Progressive Alaska

The Obama Doctrine

2012-01-31T23:45:00.000-09:00

Glenn Greenwald, reacting to the Haditha war crimes final verdict, posted four points, which resonate, of course, with his latest book and its profound message. His points might be regarded as the centerpiece of "The Obama Doctrine":

The Rules of American Justice are quite clear:

(1) If you are a high-ranking government official who commits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immunity, both civil and criminal, and will have the American President demand that all citizens Look Forward, Not Backward.

(2) If you are a low-ranking member of the military, you will receive relatively trivial punishments in order to protect higher-ranking officials and cast the appearance of accountability.

(3) If you are a victim of American war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any entitlement to see the inside of a courtroom.

(4) If you talk publicly about any of these war crimes, you have committed the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espionage – and will have the full weight of the American criminal justice system come crashing down upon you.

A president who lied himself into office by claiming he would protect whistleblowers, is now prosecuting more of them than any of his predecessors.

A president who lied himself into office by claiming he would end torture and prosecute those who had engaged in it earlier, is now just snuffing people that get in the way:

The promise to scrap his predecessor’s hardliner war-on-terror policies, which helped Barack Obama win presidential election, is apparently off the table. The political reality is that the current administration is doing quite the opposite thing.

Long before he became US president or the winner of a Noble Peace Prize, Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. During his election campaign he vowed to reverse the abuses and policies of his predecessor George W. Bush.

Three years later, many civil rights advocates, who once cheered “yes, we can,” are finding themselves disillusioned.

“Not only has the Obama administration blocked torture accountability and refused to investigate and prosecute. He has basically maintained indefinite detention. He has revived military commissions. As well he has expanded targeted killings – they’ve increased under the Obama administration manifold, and he’s even authorized the killing of a US citizen,” explains Maria LaHood from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

World-renowned author and scholar Noam Chomsky believes the Obama administration has changed gears and accelerated illegal practices into overdrive.

“There is a shift between Bush’s policies and the Obama’s on this. Bush’s policy was to kidnap people, take them to Guantanamo or Bagram or some other torture chamber and try to extract some information from them. Obama’s policy is just to kill them. They’re killing them all over the world.

And the Bin Laden assassination was a case point,” he told RT.

Another was the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric. President Obama described the man as “the leader of external operations for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Apart from those two are hundreds more killed by US UAVs. The number of drone strikes during the first two years under Obama exceeded the total carried out during Bush’s 10 years.

“If a President McCain were doing the exact same thing that President Obama is doing, he would have been denounced by a lot of liberals. It’s one of those dangerous moments in the US history. We saw it a bit with Clinton in the 1990s, where a democrat campaigned and pledged to change the country and the world has actually pushed the right-wing agenda further forward than a republican could have if they took the power,” says New York-based journalist and author Jeremy Scahill.

As Obama gears up for his re-election campaign, civil liberties groups that believed his words the first time around are now left to judge the commander-in-chief on his actions.

"As Obama gears up for his election campaign," I asked some of my friends this morning what they think the Democrats who still support this fucking war criminal should put up as his campaign slogan. Here are some of the suggestions:

‘The devil made me do it’

VOTE FOR JILL STEIN

Obama 2012: “I Suck Slightly Less”

Frack Baby Frack

Of the Banksters, By the Banksters, For the Banksters

This Time is Different

Gotcha!

Half a Loaf of Bread Is Better Than None

“Half a slice is better than none

You won’t be sorry this time!

The Rule of Law is so last century!

He Put the Extra in Extra-Judicial

Believe in change you can be deceived by!

Obama/Citigroup 2012

Who else you gonna vote for?

Eat your peas and get over it!

It could be worse

Read my lips – I am a Democrat

Since 2009 Giving the Tea Party only 95% of what they demand – we know compromise

Obama – He Killed Osama

As you might glean, it will be a tough haul for the Obama campaign machine to get people like me who donated every penny we could afford, opened up our houses to volunteers, and campaigned on the streets and in the Obama HQ for hours and hours to do that again.

Do you think you have a slogan that will help him convince me he deserves the same efforts I gave in 2008?

Good luck!

Stupid Valley Sled Punks Post Long Video of Themselves Breaking the Law

2012-01-30T21:52:00.000-09:00

Hey, Dudes - too late to take it down. We've already copied it, its url and all that, and sent it on to DNR.

They're snowmobiling in an area of Hatcher Pass closed to motorized recreation.

Democracy Now's Coverage of Yesterday's Occupy Oakland Police Action

2012-01-30T21:49:00.000-09:00

UAF Students at Minus 50 F

2012-01-30T21:47:00.000-09:00

My facebook friend, Yvonne McLoud posted this photo of four UAF students, out in the cold.

Max Keiser Interviews Michael Hudson on Our "Hopeful" 2012 Economy

2012-01-29T00:56:00.000-09:00

David Rovics' Best Song in a While - If Only It were True

2012-01-29T00:04:00.000-09:00

OMG! Look who Mitt is making uncomfortable now!

2012-01-28T16:24:00.000-09:00

Hat tip to Howie Klein

20, Well, Maybe 12 Visionaries for 2012 – #s 3 & 4: Winona LaDuke and Stewart Brand

2012-01-27T10:29:00.000-09:00

Winona LaDuke and Stewart Brand

I. One of the people most often mentioned as an early visionary of the "global village" concept that developed in the mid-1960s, as a result of Marshall McLuhan's ideas, expounded in his seminal book, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, was Stewart Brand, the chief editor of the basic series of Whole Earth catalogs, which began appearing in 1969. I met Brand at an event held somewhere in Marin County (the fogs of time...) in late 1968. A bunch of us had gathered at Timothy Leary's dentist's place, as part of organizing for the Autumn Equinox Conference at Harbinger Springs, in Lake County, California. That conference was supposed to lead to a further 1969 Celestial Synapse Conference there, that never took place, at least at Harbinger. He was excited about his project - the catalog. He couldn't find time to participate in ours.

I liked his idea - making it easy for people to have access to tools for independent, sustainable living. The catalog was filled with entries about stuff one could buy or get for free that could help in a lot of areas. Brand defined its purpose thusly in the forward of the first edition:

We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.

The first edition was subdivided into categories of topics:

Understanding Whole Systems
Shelter and Land Use
Industry and Craft
Communications
Community
Nomadics
Learning
Within each section, the best tools and books the editors could find were collected and listed, along with images, reviews and uses, prices, and suppliers. The reader was also able to order some items directly through the catalog.

After the catalog days, Brand continued to have an impact on other iconoclastic thinkers and was sought after time and again as the digital revolution, predicted so well in its impact by McLuhan, began to unfold and expand. Her's how McLuhan predicted it in his Gutenberg Galaxy:

The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.

Brand has long been noted for his aphorisms. See "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" above. He's also adaptive, and recently changed that saying to "We are as gods and HAVE TO get good at it." Some of his aphorisms have become so embedded in the text and subtext of digital luminaries, people forget where they came from:

Virgin America tried to do a cool thing when the company named an airplane “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.” The name was a tribute to Steve Jobs who used the quote in his renowned 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. It’s a nice gesture, but, unfortunately, it’s not 100% correct.

You see, that quote, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” is attributed to Jobs, but he was not the source. Yes, he used the quote in his Stanford commencement, but it was originally from The Whole Earth Catalog. The catalog was produced by Stewart Brand who used it to educate people and give them the tools to “find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.”

Brand was controversial when he was young for seeming to reject so much of what the 60s and 70s establishments stood for. Recently, he has become controversial for seeming to embrace some of the most questionable practices in use by the large corporate and national structures that are creating huge long-term messes many of us feel are almost beyond human comprehension: nuclear power, genetically-modified foods and other materials, and herbicides. His latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, is, in part, about his deadly embrace of these ideas. At the bottom of this essay, I'll post a youtube of him explaining the book's main ideas.

Brand's thinking in this book takes in a lot of important points having to do with how important (in terms of percentage of energy/food consumption) urban life on earth really is, how deadly coal burning for electrical power is to the atmosphere, land and sea, and how important it is to find new ways to feed billions of people who live at the edge of poverty or starvation.

II. Which brings me to Winona LaDuke. Unlike Brand, I've never met this amazing woman. I voted for her, though, in 1996, when she made her first run for the White House as Ralph Nader's Green Party running mate. Many firedoglake readers will be familiar with her name and accomplishments. Some might not, though, as she is seldom covered in mainstream media.

Like Brand, LaDuke is good at aphorisms, and terse statements full of impact. I'll get back to that. She's also very colloquial. Young people, especially young women love her talks and lectures, which are warm and direct. Here's a statement she recently made at Portland State University, while speaking about the Alberta Tar Sands Project:

The longer you fight a project, the more expensive it becomes. Right? And the more expensive it becomes in a failing capitalist economy, the better shot you have at winning. Just telling you - that's the way it is. Right? So, keep that it mind. We don't have the money, but they don't either. In the long haul, they do not.

And how do you know you've won? It's when they say "the project is no longer considered economical." And the New York Times calls you " a ragtag group of activists." (My transcript. Again - video posted at the bottom)

Like Brand early on, LaDuke embraces the idea of individuals trying to get more control over their lives. Why Brand seems to be turning more toward accepting being part of the borg, and LaDuke has become a leader of the rebellion against it may have more than a little bit to do with their early lives.

Brand joined the Army and became a paratrooper:

As a soldier in the U.S. Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he was later to express the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing.

And allegiance to authority images? Perhaps.

LaDuke, marginalized in her youth as a Native American, reacted against authority and being stereotyped:

Q: You were born in L.A. and educated at Harvard. How did you make your way back to White Earth?

Winona LaDuke: Ever since I was little I wanted to come back and work in the Indian community. My father is from White Earth, and I never felt entirely accepted on the West Coast. As a kid, I was always the one passed over at dances and never picked for sports teams. At that age, it's easy to blame the victim--you're too dark or your hair is funny But that's not what it's really about. It's about learned racism and classism. Eventually, I started to question what's wrong with America.

My family also had a keen sense of social responsibility. I was never told to go out and make money, but to do the right thing. Before my parents split up, they were both active in Indian politics in Los Angeles. Later, I remember my mom taking me out of school for anti-war and civil-rights marches.

Q: What led you to the Ivy League?

LaDuke: I'm not sure. I certainly wanted to escape from my hometown. I also think I went to Harvard because they told me I couldn't. My guidance counselor basically said, "Don't bother. Go to vo-tech."

(Note: As an Alaskan who has worked with many strong Native women here, including Diane E. Benson, and whose wife mentors young teachers in Alaska villages, I can guarantee these prejudices remain alive, well and thriving)

III. Winona LaDuke's trajectory as an advocate for retaining marginalized and indigenous values clashes with where Stewart Brand now finds himself exactly in the areas I mentioned about him above: nuclear power, GMO products and herbicides. This is partly due to their upbringing and early impressionable encounters. And partly, it is perhaps due to the ways their career paths went in different directions:

Brand is a molecular biologist whose income in the 80s through now relied partially on his ability to continue to have an impact on the rapidly growing high tech community around San Francisco Bay.

LaDuke is a community economic development specialist whose jobs and income have always been linked to her efforts as a key player in helping people out of power gain some.

Perhaps the divergence in their views is best epitomized in these two statements:

LaDuke likes to quote her father, a Hollywood stuntman and bit player in cowboy-and-indian films, who later became a shaman known as Sun Bear, telling her "I don't want to hear your philosophy, unless it grows corn."

Brand, defending what he sees as the vital importance of developing GMO crops, citing Pamela Ronald's book, Tomorrow's Table, says: "[Ronald] has been a major part of developing a flood-proof rice in Bangla Desh. They lose about a third of their crop every year to flooding. With genetic engineering, she and her cohorts in the Philippines and elsewhere have developed a rice that can hold its breath underwater for weeks. This was not accomplished by breeding. They tried for years to do it with breeding. Couldn't do it."

LaDuke is actively trying to reclaim Northwestern Minnesota wild rice habitat and the ancestral tribal lands around it. She even hosts a "whole tribe catalog" (my term, not hers) that offers local seeds, finished products and other stuff.

Here's a good short episode, from the Earth Island Institute, that shows how their viewpoints diverge. In this case on the alleged neutrality of technology:

Here is Winona LaDuke, speaking at Portland State University last May, about the Alberta Tar Sands development:

[Ed. Note - Video here: unfortunately embeding is disabled. Content note: Speaking at the Native American Center at Portland State University. Winona spoke for about ½ an hour about the Alberta Tar Sands and also about the large oil extraction equipment being shipped from South Korea through Portland and along narrow highways though Idaho and Montana. This transportation has been dubbed the "Heavy Haul."]

And here is Stewart Brand, speaking at Green@Google talks, a year before Fukushima, waxing enthusiastically about nuclear power's green future:

Post-Fukushima, Brand has been - i'll be charitable here - evasive on what he and we might have learned.

Visionary #3 was to be anti-deforestation pragmatist, Moses Sanga. Still working on it....

The Series:

Visionary #1 – Paul Stamets

Visionary #2 - Peter Ward

Visionaries #s 5, 6 & 7 will be - Roz Savage, Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman

In the Age of Robotic Weapons

2012-01-25T17:25:00.000-09:00

--- by Ralph Nader

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is testing so much futuristic detect and destroy weaponry that it can be called the most advanced all-seeing invasion in military history. From blanket satellite surveillance to soldiers’ infra-red vision to the remotely guided photographing, killer drones to the latest fused ground-based imagery and electronic signal intercepts, the age of robotic land, sea, and air weaponry is at hand.

U.S. and NATO soldiers and contractors greatly outnumber the Taliban, whose sandals and weapons are from the past century. Still, with the most sophisticated arsenals ever deployed, why are U.S. generals saying that less than 30,000 Taliban fighters, for almost a decade, have fought the U.S. led forces to a draw?

Perhaps one answer can be drawn from a ceremony that could be happening in various places in that tormented country. That is, a Jirga of elders awarding a young fighter the Jirga medal of honor for courage on the battlefield, which often happens to be their village or valley.

The chief elder rose to address a wise circle of villagers. “Today we are presenting our beloved Mursi with the revered Jirga medal of honor for courage beyond the call of duty in rescuing seven of his brother defenders from almost certain destruction.

The invaders had surrounded our young brothers at night in the great Helmand gully with their snipers, grenade-launchers and helicopter gunships.

It looked like the end. Until Mursi started a very smoky fire and diverted the enemy with a firebomb that startled several donkeys into braying loudly. In the few seconds absorbed by diverting the foreigners who directed their firepower in that direction, Mursi led his brothers, two of them wounded, through a large rock crevice and down an incline that was hidden from view and into a cave covered with bush. For some reason, the occupiers’ night vision equipment was not working, thanks be to Allah.

The next morning, the enemy had gone away, provably to start another deadly attack elsewhere on our people. Before the Jirga awards you this ancient symbol of resistance, Mursi, in the form of a sculptured shield made of a rare wood, will you say a few words to your tribe?”

Mursi, a thin as a rail twenty year old youth, rose.

“I accept this great honor on behalf of my brothers who escaped with their lives that terrible night in Helmand. I was very scared. The enemy has everything and we have nothing. They have planes, helicopters, artillery, many soldiers with equipment that resists bullets, sees in the dark and provides them with food, water and medicine. We only have our old rifles, some grenades and explosives. They can see us all the way from America on screens sitting in cool rooms where they can press buttons and wipe us out without our seeing or hearing anything coming at us. We are all so terrified. Especially the children.

We wonder why they are doing this to us? We never threatened them. They threaten everyone with their bases, ships, planes and missiles. I hear that the foreign soldiers ask themselves why are they here, what are they doing here and for what? But they are paid well to be here, destroying our country year after year, though they boast about building some bridges and digging some water wells. No thank you.”

“Go back to your families, you will never win because we are fighting to repel you invaders from our ancient tribal lands, our homes,. Fighting to expel the invaders is stronger and more righteous than your weapons and all your military wealth. Even if many of us lose our lives, we will prevail one day. For we will have heaven and they will have hell.”

A long knowing silence followed. A rooster crowed in the distance. The chief elder then slowly handed the medal to their brave hero.

Can the most militarily powerful country in the world, many of whose people and soldiers are opposed or have serious doubts about why we are continuing to pursue these senseless undeclared wars of aggression that create more hatred and enemies, look with empathy at what those people, whom we are pummeling, are going through? Will the Pentagon, which doesn’t estimate civilian casualties, let its officials speak publically about the millions of such casualties—deceased, injured and sick—that have afflicted innocent Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis?

Will our current crop of political candidates for Congress and the Presidency ever reflect on the wise words of our past Generals—Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall and earlier Smedley Butler—about the folly and gore, not the glory of war?

The eighteenth century words of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, rings so true. He wrote:

“And would some Power the small gift give us.
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us…”

Cenk and Alyona Discuss the SOTU Speech on RT TV

2012-01-25T16:47:00.000-09:00

I listened to the beginning of his triumphalist, militarist, inaccurate pap yesterday evening, driving between East High School and UAA. I tried watching the entire speech late last night, after I got home from work. I couldn't finish it.

I've never voted for an incumbent US president before (1972 - George McGovern, 1980 - Gus Hall and Angela Davis, 1996 - Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke, 2004 - John Kerry), and it's looking more and more like I'm not going to break that record.

Lukáš Kmiťs New Ringtone Concerto

2012-01-24T06:42:00.000-09:00

Andrew Adler, Obama Assassination Advocate, Resigns from His Own Paper

2012-01-23T22:18:00.000-09:00

Andrew Adler, ex-newspaper editor

From Haaretz:

The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, who suggested Israel should assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama, has resigned from his post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Monday.

Adler, who has since apologized for his article, listed three options for Israel to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons in an article published in his newspaper last Friday. The first is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, the second is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and the third is to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

According to FOX News, he is under investigation by the US government:

Jewish advocacy groups condemned his comments as "outrageous," and Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said the agency is "aware" of the incident.

"We're conducting the appropriate investigative steps," he told FoxNews.com.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has a good roundup of some of the many negative reactions from prominent Jewish agencies and publications to Adler's January 13th column.

Jeremy Ben Ami, founder of J Street, who was hosted by me last July at firedoglake's Book Salon has responded:

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami issued the following statement in response to an editorial written by the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times calling for Israel to consider assassinating President Barack Obama:

“J Street condemns in the strongest possible terms the editorial in the Atlanta Jewish Times, written by the paper’s own publisher, that included a call for Israel to consider the assassination of President Obama. Andrew Adler’s remarks are un-American and decidedly not pro-Israel. An apology is insufficient and we welcome news that the US Secret Service is taking the ‘appropriate investigative steps.’

Words can’t express the repugnance that all Americans – Jewish and other – must feel toward someone who could use language like this. It is out of keeping with American and Jewish values.

This incident should serve, however, as more than an opportunity to join in condemning a lone extremist. It should be a wake-up call for the Jewish community that the discourse around the President and Israel, generally, has gotten far out of control.

One problem is that we have allowed the portion of American Jewry who disagrees with President Obama’s policies to too freely call him ‘anti-Israel’ without adequate pushback from the leaders of our largest communal institutions, who know that charge to be untrue.

