Month: April 2008

There are not many of you.
You’re precious. Thank you.

My effort every day is to care deeply.
You might say this has been done before.
I say mankind walks.
Oh, how can I say it?
We walk because we each bring courage.
Isn’t this deep in our nation, neighborhood, and life?
Go ahead, Let yourself,
Bring yourself journey and, thud, thud, thud, simple destiny.
Our fathers felt no strength but brought today.
It’s a horrid thing when only battle these days. Loss confuses us.
But also, our nation yearns a little, hopes a bit, and truly wants.
Oh, maybe we are good hope that will replace cheap old men.
Trust yourself. Tomorrow might be what you want.
Courage changes this world, like feet step. Our journey is the world.

I’ll tire easily and be forgotten, but I want every breath written in love and freedom.

Half of the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan exposed to explosive devices suffer from tinnitus. The major cause is exposure to loud noises, which can damage and destroy hair cells of the inner ear.

Nearly 400,000 troops collected disability for service-related tinnitus in 2006, which cost $539 million in 2006. The number climbs nearly 20 percent each year. It could hit $1 billion by 2011, according to the American Tinnitus Association.

It’s the number one war-related disability. [more at Science blog]

Graduating from kindergarten in Baghdad…

[BBC]

Matt Haughey gathered up what we already know.

Contributions from Oil & Gas industry to Bush 2000 campaign: $1,889,206
Contributions from Oil & Gas industry to Bush 2004 campaign: $2,596,725

Price of a barrel of crude oil at the beginning of 2001: about $23
Price of a barrel of crude oil at the end of April, 2008: nearly $120

Maybe we didn’t know there’s $1 trillion profits to OPEC predicted for 2008.

What happens when we build an infrastructure of local armies and security technology to watch and monitor our cities, neighborhoods and infrastructure?

To give us an answer, there’s a head start in Britain where tens of thousands of cameras are installed as well as greater numbers of communication taps.

After several years installing a surveillance society, here’s the first reports of what we can expect too:

Surveillance powers designed to track terrorists are being deployed by councils to crack down on littering, dog fouling and planning law breaches, a survey reveals.

Its findings expose the vast scale of Big Brother spying by town halls and brought urgent demands for “root and branch” reforms to curb the fast-growing snooping culture.

Some councils have used the sweeping powers granted by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) more than 100 times in the last year to follow and watch residents or monitor their calls – often while dealing with the most minor of suspected offences.

…

… hundreds of local authorities and other agencies, permit checking private phone or internet records, secretly recording meetings inside suspects’ homes and recruiting “spies” to watch their neighbours.

Officials in Derby, Bolton, Gateshead and Hartlepool admitted using covert spying techniques to deal with dog fouling, while Bolton spied on suspected litter louts.

Wyre council in Lancashire confirmed it was using plain clothes investigators posing as dog walkers – and equipped with hidden cameras to gather evidence – to watch genuine dog walkers in parks.

And officials in Kensington and Chelsea said they had used Ripa powers to spy on a resident suspected of misusing a disabled parking badge.

Conwy council in Wales said it spied on an employee who was working while off sick, while Liverpool officials investigated a false claim for damages against the council.

[story]

There is no census data on bear population, no quota attached to the bear-hunting licenses: the more hunting parties an outfitter can organize, the more bears he can ‘harvest’.

“A lot of our customers are seasoned bear hunters and they’re coming here for a real trophy. It’s a world class area — you get a chance of killing a real exceptional old animal.”

[Rich Shootists, Bad Hunting]

Native Americans have the Coyote to explain deception. Coyote is the Trickster. The master of ploy, sometimes just for its own sake. One story tells how Coyote imitated the Mountain Lion.

‘Coyote was going along and he saw a rock rolling down the hill. It rolled down toward some deer and they jumped. Coyote wondered who was rolling stones and looked up at the top of the hill. Another stone came rolling down past Coyote toward the deer and the deer jumped again. Then a third stone came down and the deer jumped only a little. They knew it was only a stone.’

‘The next moment another stone came by Coyote. But this was a soft rock. It was Mountain Lion who had rolled himself up like a rock and was rolling down the hill.’

‘”What a funny rock,” thought Coyote. “It doesn’t make any noise when it rolls.”‘

‘Mountain Lion rolled right up to the deer who were not suspicious of the rolling rocks by this time. Then Coyote saw Mountain Lion get up, jump up on a big deer and kill it. Mountain Lion picked up the deer and carried it up to a cliff where he could eat it and see the country all around. The rest of the deer ran off around the hill.’

