From Steve Sack.

From David Horsey.

New Pearl Harbor

As I said earlier, I read the book The New Pearl Harbor, by David Ray Griffin, on the train. Lots of juicy details about 9/11 that never make it into the mainstream media. One of these is the "two-plane theory" for the Pentagon: while some witnesses say they saw a small plane or missile, many others say they did see an American Airlines 757. The physical evidence and the aerobatic maneuver performed by whatever it was that hit the Pentagon strongly suggest that it was a small plane or missile. The "two-plane" theory suggests that a 757 was flown just over the Pentagon at about the same time as the missile struck the building. This one seems pretty far-fetched, but not nearly as much as the official story.

Another theory is that flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to gain control of the plane, may have been shot down by a military jet BECAUSE the passengers tried to gain control. If "Let's roll" had succeeded, it might have blown the cover for the whole sinister plot. The four planes were all scheduled to take off about the same time--but flight 93 was delayed by 41 minutes. This meant that passengers were able to hear about the WTC attacks before 93 reached its target, and thus were the only passengers who fought with the hijackers (depending on what you want to believe about flight 77 and the Pentagon). The military "stood down" while the other planes hit their targets, but the one which might have landed safely may have been shot down.

Another plot element examined in detail is the highly suspicious collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7, apparently the first three steel buildings in history to collapse completely because of fire. The author points out that the tops of both towers fell to the ground just as quickly as they would have had they been dropped through thin air. If the collapse occurred because of weakened structure, all of the floors below would have put up structural, or at least inertial, resistance, which would have caused the collapses to take much longer (and also probably kept them from being anywhere near as complete as they were). Also, the second tower hit was the first one to collapse, and the collapse occurred just as its fires were dying down! The author asserts that all of this is much more consistent with a controlled demolition using explosives placed throughout the towers than with structures weakened by impact and fire. In the afterward to the second edition of the book, the author adds these tidbits:

Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, was a principal in a company called Securacom, which provided security for the World Trade Center…[T]his company was in charge of security for the WTC between 1996 until September 11, 2001, and that it installed a new security system between 1996 and 2000.
…
Wirt D. Walker III, a cousin of Marvin P. and George W. Bush, is also a principal in this company, which in the meantime has been renamed Stratesec.
…
[S]ome WTC personnel reported that “after the security detail had worked 12-hour shifts for the previous two weeks because of threats, five days before 9/11 the security alert, which had mandated the use of bomb-sniffing dogs, was lifted.” This fact is possibly significant because, if the wiring for controlled demolition had been installed earlier, the explosives could perhaps have been affixed during that period.

In the meantime, I have learned of additional reports that may bear on this question. One of these is by a man named Scott Forbes, who has worked since 1999 for Fiduciary Trust… In a personal letter that has subsequently been published, he says:

In 2001 we occupied floors 90 and 94-97 of the South Tower and lost 87 employees plus many contractors.

On the weekend of [September 8-9, 2001], there was a “power down” condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower. This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approximately 36 hours from floor 50 up…The reason given by the WTC for the power down was that cabling in the tower was being upgraded…Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors [while] many, many “engineers” [were] coming in and out of the tower.

Many, many other interesting pieces of information which remain totally unexplained by the official story. The book is an easy and fascinating read.

Made it!

I'm here in California! The train arrived in Sacramento about three hours late, but my brother was almost as late because of the nasty rains they've had out here. Lots of amazing scenery between Tahoe and Sacramento, but I think Colorado was even more spectacular. I'll post more photos when I have time. My brother has wireless internet set up here, so I'll be more or less back in the blogging business for the next eight days.

During the 24 hours I was on the train from Grand Junction to Sacramento, I read the entire book The New Pearl Harbor. It spells out pretty clearly why the real conspiracy nuts in this world are the ones who believe the official explanation, such as it is, of what happened on 9/11. Now, I'm returning to reading The Creature From Jekyll Island, which Rick recommended to me. It investigates to fraud that is banking in general, and the Federal Reserve System in particular. It's interesting in many ways--one that intrigues me is that the author seems to be pretty much a free-market capitalist type, but he comes to generally the same conclusions that I do, that the wealthy elite of the world are using a variety of scams to cheat the rest of us out of house and treasure. If you've always thought that money and banking were too complicated to fully understand, well, that's exactly how they want it. It's a huge fraud, and it depends on most of us being ignorant.

Train Pictures!

I took a whole bunch; I will have them on Ofoto.com in a couple of days. If you'd like to see them, e-mail me and I'll send you an invitation. Here's a sample:

An apparently failed experiment in low-income housing on the south side of Chicago:


Denver at dawn:


Step aside, M.C. Escher! My version of "Three Worlds:"

The reflected woman is a grandmother who rode the train from Iowa to Denver to babysit her grandkids for a week. The view out the window is of Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies play. The third world, of course, is the dirty window itself.

There are many questions about America's energy future. This loaded coal train, one of maybe two or three dozen I saw headed for Denver, provides the punctuation:

A huge dam way up in the Rockies above Denver:


The reservoir for that dam (I think--we had gone around several bends and through several tunnels between the pictures). Note how low the water level is.


The train in a canyon of the upper Colorado River:


Step aside, Ansel Adams!


No, that's not quite right. This should make it more Ansel-y:


The Colorado River, the train tracks and I-70 all share a canyon just east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado:

Earthquake

I first learned of the killer Asian earthquake this morning about 7:30 when I bought a paper in Denver. If you're looking for insightful comments and suggestions for charities to donate to, check out Bob Harris.