As I wrote at MyFiredoglake last week, and as many others have too, were Mr. Adler Muslim, his options between January 13th and now might have been considerably more limited than merely getting out of the publishing and op-ed/threat business. That being said, the prompt and articulate responses from so many important voices in Jewish public life in the U.S. was quite good to see and not surprising. The lack of attention this story has gotten in the mainstream press is another matter.

PEER Releases Email Showing White House Manipulation of BP Gulf Leak Info

2012-01-23T21:41:00.000-09:00

I. On Monday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) announced today that they have gotten positive proof of what many of us had been suspecting back in the spring of 2010, that the White House pressured government scientists to lowball how bad the BP Gulf of Mexico blowout really was:

Top Obama officials manipulated scientific analyses of independent experts to seriously lowball the amount of oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon, according to a scientific integrity complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Documents obtained by PEER through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit indicate White House pressure to present low-range estimates as best estimates. In fact, numbers presented to the public were less than half the true flow rate.

On May 19, 2010, one month after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the White House announced creation of a group of experts from academia, industry and government to generate an accurate and independent estimate of the oil leak rate. This group was called the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG).

It is important to post the email pointing toward what kind of pressure the FRTG was under at the time (emphases added):

From: McNutt, Marcia [mailto:marcia@mbari.org] Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2010 10:04 AM To: rileyj@u.washington.edu; pmbommer@mail.utexas.edu; Franklin.Shaffer@NETL.DOE.GOV; pedro.espina@nist.gov; aaliseda@u.washington.edu; lasheras@ucsd.edu; savas@newton.berkeley.edu; pdy@clarkson.edu; ira.leifer@bubbleology.com; Wereley, Steven T. Cc: bill.lehr@noaa.gov; vlabson@usgs.gov Subject: Pending developments

Dear Plume Team:

First, wanted to say that it is terrific that the team is moving forward with providing an upper bound with the new data. I cannot tell you what a nightmare the past two days have been dealing with the communications people at the White House, DOI, and the NIC who seem incapable of understanding the concept of a lower bound. The press release that went out on our results was misleading and was not reviewed by a scientist for accuracy. It was based on a brief report that Bill, Vic, and I had prepared, and the communications people "thought" that it reflected our results, but it didn't because they don't understand what a lower bound is. Bottom line: if you are at a university, do convince some of your best and brightest to go into science communication. Please. Let me give you a flavor of some of the "suggestions" I was getting from the NIC and from the communications people at the White House and DOI as recently as yesterday afternoon as to how to "simplify" our bottom line:

From a NIC Admiral: How about just saying that the range of flow rates is 12,000 to 25,000 barrels per day? (No, because the 25,000 is a LOWER bound, not an UPPER bound....)

From a White House communications person: How about saying that several lines of evidence suggest that the flow is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day but that the rate could be as high as 25,000 barrels per day? (No, because the 25,000 is a LOWER bound, not an UPPER bound...)

The message I delivered, with 100 representatives from the media present, was that 3 lines of evidence raised the minimum rate of release to 12,000 barrels per day. Two lines of evidence raised the limit to as high as 19,000 barrels per day. One method determined the rate to be 25,000 barrels per day OR HIGHER. We were still working to improve these estimates and get the upper bound from the flow rate team. This was the least amount of interpretation I could possibly put on the results.

Very few representatives from the media really took the time to understand this. CNN was the best. I want to thank those of you who also took the time to educate the media on the complexity of this situation, and especially to those who did so in a fair and balanced way without trying to cast doubt on the scientific integrity of other groups. We are all after the truth here.In other news, I worked with a wonderfully resourceful Lieutenant here from the Coast Guard, Joe Kusak, and together we have managed to mobilize the Woods Hole experiment to directly image the plume with 1.8MHz imaging sonar and 1200 kHz ADCP. They are at the airport now awaiting a lift on a Coast Guard chopper to the Neptune Skandi where they will be integrated into an ROV to image the plume. We are also trying to get Ti sampling bottles on the ROV. This requires getting the UNOLS safety standards, which the bottles meet, crosswalked to ABS standards, which the workboat ROVs require. As I was chair of UNOLS when the safety standards were written, I recall that there were words in there that the UNOLS standards exceed the ABS standards. Just in case, I have Steve Etchemendy from MBARI standing be to interceed. He was an Alvin pilot, so knows the origin of the safety requirements for the Ti bottles, but also worked for Oceaneering, the workboat operators who need to sign off on the gas sampling.

My view is that the flux from the plume will be captured in a few days' time with an LMRP cap. It will be good to have the WHOI equipment calibrated to that flux so that if there ever is another blowout in the OCS, we will have calibrated methods for measuring the release from day 1.

Sorry this email got so long. Have to send from my MBARI account as my USGS computer is in service so I am on a loaner and only have bb access to my USGS mail. But thanks again for your service to the FRTG and I look forward to more results.

Marcia

PEER's press release on the information goes on (emphasis added):

Using new scientific integrity rules, PEER today filed a complaint charging that the leader of one of the FRTG Teams, Dr. William Lehr of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), manipulated the scientific results of the FRTG experts throughout the entire crisis to significantly understate the spill rate. Lehr is also the author of the now infamous “Oil Budget Calculator” and a report concluding 75% of the oil was gone from the Gulf by August 2010.

Lehr was leader of one of the most important FRTG teams, the “Plume Team” which analyzed videos of the oil leaks to produce the first estimates. Three of the 13 Plume Team experts used a technique called Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to estimate a leak rate in the range of 25,000 bpd. But three other experts on the Plume Team reported that PIV was underestimating the size of the leak by more than 50%. Those three experts used a different technology to correctly peg the leak rate at 50,000 to 60,000 bpd.

Yet Lehr did not tell the public or key decision makers that there was a deep split on the Plume Team.

And PEER mentions aspects of the White House manipulations and pressures that have ramifications on the announced "settlement" the government has come up with BP, on spill damages:

In fact, the leak rate was physically measured by an Energy Department team as the well was capped. This final official estimate set the leak rate at 62,000 bpd (decreasing to 53,000 bpd when finally closed), proving correct the suppressed estimates from dissenting Plume Team members.

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch stated Monday:

"This complaint serves as a litmus test as to whether the Obama administration will apply its scientific integrity rules to its own actions,” stated PEER executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that his organization has waged an 18-month court battle to obtain approximately 100 highly redacted emails while several hundred more emails are still being withheld. “Hopefully, the investigation of this complaint will force the immediate release of the full deliberations so that the scientific record can be set straight."

Mother Jones and Forbes covered the story Monday. Here's Kate Sheppard for Mother Jones, in her conclusion, with an update:

The government was also criticized for its handling of an August 2010 report on where the oil went, for which Lehr also served as the lead scientist. (I've requested comment from NOAA and the White House, and will update this post to reflect that when I receive it.)

UPDATE: Scott Smullen, a spokesman for NOAA, said it is "not appropriate to comment" on this matter because it is still in litigation.

It's not entirely clear from PEER's release, though, what was real reason for the inaccurate figures—a single scientist giving inaccurate information, the White House pressuring him to do so, or the White House screwing up the reporting of the figures. Whatever it was, it resulted in the public getting a dramatically inaccurate impression about the size of the spill.

Here's John McQuaid for Forbes:

In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, it took weeks before the public got a decent estimate for the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. BP claimed not to care (it was supposedly focused on stopping the oil, not estimating how much there was). And from the White House on down, government officials seemed downright incurious about getting an accurate figure out there. So for weeks, a placeholder estimate of 5,000 barrels per day was the official figure, even though pretty much everyone knew it was wrong. Ultimately, the figure turned out to be ten times higher.

Now we have some insight into what went wrong. An email released by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) recounts the back-and-forth between scientists trying to estimate the flow of oil and the people at the White House and other entities doing political damage control.

Basically, political damage control won out over accuracy in the form of persistent, and wrong under-estimations.

Not surprisingly, there are no comments at the Forbes article. The Mother Jones article has a growing number of them, though. This one is fairly succinct, and hits on points important to me in Alaska, as we fight Shell's plans to drill offshore year-round in the Arctic, and as I'm directly involved in the growing struggle to stop a huge open-pit coal mine on the outskirts of Palmer, and less than four miles directly upwind from my house:

The world can't sustain this insane global predatory capitalist system anymore. Corporation have their tentacles in all levels of governments around the world. No treaties on climate change will come, no safety standards for drilling and transporting crude oil, no air quality standards for coal burning, and on and on. The corporate barons have ushered in a whole new global tyranny. So get used to this, lies, cover-ups and flat out indifference to the will of the people.

And this one, from the Gulf coast:

They have lied, failed to mention, coverered up, omitted all real information on the Bp Oil Disaster. I live on the Al. Gulf Coast. Its horrible. Please help us.

II. Bmaz, Dr. Kirk Murphy and I are perhaps the only writers at firedoglake to bring much attention to the very important work done by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Hats off to Jeff Ruch and his dedicated team!

Desperate Santorum Launches CUM Bomb

2012-01-22T18:34:00.001-09:00

Hat tip to Pam Spaulding

Wind on January 21, 2012 - Wasilla, Alaska

2012-01-21T15:14:00.000-09:00

Here's a Youtube I made of our weather today. Drifts have all but closed our driveway. I'm going to have to rent a neighbor's bobcat to crack them up and move them, as they're too thick for the snowblower.

Here's a picture of the driveway last week, before the drifts formed. The snow in the drifts probably weighs about 12 to 15 tons.

Thoughts on Dmitri Shostakovich's Babi Yar Symphony and Occupy Wall Street

2012-01-21T14:51:00.000-09:00

Yevgeni Yevtushenko in the 1960s

A remarkable performance from August 2006 showed up on Youtube late last month. It is a rendition of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony, by the Maryinsky Theater Orchestra and Chorus, with bass Mikhail Petrenko, conducted by the great Valery Gergiev. The presentation was on August 19, 2006, at Royal Albert Hall, as part of the BBC Proms series. The recording, in high definition video, and with superb sound, has subtitles. It is a stunning document.

I've written a little about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the fine arts here, covering, for instance, the Occupy Lincoln Center protests after the final performance by the Metropolitan opera of Philip Glass' opera about pacifism and civil disobedience, Satyagraha. I wrote then:

I would like to see more artists involved in OWS in 2012 than has been the case this year. It is certainly true that a lot of artists are involved, but they are mostly popular artists, with only a sprinkling of personalities or top names from the fine arts.

The reality that among the first victims of funding cuts in education and government agencies are fine arts programs and classes, and that this has been going on for decades, hasn’t been covered as much as it should have been. Arts programs all over the country were the prototypes for moves designed to lower taxes on the 1%.

I've written a fair number of works that protest injustice, violence and environmental degradation. In America, protest music is generally associated with the realms of the blues, jazz, rock, rhythm-and-blues and hip-hop. Classical composers who have joined in social protests through their works have been few and far between. The modern American composer who suffered most for his political activities was the iconic populist artist, Aaron Copland. He had the audacity to stiff Sen. Joe McCarthy's juggernaut. When called to testify in front of McCarthy, here was part of the exchange:

[A]fter composer Aaron Copland denied ever having been a communist, McCarthy hectored the composer, "You have what appears to be one of the longest communist-front records of anyone we have had here."

Copland replied, "I spend my days writing symphonies, concertos, ballads, and I am not a political thinker."

Copland was never called to appear at a public hearing.

He was blacklisted from the film industry and other important venues. A performance of his Lincoln Portrait for President Eisenhower's inaugural events was cancelled.

My own work, The Skies Are Weeping, got me denounced by Alaska Rep. Bob Lynn in front of a joint session of the Alaska Legislature. Unlike Copland, I've still got my job.

But compared to the ordeals of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and thousands of Soviet artists from 1935 well into the 1960s, we were lucky, to say the least.

Shostakovich was twice purged during the Stalin years - in 1936 and 1948. Had he not been the Soviet dictator's favorite film composer, he would have ended up in the Gulag by the late 1930s, to perhaps never return, as happened to many of his friends and relatives. The best book on the subject is Solomon Volkov's 2004 volume, Shostakovich and Stalin.

Stalin died in 1953. Although Soviet artists immediately felt relieved, the "thaw" resulting from Nikita Khrushchev's consolidation of power was partially facade, partially arbitrary. Shostakovich, along with artists such as Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova sensed this, and pushed the envelope. Shostakovich, having learned much from his previous experiences with dictatorial caprice, pushed back the most. Some of his pushback was secret, but because of his popularity in the USSR and international prominence, he could push far harder. And he did.

Beginning in 1959, with his song cycle, Satires, he openly criticized the apparatchiks and nomenklatura of the ossifying Soviet establishment. Satires was immediately followed by his profound String Quartet No. 8 in C minor:

In 1979 a book appeared in the West entitled 'Testimony' which claimed to be the composer's memoirs, told to, and subsequently edited by, an associate, Solomon Volkov. The book was highly controversial because it showed Shostakovich not as the passive supporter of the Soviet regime, the role in which Western critics had placed him, but as a closet dissident. Protests followed the book's publication. It was first accused of being a forgery (which in parts it was), but it was also hailed as reflecting the spirit of Shostakovich's thoughts (which it is now generally believed to do).

Music critics also found much to ponder in the book because it included passages which upset their previously held consensus, like the one below concerning the Eighth Quartet.

When I wrote the Eighth Quartet, it was also assigned to the department of 'exposing fascism'. You have to be blind to do that, because everything in the quartet is as clear as a primer. I quote 'Lady Macbeth', the First and Fifth Symphonies. What does fascism have to do with these? The Eighth is an autobiographical quartet, it quotes a song known to all Russians: 'Exhausted by the hardships of prison'.

This was followed by his 12th Symphony, which has always struck some as so over-the-top agitprop for the Soviet regime to be parody. That is my take too.

The next work was his 13th Symphony, the subject of this post. It should be pointed out that at some notable earlier premieres of major works by Shostakovich, the audience, by and large, knew that the composer had secret messages to resistors of Soviet power and excesses embedded into the themes and their treatment. This has been well covered by major books on him published since the downfall of the USSR. All that had been veiled, a shared dissidence. With the 13th, it all came out into the open.

Shostakovich had been inspired by the poetry of the young writer, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The latter's Babi Yar was the biggest hit among political poetry aficionados in the world of samizdat. Then, startlingly, it was published:

Babi Yar appeared in the Literaturnaya Gazeta in September 1961 and, along with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir, was considered a high point of the relaxation in Soviet censorship during the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev.

Here's a description of the poem:

he denounced the Soviet distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi massacre of the Jewish population of Kiev in September 1941, as well as the antisemitism still widespread in the Soviet Union. The usual Soviet policy in relation to the Holocaust in Russia was to describe it as atrocities against Soviet citizens, and to avoid mentioning that it was a genocide specifically of the Jews. Therefore, Yevtushenko's work Babi Yar was quite controversial and politically incorrect, "for it spoke not only of the Nazi atrocities, but the Soviet government's own persecution of Jewish people."

In composing the 13th Symphony, Shostakovich took poems, some not allowed to be printed, turned them into lyrics, and then presented the package in such a way it had to be performed in Moscow, and the Soviet authorities would be watched by the European and American cultural press in how they reacted.

The composer also set four other Yevtushenko poems, one of which they created together. The Soviet authorities, when they realized what they had on their hands, tried to quash the premiere:

For the Party, performing critical texts at a public concert with symphonic backing had a potentially much greater impact than simply reading the same texts at home privately. It should be no surprise, then, that Khrushchev criticized it before the premiere, and threatened to stop its performance. Shostakovich reportedly claimed in Testimony,

"Khrushchev didn't give a damn about the music in this instance, he was angered by Yevtushenko's poetry. But some fighters on the musical front really perked up. There, you see, Shostakovich has proved himself untrustworthy once more. Let's get him! And a disgusting poison campaign began. They tried to scare off everyone from Yevtushenko and me."

By mid-August 1962, Boris Gmyrya had withdrawn from the premiere under pressure from the local Party Committee; writing the composer, he claimed that, in view of the dubious text, he declined to perform the work. Mravinsky soon followed suit, though he excused himself for other than political reasons. Shostakovich then asked Kyril Kondrashin to conduct the work. Two singers were engaged, Victor Nechipailo to sing the premiere and Vitaly Gromadsky in case a substitute were needed. Nechipalio was forced to drop out at the last minute (to cover at the Bolshoi Theatre for a singer who had been ordered to "get sick" in a performance of Verdi's Don Carlo, according to Vishnevskaya's autobiography "Galina: A Russian Story", page 278). Kondrashin was also asked to withdraw but refused. He was then put under pressure to drop the first movement.

That wasn't the end of it:

Official interference continued throughout the day of the concert. Cameras originally slated to televise the piece were noisily dismantled. The entire choir threatened to walk out; a desperate speech by Yevtushenko was all that kept them from doing so.

As the music unfolded, the audience was overwhelmed:

The premiere finally went ahead, the government box empty but the theatre otherwise packed. The symphony played to a tremendous ovation. Kondrashin remembered, "At the end of the first movement the audience started to applaud and shout hysterically. The atmosphere was tense enough as it was, and I waved at them to calm down. We started playing the second movement at once, so as not to put Shostakovich into an awkward position." Sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, who was present, said, "It was major! There was a sense of something incredible happening. The interesting part was that when the symphony ended, there was no applause at first, just an unusually long pause—so long that I even thought that it might be some sort of conspiracy. But then the audience burst into wild applause with shouts of 'Bravo!'"

Unlike all of Shostakovich's other major works of the time, the 13th was not rebroadcast or mounted throughout the nation. The first commercial recordings came from outside the USSR.

It is a gnarly work, full to the brim of polemic and rhetorical gestures that, unless well-rehearsed and performed with full conviction, fall flat.

I'd heard of the 2006 proms rendition led by Gergiev. Babi Yar has finally become available to the public in a brilliant presentation with English subtitles, almost 50 years after its creation. Here it is, the most profound piece of protest art in the history of the Soviet Union:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five:

Atlanta Publisher Andrew Adler Wants Obama "Whacked" by the Mossad

2012-01-20T13:11:00.000-09:00

Adler's solicitation for Obama assassination (click to enlarge)

There it is. Andrew B. Adler's editorial from his paper, The Atlanta Jewish Times, from January 13, 2012:

Here's John Cook at Gawker, covering it late yesterday:

Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper serving Atlanta's Jewish community, devoted his January 13, 2012 column to the thorny problem of the U.S. and Israel's diverging views on the threat posed by Iran. Basically Israel has three options, he wrote: Strike Hezbollah and Hamas, strike Iran, or "order a hit" on Barack Obama. Either way, problem solved!

Here's how Adler laid out "option three" in his list of scenarios facing Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu (the column, which was forwarded to us by a tipster, isn't online, but you can read a copy here):

Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States' policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read "three" correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel's existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don't you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel's most inner circles?

Another way of putting "three" in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives...Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.

It's hard to tell whether or not Adler is just some crank. But the Atlanta Jewish Times, which he purchased in 2009, appears to be a real community newspaper. It was founded in 1925 and,according to Wikipedia, claims a circulation of 3,500 and staff of five. To judge from its web site, it's a going concern.

