EBOLA EXPOSES FAILED GOP POLICIES--A COUNTRY IN DECAY
Francis Fukuyama: the USA "a country in decay"*
The recent responses to the Ebola virus which tragically emerged in Texas has revealed distressing weaknesses in the health care industry and in Washington. It is only the most recent in a series of events both domestic and foreign which suggest that the USA is on a path toward decline and decay. The events in Dallas were shocking. In a modern US hospital first responders, the nurses and the physicians, were obviously unprepared for this emergency. They sent a critically ill patient, who informed them he had been in Africa, away. They made grievous mistakes in judgement, and standard protocol which were then compounded by hospital administrators in Dallas, and by government officials in the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and in Washington. The US agency supposedly in control, the CDC actually permitted a nurse who was being monitored for Ebola to take a commercial flight out of the state, potentially exposing more than a hundred passengers to this deathly pathogen. (They then denied that they did it.) In Washington, the President took a long while to respond to the problem of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He is still unwilling, citing some muddled reasoning, to take the most reasonable step to stop commercial airlines flights to the stricken nations.
Is the USA really a Third World State? Or are these screw ups only symptomatic of a nation which for the last decades has been actively hollowing out its domestic infrastructure, cutting its social safety net, and its medical care system at the behest of ideologues on the right (urged on and financially supported by a tiny radical minority of super-wealthy business tycoons)? The events in Dallas (and elsewhere recently) have underscored the fact that the ideologues have been in control for too long. We are no longer functioning as a unified political entity We are torn apart....according to Fukuyama, a nation torn by polarization and bound by its encrusted Constitution which codifies systematic conflict. The result has been a steady drift to the right, toward limited ineffective government and toward a "nation in decay."
After the decades under the sway of political ideologues of the right, such as those associated with Reaganism, Neoconservatism, and Bush and Cheney, we find our nation weakened and diminished. The rise of the right and of policies fostered by a reactionary GOP which focused on "limiting government", cutting entitlements, cutting government regulations, and getting "government off our backs" has finally achieved its goal. It has strangled and hollowed out government agencies and infrastructure to the point where it is so degraded it is ineffective, and we no longer have confidence in its efficacy and ability to deal with critical or even existential issues. We find ourselves a nation only a shadow of our former selves, a nation closer to the Third World than with the great industrial, inventive, creative force we were in the latter half of the 20th Century. Is that what we want for America and our children and grandchildren?
We can lay much of this problem at the feet of the GOP and their facilitators in the Democratic party who should have known better. During this election cycle we should remember the Ebola scandal in Dallas...a good part of which is a result of irrational Republican policies of austerity and debasing essential government services.
*Political Order And Political Decay, Vol 2. by Francis Fukuyama
In Political Order and Political Decay, Fukuyama states that in the west, many nations have achieved a balance between the rule of law and democratic accountability. This balance has contributed to their manifest success. One aspect of Fukuyama's book discusses political decay. In regard to "decay" in the USA , Fukuyama states (in a recent Economist interview) that the present problems of the USA, relates to the collision of its vaunted "checks and balances" (designed in the 18th century to oppose the tyranny of competing elite groups of that period) with modern political polarization. Polarization in the twenty first century is in conflict with the nations institutional checks and balances system bringing the operation of a massive government to a grinding halt and to the precipice of disaster.. Fukuyama indicates that in the 18th century and for nearly two hundred years the two political parties had significant overlap and an ability to reach compromise decisions. At the present time..( this author adds here: with corruption of money in politics, pervasive gerrymandering to "politically cleanse" election districts, the abuse and use of money by lobbyists, and special interest groups to control issues and policy, the effects of massive amounts of corporation money on government after the Citizens United ruling, as well as the excessive power, grandstanding and do nothing of a grossly undemocratic Senate) this antiquated system of checks and balance adds to the the dysfunction "at a time when Republicans and Democrats have no overlap of political space." The result is "a country not a grown up" The USA is "a country in decay".
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Thursday, September 4, 2014
UNPLEASANT SIMILARITIES HONG KONG AND USA
September 1, 2014, Hong Kong (HK) police spray demonstrators with pepper spray, to disperse an unruly crowd. What is this? Rowdy demonstrations in staid Hong Kong? The cause? A Chinese official visiting HK, the great financial hub of Asia, is heckled and shouted down by protesters who are demonstrating for free elections and the right to choose the candidates for their elections.