Grand Junction!

After spending much of the last two days on trains, I have arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado. The last eight hours of the ride, from Denver to Grand Junction, was spectacular. Up mountains, through tunnels, along the walls of canyons--Colorado by train is amazing. I've taken a lot of photos; I'll try to organize and present them soon.

Traveling yesterday, first from Ann Arbor to Chicago, and then from Chicago westward, was more prosaic. Here are some notes that I made as I rode:

Rail Rants
First and most important lesson of train travel: Don’t try to play Minesweeper on a laptop with a touchpad on a train. One little bump, and you’ve clicked on a mine!

Depressing observation: Downtowns in Jackson, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo look bleakly similar—far too much open space, mostly parking lots. No wonder they’re so dead.

10:47 am Saturday

I left my house this morning about 7:25. Weather.com said it was -3 F; fortunately there was no wind, and most of the sidewalks had been cleared. So my 1.5 mile walk to the train station wasn’t particularly painful. The train seems to be about half full, which is cool. I’ve got two seats to myself, so I can set my backpack next to me and cycle amusements—book, computer, chocolate. Right now we’re probably 20 miles west of Kalamazoo, due to arrive in Chicago in about two hours.

12:10 est
Hammond, Indiana. After going past one gigantic rusty steel mill or power plant after another, I see a parking lot that’s about 2/3 full—on Christmas. Who’s working that hard? Then I see TWO shuttle buses cruising the lot, and they say “Horseshoe” on the side. Then, a big, tacky modern building which says “Horseshoe” at the top. It’s right on Lake Michigan, and there are yachts docked nearby. Then I get it. It’s a casino, and it’s doing pretty good business at 11 am local time on Christmas. Indiana’s a red state, BTW.

12 noon cst
At Union Station, Chicago. Chinese restaurant has two vegetarian offerings: vegetable fried rice and spring roll. I have vegetable fried rice and spring roll. It’s freezing in the dining area. A guy at an adjacent table is talking on the cell phone. He’s apparently a Chicago bus driver—he’s telling the guy on the phone about all the various ways that passengers try to steal rides. Great way to spend the holiday—talking shop in a freezing train station!

1 pm: I go into the grand hall of Union Station; a big open ornate space. Three people sit down near me; they traveled from Johnstown PA the night before—two are going on to Texas, one on to LA. The one guy talking to me tells me about movies that were filmed in that room—The Untouchables and Trading Places, apparently. He pointed at the grand staircase, saying that’s where Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) shot Al Capone, and then ran in slow motion to save the baby in the carriage before it goes crashing down the stairs.

2:20 cst: Pacific Zephyr train leaves on time. Train is quite posh compared to the first one—lots of room! Nobody in the seat next to me, so far (5 pm). Several people got on in Princeton and Galesburg, but still two seats to myself. Camera and laptop both fully recharged!

5 pm: It’s dark outside! Mississippi river coming up in 30 minutes or so.

Heading West

I'm leaving tomorrow (Christmas) morning for California. I'm going on Amtrak, leaving Ann Arbor at 8:23 in the morning. I'll change trains in Chicago. I'll be spending Sunday night in Grand Junction, Colorado--the hotel reportedly has wireless internet, so I should be able to blog from there! Back on the train 24 hours later, arriving in Sacramento about 2 pm on Tuesday. (My ticket goes all the way to Oakland, but my brother said he'd drive out from Palo Alto and pick me up in Sacramento. Maybe we'll see Ahnuld!) Bro Jim just set up wi-fi in his house, so my blogging should continue from there.

If you need a more frequent blog fix, check my blog roll. Lots of great insights there--Michelle seems to have the best links to the most interesting and/or outrageous stories, if that's what you're looking for!

And Happy Holidays to all, especially Bill O'Reilly!

Hu and Hugo Sittin' in Beijing

D-E-A-L-I-N-G. That's right; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is visiting China:

Visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias said here Friday that Venezuela and China willhave a bright future for their energy cooperation as the two countries enjoy sound political relations and China's economy is developing rapidly.

The two countries have made significant progress in energy cooperation since the two nations vowed to establish a bilateral strategic partnership of common development in 2001, Chavez told an audience of nearly 50 businessmen attending a China-Venezuela business talk.

"The progress is the result of Chinese and Venezuelan leaders' strong commitment and businessmen's vigorous push," he said.

According to Chavez, his visit witnessed the signing of a package of energy cooperation agreements between Venezuela and China.

The Venezuelan government will grant Chinese companies production permits to explore oil in Venezuela's oil-bearing blocks.

Chavez also pledged to support Chinese companies' involvement in the exploration of the off-shore natural gas fields in Venezuela.

Most experts seem to agree that our number one rival in sucking the earth dry of oil will be China. Well, just this week they've made deals with two of our top four pushers:

Top Petroleum Exporters to the US, Oct 2004
Country	Barrels (millions)	% total US Imports
Mexico	53.394	16.7%
Canada	52.311	16.3%
Saudi Arabia	49.011	15.3%
Venezuela	41.229	12.9%
Nigeria	31.889	10.0%
Iraq	20.000	6.2%

(source, via Michelle)

And even number six, that shining beacon of democracy on the Tigris, is talking to the Chinese!

I tell you, the next decade or two may be absolutely horrible, but they won't be dull!

