Archive for January, 2007

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Wanted: Congressional Curiosity

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

Robert Scheer has been watching the Libby trial with a slightly off-focus set of spectacles: it’s not that Libby lied about his knowledge of Plame that’s important but the deliberate lying to Congress about the need for war by the office of the Vice President — at least.

At length, Martin explained how she, Libby and Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley worked late into the night writing a statement to be issued by George Tenet in 2004 in which the CIA boss would take blame for the bogus claim in Bush’s State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa. After ‘delicate’ talks, Tenet agreed to say the CIA ‘approved’ the claim and ‘I am responsible’—but even that disappointed Martin, who had wanted Tenet to say that ‘we did not express any doubts about Niger.’ ” Tenet later was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Certainly this deliberate corruption of the integrity of the CIA, the nation’s premier source of national security information, rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which the Constitution holds out as the standard for impeachment.


Scheer: Impeachment

I don’t think Congress needs necessarily to start out with Impeachment hearings but some nice loud sniffing at the smell by several committees might be nice; hearings; testimony. Surround the guy with facts before opening fire….

Posted in Bush Administration, General | No Comments »

Wanted: Constitution Returned

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

You may recall the name of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit who warned last Aug. 17, in a case brought by the A.C.L.U. “There are no hereditary kings in America.”

She was ruling in a suit brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union for monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The president, she wrote, had “undisputedly violated” not only the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, but also statutory law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Administration, which reversed itself in January and said it would, in future, seek warrants before evesdropping, appealed Judge Taylor’s ruling. Oral arguments begin today in the Federal Appeals court in Cincinnati.

One of the plaintiffs, James Bamford, writes about the issues and the case in the NY Times today.

Posted in Bush Administration, Civil Liberties, General | No Comments »

Scientists Testify

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

Three more good thing about having Democrats in the majority: hearings, hearings and hearings.

Yesterday one of our favorite bulldogs, Henry Waxman, got a grip on the pantlegs of the Bush Administration, hearing testimony at the House Committe on Oversight and Government Reform on the President’s censorship crew.

Another witness, Rick Piltz, said he resigned in protest in 2005 from his job with the federal Climate Change Science Program when he became convinced that the administration’s goal was to “impede” the understanding of climate science among the public and even the Congress.

Part of his job, Mr. Piltz said, was to compile periodic assessments of government climate research for the Congress. “This report has essentially been made to vanish by the Bush administration,” he said.

“…even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration’s actions…”

Scientists Criticize

Update: Isn’t it great to read ledes like this in outfits with names like The Bayou Buzz?

“The Bush administration has consistently misled the public about the threat of global warming, said scientists who testified yesterday before a US House committee hearing into political interference with climate change science. Global warming also took center stage at a separate hearing in the US Senate yesterday, where the debate flared as senators offered their views and solutions regarding climate change.”

Misleader In Chief
The Union of Concerned Scientists’ investigation of governmental interference in science is here.

Posted in Bush Administration, Climate Change, General, Science & Technology | No Comments »

Water: Australians Drink Pee…

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Not in the tourist brochures…

An Australian state plans to introduce recycled sewage to its drinking water as a record drought threatens water supplies around the nation, a state leader said Monday.

Australian farms and most cities are in the grip of the nation’s worst drought in a century, with some areas receiving below-average rainfall for a decade.

Water: Done Gone

Posted in Water | 1 Comment »

Iraq: Army of Heaven

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

The reports in the western press about the big fight near Najaf over the weekend have been confusing, if only because the facts themselves are confusing, and those in a position to interpret the facts have agendas they need to further.

One narrative is that a millinarian Shiite group, opposed to mainstream Shiism, believing in the end-times (sound familiar?) had gathered over the past months on a farm owned by one of its supporters and dug themselves in, got trained in weapons use and gotten supplied with all sorts of heavy weapons — including two anti-aircraft guns. A tip on Saturday led to an Iraqi government army probe into the area upon which all hell broke loose. A special forces Iraqi brigade was called in, and then elements of the US forces. After an all day battle the millinarians were defeated with some 400 dead, and only 25 coalition forces dead.

Of course depending on where the information is coming from everything varies, from numbers, to how the battle started, to who really were in the anti-government forces. What seems pretty clear is that a major attack on important Shiia shrines on the holiest day of the Shiia year was being planned — by other Shiia.

The only place to turn to get the best facts available is Juan Cole and even he finds events obscure. He does confirm, however, that the Shiia splinter group exists, and like splinter groups everywhere has murderous feelings towards its once brethren. For more details see Juan.