(A few facts: Hong Kong (HK) is the third most important world financial center after London and New York City. HK is a former British colony with an area of only 1,100 sq km (@ 426 sq mile, or very close in size to New York City) located on the coast of China with a deep natural harbor which provides access to the South China Sea and by that means to all of Asia. It has a population of more than 8 million (about that of NY City). The HK people are well-to-do, with averageTHE incomes (ranking 7th in the world) or just slightly higher than those of the USA. It It has one of the highest population densities recorded in the world. For such a tiny political entity, (ranking 179th in size) it is inordinately wealthy, being 7th in the world, with a GDP of more than 400 billion in US dollars annually. (while NYC is nominally @ $1.3 trillion). It is governed by a Legislative Council and a Chief Executive which have been (up to 2014) "democratically" elected. Though not a "classical democracy", (but who can cast a stone ?), it has been described as a "semi authoritarian regime", controlled by a small cadre of elites (See Wikipedia, Hong Kong) . Does that sound familiar to us in the USA? Hong Kong's chief executive is chosen by an Election Committee of 1200 (or sometimes fewer) members. It largest and only 'city' is Kowloon. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 to 1997. Since 1997 it has been a "Special Administrative Region" (SAR) of the PR of C, with the motto "one country two systems". But now the China's Politburo would like to eliminate the "two systems" part.)
Based on that report from the New York Times on September 1, 2014, it now appears that China seems bent on rescinding the 1997 agreement that country concluded with the British government, which provided for free and democratic elections in Hong Kong for another 33 years-- to 2047.
Back to the circumstances of the event: At that meeting in HK a Communist Chinese official was explaining in his quiet and logical way that everything in HK will be the same, after the new Chinese Politbureau rules are instituted.The people will still have their elections, just as before. The only difference will be that the Chinese Politbureau will pick the candidates! Then, the people of HK can have their election. Everybody will be happy. The Chinese will be certain that the new legislators will be compliant to China's wishes. That is how they see the election. But to the citizenry of HK that part is vital too. For as we all know---- the really important part of any election is the part that deals with vetting the candidates that the people will choose from. It is clear even to the Chinese that if you can control the candidates presented for election, you are really in control of the election.
When I read this , it made me think. I asked myself, "What is the big difference between our 'semi democratic regime' here in the US and that in Hong Kong?" In some ways, we are very similar...They too have nice "democratic" elections .
But, as in HK, we don't really pick our candidates either. Do we? Instead of the Politbureau picking our candidates, we have another just as powerful entity, the Moneybags Bureau (ATT, Koch Industries, Exxon, Comcast, Northrup-Grumman, Goldman Sachs, etc., etc., etc.) who support the candidates of their choice with bags of cash. The cash flow dictates which candidates can run. So as in HK we are presented with a slate of candidates ---yes selected for us--. The Moneybags Bureau dictate to the electorate the candidates of their choice.Then we all have a jolly good time electing one of these "picked" candidates.
So circumstances of power politics are much the same all around the world.
Would not it be so much better if we all understood these sad facts better---perhaps then we could work for change and not wallow so in our own misperceived exceptionalism.
(A few facts: Hong Kong (HK) is the third most important world financial center after London and New York City. HK is a former British colony with an area of only 1,100 sq km (@ 426 sq mile, or very close in size to New York City) located on the coast of China with a deep natural harbor which provides access to the South China Sea and by that means to all of Asia. It has a population of more than 8 million (about that of NY City). The HK people are well-to-do, with averageTHE incomes (ranking 7th in the world) or just slightly higher than those of the USA. It It has one of the highest population densities recorded in the world. For such a tiny political entity, (ranking 179th in size) it is inordinately wealthy, being 7th in the world, with a GDP of more than 400 billion in US dollars annually. (while NYC is nominally @ $1.3 trillion). It is governed by a Legislative Council and a Chief Executive which have been (up to 2014) "democratically" elected. Though not a "classical democracy", (but who can cast a stone ?), it has been described as a "semi authoritarian regime", controlled by a small cadre of elites (See Wikipedia, Hong Kong) . Does that sound familiar to us in the USA? Hong Kong's chief executive is chosen by an Election Committee of 1200 (or sometimes fewer) members. It largest and only 'city' is Kowloon. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 to 1997. Since 1997 it has been a "Special Administrative Region" (SAR) of the PR of C, with the motto "one country two systems". But now the China's Politburo would like to eliminate the "two systems" part.)
Based on that report from the New York Times on September 1, 2014, it now appears that China seems bent on rescinding the 1997 agreement that country concluded with the British government, which provided for free and democratic elections in Hong Kong for another 33 years-- to 2047.
Back to the circumstances of the event: At that meeting in HK a Communist Chinese official was explaining in his quiet and logical way that everything in HK will be the same, after the new Chinese Politbureau rules are instituted.The people will still have their elections, just as before. The only difference will be that the Chinese Politbureau will pick the candidates! Then, the people of HK can have their election. Everybody will be happy. The Chinese will be certain that the new legislators will be compliant to China's wishes. That is how they see the election. But to the citizenry of HK that part is vital too. For as we all know---- the really important part of any election is the part that deals with vetting the candidates that the people will choose from. It is clear even to the Chinese that if you can control the candidates presented for election, you are really in control of the election.