New low against euro

BERLIN (AP) -- The U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in thin pre-holiday trading Thursday against the euro, which breached the $1.35 mark after a mixed economic report from the U.S. Commerce Department.

After peaking at $1.3506, the euro eased back slightly to $1.3493, up more than a cent from $1.3381 late Wednesday. The previous high of $1.3470 was set Dec. 7.

From David Horsey.

Think your so wise, do ya?

From R.J. Matson.

From Wayne Stayskal. (PS--it looks like one child is more left behind than the other four!)

From Bruce Beattie.

From Anne Telnaes.

Peak Oil Rant

As mentioned in the Desperado Days article below, the Bushies (if not aWol himself) probably know everything we know, and then some. They know that world oil production will peak, and they may even know when. The biggest difference is in what to do with this information. I basically endorse the Mike Ruppert plan, which involves letting everyone know what peak oil means and immediately making preparations for it--especially through massive conservation. The Bushies pretty clearly endorse a two-part plan--keep people from knowing what's happening while they invent excuse after excuse to start war after war to put a stranglehold on whatever oil production capacity is left in the world. Aside from its obvious immorality, which bothers them not at all, this plan has another big obstacle facing it--the Bushies aren't the only ones doing it.

Chinese leaders seem just as intent at grabbing up resources. Recently, they agreed to do joint military exercises with their long-time foe Russia, and are buying Russian weapons as well. Today, the NY Times has an article about how the Chinese are trying to make deals with Canada to buy up to one-third of Canadian oil exports. Canada, as I'm guessing you may not have known, is currently the number one foreign supplier of oil for the US (that top spot seems to jockey between Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia). From the article:

China's attempts to diversify its sources of oil have already led to several foreign exploration projects in places considered on the periphery of the global oil industry like Sudan, Peru and Syria.
...
"China's gone after the low-hanging fruit so far," said Gal Luft, a Washington-based authority on energy security issues who is writing a book on China's search for oil supplies around the world. "Now they're entering another level of ambition, in places such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada that are well within the American sphere."

I've read articles suggesting that the US-China war would happen around 2020. If peak oil happens soon and both countries continue to insist on their energy-intensive ways, that war could happen a lot sooner.

Quote du Jour

[T]he national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of the nation rests. It will offer protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press . . . in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years.

-- Adolf Hitler

Desperado Days

Zbignew Zingh figures that the Bushies know exactly what's going on--global warming, peak oil, economic collapse--and just have their own way of dealing with it.

Occasionally, we need to step back from the facile criticism of the Bush Administration and think deeper about why it does what it does. It is fun to merely label it insane and delusional and idiotic, for Mr. Bush, in particular, deserves most of those labels.

However, many of us believe that Mr. Bush is just the figurehead for a larger Design and Policy, and he, himself, has acknowledged as much. The “others” responsible for the administration's actions could, too, be idiotic and delusional, but they may not be insane.

We must acknowledge that it is very dangerous not to understand what drives our adversary.

Apart from pure avarice and ego, the actions of the Bush Administration have the appearance of incredible desperateness. It is that desperateness – their desperado-like, passionate, furious recklessness – which must cause us to ask, does the Bush Administration know something that we do not know? What do they know that makes them act like desperadoes?

Perhaps the better question is, do we know anything that the Bush Administration does not know?

The whole article.

It's good to see that not all Zbigniew's are bad!

Challenge the Vote!

Tell senators to challenge the "election" "results"! Progressive Democrats of America is asking concerned voters to support a challenge to the election results on January 6. In January 2001, the 2000 election was challenged by several members of the House, but the challenge was denied by Vice President (and President-elect) Gore because not ONE senator would support the challenge! (As seen in Fahrenheit 911.)

Go here to send an e-mail to several leading Democratic senators, and then do the followup to send e-mails to your senators, leading or not.

Post Mortem

The Washington Post, which was cheerleading as aWol took this nation into the brutal and senseless war in Iraq, sees the ever-growing and obvious signs of failure as only a reason to keep committing the crime:

Those who struck yesterday hope a spectacular and bloody attack will drive the United States out of Iraq, as it was driven from Lebanon and Somalia, and doom those Iraqis who now risk their lives for the elections. That's why the only possible answer is that of those brave Virginia soldiers: to pick up the wounded, pray for the dead and return to the mission.

I am so sick of this BS; the war was a crime when it started, and every day it goes on is a brand new crime. If an intruder came into your house and killed one of your children, would you then decide you wanted him to stay if he offered college scholarships for your other kids? NO! You'd want the bastard out ASAP.

Actually, I'm taking the Post too much at face value. These people know what's going on--that the elections, like every other excuse for starting or continuing this war, are a sham. The Post is just a state-run mouthpiece for the criminals running this country.

GM to cut white-collar jobs

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Corp. plans to offer another round of early retirement offers and buyout packages to U.S. salaried workers early next year, company officials said.

GM declined to say how many employees would receive the offers, but the program is expected to cut the automaker's U.S. salaried ranks — now at 38,000 — by hundreds of employees.
...
DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group plans to exercise a contract provision to reduce skilled trades workers at some of its plants. Troy-based Delphi Corp., the world's biggest auto parts supplier, has reduced its earnings forecasts and is cutting about 8,500 jobs next year. Visteon Corp. has said it will offer buyouts to salaried employees.