Cole links to this Helena Cobban / Reidar Visser post on Islamic end-times beliefs. They are of course twins in different clothing of Christian end-times beliefs. Abraham bequeathed us such lovely armies of believers…

Posted in General, Iraq, Religion | No Comments »

Climate Change: IPPC Report

Monday, January 29th, 2007

The news is rightly filled with the IPPC report on Climate Change due out on Friday. CNN International leads with “How worried should we be?” The expert’s answer is “Very.”

Here is a link to IPCC itself with links to many other sources.

I’m glad the Dems are in power. I’m glad Barbara Boxer has taken James Imhofe’s place. But frankly, I don’t think most of us have the message yet: no great change in our behavior. People get more upset at mink coats than climate catastrophe. Go figure.

Posted in Climate Change, General | No Comments »

Nigeria & Oil

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Sunday I went with friends to see a pretty amazing one-man show at the Marsh Theatre in the Mission District of San Francisco. Dan Hoyle, son of the famous Geoff Hoyle of the Pickle Family Circus and other, is an artist in his own right now.

Following 10 months in the oil producing region of the Niger Delta of Nigeria [10% of US oil], Hoyle gives us a dramatic introduction to the politics, the people and the problems of life in oil country. Taking on dozens of personalities in dozens of accents and dialects, Hoyle embeds his impressions of this corner of Africa in our minds and emotions. As one of our friends said after the powerful closing monologue: “It makes you want to sell your car, ride a bike and cut down on oil use everyway you can.” Yep

Tings De Happen extended through March 31.

Posted in Africa, Energy, General | No Comments »

Art for Life’s Sake

Monday, January 29th, 2007
Abu Ghraib 72

We have linked you to Fernando Botero’s amazing paintings before. Some of them are now on display at US Berkeley, Center for Latin American Studies at the Doe Library. Botero himself will open the exhibit today, Monday January 29th.

Botero at Berkeley

“Anti-American it’s not,” Botero said emphatically. “Anti-brutality, anti-inhumanity, yes. I follow politics very closely. I read several newspapers every day. And I have a great admiration for this country. I’m sure the vast majority of people here don’t approve of this. And the American press is the one that told the world this is going on. You have freedom of the press that makes such a thing possible.”

Kenneth Baker on Botero

Posted in General, Torture | No Comments »

Commander in Chiefiness

Monday, January 29th, 2007

Gary Wills brings it to our attention that we too have been militarized with linguistic slight of hand.

WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

Read on

And more about this Commander in Chief here….

The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called “the father of the Constitution,” fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”

Limits of Presidential Power

Posted in Bush Administration, Civil Liberties, General | No Comments »

Insight Shame

Monday, January 29th, 2007

The tempest last week of Obama’s early schooling and Clinton’s alleged interest in it — invented by a Moonie website and promoted by Murdoch new pornographers — has subsided, temporarily. Watch for it, and others like it, to rise repeatedly in the years to come. Until we as a society come up with ways to make it less profitable to peddle lies we are going to get plenty of them

Jeffrey T. Kuhner, whose Web site published the first anonymous smear of the 2008 presidential race, is hardly the only editor who will not reveal his reporters’ sources. What sets him apart is that he will not even disclose the names of his reporters.

But their anonymity has not stopped them from making an impact. In the last two weeks, Mr. Kuhner’s Web site, Insight, the last remnant of a defunct conservative print magazine owned by the Unification Church led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was able to set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting.

Liars on Parade

“…in an interview, John Moody, a senior vice president at Fox News, said its commentators had erred by citing the Clinton-Obama report. “The hosts violated one of our general rules, which is know what you are talking about,” Mr. Moody said. “They reported information from a publication whose accuracy we didn’t know.”

But has Mr. Moody taken any disciplinary action? Have the sponsors of Rush Limbaugh’s bilious screeds reviewed their corporate guidlines?

Posted in General, Media | No Comments »

Iraq: The Right and the Wrong

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Chuck Hagel, Senator from Nebraska, is about as Right as they come in the Senate. But he’s about as right as it gets on the war in Iraq. Here’s a excerpt from a recent GQ interview. They are talking about the fall of 2002 when the President was pushing big time for an invasion.

CH: …finally, begrudgingly, they [The White House] sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

CH: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?

CH: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

But that should also have triggered alarm bells about what they really wanted to do.

CH: Well, it did. I’m not defending our votes; I’m just giving a little history of how this happened. You have to remember the context of when that resolution was passed. This was about a year after September 11. The country was still truly off balance. So the president comes out talking about “weapons of mass destruction” that this “madman dictator” Saddam Hussein has, and “our intelligence shows he’s got it,” and “he’s capable of weaponizing,” and so on.

