Peak Oil and the Winter of Our Discontent

I'm trained as a geographer, long concerned with questions of sustainablity and human interaction with the physical environment. I have been an independent scholar studying resource consumption since the early 70's. These are the parts of the Peak Oil argument that we (geologists, geographers, resource economists) are pretty sure are correct:

1. Hubbert was generally correct with his projections of the US peak oil.

2. The US economy suffered substantial dislocation after the peak, but was able to offload its supply needs to outside sources and restore its petroleum supply and eventually, its economy.

3. No new oil field of any substantial size has been discovered since the early 1990's.

4. China, India, Korea, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asian Young Lion economies are just entering their demand growth phase on oil usage.

5. Using Hubbert's methodology, it is almost certain that world peak oil will happen in the next few years, by 2010 at the latest. It's hard to be precise because:
a) some countries like Russia and Saudia Arabia play fast and loose with their figures on spare production capability and reserves
b) oil companies consider information about reserves to be proprietory and do not disclose them fully and some LIE about their reserves to prop up stock price (Shell as a recent example)

6. The last peak oil brought substantial economic dislocation at a time when we were able to replace the supply. That option will not exist this time.

7. The issue becomes one of whether there is any possibility of a soft landing from
the resulting crisis or whether a crash and burn is inevitable.

8. Given the quality of economic and political leadership the world is exhibiting at the present time, I fear for the worst.

9. I've chosen to be proactive about this. I live in a small town. I have no car. I am out of the credit/debt economy. I am in the process of buying a small energy efficient house with small woodlot and ground for a decent size garden.

I do all of this not because I am sure that the doom is upon us, but because I cannot with any certainty say it is not.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

New Autonomous House: Design and Planning for Sustainability

Five Acres and Independence

Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It

Poem Of the Day

Caedmon's Hymn by Caedmon

(c 737)
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudaes maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidae
he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe haleg scepen.
tha middungeard moncynnaes uard
eci dryctin aefter tiadae
firum foldu frea allmectig

primo cantauit Caedmon istud carmen.

(c 746)
Nu scilun herga hefenricaes uard
metudaes mehti and his modgithanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidae.
he aerist scop aeldu barnum
hefen to hrofaehalig sceppend
tha middingard moncynn&ealig;s uard
eci dryctin aefter tiadae
firum foldu frea allmehtig

MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom,
The might of the Creator, and his thought,
The work of the Father of glory, how each of wonders
The Eternal Lord established in the beginning.
He first created for the sons of men
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator,
Then Middle-earth the keeper of mankind,
The Eternal Lord, afterwards made,
The earth for men, the Almighty Lord.

In the beginning Caedmon sang this poem.

Poems and Prose from the old English

Friday Cat Blogging

HRH Xanthippe
Feline Ruler of the Universe,
closely observes her domain.

photo by handdrummer

from DED Space via arse poetica: Porn star and porn-maker Republican advisors get down with Rove

Porn star Mary Carey and her boss, Kick Ass Pictures president Mark Kulkis, are attending a dinner with George W. Bush on June 14. Presumably, they will all wave their flags. The National Republican Congressional Committee invited Kulkis.

Carey, who ran for governor against real-life porn creator Arnold Schwarzenegger, will join Kulkis in a meeting with Karl Rove, at which they will give 'their recommendations on important national issues.'

Kulkis serves as an honorary chairman of the NRCC's Business Advisory Council. Because you can't have too many family values.

You know, you just can't make this stuff up. The Neos keep exceeding even my lowest expectations of their behaviour.

The Top 5 Music Meme.

Oh dear, I seem to have been selected for my first blog meme.

ae, the muse at one of my favorite blogs arse poetica, has tagged me for the Top 5 Music Meme.

First, a disclaimer or two. I haven't listened to commercial radio for 15 years or more. Most adult contemporary music is marked unknown on my musical map. Instead, I gravitate to the weird corners and the cracks of the musical world. Stuff I find on the web. Cutouts in cd shops. Strange looking lp's in used record shops. The pop music I do know tends to be from the dim dark past, the 60's and before. So keep that in mind with my selections.

A. Top Five Lyrics that Move Your Heart

This category was hard for me. At first I kept coming up with things like Little Richard shouting "wop boppa lou bop a wham ding dong" but eventually thought better of it. Even though that lyric does move me (in a strange sort of way), I'll play it straight.