Adler's newspaper isn't what it used to be, and, according to Wikipedia, "After [Adler's] takeover the website jtonline.us ceased to be updated.. This may explain the gap of a week between the editorial's publication and the pushback, which has begun in earnest today, inducing an apology from Mr. Adler:

The owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times apologized for an opinion column in which he counted President Obama's assassination as among Israel's options in heading off a nuclear Iran.

"I very much regret it, I wish I hadn't made reference to it at all," Andrew Adler told JTA on Friday.

He said he would publish an apology in his next edition, and that reaction from readers had been overwhelmingly negative.

That was from the Jewish Telegraph Agency's short report. Here's The Forward:

The option for Israel to assassinate Obama was the third in a series that Adler laid out as choices for Netanyahu to confront the threat posed by Iran. Adler denied that he was advocating that Israel consider ordering Obama’s assassination. He claimed he only wrote the piece to provoke readers.

“I don’t stand behind what I wrote and my intention was never to stand behind it. I just wanted to get a reaction from the local community, to see what they would do,” he told the Forward.

Adler said the reaction had been “very negative.” He vowed to write a column explaining himself, and insisted he has nothing against Obama.

“My view of the President is favorable,” Adler said.

The Secret Service, which investigates threats against the president, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Adler, who is a member of the Chabad Movement and has been active in the Atlanta Jewish community for years, bought the paper 2-1/2 years ago. It has a circulation of between 3,000 and 4,000.

The National Jewish Democratic Council denounced Adler’s column, calling in the “height of irresponsibility.”

“To dare to give such despicable ideas space in a newspaper … is beyond the pale,” said NJDC President David A. Harris in a statement.

Adler's column on the 13th begs the question, "Is this one deranged man's response to the campaign of organized efforts afoot by ardently militant Zionists, to demonize Obama?"

Thursday, both Glenn Greenwald and Justin Raimondo wrote very long columns on how anyone questioning the militant Zionist meme that Iran is indeed developing nuclear weapons is being targeted as "anti-Semitic." These attacks are centering on a few writers, who Raimondo has called The DC Five:

The tale of the DC Five – the five Beltway bloggers at two prominent Democratic Washington thinktanks who have been smacked down (and one fired) for being insufficiently pro-Israel – is hardly a shock to those who know their history. But before we get into that, a few details on what is only the latest chapter in the story of how the War Party operates in this country.

The DC Five are Matt Duss, Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton and Zaid Jilani, bloggers at the Center for American Progress group blog, ThinkProgress, and former AIPAC employee MJ Rosenberg who currently writes for Media Matters.

Greenwald, in his update to a column titled The Smear Campaign against CAP and Media Matters rolls On, posted a screen shot of a Washington Post headline that declared "Liberal think tank tied to Obama accused of anti-Semitic language." (They've since changed the headline.)

Both Greenwald and Raimondo, in their articles, give many examples of how a coordinated campaign against Obama, tied directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is seeking to undermine the presidency and reelection of one of the most Israel-friendly presidents in U.S. history, for not being supportive enough of that pesky little country. Adler's over-reaction may just be one of many. As critical as I am of Obama, I'd give my life to protect his, if the occasion occurred. Likewise Mr. Adler's life.

This shit is getting way, way out of hand.

A final thought: Had the editor of the Dearborn American Muslim Times (I'm making the name up, so if there is such a paper - sorry) proposed that an option of dealing with any president of the United States might be to have him whacked by Iranian or Pakistani or Saudi or Syrian secret services, do you think that editor would be walking the streets a week later a free man or woman?

Of course not.

Blood on Whose Hands: Bradley Manning, Washington and Civilian Deaths

2012-01-20T00:58:00.000-09:00

--- by Chase Madar

Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about… civilian war casualties? What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.

A couple hundred thousand dead civilians have a way of making such noble ideals seem like dollar-store tinsel. And so, throughout our decade-long foreign policy debacle in the Greater Middle East, we in the U.S. have generally agreed that no one shall commit the gaucherie of dwelling on (and “dwelling on” = fleetingly mentioned) civilian casualties. Washington elites may squabble over some things, but as for foreigners killed by our numerous wars, our Beltway crew adheres to a sullen code of omertà.

Club rules do, however, permit one loophole: Washington officials may bemoan the nightmare of civilian casualties — but only if they can be pinned on a 24-year-old Army private first class named Bradley Manning.

Pfc. Manning, you will remember, is the young soldier who is soon to be court-martialed for passing some 750,000 military and diplomatic documents, a large chunk of them classified, to the website WikiLeaks. Among those leaks, there was indeed some serious stuff about how Americans dealt with civilians in invaded countries. For instance, the documents revealed that the U.S. military, then the occupying force in Iraq, did little or nothing to prevent Iraqi authorities from torturing prisoners in a variety of gruesome ways, sometimes to death.

Then there was that gun-sight video – unclassified but buried in classified material — of an American Apache helicopter opening fire on a crowd on a Baghdad street, gunning down a dozen men, including two Reuters employees, and injuring more, including children.

There were also those field reports about how jumpy American soldiers repeatedly shot down civilians at roadside checkpoints; about night raids gone wrong both in Iraq and Afghanistan; and a count of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a tally whose existence the U.S. military had previously denied possessing.

Together, these leaks and many others offered a composite portrait of military and political debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan whose grinding theme has been civilian casualties, a fact not much noted here in the U.S. A tiny number of low-ranking American soldiers have been held to account for rare instances of premeditated murder of civilians, but most of the troops who kill civilians in the midst of the chaos of war are not tried, much less convicted. We don’t talk about these cases a lot either.

On the other hand, officials of all types make free with lusty condemnations of Bradley Manning, whose leaks are luridly credited with potential (though not actual) deaths.

Putting Lives in Danger

“[WikiLeaks] might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” said Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the release of the Afghan War Logs in July 2010. This was, of course, the same Admiral Mullen who had endorsed a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan, which would lead to a tremendous “surge” in casualties among civilians and soldiers alike. Here are counts — undoubtedly undercounts, in fact — of real Afghan corpses that, at least in part, resulted from the policy he supported: 2,412 in 2009, 2,777 in 2010, 1,462 in the first half 2011, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. As far as anyone knows, here are the corpses that resulted from the release of those WikiLeaks documents: 0. (And don’t forget, the stalemate war with the Taliban has not budged in the period since that surge.) Who, then, has blood on his hands, Pfc. Manning — or Admiral Mullen?

Of course the admiral is hardly alone. In fact, whole tabernacle choirs have joined in the condemnation of Manning and WikiLeaks for “causing” carnage, thanks to their disclosures.

Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, also spoke sternly of Manning’s leaks, accusing him of “moral culpability.” He added, “And that’s where I think the verdict is ‘guilty’ on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.”

This was, of course, the same Robert Gates who pushed for escalation in Afghanistan in 2009 and, in March 2011, flew to the Kingdom of Bahrain to offer his own personal “reassurance of support” to a ruling monarchy already busy shooting and torturing nonviolent civilian protesters. So again, when it comes to blood and indifference to consequences, Bradley Manning — or Robert Gates?

Nor have such attitudes been confined to the military. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Manning’s (alleged) leak of 250,000 diplomatic cables of being “an attack on the international community” that “puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.”

As a senator, of course, she supported the invasion of Iraq in flagrant contravention of the U.N. Charter. She was subsequently a leading hawk when it came to escalating and expanding the Afghan War, and is now responsible for disbursing an annual $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt’s ruling junta whose forces have repeatedly opened fire on nonviolent civilian protesters. So who’s been attacking the international community and putting lives in danger, Bradley Manning — or Hillary Clinton?
Harold Koh, former Yale Law School dean, liberal lion, and currently the State Department’s top legal adviser, has announced that the same leaked diplomatic cables “could place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals — from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security.”

This is the same Harold Koh who, in March 2010, provided a tortured legal rationale for the Obama administration’s drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, despite the inevitable and well-documented civilian casualties they cause. So who is risking the lives of countless innocent individuals, Bradley Manning — or Harold Koh?

Much of the media have clambered aboard the bandwagon, blaming WikiLeaks and Manning for damage done by wars they once energetically cheered on.

In early 2011, to pick just one example from the ranks of journalism, New Yorker writer George Packer professed his horror that WikiLeaks had released a memo marked “secret/noforn” listing spots throughout the world of vital strategic or economic interest to the United States. Asked by radio host Brian Lehrer whether this disclosure had crossed a new line by making a gratuitous gift to terrorists, Packer replied with an appalled yes.

Now, among the “secrets” contained in this document are the facts that the Strait of Gibraltar is a vital shipping lane and that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is rich in minerals. Have we Americans become so infantilized that factoids of basic geography must be considered state secrets? (Maybe best not to answer that question.) The “threat” of this document’s release has since been roundly debunked by various military intellectuals.

Nevertheless, Packer’s response was instructive. Here was a typical liberal hawk, who had can-canned to the post-9/11 drumbeat of war as a therapeutic wake-up call from “the bland comforts of peace,” now affronted by WikiLeaks’ supposed recklessness. Civilian casualties do not seem to have been on Packer’s mind when he supported the invasion of Iraq, nor has he written much about them since.

In an enthusiastic 2006 New Yorker essay on counterinsurgency warfare, for example, the very words “civilian casualties” never come up, despite theircentrality to COIN theory, practice, and history. It is a fact that, as Operation Enduring Freedom shifted to counterinsurgency tactics in 2009, civilian casualties in Afghanistan skyrocketed. So, for that matter, have American military casualties. (More than half of U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan occurred in the past three years.)
Liberal hawks like Packer may consider WikiLeaks out of bounds, but really, who in these last years has been the most reckless, Bradley Manning — or George Packer and some of his pro-war colleagues at the New Yorker like Jeffrey Goldberg (who has since left for the Atlantic Monthly, where he’s been busily clearing a path for war with Iran) and editor David Remnick?

Centrist and liberal nonprofit think tanks have been no less selectively blind when it comes to civilian carnage. Liza Goitein, a lawyer at the liberal-minded Brennan Center at NYU Law School, has also taken out after Bradley Manning. In the midst of an otherwise deft diagnosis of Washington’s compulsive urge to over-classify everything — the federal government classifies an amazing 77 million documents a year — she pauses just long enough to accuse Manning of “criminal recklessness” for putting civilians named in the Afghan War logs in peril — “a disclosure,” as she puts it, “that surely endangers their safety.”

It’s worth noting that, until the moment Goitein made this charge, not a single report or press release issued by the Brennan Center has ever so much as uttered a mention of civilian casualties caused by the U.S. military. The absence of civilian casualties is almost palpable in the work of the Brennan Center’s program in “Liberty and National Security.” For example, this program’s 2011 report “Rethinking Radicalization,” which explored effective, lawful ways to prevent American Muslims from turning terrorist, makes not a single reference to the tens of thousands of well-documented civilian casualties caused by American military force in the Muslim world, which according to many scholars is the prime mover of terrorist blowback. The report on how to combat the threat of Muslim terrorists, written by Pakistan-born Faiza Patel, does not, in fact, even contain the words “Iraq,” “Afghanistan,” “drone strike,” “Pakistan” or “civilian casualties.”

This is almost incredible, because terrorists themselves have freely confessed that what motivated their acts of wanton violence has been the damage done by foreign military occupation back home or simply in the Muslim world. Asked by a federal judge why he tried to blow up Times Square with a car bomb in May 2010, Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad answered that he was motivated by the civilian carnage the U.S. had caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. How could any report about “rethinking radicalization” fail to mention this? Although the Brennan Center does much valuable work, Goitein’s selective finger-pointing on civilian casualties is emblematic of a blindness to war’s consequences widespread among American institutions.

American Military Whistleblowers

Knowledge may indeed have its risks, but how many civilian deaths can actually be traced to the WikiLeaks revelations? How many military deaths? To the best of anyone’s knowledge, not a single one. After much huffing and puffing, the Pentagon has quietly denied – and then denied again – that there is any evidence at all of the Taliban targeting the Afghan civilians named in the leaked war logs.

In the end, the “grave risks” involved in the publication of the War Logs and of those State Department documents have been wildly exaggerated. Embarrassment, yes. A look inside two grim wars and the workings of imperial diplomacy, yes. Blood, no.

On the other hand, the grave risks that were hidden in those leaked documents, as well as in all the other government distortions, cover-ups, and lies of the past decade, have been graphically illustrated in aortal red. The civilian carnage caused by our rush to war in Iraq and by our deeply entrenched stalemate of a war in Afghanistan (and the Pakistani tribal borderlands) is not speculative or theoretical but all-too real.

And yet no one anywhere has been held to much account: not in the political class, not in the military, not in the think tanks, not among the scholars, nor the media. Only one individual, it seems, will pay, even if he actually spilled none of the blood. Our foreign policy elites seem to think Bradley Manning is well-cast for the role of fall guy and scapegoat. This is an injustice.

Someday, it will be clearer to Americans that Pfc. Manning has joined the ranks of great American military whistleblowers like Dan Ellsberg (who was first in his class at Marine officer training school); Vietnam War infantryman Ron Ridenhour, who blew the whistle on the My Lai massacre; and the sailors and marines who, in 1777, reported the torture of British captives by their politically connected commanding officer. These servicemen, too, were vilified in their times. Today, we honor them, as someday Pfc. Manning will be honored.

Chase Madar is the author of The Passion of Bradley Manning, to be published by OR Books in February. He is an attorney in New York, a TomDispatch regular (where this column originally appeared), and a frequent contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

Rdddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Interviewed by Alyona Minkovsky on Wednesday's Anti-SOPA/PIPA Internet Protest

2012-01-19T09:29:00.000-09:00

Ron Paul Introduces Legislation to Repeal Section 1021 of the Notorious NDAA

2012-01-19T07:21:00.001-09:00

His speech ends at about 3:30...

Twitter Voters Watching South Carolina GOP Debate Give Win to Ron Paul

2012-01-17T06:11:00.000-09:00

Ron Paul Booed on MLK Day in South Carolina for Wanting to Invoke Jesus' Teachings

2012-01-16T22:33:00.000-09:00

Thoughts on MLK Day the Day Before Muhammed Ali's 70th Birthday

2012-01-16T13:02:00.000-09:00

Today is Martin Luther King Day, a holiday commemorating the American Civil Rights struggles, and Dr. King's pivotal role in some of its important battles. Tuesday is Muhammed Ali's 70th birthday.

During the key civil rights battles between 1966 and King's assassination, champion heavyweight boxer Muhammed Ali was in his own struggle: his refusal to be inducted into the United States Army on religious grounds led to a five-year legal battle which went to the Supreme Court, ultimately vindicating Ali.

When Ali was stripped of his titles, ability to box or travel, and vilified in 1966, Dr. King was fighting aspects of functional Apartheid in the Chicago area, and struggling in a volatile environment, to keep his movement non-violent. While King was receiving daily death threats, and actually pelted with bricks by young Whites at Chicago demonstrations, Ali was saying:

I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me Nigger

No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end:

Martin Luther King also turned against the Vietnam War, beginning in 1965, and supported Muhammed Ali's fight:

On April 4th, 1967, at New York City's Riverside Church, he delivered one of the most enduring anti-war statements in modern memory:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

Soon afterward, he based a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on the Riverside address. Here it is:

How much we still have to learn from these two magnificent men. Muhammed Ali gave very much. Martin Luther King gave all.

Happy Birthday, Muhammed Ali.

The Emerging "Dolphin Gap" Amidst False Flags Waving in the Real Fog of War

2012-01-15T23:09:00.000-09:00

I. Don't tell the GOP presidential primary candidates, but they're missing an issue far more substantive than 99% of what they argue about in their debates and campaign ads: The emerging Dolphin Gap in the Straits of Hormuz (hat tip to Harry Law):

The US:

"We've got dolphins," said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy's use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy:

KEATING: They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects.

NPR's TOM BOWMAN: Dolphins were sent to the Persian Gulf as part of the American invasion force in Iraq.

KEATING: I'd rather not talk about whether we used them or not. They were present in theater.

BOWMAN: But you can't say whether you used them or not.

KEATING: I'd rather not.

The Russians:

It sounds like the plot from a stupid B-movie, but it’s true: A marine mammal trainer and former Soviet militiaman just sold four “killer” dolphins and a white beluga whale to Iran.

According to a BBC report, the dolphins and whale were trained by the Soviet navy to attack “enemy frogmen with harpoons attached to their backs” and carry out “kamikaze strikes” against enemy ships. The animals learned to distinguish between Soviet and foreign submarines by the sounds of their propellers and were taught to carry mines to the hulls of enemy vessels to blow them (and themselves) up.

If the Iranians have four dolphins and Belugas, they might have plans for 400. They may be less than two months from this, let alone two years, as has been said of their ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least the past 20 years.

When the GOP candidates get wind of this, they might challenge Obama about letting the "Dolphin Gap" get out of hand, as John F. Kennedy used the fictitious "Missile Gap" to close in on Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 White House contest.

To quickly close the gap before the election, the GOP could try to force Obama to immediately draft all the Cook Inlet Belugas in Alaska. This would eliminate a thorn in the side of hyper developers who hope to soon extract very large amounts of coal, mined from pristine upper Inlet lands, out of the Inlet, and to the Orient. Currently, Cook Inlet Belugas are listed by NOAA as endangered. By drafting all of them for the cause, they would no longer be endangered. At least in Cook Inlet, that is.

II. On a more serious note, this past week has seen many signs that a real shooting war between Iran and the United States Navy could start at any minute, perhaps by intent, perhaps by mistake. I wrote a diary at MyFiredoglake on aspects of how dangerous this is on Friday. Since then, all indications are that both the Israelis and Americans are almost in free fall, as they appear to be frantically reassessing ramifications of what could only be best termed as a shaky alliance. No statements issued by Israeli or American government officials regarding last week's Tehran scientist assassination should be given any more credence than should have been given to Eisenhower's May 5, 1960 statement, regarding a U-2 shot down over the USSR, that "there was absolutely no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace and never has been."

Today's back-and-forth on who has cancelled or rescheduled the upcoming anti-missile defense exercises that would have allowed Israelis unprecedented access inside of US and NATO command structures is just one of many examples so far this year that there are perhaps major rebellions going on within both the American and Israeli military and defense establishments about how to chart these crazy waters.

Not just the Straits of Hormuz.

Sometimes I feel we'd be better off if the Dolphins and Belugas ran world affairs, rather than humans.

IBM Reduces Size for One Bit Storage from a Millon Atoms to Twelve

2012-01-15T17:24:00.002-09:00

Colbert's "Mitt the Ripper" TV Ad

2012-01-15T11:00:00.002-09:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Max Blumenthal on RT Discusses Israeli PM Netanyahu's War on Obama

2012-01-14T19:51:00.000-09:00

The article by Blumenthal, to which he refers in the interview, is here.

It has been discussed by Andrew Sullivan and at the blog, Mondoweiss.

Mat-Su Democrats Coastal Management Petition Signing This Weekend

2012-01-14T13:22:00.000-09:00

Sat. and Sun. January 14 and 15, 2012
Carrs Safeway in Palmer

Coastal Management Petition Signing This Weekend

Local supporters of the signature drive to get the reinstatement of coastal management on next year's general election ballot are working fast and furiously to gather enough signatures. Statewide, nearly 26,000 signatures of qualified voters are required to get a citizens' initiative on the ballot, but they can't all be from large population centers like Anchorage or Juneau - 10 percent of voters in the most recent general election from three-fourths of the house districts in the state must be represented on the petition.

