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Next week, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will feature an online display of a photo scrapbook that depicts the day-to-day lives of Auschwitz’s SS officers. It was donated to the museum by a former United States Army intelligence officer who found the photographs over 60 years ago in Germany.

Shown here: Nazi officers and female auxiliaries pose on a wooden bridge in Solahütte (a recreation lodge for the SS near Auschwitz).

The comparisons between the albums are both poignant and obvious, as they juxtapose the comfortable daily lives of the guards with the horrific reality within the camp, where thousands were starving and 1.1 million died.

For example, one of the Höcker pictures, shot on July 22, 1944, shows a group of cheerful young women who worked as SS communications specialists eating bowls of fresh blueberries. One turns her bowl upside down and makes a mock frown because she has finished her portion.

On that day, said Judith Cohen, a historian at the Holocaust museum in Washington, 150 new prisoners arrived at the Birkenau site. Of that group, 21 men and 12 women were selected for work, the rest transported immediately to the gas chambers.

The New York Times has a slideshow with audio commentary by Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist at the the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Link

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But this, alas, is not a travel column. It’s an energy column. If you want to know why I remain a climate skeptic — not a skeptic about climate change, but a skeptic that we’re going to be able to mitigate it — it’s partly because of Doha and Dalian. Can you imagine how much energy all these new skyscrapers in just two cities you’ve never heard of are going to consume and how much CO2 they are going to emit?

I am not blaming them. It is a blessing that their people are growing out of poverty. And, after all, they’re just following the high-energy growth model pioneered by America. We’re still the world’s biggest energy hogs, but we’re now producing carbon copies in places you’ve never heard of.

Yes, “Americans” are popping up all over now — people who once lived low-energy lifestyles but by dint of oil wealth or hard work are now moving into U.S.-style apartments, cars and appliances.

Our planet cannot tolerate so many “Americans,” unless we take the lead and change what it means to be an American in energy terms. Attention Kmart shoppers: the world consumed about 66.6 million barrels a day of oil in 1990. We’re now consuming 83 million barrels a day.

“Demand for oil has grown 22 percent in the U.S. since 1990. China’s oil demand has grown nearly 200 percent in this same period,” Margo Oge, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of transportation and air quality, told the Tianjin China Green Car conference that I attended. “By 2030, the global thirst for oil is forecast to increase by another 40 percent if we maintain business as usual.” Such an appetite would devour every incremental green initiative we make.

Hey, I’m really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I’m glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch — maybe just the first course. I’m glad that solar and wind power are “soaring” toward 2 percent of U.S. energy generation, but Doha and Dalian will devour all those gains for dinner. I am thrilled that you are now doing the “20 green things” suggested by your favorite American magazine. Doha and Dalian will snack on them all, like popcorn before bedtime.

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With the U.S. Dollar Index breaking decisively below its long-term support level, the sun is finally setting on the golden age of American consumption. As America’s economic dominance fades, so too will the faith in the central thesis that has explained its apparent success and has shaped the majority of recent economic theory.

At issue is the belief that a nation can grow and prosper by borrowing from abroad in order to consume imported goods. To consume at the pace that it has, America exchanges income producing assets, such as companies or property, or interest bearing IOUs, such as Treasury notes or mortgage-backed bonds, for foreign made clothes, toys and electronics. Economists call these transactions “growth”. But rather than discovering a new path to prosperity, America has simply stumbled on a short cut to financial ruin.

For years America has convinced the emerging market countries that their prosperity is a function of our consumption. It is argued that their export oriented economies would falter if not for the insatiable American willingness to consume (a “virtue” that is assumed to be uniquely American). As the dollar falls into the abyss, this myth will be shattered.

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Who doesn’t love a bargain? For the last few months, I’ve been fighting the lure of those big, flat LCD televisions. I’m no great videophile, they all look great to me (compared to the old set I have), and best of all, every time I walk in a store, they’re cheaper. It’s amazing, really. It’ a wonder of the free market.

Only, as it turns out, the free market isn’t. Free, that is.

In Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, Robert Reich agrees that global capitalism had made goods both cheaper and more plentiful. However, the price tag at the store doesn’t represent the full price we pay for this consumer bounty. In creating not just a market, but an international culture, driven almost entirely by price, we’ve sacrificed much of our ability to control the actions of corporations or even the quality of our own lives.

The tendency when looking at globalization is to blame the giant international corporations, but Reich has another villian at the center of the story. You. You and me. You and me and our constant search for a cheaper pair of socks, a better deal on a car, that beautiful cheap 47″ TV. The consumer culture we’ve built creates an enormous pressure on price — a pressure that far outweighs every other factor shaping the actions of corporations. Reich’s picture of the people serving up those child-labor sneakers and lead-painted toys isn’t one of corporate Snideley Whiplashes rubbing their hands together in glee. It’s of corporations desperately trying to keep up with the demands of consumers for more, more, more delivered cheaper, cheaper, cheaper.

But whether they’re driven by greed, survival, or a mixture of the two, the result is the same. Price trumps everything. Pass a law that protects labor? Good for you, but the corporations will find another place to make their goods cheaper. Pass a law against pollution? How nice. They’ll go somewhere else not so particular. And when they’ve found that place where they can operate without scrutiny, for the cost of a few bribes, will you turn up your nose at the products they put on your local shelves? Of course not. You’ve got to make a good impression at work. You’ve got to get your ever-growing kids outfitted for the new school year.

To deliver that new television at such a great price, the company making it will chop their payroll, move assembly off shore, buy their parts piecemeal from companies you’ve never heard of, and sell it directly to select “big box” stories, leaving your local retailers (if you still have any) out in the cold. Will they tell you about the safety record of the factory in Bangladesh? Will they talk about the metallic salts spilled over east Africa while mining for all those elements it took to make the electronics? No. What they will tell you is that their set is $200 cheaper than their competitors. Consumers will turn out in droves.

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Two University of Florida police officers were placed on leave with pay after using an electronic stun gun to subdue a student who was questioning Sen. John Kerry at a campus forum, the school’s president said Tuesday.

[..]

One of the police officers on the scene observed that Meyer was “yelling as loud as he could as to sensationalize his presence,” according to the police report.

Really? Doesn’t look like it on the video… no yelling until after the police starting acting as goons.

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Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its third annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress entitled Beyond DeLay: The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch). This encyclopedic report on corruption in the 110th Congress documents the egregious, unethical and possibly illegal activities of the most tainted members of Congress. CREW has compiled the members’ transgressions and analyzed them in light of federal laws and congressional rules.

Sixteen members have been replaced from last year’s list of 25.

CREW also has re-launched the report’s tandem website, www.beyonddelay.org. The site offers short summaries of each member’s transgressions as well as the full-length profiles and all accompanying exhibits.

• Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM)
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
• Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)
• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
• Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
• Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)
• Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
• Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA)
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
• Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA)
• Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)
• Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA)
• Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA)
• Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)
• Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY)
• Rep. David Scott (D-GA)
• Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL)
• Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM)
• Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

Dishonorable mentions<

• Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-ID)
• Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)

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In California, ABC is advertising the return of “Desperate Housewives” on parking space lines with the sort-of-clever tagline, “Parking for Desperate Housewives. They’re Back Sunday 9 p.m.” We scoff at the idea, but they seem to have been a hit with the L.A. denizens who tested them out. One professor of communications called it “brilliant.” The company behind the ads has been around for three years, and they say business is booming.

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Ohio Republicans have blocked a proposal to test electronic voting machines prior to the 2008 presidential primary.

By a 4-3 vote, Republicans on Ohio’s State Controlling Board blocked Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s proposed $1.8 million unbid contract for voting machine testing.  Brunner had already set aside the $1.8 million for the test. Her specific request to the Controlling Board was a waiver for competitive
bidding. Her office had hoped to complete all testing by November 30, 2007.

A former judge, Brunner is successor to the infamous J. Kenneth Blackwell, who helped engineer the theft of Ohio’s electoral votes for George W. Bush in 2004.  Brunner won election as a reform candidate, vowing to guarantee the public access to the polls—and an accurate vote count—in 2008.