So here goes:

Neil Young, 'One of These Days'
One of these days/I'm going to sit down and write a long letter/To all the good friends/I've known/And I'm going to try/To thank them for the good times together/Though so apart/We've grown
Maybe it's the growing old thing, but it seems to me that what the world makes of us in our passing will mostly be how we touched those we lived with on the journey. Thanking those of such importance only seems right somehow.

Kathy Mattea, 'Standing Knee Deep in a River'
They roll by just like water/And I guess we never learn/We go through life parched and empty/Standing knee deep in a river/And dying of thirst
Substitute any of life's real rewards for 'they' . Friends, love, nature's beauty, joy. We all feel the emptiness and yet the way to fill it is all around us if we would just notice and DRINK.

Fred Astaire, 'The Way You Look Tonight'
Someday/When I'm awfully low/When the world is cold /I will feel aglow/Just thinking of you/And the way you look tonight
Strikes me that this is what love is all about, being with someone who the very thought of makes your life better no matter where you are. Sublime.

Johnny Cash, 'Hurt'
I hurt myself today/Just to see if I could feel
Yeah, I know it's a cover of a Nine Inch Nails tune. But by all that's holy, it's magnificent. The video is the one and only time something on MTV made me cry. Cry like a baby wailing for my lost momma. Oh Johnny, we hardly knew ya!

Tom Waits, 'Step Right Up':
Tired of being the life of the party?/Change your shorts/change your life/change your life/Change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy/get rid of your wife/And it walks your dog, and it doubles on sax/Doubles on sax, you can jump back Jack/see you later alligator/See you later alligator/And it steals your car/It gets rid of your gambling debts, it quits smoking/It's a friend, and it's a companion/And it's the only product you will ever need
Well, you didn't think I'd play it totally straight, did you? This song is the Xmas retail theme song in my bookshop. During 'da season' we play this right before store opening as a ritual to get ourselves through another day of retail hell. Delightful.

B. Top 5 Instrumentals
This catagory was also hard, simply because a lot of what I listen to regularly is instrumental music. So many cds, so little time.

Yo-Yo Ma, Soul of the Tango
God, this is so good. The man has soul. Astor Piazzola would be proud.
drums and tuba, Flatheads and Spoonies
Trio with electric guitar, drums and tuba. A great variation on the drum n' bass form
Nightnoise, 'Retrospective'
Celtic smooth jazz at its best played by 4 superstars of Irish music
Glen Velez, 'Doctrine of the Signatures'
Velez is a master of the frame drum. The title cut is the best accompaniment for meditation I have ever found.
Ennio Morricone, 'The Mission'
A glorious soundtrack. In a just world this would be played in the concert halls that play our greatest music

C. Top 5 Live Musical Experiences

Babtunde Olatunji, Omega Institute, NY, 2001:
I actually got to play as part of his band in the camp concert. An amazing spiritual experience, easily the best two hours of my life. Not just on another planet after this one, folks, in another universe.

Boubacar Traore, Grassroots Music Festival, Finger Lakes July 2002:
Traore plays a version of blues roots music from Mali. I sat not three feet from him in a small tent stage area and was simply astounded by the fingerings he used. He is the most amazing guitarist I have ever, ever seen or heard. He sent me over the moon. It took me hours to come down.

Kodo, Wilmington, DE, 1988:
The best group of drummers from Japan. Seats six rows back. Heads just above stage level. Man oh man, it doesn't get any better than this.

John Adams & the American Symphony Orchestra, State College, PA, 1998:
The best modern American 'classical' composer. A marvelous orchestra. An evening of John Adams superlative compositions. Tasty. Tasty. Tasty.

Ain't Misbehavin', Off Broadway, 1986:
Fats Waller music. Great cast. Front row seats. My very straight in-laws beside me. And I get sucked up onto the stage to play the victim in the Youse A Viper number. What a hoot!

