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African-American Soldiers Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List
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The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.
A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.
Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward?, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as “undeliverable.?
The lists of soldiers of “undeliverable? letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.
One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.
It doesn’t get much seedier than deliberately disenfranchising soldiers so you can continue committing troops without interruption..
Hitler saved us before; Terra can do it now
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I firmly believe that the reason that BushCo actively refuses to prevent or minimize destruction is they are ideologically opposed to doing so. The problem is that in a peaceful, non-destructive environment, the opportunities to make an enormous profit in no time are limited basically to being clever and starting a business that makes a lot of money from your ingenuity. Looking at the collective brain power of BushCo, it’s clear that this is not an option for them or their friends. But opportunities abound for the well-connected war profiteer if there’s plenty of death and destruction around, and war profiteers are who we have as leaders.
But more than that, it’s an important facet of neocon ideology to believe that destruction is a good thing for the economy. It does well to remember that it’s an article of faith amongst the wingnutteria that FDR didn’t save us from the Great Depression; Hitler did. In fact, the fetishistic regard for the theory that WWII was the source of American’s economic growth can’t be overrated in importance to holding together the conservative worldview.
Without this theory, they’d have to admit what any fool can see, which is the prosperity of the 50s came from a series of government programs designed to create a huge middle class(an issue that will hopefully start receiving attention again)—programs that were reliant on high marginal tax rates. And admitting that high marginal tax rates are a good thing for the economy is just not possible, to the point where any other explanation, no matter how asinine, will do. Enter the importance of destruction, war, and fear as economic motivators into the conversation.
Add a dash of Cold War military fetishization and the build-up of a military industrial complex that is enormous and needs to have periodic justifications for its existence, or else people will start agitating for defense cuts so we can improve social spending. (Hey, and maybe get a real middle class back, wouldn’t that be cool?) If cutting military is against your ideology, why on earth would you prevent enemies from bombing us, when you know the end result of peace would be dreaded defense cuts?
Add to that Bush’s own personal theory that war makes him popular and important, something he doesn’t even bother to conceal. No matter how silly that’s beginning to sound, it’s still an article of faith to Republicans that chaos and violence are politically beneficial.
Take all these beliefs together—that economic growth from a war would prove once and for all that we don’t need high marginal taxes, that periodic warfare will prevent dreaded defense cuts, and that war is just good politics—and imagine that you’re a person with these beliefs and you get a memo that says, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.? If you sincerely believe these things, you’d be highly motivated to toss that memo in the trash, it would seem.
Cartoons
The Joy of Gay Sex
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Several books considered controversial by some will remain part of the collection at the Nampa Public Library, but they might not be accessible to library patrons.
Monday afternoon, the Nampa Library Board decided to keep “The Joy of Sex” and “The Joy of Gay Sex” books as part of its collection. However, the books will now be housed on the highest shelf in the library, and library workers will be asked to make more rounds to pick up books left on tables.
Randy Jackson complained to the board about the books, which he feels are pornographic in nature, and too easily accessible by children and teens, “I believe that the library board did not have the best interests of the community in mind when they made their decision today.?
Those who want the books to stay, like Lorrie Breshears, say it’s censorship, “Parents should be watching their children and supervising what they are reading. So I prefer it stay where it was so that people wanting that information don’t have to ask for it.?
Jackson checked out a copy of the book “The Joy of Gay Sex”, and he says he has no plans to return it.
Given the number of people out there with a little bit of money to spare and a healthy sense of irony, I for one predict that this little library in Idaho might suddenly receive enough surprise Amazon packages to open up a full Gay Sex department.
and if you follow that amazon link:
Nampa Public library
101 Eleventh Ave South
Nampa, ID 83651
10-Year-Old’s Bandana Causes Controversy
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If you go shopping at the Battlefield Mall in Springfield, be careful what you wear.
A 10-year-old girl got in trouble while shopping with her mom, because she had on a bandana.
Lydia Smith was wearing a bandana, decorated with peace signs, smiley faces and flowers.
A security guard approached her at the food court and said the bandanna violated the mall’s code of conduct, which is “wearing apparel which is likely to provide a disturbance or embroil other groups or the general public in open conflict.”
US threatens Sweden with trade sanctions
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An english subbed version of the news cast about the MPAA and US government threatening the swedish government with trade sanctions if www.thepiratebay.org is not shut down.
Bush Will Ignore Congressional Ban on Aid to Saudi Arabia
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Officials in the Bush administration said the American President will use his power of waiver to ignore a recent Congressional measure to reduce aid to Saudi Arabia.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly agreed earlier this month to deny $420,000 for the Arab country’s participation in anti-terrorism training supported by the American military. Congressmen passed the aid-reduction measure because Saudi Arabia has not blocked financing al Qaeda terrorists groups outside of the country, according to Middle East Newsline
Now, in addition to “signing statements” the fucker has a “waiver” that allows him to ignore Congressional action on appropriations too?
