Monday, February 28, 2005
Sunday, February 27, 2005
OSCARS
There's only one film I can think about -- MILLION DOLLAR BABY -- never been that hit with a movie since One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I expect it to get all seven of it's nominations, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Adapted Screen Play, Best Film Editing.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Is Iran Next?
Ex-marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that President George W. Bush has received and signed of on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005.The implied goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with great skepticism.
Ritter also claims that the January 30 elections, which Bush calls a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom, were not so after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%. Ritter claims an official involved in the manipulation was the source of the information. It appears this will soon be reported in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh.
Scott Ritter's talk was a culmination of a long evening devoted to discussion of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Before Ritter spoke, Dahr Jamail narrated a slide show on Iraq focusing on Fallujah. He showed more than 100 vivid photographs taken in Iraq, mostly by himself. Many of them showed the horrific slaughter of civilians. Jamail argued that U.S. mainstream media sources are complicit in the and helped sustain support for it by deliberately downplaying the truth about the devastation and death it is causing.
The Friday Feb. 18 event in Olympia was sponsored by South Puget Sound Community College Student Activities Board, Veteran's for Peace, 100 Thousand and Counting, Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace and the United for Peace of Pierce County.
Ritter also claims that the January 30 elections, which Bush calls a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom, were not so after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%. Ritter claims an official involved in the manipulation was the source of the information. It appears this will soon be reported in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh.
Scott Ritter's talk was a culmination of a long evening devoted to discussion of Iraq and U.S. foreign policy. Before Ritter spoke, Dahr Jamail narrated a slide show on Iraq focusing on Fallujah. He showed more than 100 vivid photographs taken in Iraq, mostly by himself. Many of them showed the horrific slaughter of civilians. Jamail argued that U.S. mainstream media sources are complicit in the and helped sustain support for it by deliberately downplaying the truth about the devastation and death it is causing.
The Friday Feb. 18 event in Olympia was sponsored by South Puget Sound Community College Student Activities Board, Veteran's for Peace, 100 Thousand and Counting, Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace and the United for Peace of Pierce County.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Time to Start Thinking About Next Year's Flu Season
I posted a story titled the White House Rodeo by Mike Davis last November 11, 2004. In it were the four 'horsemen of the apocalypse' which he used as a format for his story. One of the four was the avian flu and the warning of a world wide pandemi that we are not prepared to deal with.
Today a story in the Chicago Sun Times says that Earth may be on the brink of a worldwide epidemic from a bird flu virus. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said scientists expect that a flu virus that has swept through chickens and other poultry in Asia will genetically change into a flu that can be transmitted from person to person.
The avian flu now spreading in Asia is part of what is called the H1 family of flu viruses. "Each time we see a new H1 antigen emerge, we experience a pandemic of influenza," said Gerberding. In 1918 H1 appeared and millions died worldwide. In 1957 the Asian flu was an H2, and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 was an H3.
"The science here is all alerting us that we have a great deal to be concerned about," she said.
We might not be able to afford the flu shot screwup next year.
Today a story in the Chicago Sun Times says that Earth may be on the brink of a worldwide epidemic from a bird flu virus. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said scientists expect that a flu virus that has swept through chickens and other poultry in Asia will genetically change into a flu that can be transmitted from person to person.
The avian flu now spreading in Asia is part of what is called the H1 family of flu viruses. "Each time we see a new H1 antigen emerge, we experience a pandemic of influenza," said Gerberding. In 1918 H1 appeared and millions died worldwide. In 1957 the Asian flu was an H2, and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 was an H3.
"The science here is all alerting us that we have a great deal to be concerned about," she said.
We might not be able to afford the flu shot screwup next year.
Misplaced Priorities
The Army said yesterday, against the advice of its own auditors, that it would not hold back tens of millions of dollars each month from the Halliburton Company until the company justifies bills for past work in Iraq, while hundreds of Army Reserve and National Guard troops returning home after being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone months without pay or medical benefits they were entitled to receive.
Are the politicians who voted to increase by 15 times the maximum fine for broadcast indecency the same ones who want to severely limit awards to families of patients who are maimed or killed by incompetent doctors and hospitals?
Are the politicians who voted to increase by 15 times the maximum fine for broadcast indecency the same ones who want to severely limit awards to families of patients who are maimed or killed by incompetent doctors and hospitals?
Monday, February 21, 2005
What's Goin' On?
The administration now says that Iraq is about to become the breeding ground for terrorists, surpassing Afghanistan. Wasn't that the reason most critics said the Iraq war would be a bad idea. So, we're spending billions of dollars to create a new breeding ground for the enemy in the 'war on terror'. Brilliant.
Participation in the Kyoto Protocol took place within the past few days. The United States would not participate -- not economically sound -- participation would, through pollution restrictions, harm the economy. Weather, recently, has been extreme. Worst hurricane season in recent memory in Florida, and predicted to be worse. Southern California, as we speak is getting weather it does not customarily get -- tornadoes, extreme amounts of rain. In the midwest, Chicago had its first ever bad air quality warning during the winter.
