Oil rigs missing in the Gulf

An anonymous oil industry insider reports on the extensive damage to Gulf of Mexico oil operations:

There are MANY production platforms missing (as in not visible from the air). This means they have been totally lost. I am talking about 10's of platforms, not single digit numbers. Each platform can have from 4 to 100+ wells on it. Most larger ones have 20-30 wells in this area, with numerous caisson wells. They are on their sides, on the bottom of the gulf - they will likely be left as reef material, provided we can get permission. MMS regulations require us to plug each of the wells that were on these platforms - HUGE cost now, as the platforms are gone... Hopefully, MMS will grant `abandon in place' status for these wiped out structures.

We also set individual wells as satellites and pipe them back to existing platforms. These stand-alone wells are called caisson wells. 90% of those in the storm path are bent over, rendering them a total loss, We would have to remove the existing bent structure and drill a new well, as bent pipe is basically unusable.

We utilize platforms as gathering hubs. We pipe the raw oil/water to them and then send it on for separation, or separate it there and send finished oil on. Damage to a hub means everything going to the hub is offline indefinitely. There are +/- 15 HUBS missing. MISSING!! As in we cannot find them from the air.

Thus even if the wells feeding the hub are ok, we have nowhere to pump the oil to...

She also reports that many of the boats and ships which service the oil rigs were damaged or lost in Katrina, meaning that repairs will take much longer than normal. The Coast Guard confirms that many oil rigs are missing. Experts say $4 a gallon is coming soon.

$3.15

The Speedway station I go by on the bus each day was at $2.99 this morning, and $3.15 this afternoon. I saw $3.19 at other Ann Arbor stations. There were more people on the bus than usual.

Detroit is poorest big city

From the Detroit Free Press:

Detroit is the nation's poorest big city, with about one in three residents living below the federal poverty level -- $19,157 in household income for a family of four.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 33.6% of Detroiters had income below the poverty level in 2004, compared with about 23% in 2002. In the two-year span, "you're talking somewhere easily between 75,000 to 80,000 more people living in poverty" in Detroit, said Kurt Metzger, research director of Wayne State University's Center for Urban Studies.

And nearly half of Detroit children 17 and younger lived in impoverished homes in 2004.

The two pieces of bad news come as Detroit struggles with a high unemployment rate, a municipal budget teetering on bankruptcy and its core auto industry struggling.

Nero Zero

While New Orleans drowned yesterday


aWol strummed.


I'm pretty sure that's his favorite chord--the f*** you chord.

Not that I think Bush personally is capable of doing anything that would help Louisiana and Mississippi. A good president, or just your ordinary run-of-the-mill bad president like Ford or Clinton, sure. But Bush is poison--the farther away the better. Let's just hope that people start to realize that.

(Photos via Bob Harris)

The National Guard Belongs in New Orleans and Biloxi

Article from Norman Solomon. Excerpt:

National Guard troops don't belong in Iraq. They should be rescuing and protecting in Louisiana and Mississippi, not patrolling and killing in a country that was invaded on the basis of presidential deception. They should be fighting the effects of flood waters at home -- helping people in the communities they know best -- not battling Iraqi people who want them to go away.

Let's use the Internet today to forward and post this demand so widely that the politicians in Washington can no longer ignore it:

Bring the National Guard home. Immediately.

Understatement du jour

For the second time in a week, the understatement du jour comes from Juan Cole:

The top police officials of the cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad were assassinated on Tuesday. This is not a good sign.

Meanwhile, hundreds died in a stampede in Baghdad after rumors of a terror attack, and US warplanes continue to bomb the crap out of places.

Money spent destroying Iraq might have saved New Orleans

From Editor & Publisher:

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Read the whole article. Funding amounts equivalent to mere hours of expenditure on the Iraq quagmire, and which were tiny compared to how much will now be spent on cleanup, might have saved the Big Easy from the deluge.

Having a total incompetent as pResident costs lives, and hundreds of billions of wasted dollars. Impeach the bastard.

Public service announcement

The American Red Cross could probably use a bunch of money right now, if you can spare it. I just made a donation.

Our insane economy

From CNN (emphasis added):

Prof. Doug Woodward, with the Division of Research at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, has researched the economic impact of hurricanes.

"On a personal level, the loss of life is tragic. But looking at the economic impact, our research shows that hurricanes tend to become god-given work projects," Woodward said.

Disasters are good for the economy, he said. Within six months, he expects to see a construction boom and job creation offset the short-term negatives such as loss of business activity, loss of wealth in the form of housing, infrastructure, agriculture and tourism revenue in the Gulf Coast states.

If killing hundreds or thousands, and chasing millions from their homes, is good for this beast we call the economy, maybe it's time to slay that beast and find a different one to feed.

I mean jeez--it's not like there weren't plenty of homeless and hungry people already.

