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.

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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.