with a blue team and a red team competing for all the prizes of power and money. The goal is to win the game by staying in office and by getting or keeping your team in the majority - so you as a congressman get the bigger and better slice of perks, pork, privileges, and power.

That's much different than the body of citizen representatives our Founders envisioned - men who would act not as part of the factions so feared by Madison, but as an independent board of directors to run government according to the rules, the Constitution, and for the benefit of us all as shareholders.

But our Founders' dreams are not today's reality. This can be seen in the reckless disregard for principle, and in the routine trivialization of ideas. The issues that so animate the citizenry have become mere objects to be used to win the game by the partisan professional politicians populating the nation's capitol.

First of all, the founders' of this country were indeed professional politicians. Or, at the very least, white men that could afford to take the necessary four months off in order to draft the Constitution and Articles of Amendment. This situation applied to all centralized governmental processes wherein those attending needed to physically meet.
 
Does that sound like the common worker of today, or does it more likely reflect the moneyed and privileged?
 
Madison was very class conscious. When he uses the word 'factions' he is using it as means to differentiate between the gentry - of which he was part - and the proletariat. The founders' - very much a class of ruling elites - wanted to control the political and social processes of the new country. Why else would the electoral have been written into the Constitution?
 
Lest you think I am in error, and that Madison meant something else when he used the term 'factions,' I refer you to the following text from Madison's Federalist Paper number 10:

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

Now there you have the real Madison. Far from being a democratically minded product of the enlightenment, Madison was, as he wrote above, supremely conscious of class. He was a member of the ruling elite of the eighteenth century. Madison considered he and his class above the rabble, and together, they structured government in a way that would solidify and perpetuate his conceptions. Read the whole document. Ideologically, Madison had more in common with Marx than he does with the fabricated history that we are taught in school.
 
I'll be emailing Mr. Jacob with the entirety of Federalist Paper No. 10
 
He just might learn some real history :)
 
Before anyone asks me what I was doing at TownHall.com, I sometimes go there to see how much I don't fit into the reactionary cheerleader mold. It can be quite invigorating.
 
Besides, it's my birthday!
 
Birthday Update: Sarah McLachlan will not be performing at my birthday party later today. Something about 'doing her hair.' :)

Unsorted Stuff

First of all, I'd like to wish the folks at Blogger/Pyra/Google success with the new WYSIWYG blog editor. I think it sucks, but it should enable people even less qualified than me to publish their spurious opinions via a blog.
 
Now, on to a couple of news items.
 
I see that Allawi is going to get tough on terrorists. Which terrorists? USA Today reported earlier in the week that 2% of people being held in Iraqi jails and prisons were foreigners.
 
Allawi learned his lessons from the MI6 and the CIA very well. He's establishing a "security service" to deal with the "terrorists." One must keep in mind that Allawi was the teller of the infamous "45 minutes" claim.
 
Of course we don't know how much real support Allawi has amongst the Iraqi populace. Time will tell.
 
Relatedly, the unconflicted U.S. government is scolding the Filipino government for pulling troops out to spare a man's life. The U.S. NEVER negotiates with terrorists.
 
See: 1983 Beirut, Lebanon when another faux cowboy in White House, we did much the same...Nevermind, you're supposed to forget about that.
 
The other thing that caught my otherwise sleep deprived attention this morning was that Martha got 5 months in the joint, and another 5 months of "home detention." I'm sure she'll somehow make it through the 5 months confined to her stately Connecticut manor.
 
Now, we have to look at Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay. If Martha gets 10 months for making what - $20K? - Kenny Boy should get an "Arabian Crew Cut" if convicted :) (yes, I just made that up)
 
This WYSIWYG editor is a real step backwards. *sigh*

Success!!

The blog now renders acceptably well in IE at 800 x 600.

I think I'm done messing with the CSS for a while - okay, maybe a tweak here and there - but that's all.

Once I fill the blog up with topical stuff over the next week or so, I'll be engaging in a link swap drive.

I do have one really interesting item for you(at least I found it interesting). Karen Kwiatkowski was interviewed by Philip Dru back in May. You can D/L and listen to the interview by clicking on → this link ←. Neocon strategy explained by someone that was right there listening. There is a lot of material covered. It's almost an hour and a half, and well worth your time. In my humble opinion. It's a 10MB D/L. If you'd rather listen to the interview in streaming audio, here's a dial-up friendly 16k stream.

Die Wirtschaft

Sorry about my use of German for the entry title(The economy) but I'm reading Marx. I'm concurrently reading Keynes so I'm more than a little confused about economic theory at present :)

No worries though, as real world economics are vibrant and many faceted things that seem bent on confounding theories and rendering equations useless..or else we're all being mislead. Nah. That could never happen.

The state of the U.S. economy seems to be wiltering under the summer heat.

The labor market is loosening, producer prices slipped unexpectedly in June, and the housing market - which has been the bulwark of economic strength all throughout the last four years - is cooling as sure as interest rates are rising.

All told, the stimulus from the Bush tax cuts appear only in the rear-view mirror. The various talking heads that were raving about Bush's economic plan were directly benefitting from it.

For those of you using IE at a resolution of 800 x 600, help is on the way. I have a couple of days to reapply the old template and it'll be right as rain.

Back on Thursday

I have been on a data recovery crusade..I lost the working template to pure bs - that is, that template that works in the utterly useless IE browser at 800 x 600.

So, I'm using a linked stylesheet to reconstruct the template...essentially reverse engineering the blog template via a stylesheet.

If I could spend a few uninterrutpted hours on the template, I'd have it done. Unfortunately, Thursday July 15 is the soonest I'll be able to work on it.

A Thousand Pardons

If you've come to the site using IE at a resolution of 800 x 600 the left hand column doesn't display properly(scroll down to see what it looks like and contains).

IE using 1024 x 768 doesn't have this issue..Higher resolutions are also okay. When I developed the CSS, it did render properly in IE at 800 x 600. I made a couple of adjustments..Minor, I swear, and now it's just bad.

Gecko engined browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape 6 and newer render it properly at 800 x 600.