Is it time for Congress to just pack up and go home?
Official Dept. of Energy statistics are full of shit
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The US government has released its official view on future energy trends, and the Oil Drum has actually gone through the numbers in detail and prepared a thorough debunking.
Bottom line; the official statistics are either lies or absurdly incompetent. Go read the whole post over at the Oil Drum (home page)), but here are a few tidbits and, of course, selected graphs.
So join me in the bright happy world of plentiful energy of the EIA:
Focusing on oil, the Oil Drum comments this graph:
They analyse where the EIA expects the oil to be coming from, and focus specifically on the output from OPEC, with the following conclusion:
In short, those OPEC production numbers didn’t come from some complicated model of OPEC reserves and decision-making. Instead, they came from a fixed percentage of the top-line production.
I think this tends to support what many of us suspected about the EIA projections: they start with what they think will be a politically acceptable demand projection, and then tweak the supply assumptions to add up to that.
Fixing the facts around the policy? Hmm, where have we seen this before?
But there’s worse. The EIA has this to say about North Sea oil:
In the IEO2006 reference case, the decline in North Sea production is slowed slightly relative to past outlooks, based on the implementation of strategies for redeveloping mature fields. Production from Norway, OECD Europe’s largest producer, is expected to peak at about 3.6 million barrels per day in 2006 and then decline gradually to about 2.5 million barrels per day in 2030 with the maturing of some of its larger and older fields. The United Kingdom sector is expected to produce about 2.2 million barrels per day in 2010, followed by a decline to 1.4 million barrels per day in 2030.
And the Oil Drum kindly provides the graph or recent production from that region:
Their polite comment: “what planet are they living on?” Production is already declining starkly, is set to continue on that trend, and is thus already reaching the levels expected only for 2030. So the IEA numbers bear no relation to reality whatsoever.
In the comments, jimmyboy33 adds the following info:
Current situation in UK north sea is that decline is running at 7% per year from peak ( production halves every 10 years) after new production etc brought on.
The Buzzard Field is due on in late 2006 at 200K bpd. This will slow the decline for a couple of years(they hope). this field was discovered 5 years ago. No field produring over 100K bpd at present.Decline rate in existing fields probably 15%.
Everybody is running hard to hold the decline at 7%.
The finds being made are small. The government and the industry talk up the future but the reality is decline.
The OD post also looks at Mexican production, oil sands production, and oil prices, with similar conclusions.
In the comments, westexas also points out that they have been full of shit about Canada as well:
In the IEO2003 they stated:
“Canada’s conventional oil output is expected to increase by more than 200,000 barrels per day over the next 2 years, mainly from Newfoundland’s Hibernia oil project, which could produce more than 155,000 barrels per day at its peak sometime in the next several years. Canada is projected to add an additional 500,000 barrels per day in output from a combination of frontier area offshore projects and oil from tar sands.”
Assuming the total increase of 700,000 b/d for Canada was for the 2003 to 2005 period, the US DOE/EIA was only off by 710,000 b/d. In 2003, Canada’s total liquid hydrocarbons (TLHs) production was 3.11 mb/d and in 2005 it was 3.10 mb/d (US DOE/EIA data/I used TLHs data because they include NGLs in their forecasts), a decline of 10,000 b/d.
And Khebab summarises how the IEA’s data are not even internally consistent:
I think the EIA is definitively in love with straight lines! If you look at the third figure from the top (World production of oil by source 1990-2030):
- The total conventionnal oil produced from 1990 to 2005 is approximatively 420 Gb. The forecast from 2006 to 2030 predicts that an additionnal 870 Gb (more than three Saudi Arabia URR!) will be produced without any visible peak.
- The figure below about reserves is showing a world reserve around 1,300 Gb in 2006 (i.e. URR ~ 1,300 + 1,100= 2,400 Gb) which means that we will consume 870/1,300= 67% of our reserves in the next 24 years! or (1,100 + 870) / 2,400= 82% of the URR will be consumed in 2030 without experiencing any decrease in production rate whatsoever!
- Even worse, if we are taking out the 200 Gb dubious increase in Middle East OPEC reserves, we get (1,100 + 870)/(2,400-200)= 90% of the URR consumed in 2030!
Now, here is the problem:
Never has been observed a production curve that is showing a production increase past the point in time where cumulative production is past 60% of the URR. The only possibility is that the world URR is in fact around 2,900 Gb and that a future 2,900-2,400= 500 Gb (+38%) jump in conventional oil reserves increase is waiting for us somewhere. Talk about an act of faith!
Faith based predictions? Again familiar…
Stuart Staniford, the author of the story, kindly provides another graph which shows how unrealistic these predictions are:
This matters because everybody uses the statistics from the Energy Information Agency (or that of its international cousin, the International Energy Agency), and their absolutely optimistic reports provide great coverage for the politicians to do nothing about our current predicament: “see, there’s plenty of oil, really - the experts say so”.
