Month: April 2005

I thought I was paranoid, but it seems the White House is also.
D.C. Alert Triggered By Clouds

If clouds can trigger a major alert maybe we need to start sending smoke signals..

With all that Bushco has done to destroy American Democracy, and the world, it is comforting to know that he is a bit jumpy.

We could use some old fashion Left Radicals in D.C. right now to let Bush know that We Have Had Enough of Him and The GOP.

WE need to scare them! One major riot would probably chase Bush and his crew into a bunker until the next election.

Are there any Progressive militia or angry Democrats out there??

in 2000!  I stumbled across a op/ed piece written by the Cato Institute’s Director of Natural Resources, Jerry Taylor.  The column, titled Bush Energy Babble, was published on the New Republic’s website September 30, 2000, just days prior to the election.  This libertarian think tank’s scathing review of Bush Energy Policy could just as well have been written in April of 2005.

Reading this op/ed piece has given me an eerie feeling, as if time has stood completely still since Bush was elected.  Join me below the fold for some of the more salient quotes….

See last night’s bullet points there?

*increasing domestic production

*opening up some public lands to the industry

*promote natural gas (would that be solid or liquid?)

*additional tax credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency (like that of a Hummer?)

*more R&D for “clean coal” technologies

*cash transfers to the poor (????????) didn’t hear this one last night but imagine the uproar if he had!

Taylor continues the smackdown on the myth that it’s OPEC’s fault:

So Cato Jerry is saying that the concept of drilling in ANWR would benefit American consumers is not reality based, American oil is statistically and economically insignificant, and American oil companies benefit more than foreign oil sellers when the world market price rises.

Libertarians describe themselves as market liberals, but they generally find allies in the far right (with the exception of some social policies).  At the writing of this op/ed, I think they were right on in shredding Bush’s energy policy 6 years ago!  They recognized the strangely symbiotic relationship between American and foreign oil producers.  At no time in our history should our understanding of this relationship be more clearly shown than the relationship between our country’s president,(at his core, an independent oil man) and the de facto leader of the foreign oil cartel.  I highly recommend reading the entire op ed, because this writer had the ability to see the future.  

Not this whole business of diverting payroll taxes to stock market accounts.  That just makes the financing of SS worse.  But his embrace of the Pozen proposal for progressive price indexing is a very encouraging, and surprising, sign.  

Though we tend to reflexively oppose Bush on anything he says, shouldn’t we be a bit relieved that after making the income tax decidedly less progressive, Bush plans to make SS more progressive?  I’ve said for years that we should make two simple changes to the program that would make it last forever:
[continued below fold]
(1) FICA should not be assessed on the first $20K of earnings, but there should be no wage cap on how high earnings can be and be taxed.  Let the CEOs making millions in salary pay FICA on every cent.

(2) Means testing for benefits.  The details can be worked out, but no one who has a fat pension or IRA ought to get a dime of Social Security.  It’s supposed to be an antipoverty program for the elderly, not an extra pension for rich retirees.

Bush’s proposal doesn’t go this far, of course, but then neither do the Democrats (who have become increasingly beholden to affluent urbanite donors).  In fact, if you look at the article I linked above, Republicans are more open to changes toward greater progressivity in the program than Democrats are!  That’s pretty frickin’ sad if you ask me.

Here are a bunch of photos from events around the world. I’ve seen so little on the wires about many of these events.  Anybody have more info? Some things have been talked about and written about, but not substantively.

Some of these photos are just heartbreaking.  Some are happy photos.  Others are just photos of different cultures and rituals.  

Opposition demo : Togolese opposition activists light tires and set up barricades to the call ‘We want a new president’ in a Lome neighborhood as voters turned out to elect a successor to 38-year ruler Gnassingbe Eyadema. (AFP/Issouf Sanogo)

Getting pierced : Avish Ramsaroop gets his body pierced by chanting devotees during the Hindu Festival of the Chitraparavam Kavady in Durban as observed by millions of Hindus throughout the world. (AFP/Rajesh Jantilal)

Unveiling ceremony : Nuns pray during an unveiling ceremony of Nanshan Guanyin statue in the well-known resort city of Sanya, in China’s island province of Hainan. (AFP/Liu Jin)