In California, Democratic Secretary of State Debra Bowen recently completed an extensive testing of that state’s electronic voting machines.  She decertified many of them and is on course to rework how America’s biggest state casts and counts its ballots.

Brunner has not been quite so aggressive.  When it was recently revealed that 56 of 88 Ohio counties illegally destroyed protected materials from the 2004 election, she showed little reaction.  She has also stated publicly doubts that the irregularities that defined the Ohio vote that year could have affected the outcome or that the illegal destruction of more than 2000 ballots could have been intentional. 

Many more great pictures here.

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One member of Cheney’s national security staff, David Wurmser, worried out loud that Cheney felt that his wing was “losing the policy argument on Iran” inside the administration — and that they might need to “end run” the president with scenarios that may narrow his choices. The option that Wurmser allegedly discussed was nudging Israel to launch a low-yield cruise missile strike against the Natanz nuclear reactor in Iran, thus “hopefully” prompting a military reaction by Tehran against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Gulf. When queried about Wurmser’s alleged comments, a senior Bush administration official told the New York Times, “The vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff.”

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Google Inc. loses about $1 billion US a year to “click fraud” or other invalid click-throughs on its ad service, the company says.

Every small website I personally know that had google advertising got their account yanked just a very short time before google had to send their first check. Every time “click fraud” was stated as the reason, with no way to appeal - and one case was where the site owner was on vacation without web access - good luck fraudulently clicking that way! I’ve heard similar stories from others, and I strongly suspect that this billion dollar claim has nothing to do with it - in every case, the dollar amount Google would have had to pay was nearing $100, so even in the unlikely even that there were a few fraudulent clicks most of that $100 flows into the coffers of google.

Guess who is in my permanent adblock file?

: - )

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McAfee CEO David DeWalt says cyber-crime has become a US$105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide.

Despite the increase in government compliance requirements and the proliferation of security tools, companies continue to underestimate the threat from phishing, data loss, and other cyber vulnerabilities, new McAfee CEO David DeWalt said Tuesday.

Translation: people should buy my tools more often. With such a conflict of interest I suspect he pulled that US$105 billion number straight out of his ass. And he’s not the only one..

Hoist the colors!

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Well, tasering is in the news again. Long time readers know that, like Our Leader and my beloved GOP, I believe submission to authority to be the ultimate act of patriotism. That’s why I’ve applauded police in the past for tasering a 14 year old who refused to stop playing Nintendo and a five year old little girl who refused to stop raising hell in her school principal’s office.

The way I see it is that it doesn’t matter whether a person is armed or not, if they refuse, or are unable, to comply with an authority figure’s commands, they’re likely to be some kind of communist, islamunistofascist, or other kind of enemy of the state, and they deserve to have the hell tasered out of them.

That’s why I cheer the officers involved in the lastest series of taserings making the news. You’ve probably already heard about the student who was tasered for not yielding the mic while questioning a US Senator, so I won’t spend any more bytes on it, but I’d like to recognize the fine officers involved in the other incidents.

On September 17, a gang of the Orange County (CA) Sheriff Department’s finest chekists tasered a very dangerous 15 year old autistic who refused to stop pushing his shopping cart and comply with their orders.

In Houston,, an alert security professional took out a suspiciously happy new father when he refused to drop the infant he was cradling in a suspicious manner.

Earlier this summer, enforcers for the Barry County MO Sheriff’s Department and the Cassville Police Department took turns giving a 41 year old woman a righteous tasering as punishment for struggling with her bonds as she laid, hogtied, on the jailhouse floor.

In Fountain Inn, SC, jailers stood up for traditional confederate values by tasering a dangerous black man who apparently dawdled during his own hanging.

In all fairness, I guess I should also note at least one case where the local Oprichniks failed to properly and efficiently employ their tasers. I hope the people of Decatur, Alabama are holding their heads down in shame after their guardians of the public order failed to take down an unarmed, but fleeing, goat with their tasers. Who knows how many young Alabamans will be corrupted by the goat they allowed to get away.