AWol--again

New Orleans dodged the bullet, only to drown in the bathtub. Tom Tomorrow says "For all practical purposes, a major American city has just been wiped off the map." So what was the pResident doing today? Giving a friggin' speech defending his indefensible war in Iraq. The same war chewing up the lives of thousands of National Guard troops who really have something much more important to do right now. They're fighting over there so they won't be able to save lives here. As the Iraqis stand up, Americans drown.

Overcoming the devastation of Katrina will require lots of resources--money, equipment, and trained people--all of which are being wasted at prodigious rates in the Iraqi quagmire. Even those Halliburton people raking in the billions could probably offer some expertise to help deal with Katrina--except they're stuck in Iraq. This is ENTIRELY the fault of George W. Bush, and we need to remind people of this at every opportunity.

$70.46 per barrel; $2.55 per gallon

Three weeks ago, oil futures hit a new high of $62.74, while regular gasoline futures hit a new high of $1.84 per gallon. The retail price on August 8 was $2.54 per gallon--70 cents over the futures price. Where do you think the retail price will be tomorrow? $3.25 is my guess. Rick says $5 a gallon by Christmas.

Katrina knockin' on the door

Radar weather map from 3:25 this afternoon.

Fortunately for us, it's not packing dangerous winds any more, and I don't think we're even supposed to get a lot of rain.

Wholesale gas prices skyrocket

$2.37 a gallon. Up about 50 cents in a week. This hasn't shown up at the local pumps, yet. The Speedway station was $2.75 at lunchtime. But I think my $3 a gallon prediction for this week is now pretty much a sure thing--it may be low.

Still, traffic all over the friggin' place. I'm not sure what price it will take to get Americans out of their guzzlers.

One man's failure is a neocon's success

Many have been pointing out that Iraq's alleged constitution basically turns Iraq into Iran, and that this is obviously a failure of the last great excuse for the Blair-Bush Project. But is it? Xymphora points out that the critical language about the role of Islam in Iraq wasn't merely accepted reluctantly by US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad--he actually pushed for it!

So Iraq tumbles into an even bloodier civil war, leading to its eventual breakup. Many would see this as a failure; but many are not neocons. The Balkanization of the Middle East suits their evil purposes just fine.

Maybe Bush isn't happily taking five weeks of vacation because he's out of touch--maybe it's because he's getting everything he wanted.

Irony du jour

From Juan Cole:

The Iraqi parliament attempted to legislate sanctions against perpetually absent members of parliament on Monday. But they could not legislate on the issue because there were too many absentees.

From Ken Catalino.

From Tim Menees.

Gimme a break

From Vic Harville.

From Jeff Parker.

I'm continuing my lonely vigil as perhaps the only pro-gouging blogger on the Internet. If a tornado comes through Ann Arbor and opens a hole in my roof, I'll gladly pay four times the normal price for plywood from the first guy who comes down my street with it--and I'll be totally pissed if the cops arrest him before he gets to me.

I was watching a TV station from Jackson, Mississippi over the Internet yesterday, and they kept flashing the 800 number for the gouging hotline on the bottom of the screen. Stopping people from bringing hurricane victims what they need--obviously a top priority. If you want to condemn someone for exploiting tragedy, go after aWol and his shameless ongoing exploitation of 9/11, something that was at the very least partially his own fault. The guys trying to sell $500 generators for $1000 in Mississippi had nothing to do with Katrina. They're taking a risk to provide a service and make some money. America is supposed to admire that, not arrest it. We let big-time wage gougers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot operate, then go after the little guy with the pickup truck.

Along with the media-hyped hatred for "gougers" is their hissing anger at "looters." Mississippi governor Haley Barbour said a lot of things yesterday, many of them sensible and intelligent, but the one that CNN's Paula Zahn couldn't resist from repeating over and over again was when Barbour said that looters would be dealt with "ruthlessly." Zahn said this with evident glee. And one of the CNN reporters mentioned seeing video of 50 people coming out of a Winn Dixie supermarket with shopping carts full of groceries. He shook his head with disdain for these obvious dregs of humanity. It didn't sound like he'd even investigated whether the store might have still been open, or pondered how long that food was likely to last with the power out, possibly for weeks.

People going door to door stealing DVD players while the homeowners are away is one thing--but people who may have just lost everything, including their food, going and grabbing some stuff off the Winn Dixie shelves (which they might well have paid for if the store was open) is clearly another. "Ruthlessly" is not the way to deal with them. Chances are that the "official" way for them to eat would be to wait three days for FEMA or the Red Cross to set up food tents--with food donated by Winn Dixie.

From Andy Singer.

From Nick Anderson.

Baghdad Bob Crawford George

From Monte Wolverton.

From Steve Sack.