I'm terribly sorry for this inconvenience, and will have it rectified by 7/8 early in the PM. I'd work on it now, but due to my working late at night, I must get some shut-eye.

Again, I'm dreadfully sorry.

Todd

Krugman

Today's Krugman piece is pretty good. While it is his opinion of course, there are facts presented to support his(Krugman's) position.

I have held that this 'recovery' has largely passed the vast majority of Americans by. My measure of the robustness of any recovery after a contraction is how does wage growth compare against inflation?

As is likely to become the norm, while corporate profits boom, wages for working people have lost ground to inflation. This is, in no small part due to neo-liberal trade policies. This is commonly referred to as globalization.

No matter who is elected in November, this issue is going to prove to be amongst the toughest economic challenges.

Of course, regular readers of pure bs know that everything is temporal except for the damn environment! This is the one issue that needs to take center stage and stay there until we reach a global environmental homeostasis...Or all die trying. Damn it! Why can't anybody in either of the major political even begin to talk about the one issue that may cause the extinction of the human race if left unchecked? Is this not an important enough issue?

Sorry for the digression.

The best series I have heard on how the money really works, is Smithy's Wizards of Money. It is terrific. The website is new, so it doesn't have all the information about all the episodes. There are 22 episodes, each one indispensable, and often drawing on the subsequent episodes..So, it makes sense to listen to them in order. The old website's URL is: http://www.wizardsofmoney.org/indexold.html, and all the episodes are available for download from the A-infos page here. The A-infos project has a tremendous amount of 'not on CNN' news and programming, but the site is a bit awkward to navigate.

The series starts out with basic money tidbits about how money is created, and progresses all the way to how money interplays with environmental issues such as oil, and why the Hell we haven't signed on to Kyoto, to the future use of our national public lands and how Disney is looking at getting in on the 'eco-tainment' industry.

It's intelligent programming that everyone should be required to have exposure to..Try it. If you don't think it's the best economic series you've ever experienced, I'll give you a full refund!

Important tip: As A-infos is a bit bandwidth choked, it helps the download process tremendously if you use a download manger that splits the files into segments, and then combines them. Justin, at a developer's tale recommends the excellent Internet Download Manager. You'll want this utility even if you have broadband. Pure bs is on a 3mb/sec. connection, and the IDM really helps.

Now, before an astute reader informs me that even the Earth itself is temporal on a 'deep time' scale, I am aware of this fact :)

CSS Loaded - New bs

Tell me what you think?

New CSS stuff in the rh and lh columns..and less clutter.

This begins my crusade for 10 new link exchanges.

If you want to swap links, my email is listed in the lh column under the 'contact' sub-header.

Blogger Still Wonky

Okay. I have tried to update pure bs to v0.5, but Blogger won't allow me to publish my new template today. In preview mode, it looks to be quite an improvement.

Meanwhile, in 'free Iraq' it's still deadly, Mr. al-Sadr may get amnesty from Allawi, while he(al-Sadr) vows to fight on.

Illustrating just how quickly things evolve in 'free Iraq,' The Guardian is reporting that any amnesty announcement has been delayed. Jack Straw, the UK foreign secretary reportedly indicated British support for amnesty..No doubt waiting until after calling across the pond and getting the nod from Washington to make such an announcement.

It's a whacky world.

CSS Complete!

Well, the CSS for the blog is complete and renders properly in IE, Mozilla FireFox, Netscape 6, and the little browser that's bundled with Homesite v5.5

I'd try and publish it today, but a combination of too much sun, beer and the weird behavior of Blogger have lead me to postpone publishing until sobriety and Blogger are once again in harmony.

Once published, I'm going on a link exchange drive. My goal is for ten new links. I think that's readily attainable(I am almost always successful because I set the expectations bar low :).

More Site News and a Post

The new CSS is nearly done, and I'll be plugging it in tomorrow.

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Brad DeLong was cited on Salon.com yesterday. Part of his post here was picked up by Salon.

"Is George W. Bush responsible for the fact that the employment situation is lousy? No. The economy is an ocean liner, but the president is not its captain. Presidents influence the economy. They don't control it."

"But are he and his administration responsible for the fact that the employment situation is as lousy as it is? Yes. He sold his tax cuts as employment-generating stimulus programs, while in fact they got only about half as much employment bang for the deficit buck as a reasonable program would have. Think of it this way: Suppose your insurance agent tells you you ought to get homeowner's insurance. You give your insurance agent $4,000 to buy homeowner's insurance. You then have a small fire. And your insurance agent then tells you that you're only getting half of the damage covered--that he only used half the money to buy insurance, and spent the rest buying his friends large flat-screen TVs. That's the situation were in: sold as jobs programs, the Bush tax cuts got us only about half as much insurance against a lousy labor market as a real job-promoting stimulus that cost the same in deficit terms would have generated."

That's how it's now shaping up - the 'recovery' has been great for corporate profits, while creating far fewer jobs than other 'recoveries,' and wages are losing ground to inflation.

The wage issue isn't likely to go away. Corporate America has but one goal: to increase shareholder value. All the rest is way down the list.

When the Fortune 500 can dangle the carrot of jobs here at third-world wages versus the stick of moving those jobs to an already third-world country, you bite the bullet. Neither prospect is palatable. It's almost a stick and stick approach. And that's if you're even given the option.

Then, once your job is 'outsourced' the same unaccountable corporate power will use the same techniques to further their profits and produce a whole series of labor forces vying for ever depressed wages.

Here's a snippet from the linked article:

It's unlikely that employees will get raises that outpace inflation over the next five to 10 years, said William A. Niskanen, former acting chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors during the Ronald Reagan administration.

"I don't see any substantial increase in average real wages for some time," said Niskanen, who is now chairman of the Cato Institute, a Washington research group. Niskanen and other economists cite global competition, which forces companies to keep costs down, shrinking union clout and continuing slack in a labor market with an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent, up from 4.2 percent when the last recession began in March 2001.