You can sign the petition at the Palmer Carrs Safeway between 10AM and 2PM on Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

The state's Coastal Management program went out of existence on July 1st of this year because opponents in the State House and Governor's office could not come to agreement with project supporters in the State Senate. As a result, three local officials from coastal communities launched the Alaska Sea Party to pressure the legislature to reinstate it, and failing that, to put the initiative on next October's ballot. Organizers include Kodiak Island Borough Mayor Jerome Selby, Juneau Mayor Bruce Bothello and Kenai Peninsula Borough Assemblyman from Homer, Mako Haggarty.

Obama's Best 2012 Campaign Ad Yet

2012-01-12T23:20:00.001-09:00

The end line "Or Else" got me.

Reading Between the Lines in the Corey Rossi Criminal Investigaion

2012-01-12T21:16:00.001-09:00

This story just broke. I had heard something was coming down last month, but was asked to keep quiet:

Corey Rossi, the director of the Alaska Department of Wildlife Conservation, has resigned after he was charged Thursday with a dozen misdemeanor counts related to illegal bear kills allegedly made during hunts he guided in 2008.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game spokesperson Nancy Long says Fish and Game Commission Cora Campbell accepted Rossi's resignation at 5 p.m. Thursday. Long said the incidents outlined in the charges happened before Rossi's employment with the state.

Alaska State Troopers say the charges against Rossi, 51, include one count of permit hunt report violations, three counts of making false statements on black bear sealing certificates, two counts of unsworn falsification, one count of illegal possession of an illegally taken bear, and five counts of unlawful acts by an assistant big game guide.

From what I know, there is probably going to be more hanging over Rossi than a dozen misdemeanors. For one thing, how often does this happen in misdemeanor charges:

Troopers made it clear they did not act on their own.

"Charges were filed by the Department of Law, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, following an investigation by the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, Wildlife Investigations Unit after learning of the offenses through an unrelated out-of-state operation conducted by another agency," the trooper statement said.

The Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals is the main source of attorneys and investigators in the realm of white collar crime. They don't normally do misdemeanors Or a dozen of them.

Here's part of the scam I think they're going to go after Rossi on, perhaps holding it over him, to get at people involved in kickbacks:

Rossi has also been active with the organization Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, a somewhat controversial hunter advocacy group. Guide Aaron Bloomquist, who has a business relationship with Rossi, was recently handed coveted, special permits from the wildlife division for bison, Dall sheep and musk ox. He is to take the permits to the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo in Salt Lake in February where they are to be auctioned to raise funds for the organization.

While this has been going on, Rossi has been lobbying to try to expand the wildlife director's authority over those permits to gain the power to change state hunting rules. Some in the department say he appears to wish to make it possible for the people who pay thousands for such permits, sometimes as much as $100,000, to obtain easy access to their hunts by means of helicopters.

If I write more, I might get whacked. But this line in Craig Medred's Dispatch article on the bust is surely the understatement of the day:

The charges against Rossi were expected to send a shock wave through the state's hunting community and make him even more controversial.

Ron Paul Makes History in New Hampshire - Comes in 2nd in Both GOP and Democratic Party Primaries

2012-01-12T20:50:00.000-09:00

GOP Presidential primary-level candidate Ron Paul got over 20% of the vote in this week's GOP New Hampshire primary. But he also got 2,273 write-in votes in the state's Democratic Party primary, edging out all but President Obama. Obama, with 49,480 votes walloped everyone else, but he was running in an essentially unchallenged environment, with all the party machinery behind him.

This was the first time in U.S. history where a candidate came in second in both major partys' state primaries. most news accounts of the New Hampshire Dem results do not even mention Paul. If you've been following media coverage of Ron Paul as long as I have, this shouldn't be very surprising.

Writing about the New Hampshire Dem results for The Nation, John Nichols notes:

Almost one in five New Hampshire Democratic primary voters cast their ballots Tuesday for someone other than Barack Obama.

The president still won the primary with a handsome majority: 81.9 percent of the vote.

But the fact that more than 18 percent of New Hampshire voters who took Democratic primary ballots chose to write in the name of another candidate—anti-war Republican Ron Paul was the second-place finisher in the primary with 2,273 write-ins—or to vote for one of the little-known contenders whose names were on the ballot with Obama’s begs a question: What if a prominent progressive had mounted a primary challenge to the president?

Consumer activist Ralph Nader, scholar Cornel West and others argued for such a challenge last year. And Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressman Peter DeFazio and Congressman Dennis Kucinich were among the Capitol Hill progressives who suggested it would be good for the party and the president to face a meaningful primary test. While inside-the-party wrangling might be messy, the argument went, Democrats would ultimately be well served by an airing of the issues and a pressuring of the president to focus and intensify his outreach to the party's base voters.

Obama got just under 82% of the vote. In recent New Hampshire Democratic primaries, Clinton got 84% in 1996, but:

.... there are some other numbers that should concern Obama and his Democratic allies.

While Obama’s New Hampshire Democratic primary vote percentage in 2012 was roughly the same as Clinton’s in 1996, their actual vote totals were dramatically different.

Clinton won 76,797 votes out of a total 91,027 votes cast in the 1996 Democratic primary.

Obama won 49,480 votes out of a total of 60,996 votes cast in the 2012 Democratic primary.

The Democratic primary turnout this year was down dramatically (roughly 33 percent) from 1996, the last year when a Democratic president was seeking re-election without meaningful opposition. By contrast, 2012 Republican primary turnout was up by almost 39,000 votes, an increase of roughly 16 percent, from 1996.

In 1996, when Republicans had an intense contest (Pat Buchanan beat Bob Dole by a handful of votes), more than 30 percent of all primary voters in New Hampshire participated in the low-profile
Democratic contest.

In 2012, when the Republican race was significantly less intense (Romney maintained a reasonably steady polling lead and won with ease), less than 20 percent of all primary voters in New Hampshire took Democratic ballots.

Barack Obama ought not worry about the percentage of the vote he took in this year's New Hampshire Democratic primary. It was sufficient.

But the president and his campaign aides should be paying attention to the evidence of an enthusiasm gap when it comes to voting in the Democratic primary of will be a battleground state this fall. And they should be asking themselves whether that gap in just a New Hampshire concern, or if might be a problem in other battleground states where Obama may not have much margin for error.

I'm not lifting a finger to help Obama in 2012, especially with new reports coming out of Afghanistan about the level of torture still being performed routinely by Americans at the Bagram black sites. How can one donate to or vote for somebody who should be impeached and sent to the Hague?

I'd call that "an enthusiasm gap."

What War With Iran Might Look Like

2012-01-12T14:43:00.000-09:00

--- by Philip Giraldi (via anti-war.com)

Back in September 2007 I wrote an article for Antiwar.com called “What World War III May Look Like.” The article, which presumed that an incident involving U.S. troops on the border between Iraq and Iran could easily escalate into what would eventually become a global conflict, was widely replayed in the alternative media and even in the mainstream. Well, I am pleased to report that no such war has yet started, though there has been a disturbing expansion of U.S. military activity through the deployment of drones to hit targets in assorted countries without having to worry about American casualties or niceties like declarations of war. Other geopolitical elements that figured in my 2007 analysis have also changed, so I believe that the time has come for an update.

Iran is clearly the target of choice, just as it was in 2007. Despite President Barack Obama’s assertion that he would open up avenues to talk to the Iranians, he has failed to do so, he has rejected Iranian initiatives to start a dialogue, and he is showing every sign of unwillingness to negotiate on any level.

Congress has even moved to block any contact between American and Iranian diplomats. The sanctions that recently took effect against the Iranian banking system can be construed as an act of war, particularly as Iran has not provided any casus belli. Further sanctions that will restrict energy imports are impending and will bring the country’s economy to a halt. There are already signs that the Iranian government feels itself compelled to demonstrate to its people that it is doing something about the situation. That “something” might well be a confrontation with the U.S. Navy that will have unfortunate results. In light of all that, it might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don’t roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot.

It might start with a minor incident, possibly involving an Iranian armed small craft manned by the Revolutionary Guard. Though the Strait of Hormuz is generally considered an international waterway, the Iranians claim that half of the strait is within their territorial waters. Tehran, in response to intensified sanctions, declares that it can determine who can use the strait and says that it will take steps to keep American warships from entering. The frigate USS Ingraham, patrolling off of Bushehr, is confronted by the small craft and ordered to heave to, an order it rejects. The Iranian commander, ignoring instructions to back off when confronted directly by the U.S. Navy, opens fire with rocket-propelled grenades. The frigate’s Phalanx rapid-fire battery immediately responds by blasting the Iranian boat, killing the entire Revolutionary Guard crew, but two American sailors are also killed in the exchange and four are wounded.

Fighters from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis are immediately launched under standing orders, and they devastate the naval base that the Iranian boat departed from. President Obama holds a press conference and calls the incident an act of war and vows to do everything necessary to support U.S. forces in the region, but he stops short of a commitment to stage a full-scale attack on Iran. A hastily called meeting of the U.N. Security Council results in a 17–1 vote urging the United States to exercise restraint, with only Washington voting “no.” In the General Assembly, only the United States, Israel,

Micronesia, and Costa Rica support possible military action.

The United States is effectively alone, but Israel takes advantage of the growing war fervor in the United States to launch an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. The recently completed nuclear reactor at Bushehr is destroyed, killing 13 Russian technicians working on the site, and the aboveground buildings at the Natanz nuclear research facility are leveled. Russian-supplied Iranian air defenses shoot down six Israeli aircraft. Washington receives no prior warning of the Israeli attack, though it does pick up the signal traffic that precedes it and knows something is coming. It makes no effort to stop the Israelis as they fly over undefended Iraqi airspace.

Congress and the media rally behind the Israelis and demand war. A bill in the House of Representatives calling on the White House to take military action in support of Israel passes 431–4. A similar bill in the Senate receives only two nays. President Obama hesitates but then approves a limited offensive, directed against Iran’s military, its nuclear sites, and, most particularly, its Revolutionary Guard installations. In the first few days, overwhelming American air and naval superiority destroys Iran’s principal air, naval, and army bases. Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities are obliterated, as are the known Iranian nuclear research and development sites. The limited offensive soon becomes anything but that, with strategic bombers dropping 30,000-pound Big BLU bunker-buster bombs to strike underground labs and processing centers. Population centers are avoided, though smart weapons are used to destroy communications centers and command and control facilities. There are nevertheless large numbers of civilian casualties as many of the targeted nuclear sites are close to or within cities and large towns. Infrastructure is also hit, particularly bridges, roads, and power-generation stations close to known nuclear research centers and military sites.

There is a pause in the attacks, and Iran strikes back. With nearly 10 years to prepare, Tehran has successfully hidden and hardened many of its military and nuclear facilities, a large percentage of which are undamaged. The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis operating in the Gulf of Oman is hit by a lucky strike by a Chinese Silkworm cruise missile that comes in low and successfully evades countermeasures. The Stennis retires to port in Bahrain. Three other support vessels are also hit and severely damaged when they are attacked by waves of small craft manned by suicidal Revolutionary Guards, not unlike the kamikaze attacks in the Second World War. The Iranian attackers are annihilated, but the Pentagon refuses to say how many American sailors have been killed in the exchange.

Pro-Iranian riots break out in Beirut. In the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah fires salvos of rockets into Israel, striking Tel Aviv and killing several hundred Israelis. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon and Syria, which it blames for supporting the attacks. Upgraded Iranian Shahab-3 missiles also strike Israel, killing more civilians. The Israeli Defense Forces are fully mobilized, and troops are sent to the northern border. Syria and Lebanon also mobilize their forces. Rioters in Baghdad attack the American embassy, which demands that the Iraqi government “do something” to protect it, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugs and says that the situation is out of his control. Large public demonstrations demand that Iraq support Iran in a fraternal struggle against the United States.

Shi’ites sympathetic to Iran sabotage Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields. Hundreds of alleged saboteurs are shot dead by Saudi security forces. An oil tanker out of Kuwait is hit by a Silkworm and runs aground to keep from sinking. Another hits a mine. Insurers at Lloyd’s of London refuse to cover any tankers transiting the Persian Gulf, claiming that damage incurred during a state of war is not covered by the policies. Oil shipments from the region, one quarter of the world’s supply, stop completely, and oil goes up to $300 a barrel. Wall Street suffers its biggest loss in 20 years, with the Dow Jones index plummeting more than 900 points.

The United States offers Iran a cease-fire, which Tehran rejects. Two days later, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is assassinated by a Shi’ite bodyguard under orders from Tehran. Pakistan declares that it is neutral in the conflict and orders the U.S. embassy to reduce its staff by 50%, including the CIA station chief and his deputy. Order breaks down in both countries, and the Pakistani army declares a state of emergency, closing the border with Afghanistan. NATO calls an emergency meeting and decides to begin the evacuation by air of the multinational force trapped in Afghanistan, leaving many weapons and heavy equipment behind.

In the power vacuum, NATO troops withdraw to their bases while Taliban-backed militias take over much of Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif, which is largely Shi’ite, declares itself a part of Iran. The government resigns in Beirut, and Hezbollah forms a new one. A salvo of Iranian Silkworm missiles sets the Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields ablaze. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates send an urgent diplomatic message to Tehran declaring that they will be “neutral” in the fighting and will not assist the United States in any way. Kuwait sends the same message, while Egyptian volunteers gather along the border with Israel in Sinai, demanding that Cairo take steps in support of their Arab brothers in Lebanon. Kuwait refuses to allow the United States to use its men and supplies at Camp Doha against Iran. In Bahrain, rampaging Shi’ite crowds depose Sheikh Khalifa al-Khalifa and set up an Islamic Republic, forcing the U.S. Fifth Fleet to abandon its only secure base in the region. The Dow Jones index loses another 1,000 points.

The United States attempts to get China and Russia to mediate with Iran to end the fighting, but they refuse to do Washington any favors, noting that they had opposed the attack in the first place and also citing their countrymen killed in the U.S. attacks. Suicide bombers attack in London, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. The attacks are poorly planned and inflict only a few casualties, but panic sets in and the public demands that the respective governments do something. The United States tells the Iranian government that unless resistance ceases, nuclear weapons will be used on select targets. India and Pakistan are alarmed by the U.S. threat and put their own nuclear forces on high alert, as does Israel. Russia and China also increase their readiness levels to respond to the crisis.

Iran refuses to concede defeat, and the Iranian people rally around the government. The U.S. public is clamoring for action. Oil prices continue to surge, and the long-term viability of petroleum supplies is in question as the Strait of Hormuz continues to be closed. Another U.S. ship is badly damaged by suicide attackers in the Persian Gulf. American embassies throughout the region are attacked.

Anti-American rioting takes place in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Mindanao, and in Dhaka. The United States consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan, is sacked and burned. Forty Americans die along with scores of Pakistanis when the Marine guards open fire.

There are frequent terrorism scares in a number of American cities, which are under red-alert security lockdown, though there are no new attacks. Domestic air travel declines by more than 50%. As a preventive measure, there are mass arrests of American Muslim leaders. Some antiwar activists are detained at military prisons, including Guantanamo, under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Israel continues to be bombarded from inside Lebanon. Its air attacks inflict massive damage on civilians but are unsuccessful in stopping the rockets. Its government falls and is replaced by a hard-right regime headed by former Foreign Secretary Avigdor Lieberman. Rioting rocks the West Bank and Gaza, forcing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resign and flee to Paris. Hamas forms a provisional government. India threatens to attack Pakistan if there is any question about the security of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.

The United States uses a neutron-type bomb against the main Iranian nuclear research center at Natanz, which both Washington and Israel had already bombed conventionally and destroyed. It vows to bomb again if Iran continues to resist. Iran is defiant and fires another wave of Silkworms at U.S. ships, hitting one. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistani militants assume control of the government, aided by radical elements in the army and the intelligence service. India launches a preemptive strike against the main Pakistani nuclear centers at Wah and Multan, where the country’s arsenal is believed to be concentrated. Pakistan has some of its nukes moving around on trucks to avoid such a scenario, however, and is able to strike back by bombing New Delhi.

A minor engagement between American and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf has ignited World War III.

Ron Paul - War Propaganda

2012-01-12T12:52:00.002-09:00

KABATA Taking Homes & Businesses Before There's A Project?

2012-01-09T16:45:00.000-09:00

--- by Rep. Les Gara

Here's the latest bit of news from your friends at KABATA. Folks in Anchorage's oldest neighborhood, Government Hill, are not happy.

KABATA, even though no project has been approved or funded, has jumped the gun and is already telling people they are buying their homes and businesses (they have the power to condemn Government Hill property so they can build a huge ditch and then a tunnel under Government Hill as part of the Anchorage approach to the Bridge). Spending millions of your money, for a project we don't even know will go forward is wrong, is an assault on homeowners and business owners, and a poor use of public money. Destroying homes and businesses under the threat of a future power of eminent domain, is offensive. They sent letters seeking to buy property to residents and businesses this fall and summer, and have started negotiations. They may have even concluded some sales to condemn homes and businesses by now.

And for context, here are a few facts on the Knik Bridge you may not know, regardless of your position. First, KABATA (the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority) promised a few years back that the Bridge, and hundreds of millions of dollars of approach roads on either side of Knik Arm, and the bridge and tunnel projects needed to get from Anchorage to the bridge start, would all be privately funded. Well, surprise, there is pending legislation now that KABATA has changed its mind, to require the state to subsidize any private company that builds the billion dollar-plus project. If tolls don't cover the cost of building and operating the bridge, the bill requires the state to pay for all the shortfalls - and, really, how many people are going to pay a $10 - $30 toll to drive a bridge that gets them to Wasilla or Palmer more slowly than the Glenn Highway (oh, you didn't know that?

Yup - the bridge is not designed to cut the commute to the population centers in the Valley). The subsidization costs to Alaskans could reach over a billion dollars.

No one knows.

Environmental Coalition to Sue Usabelli? It is Beginning to Look Like They Might Have To

2012-01-09T16:31:00.000-09:00

From The Friends of Mat-Su:

Usibelli Coal Mining Company Operating Without Valid Permit

Mat-Su Residents Ask Usibelli to Stop Operating Until the Company Obtains a Permit that Protects the Valley and Its Residents

Palmer, Alaska. In an effort to protect their families, their property, and the community, residents of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley sent a letter to Usibelli Coal Mining Company today asking them to stop operations at the Wishbone Hill site because the company does not have a coal mining permit.

“The development of the proposed Wishbone Hill coal mine will have lasting negative impacts on property values, air and water quality, wildlife, recreational access, public safety, and future economic opportunities for Mat-Su residents. A residential neighborhood is simply no place for a coal mine, ” said Jeremiah Millen of Friends of Mat-Su, a local planning organization representing residents across the Mat-Su Borough and a signatory of the letter.

According to the law, Usibelli does not have the necessary permit to mine at Wishbone Hill. However, since the summer of 2010, Usibelli has been engaged in illegal mining activity at Wishbone Hill. Residents hope the company will immediately stop all mining operations until it obtains a permit that ensures that the Valley and the community are protected. If Usibelli refuses to do so within the next sixty days, residents intend to go to court to protect themselves and the Mat-Su Valley.