Harassment Ready (TM) Blogging

Tom Philpott of the Bitter Greens Journal got a harrassing letter from a Monsanto lawyer concerning Tom's use of the title "Roundup, ready" for a regular segment on his blog, claiming it violated their trademark on "Roundup Ready" genetically-modified plants, which can survive being poisoned with large amounts of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller. Tom sent the mutant corporation a defiant reply. Excerpt:

With all due respect, it seems to me that rather than protect your trademark from any serious threat, what you're really trying to do is intimidate a political opponent into ceasing what is surely Constitutionally protected speech. And so, as I stated above, I must decline your request. And I will redouble my efforts to study and write about the practices of your company.

Halliburton is just a spectacular example of corrupt war profiteering. Wal-Mart's "always low wages; always" scheme will collapse along with the U.S. economy. But Monsanto's crimes threaten the world's food supply--forever. So, more power to Tom and Bitter Greens!

Calm before the storm

Cool photo from Rick Wilking of Reuters:

The French Quarter was nearly deserted in the early morning hours before the storm arrived.

To form a more perfect disunion

AWol was blathering in his radio address about how the preparers of the Iraqi constitution are "like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago." Billmon points out that not only is this a serious insult to Tom, Jim, Ben, Alex and the rest of the 1787 Philadelphia gang, it is also pretty much completely backwards. Our constitution, prepared by men who had just gained independence from an occupying power, provided for a strong federal government which controlled the nation's most valuable resource (western lands) and which retained the most important powers--military, monetary, affairs of state. The alleged and probably doomed Iraqi constitution gives control of the most valuable resource (oil) to regions, and invites quibbling almost certainly leading to warfare on the other issues. In his long, interesting post on the subject, Billmon concludes:

That said, though, as a student of American history it's hard not to be contemptuous of anyone who would dare compare what the framers tried to do in Philadelphia to the deal that just went down in the Baghdad bazaar. Whatever you think of their politics -- or the utter hypocricy of slaveowners and slave merchants posing as champions of liberty -- the men of 1787 were giants.

The boys of 2005 (and their American sponsors), on the other hand, are just pygmies pretending to be giants. And the Iraqi people are going to be footing the bill for those pretensions -- in blood -- for a long time to come.

Scary thought du jour

So, imagine you're the poor person who decides not to evacuate: Your house will disintegrate around you. The best you'll be able to do is hang on to a light pole, and while you're hanging on, the fire ants from all the mounds -- of which there is two per yard on average -- will clamber up that same pole. And, eventually, the fire ants will win.

--Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center, in a CNN article titled Katrina may be 'our Asian tsunami'.

Good luck, New Orleans--looks like you're going to need it.

$69.70

A new week of oil trading starts off with a new record. The wholesale gasoline price is now $2.15 per gallon, also a record.

Fearless Prediction

$3 a gallon regular gasoline in Ann Arbor this week. Katrina has already cut Gulf of Mexico oil output by one-third, the instability in the Middle East will become even more obvious, and Americans will be driving willy-nilly--going on Labor Day vacations, going back to school, and running from Katrina.

Second fearless prediction--somebody with a boat will go buzzing around filthy floodwaters saving people's cats and such, and be called a price-gouger for charging $50 per cat. Probably get arrested. State governments in Louisiana and Mississippi will zealously protect the oligopoly of Home Depot and Lowes by chasing down any freelance entrepreneurs asking any premium at all for plywood, chainsaws, generators, water, etc. And while gas stations all over the country will probably be charging over $3 a gallon for gas, those that do so in the hurricane areas will be fined for it. Because remember--the free market is only for the big guys.

Commuter rail for southeast Michigan?

According to the Ann Arbor News, Michigan's share of the pork in the recent transportation bill included $100 million for studying and starting the engineering on a commuter rail system serving Chelsea, Dexter, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and several Wayne County cities on its way to Detroit. Senator Stabenow was the champion of getting the money in the transportation bill, and it is supported by Congressman Dingell and Mayor Hieftje.

I had a brief conversation with Mayor Hieftje a few months ago. He's a strong advocate of commuter rail. Ann Arbor has two rail lines running through it--the Conrail tracks running east-west from Detroit to Chicago, currently used by Amtrak and freight, and the north-south tracks of the old Ann Arbor railroad, which carry about one freight train a day (usually in the middle of the night). Both lines could support more traffic. The simplest proposal for commuter rail is just to run commuter trains on the Conrail lines, starting in Chelsea. Officials quoted in the article say this could be done in as little as a year. More elaborate light-rail plans involving new track would take much longer and cost more.

Now that not many companies are actually making cars around here anymore, maybe it will be politically possible to get this moving. Whether it can get started before the economy collapses and makes large-scale public projects completely impossible is another question. Then again, some of the grandest public works in this country's history were completed in the decade following the 1929 economic crash. Anybody see another FDR out there somewhere?