When I read this , it made me think. I asked myself, "What is the big difference between our 'semi democratic regime' here in the US and that in Hong Kong?" In some ways, we are very similar...They too have nice "democratic" elections .
But, as in HK, we don't really pick our candidates either. Do we? Instead of the Politbureau picking our candidates, we have another just as powerful entity, the Moneybags Bureau (ATT, Koch Industries, Exxon, Comcast, Northrup-Grumman, Goldman Sachs, etc., etc., etc.) who support the candidates of their choice with bags of cash. The cash flow dictates which candidates can run. So as in HK we are presented with a slate of candidates ---yes selected for us--. The Moneybags Bureau dictate to the electorate the candidates of their choice.Then we all have a jolly good time electing one of these "picked" candidates.
So circumstances of power politics are much the same all around the world.
Would not it be so much better if we all understood these sad facts better---perhaps then we could work for change and not wallow so in our own misperceived exceptionalism.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
PHOTOS SUGGEST STONEHENGE A "GAPING OPEN" CIRCLE?
I read today that Stonehenge, may have been a complete circle. At present, the ring is incomplete. Some British archaeologists have argued that was its original design. Others have assumed that it was circular, but the stones were removed and used elsewhere ---a common occurrence in antiquity.
The discovery relating to its circularity, was made by a groundsman tasked with maintaining the lawn by watering the site. This perceptive fellow noticed that during the recent (August 2014) drought, patches of brown were appearing in the normally verdant lawns. The effect was enhanced since the area where the circle was incomplete lay too far away from the short hosepipe he had for watering. As this observant man made plans to irrigate the dry and brown patches, he realized that these seemed to be located in places where stones should have stood were the circle complete. He brought in the professionals who immediately ordered aerial photos to be taken.
The Guardian published one of the pictures. (The Guardian, Sept 1, 2014, Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has alluded archaeologists. By Steven Morris.) The dry spots do seem to indicate a curving line of patches which would crudely tend to complete the circle.
On closer examination, however, I observed something that reminded me of a feature I once encountered in studying post hole patterns of a house structure in the sub-soil at a prehistoric Native American site. The post hole pattern in that case gaped away from the circular to provide an entrance way. The pattern of brown patches at Stonehenge seem to suggest a similar type of pattern. The patches on the bottom right of the published picture seem to fall away from (have a longer radius from the center than) those on the left. That "gape" were it actual, would have provided a wide and graceful entry point, perhaps adapted for ceremonial purposes.
Thus I suggest that Stonehenge may not have been a complete circle, but one with part of its outer stone erections arranged with a greater radius from the center to form an entranceway. The British archaeologists should investigate this "gaping circle" hypothesis . Based only upon the revealing photos, I suspect that upon closer examination of the photos and further subsurface analysis they may well confirm this "open" pattern.
(The Guardian, Sept 1, 2014, Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has alluded archaeologists. By Steven Morris)
The discovery relating to its circularity, was made by a groundsman tasked with maintaining the lawn by watering the site. This perceptive fellow noticed that during the recent (August 2014) drought, patches of brown were appearing in the normally verdant lawns. The effect was enhanced since the area where the circle was incomplete lay too far away from the short hosepipe he had for watering. As this observant man made plans to irrigate the dry and brown patches, he realized that these seemed to be located in places where stones should have stood were the circle complete. He brought in the professionals who immediately ordered aerial photos to be taken.
The Guardian published one of the pictures. (The Guardian, Sept 1, 2014, Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has alluded archaeologists. By Steven Morris.) The dry spots do seem to indicate a curving line of patches which would crudely tend to complete the circle.
On closer examination, however, I observed something that reminded me of a feature I once encountered in studying post hole patterns of a house structure in the sub-soil at a prehistoric Native American site. The post hole pattern in that case gaped away from the circular to provide an entrance way. The pattern of brown patches at Stonehenge seem to suggest a similar type of pattern. The patches on the bottom right of the published picture seem to fall away from (have a longer radius from the center than) those on the left. That "gape" were it actual, would have provided a wide and graceful entry point, perhaps adapted for ceremonial purposes.
Thus I suggest that Stonehenge may not have been a complete circle, but one with part of its outer stone erections arranged with a greater radius from the center to form an entranceway. The British archaeologists should investigate this "gaping circle" hypothesis . Based only upon the revealing photos, I suspect that upon closer examination of the photos and further subsurface analysis they may well confirm this "open" pattern.
(The Guardian, Sept 1, 2014, Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has alluded archaeologists. By Steven Morris)
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
HILLARY, STUPID STUFF AND BIBBI'S HAIRY LEGS
HILLARY, BIBBI'S HAIRY LEGS AND STUPID STUFF
In a revealing interview for the Atlantic, this last week, (Jeffrey Goldberg, August 10, 2014) Mrs. Hillary Clinton, attacked her erstwhile friend and former boss, President Obama, by dissing his careful foreign policy approach ("don't do stupid stuff"). She also pointed a crooked Clintonian finger at the President, claiming that it is Obama's fault that Islamic State (or ISIS) arose in western Syria and expanded into the seeming formidable force now raging through northern Iraq. The hutzpah, and gracelessness of the attack as well as the fact that she had earlier been quoted widely as "fully on board" with Obama's Syria policy make it all the more disturbing and distressing to observe in a likely presidential candidate. But then again this is a "Clinton" we are talking about, past masters of deception, opportunism and calculation.