The disparity between pay and prices may keep President Bush from fully capitalizing on the economy's addition of 1.2 million jobs this year, the best five months of job growth since 2000, as he runs for re-election, said political analysts including Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"The stagnation in wages leaves open a big target" for Democratic challenger John Kerry, Mann said. In terms of pay, "a lot of Americans have been left behind," he said. "Kerry now has an opportunity to ask, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?' "

After accounting for inflation, wages and salaries have been growing less than a third as fast as they did after previous recessions, Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, said in a note to clients this week. The rise in pay this time is "far short of the nearly 10 percent gains that occurred in the first 29 months of the preceding six cyclical recoveries," Roach wrote. "This translates into a shortfall of $280 billion in 'missing' real personal income."

If you want to find out what's really going on, read the business press(that was from a Bloomberg piece).

Sure, there are cheerleaders in the business press, but you're far more likely to get at least some reporters with integrity. Remember, their constituency is doing very, very well.

Krugman on Pundits, Moore

I haven't been reading Paul Krugman lately.

In today's NYT, he states the obvious about the Punditocracy's fawning over Bush, and the other standard used to criticize Moore over his latest.

...There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?...

Why indeed? It's abundantly clear that the pundits are echoing the sentiments of their paymasters.

The various sets of standards that pundits ascribe to their wide range of interests simply add more credence to the now all too obvious fact that the 'liberal media' is at best a myth. Pundits are - with a few notable exceptions - owned wholly by corporate giants. Thus, we consumers of media are fed a steady diet of opinion ranging from far-right to a sort of chewy-centered, smarmy moderate-right that is supposed to represent the loyal opposition.

I should point out that I'm not a fan of Michael Moore's. I am however, less a fan of those applying differing standards if 'circumstances' dictate.

Poland Claims WMD Buy Thwarted

Oddly, the U.S. claims the warheads impotent.

Not every U.S. citizen makes shit up to justify their actions after the fact.

..."the US military said that while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless."

The U.S. military gets the pure bs Truthteller of the Day award.

Site stuff

Copygodd left a comment about "peak oil" after reading this entry.

His comment has moved me to make what is turning into a long entry. An expanded version of the linked-to-entry will be up either tomorrow or Sunday.

In addition, I am reworking the site's CSS. I have the right hand column finished, and am working on the LH column.

Again, expect that to be posted by no later than Sunday.

If you have any ideas as to how to make the site more user friendly, leave a comment.

New GYWO

*SPECIAL* Post-Sovereignty Edition!

Iraq, and The Cost of War

What are the two metrics that people traditionally use to tally the cost of war?

They're axiomatic, I think.

1) Casualties - the military's euphemism for deaths.

2) Raw dollars - at least here in the U.S. where the masses worship at the temple of the greenback(I am amongst the masses, although I'd like to believe that I am not so inured to the amassing of wealth - evidence supporting this belief are few indeed).

The Washington based Institute for Policy Studies along with Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of IPS and the Interhemispheric Resource Center have compiled a more realistic picture of the true costs of the Iraq war. The IPS has been called a 'liberal' think tank by the corporatist press corps elites. I have yet to see anyone refute their conclusions, and a web search turns up nothing substantive.

Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

Key findings:

I. Costs to the United States

A. Human Costs

U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 836 U.S. military. Of the total, 693 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 5,134 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, including 4,593 since May 1, 2003.

Contractor Deaths: Estimates range from 50 to 90 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths. Of these, 36 were identified as Americans.

Journalist Deaths: Thirty international media workers have been killed in Iraq, including 21 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

B. Security Costs

Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda's membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq. A former CIA analyst and State Department official has documented 390 deaths and 1,892 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. In addition, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world in 2003, more than any year in contemporary history.

Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government's standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 54 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey felt that the "the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over."

Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq. Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are "first responders," including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country's police forces have lost officers to Iraq. In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

C. Economic Costs

The Bill So Far: Congress has already approved of $126.1 billion for Iraq and an additional $25 billion is heading towards Congressional approval, for a total of $151.1 billion through this year. Congressional leaders have promised an additional supplemental appropriation after the election.

Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household. Another economist, James Galbraith of the University of Texas, predicts that while war spending may boost the economy initially, over the long term it is likely to bring a decade of economic troubles, including an expanded trade deficit and high inflation.

Oil Prices: Gas prices topped $2 a gallon in May 2004, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to a mid-May CBS survey, 85 percent of Americans said they had been affected measurably by higher gas prices. According to one estimate, if crude oil prices stay around $40 a barrel for a year, U.S. gross domestic product will decline by more than $50 billion.

Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased "several hundred percent" between 2002 and 2003.

D. Social Costs

U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration's combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. Instead, the administration's FY 2005 budget request proposes deep cuts in critical domestic programs and virtually freezes funding for domestic discretionary programs other than homeland security. Federal spending cuts will deepen the budget crises for local and state governments, which are expected to suffer a $6 billion shortfall in 2005.

Social Costs to the Military: Thus far, the Army has extended the tours of duty of 20,000 soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans' groups.

Mental Health Costs: A December 2003 Army report was sharply critical of the military's handling of mental health issues. It found that more than 15 percent of soldiers in Iraq screened positive for traumatic stress, 7.3 percent for anxiety, and 6.9 percent for depression. The suicide rate among soldiers increased from an eight-year average of 11.9 per 100,000 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2003. Almost half of soldiers surveyed reported not knowing how to obtain mental health services.

II. Costs to Iraq

A. Human Costs

Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of June 16, 2004, between 9,436 and 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During "major combat" operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in Southern Iraq.

B. Security Costs

Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis say they have "no confidence" in either the U.S. civilian authorities or in the coalition forces, and 55 percent would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country immediately.

C. The Economic Costs

Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, only 1 percent of Iraq's workforce of 7 million is involved in reconstruction projects.

Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq's reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires.

Iraq's Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 130 attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure. In 2003, Iraq's oil production dropped to 1.33 million barrels per day, down from 2.04 million in 2002.

Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq's health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq's hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Largely because of security concerns, school attendance in April 2004 was well below pre-war levels.

Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country's fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexposed ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

Human Rights Costs: Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and abuse of prisoners, the U.S. military is investigating the deaths of 34 detainees as a result of interrogation techniques.