It was in the script

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Twenty-one people were wounded Sunday, two seriously, in a suicide bombing at a central bus station in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba, Israeli officials said.

The bombing occurred about 8:30 a.m. outside a bus during the morning rush hour when a man detonated himself.

Security guards at the bus station were approaching him to check him out, thinking he looked suspicious, when the explosion occurred, police said.

"Israel has taken the necessary steps to advance the peace process," said an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, referring to the Israeli withdrawal from settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.

"The Palestinians have not. Without such steps, there will be no progress."

Gee, who could have seen that coming? Without "terrorists," Ariel Sharon would long ago have been retired to the crazy Zionists asylum, just like George W. Bush would now be selecting the coloring books for his one-term presidential library without Osama. These guys need terrorism like most of us need food and water.

For more on the hypocrisy of the Gaza "withdrawal," check out Xymphora.

Look out below!

Katrina may be heading for New Orleans. Big city. Below sea level. Catastrophe waiting to happen. And I still don't know why they can't figure out how to use both sides of a freeway to get people out of town quicker.


[Update 3:45 pm] Reader Margaret points out that New Orleans did learn from last year--they ARE using both sides of several freeways to evacuate, using exit ramps as on ramps. Thanks, Margaret!

Out on the bike trails of Texas, all is well

Reading aWol's weekly radio address, I pretty much have to believe that the moron in chief does not have even a passing acquaintance with reality:

In January, eight-and-a-half million Iraqis defied the terrorists and went to the polls to vote. Iraq's main ethnic and religious groups made the courageous choice to join the political process. And together, they have worked toward a democratic constitution that respects the traditions of their country and guarantees the rights of all their citizens.

The right to be silent, the right to wear a burka, the right to kill one's wife or sister if she's raped, etc.

Like our own nation's founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion -- not at the barrel of a gun.

More like a million guns--plus car bombs, F-18's, Blackhawks, etc.

The establishment of a democratic constitution in Iraq, just like the establishment of a constitution in Afghanistan last year, will be a landmark event in the history of the broader Middle East.

Oh yeah, Afghanistan. The bright shining light, the city on the hill, where the poppies grow and the fear and the Taliban play.

And it will bring us closer to the day when the nation of Iraq can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.

We're going back to 1990 before the Bush clan took aim on it?

The terrorists are trying to stop the rise of democracy in Iraq because they know a free Iraq will deal a decisive blow to their strategy to dominate the Middle East. But the Iraqi people are determined to build a free future for their nation, and they are uniting against the terrorists.

There seems to be precious little evidence that they're uniting at all, and if they are, it's against us.

We saw that unity earlier this month when followers of the terrorist Zarqawi tried to force Shiite Muslims to leave the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Sunni Muslims in that city came to the defense of their Shiite neighbors. As one Sunni leader put it, "We have had enough of Zarqawi's nonsense. We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis."

Can you believe bubble boy actually quoted that? "We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis." WIIIAI figures Bush must live in a parallel universe. I just wish he'd stay there.

Enemy combatants, detentions forever

Digby quotes from an article by Spencer Ackerman. Both Ackerman and Digby state that these absurd, brutal policies demonstrate that the SCWOT ("So-called war on terror") has as its main goal not stopping terrorism, but giving the pResident unlimited power. From Ackerman:

That position--that the war on terrorism requires executive latitude at odds with hundreds of years of law--has animated every single step of the administration's approach to the war. It's why Bush has kept nato allies at arm's length while simultaneously trumpeting their absolute necessity to the defeat of Al Qaeda. It's why he didn't just oppose the creation of an independent 9/11 Commission to investigate the history of counterterrorism policy, he also argued it would be an unacceptable burden on his prosecution of the war. And it's why he's blasted any move by the courts to exercise oversight of the war as a dangerous judicial overreach: When a district court judge last year challenged the constitutionality of the administration's military commissions for the trial of enemy combatants, the Justice Department "vigorously disagree[d]," as a spokesman put it, and contested the ruling until the commissions were reinstated on appeal last month. For the administration, its expansion of executive power is synonymous with victory in the war--regardless of the real-world costs to the war effort.

To which Digby adds:

This pretty much says it all. President Bush having unchecked power is synomymous with victory. (There can be no doubt that this executive power would not apply to a Democratic president in similar circumstances.)

Once again, every loss becomes a win. Every mistake means that they must dig in all the more deeply, because to not do so would be to admit they were wrong. And if they were wrong, the terrorists will have won.

Remember--US citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago, and charged with only two things: diddly and squat (or SCWOT). He's been in jail for over three years, and counting. Every one of us is at least as guilty Padilla--at least in terms of traditional US law (innocent until proven guilty, remember?). The Padilla case is a disgusting demonstration that freedom is dead in George Bush's America.