“Usibelli Coal Company is not a good neighbor,” said Kirby Spangler, president of the Castle Mountain Coalition. “How can I trust a company that is mining without a permit? How can we be sure that they are protecting our water, wildlife, and community if they aren’t following the law?”

Many federal and state agencies have begun to question the accuracy of Usibelli’s permit applications. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation required Usibelli to resubmit their Air Quality Permit Application twice because of inaccurate information. In addition, the Federal Office of Surface Mining recently got more involved with the project.

This action comes of the heels of the Alaska Mental Health Trust selling about 11 square miles of land in Chickaloon to a massive Australian Mining company.

note - the author and proprietor of Progressive Alaska is a member of Cook Inletkeeper, and Secretary of the Board of Friends of Mat-Su

Americans are NOT Stupid! -- or Are They?

2012-01-09T16:05:00.000-09:00

Why do the people in the above video remind me of some of the people in the video below?

January 8th Home Snow Scenes

2012-01-08T16:40:00.000-09:00

Although this is the most snow accumulation I can ever remember us having at this house (we moved here in November, 1995), a lot of other places in southcentral Alaska are getting far more than we are. And there is no end of it in sight, with it still snowing moderately as I type. The peak of our local snow season is usually around the first week of February.

The snow shovel below is dwarfed by the snowblower berm it rests against.

I haven't started the pickup truck since early December, so it has about two feet or more of snow on top.

The picnic table on the front deck is not ready for dinner any time soon.

Giuseppi Verdi and the Fall of Silvio Berlusconi

2012-01-07T14:22:00.001-09:00

Verdi-Berlusconi-Muti

This past summer saw the fall of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government in Italy. He lasted into the second week of November, but the handwriting was on the wall from midsummer on. The 2011 austerity measures, which he backed, coincided with further scandals surrounding the billionaire politician's personal life. Perhaps more importantly on some levels, all of these coincided with public celebrations throughout Italy, of the 150th anniversary of the Italian Republic, which - the country being Italy - had scheduled hundreds of musical events throughout the nation, which now had to be scaled back.
Berlusconi himself is a musician of sorts:

During his university studies he was a upright bass player in a group formed with the now Mediaset Chairman and amateur pianist Fedele Confalonieri and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life he wrote AC Milan's anthem with the Italian music producer and pop singer Tony Renis and Forza Italia's anthem with the opera director Renato Serio. With the Neapolitan singer Mariano Apicella he wrote two Neapolitan song albums: Meglio 'na canzone in 2003 and L'ultimo amore in 2006.

In early 2011, his government announced austerity measures that attacked the Italian Unified Fund for the Performing Arts:

[T]he government of Silvio Berlusconi has shown startling indifference, if not outright contempt, toward opera and other traditional genres. Last year, it was announced that the Unified Fund for the Performing Arts, which covers opera, theatre, dance, and film, would be slashed by thirty-seven per cent. At least a few of Italy’s storied companies seemed doomed to extinction, and others faced a threadbare existence.

Italian conductor Ricardo Muti, currently the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was in Italy last Spring to conduct a series of staged presentations of Giuseppi Verdi's patriotic masterpiece, Nabucco, with Rome's Teatro dell' Opera.

The opera contains a chorus, Va Pensioro. Verdi based it on Psalm 137, "By the Waters of Babylon." Nabucco was Verdi's first huge success as a composer. And, as time went by, Va Pensioro became a precursor of a true Italian national anthem, during the struggles for independence from foreign, mostly Austrian, domination:

In that historical moment, Verdi played a significant symbolic role: “Va, pensiero,” the lofty chorus of the Hebrew slaves in “Nabucco,” became an unofficial national anthem, its Biblical lament alluding to the long struggle under Austrian rule.

La Pensiero has taken on a life of its own outside Italy. The Italian-American conductor, Arturo Toscanini, turned it into an anti-Fascist anthem in the late 1930s, and conducted it at the reopening of the partially destroyed La Scala Opera House in Milan, in May, 1946.

Israeli cultural authorities have used La Pensiero in various guises, even staging the entire opera Nabucco at Masada. The 2008 Oslo Winter Olympics' opening ceremony featured an over-the-top rendition of the chorus as its centerpiece:

This past Spring, when Muti had finished leading the scene in which La Pensiero occurs, he stopped the opera's progress after applause for the chorus died away. After a short pause, he addressed the audience. Here's New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, who was there, describing the scene:

In March, one man made a notable protest. Riccardo Muti, who long directed La Scala, in Milan, and who now leads the Chicago Symphony, was conducting Verdi’s “Nabucco” at the Rome Opera. The production arrived in the midst of elaborate nationwide observances of the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy.

......

On the opening night of Muti’s “Nabucco,” during the ovation after “Va, pensiero,” someone shouted out “Viva l’Italia!” The conductor made a little speech, with television cameras running. “Sì, I am in accord with that ‘Viva l’Italia!’ ” he said, in a quiet, pensive voice. Alluding to the budget cuts, he declared, “When the chorus sang ‘Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta!’ ”— Oh, my country so beautiful and lost!—“I thought to myself that, if we slay the culture on which the history of Italy is founded, truly our country will be beautiful and lost.” He then led an encore of “Va, pensiero,” inviting the audience to sing along.

Muti, who seldom indulges in political posturing, knew exactly when and where to strike. He succeeded in casting doubt on the patriotic credentials of a regime that came to power through chauvinistic spectacles; indeed, he seemed almost to be comparing Berlusconi and his American-style media operatives to the old Austrian occupiers. Such tactics elicited an immediate response. The finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, who had earlier said, “You can’t eat culture,” met with Muti and agreed to roll back the cuts. Berlusconi came to a later “Nabucco” performance, amid loud boos and heckling from the public, and made a show of going backstage to greet Muti. Seldom has a celebrity musician intervened in politics to more decisive effect.

Here's the Ricardo Muti episode. It is quite moving, especially watching the reaction of the chorus, as more and more members of the audience join in the singing:

Muti's decisive statement did not bring down Berlusconi. However, one can't help but wonder why more classical musicians, especially important ones, aren't emulating Muti's incisive, well-timed action. Let's hope that as the Occupy Movement comes back in the Spring, bigger than ever, more world renowned cultural figures join us in our struggles against the nihilism of corporate greed and government accommodation of the one percent.

Anti-Santorum Ron Paul Ad to Begin Airing in South Carolina Monday

2012-01-06T16:50:00.000-09:00

ECI Hires Top-Rated Whore Gary Bauer to Slime Ron Paul in South Carolina

2012-01-06T16:38:00.000-09:00

--- worst use of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata ever.

More

Phil Donahue on Ron Paul's Anti-War Stance

2012-01-06T16:27:00.000-09:00

Go back to early 2003. Phil Donahue had the most popular program on MSNBC. He opposed the Iraq War, which hadn't been started yet, but had been decided upon - by the US military, the US government, and was being thoroughly enabled by the US media establishment, including NBC. Donahue then, like Ron Paul now, was the only visibly prominent voice for sanity in American public affairs.

NBC fired him.

Alyona Minkovsky Interviews Glenn Greenwald on Obama's Signing of the NDAA

2012-01-06T16:11:00.000-09:00

Sunset, Almost Full Moon, and Lots of Fresh Snow

2012-01-06T16:01:00.000-09:00

Thousands of American Military Deploy to Israel for "Maneuvers"

2012-01-06T15:52:00.000-09:00

Michael Scheuer, ex-head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, asked here by RT TV's Gayane Chichakyan, "About Iran - What is Washington's plan for Iran?"

Scheuer replies, "Whatever Israel's plan for Iran is."

Former South African President De Klerk Compares Israel's Apartheid Policies to South Africa's: "In Our Case, We Failed"

2012-01-05T16:06:00.001-09:00

Apartheid South Africa - Apartheid Israel - graphic by Progressive Alaska

Here's a longer excerpt from De Klerk's December 29th interview on BBC Radio 4:

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed.

There were three main reasons. We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

Mondoweiss, in an article by Adam Horowitz, covers this too. The comments are illuminating. One commenter observes, "So, now BOTH sides the of South African apartheid fight are calling a spade a spade in Palestine."

Indeed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it almost 10 years ago:

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.

The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".

So, now both the former oppressor (and former longtime ardent Israeli ally) of blueprint Apartheid, and the formerly oppressed, have joined together in condemning Israeli policies in the Occupied West Bank.

Thom Hartmann Interviews Brad Friedman on Iowa GOP Caucus Voter Requirements and Vote Count

2012-01-04T13:15:00.003-09:00

ACLU 2012 Report Card: Ron Paul Creams Obama

2012-01-03T13:17:00.000-09:00

Wall Street Journal Video on How the Iowa Caucuses Work

2012-01-03T09:47:00.000-09:00

Sarah Palin Disses Ron Paul on Israel

2012-01-02T19:30:00.002-09:00

Rand Paul Introduces Ron Paul in Iowa Monday

2012-01-02T19:02:00.002-09:00

20, Well, Maybe 12 Visionaries for 2012 - #2 - Peter Ward

2012-01-02T18:21:00.000-09:00

Peter Ward - image from wired.com

Paleontologist Peter Douglas Ward first came to international scientific prominence through his research on the cephalopod, the Chambered Nautilus. His 1987 book, Natural History of Nautilus, led to his well-received 1988 book, In Search of Nautilus. The first book was mostly about the fascinating undersea creature, increasingly endangered. The second is full of anecdotal material about scientists who have shown interest in the nautilus over the centuries.

Ward came to be viewed by some as a contrarian with the publication in 2000, along with co-author Donald E. Brownlee, of Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Their hypothesis, simply put, is:

The emergence of complex life requires a host of fortuitous circumstances. A number of such circumstances are set out below under the following headings: galactic habitable zone, a central star and planetary system having the requisite character, the circumstellar habitable zone, the size of the planet, the advantage of a large satellite, conditions needed to assure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts, and whatever led to the still mysterious Cambrian explosion of animal phyla. The emergence of intelligent life may have required yet other rare events.

In order for a small rocky planet to support complex life, Ward and Brownlee argue, the values of several variables must fall within narrow ranges. The universe is so vast that it could contain many Earth-like planets. But if such planets exist, they are likely to be separated from each other by many thousands of light years. Such distances may preclude communication among any intelligent species evolving on such planets, which would solve the Fermi paradox.

The Rare Earth Hypothesis, seen as being opposed to the Principle of Mediocrity, itself a development of the Copernican Principle, never had its fierce, media savvy PR man, as did the latter two, through the advocacy and popularity of Carl Sagan.

The work that has vaulted Ward to a more central place in visionary aspects of science is his development of the anti-Gaian Medea Hypothesis, detailed in his 2007 book, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future. Simply put, this idea stems from the proposition:

that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, is suicidal; in this view microbial-triggered mass extinctions are attempts to return the Earth to the microbial dominated state it has been for most of its history.

It is named after the mythological Medea, who killed her own children. Medea represents the Earth, and her children are multicellular life.

Past "suicide attempts" include:
Methane poisoning, 3.5 billion years ago

The oxygen catastrophe, 2.7 billion years ago

Snowball earth twice, 2.3 billion years ago and 790–630 million years ago

At least five putative hydrogen sulfide-induced mass extinctions, such as the Great Dying, 251.4 million years ago
- but does not include the K–T event, since this was, as least partially, externally induced by a meteor impact.

Understandably, Ward's work on the Rare Earth Hypothesis and the Medea Hypothesis is less popular than ideas which point to larger chances of human life or habitability prospects for such life existing elsewhere, or for a more positive outcome for our extremely carbon-based civilization's future evolution.

In the following video, Dr. Ward shows clearly why he's not just the most important communicator on past mass extinctions. He's also remarkably optimistic in the face of enormous changes to our climate and environment cascading down, as our political, economic and military worlds mask us from reality or just plain fail.

Visionary #3 will be anti-deforestation pragmatist, Moses Sanga

The Series:

Visionary #1 - Paul Stamets

20, Well, Maybe 12 Visionaries for 2012 - #1 - Paul Stamets

2012-01-01T21:06:00.001-09:00

Paul Stamets with Fomitopsis officinalis

Groundbreaking mycologist, Paul Stamets, is one of the few mushroom experts in the world often called "visionary," whose attachment to that term has nothing to do with the psychotropic properties of some fungi. He's one of the newest in a long line of thinkers who see far more benefits from understanding mushrooms than do most scientists, or the world at large.

He has his detractors and ardent supporters. I'm more of an observer. Longtime PA readers know of my love of culinary mushrooms.

Stamets explains why mushrooms are so important in this talk, made available by TED:

The series - 20, Well, Maybe 12 Visionaries for 2012: I'm going to profile some people whose ideas might help us unravel the Gordian Knot that societal progress has become, without having to slice that knot in the old way.

Visionary #2 will be paleontologist Peter Ward.

Ron Paul's Appearances on Today's Sunday TV News Shows and Other Stuff

2012-01-01T16:28:00.000-09:00

FOX News Sunday:

ABC This Week:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich Defends Rep. Paul Against Rick Santorum:

Iowa KTIV TV Interview from December 30th:

Ron Paul at a Sioux City Iowa Town Hall on Friday:

The Ron Paul Debate Deepens on the Left - A Sampling of Recent Articles

2012-01-01T16:04:00.001-09:00

Here are short excerpts from some articles on the web that were posted over the past weekend:

Glenn Greenwald, at Salon.com:

As I’ve written about before, America’s election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture — obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace “reporting,” and mindless partisan loyalties — become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts of the U.S. Government and the permanent power factions that control it — covert endless wars, consolidation of unchecked power, the rapid growth of the Surveillance State and the secrecy regime, massive inequalities in the legal system, continuous transfers of wealth from the disappearing middle class to large corporate conglomerates — drone on with even less attention paid than usual.

Because most of those policies are fully bipartisan in nature, the election season — in which only issues that bestow partisan advantage receive attention — places them even further outside the realm of mainstream debate and scrutiny. For that reason, America’s elections ironically serve to obsfuscate political reality even more than it usually is.

This would all be bad enough if “election season” were confined to a few months the way it is in most civilized countries. But in America, the fixation on presidential elections takes hold at least eighteen months before the actual election occurs, which means that more than 1/3 of a President’s term is conducted in the midst of (and is obscured by) the petty circus distractions of The Campaign. Thus, an unauthorized, potentially devastating covert war — both hot and cold — against Iran can be waged with virtually no debate, just as government control over the Internet can be inexorably advanced, because TV political shows are busy chattering away about Michele Bachmann’s latest gaffe and minute changes in Rick Perry’s polling numbers.

Then there’s the full-scale sacrifice of intellectual honesty and political independence at the altar of tongue-wagging partisan loyalty. The very same people who in 2004 wildly cheered John Kerry — husband of the billionaire heiress-widow Teresa Heinz Kerry — spent all of 2008 mocking John McCain’s wealthy life courtesy of his millionaire heiress wife and will spend 2012 depicting Mitt Romney’s wealth as proof of his insularity; conversely, the same people who relentlessly mocked Kerry in 2004 as a kept girly-man and gigolo for living off his wife’s wealth spent 2008 venerating McCain as the Paragon of Manly Honor.

Philip Weiss, at Mondoweiss:

Andrew Sullivan has my view of the matter, that Paul represents a strong grassroots antiwar feeling, and that people like David Brooks are seeking to delude us on this score. And he explains the youth attraction to Paul as not being xenophobic.
So most Americans seem to disagree with the Beltway that Ron Paul is somehow an impermissible candidate for president. Why am I not surprised?
Meanwhile, Ron Paul has grasped the Iran question more aggressively as the voting nears. He is the only candidate who has taken military force off the table with respect to Iran's nuclear program. Obama is still threatening, with poor Leon Panetta being dragged back and forth in public by the Greater Israel lobby. Paul, in other words, is the only candidate we can be sure will not take us into a third war with a Muslim country in a decade. And he seems to believe this is a strength. No wonder Washington is still scratching its collective head.
The mindset that the world is our plaything remains entrenched. Only Paul has moved beyond that. If you ask me, that's the core of his appeal to the young.
I do wonder if any of those young people are ethnic minorities...

Ross Douthat, in the New York Times:

The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised. Yet politicians of both parties are required, by the demands of partisanship, to embrace the convenient lie that our problem can be pinned exclusively on the other side’s elites — as though both liberals and conservatives hadn’t participated in the decisions that dug our current hole.

In this climate, it sometimes takes a fearless crank to expose realities that neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge.

In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Paul has been the only figure willing to point out the deep continuities in American politics — the way social spending grows and overseas commitments multiply no matter which party is in power, the revolving doors that connect K Street to Congress and Wall Street to the White House, the long list of dubious policies and programs that both sides tacitly support. In both election cycles, his honest extremism has sometimes cut closer to the heart of our national predicament than the calculating partisanship of his more grounded rivals. He sometimes rants, but he rarely spins — and he’s one of the few figures on the national stage who says “a plague on both your houses!” and actually means it.

Obviously it would be better for the country if this message weren’t freighted with Paul’s noxious baggage, and entangled with his many implausible ideas. But would it be better off without his presence entirely? I’m not so sure.

Neither prophets nor madmen should be elected to the presidency. But neither can they safely be ignored.

Robert Scheer at Truthdig:

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it “claptrap” for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That’s the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.

It is hypocritical that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the Fed that led ultra-secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of their exploited customers.

Andrew Sullivan, on former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's endorsement of Rep. Paul:

Which kinda undercuts the argument that libertarians repulsed by the language in Ron Paul's old newsletters should switch to Johnson. Meanwhile, Paul is now firmly in second place in New Hampshire in the poll of polls behind Romney. He over-took Gingrich a few days back.

Cenk Uygur, on the establishment's siege on Rep. Paul (a compilation from 11 days ago):

For Alex: Nine Posts on Ron Paul

2012-01-01T15:04:00.002-09:00

Alex, Strider and Ron

Our son, Alex, is for Ron Paul.

He's not to the point of going out and knocking on doors for the Congressman/presidential candidate. Like a lot of young people, he feels Paul is the only candidate on either side of the Democrat-Republican line who is seriously addressing the vital issues now facing us: our failed, awfully expensive imperial wars; the revolving access door to Wall Street crooks that the Obama administration has come to be emblematic of; the failed, racist war on drugs; and the assault on constitutional rights.

So, in honor of our son actually taking an interest in politics for a change, I'll post at least nine Ron Paul articles between now and the end of Iowa's GOP Caucus day - January 3rd.

Here is Ron Paul's supporters' most recent ad addressing charges of racism against him:

Here is Rep. Paul reacting to parts of the ad on C-SPAN:

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T12:25:00.000-09:00

It is 2012.

Having been told about the so-called Mayan 2012 end times prophecy back in the summer of 1968 by a guy named Patrick - who was a helluva free jazz tenor sax player, and who also loaned me his well-leafed copy of Morning of the Magicians - I've seen many, many predictions by one cult or another of end times come and go.

Some of them - The Peoples Temple, the Aum Shinriko, Heaven's Gate, the Order of the Solar Temple, the Branch Davidians, and others - have pretty much met their own separate fates.