Equally distressing was her "beyond the pale" remarks on the gruesome and disproportionate attack by Israel on Gaza where Israeli bombardment has killed more than 1800 Palestinians mostly civilians, trapped in what is essentially an outdoor prison camp. Apparently Mrs. Clinton....like her husband...will say or do anything for a buck. In this case she is vying for the bucks of wealthy Americans whose favor she is attempting to curry with her far-out statements of support for the Israeli extreme right...such as the one-issue Sheldon Adelsons of this nation.
On Gaza, Mrs Clinton got so far into bed with with the dour and blood-stained Mr. Netanyahu and his far right Likudnics that--were her husband,Bubba, not so deeply involved with his string of regular squeezes--her bed-jumping might be a cause for jealous spousal rage. In her Gaza remarks Hillary snuggled so close to the Israeli extremists she left no space for a flea, between her and Bibbi's hairy legs. Talk of Hillary being to the right, but these comments put her in the category of Dick Cheney and George Bush. One worry for her supporters might be that she has gone so far into Israeli territory with this interview (she voiced full and vociferous support for every far out Israeli propaganda position, even claiming that the Israelis did not bomb that UN school where so many children were killed....but only its "annex") that she seems better positioned to run for a seat in the Knesset, rather than for US President . I would also add that were I one of her targeted monied supporters, I would be mighty suspect about her sincerity and actual beliefs. She has famously made numerous 180 degree turns...on many issues and has a "complex relationship to the truth" (a well turned phrase attributed to C.C.W. Cooke of National Review). But I guess that is all part of being in the money making racket, and "beneficiaries" of the $200 million dollar Clinton Foundation. We should all recall that as the First Couple, Hill and Bill went into business for themselves by selling sleep-overs in the White House Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder. Now they have risen to the level where they (and even daughter Chelsea) pull in $200,000 for a short speaking engagement. Not counting the Clinton Foundation coffers, stuffed with hundreds of millions of donation money, their personal wealth has soared into hundreds of millions of dollars.
If Ms Clinton's strategy in this interview was to clearly demarcate herself from the careful and considered FP approach of Mr. Obama..to facilitate her ever-present and overarching goal--a Presidential run..she has over-shot her mark and will lose a vast number of America voters who are tired of the jangling of rowel spurs, and the bulging six-gun in a low-slung-holster-approach to foreign policy. She made the same error in 2002, when as a Senator she positioned herself with Bush and Cheney on the Iraq War Resolution attempting to establish with voters that she was not only smart, but was a street tough too. But street toughs don't solve problems--they do "stupid stuff" that gets them into trouble. That's what she and 77 other US Senators did to push the country into a financial and military disaster. That was then. Our nation is now tired of attempting to solve our problems doing stupid stuff, and wiser too. We learned our lesson. Mrs. Clinton seems still unfazed, mired in the past, unable to see how our perceptions of Israel and old style tough guy foreign policy concepts have changed since the Great Recession, and as smart as she thinks she is, she hasn't learned that elementary lesson from so long ago.
In a revealing interview for the Atlantic, this last week, (Jeffrey Goldberg, August 10, 2014) Mrs. Hillary Clinton, attacked her erstwhile friend and former boss, President Obama, by dissing his careful foreign policy approach ("don't do stupid stuff"). She also pointed a crooked Clintonian finger at the President, claiming that it is Obama's fault that Islamic State (or ISIS) arose in western Syria and expanded into the seeming formidable force now raging through northern Iraq. The hutzpah, and gracelessness of the attack as well as the fact that she had earlier been quoted widely as "fully on board" with Obama's Syria policy make it all the more disturbing and distressing to observe in a likely presidential candidate. But then again this is a "Clinton" we are talking about, past masters of deception, opportunism and calculation.
Equally distressing was her "beyond the pale" remarks on the gruesome and disproportionate attack by Israel on Gaza where Israeli bombardment has killed more than 1800 Palestinians mostly civilians, trapped in what is essentially an outdoor prison camp. Apparently Mrs. Clinton....like her husband...will say or do anything for a buck. In this case she is vying for the bucks of wealthy Americans whose favor she is attempting to curry with her far-out statements of support for the Israeli extreme right...such as the one-issue Sheldon Adelsons of this nation.