‘Coyote thought this would be a good way to get deer.’

‘He rolled a stone down the hill to where the deer were and they jumped. He rolled another stone and they did not jump as far. When he rolled the third stone they only looked around to see that it was just another stone. Then Coyote rolled himself up in a ball like Mountain Lion and rolled down the hill. When e got there he jumped up and tried to get a deer but he couldn’t. He was too dizzy. He just fell over and the deer ran away.’

From Josie, who reminds, “Greed… ruins everything.”

Like Coyote some people try to copy the successful people they see….the Mountain Lions. They try to be big-shots so they can gain the big game. Coyote could have stuck to catching rabbits, mice, and field birds, but he wanted to be a big game hunter….He wasn’t satisfied just being himself.

FuturePundit posts a report from the investment and merchant bank CIBC saying the price of oil will double in the next 4 years.

Retail gasoline prices will rise to almost $7 a gallon.

A short competent summary of the reasons for pain at the pump

Rising demand
Flat production
Falling dollar
Too few refineries

Who’s next?

Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.

According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.

Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($2.2 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining.

It was forced to call on an emergency reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.

In the wake of the decision this week by Kazakhstan, the world’s fifth biggest wheat exporter, to join Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in stopping exports to satisfy domestic demand, the situation in Japan is expected to worsen.

Arguably Japan’s biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country’s self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%…. [story]

Attached to a particle of floating plastic garbage to ride the currents of the world, species are increasingly crossing habitat:

“There has always been marine debris in the form of pumice, volcanic rock, coconuts and so on [but] we are greatly increasing something that was already there. Human rubbish spreads across all the world’s seas, forming half of all the marine debris washing up in the tropics and more at higher latitudes.” [link]

David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey found that man-made rubbish in the seas, especially plastics, has almost doubled the spread of alien species in the subtropics and more than tripled it at high latitudes. Since the creation of plastics over 50 years ago, floating litter has provided mobile homes for marine organisms such as bryozoans, barnacles, polychaete worms, hydroids and molluscs, increasing opportunity for dispersal to new areas. Many seem to prefer plastics to natural matter such as volcanic rock, pumice and wood.

Link to previous post on the Garbage Island.

Link to a 12 part video series about ‘the Pacific Ocean’s floating trash heap‘.

Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation points out:

“The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, although it has a 6 year period of rotation at the surface, is much too large to be considered a single “area” in any meaningful sense.

“It is full of diverse habitats and is already richly seeded with plant life. In fact, plastic debris has doubled the biological life at the surface in the area according to Dr. Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey.

“The writer conjures up an image more like a lake. Remember, if the gyre was a lake it would be the size of Africa, with an average habitat depth of over a mile.

The scale is the hardest thing to communicate.”

“What you hear ain’t what you get,” reports Michael Fellman, a historian at Simon Fraser University.

He writes eloquently about the campaigns of Clinton, Obama and McCain. He’s exploring our politics and culture – “Racism, lite”, “Faking a blue collar”, “A nation in denial” – but first he reminds us this is “An old and proven game”.

As I am an American history professor as well as sometimes journalist, let me venture into deep background on pseudo-populism.

In the first three decades of the 19th century, the Jeffersonian party — precursor to the Democrats, broadened the suffrage to include all white males, not just property owners or taxpayers, as in the past. However, most of these men did not vote. Indeed the Jefferson Democrats had basically eliminated their aristocratic Federalist opponents, and they nominated their presidential candidates — all from Virginia as it happened — in their congressional caucus. Few voters bothered to show up at the polls, as there was no real contest.

That changed after the election of 1824, in which Andrew Jackson, a rough-hewn Tennessee slaver-holder and popular Indian-killing war hero, was denied the nomination by the caucus in favour of John Quincy Adams, son of a president and gentlemanly Massachusetts statesman. In 1828, Jackson ran against the eastern establishment, claiming to represent the little people against the effete, out-of-touch snobs. Voter participation swelled dramatically and Jackson won big. In office, he then destroyed the Bank of the United States, the symbol of aristocratic control, running against Chestnut Street (the Philadelphian predecessor to Wall Street). And he did this all in the name of the little guy.