In a sensible world facing peak oil and global warming, cutbacks in automobile production would be a completely positive development. But in the nonsensical world we live in, these cutbacks will mean real hardships for real people--loss of health care, mortgage foreclosures, probably some divorces and domestic violence. In our current world, the well-being of a state blessed with many resources (including perhaps the most important, water) depends on selling unnecessary and destructive products to the rest of the world. And in our nonsensical world, the demands of the wealthy few for greater profits trumps the needs of the many for decent wages. So, like everything else, cars will be made where they can be made the cheapest, no matter how many people get destroyed in the process.

Homeless for the holidays

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a minimum-wage worker in the Ann Arbor area has to work 106 hours a week to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment. The NLIHC's Out of Reach 2004 report compares typical rents throughout the country with wages, and the ability of low-income workers to be able to afford rent. It could be worse--in San Francisco, it takes 140 minimum-wage hours! But it's bad enough in Ann Arbor that a man nearly got himself compacted the other night because he was sleeping in a dumpster.

I went to a local town meeting last night, organized by some local peace and justice advocates. Some people talked about things I have been thinking about, like the need to develop a diverse local economy as the global economy inevitably crumbles. Others talked more specifically about issues that the community is not adequately addressing, such as child care, racism/sexism/classism, and affordable housing.

I haven't read enough about the housing crisis to know what the real root causes are or what we can do about it. About all I can figure out so far is that Ann Arbor has a reasonably robust economy, with the University and Pfizer and the auto companies and high tech, that keeps real estate prices high. But the economy is not robust enough to employ everyone, and the low minimum wage keeps many working people in poverty and on the brink of homelessness, if not in it. McMansions continue to be built throughout the area, each one typically housing three or four people, while for the same amount of money apartments housing dozens could probably be built. But the profits are greater with the McMansions, so they get built and the apartments don't.

In general, throughout the country, the problem seems to be that most jobs are in high-rent districts, but the wages there can't pay the rent. So the workers live miles away, spending dollars they don't have on older cars or bus passes.

22 dead, 51 wounded at US military base in Mosul

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Multiple rounds hit a dining hall at a U.S. military base near Mosul on Tuesday, killing 22 people, including U.S. troops, members of the Iraqi national guard, and Iraqi civilians, Pentagon officials said.

Fifty-one people were wounded in the incident -- which occurred at noon (4 a.m. ET) as people ate lunch at the Camp Merez base, the officials said.

The attack came shortly after Bush's poodle arrived in Baghdad:

Standing beside interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at a news conference, Blair -- President George W. Bush's chief ally in launching the war in Iraq two years ago -- acknowledged the dangers and the fact that much of the world opposed the original invasion.

"Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror," he said.

"On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work and have the same democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy. And on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."

What does this nincompoop think US and British troops are doing? They are killing and intimidating and destroying. A car bomb is no worse (or better) than a bomb dropped from an airplane. Insurgents do the first, invaders do the second.

US warplanes have launched air strikes on the Iraqi town of Hiyt, west of the capital, killing six Iraqi civilians and wounding nine others.

Hospital officials said a woman and child were among those wounded in the strikes which began on Monday night on the Jamaiya and al-Sinai districts on the eastern edges of the town, which lies about 170km west of Baghdad.

Aljazeera has learned that houses, shops and vehicles belonging to civilians have been destroyed in the bombing that continued until Tuesday morning.

US marines based in the area had no immediate comment.

Torture directly approved by Bush?

From the ACLU:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

I've pretty much given up hope that ANY revelation about the Bushies is going to have any impact on the national unconsciousness. Bob Harris hasn't completely lost hope, however:

The way the public rolled for the "few bad apples" story about Abu Ghraib was one thing. But would middle America really stand for knowing Bush personally authorized torture?

The fact that I don't know the answer is depressing really, since, um, torture ought to be a no-brainer. But so should unnecessary war, billions of dollars for unworkable weapons, and needlessly destroying everyone's Social Security.

But I have a feeling that Bush's name on such an Executive Order, should it exist, would be huge.

He left out outing a CIA agent, stealing two elections, and presiding over the worst terror attack in U.S. history. That W's popularity shot up after that mindboggling debacle says way too much about the collective intelligence of this country. I remember in the summer of 2003, back when I still had some hope, people would ask me why I thought Dennis Kucinich had a chance of getting elected. I would tell them that as time went on, more people would see that the Iraq war was a disaster based on lies, and that they would turn on Bush and any of the Republicrats like Kerry who voted for the war. Unfortunately, H.L. Mencken was right when he said "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I mistakenly believed that the truth would make a difference. But truth was the first casualty of Bush.

From Kirk Walters.

From David Horsey.

From Jim Morin.

Hopefully this year Christmas will steal the Grinch

From Bruce Plante.

From Slowpoke.

Somebody had a better time in Venezuela than I did!

Douglas Valentine attended a recent "Defense of Humanity Conference" in Caracas, or, judging by his account of it, spent most of his time skipping out on the sessions with beautiful women! It's a long article, probably of less interest if you haven't been to Caracas or to a Venezuelan beach, but his conclusion about Hugo Chavez rings true to me:

The famous referendum was on 16 December 1999, exactly five years ago, Jose says. This was a crucial moment in Venezuelan history, and Chavez's survival depended on a huge turnout in his favor. The rains, Jose says, started on the 14th, and the weather forecasters were predicting a devastating storm. So Chavez got on national TV and gave a speech. He said words that went something like this: "If nature will oppose us, then we will fight and overcome nature."