On Gaza, Mrs Clinton got so far into bed with with the dour and blood-stained Mr. Netanyahu and his far right Likudnics that--were her husband,Bubba, not so deeply involved with his string of regular squeezes--her bed-jumping might be a cause for jealous spousal rage. In her Gaza remarks Hillary snuggled so close to the Israeli extremists she left no space for a flea, between her and Bibbi's hairy legs. Talk of Hillary being to the right, but these comments put her in the category of Dick Cheney and George Bush. One worry for her supporters might be that she has gone so far into Israeli territory with this interview (she voiced full and vociferous support for every far out Israeli propaganda position, even claiming that the Israelis did not bomb that UN school where so many children were killed....but only its "annex") that she seems better positioned to run for a seat in the Knesset, rather than for US President . I would also add that were I one of her targeted monied supporters, I would be mighty suspect about her sincerity and actual beliefs. She has famously made numerous 180 degree turns...on many issues and has a "complex relationship to the truth" (a well turned phrase attributed to C.C.W. Cooke of National Review). But I guess that is all part of being in the money making racket, and "beneficiaries" of the $200 million dollar Clinton Foundation. We should all recall that as the First Couple, Hill and Bill went into business for themselves by selling sleep-overs in the White House Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder. Now they have risen to the level where they (and even daughter Chelsea) pull in $200,000 for a short speaking engagement. Not counting the Clinton Foundation coffers, stuffed with hundreds of millions of donation money, their personal wealth has soared into hundreds of millions of dollars.
If Ms Clinton's strategy in this interview was to clearly demarcate herself from the careful and considered FP approach of Mr. Obama..to facilitate her ever-present and overarching goal--a Presidential run..she has over-shot her mark and will lose a vast number of America voters who are tired of the jangling of rowel spurs, and the bulging six-gun in a low-slung-holster-approach to foreign policy. She made the same error in 2002, when as a Senator she positioned herself with Bush and Cheney on the Iraq War Resolution attempting to establish with voters that she was not only smart, but was a street tough too. But street toughs don't solve problems--they do "stupid stuff" that gets them into trouble. That's what she and 77 other US Senators did to push the country into a financial and military disaster. That was then. Our nation is now tired of attempting to solve our problems doing stupid stuff, and wiser too. We learned our lesson. Mrs. Clinton seems still unfazed, mired in the past, unable to see how our perceptions of Israel and old style tough guy foreign policy concepts have changed since the Great Recession, and as smart as she thinks she is, she hasn't learned that elementary lesson from so long ago.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
NEEDED FOR PEACE---BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL
In this last round of brutal, disproportionate attacks on Gaza, Israel has clearly revealed its long term strategy. They give lip service to peace negotiations, but have no incentive to actually make any concessions, that could led to peace. Would you? The have the top hand. Superior military power, control of the levers of opinion and funding, and the protection of America, which supports their policies no matter how far they go astray. The US would actually find some reason to support Israeli polices were they to descend to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Or have they done so already? The latest Gaza round has caused the deaths of more than 1800, Palestinians....almost all civilians...and mostly women, children and the elderly. More than 9,000 were wounded. Mr. Obama's response to this massacre was "Israel has the right to defend itself."
They have the political agenda sewed up. Don't bother writing to your representative or senator, all our politicians are shivering in their boots when it comes to Israel----afraid of being labeled "anti Semites" even if they simply question Israeli propaganda. Our media are also manacled. So there will be no succor from that quarter. There appears to be no recourse for those who would see a more peaceful a more just world...
With the deck stacked against those who seek peace....the only possible means of eliciting change in Israeli leadership is for each of us to use the economic lever we all have at hand in our pocketbooks. We can simply refuse to buy Israeli products. Israel has a vibrant economy almost exclusively based on selling products abroad. They are dependent upon YOU to buy those products. But if we disagree with their policies we can make a choice for a more peaceful, just world. That is a BOYCOTT. Why should we financially support a government which flaunts international law, refuses to negotiate in good faith, engages in creeping confiscation of lands illegally, and periodically descends into military adventures which brutalize and kill innocent civilians and children seemingly without compunction?
If we were all to simply stop purchasing Israeli made products, services, and attending Israeli sponsored events...the global impact would be astounding.
Support peace, demilitarization, and global welfare by simply boycotting Israeli goods, products and services. That would get their attention almost immediately.
They have the political agenda sewed up. Don't bother writing to your representative or senator, all our politicians are shivering in their boots when it comes to Israel----afraid of being labeled "anti Semites" even if they simply question Israeli propaganda. Our media are also manacled. So there will be no succor from that quarter. There appears to be no recourse for those who would see a more peaceful a more just world...
With the deck stacked against those who seek peace....the only possible means of eliciting change in Israeli leadership is for each of us to use the economic lever we all have at hand in our pocketbooks. We can simply refuse to buy Israeli products. Israel has a vibrant economy almost exclusively based on selling products abroad. They are dependent upon YOU to buy those products. But if we disagree with their policies we can make a choice for a more peaceful, just world. That is a BOYCOTT. Why should we financially support a government which flaunts international law, refuses to negotiate in good faith, engages in creeping confiscation of lands illegally, and periodically descends into military adventures which brutalize and kill innocent civilians and children seemingly without compunction?