Smoke break : A performer lights a cigarette before the start of the commemoration of the golden jubilee of the 1955 Asian-African conference, in Bandung. (AFP/Philippe Lopez)

Raging fire : Iraqi firefighters take a look at raging fire erupting from a sabotaged oil pipeline in Bay Hassan oil field near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. (AFP/Marwan Ibrahim)

Detention : A man being detained by police shouts during a brug-bust operation in the district of El Gallito, in the Guatemalan capital. (AFP/Orlando Sierra)

At the Lone Pine : An Australian visitor rests in front of the Australian monument known as ‘Lone Pine’ during the ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of Anzac Day in Canakkale, Gallipoli Peninsul,a (AFP/Tarik Tinazay)

University bullets : A student show a rubber bullet fired by riot police during clashes in the surroundings of the Central American Catholic University in Managua. (AFP/Miguel Alvarez)

Orthodox pilgrims : Orthodox pilgrims rest next to a line of crosses at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher during the Good Friday processions in Jerusalem’s old city. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)

At the fair : Children experience the so-called ‘Nest’ of the cell garden exhibited at the National Garden Festival in Munich during the fair’s opening day. (AFP/DDP/Johannes Simon)

Thai Mosque : Thai muslim villagers pray at the 400-year-old Krue Se mosque in Pattani province southern of Thailand. (AFP/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Street chat : A British soldier chats with an Iraqi boy during a patrol on a street in the Iraqi southern city of Basra. (AFP/Essam al-Sudani)

A sand painting created by Tibetan monks is shown Friday, April 29, 2005, at the St. Louis Art Museum in St. Louis. On Sunday, after five days of work, the monks will destroy their creation. The process serves as a way for the Buddhists to meditate, work to spread blessing, and show the temporary nature of things in this world, even the beautiful ones. (AP Photo/James A. Finley)

This photo provided by the Nature Consortium shows Emanuel Torres, foreground, and other students from Sanislo Elementary School in Seattle, running with trees in hand, Friday, April 22, 2005, to take part in a nationwide effort to break the Guinness World Record for most trees planted in an hour. Local students and Nature Consortium members planted 1,800 trees in the West Duwamish Greenbelt in West Seattle. (AP Photo/Nature Consortium, Ron Wurzer)

In this image provided by the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights, a pathologist and archaeologist examines human remains found in a mass grave near Samawa in the Muthanna Province in Iraq April 21, 2005. International forensic experts this week examined a mass grave site in Samawa, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, collecting evidence to prosecute Saddam and his top lieutenants for the mass killings of ethnic Kurds and Shiites during his more than 30 years in power. (AP Photo/Ministry of Human Rights, HO)

A massive sand storm cloud is close to enveloping a military camp as it rolls over Al Asad, Iraq, April 27, 2005. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. REUTERS/U.S. Department of Defense/Cpl. Alicia M. Garcia, U.S. Marine Corps/Handout

Uh-huh. And “Democratic buyers of Volvo cars outnumbered Republicans by only 32 percent to 27 percent,” reports the New York Times.

“Volvos have become more plush and bourgeois, which is a Republican thing to be,” said Mickey Kaus, a dual expert in politics and cars … [Democrats drive old Volvos]

[B]uyers of American cars tend to be Republican – except, for some reason, those who buy Pontiacs, who tend to be Democrats. [WHY?] Foreign-brand compact cars are usually bought by Democrats – but not Mini Coopers, which are bought by almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. [I do not believe this!]

: : : More below, with a Hummer poll : : :

The Minivan:

The Gay Market:

And nothing says REPUBLICAN like a:

The Bumper Sticker Survey:

I have an unproven theory. That people who care enough about their politics to put it on their bumper also tend to be safer drivers.

Since we’ve been talking about gender a lot, and it’s Friday, and BooMan called me a gadfly, I thought I would spew some inflammatory rhetoric for a change.

There are three things women cannot do, and two of them have to do with cars.

1) Stare thoughtfully at automobile engines.

This is a well known fact: Women are incapable of the art of opening the hood and staring down contemplatively at the engine, rubbing their chins, pursing their lips and furrowing their brows.

Men, on the other hand, are born with an innate ability to gaze fixedly into the mystery of the engine, muttering occasionally. Whether he has any idea of what he is looking at or not, much less any idea how to fix it or not, is his business and his alone, and he knows how to keep that information close to the vest. Where it should be.