That's Hugo Chavez Frias, a modern-day Don Quixote. With inexhaustible optimism, he's trying to keep the inexorable forces of Crony Capitalism from sweeping away his policies of government reform and redistribution of wealth. He is fearless and inspirational, and rightly blames the tragedy of December 1999 on the corrupt politicians and businessmen who allowed the shantytowns to be built in the steep valleys in the first place. He is right that the Capitalists don't give a damn about the 50,000 poor people, street vendors mostly, who perished; or the illiterate and malnourished people we saw on our visits to the missions. He is right to appropriate the land of the big companies, which have deforested much of Venezuela, and to give it to poor people to farm. He is right, even heroic, to thumb his nose at the little prick, George W. Bush, who would like nothing better than to dip his blood-soaked hands into Venezuela's oil fields.

Unintentionally funny headline of the day

From the Grand Rapids Press:

What makes a great Santa? It's more than just ho, ho, ho

I'd guess that they meant to put "ho, ho, ho" in quotes, but the rest of the article supports my interpretation--that mall Santas are ho-ing for their corporate masters, making sure that profits and credit-card debts stay high:

Santa for hire is big business. There are dozens of companies around the country that train Santas before they are sent to malls, church fund-raisers, Christmas parties -- even bachelorette parties.

And the pace isn't slowing.

The average arrival date for mall Santas is Nov. 20, according to a survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers. Santa was visited by about 6,000 kids per mall during 2003, it said.
...
Noerr Programs is a Colorado-based company that trains nearly 250 Santas who work in about 200 malls across the country.

"What a Santa does and says can make a huge difference," President Judy Noerr said. "People will shop Santas. Mothers will talk about them in their neighborhoods. If people find a Santa they like, they'll drive hundreds of miles."

Great. Just what we need as peak oil and global warming approach--parents willing to drive hundreds of miles to have someone lie to their children. Not that they mind:

The reindeer, including an antler-heavy 1 1/2-year-old named Thunder, add credibility.

"My third-grader is asking questions, so having the reindeer here was fabulous," said Julia McGonigal of Rockford, who brought 8-year-old Mikaela to see Santa after a Christmas concert. "When we came out, she said, 'Mom, I've got to do my list,' so I think we're good for another year."

Good job, Julia. Keep your third-grader ignorant for as long as possible. Maybe Mikaela can go straight from Santa to drugs and never have to deal with reality at all!

Disabled Man Freezes to Death Outside Apartment

I'm not sure what, if any, moral can be derived from this story. Somebody tried to help by calling the cops; the cops tried to help by calling the building security guard; the security guard tried to help by checking the two main building entrances--but not the third one where the 52-year-old man was freezing in the 7-degree Grand Rapids weather.

My Pet Goat Explained

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

spectacular: 1. adj. Of the nature of a spectacle; impressive or sensational.

From CNN:

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Card said, "I support the FDA. They do a spectacular job."

From the Washington Times:

White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. appeared on ABC's "This Week" and said, "Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a spectacular job, and the president has great confidence in him."

I guess if this numbskull whipsered in my ear that the nation was under attack, I might finish what I was doing first too.

It has been asked before, but I'll update it: If Franks, Bremer, Tenet, Rummy and the FDA are success stories, can anything be called a failure?

Peak Oil--The Department of Energy Knows

The DOE recognizes and basically validates the idea that world peak oil production will occur soon (by 2020 at the latest), if it hasn't already. In a March, 2004 report on oil shale, DOE included the following graph:



DOE later quotes or cites several of the leading "depletionists" who have been trying to sound the peak oil alarm for years:

Campbell and Laherrère, in a 1998 Scientific American paper titled "The End of Cheap Oil," pointed out that:
"About 80 percent of the oil produced today flows from fields that were found before
1973, and the great majority of these are declining." (Ref. 15)
Discoveries did peak before the 1970s as shown in Figure 6. This figure also shows
that no major new field discoveries have been made in decades. Presently, world oil reserves are being depleted three times as fast as they are being discovered. Oil is being produced from past discoveries, but the reserves are not being fully replaced. Remaining oil reserves of individual oil companies must therefore
continue to shrink. For example:

“Royal Dutch/Shell Group, one of the world’s largest oil companies…failed for a third year to find as much oil as it pumped” (Ref. 16).

The disparity between increasing production and declining discoveries can only have one outcome: a practical supply limit will be reached and future supply to meet conventional oil demand will not be available. The question is when peak production will occur and what will be its ramifications. Whether the peak occurs sooner or later is a matter of relative urgency, but does not alter a central conclusion; the United States needs to establish a supply base for its future energy needs using its significant oil shale, coal, and other energy resources.

Now obviously I think that the central conclusion should be that massive and immediate conservation steps need to be taken, not that we should rip up what's left of the American west to squeeze every burnable drop of oil out of the ground. I haven't finished reading the report--I'll have to see what their take is on the potential of oil shales, both in terms of providing energy and in terms of environmental impact.

The key here is that an official report from the Republican administration has validated the peak oil concept and that it is likely to occur soon. Dismissing Richard Heinberg, Michael Ruppert, Kenneth Deffeyes and other peak-oil prophets should be harder for wingnuts to do. Then again, they never let facts get in their way.

Thanks to Cyndy for the link.