Sovereignty Costs: Despite the proclaimed "transfer of sovereignty" to Iraq, the country will continue to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and have severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government will not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq's state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.

III. Costs to the World

Human Costs: While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied "coalition" troops have suffered 116 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

International Law: The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be "pre-empted." The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

The United Nations: At every turn, the Bush administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution's capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The recent efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter.

Coalitions: Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called "Coalition of the Willing." This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent.

Global Economy: The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the "stagflation" of the 1970s. Already, the world's major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

Global Security: The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department's annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed "significant" than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

Global Environment: U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq's land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River, for example, flows through Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.

Human Rights: The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.

Well, there you have it.

Additionally, Phyllis Bennis of the IPS moderated a discussion with WaPo readers on 29 June 2004.

How accurate is this portrayal of the "mounting costs of the Iraq War?" I do not know. I do know that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon don't seem willing to address the cost issue. "Too many unknowns". True enough, but not even providing the citizenry with a broad range of cost estimates is disingenuous.

I think that the above cost picture is pretty accurate at this juncture. There is no way to know with certainty where the costs will go from here, but 'up' is historically the good bet during wartime.

Saddam in Court

List of Major Charges:

• Killing of religious figures in 1974.


• Killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983.


• Gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988.


• Killing members of political parties over the last 30 years.


• The 1986-1988 "Anfal" campaign of displacing Kurds.


• The 1990 invasion of Kuwait.


• The suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites.

More specific charges to be filed later.

Let's see..How many of these actions did the U.S. offer tacit or direct support for, or turn a blind eye toward? A case can be made for all of them. Yes. Even Kuwait¹.

"This is a theater, the real criminal is Bush." - S. Hussein 7-1-2004

Saddam was, and is, a very bad guy. He is also largely a U.S. creation.

Let's not create any more monsters.

¹April Glaspie of the U.S. State Department told Saddam Hussein, "I have a direct instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq.. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Source: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html

Anonymous/Moneyed Arabs

Well, the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror is anonymous no longer.

The Phoenix is reporting that Anonymous is one Michael Scheuer - an overt CIA employee. Scheuer is reportedly 'a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center’s bin Laden station (code-named "Alec") from 1996 to 1999.'

A snippet from The Phoenix piece:

Public interest in the book itself isn't at all hard to understand: it's not every day that an active US intelligence officer publishes a work that disputes the Bush administration's assertions, holding that, among other things, bin Laden is not on the run; the invasion of Iraq has not made the United States safer; and that Islamists are in a campaign of insurgency, not terrorism, against the US because of US policies, not out of hatred for American values.

The book confirms the findings of a survey of "moneyed Arabs" conducted by the Wall Street Journal in the days following 11 Sept. 2001.

Immediately after the attacks, the WSJ had correspondents ask these "moneyed Arabs" - the WSJ's essentially two questions.

The first was, "do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the U.S.?

Now remember, these aren't destitute, militant religious fundamentalists, these are the WSJ's constituency - people with lots of wealth. Approximately 70% of respondents had an unfavorable view of the U.S.

The other question was a follow-up. Why do you harbor animosity towards the U.S. The answers were essentially three, and widely held by those harboring 'unfavorable views' of the U.S.

The Arabs were most troubled that the U.S. supported repressive, undemocratic regimes in the middle-east.

They were also angry about the difference of policies regarding the Israelis and Palestinians. They were also frustrated that the U.S. wasn't able to help solve the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

Lastly, they were angry over the decade of sanctions against Iraq which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths(remember, this was well before the Gulf War redux).

These were most often cited reasons for their unfavorable views of the U.S.

This is almost 'line and verse' the steady message bin Laden has broadcasting over the years.

There is no link, as this was only in the print version, and I can find no mention of the piece online. I have some audio that makes reference to the survey, but I cannot find it at the moment(I have over 800 hours of talks on disk, but I have it indexed rather poorly). You can trust me on this. The numbers and reasons for Arab concern are accurate. If I can find the audio, I'll upload it, and link to it.

Go ahead and read The Phoenix article. There is a lot of factual material that isn't widely distributed, as well as speculation about motives.

'They' don't hate us because of our freedoms. 'They' hate our foreign policy positions.

Update: I'm sorry that I didn't refer to "The Phoenix" as "The Boston Phoenix." It's a habit.

Chavez Has Our Oil

Hugo can't be allowed be saying things like:

"Iraqi oil should be handled by the Iraqi people. Otherwise it would be going back 200 years, and I don't want to think that the new century is beginning with colonialism."

The Venezuelan president is already(still?) being demonized in Washington and it's not impossible that Chavez might receive an acute, fatal case of lead poisoning courtesy of the U.S. national security state.

I like the following: "if things do not develop in a positive way ... you are going to see the United States taking a more proactive role." So said an unnamed diplomat regarding Chavez's alleged refusal to hold elections.

More proactive role? I'll ask Don Vito Corleone for a translation.

Chavez is a real problem for the U.S. He was democratically elected, is pro-Castro and of course, Venezuela has oil. Talk about a dilemma.

His reforms seem to be helping the poor. Egads! A monster!

The Bush administration has already supported a short-lived coup d'etat against Chavez, and the recycled Reaganites in the administration purportedly support democracy - yet there is precious little evidence to support that policy declaration.

We know what this gang did in Latin America during the Reagan years. That didn't strike me as what I would call democratic reform.

The U.S. is willing to accept open markets sans democracy, but does not appear to be willing to allow democracy without markets open to U.S. corporate interests.

He'll likely be okay as long as the oil tap remains open.

Should the crude stop flowing out of Venezuela, I fear that the U.S. may do something crude - and all too familiar - to Chavez.

Another Day in the Empire

Bombings, explosions, killings and hostage taking - just another day in the empire.

Convoy attacked, marines dead

Iraq remains treacherous after handover

Some conservatives say they hope U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely as a permanent presences in the Middle East.