If we were all to simply stop purchasing Israeli made products, services, and attending Israeli sponsored events...the global impact would be astounding.
Support peace, demilitarization, and global welfare by simply boycotting Israeli goods, products and services. That would get their attention almost immediately.
Friday, August 8, 2014
IRAK REDUX MORE WASHINGTON STUPIDY
MORE STUPIDITY REDUX FROM WASHINGTON REGARDING IRAQ
President Obama has just OK'd bombing missions in northern and western Iraq to support Iraqi and Presmerga (Kurdish) troops which are fleeing from the onslaught of the Islamic State forces.
So many lives could have been saved if President Obama and his neoconservative-holdover advisors from the Bush Administration (as well as his former and failed Secretary of State, who never saw a conflict she didn't want to send some other person's sons and daughters to fight in-- Ms Clinton) had been a bit less gleefully eager to support the fanatic rebels in Syria in their attempt to overthrow Mr. Assad. Mr. Assad who still holds sway in all of western Syria, was weakened and undermined by US INTERVENTIONISM, CIA covert activities, US logistic aid, money, and weapons supplied foolishly by the USA and other state actors urged on by Obama on Syria's eastern border. These narrow and short sighted efforts prolonged the war, and weakened the Assad Regime. The result of this foolish attempt at "regime change" by the USA helped create just another disaster zone, next to the previous disaster zones we created in the Middle East. The geographic result of US interference in Syria and foreign aid to Assad's (and it now turns out our) enemies was the formation of a no-mans land in eastern Syria where the forces of the Islamic State, using US-supplied weapons coalesced and grew into a powerful military force. These IS forces were the same rebel elements some Washington Senators ( John McCain among them) were very recently bellowing for President Obama to support more forcefully with more aid and even more powerful weapons.
But after establishing eastern Syria as their base, the IS, with goals of a regional Islamic Caliphate, moved outward to the east and south into a weakened and fragmented Iraq. Recall that that unfortunate nation was left in a parlous state by the aggression, missteps, lies and foolish polices of a previous US administration, led by an unsophisticated and inexperienced President. Iraq's newly (and less than effectively) USA-trained forces were no match for the well-armed, focused and determined, religious fanaticism of the IS. The IS troops plowed through northern Iraq...gathering up territory, towns, resources, money, abandoned US military materiel, as well as disaffected Sunni soldiers and former Bathist army officers.
So in reality the President is now fighting on the side of Mr. Assad, the man who he was attempting to overthrow and, in the process of that misguided attempt, helped to generate the mess we are now experiencing in that part of the world. But it is unlikely that he would be willing to admit to that.
Do you understand how stupid this all is? Only the militarists, military pundits, and the arms manufacturers are happy---they are all making big profits. The long-suffering American taxpayer, who now lives in a nation with a sick economy and crumbling infrastructure is reluctantly footing the bill, our US airmen are putting their lives in danger on these flights, and the Iraqi and Kurdish people are again suffering horribly. For this disaster we can thank all those US interventionists: G W Bush, Cheney, McCain, Clinton and now Obama too , who think we can solve the world's problems using the muzzle end of a smoking gun. Let us not forget that. They did it! Let us remind them of their stupidity on a regular basis.
It seems whatever the neocons and their supporters touch abroad gets screwed up-----and sadly lots of people die.
Please President Obama, stand up to this scourge of mankind and give us all a break.
.
President Obama has just OK'd bombing missions in northern and western Iraq to support Iraqi and Presmerga (Kurdish) troops which are fleeing from the onslaught of the Islamic State forces.
So many lives could have been saved if President Obama and his neoconservative-holdover advisors from the Bush Administration (as well as his former and failed Secretary of State, who never saw a conflict she didn't want to send some other person's sons and daughters to fight in-- Ms Clinton) had been a bit less gleefully eager to support the fanatic rebels in Syria in their attempt to overthrow Mr. Assad. Mr. Assad who still holds sway in all of western Syria, was weakened and undermined by US INTERVENTIONISM, CIA covert activities, US logistic aid, money, and weapons supplied foolishly by the USA and other state actors urged on by Obama on Syria's eastern border. These narrow and short sighted efforts prolonged the war, and weakened the Assad Regime. The result of this foolish attempt at "regime change" by the USA helped create just another disaster zone, next to the previous disaster zones we created in the Middle East. The geographic result of US interference in Syria and foreign aid to Assad's (and it now turns out our) enemies was the formation of a no-mans land in eastern Syria where the forces of the Islamic State, using US-supplied weapons coalesced and grew into a powerful military force. These IS forces were the same rebel elements some Washington Senators ( John McCain among them) were very recently bellowing for President Obama to support more forcefully with more aid and even more powerful weapons.