No man, whether he is a skilled mechanic or had to check his notes to be able to open the engine in the first place, will omit this important ritual of offering homage to the automobile. If he knows how to fix the car, he will do so after a suitable engine-staring period. If he does not know, only he will be the wiser, as he continues to stare, furrow and mutter until someone else appears, whereupon he can display his skill:

Man 1: (Stops car, opens door, puts one leg out, calls over the door: Got a problem there?

Man 2:(Briefly glances in direction of man 1, returns gaze to car, nods thoughfully) Mmmm-hmmm (mumbles indistinctly)

Man 1: (Approaches car. Both men stare reverently at engine, rub chins.)
Think it’s your battery?

Man 2: (Attempts to broaden gaze field to include entire engine, to mask fact that he does not know which object is the battery) That’s what I was thinking.

Man 1: You got some cables?

Man 2: (Shakes head slowly, raises eyebrows, turns corner of mouth down to indicate that either he has no idea what cables are, or does not have any.)

Man 1: (Politely refraining from speculating on which of the two possibilities mentioned above is the case)
I think I got some in the trunk. Lemme try to give you a jump. Go ahead and turn everything off

Man 2: (Gets into car, grateful for his rescuer has the good grace to respect his privacy in this matter)
Preciate it, man

Man 1: (Hooks up batteries with cables) OK, turn it on, let’s see what we got.

Car: Vroom

Man 2: (Gets out of car, both gaze at vrooming engine for a suitable period.)
That did it! Thanks man!

Man 1: No problem, take care now.

When faced with any automotive problem, women have only two possible responses:  fix it or get it fixed. They are simply incapable of transcending this simplistic view and  appreciating the tradition and complexity of the situation.

Women who know nothing about cars give themselves away immediately by shamelessly calling someone to fix the car, frequently without getting out of it at all.

Women who know how to fix cars barely glance at the engine without missing a beat in the conversation in progress, which seldom has to do with engines. Some women even go to the trunk to get tools BEFORE they open the hood.

2) Drive around with determined aimlessness when lost

If a man realizes, during the course of a trip, that he is neither reaching his destination nor has the foggiest notion how to do so, he will have the manly fortitude to continue driving until forced to stop by either lack of gasoline or more likely, a destination-dependent woman.

And face it, that is what women are. Destination dependent. Once she sets out on a trip, that is the only thing her feminine brain can focus on. If she becomes lost, she lacks the discipline and grit to keep that detail to herself and keep on driving, in circles if need be.

She is a slave to her fixation on arriving at the place she set out to go, and will even go so far as to seek out total strangers in whom she can confide and receive emotional support of a nature that she prefers to call “directions.”

Some women will even write down these “directions,” and follow them mindlessly. The whole concept of creative navigation is lost on them.

Men do not need directions. We know where things are. Like cats, we have a psi tracking factor, and just because it slips occasionally does not mean that we are going to tuck our tails between our legs and scurry whimpering off to some smirking gas station attendant to humble ourselves and become the butt of jokes once he gets off work and goes to have a beer.

We, unlike women, have pride. We will find it. Eventually. In most cases. And even if we do not, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we did not stop driving around looking for it.

Write their names in pipi

This is almost too tragic even to mention, but it is a fact that unless she is very skilled in certain forms of dance, and has a very short name, a woman will spend her entire life without even once knowing the sense of joy and personal accomplishment that can come only from writing one’s name in pipi in sand, snow, or other suitable surface.

Most women discover this deficiency early in life, and try to put a brave face on things, pretending that they do not give a fig that they never have and never will write their names or anything else in pipi.

Long after men have grown up and forgotten that they ever did it, a woman is doomed to stand on a solitary beach and reflect on childhood failure as she sadly writes her name with her toe.

I was hoping the headline was a mistake; but it’s not.  This is the environment Bush’s administration has created in our country.

The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting Bush and his family, “routinely” asks for five “identifiers” of people who will be near the president to run through a criminal data base, Mazur said.

The five factors — name, date-of-birth, Social Security number, gender and race — are used to search the database “in a most timely and effective manner,” he said.
CNN.com

They are requesting the information for the guest list at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday.  According to interviews in the article, this is the first time they have asked for a guest’s race.