Less than delightful, even if apt, imagery

I enjoy reading the blog Xymphora, in part because I usually learn something, but mostly because he makes me feel less out on a limb when I engage in conspiracy theory (something against which there is a vast conspiracy, BTW). Today, Xymphora has a post questioning why the Israelis would risk alienating their biggest supporters (the US) by transferring high-tech secrets and technology to the Chinese. These two paragraphs caught my attention, although the imagery is a little too graphic, even for me:

Problem. The United States is a giant turd circling the toilet bowl, and George Bush is flushing as fast as he can. It's funny how empires at crucial junctures in their histories sometimes find themselves with inspired leaders, and sometimes find themselves with chimps, and the United States has lucked out with a chimp. The combination of religious nuttiness, disdain for the environment, crazy class-warfare tax policy, and ruinous wars would be bad enough, but the real problem is economic, and Bush's complete disinterest in even addressing the debilitating problem of the two massive deficits, budget and trade, which are bound to become progressively worse. He has no ideas for the trade deficit, and his big ideas for the budget deficit, needless to say, involve removing what few benefits poor people now receive in return for their taxes. For all intents and purposes, the United States is bankrupt, by which I mean it will never, ever, be able to pay back what it owes the rest of the world. The only reason the rest of the world continues to fund this disaster is that it needs to keep the American economy on enough life support to maintain the value of the trillions of American dollars held outside the United States, and support the American consumer demand which keeps foreign factories running to create such massive foreign prosperity.

The American economy is just a big Ponzi scheme, with its prosperity an illusion created on its ability to borrow more and more money. Like all Ponzi schemes, this can't go on forever, and eventually the rest of the world will figure a way to get out as painlessly as possible. This will cause problems all over the world, but mostly in the United States, as the drastic decline in the value of the U. S. dollar will cause the cheap Walmart consumer goods made in China - the real opium of the masses - to become expensive consumer goods made in China. When that happens, we may get to see what revolution looks like in the surprisingly passive American poor, and those semi-secret concentration camps set up by the Office of Homeland Security may see some use.

Better watch out...

From David Horsey. BTW, David Horsey drew many fine cartoons that illustrated the book Affluenza.

Supporting the Troops

Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette is probably the most consistently obnoxious cartoonist who appears regularly on Slate's cartoon page. But I think Chuck has outdone his idiot self this time:

I've heard rumors that the talk-radio noisemakers have taken this angle, but to their credit I haven't seen this line taken by the Bushies themselves. A legitimate question was asked of the Sec-Deaf by a soldier, and will probably result in many soldiers staying alive and/or whole. But to fascists like Asay, any questioning of authority is verboten.

From Drew Sheneman.

From John Trever.

Beep Beep!

From Bruce Plante.

From Clay Bennett.

This cartoon is insulting...

To the Three Stooges, that is!
From Sandy Huffaker.

Worst Government Money Has Bought

If I quoted all of the outrages spelled out by the WSWS on the hiring of Louisiana Congressjerk Billy Tauzin by the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying group, I'd quote the whole article. Scum like Billy Tauzin have done more harm to this country than all the terrorists in the world ever have, or ever could.

A Safer Place

Car bombs went off today in Najaf and Karbala, killing dozens in the two Shiite holy cities in southern Iraq. Election officials were dragged from their cars and killed in Baghdad.

I don't doubt that there were plenty of people in Iraq who thought that anything would be better than being ruled by Saddam Hussein. I also don't doubt that most of those people have changed their minds.

Imagine

Imagine there's no Rummy
It's easy if you try

Or if you read Maureen Dowd.

Two-shot "Suicide"

The Sacramento County Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head.

I'm certainly no expert, and the Sacramento Bee's story is little help, but a two-shot suicide seems pretty suspicious. If it was some sort of automatic weapon I guess it would be possible, but if it's a one-shot gun, who's there to pull the trigger the second time?

Well, the weapon was a .38 caliber pistol; anyone out there know if it's likely that Webb could have reflexively fired a second shot after shooting himself in the head the first time?

The Bee is anxious for us to know that it was a suicide:

Webb's allegations spawned a following, including conspiracy theorists who have worked the Internet feverishly for days with notions that because Webb died from two gunshots he was killed by government agents or the Contras in retribution for the stories written nearly a decade ago.

Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted such theories Tuesday, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper.

"The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," Bell said.

She said that before he died Webb wrote and mailed notes to family members and placed his baby shoes in his mother's shed.

Webb had paid for his own cremation earlier in the year and had named Bell months ago as the beneficiary of his bank account, she said. He had sold his house last week, because he could no longer afford the mortgage, and was upset that his motorcycle had been stolen last week.

Bell may be right. Then again, those actions would also make sense if Webb had received death threats from people he knew would follow through. The stolen motorcycle may have been their indication to him that he couldn't run.

Xymphora has a long list of writers who have committed "suicide." A few years ago, I would have doubted that our government could be so criminal. But it is. The people who believe that the war in Iraq is protecting America and that George W. Bush took all the right steps after 9/11 are the "conspiracy nuts" who are operating without facts. The facts support completely different conclusions.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Back in the early 1920's, there were "red scares." They would probably have been called McCarthyism, if Joe McCarthy hadn't been about twelve years old at the time. The Russian Revolution had Americans scared that there was a commie in every closet and under every bed. Similar fears were felt in Britain. But when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Britain quickly became an ally of the USSR, and the US joined in when it was officially invited to join WWII by the Japanese in December. (FDR had apparently been waiting anxiously by the mailbox.) Nazi Germany was the enemy of Britain and the US, and Nazi Germany was the enemy of the USSR. So, red scares or not, the three allied with each other to battle Hitler.