Some predict the Obama worship cult will meet its end in 2012, but I suspect it will live on into the first three weeks of 2017.

I sometimes believe that my dog is closer to God than most religious fanatics are. He calmly accepts that he can only control my life every once in a while, and is quite grateful for the attention he gets.

Some Thoughts on 2011

2011-12-31T16:50:00.004-09:00

I. This year ending today has been an important one for me.

• In terms of my art, I've completed three fairly substantial new works: Aleutian Sketches for Brass and Piano; The Wild Coast, for Orchestra; and Five Alaska Trees, for a capella Chorus. I produced and directed a well-played concert for the Anchorage Civic Orchestra, devoted to popular Russian works from the 19th and 20th century.

• In terms of work, this past year, particularly during the fall term at the University of Alaska Anchorage, was intensely busy, very difficult, yet enormously rewarding regarding how I was able to educate young people.

• In terms of our outdoor life, summer and winter:

We traveled Outside three times: for our dear friend James Acord's memorial service, for my mom's 93rd birthday, and to visit family over the holidays.

Judy and I went halibut fishing together for the first time in over 25 years.

Our gardens were incredibly productive, even spectacular in some ways.

• In terms of blogging, this has been a mixed year:

I wrote a large number of diaries for Firedoglake, and hosted four book salons there:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, with author James Carroll, On April 17th

The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power, with author Geoffrey Dunn, on May 7th

A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation, with author Jeremy Ben-Ami, on July 31st

The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, with author Joe McGinniss, on September 25th

At Progressive Alaska, it has been a strange year:

My increasing disenchantment with Democratic Party politicians, beginning at the top, has led to a lot of strange - sometimes hateful - comments and e-mails.

My willingness to convey or write about the messages of Andree McLeod and Geoffrey Dunn on aspects of how people deal with Sarah Palin debris has not made me any friends, perhaps a new enemy or two.

So be it.

The truth is far more important than indulging in the fantasies of people who are more involved in spreading gossip, creating a new Troopergate coverup, or reminding me of people I once knew who became Moonies, or followed Jim Jones to Guyana.

Progressive Alaska led the way in Alaska reporting on:

Aspects of the hounding of Federal scientists by the Obama administration

Aspects of the Fukushima radiation

On Carl Gatto's strange HB 88 (his anti-Sharia Law legislation)

The Norway shootings, which are almost directly linked to some of Carl Gatto's out-of-state supporters' backers

The rapidly escalating turn to the crazy religious right of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, their relationship to crazy fundamentalist American Christianists, and the growing worldwide movement to acknowledge and grant Palestinians their rights

The Obama administration and the Keystone XL Pipeline

PA also covered - along with other Alaska blogs, most notably, The Mudflats, Southcentral Alaska coal issues.

In my view, PA failed to adequately cover:

Fisheries issues, particularly those having to do with the overwhelming political power of the trawlers

Mat-Su Valley political events, issues and candidates

The erosion of education funding

Miscellaneous environmental issues

There is only so much time.....

II. Thoughts on some of the most important issues of 2011:

1. The end of the Iraq Wars: For the United States, these began when we encouraged Saddam Hussein to go to war with the Iranians in the 1980s. Our direct involvement began after we encouraged Saddam to settle his disputes with Kuwait as Iraq saw fit. From that time in July 1990 until this last month, we waged war against a country we should have stayed out of. We bear the primary responsibility for the destruction of much of its civilian infrastructure, the eradication of its Christian community, an inflamed Sunni-Shia relationship, and the virtual end of what had been the most highly educated female population in the Mideast outside of Israel, from meaningful careers in most circumstances.

2. The Arab Spring Revolts: Iraq eventually would have had its own Arab Spring, had we not gone in there and established our own, new authoritarian regime. Obama propped up Egypt's Mubarak way too long, then tried to substitute the butcher Omar Suleiman in his place. We're shipping railroad cars full of tear gas, rubber bullets and real bullets to the Egyptian military as I write. Combined with our irrational support of Israel's increasingly racist regime and throttling of any Palestinian initiative, no matter how rational, any emerging democracies in the Middle East have little reason to trust our wisdom, let alone our actual policies.

3. The Tucson and Norway shootings: Both shooters were unstable men, acting out rage based upon fantasies they fed themselves, or were shoved into their unbalanced minds from external sources that breed hatred. Gabriel Giffords' remarkable courage through recovery here is matched in my mind by the equally remarkable sanity Norwegians have shown toward dealing with terror in their own midst.

4. Occupy Wall Street: It will be back in the Spring, more vocal than ever. Maybe even coherently organized?

It is a young movement, with important issues to address - they are coalescing over the Winter. Unlike the several Tea Party movements, OWS, by being very appealing to young people, will have a vitality that - if used well - will turn it into one of America's most important civil disobedience chapters.

5. The Importance of Ron Paul: So many people are saying or writing "Too bad the important parts of Paul's message [end the imperial wars, cut defense spending, demand accountability from the finance sector of our economy, end the racist war on drugs, etc.] are accompanied with all his unpleasant baggage [dismantle Rowe v. Wade, his alleged homophobia, his racist statements or actions in the past, etc.]."

If other candidates were offering more than bullshit platitudes aimed at primary state voters, the parts of Paul's message that progressives might relate to might not stand out so prominently. But as he is the only candidate to stand with the majority of Americans who want out of these wars (and no war with Iran), want banksters brought to heel and have come to distrust the effects of the war on drugs, he may have more of a voice in the 2012 campaign than most yet believe.

in today's mail - Obama begging for money from Judy - and lying about "the deadline"

6. Where's Obama's support going to come from in 2012? Not from me, at least not like Judy and I fervently supported him in 2008. He can go beg for money from Goldman-Sachs, the energy companies, the insurance companies, the health industry and defense contractors. Oh, wait - he already is.

Give me one good reason to donate to him, rather than to another Democratic Party candidate who needs support, and will seek to change things?

in today's mail - Obama's 'bots lying about his link to Occupy Wall Street. What crap!

7. Fukushima radiation: It is appalling that the meltdown of three nuclear reactors and the effects of their spreading pollution has not garnered more attention than it has.

David Rovics at Occupy Portland Oregon

2011-12-29T15:29:00.001-09:00

Progressive troubadour David Rovics put up a post on the events of 2011, through the efforts of his songs and performances around the country and Europe. Here is what he called his favorite performance, in his hometown of Portland, the evening before the police shut that encampment down:

RAP NEWS X - #Occupy2012 (feat. Noam Chomsky & Anonymous)

2011-12-28T09:16:00.002-09:00

Back Yard Redwoods

2011-12-26T17:56:00.001-09:00

This afternoon I finished the conductor's score to The Wild Coast, did laundry for Julia, Judy and myself, and took pictures with my new Canon camera, an ELPH 310.

Here are three images of redwoods, in or near our son's back yard.

Bradley Manning Article 32 Hearing Week Wrap-ups

2011-12-26T13:02:00.000-09:00

There are a number of news wrap-ups on the web on last week's U.S. Army Article 32 (pre-trial) hearings in the case of Private Bradley Manning. Here are some of the more important ones. Please note that none come from the U.S. mainstream press.

RT's Alyona Show:

Al Jazeera's Listening Post (up to 10:25 in the segment):

Al Jazeera's Inside Story Americas, with Daniel Ellsberg and Glenn Greenwald:

Greenwald assails the cowardice of Manning's critics in this thorough essay.

Democracy Now's wrap-up, from last Friday:

On Craig Medred's PWSAC Article in the Dispatch

2011-12-26T11:43:00.005-09:00

PWSAC Esther Bay Hatchery

Sunday, the Alaska Dispatch published a long article by Craig Medred, the subject of which is hatchery-reared salmon, more specifically, those reared at Prince William Sound hatcheries. In the article, Medred raises concern about ways hatchery-reared fish might displace wild stocks in ecosystems similar to that of Prince William Sound, by bringing up issues that have been discovered in ecosystems quite different from those of the Sound:

Fears of some state fisheries biologists that turning Prince William Sound into one big, salmon ranch might threaten the remaining wild stocks there gained some weight this week. Oregon researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the genes of steelhead trout -- a close relative -- appear easily altered in a hatchery.

Mark Christie, lead researcher on the work done at Oregon State University, painted a portrait of "evolution at warp speed" in the sterile, environmentally controlled trays of a hatchery.

"It's similar to the process by which wolves were transformed into dogs," he told MSNBC. "That's all that's occurring here, except it's occurring at a really rapid time scale."

Whether the 11,000-square-mile Sound -- smeared by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 -- should be home to piscatorial wolves or dogs has been a subject of debate for years now between the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Association (PWSAA) [sic - it is Prince William Wound Aquaculture Corporation (PWSAC)].

Medred's article, mostly through omission, fails to put the early history of the concept of the fisher-owned hatchery system into perspective. It also neglects commenting upon the many debates, controversies and arguments that have come up in the decades since this largest user-run salmon hatchery system in the history of the world has come into existence. Medred does pose some interesting questions, though, and his article is well worth reading.

His concern about Pink salmon showing up in streams or areas other than those from which they originated has been addressed many times before. This is how salmon spread. They find a new stream, perhaps recently freed from glacial cover, and move in. They find too many fish in their home stream and move along the shore until they find one less clogged. A storm throws them off in the last week before homing in, and they make do as they can. This has been going on in Alaska for hundreds of thousands of years. And Cordova fishers have brought this possibility up many times - from the important set of meetings in 1974 that led to the creation of PWSAC, until the present. Medred's observations about how PWSAC's hatcheries have stabilized PWS salmon fisheries are solid, though they offer nothing new:

The goal of the PWSAC, of course, has never been to save wild salmon runs but to save a segment of the Alaska economy. In that, the organization has been a huge success.

"PWSAC played a critical role in the recent economic recovery of the Alaska salmon industry," claimed a study released this spring. "Since 2006, PWSAC has produced 1 in 4 of Alaska's commercially caught pink salmon. Large harvests of PWSAC pinks have provided the industry with the volume and economies of scale needed to fulfill demand."

My first year as a boat owner in the Cordova salmon fishery (Area E) was 1974. I partnered with my friend KC. I bought the gillnetter-seiner Swanee. KC had the licenses. We fished the boat as gillnetter at the Copper, Bering and Coghill Rivers. We set off of Islands from Wingham to Grass to Esther. We caught about 2,400 salmon, mostly Reds. At the same time, we had Andy the netmaker install a new bunt (the heavy end, made to hold the pocketed fish) and Dog strip (additional, heavy mesh webbing at the bottom of the net) to our seine. But -as Medred observes:

Before hatcheries arrived in the Sound, there weren’t enough salmon to prosecute a fishery there in one out of every five summers. Every fifth summer was -- for lack of a better comparison -- an Exxon Valdez summer, with fishermen ordered to stay in port.

That is what happened in 1974. The thousands of dollars we put into the seine went to naught - at least for that year.   The Alaska Department of Fish and Game decided to not open the Sound for seining that year.

Medred neglects to relate the importance of the profound changes the 1964 Good Friday earthquake wrought on Prince William Sound, and other areas around Cordova. PWS was subject to large uplifts and sinkings of lands and the land under waters. The Cordova Razor clam industry all but vanished overnight. Sloughs and beaches off the Copper and Bering Rivers became even more shallow than before the quake. The PWS Pink runs were adversely effected more than any other southcentral Alaska fishery. PWSAC was a much a response to this physical event as to anything.

In the late summer, fall and early winter of 1975, at the same time Valdez was gearing up into oil pipeline construction mode, Cordova was gearing up to ship the equipment from there down to Sawmill Bay, for the building of the first of PWSAC's hatcheries. I was working part-time as an expeditor for PWSAC, and volunteering for them on some of my time off from fishing and working for KLAM, Cordova's radio station.

At the time, Cordova was getting close to the tail end of what had been a year-round boom created by the growth of the winter Tanner (Snow) crab industry.   In the 1970s, St. Elias Ocean Products, Morpac, North Pacific and New England Fish Company all took deliveries of Tanner crab through the winters. They employed over 150 people among them, through the January to April period.

At the same time, associated with the drive to get the fisher-owned hatcheries going, some fishers were seeking better ways to market local products, particularly Copper River Reds. The University of Alaska Cordova branch - Prince William Sound Community College - began offering courses in aquaculture in 1975. They were well-attended. The Sea Gant program offered courses in ways to add value to fish catch, and spurred innovative marketing concepts.

Cordova was and is full of contrarians. Perhaps the most remarkable among those wondering what all the new hatcheries might do to the PWS ecosystem was longtime iconoclast Stan Samuelson. He speculated as early a 1973 that when the hatcheries came on line, managers would be in competition with each other to be the most productive, which would lead to releases of millions of young salmon from the hatcheries into PWS at the time they judged to be optimum for survival. This would lead to the hatchery fish crowding out the wild stocks from food sources, such as early plankton blooms, as water temperatures reached thermocline. When, in the early 1980s, some PWS wild runs came in small compared to the hatchery fish, Stan's supporters came up with a "Stan Was Right" bumper sticker. A couple of years later, the wild fish came back as big as or larger than the hatchery returns. A new bumper sticker emerged - "Was Stan Right?"

The strength of Medred's Christmas PWS salmon article is that it raises important questions about rapid evolution of species. Its weakness is its lack of historical perspective on how long Cordovans have been aware that new, complex issues would emerge from the creation of such a large new element into a somewhat closed ecosystem.

Medred has written about PWSAC often in the past, and I've been critical of some of that writing. Over the years, he seems to have given Cordovans less credit for their accomplishments than they probably deserve. And his apologia for oil company disasters in Cordova's back yard go all the way back to August, 1989, while his dismissive views on just how pragmatic Cordovans can be has often struck me as emblematic of what one might call "Anchorage-based Chauvinism."

Medred's articles can be a treasure trove of fascinating information, as some parts of his Christmas article demonstrate.   With a little more research on the history of PWSAC's concern over ecological issues, the article would have been much more meaningful.

Merry Christmas from Quinhagak, Alaska

2011-12-25T16:01:00.000-09:00

California Roadside Rest Area Rattlesnake Sign

2011-12-23T17:34:00.001-09:00

The above sign was all over the place at an I-5 rest area north of Bakersfield.

Below - Judy and Julia yesterday afternoon, enjoying a sunny afternoon in Healdsburg, where it was 65 degrees.

A Pre-Christmas Message for Obama: War Is OVER - If YOU Want It

2011-12-22T06:26:00.000-09:00

An Historic U.S. Navy "First Kiss"

2011-12-22T06:09:00.000-09:00

From the UK Telegraph:

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, California, descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles.

Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

"It's something new, that's for sure," Gaeta told reporters after the kiss. "It's nice to be able to be myself. It's been a long time coming."

For the historical significance of the kiss, there was little to differentiate it from countless others when a Navy ship pulls into its home port following a deployment. Neither the U.S. Navy nor the couple tried to draw attention to what was happening and many onlookers waiting for their loved ones to come off the ship were busy talking among themselves.

List of Active Occupy Encampments Across the Country – Now at 61

2011-12-20T12:25:00.000-09:00

Occupy Anchorage Igloo

--- by Jane Hamsher

Although the media has grown bored with the Occupy movement and are declaring it over, OccupySupply has verified the existence of 61 encampments across the country.

We are listing them below, along with links to photos and videos that demonstrate what they look like today.

The FDL Membership Program now has 110 liaisons at over 70 occupations across the country who report back to us on the status of their occupations twice each week. That’s how we determine which occupations OccupySupply will send cold weather gear to every day.

OccupySupply shipped more stuff out last week alone than we did in the entire first month, and the demand is only increasing.

So we thought we’d try to drive a stake through the heart of the “Occupy is Dead” narrative by publishing our working list, which is consistently more up-to-date than any I’ve seen. These are occupations with encampments only — there are many, many more vibrant occupations that are doing tremendous community activism despite the lack of an encampment.

» Please consider donating $10 or more to help us continue to meet the demands of the now 70+ occupations we serve with the Occupy Supply fund. As always, 100% of your donations to the fund will go to purchase and distribute the supplies they need to make it through the winter and beyond.

1	Occupy Anchorage	Igloos!
2	Occupy Atlanta	Re-occupied Woodruff Park after the raid, stopped foreclosure this week.
3	Occupy Austin	Nice story in Daily Texan about OccupySupply helping them prepare for winter
4	Occupy Berkeley	90 tents
5	Occupy Birmingham	Marched with Alabama civic & religious leaders to protest state immigration law
6	Occupy Bloomington	Longest running occupation?
7	Occupy Boise	Highs in the 30s, lows in the teens, but hanging in there
8	Occupy Boulder	Working with city on permit
9	Occupy Buffalo	Just opened 2nd encampment
10	Occupy Cedar Rapids	Says they have a stable location through the winter
11	Occupy Chapel Hill	Expanding, building bridges with local congregations
12	Occupy Charlotte	Growing, now 30 tents
13	Occupy Claremont	City council may intervene, but police say they’re not breaking any laws
14	Occupy Cleveland	Recently worked with Youngstown & Ashtabula to encamp vs. foreclosure
15	Occupy Columbia SC	Won their court battle; judge says they can stay
16	Occupy Dover DE	Just celebrated their 1 month anniversary
17	Occupy Kstreet	Expanding to local black churches
18	Occupy Lancaster PA	Renewing the permit that expires January 1
19	Occupy Delaware	Won a ruling from a judge that recognized the tent city as a form of protected speech.
20	Occupy DesMoines	Launching Occupy the Caucus, urging people to vote “uncommitted”
21	Occupy Erie	Re-occupied the gazebo yesterday, looking good in OccupySupply
22	Occupy Eugene	City installed lights at request of campers, increasing budget to help homeless
23	Occupy Fairbanks	Yes, there’s an Occupy Fairbanks. No shit.
24	Occupy Freedom Plaza	Feed 140 people each day
25	Occupy FtWayne	Flash mob at the Glenbrook Mall last weekend reminding people to shop local
26	Occupy Gainesville	Organizing Florida occupations for upcoming FL legislative session
27	Occupy Harrisburg	Organizing around state redistricting
28	Occupy Houston	Celebrated International Migrants Day by protesting prison industrial complex
29	Occupy Huntsville AL	City gave them a spot
30	Occupy IowaCity	Mic checked Newt Gingrich last week
31	Occupy Lancaster PA	Holding toy and book drive for children of the community
32	Occupy Las Vegas	Protesting at auctions of foreclosed homes seized without paperwork
33	Occupy Lincoln	Tent town in Centennial Mall going strong
34	Occupy Little Rock	Built a geodesic dome
35	Occupy Madison	Recently had its first marriage proposal
36	Occupy Memphis	Held Saturday march to mark 1 year since Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in Tunisia
37	Occupy Miami	Just celebrated 2 month anniversary
38	Occupy Milwaukee	Immigration groups recently loaned them office space
39	Occupy Monterey	Holding a series of public community educational talks
40	Occupy Nashville	Getting tremendous community support
41	Occupy New Haven	On private property by agreement with managers
42	Occupy Newark	City recently lifted ban on overnight encampments
43	Occupy Norman OK	Just started this week
44	Occupy Orange County	Held a mock funeral for the Bill of Rights
45	Occupy Palm Beach	Protesting wealth inequality in rich neighborhoods
46	Occupy Phoenix	Demonstrating against Joe Arpaio’s tasering of Latino Marine vet that left him brain dead
47	Occupy Pittsburgh	Protesting the bilking of millions of dollars from schools & local govt at US Steel Tower
48	Occupy Providence	Approx. 60 overnight sleepers in Burnside Park
49	Occupy Raleigh	Property owner & city say they can stay
50	Occupy Sacramento	Recently occupied Clear Channel
51	Occupy Rochester	Just received AFL-CIO Rochester Labor Council’s Community Solidarity Award
52	Occupy San Jose	Just re-occupied this week
53	Occupy San Luis Obispo	Denied the use of tents but still staying each night
54	Occupy Syracuse	Recently erected a triple-walled Army surplus tent and plan to stay for the winter
55	Occupy Tacoma	Mic check to OccupySupply on Dec 15!
56	Occupy Talahassee	Will present objectives of Florida occupations to state legislature on January 10
57	Occupy Tampa	Set up last Saturday in Voice of Freedom Park
58	Occupy Trenton	Protesting Chris Christie’s charter school plan in Dept. of Ed offices
59	Occupy Tucson	One of the largest occupations still going
60	Occupy Walton OR	Small Oregon town trying to save their post office
61	Occupy Winnepeg

Hanukkah with Family in New Mexico

2011-12-20T12:10:00.001-09:00

Happy Hanukkah.