In fact Jackson represented big slaveholders and state and local bankers who chaffed at the control of any central bank. He accomplished the first economic deregulation of the sort that modern Republicans favour, which led to wild inflation and the crash of 1837. The pseudo-populist Jacksonian rhetoric was power to the people and democratic equality. The name of the actual game was rapid wealth accumulation by the rising American economic elites displacing the old-fashioned and more restrained merchant elite.

By 1840, after three years of depression, the opposition gentlemen re-gathered, but they ran their candidate, a Virginia aristocrat named Harrison, as a man born in a log cabin and given to drinking hard cider (the boilermaker of 1840). They mimicked the pseudo-populism of the Jacksonians, thus proving it had become the dominant political discourse.

Pandering elites

American political rhetoric and ideological clarity has never recovered. Pseudo-populism has been the language of political elites ever since. If I were a really tedious political historian I would give you chapter and verse of this dreary history, but I will resist.

Pseudo-populism is dishonest because American politicians feel compelled to pretend to be just folks rather than the elite power holders they are.

In a Reuters poll of 52 economists across Europe, Germany’s business climate index fell below all forecasts. Business sentiment in France fell to a low level. Dutch business confidence fell in April. The head of the European Central Bank said, “”We have observed in the recent period of time sharp fluctuations and we are concerned about their possible implication for financial and economic stability.”

“More than ever, what is said by the U.S. authorities at the level of president, minister of finance and Ben Bernanke on the fact that a strong dollar is in the interest of the U.S. is very important.”

“The euro-zone economy is coming under stress, particularly the more resilient part of the euro zone,” said Matthew Sharratt, a Bank of America economist. [story]

The Earth Will Be Just Fine, Thank You

The grand myth of environmentalism is that it’s all about saving the Earth.

From AP at the BBC:

Fee, a Hungarian Puli sheep dog jumping over a hurdle during a dog show in Germany.

Supposedly unknown mortgage brokers duped strawberry pickers and day laborers near Watsonville, California into thinking they could afford homes, and have since left town.

Concerned about dozens of foreclosures and families on the street?

The Watsonville City Council were considering drafting an ordinance that would require the banks and lenders fiscally responsible for the dozens of homes that have been abandoned to register with the city when they file a notice of default and maintain the houses.

“We need to be proactive,” said John Doughty, director of community planning for the city. “This is just another tool in the tool box.”

Doughty told the council that at the very least the ordinance should address the boarded-up houses that have boards that do not match the exterior paint to the house. [story]

John McCain campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns opposes equal pay for women but arranges favors for cronies.

McCain’s assistance came to light in a New York Times front-page story Tuesday, thrusting Seaside’s real estate machinations with Fort Ord into the national campaign spotlight.

Diamond, 80, stated in Monterey County court records that on several occasions he asked McCain to intercede in Seaside water and real estate affairs, and local officials say he boasted of his close friendship with the senator. According to McCain’s campaign Web site, Diamond has raised more than $250,000 for the senator’s presidential bid.

“Keep in mind there is another $100 million opportunity just across the road if we are in a position to influence ownership of water …” Diamond’s associate Donald Pitt wrote in a memo.

In a 1998 memo to Pitt, Diamond wrote, “I also heard that there is additional land that Seaside is getting from the Army and that could make this an even bigger play than we thought.”

They set their sights on the opulent Bayonet and Black Horse golf course developments, and Diamond again asked McCain for support in a deal Diamond described in the court records as a “love fest.” Also known as The Fairmont, the development project now includes the renovation of the golf courses, a 330-room hotel, 125 homes and 170 timeshare units.

Diamond’s partnership, Seaside Resort Development, submitted a thick packet to Seaside officials in response to the city’s solicitation of golf course resort developers. The packet included a hearty letter of endorsement for Diamond on McCain’s senate letterhead and signed by McCain, along with letters from a couple of other Arizona politicians.

Don Jordan, a Seaside councilman who was mayor from 1994 to 1998, said he never saw McCain’s letter.

Letters of support

McCain’s letter was among appoximately a dozen from politicians, businesses and local officials in support of Diamond. U.S. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., and a congressman at the time, Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., also sent letters of support.

In his letter, McCain called Diamond “an uncommonly dedicated public citizen … and a close personal friend.”

“You get letters from people for their development all the time,” Jordan said.

Jordan said he seldom talked to Diamond because most of the negotiations about the project were handled by city administrators and the operators of the golf courses.