"Even if we're successful with the internal struggle in Iraq, this will be a Shia dominated proto-democracy in the Arab heartland. It's going to have repercussions and we have to make sure this thing's protected," said Thomas Donnelly, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

This is how we continue to build American Empire. Neo-conservatism and neo-imperialism are like hand and glove. Of course the policy wonks at the neo-conservative AEI want troope to remain in Iraq. A permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq provides Israel some additional protection - which is paramount to the neo-cons at the AEI, and as an added bonus gives the U.S. effective control of Iraqi material assets. Having the second largest deposits of oil sitting within your(our?) borders is too powerful a resource to be left to those that rightly own it. I'm sure we'll prove good stewards of Iraq's petrochemical wealth.

U.S. Still Failing to meet Iraq's electricity needs

Billions of reconstruction dollars given to U.S. corporate interests in Iraq, while millions of Iraqis remain jobless.

This is no way to run an empire. I think it's past time that we continue trying.

The Post Carbon World

This is amongst the most important post you may ever read. I'm not kidding.

"Saudi oil finance ministers and their U.S. counterparts... lined up to say that the industrial world has nothing to worry about on the oil front for decades. That so many high-ranking Saudi and US officials should gather in public to tell us not to worry should be quite worrisome." - Julian Darley

Oil. How much is really left? What are the viable alternatives? What can we do?

Can industrial society survive or is the "party" over?

I have resources.

Audio interview courtesy of Unwelcome Guests

Hour 1 Hour 2

Julian Darley's Post Carbon Institute website.

Global Public Media's multimedia archive of talks and discussions regarding energy.

At the very least, spend the two hours and listen to the audio interviews. It'll inspire you and or frighten you. Maybe a little fright is just what we need to awake from our collective slumber.

Get out there and stir it up!

Bush Numbers at New Low

A new NYT/CBS Poll finds Bush at the lowest numbers of his presidency.

Lots of interesting stuff here.

I think that there is little doubt that Bush will get a short term bounce due to the Iraqi 'transfer of sovereignty.'

As has been the case in recent polls, Kerry doesn't appear to be benefiting from Bush's ground-scraping numbers.

A telling item from the poll is this:

In Mr. Kerry's case, 36 percent said they had no opinion of him, despite the campaign's record-setting expenditure on television advertisements. That figure is fairly typical for challengers at this point in the campaign; in June 1992, 44 percent of the public did not have an opinion of Bill Clinton.

The electorate is truly asleep.

If you want to view the NYT poll data without registering, just paste the following URL into your address box: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/politics/campaign/29POLL.html?ex=1089086400&en=bf69cb72a2827a2e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

You really should read the piece.

My favorite bit is "Americans were more likely to believe that Mr. Bush would do a better job than Mr. Kerry would in steering the nation through a foreign crisis," and I think it likely more people that think that Bush would be the most likely to foment the "foreign crisis." :)

Read, Learn. Know stuff. Be cool.

CAFTA

Your CAFTA Audio Primer

Listen and learn.

Handoff

Via Reuters

Interestingly, the move was allegedly made two days early in an effort to thwart attacks believed planned for 30 June. Of course, it's U.S. doctrine to never negotiate with terrorists. Pragmatism trumps doctrine.

Conditional sovereignty

The ruling Iraqis do not have authority to:

1) Retake the assets that have been sold and or controlled by allied corporate interests

2) Make "long-term" policy decisions

3) Control the ~160,000 foreign troops still in Iraq

I wish the Iraqis well. I also hope that the U.S. does the right things regarding what are rightfully Iraqi assets.

So ends one chapter in Operation Iraqi Liberation(OIL).

Another New Book

Former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich has a book out. The title of which is: Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America.

As a friend of mine loves to point out, any book with a colon in the title is a popular work masquerading as an academic work. I have found that there is more than a bit of truth in his observation.

Nevertheless, this book is going on my reading list. I have listened to Reich a lot since his stint in the Clinton administration, and he is always engaging and never condescending - Reich is a regular on NPR's weekly Marketplace.

I read a review of the book that gives much of it away, but that's okay.

Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America

pbs forecast: Expect "Radcon" to achieve some popular usage. It's Reich's term for the 'slash and burn' economic policies that Gingrich/Limbaugh/Reagan/Bush have endorsed. If you can't eliminate it, as in Social Security, privatize it. This rewards their big donors. In place of the "social contract", the same group of "Radcons" has delivered crippling blows to our future with deficit spending, and a seriously out of control expansion of the DoD budget while almost eliminating taxation on the extremely wealthy.

From what I've read about the book, it offers a pretty convincing case, and Riech is a really effective communicator.

One added bonus is the title, I'm sure it was aimed at Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery..blah.

At this rate, I'm going to have to start a pure bs money raising campaign. Nah. I can afford it.

If you've read the book, or have alternate information about it, leave a comment.

Serbia to be Privatized?

Yoo-Essay Today is reporting that "pro-democracy" candidate Boris Tadic has won the Serbian presidential race.

Here's a tiny bit:

The presidential vote was seen crucial to whether Serbia moves closer to the European Union and NATO or sinks back into the nationalist isolation reminiscent of Milosevic's autocratic regime.

Three previous attempts to elect a president since 2002 failed because too few voters showed up at the polls. This vote was certain to produce a president regardless of the turnout, after Parliament earlier this year scrapped a 50% turnout requirement.

Articles like this are fun. They don't tell the reader anything..Or do they?

U.S. Americans equate democracy with capitalism. Pro-democracy means opening up of Serbian markets to multi-national corporate interests. Yes, this is a very wrong way to define democracy, but it is the one that U.S. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe.

Real democracy isn't something that is in the interest of the ruling class. In privatized America, we are conditioned that the "social contract" is a bad thing, and that the Fortune 500's interests are our interests.

30 years of corporatist propaganda has been so effective that legions of people vote for candidates that stand for a platform that is in direct opposition to their own best interests. In fact, if you ask them about American propaganda, they'll either deny its existence, or claim that they're not affected by it.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive.

Democracy does not equate to capitalism in practice. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.

The 'free-marketers' in this country, and around the world, have concentrated wealth and power for themselves while increasing levels of poverty for virtually everyone else. This is capitalism in practice. Is this democracy?