Solidarity forever forsaken

Not only are passengers and other union members crossing the picket lines of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) strike against Northwest Airlines--members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) are serving as scabs! The WSWS has the details on what appears, truly, to be the last throes of organized labor in the U.S.

Ominously, Northwest's strikebreaking policy may come crashing in on them--literally:

Many of the workers said Northwest’s safety was being seriously compromised due to the use of strikebreakers. Barry estimated that only about 30 percent of the replacements had experience repairing the type of planes used by Northwest.

Mike said, “We’re not getting fair coverage in the media. According to them, everything is hunky dory. Well, it’s not. The workers they have now can fix the reading light and change the oil or other small things, but the bigger things like repairing the auto pilot or an engine problem, they can’t. Sometimes you have to read between the lines of the manual, because it’s not all there. There are a lot of things you learn over the years through experience, which these new people don’t have.”

Of course, the union is getting LOTS of supports from the Democratic politicians they helped to elect--NOT:

Many of the picketing workers expressed disgust and disillusionment with the Democratic Party. Mike said the two main parties act as “one party.”

When asked about the Democratic Party, Tonya said, “I haven’t seen anyone out here. I haven’t seen any of them on the news. When it is time to vote, they expect us to go out and vote for them. However, when it comes to a strike, they are not there. That says it all. Maybe the Democratic Party is the Republican Party in disguise.”

It was Bill Clinton, after all, who pushed NAFTA and the WTO on the American people, guaranteeing that we'd have to participate in the grueling race to the bottom known as globalization. Fifty, even thirty years ago, American workers had some actual power. Now they have none. Divide and conquer--the strategy that has worked for the wealthy elite for centuries.

[Update] Lee Sustar has a good article on the strike at Counterpunch.

Why we went to war in Iraq

An animated, annotated version of aWol's speech from February 6, 2003.

Wind-up power

From the Washington Post:

In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.

The "Justice" Department claims this is all legal because of "wind-up power," which gives a government the time necessary at the end of a conflict to figure out what to do with detainees. All the "Justice" Department has figured out so far is that they've been unable to find a country to take these guys, and are unwilling to give them homes in the U.S. Meanwhile, the fifteen cleared men are still treated as prisoners, including being shackled to the floor.

And our government still has the chutzpah to lecture others on human rights from time to time.

The US commitment to freedom--wind-up power.

From Tom Toles.

Good articles on Chavez

From Richard Gott, Johann Hari, and Lori Zett. Zett notes:

I don't believe it will be possible, even if that was Chavez's goal, to take democracy, especially participatory democracy, away from the people who have finally been allowed to taste it. In addition, unlike Cuba, which moved from the extreme right with Batista, to the extreme left with Castro, Venezuela deposed its last dictator in 1958 and has been practicing democracy, however flawed, since then. Neither the people, nor the military would accept a dictatorship today. What Chavez promises, and is today achieving, is a socially conscious democratic government. It is time for people in the United States to take notice.

The Venezuela Information Office suggests ways to respond to Pat Robertson's insanity:

The human rights group Global Exchange is encouraging citizens to call the White House to ask the Bush Administration to "condemn the call for terrorist homicide. [The administration] must investigate the legality of calling for the assassination of a democratically elected foreign head of state, and abide by international law in prosecuting terrorist activity." The public comment line at the White House is (202) 456-1111.

The Feminist Majority Foundation and Media Matters for America are working to get the ABC Network and Trinity Broadcasting to dump the 700 Club from its affiliates.

Quote du Jour

From Bionic Octopus:

For-profit healthcare is the moral equivalent of war profiteering. It is morally bankrupt and relies for its perpetuation on demonstrably false shibboleths of market efficiency, the primary importance of 'consumer choice', and capitalist incentivization. The United States stands practically alone in maintaining this barbaric let-them-eat-cake system of 'caring' for its citizens' health. When will we join civilization?

Well hey--we're also the world leaders in war profiteering, and our government's goal isn't to join civilization; it's to force civilization to join us.

Faster than the speed of light?

From Physorg.com:

Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary "optical memory." They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn't move over – relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected.

I dunno--I learned in physics class that NOTHING goes faster than the speed of light; even a portion of a signal. Did they lie to me again?

(Via Bionic Octopus, who claims she knew it all along. She must have gotten the message via faster-than-light communication, I guess.)

Cool photo

Nothing in particular to add to this photo from Reuters via the NY Times:

Moktada al-Sadr speaking with journalists at his office in Najaf today as fighting was taking place in the early hours.