Israel says Iran will know how to build a nuclear bomb in six months.
We are being warned of a possible al-qaida attack in the U.S. with nuclear weapons.
Syria and Iran seem to forming a united front.
North Korea has developed new longer range missiles.
Our military is stretched to its limits.
Thank God we put all our efforts in getting rid of Saddam, now the world is safer and cleaner.
And with this guy in office for another 4 years we'll have to create a new number to name the deficit . . . maybe abominabillion.
Participation in the Kyoto Protocol took place within the past few days. The United States would not participate -- not economically sound -- participation would, through pollution restrictions, harm the economy. Weather, recently, has been extreme. Worst hurricane season in recent memory in Florida, and predicted to be worse. Southern California, as we speak is getting weather it does not customarily get -- tornadoes, extreme amounts of rain. In the midwest, Chicago had its first ever bad air quality warning during the winter.
Israel says Iran will know how to build a nuclear bomb in six months.
We are being warned of a possible al-qaida attack in the U.S. with nuclear weapons.
Syria and Iran seem to forming a united front.
North Korea has developed new longer range missiles.
Our military is stretched to its limits.
Thank God we put all our efforts in getting rid of Saddam, now the world is safer and cleaner.
And with this guy in office for another 4 years we'll have to create a new number to name the deficit . . . maybe abominabillion.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Declassifying the 9/11 Report Little by Little
So now we're learning of newly released facts contained in the 9/11 report. On top of the press briefing "bin Laden intent on attacking inside the U.S.", now the report tells of dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. They specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations.
The FAA warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable." The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.
Among other things, the report says that leaders of the FAA received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all intelligence summaries in that time.
The FAA warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable." The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.
Among other things, the report says that leaders of the FAA received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all intelligence summaries in that time.
Fish and Wildlife are doing just fine?
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, a survey finds that more than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protection and favor business. Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists said"The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasiveat Fish and Wildlife offices around the country." Biologist Sally Stefferud said she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion. "Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all cases. As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency," she said.
Further survey comments --
A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."
"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions[if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Further survey comments --
A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."
"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions[if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
JUSTICE?
Army Spc. Charles Graner, convicted for abuse of prisonersat Abu Ghraib, is sentenced to ten years, while Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel who signed off on possible abuse of war prisoners, starts first week as attorney general. HUH?
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Reaching a Point of No Return
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously assumed to be stable may be starting to disintigrate. Its collapse would raise sea levels around the earth by more than 16 feet.
BAS staff are carrying out urgent measurements of the remote points in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) where they have found ice to be flowing into the sea at the enormous rate of 250 cubic kilometers a year. Only four years ago, in the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worries that the ice sheet was disintegrating were firmly dismissed. That's quite a change in thinking in just four years. Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, said "The previous view was that WAIS would not collapse before the year 2100. We now have to revise that judgment." Collapse of the WAIS would be a disaster, putting chunks of low lying, desperately poor countries such as Bangladesh under water - not to mention much of southern England.
England's Prime Minister Tony Blair has called a conference to increase the pace of international action on climate change. One topic to be covered, at Tony Blair's request, is to explore the question of how much climate change the world can take before the consequences are catastrophic for human society and ecosystems. This conference takes place in about a year when the UK is heading the G8 group of industrialized nations and the European Union.
Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, had an ominous prediction when she said that major global warming impacts on the world in the next 20 to 30 years could not be avoided. Her forecast that we are powerless to prevent major damagefrom climate change is accepted by scientists but rarely accepted by a politician. Greenhouse gases that have already been put into the atmosphere, will be enough to threaten the survival of many ecosystems and wildlife such as polar bears and penguins. "I believe that most of the warming that we are expecting over the next few decades is now virtually inevitable, and even in this time frame we may expect a significant impact," Mrs. Beckett said.
The conservation organization WWF believes the polar bear, lacking the melting summer sea ice they normally hunt on, could be extinct within 20 years due to the effects of global warming. And yet these facts are not mentioned in the mainstream press.
As much as our mainstream television new and press love to stand out in a storm to report it, you can search almost in vain for anyone even willing to speculate that the increase in 'extreme weather events' -- multiple massive hurricanes in Florida, prolonged drought in the southwest, Europe's burning summers, Brazil's first south Atlantic hurricane ever, the storm of the century on Canada's east coast, Japan's worst season of typhoons in memory or Chicago's first ever air pollution warning during winter -- might have anything to do with global warming.
A new report by the International Climate Change Task Force said:
"The countdown to climate change catastrophe is spelled out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world -- and it is remarkably brief. In as little as ten years, or maybe less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached. And it breaks new ground by putting a figure -- for the first time in such a high level document -- on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes, such as agriculture failure, water shortages, major droughts, increased disease, sea level rise and the death of forests. -- with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as runaway global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheetor the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.