It appears now that, more and more, much of the world sees the U.S. as the enemy. Though both nominally "communist," at least from 1948 until 1991, Russia and China have been antagonistic towards each other, with even a couple of small border wars between them. But the emergence of the U.S. as the sole "superpower" over the past 15 years, heightened by the overtly aggressive actions of the Bush administration, seem to have brought the bear and the dragon closer together.

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern reports that Russia and China will conduct joint military exercises in 2005, and are cooperating in other new ways as well. In Mike Ruppert's video The Truth and Lies of 9-11, he mentions that U.S. policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been to trash the Russian economy, making it easier for us to pick off various parts of the former Soviet empire--especially the oil- and gas-rich parts. But a Russian-Chinese alliance would combine the world's biggest economic juggernaut with the only nation with even a semblance of a military competitive with ours (especially in nuclear weapons).

Our country is being run by megalomaniacs, with an idiot as the front man. We're in for quite a ride, those of us who live long enough to see it.

Monsanto! Ugh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nuthin!

From the Organic Consumers Association:

A well-respected and popular professor at the University of California in Berkeley has been fired after publishing a scientific paper regarding the uncontrolled contamination of irreplaceable native Mexican corn varieties by genetically engineered corn. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose corn contamination article was published in the science journal "Nature," was denied his tenure due to pressure from the biotech company Monsanto on the University (the UC Berkeley tenure review panel had actually voted almost unanimously to approve his tenure). Professor Chapela has been told to have his office cleaned out by December 31. Sign a petition to demand a review of Dr. Chapela's tenure denial. Sign here.

The genetically-mutant scumbags at Monsanto used a bunch of subterfuge and dirty tricks in waging this campaign. If you're looking for a corporation more criminal than Enron or Halliburton, Monsanto's the one.

Funny Money

Referring to my earlier posts about money, Rick recommended the book The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin as "an exhaustive description and analysis of our debt-based money system, and how it came to be."

Add it to my list, I guess! I'm currently reading Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (about page 350 out of 600), and Blood and Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (page 16 out of 200). Waiting in line are Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael Ruppert, and The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin. And several others.

Paying for it all

Wars and tax cuts direct resources in a certain direction; and away from another one. Two articles from the WSWS today, one on Michigan school funding and the other on the growing ranks of hungry and homeless people in our cities, highlight where the resources aren't going.

House of Cards

Time magazine has an article about the falling dollar and the possible implications. They mention the downside, although not as starkly as some:

[O]ver the long haul, a banana-republic dollar could lead to inflation, higher interest rates and a recession likely to spill around the planet. In the past, the strong dollar allowed the U.S. government to borrow cheaply and attract investment in the safest currency on the globe. That helped finance the budget deficit, kept interest rates low and also allowed Americans, as individuals and collectively through their government, to spend way beyond their means. Foreigners are big buyers of mortgage securities, which make purchasing that McMansion more affordable. They hold nearly $2 trillion of Treasury securities, keeping government costs low enough to allow the President to consider his new initiatives. But foreigners may be reaching their saturation point when it comes to funding the U.S.'s profligate lifestyle. The nation sucks up 80% of the world's available savings. If the dollar loses its cachet, foreigners will demand higher interest rates, which, if they rise fast or far enough, could topple the economy.

But, like "good" mainstream media, they end on an upnote:

In this delicate balance, if the Japanese hold their dollars, if the Chinese let the yuan rise even a little and suggest they are willing to go further, if Europe does something to jump-start demand at home, and if the U.S. addresses its budget shortfall — well, we may just escape this jam without a scratch. That's a lot of ifs. But, thankfully, everyone has something at stake.

Frankly, I find explanations like Alex Wallenwein's, that all of the currency and financial manipulations are just one of the ways that the powerful elite uses the labor of the poor to help transfer the wealth of the world into the hands of the few at the top, much more believable than Time's conclusion. What we call "money" seems to be one enormous lie resting on top of a house of cards wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. As long as enough people are willing to believe the lie (mostly because of the obscuring wrapping), the system stays afloat. Actually, for much of the world--Argentina, Iraq, most of Africa, and for poor people everywhere, the system has already collapsed.

The key, as always, is for the wealthy elite to co-opt enough of the population to enable them to completely pillage the rest. This is a major theme of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. In the US, it has generally been the poor and middle-class white people who have been recruited to help the wealthy do their pillaging--against the Native Americans, against the blacks, against the immigrants, against the Mexicans and Haitians and Vietnamese and Nicaraguans and Panamanians and Iraqis. Give these NASCAR dads the dream that they can someday become a part of the elite, and suggest to them that those "other" people are their main obstacle to overcome. It has worked for 300 years; it worked on November 2. Meanwhile, the global monetary system is sucking the remaining wealth out of all these people.

Financial Heroin

I'm a privileged individual. I have two cards in my wallet that I can pull out at various places and people give me stuff. One is a pretty amazing thing called a debit card, which when I present the number on the card combined with the number in my head causes a certain decimal number to be added to the store's account somewhere while subtracting a slightly larger number (I've heard 35 cents) from my account at the credit union. I'm allowed to do this because the University of Michigan once a month performs a similar operation, subtracting a number from their account and adding the same number to my account. They do this because I spend a bunch of hours playing with a bunch of numbers which could mean nothing, but have some meaning if you know the context.