Interesting 9/11 article

Larry Chin writes about Able Danger and related stories. Excerpt:

• We know that the "Islamic terrorism" is a creation and tool of Anglo-American geostrategy, created by the US government in the 1970s, fully utilized during the Clinton administration, and nurtured from the Reagan-Bush administrations to the present Bush administrations.
• We know who Osama bin Laden is (or was). In Crossing The Rubicon, Mike Ruppert noted:

"The Washington Post explicitly suggested that the real relationship between the United States government and Osama bin Laden may be quite the opposite of what it seems. ‘As early as March 1996, the government of Sudan offered to extradite bin Laden to the United States. US officials turned down the offer, perhaps preferring to use him ‘as a combatant in an underground war.’" In other words, as a US government agent. In a footnote, Ruppert analyzes the above passage, and cuts to the core of 9/11, and the deception that the world has faced for the past five years:

"If this means that OBL is to be ‘used as a combatant’ on the USG side, it strongly suggests that he is a willing participant in such an effort and that his CIA affiliation from the Mujahadeen war of the 1980s has persisted. If the same locution means that OBL is to be ‘used’ as a combatant on the anti-USG terrorist side of the supposed war on terror, it strongly suggests that the USG is engaged in the business of supplying itself with enemies. That practice is called ‘false flag’ operation, and 9/11 is the greatest exemplar in history."

• We know that Al-Qaeda is connected to the ISI, which, in turn is a virtual branch of the CIA, and involved in US covert operations.
• We know that numerous intelligence agencies had monitored, penetrated, and guided Al-Qaeda assets. Notwithstanding the denials of Washington’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Al-Qaeda and its operatives were under scrutiny years before 9/11, and completely penetrated.

According to Ruppert, who exhaustively broke down this penetration over several chapters of his book, Crossing the Rubicon, "based on what is known about successful intelligence penetrations for years prior to the attacks of 9/11, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda could not have sneezed without the CIA or the NSA knowing about it."

• We know that it is standard intelligence procedure to create intelligence legends and multiple layers of plausible deniability around their operatives.
• We know who, and what, Atta was. Investigative journalist Dan Hopsicker exposed the backgrounds and movements of the Atta cell and the "hijackers" prior to 9/11. Members of the Atta cell received military training, and had connections to intelligence and intelligence-connected Floridians with direct Bush family ties.
• We know that various US intelligence and law enforcement agencies, agents, and officers had information---and were systematically blocked from reporting the information and acting on it by gatekeepers of the 9/11 false flag operation.
• We know that Atta received funding from the ISI for 9/11, and that then-ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad wired $100,000 directly to Atta, and met with Washington lawmakers on the morning of 9/11 (including current Director of Central Intelligence, Porter Goss).
• We know that there were and are 9/11 gatekeepers in the government, the FBI, the CIA, and all over the world.
• We know that 9/11 was not an "intelligence failure", but an "intelligence success" that included the use of guided Al-Qaeda assets, and "hijacker" intelligence legends.
• We know that the Kean 9/11 Commission has been a massive cover-up from its inception to the very end.

Nobody has done more for BikeBoy's political fortunes than Osama bin Laden. Did aWol repay the favor? You bet! IRAQ: Increased Recruiting for Al Qaeda.

Understatement du jour

It is always worrisome when you see a whole platoon of guerrillas operating openly in daylight in the capital.

-- Juan Cole.

Just another of their products they'll get from China...

From Wayne Stayskal.

From Bruce Plante.

From Olle Johansson.

For once, the cartoonists are in agreement

Pat Robertson is an insane, hypocritical jackass:


From Jeff Parker.


From Pat Bagley.


From Rob Rogers.


From Signe Wilkinson.


From David Horsey.

Quagmire exploding?

The alleged Iraqi constitution appears to have thrown gasoline on the already roaring fires in Iraq. Shiites loyal to the SCIRI and Dawa parties which form the core of the ruling coalition have attacked the headquarters of other Shiites loyal to Moqtada al Sadr in Najaf. Al Sadr has asked his supporters in Parliament to resign. There were also big attacks by Sunni insurgents against Iraqi police in Baghdad. Billmon has lots more based on the Reuters story.

Also be sure to read Billmon's two posts on the recent comments from an Iraqi women's leader who was used as a stage prop during aWol's 2005 State of the Union address. Suffice it to say that she ain't happy about the alleged constitution which takes women's rights in Iraq back to the stone age (or the Taliban age).

The reason we're in Iraq is because we're in Iraq

From Maureen Dowd:

"We owe them something," [Bush] told veterans in Salt Lake City (even though his administration tried to shortchange the veterans agency by $1.5 billion). "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."

What twisted logic: with no W.M.D., no link to 9/11 and no democracy, now we have to keep killing people and have our kids killed because so many of our kids have been killed already? Talk about a vicious circle: the killing keeps justifying itself.

Dowd adds:

Just because the final reason the president came up with for invading Iraq - to create a democracy with freedom of religion and minority rights - has been dashed, why stop relaxing? W. is determined to stay the course on bike trails all over the West.

$67.40

We've got a new record!