Just when you think they couldn’t be more offensive.

I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. In the 70’s (and probably now too), Charleston was a rich military target. We schoolchildren were often directed to watch films about the proper response to a nuclear missile attack. Duck and cover, turn away from the blast, get under your desk. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I remember thinking how glad I was that the likelihood of nuclear missile attack had been diminished and I wouldn’t have to think about my kids growing up with the paranoia of such an attack. Well a news story today has taken that away.

February 12, 2003

April 29, 2005

So now, due to George’s incompetence, Bolton’s assholeyness, the determination of the North Koreans to successfully implement nuclear weaponry, and AQ Khan’s cut-rate Pakistani Nuclear Bazaar, we find ourselves faced again with the prospect of nuclear ballistic missile attack on our country. George and John couldn’t even sustain the dialogue that Clinton and Allbright initiated. Its as if Bushco wants to doom the country. How can any person say they feel more secure with these people in charge?

Cross posted at dkos

The point of this diary? Well I’ve recently found out about the proposed Iranian oil bourse (bourse being the French word for a commodities exchange) and would like to look into how this fits in and how serious the likelihood of it is.

I’m glad to see the number of diaries reflecting on various aspects of the Iran issue are starting to creep up on here, I hope it continues and while I get the sense that the average perception at the moment (of those who are commenting or showing an interest in Iran) is……naaah, never happen, we’ve not got the forces (and I hope you are right)….I think we have to continue to stay informed.

To do our bit to try and avoid a repeat of this 98,000 and this 1,756
But first a bit of

Background

Both Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh have written recently on the possibility of military action on Iran, Ritter highlighting Israels supposed “point of no return” of the end of June (may explain Sharon waving old photo’s around at Crawford) and Bush having reviewed plans being prepared by the Pentagon to have the military capability in place by June 2005, while Hersh refers to US reconnaissance missions inside Iran.

As realtique pointed out in a diary yesterday, GQ reports this month that the Bush administration has already turned down Iranian offers that may avert military engagement (and I remember another diary on here recently where we were all shocked, shocked I say to find the Bushies had turned down a similar offer from Hussein last time – can’t find that diary now), from the diary:

Additionally, stoy diaried on the Bolton angle, picking up on an Al Jazeera piece opining that Bolton is being sent to the UN to attempt to force a change in the NPT, from that diary:

and as stoy pleasantly puts it there are plenty of “galactic assholes” in waiting if Bolton fails to get nominated.

Finally Michael Klare’s excellent piece entitled Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran shows the role Irans oil and natural gas supplies have to play vis-a-vis Iran opening up further trading relations with China, India, Pakistan and Japan

Iranian Oil Bourse

But what none of the above have dealt with is the prospect of Iran opening it’s own oil bourse.

At present the majority, if not all, world oil trade is denominated in the mighty dollar, which means any country wishing to trade in oil must hold US dollar reserves which in turn helps to prop up the mighty dollar.

And it’s traded on exchanges such as the IPE (London) and the NYMEX, both of which are owned by US corporations. The IPE one including BP, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

However what appears to be a little known fact (correct me if I’m wrong) is that in November 2000 Saddam Hussein commenced trading oil in Euros and its thought in some quarters that this was one of the major reasons for the invasion.  Post invasion (you know, post “mission accomplished”) Iraq’s oil was mysteriously reverted to trading in dollars.

In June 2004 Iran announced it was looking into setting up it’s own oil bourse for launch by March 2005.

Obviously that hasn’t happened.

However in September last year Iran announced it would be operational by March 2006

The consequences of oil being traded in Euros on an Iranian bourse? Well according to this piece from Arab Media Internet network last month

and according to this excellent piece this month from altpressonline

(Unfortunately I can’t find the AJC piece)

So to get to my point in writing this, I know there are plenty of people posting on here with a far better understanding of the machinations of the international oil industry than me and I’m just inviting comments on whether this proposed oil bourse is a serious proposition and what it’s likelihood of success are. Meantime I’ll keep reading.

And if it does turn out to be serious I’d bet

a) It wont garner much attention in the mainstream media.

b) It would be one of a series of useful arguments we on the left are going to have to frame if and when the current sabre rattling starts to achieve it’s aim and the administration needs to start scaring the general public into another war.