And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored.

CH: Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that’s what we were presented with. And I’m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, “I don’t believe them.” But I was told by the president—we all were—that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.

You were told that personally?

CH: I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, “This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us.”

Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father?

CH: Yep. He said, “That’s what we’re going to do.” But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, “Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don’t think there’s anything in there.” They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn’t been in there. We didn’t know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn’t do it! So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.

GQ

Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton still wants it both ways.


Clinton Dodges Political Peril for War Vote

Ducking the Question

Frank Rich has her number.

“I would never have expected any president, if we knew then what we know now, to come to ask for a vote. There would not have been a vote, and I certainly would not have voted for it.” John Kerry could not have said it worse himself. No wonder last weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” gave us a “Hillary” who said, “Knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I would never have pretended to support it.”

Hillary Clinton’s Mission Unaccomplished

Posted in General, Iraq, War | No Comments »

Nuclear News

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

The strange case of Iraninan Uranium, with dire implications for the world, is taking more twists and turns.

While Iran has notified the AEIE it intends to mount 3,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium others claim it is not nearly capable of doing any such thing: “Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders.” Inside Iran significant voices (i.e. clerical) have been raised against the President’s drive to rub his future nukes in the world’s face, worried that his following Sadam Hussein’s lead in boasting of what he has not in order to cow the neighbors may wind up with similar results: bombing and invasion.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, south of Russia, it is revealed a year after the fact that a Russian had been arrested in February, 2006 for having 100 grams of enriched uranium in his britches. While this is certainly possible, and scary as hell, none of the stories I have read specified how he was carrying the deadly stuff, and how it was discovered. One story even carried a picture of a plastic baggie –as though it were marijuana. I don’t think so: enriched uranium — and 100 grams is enough for 4 nuclear devices — would fry his testicles in a matter of minutes. Funny thing is that Russian authorities are calling the arrest a provocation and a big setup rather then being curious about the facts of the case — which, if true, should worry them as much as us. Much more likely than a nuclear bomb is the use of thimble fulls of the stuff in ordinary, say car, bombs to be disbursed whither the force of the blast takes it.

And what is the only significant nuclear power in the world, the US, doing to lessen the threat of a nuclear arms race? Why developing smaller, more powerful weapons itself, while planning to carry out open air tests, called Divine Strake of all things, to monitor fall out and blast patterns. Fortunately the good citizens of Utah are up in arms.

Posted in General, Nuclear | No Comments »

Dowd On Lunacy

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

” Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?”

M Dowd

Posted in Bush Administration, General | No Comments »

Libby Trial: The Meat of the Story

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

I for one find it hard to follow the Libby trial stories, in part because the news stories are so badly written (for example, “Cathie Martin received a call in July” with no reference to the year, in an article which is talking about 2003, 2006 and 2007.) But in some ways Libby himself, and whether he lied to Fitzgerald is just the plot device to bring us through an incredible book about how this administration thinks and works, how hard they worked to dupe those who voted for them, and to lie about their dupering.

This from AmericaBlog

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Option 1: “MTP-VP,” she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

Also, Ms. Martin verified that the White House uses the trick of putting out bad stories late on Friday afternoon:

And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.

With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. “Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday,” she said. “Fewer people pay attention when it’s reported on Saturday.”

We all hope, of course, that Tim Russert (Meet the Press) is proud to see his name in lights — and that he will understand what is being said about him here: Tim Russert, Lap Dog!

FireDogLake is the place to go for ongoing and thorough commentary on the trial. (With a fine pic of Russert looking an awfully like Chucky.)

Posted in Bush Administration, General | No Comments »

SOTU: More on Prezzie Plans

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

“About one third of greenhouse gases emissions in the the U.S. come from cars and trucks. Thus, a 20% cut in gasoline consumption would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 6%, at best. Since a large portion of the gasoline reduction would come from liquefied coal–which, when burned, makes double the CO2 of burning gasoline–even this modest 6% decrease in emissions might end up at zero. The President offered no plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities or industry, whose emissions will continue to grow at about 2% per year. Overall, greenhouse gas emission will grow by 14% over the next decade under the President’s plan, according to Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. The consensus among most climate scientists is that emission of greenhouse gases must be radically cut 50-60% globally by 2050 in order to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.”


Sez Jeff Masters on his weather blog.