Do what you want; you will anyway!

A hearty "Hasta luego!" to Michelle, author of the blog You Will Anyway. She's moving to Mexico to teach English, having suffered from the red-state blues long enough (she has been living in Missouri). The thing I liked about Mexico? Everyone there knows their democracy is a sham, unlike here where millions actually believe our dollarocracy is so good it should be exported.

Good luck, Michelle!

Passed Inspection!

My solar project was approved by the electrical inspector this morning. The system is running smoothly, generating between 5 and 10 kilowatt-hours per day.

One of the reasons I like Hugo Chavez

I was in this crowd

when he gave this speech!


Read all about my April 2004 experience in Venezuela!

Filling the Void

It seems that the Democratic Party has pretty much decided on a platform of "a stronger America" based on more troops in Iraq and being tougher on terror than Bush, at least judging by John Kerry and the supposed front-runners for the 2008 presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. This leaves old Democratic promises, like, y'know, health care and helping the poor, without a major-party home.

Into the breach step two feisty Latinos--Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. From Reuters:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.

"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.
...
Chavez and Castro offered to give poor Americans free health care and train doctors free of charge.

You gotta love these guys! Can't you just see it--Gas for 99 cents a gallon at (Venezuelan-owned) Citgo stations, but only if your car is at least ten years old, makes a lot of noise, and has visible body damage. And little neighborhood clinics flying the Cuban flag sprinkled throughout Detroit, the Bronx, south central LA, and Mississippi, with poor kids flying off to Havana for med school rather than joining the Army. Hillary and Joe won't do that for us.

I know our oligarchs won't let it happen, but that Hugo and Fidel have the chutzpah to make such offers just makes me smile!

Lie du Jour

"Our department doesn't do that kind of thing. It's against the law." -- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, referring to "Christian" Pat Robertson's call for the U.S. to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

While I guess Rummy might argue that some of the many US-sponsored assassination attempts through the years--in Cuba, Central America, Southeast Asia, etc.--were done by the CIA and not the Pentagon, there's little doubt that the DoD attempted to assassinate Libyan President Qaddafi in 1986 and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003. Not to mention the thousands of extra-judicial murders committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere based on the flimsiest of rumors about supposed ties to the Taliban, al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or perhaps just because they were getting married.

"It's against the law." Well, yeah, and so is invading sovereign nations for no apparent reason.

36%

AWol's new approval rating.

Protests in Salt Lake

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

The caption says that's aWol's limo. I doubt it. But if he had any guts, he'd have ridden his bike down that beautiful bike lane.


Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, left, greets protestors against President Bush who addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their 106th convention in Salt Lake City. Anderson, a Democrat, was booed by the VFW members when he spoke to the group before the president.




SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson addresses the audience at a peace rally at Pioneer Park in SLC, Monday.

Pay rent on your own home

That's apparently what the unlucky homeowners of New London, CT will have to do after the Supreme Court's atrocious 5-4 Kelo decision in June ruling that New London could use eminent domain to take their houses on behalf of a private developer. The city decided to use eminent domain back in 2000, and the residents have been fighting it ever since. Now that they've lost in the Supreme Court, the city intends to pay them the much lower year 2000 price for their homes--AND charge them rent for the five years since. Property owners who have been renting the houses out will have to turn over all rent proceeds for the five years to the city.

While the illegal Gaza squatters are evicted with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and free rent for two years, the losers in the Kelo decision are thrown onto the street with little or no money in the face of a housing bubble--and without nearly as much media coverage.

"Thanks to you, Mr. President, we're growing almost as fast as al Qaeda!"

Are We Really Better Off Without Saddam?

Of course, if you're reading this blog, you probably already know that almost nobody is better off without Saddam. But Jude Wanniski, a former Reaganite, Wall Street Journal editor and coiner of the term "supply-side economics" (i.e., a man with impeccable conservative credentials), explains to Trent Lott why almost nobody is better off without Saddam.

In your "Meet the Press" interview this morning, I noticed you made the obligatory remark that "Of course we are all better off without Saddam Hussein." Practically every politico in every party makes that exact statement on all the talk shows in recent weeks and months. Maybe if I were a politician I would also include it in my litany. Which may be why I've rejected every suggestion that I should be a politician. It is dismaying to me, even disgusting, to see your congressional colleagues prattle on about how Iraqis are better off without Saddam, when more than 100,000 of their sons and daughters would still be alive if we had not gone to war. Are the dead "better off"? Are their families?

It would have been refreshing, Trent, if you had realized by now that after your wings were clipped by the neo-cons, you were a zero in the Senate discussions in the first months of 2003, when your questioning could have made a difference. In your heart, I think you know that all things considered, we are not "better off" without Saddam Hussein. If we could roll back the clock and do it all over again and accepted his invitation to prowl Iraq in perpetuity in search of weapons of mass destruction, we would be a lot better off.