We're outside of Albuquerque with family, enjoying the crisp sunshine the day after a major storm has passed through the area, headed for the Midwest.

We drove into Albuquerque yesterday evening to pick up our daughter, Julia at the airport. The snow was still falling. Between when we left the house here, ate inner at a bistro, picked up Julia, and returned to the freeway - I-40 - it had been closed. We snuck back home via old US Route 66.

This morning, it was spectacularly beautiful in the crisp (10 degrees F) mountain (7,300 feet) air and bright sunshine.

Here are two images from near Judy's sister and husband's house:

Snow laden evergreens:

Twelve kinds of bananas, from an ethnic market we visited yesterday in Albuquerque:

Judy and I are fortunate to be members of a loving, extended Swedish-Jewish-Norwegian-Cambodian-Icelandic-Scotts-Irish family, with members spread right now from Indonesia to Massachusetts to Houston to who-knows-where. This is our first Holiday season outside of Alaska in 17 years, and our first Hanukkah with one of the Jewish branches.

And, as today is the first day of the Festival of Lights, you might consider joining Jewish Voice for Peace. Judy is a member, and we're making a donation today.

Here's where you can do that too.

Kevin Gosztola on The Young Turks, Talking Abut the Bradley Manning Article 32 Hearing

2011-12-20T08:48:00.001-09:00

Ferry Kalakala Sold to Investor for One Dollar

2011-12-19T22:15:00.000-09:00

From the Seattle PI:

The adventures of the art-deco ferry Kalakala have taken another twist with the announced sale of the ferry.

Kalakala owner Steve Rodrigues posted a note on the ferry's website Sunday stating the boat was sold to an anonymous bidder for $1.

"There are specific moments of time that you cross the path of the right person with the right heart and soul and this person is the one," Rodrigues said.

While the investors wish to remain anonymous, Rodrigues said they are maritime-related company that has experience in renovating historical ships and have promised to restore the ferry to its original condition.

"He has given me his promise, he has embraced this vessel's history; it's rich future," Rodrigues said.

That future is to make her sea-worthy once again so she can sail from a permanent home-port and take passengers on cruises with food, drink and music. The first step will be to spend the next six months to repair the hull so it can be towed to a shipyard where the renovation will begin.

Rodrigues says the restoration is supposed to be finished sometime in about the next two to three years. He'll stay with the project and says he retains the authority to choose the Kalakala's home-port -- hopefully Seattle, he says, but other cities like San Francisco and San Diego will be considered.

Monday is the deadline set by the Coast Guard for the vessel's thin and brittle hull to be improved and for a mooring and towing plan for the ferry.

It has to move from its location in Tacoma. The Coast Guard says the ferry is being evicted. Rodrigues has disputed that the boat is being evicted but acknowledges that it must be moved.

Extremely Lucky on Travel Weather

2011-12-18T21:55:00.001-09:00

Wind turbines on the Price River, Utah

Saturday morning, Judy and I left my brother's house in Portland, Oregon. We drove up the Columbia and Snake Rivers, and down to Ogden, Utah, where we spent last night. Sunday morning we drove from there to Albuquerque, New Mexico, arriving at her sister's house this evening, in time for a delicious dinner.

Considering how bad the weather might possibly be at this time of year, we've been fortunate, to say the least. It was sunny and in the lower to mid-fifties in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico this afternoon. Our daughter Julia will join us tomorrow. A Chanukah feast is planned for Tuesday.

Judy had never been to Utah or Colorado before. I had never been along some of the routes we took, so we were grateful for such picturesque weather. There are so many more people in places like Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo than I remember from previous trips.

So many routes I travelled in the 60s, that were neglected two-lane roads are now four or five-lane highways, it is almost baffling. The population of the USA is almost double what it was when I last passed through Boise, Idaho. And the population of the southwest has at least tripled since I last visited Farmington, NM.

How long will there be enough water for all these people?

Wilson's Arch, near Moab, Utah

The Detainee - A Powerful Indie Film

2011-12-17T21:01:00.001-09:00

This powerful short film was recently made byKyle Broom:

Director Kyle Broom wanted to take “Prevention of Injury (POI)” through the film festival circuit just like every other independent filmmaker, but this 20-minute film has the burden of being about something. The film’s main character is doesn’t have a name. He’s referred to in the credits only as “The Detainee.” Actor Jordan Butcher doesn’t look much like Bradley Manning, but this hardly matters. Butcher pretty much is Bradley Manning here. He’s locked in a white-walled cell in near solitary confinement where being “administratively upgraded” to suicide prevention status brings with it the tortures of restraint and sleep deprivation. Amnesty International has condemned the real Private Manning’s treatment as harsh and punitive. In this film, you get a glimpse of what it must be like. After a few screenings at various Occupy sites, Broom and producer Alexandra Spector posted their film on Vimeo to get as wide an audience as possible before Manning’s Article 32 hearing (a kind of military code preliminary hearing) set for Friday.

Prevention of Injury (POI) from kyle broom on Vimeo.

Extremely Well-Produced Occupy San Francisco-Oakland Flashmob

2011-12-17T20:56:00.000-09:00

On 19 November 2011 over 100 dancers converged at Occupy SF - Oakland to dance the world awake.

The Snake River at the Oregon-Idaho Border

2011-12-17T20:30:00.000-09:00

We're on the road.

We couldn't ask for better weather than we're getting, for mid-December on a route that is taking us through places where anything can happen this time of the year.

Catching Up with Andrée McLeod, Alaska's Leading Muckraker

2011-12-16T13:30:00.000-09:00

Roses blooming in my brother's yard

We're in Portland, Oregon, the City of Roses and Occupy Portland, visiting my brother Steve and his family, before we hit the road south. Steve's kids are showing up from around the country for the Holidays. And it is bright, sunny, and, by Alaska standards, warm here - sunny and in the upper 40s. His roses are blooming.

Andrée McLeod, perhaps Sarah Palin's most effective ethics nemesis, has updated me on issues she is pursuing, regarding the unlawful ways our state government operates. Here are the updates:
I. Regarding McLeod's complaint on the use of state emails by Frank Bailey, Jeanne Devon and Ken Morris, McLeod has written to John J. Burns, Alaska's outgoing (January 2nd, 2012) Attorney General:

Dear Mr. Burns.

What is the status of the September 7, 2010 ethics complaint I filed relating to Frank Bailey’s misuse of official email documents for personal gain and benefit. That complaint was filed over one year and 3 months ago?

What actions has the AG’s office taken against Frank Bailey’s co-authors, Ken Morris and Jeanne Devon, for their collaboration with Bailey that commenced in 2009, and included their possession, misuse and abuse of official, confidential, and yet undisclosed email documents that still belong to the state of Alaska until appropriately reviewed?

Thanks.
Andrée McLeod

II. Andrée has written Attorney General Burns, in a followup to her November 14th letter to him, re: misuse of official positions and titles for partisan political purposes? That letter stated:

Thank you for your (attached) reply Mr. Burns. If you would, please oblige my response…..

There was a time not that long ago when one knew that Alaska’s leaders worked more for Alaska’s interests than their own special interests. They didn’t merely use our esteemed public offices of Governor and Lt. Governor as stepping stones for higher office and get-rich-quick schemes.

We have been debilitated long enough these last few years by the self-interested, reckless actions of our elected officials with their use of public funds to quell their inordinate sense of entitlement, self-dealing and self-aggrandizement. Please help our state officials regain some semblance of proper responsible conduct, notwithstanding custom and practice, by siding towards the people’s interests.

Thank you.
Andrée McLeod

McLeod's December 26th followup states:

Dear AG Burns John

It’s been over a month since you’re received my request for documents re: Sean Parnell’s attached gift claims. Please consider, again, my request for copies of any ethics determination requests on file that relate to Parnell and the Aspen Institute’s programs and non-state funded trips, including the ($13,755) he took to the Middle East in March of 2008, before he announced his bid for the US House.

Clearly, this transparent political partisan campaign attempt to disingenuously sprout his foreign relations bona fides less than 2 weeks before he announced he was running against Don Young, and the numerous inherent conflicts of interests re: partaking of the Aspen Institute’s ‘True Rising Star’ program, ought to have garnered some modicum of review by the Attorney General. As you mentioned in your letter, they are Lt. Governor 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whose interests were really served? The public’s or Parnell’s?

Aspen Institute Names Top Young Elected Officials to its Third Class of Aspen-Rodel Fellows

Washington, DC, November 1, 2007––Following an eight-month search involving input from over 1,000 business, political, and civic leaders, the Aspen Institute has selected a group of the nation's top young elected officials for a fellowship program honoring public leaders identified as "the true rising stars" of American politics.

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/2007/11/01/aspen-institute-names-top-young-elected-officials-its-third-class-aspen-rodel-fellow

May I have a copy(ies) of any of these determination(s) for Sean Parnell that relate to the Aspen Institute and is non-state funded trips, if it/they exist? Or would you like a separate communication with my request?

Thank you for your time and attention on this matter.

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. Your subsequent resignation was a disappointment. I’ve dealt with many AG’s since Palin was elected. Your rapprochement and unique lack of contempt towards this ordinary Alaskan was refreshing.

Good luck!
Andrée McLeod

III. Additionally, Andrée has written the following short article, an open letter. It was inspired, in part, by redent news that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was allowed to destroy very large amounts of public documents, as he was leaving office:

Since the fall of 2008, we've been made aware of the fact that our public records laws need to be updated. Every year since then, I've appealed to you to address our public records laws and fix the outdated and gaping holes.

I do so, again.

Granted, Alaska's declining revenues is a priority. But surely, there must be some among the 60 of you who could handle bringing the public records preservation laws up to date with the digital era, so that the intent of our public records laws is satisfied, including emails and other digital documents.

When will you protect the people's right to access ALL public records and address this most fundamental and glaringly broken statute with regards to the protection and preservation of ALL our public records, including emails and other digital documents?

Who among you will rise to make sure that the state is protected against liability by having all public documents secured, including emails and other digital documents?

Alaska's history depends on you to take action now, in order to protect and preserve Alaska's public records for tomorrow, including emails and other digital documents.

Sincerely,
Andrée McLeod

Duke University Study May Force Usabelli Wishbone Hill Coal Mine to Have to Completely Rework Project

2011-12-15T06:58:00.004-09:00

While the local media is all but ignoring the fact that Usabelli has been conducting its preliminary work on the Wishbone Hill mountaintop removal coal mine illegally, new data, particularly a study just released by Duke University, raises serious questions about the long-term effect of that mine on the local downstream area's water quality:

The Charleston Gazette highlights a new study confirming the long-term water quality impacts of mountaintop removal mining. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) this week, a team of Duke University researchers found that contamination from MTR mines is cumulative, and that mine sites abandoned decades ago still continue to contaminate waterways.

The study authors looked at water quality at various points along West Virginia's Mud River, which flows past the massive Hobet mine and many others, and its tributaries. They found that mine waste pollution including selenium and sulfate increased along the river's course as it flowed past more and more MTR sites. In addition, sites supposedly reclaimed decades ago continued to contaminate the river.

Along with the Duke University study, other recent data suggests that local Palmer and Wasilla residents' concerns about long-term and short-term health effects of Wishbone Hill and other proposed lower Matanuska River watershed mines may be - if anything - under-estimated:

Recent examinations of the health and environmental impacts of mountaintop mining – stripping the tops off of mountains to extract coal – has the practice looking pretty guilty. It apparently spikes birth defects, worsens chronic conditions like heart disease, and ruins land, and it doesn’t look like it will be clearing its name anytime soon. And PNAS has added one more strike to the list with new research that further demonstrates how mountaintop mining erodes long-term water quality and causes deformities in aquatic life.

Usabelli's own propaganda (PDF) on how the coal they will strip from Palmer's northern suburbs will be prepped for trucking through our over-crowded local arterials should raise alarms of anyone familiar with the new Duke University study's findings:

Controlled blasting techniques will be necessary to help fracture the conglomerate and rock layers, which can then be removed using excavators. UCM will use sequential delay blasting to limit the amount of explosives detonated at one time to reduce noise and vibration.

The overburden will then be removed and used according to the approved mining and reclamation plan. Finally, excavators will scoop up the coal and load it into trucks bound for the wash plant. After washing, the coal will be transported from the mine site to the customer.

The millions of tons of explosive-drenched, high mercury coal will be washed with billions of gallons of water. The water will then enter the Moose Creek and other drainages' aquifers, to remain there, deforming plants, animals and people for generations to come, according to the Duke research team's studies.

Hopefully, Usabelli will be forced by the state or the US government to develop a plan that allows zero tolerance for the findings of these three new, critical studies.

New MTV Video Welcomes Us to the Post 12-14-2011 ObamaLand

2011-12-14T20:35:00.002-09:00

Cenk Uygur Interviews Glenn Greenwald on The Defense Authorization Bill

2011-12-14T17:36:00.000-09:00

Congressional Tyranny, White House Surrender

2011-12-14T17:09:00.000-09:00

--- by Ralph Nader

[see Note at the bottom of Mr. Nader's article]

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Capitol Hill. A majority of Congress is just about to put the finishing touches on an amendment to the military budget authorization legislation that will finish off some critical American rights under our Constitution.

Here is how two retired 4 star marine generals, Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, described in the New York Times the stripmining of your freedom to resist tyranny in urging a veto by President Obama:

"One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past....

"A second provision would mandate military custody for most terrorism suspects. It would force on the military responsibilities it hasn't sought"..."for domestic law enforcement...."

"A third provision would further extend a ban on transfers from Guantanamo, ensuring that this morally and financially expensive symbol of detainee abuse will remain open well into the future."

All of Obama's leading military and security officials oppose this codification of the ultimate Big Brother power. Imagine allowing the government to deny people accused of involvement with terrorism (undefined), including U.S. citizens arrested within the United States, the right to a trial by jury. Imagine allowing indefinite imprisonment for those accused without even proffering charges against them. Goodbye 5th and 6th Amendments.

On some government agency's unbridled order: just pick them up, arrest them without charges and throw them into the military brig indefinitely. This atrocity deserves to be repeatedly condemned loudly throughout the land by Americans who believe in the rights of due process, habeas corpus, right to confront your accusers, right to a jury trial--in short, liberty and the just rule of law.

Some stalwart lawyers are speaking out soundly: They include Georgetown Law Professor, David Cole, George Washington University Law Professor, Jonathan Turley, Republican lawyer, Bruce Fein, former American Bar Association (2005-2006) president, Michael Greco, and the always alert lawyers at the civil liberties groups. Their well-grounded outcries are not awakening the citizenry.

Where are the one million lawyers? Where are the thousands of law professors? Where are the scores of law school deans? Are they not supposed to be our first constitutional responders?

Where is the Tea Party and its haughty rhetoric about the sanctity of constitutional liberty? Most of the Tea caucus voted for tyranny. Presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul has been an outspoken critic of this attack on our civil liberties.

The majority also voted to ratify a dictatorial procedure in the Congress, as well. This indefinite, arbitrary, open-ended dictatorial White House mandate was never subjected to even a House or Senate Committee hearing, and was not explained with any rationale known as legislative "findings." It was rammed through by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees without the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees invoking their concurrent jurisdiction for public hearings.

So extreme are these majority Congressional extremists, composed of both Republicans and renegade Democrats, the latter led by Senator Carl Levin, that the Obama Administration has to lecture them about the fundamental American principle that "our military does not patrol our streets."

It is not as if the imperial presidencies of Bush and Obama need any more encouragement and legitimization to continue on their lawless paths to criminal wars of aggression, unlawful surveillance, arbitrary slayings of innocents, wrongful imprisonments, and unauthorized spending. Instead of Congress using its constitutional authority regarding the war, appropriations and investigative powers, it formalizes its impotence by handing the "go for it" power to the Executive branch with the vaguest of language boundaries.

Usually there are a few Senators whose upfront defense of our Constitution would lead them to stand tall against the "Senate Club" and put a "hold" on this pernicious amendment. Civil libertarians hope that, before the final Senate vote in the rush to get home for the Holidays, Senators Rand Paul, Tom Harkin, Al Franken, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Tom Coburn or Mike Lee would step forth. A "hold" could spark the demand for public hearings and floor debate to give the American people the time and information to react and ask themselves "how dare Congress take away our most fundamental rights?"

President Obama initially threatened to veto the entire bill and make Congress drop these pernicious dictates that so insult the memory and vision of our founding fathers. He is already signaling that he doesn't have the backbone to reject the false choice "between our safety and our ideals," that he asserted in his Inaugural Address.

Note: Since Ralph Nader posted the above article, the White House has issued the following statement:

We have been clear that “any bill that challenges or constrains the President’s critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the Nation would prompt the President’s senior advisers to recommend a veto.” After intensive engagement by senior administration officials and the President himself, the Administration has succeeded in prompting the authors of the detainee provisions to make several important changes, including the removal of problematic provisions. While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the President additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength. This legislation authorizes critical funding for military personnel overseas, and its passage sends an important signal that Congress supports our efforts as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan lead while ensuring that our military can meet the challenges of the 21st century.

As a result of these changes, we have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto. However, if in the process of implementing this law we determine that it will negatively impact our counterterrorism professionals and undercut our commitment to the rule of law, we expect that the authors of these provisions will work quickly and tirelessly to correct these problems.

No Credit to Wikileaks or Manning in TIME Magazine's Person-of-the-Year Tribute to Protesters

2011-12-14T16:50:00.001-09:00

No credit to Wikileaks.

No mention of or tribute to Julian Assange, who was kept out of the spotlight at TIME last year, even though he was readers' choice for Person of the Year.

No mention of Bradley Manning, whose detainment for uncovering important aspects of why people are so outraged, begins a new stage tomorrow.

No mention of the thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters, who have been protesting Occupation for generations now.