If you believe it to be so, then it follows that your vote is given equal weight to that of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. If you believe this, then I have a series of experienced bridges that you might be interested in...Have a look. :)

No, this is not a Democrat versus Republican issue. Bill Clinton mined silicon valley for money like no other before him, and W..Well, there is hardly need for comment.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive, and it irritates me like few things.

Back in The States

Well, I am back in New Hampshire. I must say that after a week in the tropics, that life stateside is highly overrated.

The only thing that I can see as a plus is that here I have a broadband internet connection. Not a great consolation.

I found that I can be a very much 'type b' personality given the proper environment.

A different perspective is vital for growth. Having your biases and realities challenged by others that are trying to get to some kernels of truth in a world dominated by lies and obfuscations is at once both draining and exhilarating.

I managed to read a book while in St. Thomas.

I read Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq by Stauber and Rampton. Cover art courtesy of This Modern World creator Tom Tomorrow, AKA Dan Perkins.

A good read, and while much of the content has since been covered by others, and in more detail, it is still a good primer on how governments of all stripes use propaganda and yes, lies in their push for war, or any other unpopular program.

Fear not. This is not going to become a travel log.

This post is the last time I am going to mention my trip. I need to catch up on what's going on. Our flight back was delayed by five hours by some sort of communication f*ck-up between American(the airline) and the Kennedy Space Center.

I'm really tired.

Thanks to all of you that have checked in over the last week. Yes, my entries were sparce, but I am back! :)

Go Figure

Ripped From Reuters

Majority of Americans Now Call Iraq War a Mistake
Thu Jun 24, 2004 07:45 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans now say the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll released on Thursday.

Amid continuing violence in Iraq and questions about the justification for the war, 54 percent of the 1,005 Americans polled said it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq, compared with 41 percent who held that view three weeks ago.

The findings mark the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake, USA Today reported on its Web site.

In addition, the poll found that for the first time a majority also said the war in Iraq has made the United States less safe from terrorism.

Fifty-five percent said the war has increased U.S. vulnerability, compared to a December poll in which 56 percent said the war made the United States safer.

The war's original justification was to stop Iraq deploying weapons of mass destruction. None have been found.

President Bush has also said the Iraq mission would make America safer by bringing democracy to a key country in the Middle East.

In Iraq on Thursday, insurgents killed about 100 people in a wave of attacks across the country aimed at sabotaging next week's transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.

Despite Americans' changing attitudes toward the war, the poll found Bush in a statistical dead heat with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among likely voters, Bush edged out Kerry 48 percent to 47 percent. Three weeks ago, Kerry led 49 percent to 43 percent.

In the new poll, 60 percent of respondents said they believe the Massachusetts Democrat could handle the job of commander-in-chief, but most Americans indicated they trust Bush more in that role, 51 percent to 43 percent.

The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

I have rarely understood polls(yes, I know the math ;)), hence I don't pay them much heed.

Iraq is almost an entirely a notion of Bush's - as best we can tell - and is now seen as not only a mistake, but a majority also now believe that Georgie's Excellent Iraq Adventure has made the U.S. less safe. Yet, Bush is more trusted in the role of commander-in chief than Kerry?!?!

Is this a major lack of critical thinking, or am I merely insane?

Okay, my sanity aside, it is still a most perverse thought process that doesn't make the sledgehammer-to-the-forehead obvious disconnect that while Bush got the U.S. involved in a war now seen as a mistake on several levels, the voters trust his military leadership more than Kerry's. Hey, you can't make this stuff up.

This could be attributed to Bush's wholly unwarranted cult of personality, but I think not.

I'm sticking with Americans' general lack of critical thinking skills. It seems most likely. If the results of this poll aren't an outcry for better education in this country..Then I am insane.

Who's Buying a President?

I like charts, graphs and the like.

Let's take a very cursory look at how Wall Street buys access.



From this chart we can see the top 5 Wall Street influence peddlers paid to their guy in order to garner favorable legislation. I'm sorry, rather they did so out of benevolence. opensecrets.org lists $2,173,703 to the Bush 2004 campaign, whilst Kerry was awarded $528,237.

Remember the Internet ad"Unprincipled" that the Bush team ran in February? We do. That was a major distortion.

Truth is, Bush has taken far more "special interest" money than Kerry.

(Can you really call a GOP candidate taking tobacco money a "special interest?"..I'd argue it's a "regular interest" of the GOP's)

More fun courtesy of opensecrets.org:

Special Interest Money

 

(Selected Industries)

 

(Donations to 2004 Presidential Campaign)

 

                            Bush          Kerry

Paid Lobbyists            $960,154       $234,920

 

Lawyers & Law Firms      $7,085,942     $3,474,264

 

Real Estate              $6,678,976      $787,124

 

Securities               $4,820,780     $1,087,925

 

Health Professionals     $3,010,576      $392,187

 

Insurance                $1,850,532      $134,250

 

TV/Movies/Music           $522,725       $475,050

 

Pharmaceuticals           $393,100        $55,650

 

Telephone Utilities       $285,250        $10,000

 

Health Services/HMOs      $171,450        $33,950

 

Tobacco                   $107,500         $5,300

Those are some of the numbers.

As Greg Palast so aptly put it: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

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Staying with the literary bestseller topic, I am not at all interested in reading W.J. Clinton's My Life. I think the next tome I am going to read is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present. I know where Zinn is coming from, and I think that a counter to history written by the ruling class is necessary.

****************************************

I know that my spelling, syntax and punctuation have been really awful this week. I blame it on a combination of all-too-cheap rum, and this mind-warpingly slow web connection. See any psychology text for a comprehensive definition of: rationilization :)

More Messy Democracy

Iraqis launch seemingly coordinated attacks across 5 cities. According ot the linked WaPo article, the cities of Baqubah, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad all came under attack by 'insurgents.'(Will we be calling these same people 'residents' next week after the "handover?")

I don't mean to make light of the ongoing violence, but the attacks underscore the ongoing lack of any real security in Iraq.