Wanniski's open letter is also interesting in that he provides an explanation as to why Lott lost the job of Senate Majority Leader. Wanniski says that Lott might have objected to proceeding to war with Iraq, whereas the Bushies knew they could count on Frist to rubber-stamp everything they said. Therefore, they jumped at the first opportunity to get rid of Lott--the remark he made at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. As many pointed out at the time, it wasn't the first time that Lott had made similar remarks. It was just the first time he'd made them when the powers that be wanted him out of the way.

You can't handle the truth!

Jonathan Schwarz describes a dinner he attended with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen back when Schwarz was a student at Yale in 1988:

Gary Hart had recently flamed out in the '88 presidential race because of Donna Rice. And Cohen told all us fresh-faced, ambitious, grotty youths this:

The Washington press corps had specifically tried to push Hart out of the race. It wasn't that he'd had extramarital affairs—everyone knew this was the norm rather than the exception among politicians. Hart wasn't at all unusual in this respect. Instead, Cohen said, it was because the press corps felt that Hart was "weird" and "flaky" and shouldn't be president. And when the Donna Rice stuff happened, they saw their opening and went after him.

...
At the time, I remember thinking this:

1. How interesting that the DC press corps knows grimy details about lots of politicians but only chooses to tell the great unwashed when they decide it's appropriate.

2. How interesting that the DC press corps feels it's their place to make decisions for the rest of America; ie, rather than laying out the evidence that Hart was weird, flaky, etc., and letting Americans decide whether they cared, they decided run-of-the-mill citizens couldn't be trusted to make the correct evaluation.

Now, this doesn't mean Gary Hart wasn't weird and flaky. I assume he was. To me, the desire to be President of the United States in itself means you're a psychopath who should never be President of the United States. Just like you have to be Catholic to be Pope, you have to be dangerous and sick to be president.

But the point is the powerhouse media and their politician lovemates truly do feel there are things normal, grubby Americans simply can't handle. Everything I've seen in my life confirms this—and it's true across the (extremely narrow) political spectrum.

If you're not part of their little charmed circle, believe me, all your worst suspicions about them are true. They do think you're stupid. They do lie to you. It's not necessarily because they fear and hate you, although they do. It's because they think you can't be trusted with the things they know—and if they're not monitoring you, you will break America.

(Note: The bold emphasis was Jonathan's; the italic emphasis was mine.)

I've had similar thoughts about anyone who really wants to be president--he or she has to be a psychopath. To even get close you've got to sell so many liens on your soul that you'll never get it back--which makes the job a lot easier for morons like the current pResident, who never had a soul to begin with. My last few years of following the news closely have convinced me of Jonathan's main point--the media is simply putting on a show, not to enlighten us, but to confuse and control us.

From Pat Bagley.

From Rex Babin.

From David Horsey.

From R.J. Matson.

Pat Robertson--Spawn of Satan

The insane, vile twit called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his 700 Club show:

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Hugo Chavez is smart, articulate, and has won election after election by wide margins. He has offered hope to millions of poor people in Venezuela and throughout South America, and with $65 a barrel oil, he is actually in a position to deliver on his promises. I've seen the man in person; he is a far greater man than either George W. Bush or Pat Robertson could ever hope to be. And anyone who knows anything about the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela knows that the coup was led by a small group of very wealthy politicians. The popular uprising was what restored Chavez to power.

The only thing that Chavez has done that really bothers the powers in Washington is that he has objected to the (re-)imposition of the neoliberal economic model--the IMF/World Bank model where the corporations get the wealth and people of Latin America get the shaft. I understand why this pisses off the Cheney/Clinton crowd; but why should Pat Robertson hate the man so much that he calls for him to be killed? Chavez continues to sell us oil, and he poses no military threat to us whatsoever.

In any case, lunatics like Robertson should not be permitted to incite violence on their TV shows.

A glimpse into the future

Election Day 2008
7 AM, EST: Polls open on the east coast.
7:45 AM: Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton concedes to Republican Bill Frist, citing the need for national unity. Clinton said: "I will not put America through the trauma of 37 days of indecision, like Al Gore did, or even 18 hours like John Kerry did. And even though I opposed Senator Frist's plans to bring some of our troops home and to allow the use of stem cells in medical research, I call for all Americans to stand behind him and give him your full support."
10:15 AM: Reports out of the green zones in Baghdad, Tehran, Pyongyang and Caracas indicate that progress is being made on all four constitutions.
11:07 AM: Reports out of Baghdad indicate that an insurgent blimp bomb has destroyed Basra.
12:30 PM: President Bush calls for America to stay the course in all twelve quagmires, and for Americans to unite behind apparent President-elect Frist, should Bush decide to turn power over to him.
2:30 PM: Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Gonzales and Ash