But after establishing eastern Syria as their base, the IS, with goals of a regional Islamic Caliphate, moved outward to the east and south into a weakened and fragmented Iraq. Recall that that unfortunate nation was left in a parlous state by the aggression, missteps, lies and foolish polices of a previous US administration, led by an unsophisticated and inexperienced President. Iraq's newly (and less than effectively) USA-trained forces were no match for the well-armed, focused and determined, religious fanaticism of the IS. The IS troops plowed through northern Iraq...gathering up territory, towns, resources, money, abandoned US military materiel, as well as disaffected Sunni soldiers and former Bathist army officers.
So in reality the President is now fighting on the side of Mr. Assad, the man who he was attempting to overthrow and, in the process of that misguided attempt, helped to generate the mess we are now experiencing in that part of the world. But it is unlikely that he would be willing to admit to that.
Do you understand how stupid this all is? Only the militarists, military pundits, and the arms manufacturers are happy---they are all making big profits. The long-suffering American taxpayer, who now lives in a nation with a sick economy and crumbling infrastructure is reluctantly footing the bill, our US airmen are putting their lives in danger on these flights, and the Iraqi and Kurdish people are again suffering horribly. For this disaster we can thank all those US interventionists: G W Bush, Cheney, McCain, Clinton and now Obama too , who think we can solve the world's problems using the muzzle end of a smoking gun. Let us not forget that. They did it! Let us remind them of their stupidity on a regular basis.
It seems whatever the neocons and their supporters touch abroad gets screwed up-----and sadly lots of people die.
Please President Obama, stand up to this scourge of mankind and give us all a break.
.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
GAZA : REPLAY OF WARSAW GHETTO?
THE WARSAW GHETTO MASSACRE REPLAYED IN GAZA
Israel has stepped over the red line demarcating the humane from the brutish and bloodthirsty in its attack on Gaza. I will not take up the argument of the Hamas rocket fire and the tunnels. You have heard all that. Let me concentrate on the part of the story you do not hear or read about. Sadly, the events in Gaza reminds me of the 1943 brutal massacre of innocent Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The world mostly sat back and let that tragedy happen, unable or unwilling to help. More than 7,000 Jews were killed and the rest deported to concentration camps where many or most died. As I write this today, wondering as I write, how and why we as a people either forget our history or simply are unaware of it, and thus keep repeating past mistakes and atrocities. As of today I read that more than one-thousand Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. And as in the Warsaw uprising, the world's nations just sit by doing nothing.
The Israeli Army--considered perhaps one of the top-five best-equipped and run militaries in the world--was unleashed by Mr. Netanyahu two weeks ago against the poor, urbanized, densely populated enclave of Gaza --a 141 square mile sea-side Mediterranean ghetto (about six miles wide and twenty-five miles long) located between Israel and Egypt. Like the Warsaw ghetto the Israelis have sealed up the borders. The Israeli forces plowed through the chain link fencing and barbed wire of the 300 meter wide no-mans land at the Gaza-Israeli boundary with tanks, heavy artillery, and armored troop carriers. Israeli navy ships used heavy guns to bombard the Gaza shore. Its Air Force made devastating bombing runs over densely populated areas collapsing high rise apartments and burying residents in rubble. Even "off target" humanitarian UN schools and facilities were bombed, more than once, causing heavy fatalities.
The Netanyahu-assigned kill-zone where the Israeli "Defense" Force ( IDF) is now operating is an outdoor, urbanized prison where 1.8 million Palestinians live cheek by jowl in an area the size of six Manhattan Islands. Even on Manhattan island-- one can readily leave by roads, bridges, and ferries, but in Gaza the Israeli barbed wire and machine gun nests have sealed off the enclave tightly since 2007. Its inhabitants have no possibility of escape. The IDF has been literally assigned by its political leaders to shoot "fish in a barrel". As the dead pile up in the streets, one wonders how the proud IDF...professional soldiers all--can stomach being ordered to target buildings and structures they know are filled with unarmed children, women and old people. The body count is now ( July 30) well over 1000 dead...largely women and children, and as as many seven thousands wounded of all ages. The Palestinian body count belies the Israeli propaganda machine which claims "pin point" strikes and "restrained" action on Hamas tunnels. Sadly these exaggerations and untruths are routinely parroted by US media. It makes one gasp with incredulity upon hearing these statements, first put forth (perhaps understandably) by professional defenders and representatives of the Israeli government, but then repeated verbatim by so-called US "journalists". As the propaganda is repeated in the American press and on air, one can sit there and view other pictures and commentators on the internet which tell a completely different story. That story is one of the illegal and disproportionate use of force by one heavily armed and militarized people brutishly visited on another group trapped and almost wholly unarmed populace. One wonders do these Israelis remember their own heroic history of resistance to the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943? Can they no longer empathize with suffering that they or their grandparents may have experienced. There is an embarrassing and disturbing parallel here.