WaPo is reporting at least 69 dead, including more than 20 Iraqi police and 3 U.S. soldiers.

Update: The death toll is now being reported as 100

Shifting Terror Tallies

Terrah data follies..Bush style. I'm sure you've all heard about the Administration's shell game concerning the numbers of terrorist events, and resultant casualites - but did you know this?(I didn't)

Bush and top aides have blamed terrorists for deadly attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, but few of those assaults were included in the total. The administration does not count attacks aimed at on-duty troops because they are combatants.

One can only wonder what the totals would have been if they had included those attacks in the totals.

More:

New figures released yesterday by the Bush administration show dramatically higher terrorism casualties last year than the State Department documented in an April report that U.S. officials heralded as evidence of great progress in the battle against terrorism.

The statistics show that 625 people died in terrorist attacks last year, not 307 as first reported. The corrections also reveal a larger number of incidents deemed "significant" by government analysts than at any time since U.S. authorities began issuing figures, in 1982.

John O. Brennan, a 23-year CIA veteran who oversaw the effort, took "personal responsibility." He blamed antiquated computers and personnel shortages for the errors and dismissed suggestions that the administration purposely fabricated the figures.

"Anyone who might assert the numbers were intentionally skewed is mistaken," said Brennan, director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), created by President Bush to produce efficient and comprehensive assessments of domestic and international terrorism.

When the April report was released, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said it provided "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight." Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Armitage's words were based on incorrect information.

The revised figures show that more people were killed by terrorists last year than at any time since 1998, apart from 2001, when the Sept. 11 hijackings caused 2,973 deaths. Terrorist bombings and shootings left 3,646 people injured around the world -- more than in any year in the past six.

Via WaPo.

Do I think that this juggling is related to election year politics? To "an exceptionally antiquated database?"

Was the d-base antiquated last year?

The Bush administration is likely playing 'three card Monte' with the data.

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I'll try and post another entry after me and my SO have a couple of rum drinks..That should be entertaining. *hiccup*

Be Very Afraid

Rumor has it, she's moving in.

I don't fear much. But I fear pop stars. And clowns. And pop star clowns. *shiver*

Do Something Good

It won't hurt a bit. While it's always a good idea to buy the least environmentally damaging vehicle, the specter of long term higher gasoline prices gives you an additional incentive to buy a fuel efficient automobile.

Here are the top ten as compiled by the EPA for city driving.

                            City/Hwy  

Honda Insight               60/66 mpg  

Toyota Prius                60/51 mpg  

Honda Civic Hybrid          48/47 mpg  

VW New Beetle TDI           38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Golf TDI         38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Jetta TDI        38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Jetta Wagon TDI  36/47 mpg  

Toyota ECHO                 35/43 mpg  

Toyota Corolla              32/40 mpg  

Scion xA                    32/38 mpg

No, they are not exciting.

I can't be the only one to notice a total lack of U.S. branded autos on this list. Disturbing, no?

An easy Corporate Average Fuel Economy(CAFE) primer.

The commonly cited reasons against raising CAFE standards would be humorous - if they weren't so scary - and are such an obvious ploy by U.S. automakers to attempt to maintain the status quo regarding average fuel economy. Here are the condensed arguements:

Critics maintain that, increasing CAFE standards would actually have a reverse effect in terms of the environment. They argue that once people begin paying less and less for gasoline as their vehicles get more efficient, they are more likely to spend more time driving. Opponents cite fears of the safety implications of downsizing vehicles, claiming that raising CAFE would lead to more unnecessary on-road deaths per year.

This is pure bs. There are no rules of physics that equate smaller vehicles with higher rates of death. In fact, cars are much smaller today than they were in the '50s, '60s, '70s..And death rates are down substantially.

On the other hand, those high-domes at the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) think higher CAFE standards are a good idea, but what do those scientists know? *sarcasm*

The best counter arguement is that if we continue to burn hydrocarbons at an ever-increasing rate, it now seems likely we'll hasten the demise of civilzation - yes, civilzation. Habitable planets are hard to find.

Full pbs disclosure: My finely tuned '92 Toyota Tercel gets no less than a combined 37MPG.

If you're in the market for an new automobile, keep the environment in mind. It's amongst the most important decisions you'll ever make.

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Beheading is bad. Can we please stop this heinous act?

Island Time

It's going to be a light blogging week, as this is the week I'm in the Carribean.

I'm in St.Thomas. It's very nice, but I'm also on dial-up :(

I'll see what's going on tomorrow.

Kwazy Kurds

In another show of messy democracy, the Kurds in northern Iraq are expanding their territory. Problem is, the territories that the Kurds are claiming as their rightful homeland areas are now populated by tens of thousands of Arab Iraqis.

A snippet:

[snip]...In Baghdad, American officials say they are struggling to keep the displaced Kurds on the north side of the Green Line, the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Americans agree that the Kurds deserve to return to their ancestral lands, but they want an orderly migration to avoid ethnic strife and political instability.

But thousands of Kurds appear to be ignoring the American orders. New Kurdish families show up every day at the camps that mark the landscape here, settling into tents and tumble-down homes as they wait to reclaim their former lands.

The Kurdish migration appears to be causing widespread misery, with Arabs complaining of expulsions and even murders at the hands of Kurdish returnees. Many of the Kurdish refugees themselves are gathered in crowded camps.

American officials say as many as 100,000 Arabs have fled their homes in north-central Iraq and are now scattered in squalid camps across the center of the country. With the anti-American insurgency raging across much of the same area, the Arab refugees appear to be receiving neither food nor shelter from the Iraqi government, relief organizations or American forces.

"The Kurds, they laughed at us, they threw tomatoes at us," said Karim Qadam, a 45-year-old father of three, now living amid the rubble of a blown-up building in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. "They told us to get out of our homes. They told us they would kill us. They told us, 'You don't own anything here anymore.'"...[/snip]

I suspect the most troubling aspects of the Kurdish activity are that:

• The activity of resettling into their former lands is accelerating as the 'transfer of authority' draws nearer.



• The Kurds are threatening to pull out of the Iraqi national government if they don't feel that they have 'sufficient autonomy.'