The 'bottom line' is that we are less than 1.2 degrees of temperature latitude before the crucial point of no return is reached.
BAS staff are carrying out urgent measurements of the remote points in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) where they have found ice to be flowing into the sea at the enormous rate of 250 cubic kilometers a year. Only four years ago, in the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worries that the ice sheet was disintegrating were firmly dismissed. That's quite a change in thinking in just four years. Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, said "The previous view was that WAIS would not collapse before the year 2100. We now have to revise that judgment." Collapse of the WAIS would be a disaster, putting chunks of low lying, desperately poor countries such as Bangladesh under water - not to mention much of southern England.
England's Prime Minister Tony Blair has called a conference to increase the pace of international action on climate change. One topic to be covered, at Tony Blair's request, is to explore the question of how much climate change the world can take before the consequences are catastrophic for human society and ecosystems. This conference takes place in about a year when the UK is heading the G8 group of industrialized nations and the European Union.
Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, had an ominous prediction when she said that major global warming impacts on the world in the next 20 to 30 years could not be avoided. Her forecast that we are powerless to prevent major damagefrom climate change is accepted by scientists but rarely accepted by a politician. Greenhouse gases that have already been put into the atmosphere, will be enough to threaten the survival of many ecosystems and wildlife such as polar bears and penguins. "I believe that most of the warming that we are expecting over the next few decades is now virtually inevitable, and even in this time frame we may expect a significant impact," Mrs. Beckett said.
The conservation organization WWF believes the polar bear, lacking the melting summer sea ice they normally hunt on, could be extinct within 20 years due to the effects of global warming. And yet these facts are not mentioned in the mainstream press.
As much as our mainstream television new and press love to stand out in a storm to report it, you can search almost in vain for anyone even willing to speculate that the increase in 'extreme weather events' -- multiple massive hurricanes in Florida, prolonged drought in the southwest, Europe's burning summers, Brazil's first south Atlantic hurricane ever, the storm of the century on Canada's east coast, Japan's worst season of typhoons in memory or Chicago's first ever air pollution warning during winter -- might have anything to do with global warming.
A new report by the International Climate Change Task Force said:
"The countdown to climate change catastrophe is spelled out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world -- and it is remarkably brief. In as little as ten years, or maybe less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached. And it breaks new ground by putting a figure -- for the first time in such a high level document -- on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes, such as agriculture failure, water shortages, major droughts, increased disease, sea level rise and the death of forests. -- with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as runaway global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheetor the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.
The 'bottom line' is that we are less than 1.2 degrees of temperature latitude before the crucial point of no return is reached.
Monday, February 07, 2005
RECENT OBSERVATIONS
Environment
Chicago, over the past week had three ozone alert (bad air quality) days. Chicago has never had bad air days during the winter. This is the first time ever. The temperature was in the lower to mid fifties and the threat was mainly to people with risk to unhealthy air.
Our military leaders
Marine General James Mattis in an interview regarding Iraq made statements to the effect -- It's fun shootin' the bad guys -- you got guys that are beating their wives for not wearing their burkas -- it's fun shootin' these guys. He doesn't get a reprimand or even a slap on the wrist. Feeble minds think alike.
Social Security
Wasn't social security born out of the collapse of the stock market in '29 that caused the great depression. It's kinda like trying to solve the drug problem by going to Al Capone for advice. Social security is the sure thing that you'll make it through your senior years. Or do you want to buy a lottery ticket?
Iraq
For all the hoopla over the elections -- the tally isn't in yet. You can hold an election, but until you have legitimate resuts that's all it is. Let's have a horse race. All is well and good, but until there is a winner and everyone agrees that the winner is the winner it's only a horse race. I agree that hte people of Iraq want a better life and they feel it's coming -- but it's up to us to deliver 'democracy' -- 'theocracy'? It is their call.
Chicago, over the past week had three ozone alert (bad air quality) days. Chicago has never had bad air days during the winter. This is the first time ever. The temperature was in the lower to mid fifties and the threat was mainly to people with risk to unhealthy air.
Our military leaders
Marine General James Mattis in an interview regarding Iraq made statements to the effect -- It's fun shootin' the bad guys -- you got guys that are beating their wives for not wearing their burkas -- it's fun shootin' these guys. He doesn't get a reprimand or even a slap on the wrist. Feeble minds think alike.
Social Security
Wasn't social security born out of the collapse of the stock market in '29 that caused the great depression. It's kinda like trying to solve the drug problem by going to Al Capone for advice. Social security is the sure thing that you'll make it through your senior years. Or do you want to buy a lottery ticket?
Iraq
For all the hoopla over the elections -- the tally isn't in yet. You can hold an election, but until you have legitimate resuts that's all it is. Let's have a horse race. All is well and good, but until there is a winner and everyone agrees that the winner is the winner it's only a horse race. I agree that hte people of Iraq want a better life and they feel it's coming -- but it's up to us to deliver 'democracy' -- 'theocracy'? It is their call.
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