Posted in Bush Administration, Energy, Environment, General | No Comments »

Iraq: Birding

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

A friend has offered to set up a trip to see the birds of the Garden of Eden. Since the offer is contingent on my translating from Arabic the new Field Guide to the Birds of Iraq we may be too old to actually make the trip. Ever. It is rather stunning that in the midst of what we are hearing and seeing that anyone has time or concentration for field guides, birding or even looking at the sky….

The release of the ‘Birds of Iraq’ field-guide adds weight to the conservation movement that has started to emerge in the country. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, the Mesopotamian Marshes – thought to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden and home to 28 of Iraq’s Important Bird Areas - have been the focus of a major international programme to help restore their ecological and social-cultural heritage.

Birding Iraq

[thx Bob Whitson]

Posted in Environment, General, Iraq, Species | No Comments »

Applauding Turkishness

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

There seems so little to applaud in the world today it is worth warming our hands against each other when the occassion is offered. The reactions being reported over the past several days to the assasination of Hrant Dink in Turkey, reactions of sorrow, of condemnation, of reaction against the ultra nationalist hatred of Armenians, are signs of hope. Even where ethnonationalism seems the most deep-rooted and the purveyors of it the least shameless progress is being made.

More than 50,000 mourners, including senior Turkish and Armenian officials in a rare display of unity, poured into the heart of Istanbul on Tuesday to bid farewell to Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist who was gunned down outside his offices last week, a death that many Turks hoped would be a catalyst for change.

…normally chaotic sections of Istanbul were subdued as ethereal Armenian music played from loudspeakers along Republic Avenue; Turks of various ethnicities stood shoulder to shoulder, many in tears.

Many mourners waved circular placards reading “We are all Hrant Dink” in Turkish on one side and in Armenian on the other.

Still other signs read “Murderer 301,” a reference to the law under which scores of writers and intellectuals, including Mr. Dink and the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted in lawsuits filed by nationalists.

Enmity Fades

My notion on the contentious use of “genocide,” a word invented in the 1940s, is to replace it with something like googolcide… meaning the collective murders of very large numbers. Stop making the imputed horror that the extermination of a race is intended; make it that very large numbers are being exterminated, never mind the motives.

Posted in General, Middle East | No Comments »

Bird Die Off

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

Just one more indicator of the handbasket taking us all to hell.

Nearly half of the world’s waterbird species are in decline, mostly due to rapid economic development and the effects of climate change, according to a global survey released Tuesday.

Waterbirds in Decline

Birds and many species can rebound spectacularly under normal conditions. In the drought of 1977 in the Galapagos on the island of Daphne Major the population of finches fell from 1,400 to 300. When the rains returned in December of 1977, after several breeding seasons, the population returned to pre-drought size, though with variations in beak-size as the breeders tired to compensate for the change in food supply.

What is worrisome about the world-wide decrease in water fowl population is that it is not due to random or transient causes — a drought that will be replaced by rain. Human development and loss of habitat — the prime reasons for the decline — are not going to be reversed soon. Though it is instructive that in parts of Europe and North America, where knowledge is being applied, habitats are being set aside, and restored and bird populations have stabilized in recent years.

Posted in Environment, General, Species | No Comments »

Habeus Corpus: Not in My Constitution

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

In one of the more astounding –though it should not have been– revelations about his intellectual, historical and moral reach, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who had voted for the Gonzalez confirmation, that “the Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus.”

For plenty a comment on this see ThinkProgress, Crooks and Liars, The Blue State. For the definitive take on Mr Gonzales you could check in on Steven Colbert.

Posted in Bush Administration, General, Law | No Comments »

Denigrating Turkishness

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

Poor Hrant Dink, made as he said, into a pigeon, “equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.” Worse than being killed is waiting to be killed. Here are a few excerpts from his final column before his death.

Those who tried to single me out and weaken me have succeeded. With the false information they oozed into society, they created a significant segment of the population who view Hrant Dink as someone who “insults Turkishness”.

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector…

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.


Hrant Dink’s final article

What makes his death so troubling is more than the state imposition of what the truth is to be regarding the death of 1,000,000 Turkish/Armenians in the early 1900s for being prematurely “anti-Turkish,” it is that all nations hold similar views — even those who condemn Drink’s death. What is the outrage in the US over flag burning, the almost yearly attempts to make it illegal but anger at “insulting Americanness”? You could make a list in an hour or two of those furious at their compatriots for “insulting Japaneseness, Chineseness, Germanness, Spanishness…” Perhaps the bar is lower for denigrating Turkishness than for denigrating Americanness. Perhaps not. Try suggesting at the Annual White House Press Association dinner that the US is directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Central America in the last decades of the 20th century. See if the disdain meter doesn’t spike.

Posted in Civil Liberties, General | No Comments »

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