It wasn’t until after Jordan was defeated for re-election in 1998 and left the council that Seaside finalized the golf deal with Diamond. He said he hadn’t heard any mention of McCain in connection with Diamond until this week’s news reports.

Daniel Keen, the city manager of Seaside from 2000 to 2004, said the deal over the Seaside golf course and resorts mostly was completed by the time he started with the city.

But Keen, who is manager of the city of Novato, said he recalls discussions with Diamond and his partner Donald Pitt about the project in which “references to McCain were inserted in a lot of conversations.”

Dropping names

Keen said at times Diamond raised McCain’s name “just in passing.”

“If you got to know Diamond, he was very gregarious, very wealthy and he liked to talk about his wealth,” Keen said. “McCain’s name came up from time to time. They were involved in Arizona. That’s how I know he had some kind of relationship.”

In 2002, McCain’s help was again requested when there was a plan for a land swap on Fort Ord to address water issues, Keen said.

Keen said Diamond brought up McCain as a possible means of getting “the Army coaxed along to do the swap.”

McCain steps away

In May of that year, according to court records, Keen wrote in a letter to Diamond: “Once again, on behalf of the City of Seaside, we appreciate any assistance you can provide in helping us ‘revive’ the swap proposal.”

Diamond sent a letter to McCain that included two Herald articles about water shortages on the Peninsula and in North Monterey County, writing “I would appreciate it if you would follow up and drop a line to the city manager of Seaside.”

But Diamond said something was going on with McCain’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee at the time, “and John said that he would rather not get involved, he didn’t think it was right. And I said, ‘Okay, thank you.'”

In a 2003 deposition, Diamond was unapologetic about asking McCain for help with his projects. A message left by The Herald at Diamond’s business office in Tucson was not returned Tuesday.

Diamond said he knew “a lot of the senators and congressmen,” because he was a lobbyist for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. But his friendship with McCain, he said, went back to the times “he got out of the concentration camp,” referring to McCain’s days as a prisoner of war.

[story]

The end of cheap clothes is near

In the US, ever more cotton farmers are switching to more lucrative crops – soybeans, corn, and wheat – whose market prices are rising even faster.

The prices of these crops have been pushed higher by a mixture of subsidies, growing demand from biofuel producers and market speculation.

End food-to-fuel diversion: The world is getting hungry. And cold!

Plastic in the ocean may be one of the most alarming of today’s environmental stories.

Studies indicate less than 5% of plastic ever gets recycled…

“Synthetic Sea” shows how many marine birds and fishes ingest plastic, because it mimics the food they eat. The program reveals scientific research, indicating how plastic pieces can attract and hold hydrophobic elements like PCB and DDT up to one million times background levels. As a result, floating plastic is like a poison pill.

Does the amount of plastic debris outweigh the amounts of plankton? How might this be affecting the marine creatures that feed on plankton?

VBS.tv has launched a 12 part video series about ‘the Pacific Ocean’s mythical floating trash heap‘.

At a recent air show in Russia, reports Pravda, Alexander Begak has shown a new vehicle called ‘Evolution’ which travels on land, water and air.

Evolution can fly at the height of 4,000 meters above the ground [2.5 miles high] and cover the distance of up to 400 kilometers [250 miles] without refueling.

“Let’s get started.”

I want tomorrow.

Ingenuity is lifted only with love.

Yes, there are poor ideas, even Jefferson warned: None of us are enough unless we trust prospects, make rewards, and respect each other; the genius of breathing is the oxygen of tomorrow.

We are more than mere accommodating, salute to Blood, any Chavez, all King, every Pope and tabletop Victory, we are inhaling hope.

So today?

Exhale agony.
Breathe good.

The only is us.

Yes. I’m using challenge terms but not hurting words, merely lifting heart to truth, so do not worry that I’m simply male and hurting you: Oh no, Jesus, me, are better things.

O’ so water more…!

Thus your sweet strength isn’t taunted nor taken nor teased, but honored please, if believing can be better than knowing.

Keep us together awhile.

We’re not worth throwing away if what’s humble is every pride.

If not love,
victory fails.

Without naming countries, who has urged states to protect their people from “grave and sustained” human rights abuses or face outside intervention?

Hungry people do not wait to tell their government. We listen to the news say, “Legacy risk assets are taking write downs.” Are you are not in the street?

Nuf sed.