Again, go read the whole story, and read the Oil Drum regularly, as they look (hard) at the data and come up with a lot of excellent information and commentary.
A Big Budget Anti-Suicide Bombing PSA
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Remember the egg, the frying pan and the message? “This is your brain,” the ominous narrator told us before cracking an egg over the sizzling skillet. “This is your brain on drugs.” Public service announcements have changed a lot since that foreboding culinary lesson. They now include exploding cars, flying Matrix-style stuntmen and exceedingly dire messages like “Don’t Suicide Bomb.” A new, American-made PSA aimed at discouraging these deadly attacks is currently in production. The ad is slated to air as a 60-second spot on Iraqi television this summer.
Pentagon Withheld Info on Troops’ Deaths
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The Pentagon waited nine months after completing an investigation into the deaths of two U.S. soldiers before notifying relatives the men were killed by Iraqi troops, the military acknowledged Wednesday.
The June 2004 deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr., 34, of Tracy, and 2nd Lt. Andre D. Tyson, 33, of Riverside, were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq. The Army said this week a military investigation found the two had been shot by Iraqi civil defense officers. No possible motive has been divulged.
Military officials visited Tyson’s family on Tuesday and McCaffrey’s on Wednesday to deliver the report, which was completed on Sept. 30, 2005, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. She called the nine-month delay troubling.
“If the American people knew that the people we are directly helping train turned on our soldiers, support for this war would slip,” Boxer said. “It’s very disturbing to think that the Pentagon might be told to keep this kind of thing close to the vest.”
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed Boxer’s timetable on Wednesday.
“There was a time gap, no doubt about it,” Army spokesman Paul Boyce said. “The Army regrets any delay in notifying the family, and we took immediate steps to do so once those facts were determined.”
translation: we took immediate steps once we were found out.
Europe to axe digital kit copyright taxes
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Digital music devices are set to become cheaper in Europe if the European Commission has its way. It wants to abolish levies member states’ governments add to prices to compensate artists and musicians for copyright infringement.
According to an EC report, a copy of which made its way to the Financial Times, the EC wants levies dropped from devices that incorporate copy-protection technologies and those that could be used to infringe copyright but generally aren’t.
Its plan is essentially a rationalisation of the rules, many of them introduced in the pre-digital era, to bring them up to date. The EC also wants the rules to be consistent across member states. Currently, not all countries apply levies to devices and media - the UK doesn’t, for example, though France and Germany do.
Gadgets like MP3 players should become cheaper because they support anti-piracy technology. The downside is that there’s a pressure here on vendors to support only media formats that incorporate DRM, but there’s no indication yet the EC’s plan is to use levies to drive DRM-only product. Indeed, the report says organisations wanting to impose a levy on a product category should be obliged to show first that the device will be used illicitly.
Library chief draws cops’ ire
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Library Director Michele Reutty is under fire for refusing to give police library circulation records without a subpoena.
Reutty says she was only doing her job and maintaining the privacy of library patrons. But the mayor called it “a blatant disregard for the Police Department,” which needed her help to identify a man who allegedly threatened a child.
Reutty, the director for 17 years, now faces possible discipline by the library board. Members of the Borough Council have suggested she receive punishment ranging from a letter of reprimand in her personnel file to a 30-day unpaid suspension. But the Library Board of Trustees said it would reserve judgment until a closed-door hearing next month.
Police received a report May 10 that a 12-year-old borough girl was allegedly sexually threatened by a man outside the municipal building. The library is on the second floor. The girl told her parents, who called police.
The suspect, who has been identified as a 23-year-old Hackensack man, did not molest the girl, said borough Police Chief Michael Colaneri. The investigation is ongoing through the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Colaneri said.
The girl told police the man was carrying a library book with a certain title. The next day, borough police detectives asked Reutty to tell them who took out that book.
Reutty said she refused to give the information to police without a subpoena — in accordance with New Jersey state statutes governing access of private information from libraries, she said.
Protecting privacy and following the law is apparently uncool these days…
Soccer fans
Balkenende klaagt over gebrek aan waardering
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De Nederlandse economie loopt voorop in Europa, maar premier Jan Peter Balkenende snapt niet waarom hij daarvoor van de oppositie in de Tweede Kamer geen waardering krijgt.
“Collega’s in Europa vragen me: ‘wat is er aan de hand in Nederland, jullie lopen weer voorop’. Van Europese collega’s krijg ik waardering, hier in het parlement is alleen maar gezeur”, klaagde Balkenende donderdag tijdens het verantwoordingsdebat in de Tweede Kamer.
Zodra je kritiek “gezeur” gaat noemen, neem je je gesprekspartner niet meer serieus, en dat is geen goed teken…