As good as TIME's long article on worldwide protest is - and the article is excellent in what it does cover - it skims over Bahreini protests, prefers to have a sidebar story on an Athenian "protest dog," rather than show any of the mutilated or dead Palestinian protesters, and certainly does not show the hundreds of people outside of Quantico last spring, or the hundreds being arrested outside the White House in the 350.org protests.

How important Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and probable information provided to them through Bradley Manning is to this ongoing, perhaps rapidly growing, global protest and action network are is difficult to assess accurately. But to deny its importance is to not tell the full story of this important year.

Glenn Greenwald, in an op-ed that will appear in tomorrow's UK Guardian, assesses some of the important domestic fallout from Manning's and Wikileaks' uncovering of the truth:

When WikiLeaks was awarded Australia's most prestigious journalism award last month, the awarding foundation described how these disclosures created "more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime".

By exposing some of the worst atrocities committed by US forces in Iraq, the documents prevented the Iraqi government from agreeing to ongoing legal immunity for US forces, and thus helped bring about the end of the war. Even Bill Keller, the former New York Times executive editor and a harsh WikiLeaks critic, credits the release of the cables with shedding light on the corruption of Tunisia's ruling family and thus helping spark the Arab spring.

In sum, the documentsManning is alleged to have released revealed overwhelming deceit, corruption and illegality by the world's most powerful political actors. And this is why he has been so harshly treated and punished.

Despite pledging to usher in "the most transparent administration in history", President Obama has been obsessed with prosecuting whistleblowers; his justice department has prosecuted more of them for "espionage" than all prior administrations combined.

The oppressive treatment of Manning is designed to create a climate of fear, to send a signal to those who in the future discover serious wrongdoing committed in secret by the US: if you're thinking about exposing what you've learned, look at what we did to Manning and think twice. The real crimes exposed by this episode are those committed by the prosecuting parties, not the accused. For what he is alleged to have given the world, Manning deserves gratitude and a medal, not a life in prison.

Manning is THE PROTESTER.

Like many in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Bahrein, Yemen, Palestine and Syria, he is paying a steep price in his genuine commitment to justice:

[T]he leaks Manning allegedly engineered have generated enormous benefits: precisely the benefits Manning, if the allegations against him are true, sought to achieve. According to chat logs purportedly between Manning and the informant who turned him in, the private decided to leak these documents after he became disillusioned with the Iraq war. He described how reading classified documents made him, for the first time, aware of the breadth of the corruption and violence committed by his country and allies.

He explained that he wanted the world to know what he had learned: "I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public." When asked by the informant why he did not sell the documents to a foreign government for profit, Manning replied that he wanted the information to be publicly known in order to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms".

Unlike most at TIME Magazine, many of us can be very proud of our open and meaningful support of Manning, and of thousands of others here and around the world, who, as Bradley put it, "want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."

image - The Protester Collage, by Philip Munger

The Palestinian Flag Raised at the UN

2011-12-13T20:39:00.001-09:00

Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia Share Nobel Peace Prize with Yemeni Tawakkul Karman

2011-12-13T08:27:00.000-09:00

Snow-Laden Birches at UAA on Monday

2011-12-13T00:01:00.002-09:00

More - Much More - On Newt's Lies on Palestine

2011-12-11T22:56:00.000-09:00

In the last few days before the ABC News GOP candidate debate this weekend, Newt Gingrich managed to get the most prominent headlines from among the set of them, with his statement Friday to the Jewish Channel Cable TV Network:

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state,” he said. “I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

In a diary here Saturday about this, I speculated:

The goal of these candidates, in bringing up Israel, is not so much designed to court Jewish Republican voters, but to court Christian Zionists. 78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and most will vote for him again. Fundamentalist Christians who believe in the necessity of repopulating the “Holy Land” with Jews to facilitate the coming of the end times represent a high percentage of the GOP voters who will determine their party’s candidate in the caucuses and primaries.

In a post-debate panel discussion Saturday on Current TV, Cenk Uygur pressed his panel on this same point:

Uygur seemed more animated in bringing this up than any of his panelists. But he was able to do that. I doubt he would have been cleared to go down this line if he was still at MSNBC.

After the Palestine issue came up during the debate, while it was still happening, Max Blumenthal tweeted:

Sawyer & Stephanapoulos smile &; avoid pointed follow-up questions to racist and ahistorical invective against Palestinians

"Racist and ahistorical invective" it was. Though Sawyer and Stephanapoulos (and Al Gore on Cenk's panel) were far beyond merely glib, other news sources did follow-up.

The Washington Post fact-checked Gingrich's debate claim about Palestinian textbooks:

“These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?’ We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. ”
--Gingrich

During the debate, Gingrich reiterated his controversial claim the Palestinians are an “invented people,” which has been criticized in some Republican quarters. But he also raised a new charge about Palestinian textbooks, which he said the United States pays for “through our aid money.”

This funding claim is correct only in an indirect sense: The United States is the largest single-state donor for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), providing nearly $250 million in 2011. As a recent Congressional Research Service report made clear, this funding is closely scrutinized by Congress. But UNRWA underwrites the schooling of Palestinian refugees and thus provides money for textbooks

The issue of Palestinian textbooks is controversial, one the Palestinian Authority says it is addressing. We cannot immediately find evidence of the statement claimed by Gingrich, and it is not clear if he is referring to a statement in one of the newer textbooks.

There have been a number of reports by pro-Israel groups that say the textbooks in Palestinian schools reinforce hatred of Jews. But one Palestinian expert has argued that studies in English that claim to show such bias in Palestinian textbooks are “based on innuendo, exaggeration, and downright lies.”

Here is what the State Department’s human rights report said about the new Palestinian text books:
The PA Ministry of Education and Higher Education completed the revision of its primary and secondary textbooks in 2006. International academics concluded the textbooks did not incite violence against Jews, but showed imbalance, bias, and inaccuracy. Some maps in Palestinian textbooks did not depict the current political reality, showing neither Israel nor the settlements. Palestinian textbooks, used in Palestinian schools, as well as in Jerusalem municipality-administered schools in East Jerusalem, inconsistently defined the 1967 borders and failed to label areas and cities with both Arabic and Hebrew names.
But the Israeli media has reported that Israeli educational system “is hardly better than the Palestinian one when it comes to inserting political messages in textbooks.”

The WaPo story didn't address the issues of Palestinian authenticity, the "rocket every day" canard, or unwillingness of Palestinians to cut a fair deal with the Israelis, because, Newt alleges, they instead want that " not a single Jew will remain."

Let's examine the authenticity issue. On Friday, in the JCCTV interview, Gingrich said:

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire." He added that Palestinians were "an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs".

Give that historian an "F-minus."

The most authentic early mention of Palestine that has come down to us from an author outside of the Levant, is that of Herodotus, in his 420BCE book, the Histories. He described "Syria Palaistine" several times. But no Israel. The earliest local authentic description of a word used elsewhere to identify the geographic area known more recently as Palestine, was the use by the XX Dynasty of Egypt (c. 1150 BCE) of the term "Peleset." But no Israel. That term did not exist to define a physical place until later.

1150 to 420 BCE were important times in the history of Judaism, and fundamentalist Christianity. But a lot of what has and has not been found archeologically, that might show evidence of a strong state in the area of Palestine, that was predominantly or solely Jewish in a sense we might recognize, leaves immense holes in any assertion that accepts much of what early-date Biblical material fundamentalists believe as fact. Many of these supposed historical events that fundamentalists accept as fact are not. They are myths.

Since Herodotus called the area Syria Palaistine, the area now comprising Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, has been called something like that by post-Alexandrian Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Caliphs, Crusaders, Ottomans and British. They have called the place "Palestine."

So many tribes have moved into and out of the place over the thousands of years, that the political constructs of Arab and Jew, or Palestinian and Israeli are just that - political. In countries that call themselves Muslim states or Jewish states, politics IS religion all too often.

The argument Gingrich is attempting to bring to the fore here isn't just calculated to gain a few fundamentalist votes in Iowa and elsewhere. It is a conscious effort by an experienced candidate to dig down into the lower reaches of the ideologies of GOP primary likely voters, to begin bringing out the same enthusiasm Palin could pull off in 2008.

Gingrich's main inroads right now may be among Christian Zionists who were supporting Cain, and from a peeling away of evangelicals who were trying to digest Romney. Maybe somebody reliable is polling that.

We'll see if he can pull it off. Maybe having Franklin Graham re-convert him to fundamentalism after Newt carries Pennsylvania (April 24th) would help cinch the deal. After all, this is the most cynical and desperate set of major candidates many of us have ever witnessed.

Ironic News Report - Newt's Gone Wild

2011-12-11T18:47:00.000-09:00

Change We Can Believe In!

2011-12-10T20:38:00.002-09:00

Top - how the police are handling election demonstrators in Moscow.

Bottom - how the police are handling Occupy Oakland demonstrators.

Didn't it used to be the other way around?

I guess this is one of the benefits of being at war - at home and abroad - all the fucking time.

hat tip - shekissesfrogs

Will Newt Have to "Reinvent" The Palestinian People for Today's GOP Clownfest Debate?

2011-12-10T14:10:00.000-09:00

This past week GOP presidential candidate hopeful Newt Gingrich, from his new perch as alleged frontrunner, made two controversial statements regarding Israel and the Palestinians. Here was Wednesday:

Newt Gingrich told a gathering of Jewish Republicans Wednesday that he would name former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton to be his secretary of state if elected president, and would immediately move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Mr. Gingrich showed his trademark flare for provocation as he spoke at a presidential candidates' forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, pledging not to let President Barack Obama dodge his invitation to debate and invoking Mr. Bolton, who advocates an interventionist foreign policy and hawkish stance toward Iran, a longtime antagonist of Israel.

On Friday, Gingrich claimed that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, in an interview with the Jewish Channel Cable Network:

"Remember, there was no Palestine as a state,” he said. “I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

The promise on Bolton prompted some to question whether or not Gingrich may have violated some law by offering up Bolton's name. He had not. He's not the first presidential candidate to promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, either. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made the same campaign promise, only to forget about it once elected.

Gingrich's statement regarding the Palestinian peoples' authenticity has elicited some severe criticism from Palestinians in the occupied territories:

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, demanded that Gingrich "review history."

"From the beginning, our people have been determined to stay on their land," Fayyad said in comments reported by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. "This, certainly, is denying historical truths."

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Gingrich of incitement. "Mark my words ... these statements of Gingrich's will be the ammunitions and weapons of the bin Ladens and the extremists for a long, long time," Erekat told CNN.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a top official in the PLO, said that Gingrich was seeking a "cheap way" to win Jewish and pro-Israel voters in next year's election.

Sen. Carl Levin, from Michigan, a state with many relocated Palestinians, was critical:

[Levin] said "Gingrich's cynical efforts to attract attention to himself with divisive and destructive statements will not help his presidential ambitions since they are aimed at putting the peace between Israel and the Palestinians that Americans yearn for even further out of reach than it is today."

The presidential hopeful, Levin said, "offered no solutions — just a can of gasoline and a match."

The reactions prompted his campaign to have to issue a clarification today:

Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman issued a clarification Saturday afternoon. “Newt Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state,” the spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said in a statement.

“However, to understand what is being proposed and negotiated you have to understand decades of complex history, which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview with The Jewish Channel.”

The competition among GOP presidential race candidates to show who is most loyal to the Jewish State is keen. Remarking on how ridiculous some GOP statements of fealty to Zionism have been, one @chucktodd tweeted:

Will someone one-up Romney and pledge to give their inaugural address FROM Israel?

Israel has come up more in these debates than it did in the 2004 and 2008 national election cycles. Many have predicted this would happen, as the GOP candidates seem to feel compelled to outdo each other in criticism of Obama's policies regarding this conflict.

The goal of these candidates, in bringing up Israel, is not so much designed to court Jewish Republican voters, but to court Christian Zionists. 78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and most will vote for him again. Fundamentalist Christians who believe in the necessity of repopulating the "Holy Land" with Jews to facilitate the coming of the end times represent a high percentage of the GOP voters who will determine their party's candidate in the caucuses and primaries.

I'm wondering if Gingrich is going to get off scott free on his statements and misstatements this past week. Ron Paul, who was banished from the Republican Jewish Coalition debate, for having been critical of Israeli policies in the past, will probably lead attacks on Gingrich, but may steer clear of this set of issues.

Gingrich really is a target-rich candidate for a host of reasons.

Military Spending Costs Jobs

2011-12-10T12:05:00.002-09:00

More Wit and Wisdom from the IM Commenting Cult

2011-12-10T01:55:00.001-09:00

One of many well-reasoned responses to a comment I made to an article at The Immoral Minority on Friday:

Looks like Phil 'the asshole' Munger isn't getting enough traffic to his website so he comes and shits on Gryphen's. This is a pattern with Phil. He resembles Sarah Palin in this way, when he doesn't get enough attention he comes and dumps his toxic, skewed anti Obama crap on an otherwise lovely discussion. He has a hard on for Obama, the same way that Sarah does. Pure, unadulterated jealousy for the fine man that Mr. Obama is when they have to suffer the poor excuses for human beings they are.

I'm more and more convinced that Sarah is paying him to be the attack dog for her under the premise of 'progressive' when in fact each and every thought that is put forward by them (Phil and Sarah) is as regressive as one can get.

Just watch, every time Sarah attacks on TV, Phil comes out from under his rock and attacks. It's a coordinated effort, as far I can tell. I've seen the pattern over and over again, to the point of predictability, and sure enough, here he is.

Phil Munger is a very dangerous, disillusioned, passive aggressive man. Be warned. It is crystal clear in all of his writings. He is incapable of presenting any sort of a balanced discussion and peppers his statements with provocative words, meant to 'stir the pot', yep, you guessed it JUST LIKE SARAH. He pulls her tactics all the time. Which is exactly why I believe he is on her payroll.

I confess. Sarah pays me thousands to hound Jesse.

Feel better now?

Will Obama Support the Sanders Constitutional Amendment? Of Course Not

2011-12-09T22:29:00.001-09:00

By the way, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich has signed on with Sen. Sanders as a co-sponsor.

Thanks, Mark!

Glenn Greenwald - Two Interesting Interviews

2011-12-09T17:20:00.000-09:00

Constitutional Law expert Glenn Greenwald was on Cenk Uygur's new program on Current TV Wednesday. Earlier in the month, he gave an hour-long interview centered on his new book, at UC Berkeley's Conversations with History series.

Here they are:

Time To Save the Post Office

2011-12-09T16:56:00.000-09:00

Hyder Alaska Post Office

--- by Ralph Nader

The battered national consensus behind a national universal postal service–conceived by Benjamin Franklin–is heading for a free fall due to bad management, corporate barracudas and a bevy of editors and reporters enamored with the supremacy of the Internet which makes up their world.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is pursuing a strategy of cutting or delaying services while increasing prices. Usually that is a sure prescription for continuing decline. For Mr. Donahoe, the drop in first class mail has left the Post Office with over-capacity. So he is closing over 200 processing centers, and shuttering hundreds of post offices, including Philadelphia’s original Ben Franklin post offices. He mistakenly thinks closing additional USPS facilities’ will not result in revenue reductions and service abandonment.

Never mind the intangibles of convenience, safety (eg. receiving medicines) and collegiality that characterizes many rural, small town and suburban post offices.

Mr. Donahoe tells reporters that he is acting the way any beleaguered business executive would, even though he knows that the Postal Service is not just anther big business feeding off corporate welfare.

The USPS has not taken any taxpayer money since 1971.

By contrast the federal government has taken money from the USPS and owes our Postal Service between $50 and $70 billion dollars in excess retirement benefits payments.

The other overpayments to the federal government are for the unprecedented advanced payment of health benefits of future retirees of the next 75 years by 2016, amounting to $5 billion a year (Congress is considering a bill to rectify this problem). Without corrective legislation, the Postal Service says it would have lost $8.5 billion this year. (By comparison, in addition to lost lives and destruction, the Afghan War quagmire costs the U.S. taxpayer over $2 billion a week.)

If all this sounds bizarre to you, it is. No other public department is a defacto creditor of the federal government. The USPS is a hybrid public corporation, created in 1970, from the old Post Office Department. It has been run into the ground on the installment plan by commercial competitors aggressively taking advantage of a weak-willed, unimaginative succession of postmaster generals ruled by a corporate Board of Governors ideologically rooting for corporate privatizers.

In his media interviews of woe, Mr. Donahoe talks precious little either about revenue increases or about long-overdue expansions of service. Abolished because of banking industry pressure in 1966, the Postal Savings System for simple savings accounts needed by tens of millions of “unbanked” Americans could be reactivated. Mr. Donahoe has been telling people that he’s thinking about it, but this self-styled salesman has proposed nothing to date. (See the letter urging this expansion by the Appleseed Foundation, dated October 14, 2011.)

Each time I ask Mr. Donahoe to tell us how he is increasing revenue through this remarkable local network of 32,000 post offices, there is no response. Postal Regulatory Commission Chairperson Ruth Goldway has proposed about two dozen ways to increase revenue. Why not explore new ways to use the Internet to produce new revenue?

My conversations with postal workers and letter carriers are filled with revenue increasing ideas from them. These workers are frustrated because the suggestion forms they are asked to regularly fill out are sent to headquarters with nary a feedback. One simple idea, establish a more vigorous staff culture of selling existing and new services. Poor morale loses sales. Are there too many “supervisors” lording it over their underlings? Why can’t Express Mail or parcel post shipments rise from their abysmal level of under 10% of the current marketplace.

The USPS is aggressive in selling new stamps, but it falls down when confronted by FedEx, UPS and others in the lucrative overnight express delivery and package business. The truck bays in Congress itself are full of these company vehicles. Let’s recognize that Congress often has tied the Post Office’s hands on what it can sell. But that cannot excuse post office problems such as long lines, long phone delays, other mismatches between staff and levels of fluctuating business, including a USPS proposal to reduce their time of delivery standards.

Recessions take their toll, more from many large companies (take the auto companies) than from the Postal Service on a percentage of sales basis. So there is no need to panic and stripmine the Postal Service. This could create a decline in usage and a fatal downward revenue spiral.

Sometimes the problem is illustrated by simple experiences. A month ago I wanted to send an Express Mail package from Washington, DC to Darien, Connecticut. The branch manager told my associate that the USPS could not guarantee next day delivery for Express Mail! The postal worker said the computer told her to tell patrons about this risk. So my colleague went to FedEx to ensure overnight delivery. On her way back home she stopped at another postal branch and was told “why of course your Express Mail will get there tomorrow. That’s what Express Mail is about.” Multiply that first response thousands of times and you get thousands of lost sales.

Postal staff know about “lost sales” to individuals and businesses. They use the phrase “lost sales” all the time when they bewail management. This is a management that spends too much of its time cutting, abandoning, closing, delaying and outsourcing postal services to K-Mart and Walmart locations.

Want to do something about a great American institution that is perfectly capable of adapting and benefiting from new times? Visit savethepostoffice.com. If you want to help us build a strong residential postal user group, send an email to info@csrl.org.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

The Ferry Boat MV Kalakala - Part One: Kalakala Toccata

2011-12-09T00:05:00.000-09:00

Andrew Sullivan's Tweet of the Day

2011-12-08T17:13:00.000-09:00

Sullivan adds: "Don't give Santorum any ideas....."