• The Kurdish 'up yours' to the U.S. plan of a gradual reclaiming of their homeland could spark civil war, and the issue of perhaps a hundred thousand new Arab Iraqis without adequate services isn't likely to win the Kurds friends amongst the Arabs not displaced.

As the Kurds are likely our only allies inside Iraq, there is little doubt that the U.S. is in a quandary as to what to do about them.

Why am I getting a sense of we've seen this sort of U.S. ambivalence between different populations inhabiting the same geography before? Yes. That is a rhetorical question.

Are the Kurds going to 'demand' that the lines of Iraqi statehood be redrawn? Two countries - one Kurd, one for the rest? If that occurs will the Shia and Sunni populations then demand the same, resulting in three new countries?

It's not unfathomable that this could happen, although I think it unlikely at this time.

Yes, democracy can be messy. The birth of the U.S. was plagued with many of these same questions.

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In keeping with the Kurdish theme, here's an AFP piece I found while article mining at NewsNow

From the AFP newswire:

Armed Kurds abduct 10 taxi drivers in revenge for murders

20/06/2004 AFP

KIRKUK, Iraq, June 19 (AFP) - 20h25 - Armed Kurds abducted here 10 taxi-drivers from Samarra to avenge the murders there last week of five Kurdish Iraqi army recruits, a police spokesman said Saturday.

"Armed Kurds abducted from Kirkuk bus station 10 taxi drivers from Samarra, where five Kurds were recently kidnapped, killed and their bodies burnt," the police officer said.

He said he did not know where the taxi drivers had been taken.

A Kurdish official here announced the deaths of the five Kurdish recruits on Monday.

Their car had broken down near Samarra, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad and they were heading to a garage for repairs when they were attacked, he said.

Kirkuk, 255 kilometres (157 miles) north of Baghdad, is known for tension among its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab populations.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long summer.

Hearts and Minds

It is being widely reported that A U.S. air strike in the Iraq city of Fallujah has killed at least 18 and as many as 24 Iraqis. It is being reported that women and children are amongst those killed.

The strike was ostensbly an effort to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be linked to al-Qaeda. As we've reported previously, al-Zarqawi's group, Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, was at odds with bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and a member proclaimed that al-Zarqawi's group was created to be an alternative terrorist group for "Jordanian's not wanting to join al-Qaeda."

The U.S. military hasn't said anything that I can find as of posting time that would lead one to believe that al-Zarqawi or any of his people were killed in the strike.

Stating the obvious, this is likely to further inflame anti-U.S. sentiment ahead of the 'transfer of sovereignty' to Iraq on 30 June.

It doesn't matter how we perceive this event. What matters most is how Iraqis and the Arab Street views this operation, and how they will respond.

I read the English version of Islam Online to get a perspective that the U.S. corporate media simply will not be allowed to broadcast.

A breaking story without any link I can find is that Iraqi women are marching to show support of Moktada al-Sadr.

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Random bs.

I think the U.S. should abolish the oxymoron: smart bomb

Blog Stuff

I'm working on another template for the blog. I want to really clean up the RH column, and style the LH column. I'm leaving the center column as it is....I like it just the way it is.

I'm also going to do away with the style switcher. The two upper links to pop-ups are going to get a face lift as well.

I hope it's a change for the better.

Oh yeah, the best part about this new template is that I'm going to work on it as the plane carries me to the Carribean next week.

I'll be on dial-up, but it's only nine days. Oh, the things I endure. :)

Wage Depression

There has been a lot of partisan tit-for-tat bickering over the strength, nature and yes, even the reality of the current economic expansion.

It's no secret that Bush has been actively talking up the economic recovery recently, saying the economy is in "high gear".

Equally apparent is Kerry's downplaying of the current economic expansion. Kerry is - as late as last week at least - invoking comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Leaving aside the long term issues that ever-widening deficits and lack of spending control is likely to have, what is the current and likely near term state of the economy? How is the state of the economy affecting wage workers?

I'll make a meager and incomplete attempt to answer these two questions(please bear in mind I'm an engineer, not an economist).

I'd say it's a mixed bag. This rising tide hasn't lifted all boats. In fact, while corporate profits have been quite robust - startlingly so - the wage worker has actually lost ground.

Where's my evidence, you ask. From the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Right from the Feds.

As far as their respective statements on the economy, both Bush and Kerry are right, and also wrong.

By the numbers:

Corporate profits have risen ~62.2% since the peak, compared to average growth of ~13.9% at the same point in the last eight recoveries that have lasted as long as the current one. This is the fastest rate of profit growth in a recovery since World War II.

This certainly bolsters Bush's statements about the current state of the economy when he talks about "company profits" and so forth. I have no qualms about that. It's accurate.

Total labor compensation has also turned in a historic performance: growing only 2.8%, the slowest growth in any recovery since World War II and well under the historical average of 9.9%.

Most of the growth in labor compensation have not gone toward larger paychecks, they have gone into non-wage items. Rising health care costs and pensions account for the majority of the growth.

Growth in wage and salary income - the primary barometer of the health of wage workers - has been negative for private sector workers: -0.6%, versus the ~7.2% gain that is the average increase in private wage and salary income at this point in a recovery.

This affirms Kerry's position that the economy is currently in a rather weak phase. There is independently verifiable data to make comparisons on some data sets between the economy today, and the Great Depression. Again, I have no issue with this part of Kerry's position. It is supported by facts available to anyone.

I wish that I had ready access to historical 'real' wage data to back up what I have heard cited by commentators on the Left and a few on the Right.

That position is this: growth in corporate profits combined with a drop in wage and salary incomes suggest that the recovery has a narrow base, with most American consumers only able to increase their purchasing power through debt.

Personal debt levels are either at, or within a fraction of a percent of all time highs in the U.S.

This WaPo piece from January of this year highlights both the record levels of consumer debt, and also points out that personal debt will rise along with interest rates.

In summation, both men are right on some key elements of the economy as it is today, and they are also demonstrably errant in their rhetoric about others.

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(I'll leave the bigger picture stuff to Brad DeLong and others :)