D. Top Five Artists You Think More People Should Listen To:

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
The master of Pakistan's devotional Qawwali music, he is the most incredible singer you will ever hear.
The Langley Schools Music Project
A wonderful 'found music' classic. A group of rural Canadian school kids, some dimestore instruments, and their visionary teacher tackle the Beach Boys, David Bowie and the Eagles (among others). Their version of 'Desperado' is so good that the Eagles should NEVER perform it again out of respect for the nine year old girl who sings it. Absolutely brilliant.
The Sim Redmond Band
A haunting lead singer. Great guitar hooks. Thoughtful lyrics. Unusual percussion stylings. And totally unknown outside of the Finger Lakes. There ain't no justice.Hear them here.
The Deighton Family
A British dad with a taste for music hall songs and instruments. An Indonesian mom with an understanding of the differing tonalities of western and eastern music. And some precocious kids let loose on instruments and vocals of all stripes. Joyous, fun music. samples here.
The Tiger Lilies
A drummer who plays a kids drum set, a bass player with a porkpie hat and attitude, and a lead singer in theatrical whiteface who sings in counter-tenor and plays the accordian. Plug in a taste for the morbid and strange and what's not to love?

E. Top Five Albums You Must Hear From Start to Finish:
This is another category that gave me pause. I'm pretty old school. I always listen to the whole album. I'm still not used to the MP3 pick a song and go way of musical programming. So with that in mind, I'll just recommend some albums that I never seem to get tired of instead.

Talking Timbuctu: Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder
To the Moonr: capercaillie
Come Away with Me: Norah Jones
Specialist in All Styles: Orchestra Baobab
My Life: Iris DeMent

F. Top Five Musical s/Heroes:

Babatunde Olatunji: My musical bodhisatva, a true saint.
Van Morrison: The amazing spiritual odyssey recorded in his music so mirrors my own journey that it is positively eerie at times
Evelyn Glennie: Though profoundly deaf, she has become the foremost classical percussionist in the world
Patsy Cline: So completely damn HONEST in her performance that it is painful
Don Williams: He's 'just a country boy', but he sings for all us who straddle that awkward line between the mountain and the 'outside'. My choice of music when I want to have a good wallow in self pity.

Update: I forgot. I'm supposed to tag someone else. Ok, you're it, Dave at Via Negativa, Tom from Tomorrow's Ancient History Today and especially you Ned at By Neddie Jingo, in retaliation for this little ditty.

from Freiheit und Wissen: Oh Give Me A Home, Where the Caribou Roam...

What was the number 1 most under-reported news story from the past 30 days? I’ll give you a hint: Alaska, oil spill, British Petroleum.

Actually, it would be unfair to call it under-reported because in order to count as such, someone would actually have to have reported on it.

Amidst the runaway brides and various other distractions the corporate media have cooked up to keep us happy and apathetic consumers of “entertainment” news, I have not seen a single news organization so much as mention that there has been an oil spill in Alaska.

Correction: Not 1, not 2, but 3 oil spills in BP’s Prudhoe Bay operation during March and April of this year – all of which went unreported to authorities. And of course the media has remained completely silent despite the fact that the spills were exposed to Congress on April 15 by an oil industry watchdog.

The story has all the earmarks of a grand drama – corporate whistle blowers, corporate malfeasance and a subsequent cover up, a federal investigation, and all the while, Congress happily debating whether or not to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.

Prudhoe Bay is in fact North America’s largest oil field and it sits only 60 miles away from ANWR. BP runs the operation on behalf of Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobile, and other oil companies – an operation known for its hazardous conditions.

But Congress just doesn’t care how shoddy the operation gets – it will not deter them or President Bush from pressing forward with their plans to let the energy industry rape Alaska’s glorious refuge. After all, we wouldn’t want to scare away all the energy money from the next election now would we?

The situation is absolutely criminal. It would be one thing to have an industrial accident. It is an entirely different matter to knowingly keep safety conditions minimal, resulting in accident after accident, and all the while hiding the evidence from the government.

Nor is this the first time that the ridiculous safety measures have been brought to light. In one of two articles I could find on the issue (both written by the same person), Jason Leopold writes:

BP has racked up some hefty fines over the years due to a number of mishaps at its Prudhoe Bay operations. In 2001, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission found high failure rates on some Prudhoe wellhead safety valves. The company was put on federal criminal probation after one of its contractors dumped thousands of gallons of toxic material underground at BP's Endicott oil field in the 1990s. BP pleaded guilty to the charges in 2000 and paid a $6.5 million fine, and agreed to set up a nationwide environmental management program that has cost more than $20 million.

The latest charges against BP stem from claims made recently by BP whistleblowers who exposed their company’s severe safety and maintenance problems that have caused at least a half-dozen oil spills at Prudhoe Bay—North America’s biggest oil field—and other areas on Alaska’s North Slope, which the whistleblowers say could boil over and spread to ANWR if the area is opened up to further oil and gas exploration.