The other card is even more bizarre--the "credit" card. When I use it, the issuing bank moves a number, slightly smaller than the purchase price (although generally more than the 35 cents of the debit card) into the store's account, pulling this number largely out of thin air. In return, they assign a debt to me in the amount of the purchase price, expecting me at some later date to see that some other numbers are directed their way. I usually do this through their web site, having the numbers transferred automatically from my credit union account to the credit card bank.

These phantom electronic transfers seem like so much nothing--except they keep me fed and clothed and housed and amused. They still don't seem real, not as real as a paper check, say, which in turn seems less real than paper money. But even paper money is just so much ephemera.

Alex Wallenwein argues that that's exactly what it is, as are the checks and debit and credit cards and the numbers in the accounts. He says that our money isn't value; instead it's debt:

This currency we call "the dollar" today is nothing but irredeemable debt. It is a sad testimony to how low our republic has sunk to see that it lends its lawmaking power to such an obvious ruse as to call something that is nothing but evidence of a debt itself a "payment" for all debts, public and private!

Americans - like citizens and subjects of any other country in the world - are forced to use this totally denuded currency for utter lack of a viable alternative. They are forced to work for this debt, or acquire it by conducting a business in order to feed themselves and their families. In effect therefore, legal tender laws effectively force you and me to work for nothing - in return for the questionable privilege of being able to "pay" others with the exact same thing!

The rest of the story.

Abusing the term "abuse"

Michelle is keeping track of the many stories of abuse torture being committed by US troops, starting soon after the March 2003 invasion and continuing well past the Abu Ghraib revelations. She notes that the press continues to refer to torture as "abuse," I guess so Americans can pretend to believe that we're so much better than Saddam, or the other brutal dictators we support currently and haven't overthrown...yet. (Mubarek, the Saudi Royals, Musharref, Karimov, etc.) I don't really blame the troops--throughout history, people placed in impossible situations have tended to turn psycho. The fault lies with the criminals in Washington who sent them there on completely false pretexts.

From Mark Streeter.

From M.e. Cohen.

From Rex Babin.

Peak Oil Rant

A bunch of scientists gathered Tuesday in San Francisco to discuss world oil supplies. They ranged from Princeton Professor Emeritus Kenneth Deffeyes (whose book I just finished reading), who predicts that world peak oil will occur around Thanksgiving of next year, to political scientist and energy consultant Michael Lynch, who wants to pretend that there isn't a problem:

"This is not science," said Michael Lynch, a political scientist and energy consultant. "This is forecasting."

Lynch agrees there are problems with relying so heavily on oil, and he sees more price volatility ahead. But he argues that many smaller deposits will be found and they will add up to "a lot of oil" over time. He also faults the running-dry-soon predictions as being based not on geology, but on politics and economics: Oil production in various countries has flattened or fell at certain times for reasons having nothing to do with how much they could produce, Lynch says.

Further, Lynch contends, it is not possible to predict the discovery of new oil fields or the true size of existing in-ground reserves. He likens current oil forecasts to stock market prediction. Charts fit history well, he says, "but they're not predictive."

I find the arguments from Deffeyes and other people who know oil to be much more compelling. World oil discoveries peaked many years ago, even though the techniques available now for prospecting are much more advanced than in the path. More places are being searched, and searched harder, than ever before, with fewer results. Discoveries seem to have clearly peaked forever, and are well into the long slide into insignificance. While that slide will have a bump or two in it, Deffeyes and the others make it pretty clear that it's impossible that there's enough oil out there to be found to turn the slide around much or for long. And production decline will inevitably follow discovery decline--quite possibly more rapidly as higher prices cause the last remaining fields to be tapped quickly. Lynch is one of a huge team of fairy-tale tellers paid to keep the U.S. economy chugging along in blissful ignorance for as long as possible. They are trying to steal a few extra years before the unavoidable collapse, at the cost of making the collapse that much more disastrous.

George H. W. Bush spoke at an energy conference in Rio in 1992, and said "The American way of life is non-negotiable." (I've seen this quote also attributed to Cheney and Junior, but Poppy apparently said it first.) This would seem to be the guiding principle behind U.S. foreign policy--we won't negotiate our wasteful and destructive way of life, we'll just fight to maintain it for as long as possible.

PS: In trying to find the origin of that quote, I came across this recent Kathy Kelly article, which included this passage:

I recently read reflections from a reporter embedded with Marines who invaded Baghdad, who referred to many of those Marines as a group of people who were “socially maladjusted — an international liability.” That charge should be held up for consideration to every adult in the United States, not simply to those who have been sent to Iraq in an unprovoked war against innocent people.

If we’ve adjusted to possessing an arsenal of weapons that could destroy the planet, if we’ve adjusted to a lifestyle that pillages the Earth’s resources while we spend trillions of dollars on weapons that aren’t necessary to defend the United States, if we’ve acquiesced to a foreign policy based on the doctrine of “preventive war,” then we are ourselves a maladjusted, international liability.

I'm sure most of the world sees us that way.

From Kirk Anderson.

From Ken Kallaugher.

From Steve Sack.

From Daryl Cagle.

Dick and Nick

Dick Morris and Nicholas Kristof; two "sensible liberals" who buy the whole good guy-bad guy crap.