And another BP cover up was brought to the government's attention last year:

Hamel [the industry watchdog] filed a formal complaint in January with the EPA, claiming he had pictures showing a gusher spewing a brown substance in July 2003 and December 2004. An investigation by Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation determined that as much as 294 gallons of drilling mud, a substance that contains traces of crude oil, was spilled on two separate occasions when gas was sucked into wells, causing sprays of drilling muds and oil that shot up as high as 85 feet into the air.

Because both spills exceeded 55 gallons, BP and Nabors were obligated under a 2003 compliance agreement that BP signed with Alaska to immediately report the spills. But they didn't, said Leslie Pearson, the agency's spill prevention and emergency response manager.

But Congress has conveniently forgotten all of this – a particularly relevant history since the exact same technology in use at Prudhoe Bay would be replicated in any ANWR drilling.

The corporate media have failed the public in any last remaining sense of civil obligation that they might feel by completely ignoring this story. President Bush and Congress have failed the public as well - not to mention the 41 Democrats in the House who voted for the Energy Bill which would open ANWR for drilling.

How much longer will we look the other way as our elected officials hand out our public resources with no concern for the consequences?

Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska's North Slope

The Natural History of an Arctic Oil Field: Development and the Biota

Walking My Dog, Jane: From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline

fromBlanton's and Ashton's - Reality-based and lovin' it: UK MP George Galloway

The following is a photograph of UK MP George Galloway in his meeting with Saddam Hussein.



Oh, wait a minute. That's not George Galloway. I can't quite...let me get my glasses...looks like...naw, couldn't be, but it looks just like...Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein!

Oh my stars and garters. But isn't the Senate investigating UK MP George Galloway because he met with Saddam Hussein? And that's Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein. And Hussein is a bad man who tried to kill President Horse Fluffer's daddy and gassed his own people, right? Right? And George Galloway met with Hussein to try to get him to let Hans Blix and the UN inspectors back into Iraq, but Donald Rumsfeld met with Hussein to sell him weapons to kill Iranians. So why is the Senate investigating George Galloway and not Donald Rumsfeld.

Politics is so confusing.

From George Galloway's testimony before the Senate:

'Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

'I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein.

'As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

'I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce. '

No, on second thought, there's nothing confusing about that at all.

Read the transcripts of Galloway's testimony. It's spectacular.

No, I have to quote this section. I didn't see this quoted on US web sites yesterday and it is so exquisite that I have to quote it. This Galloway guy gets better and better the more you read the transcripts.

'Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

'You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

'And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

'But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

'Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

'In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.'

I just gave up smoking, but after reading the transcript, I feel like I need a cigarette.


UPDATE: After being shown up for a complete ass, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman (R) said Galloway's credibility was "very suspect". That is one of the funniest things he could have said. Could anybody have been a bigger idiot in all of this than Coleman? I now dub Senator Norman Coleman, MN-R, "The Black Knight" because of his resemblance to the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I don't know the full story on Galloway, but by ghod he sure talks a good talk. Hurray for him for standing up to that jerk Coleman who couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a road map. Idiot would be high praise of his intellectual ability.

from Whiskey Bar: Scenes We'd Like to See

Defendants in the dock at the Ango-American War Crimes Trial of 2010, held at The Hague under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Of the 20 defendants shown here -- the so-called 'Republican Guard' -- only one (Alan Greenspan, second row, second from right) was found not guilty, on the grounds that the destruction of the American economy and the global financial crash of 2008, while regrettable, did not constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva Convention.

Another defendant (Ari Fleischer, front row, extreme right) received only a light sentence, as the court determined that lying to the American people was too common a crime to merit more severe punishment.

In a more controversial decision, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was spared any prison time at all, after the judges ruled that being seated between former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers for the entire eight-month trial constituted 'punishment enough.'

Former Vice President Richard Cheney (second row, extreme left), who feigned narcolepsy throughout most of the trial, was committed to the newly established United Nations Hospital for the Criminally Insane, as was former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (next to Cheney), who insisted on being addressed as 'Mrs. Bush' during the the trial.

The remaining defendants were sentenced to life terms at the Guantanamo War Crimes Penitentiary -- the same facility used to imprison the remaining leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, whose own war crimes trial began shortly after this picture was taken.

Oh Please! Oh Please! OH PLEEEEZ!

Poem of the Day

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.')

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a 'homeland of the free.'

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

from CorpWatch via arse poetica: Houston, We Still Have A Problem

On May 18, Halliburton will hold its annual shareholders meeting in downtown Houston. Inside, CEO David Lesar will be congratulating himself on the astonishing $7.1 billion revenue the company has made off its recent work in Iraq. This number is double what the company made in the war-torn country the previous year; it boosts Halliburton's overall revenue some 25 percent, bringing it to over $20 billion for 2004.

Outside the meeting, the protesters are likely to outnumber the official participants. And, if it's anything like last year, hundreds of corporate accountability activists will spend the day chanting and marching outside the posh Four Seasons Hotel, demanding that Halliburton be investigated and held accountable for ripping off both US taxpayers and Iraqis alike.

This year, there is even more reason for concern.

* Halliburton is currently being investigated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, the US Department of Justice is investigating Halliburton's work in Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and the Balkans. (more)

The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money

The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group

from MSNBC.com: 'Smoking gun' on humans and global warming claimed

NASA-led scientists say ocean data ties manmade emissions to warmer Earth
Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prepare to launch a 'profiling float' in the tropical Pacific. The float is one of hundreds used around the world to monitor climate change and which were instrumental for a new report on warming and human greenhouse gas emissions.

Using ocean data collected by diving floats, U.S. climate scientists released a study Thursday that they said provides the 'smoking gun' that ties manmade greenhouse gas emissions to global warming.

The researchers, some of them working for NASA and the Energy Department, went a step further, implicitly criticizing President Bush for not taking stronger action to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

They said the findings confirm that computer models of climate change are on target and that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit this century, even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin “out of our control,” especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the NASA-led scientists said. 'The climate system could reach a point where large sea level change is practically impossible to avoid.' (more)

Of course, these were only scientists employed by the US government. We can't trust them or the other 98% of all atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, geographers, oceanographers, and climatologists who agree with the conclusions of this report. We still have to wait for the conclusions of the 'faith based' researchers who seem to have been too busy building the Ark out behind the White House to bother reading the report.



Global Warming: The Complete Briefing

Poem of the Day

Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: 'The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.'

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

from Salon.com Politics: The accountability moment

Given the Bush administration's record of errors -- and worse -- in the war on Iraq, you'd think the administration's talking heads would be slow to climb aboard the high horse when someone else makes a mistake in the war on terrorism. You'd be wrong, of course.

Newsweek apologized over the weekend for running a short item in which it reported that 'sources' told the magazine that investigators had confirmed that interrogators at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Qur'an down a toilet. After the original report sparked a wave of anti-American rioting in Afghanistan, Newsweek's primary source backed away from the story and said he couldn't be sure where he'd learned of the alleged flushing incident. In his editor's note Sunday, Newsweek's Mark Whitaker said that the magazine regrets 'that we got any part of our story wrong' and extends its 'sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.'

It's not clear yet just how much of the story Newsweek got wrong. Newsweek seems to suggest that its error was in saying that 'sources' confirmed the incident or that the confirmation of the incident was contained in a report by U.S. investigators. The magazine's apology seems to leave open the possibility that, regardless whether it was confirmed by sources or identified in a report, the flushing incident may actually have happened. 'Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we,' Whitaker wrote. Appearing on CNN over the weekend, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley acknowledged at least the possibility that the incident actually occurred. He said the United States is investigating the allegation 'vigorously' and will take action against those responsible 'if it turns out to be true.'

But that's not the approach others in the administration are taking. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence di Rita said over the weekend that the editors at Newsweek 'owe us all a lot more accountability than they took.' White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said this morning: 'It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story.'

Accountability? Retractions? We're still waiting for that sort of thing from the White House. Newsweek has expressed its regret for any loss of life that may have come from its mistakes. As for the Bush administration? More than 1,600 U.S. troops and thousands upon thousands of Iraqis have been killed so far in a war that was sold based on White House assurances that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and a whole lot innuendo suggesting that he was somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11. Would it be too much to suggest that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others in their administration owe the American people 'a lot more accountability,' too?

Haysooze the Neocons have got a lot of nerve. This crew demanding for an apology for an error is like Dracula complaining to the Red Cross that it got his blood type wrong.

Poem Of the Day

Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint by Federico García Lorca

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

Collected Poems

from the Sunday Times via Steve Gilliard via dadahead: Holy shit

"This comes as something of a surprise. This man's capture was touted as an indication that the U.S. was right on bin Laden's tail."


Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

“Al-Libbi is just a ‘middle-level’ leader,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French intelligence investigator and leading expert on terrorism finance. “Pakistan and US authorities have completely overestimated his role and importance. He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

According to Brisard, the arrested man lacks the global reach of Al-Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s number two, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, or Anas al-Liby.

Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda’s commander of operations in Europe, as reported.

...

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: “What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying.”

...

Some believe al-Libbi’s significance has been cynically hyped by two countries that want to distract attention from their lack of progress in capturing Bin Laden, who has now been on the run for almost four years.

Even a senior FBI official admitted that al-Libbi’s “influence and position have been overstated”. But this weekend the Pakistani government was sticking to the line that al-Libbi was the third most important person in the Al-Qaeda network.

"Cynically hyped". By the Bushies? No way we're gonna believe that, are we folks?

from arse poetica Pharisees, Sadducees and Caesar Surrogates: Bill Moyers on the "Librul" Media

God bless Bill Moyers. Excerpts from his closing address at the National Conference for Media Reform this weekend follow below.

Democracy Now! | Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing".

The story I’ve come to share with you goes to the core of our belief that the quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined. I can tell this story because I’ve been living it. As Dr. Wilson said, it’s been in the news this week, including more tax on a single journalist, yours truly, by the right wing media and their friends at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As you know, CPB was established almost forty years ago to set broad policy for public broadcasting and to be a firewall between political influence and program content. What some on its board are now doing today, led by its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, is too important, too disturbing, and yes, even dangerous for a gathering like this not to address it. We’re seeing unfold a contemporary example of the age old ambition of power and ideology to squelch -- to punish the journalist who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable.

First, let me assure you that I take in stride attacks by the radical right wingers who have not given up demonizing me although I retired over six months ago. They’ve been after me for years now, and I suspect they will be stomping on my grave to make sure I don’t come back from the dead. I should point out to them that one of our boys pulled it off some two thousand years ago after the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Caesar surrogates thought they had shut him up for good. I won’t be expecting that kind of miracle, but I should put my detractors on notice, they might just compel me out of the rocking chair and back into the anchor chair.

Oh please, oh please, oh please!!

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean.

Behold righteous prose! It's a beautiful thing. People "who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets"... perfection.

And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

Can anyone refute the simple elegance of that logic?

Read more! Truth-telling like this in abundance:

...(T)he rules of the game permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.

My God, the truth sounds revolutionary, doesn't it? [Swooning.]

Bill Moyers for President I say.

Now, Keith Olbermann, please convince MSNBC to hire him. Give him a daily newscast. And fire that ass Scarborough. Then you and Jon Stewart and his crew at the Daily Show won't be the only voices of sanity on TV news.

Poem of the Day

Pi by Wislawa Szymborska


The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also just a start,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can't be grasped, six five three five , at a glance,
eight nine, by calculation,
seven nine, through imagination,
or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison
four six to anything
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth ends at thirty-odd feet.
Same goes for fairy tale snakes, though they make it a little longer.
The caravan of digits that is pi
does not stop at the edge of the page,
but runs off the table and into the air,
over the wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, the clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.
Oh how short, all but mouse-like is the comet's tail!
How frail is a ray of starlight, bending in any old space!
Meanwhile two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size
the year nineteen hundred and seventy-three sixth floor
number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade and a code,
in which we find how blithe the trostle sings!
and please remain calm,
and heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not pi, that won't happen,
it still has an okay five,
and quite a fine eight,
and all but final seven,
prodding and prodding a plodding eternity
to last.

Poems New and Collected

Poem of the Day

That the Science of Cartography Is Limited by Eavan Boland


—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at ivy and the scutch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of
the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon

will not be there.

Against Love Poetry

Poem of the Day

Sonnet XX by Francesco Petrarch

Feeling ashamed that I still seem to pass
Over your beauty, Lady, in my rhyme,
I remember when I for the first time
Saw you, made for my love as no one was:
But the burden I find crushes my frame,
The work cannot be polished by my file,
And my talent which knows its strength and style
In this attempt becomes frozen and lame.
Several times I moved my lips to cry;
But my voice was constrained within my lungs.
Which is the sound that can soar up so high?
Several times I began vriting songs;
But pen and hand and itellect were bound
To be conquered and caught in the first round.

The Portable Petrarch

#5 in a continuing series: The True Face of Compassionate Conservatism