The world rightly erupted in agonized and angry resentment at the outbreak of the Israeli attack against Gaza..and Israel's disproportionate and inhumane attack on essentially unprotected, unarmed civilians being punished as a community only because they are Palestinians and who as children are innocent of any wrong doing--- and can not escape. Massive, demonstrations against Israel's actions took place in the UK, France, Australia, Canada, Germany and many other nations. But here at home in the US, there was little anger or resentment....only bland statements by President Obama offering Mr. Netanyahu cover for his brutal actions by claiming Israel had the "right to protect itself". Left unsaid by the American media were the underlying facts of the illegal occupation, the unending expansionism of settlements, the daily humiliations, beatings, killings and attacks on Palestinians. Most importantly, what has been ignored here in the US were the provocations by Mr. Netanyahu, who, Bush-Cheney-like used the abductions and brutal murder of three Israeli boys as a pretext for war. Mr. Netanyahu was quick to blame Hamas for the abductions (without any proof or evidence to support his claim) and used this causus belli to run rough shod over Palestinian communities in the West Bank, breaking into homes, killing and brutalizing innocents in his quest to "find and return the boys to their parents". Though he well-knew at the time that the abducted youths were already dead. The three were killed almost immediately as one of the teenagers tried fruitlessly to make a covert call to the police. Mr. Netanyahu hid this fact and continued to claim, without proof, that Hamas was to blame for the abductions, and to stir up his nation to acts of hatred, violence, and support for war. His obvious goal in all this brutality was to undermine Hamas, and somehow abrogate the recent unpalatable agreement between Hamas and Fatah to form a joint government. Unsaid also was that Hamas had kept to its 2012 agreement with Israel regarding restraining rocket fire, but during that same period Israel had not modified its policy of keeping Gaza's borders sealed and limiting inflow of goods and supplies into the Gaza ghetto. So here at home, the citizenry of the nation which claims to lead the free world and prides itself on its penchant for protecting the downtrodden, and righting injustice remains ignorant of the whole story. Our government, its hands tied by a complacent and /or ignorant populace looks on and either ignores this unprecedented act of perfidy and brutality and/or encourages the perpetrators and instigators of violence. The US news reports in our papers and on the air focus on other stories--like the Ukraine-- and the streets here--unlike in the rest of the world--were essentially quiet.
The oft claimed myth that American Jews control the US press and other media might be offered as an explanation for the paltry (and where it occurred, misleading) coverage. But in this I agree with Abe Foxman of the AIPAC. The Jews who support Israel do not control the media. The US media actually police themselves. Out of habit or fear of reprisal they simply conform to the story-line handed to them by the Israeli propaganda machine.There are very few examples of journalists in the US media who step out of line. For US journalists there is no "positive" outcome in writing stories which criticize Israel. The result is, with few exceptions...they simply avoid the topic. This leaves the American public with only one view--a biased and inaccurate one. Why expose oneself to the calumny of an angry and powerful minority, and be unfairly branded as "anti-Semites" or as Jews, as facilitators of anti-Semites, in the process?
Better to focus on writing about the Russians and the Ukraine.
But perhaps when these journalists do write about the Ukraine, they might ask themselves this question--just so they can continue to call themselves "journalistssts". If Mr. Putin is "responsible" (as our government spokespersons repeat over and over again) for the acts of the
Think of that....or at least just THINK.
rjk
Israel has stepped over the red line demarcating the humane from the brutish and bloodthirsty in its attack on Gaza. I will not take up the argument of the Hamas rocket fire and the tunnels. You have heard all that. Let me concentrate on the part of the story you do not hear or read about. Sadly, the events in Gaza reminds me of the 1943 brutal massacre of innocent Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The world mostly sat back and let that tragedy happen, unable or unwilling to help. More than 7,000 Jews were killed and the rest deported to concentration camps where many or most died. As I write this today, wondering as I write, how and why we as a people either forget our history or simply are unaware of it, and thus keep repeating past mistakes and atrocities. As of today I read that more than one-thousand Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. And as in the Warsaw uprising, the world's nations just sit by doing nothing.
The Israeli Army--considered perhaps one of the top-five best-equipped and run militaries in the world--was unleashed by Mr. Netanyahu two weeks ago against the poor, urbanized, densely populated enclave of Gaza --a 141 square mile sea-side Mediterranean ghetto (about six miles wide and twenty-five miles long) located between Israel and Egypt. Like the Warsaw ghetto the Israelis have sealed up the borders. The Israeli forces plowed through the chain link fencing and barbed wire of the 300 meter wide no-mans land at the Gaza-Israeli boundary with tanks, heavy artillery, and armored troop carriers. Israeli navy ships used heavy guns to bombard the Gaza shore. Its Air Force made devastating bombing runs over densely populated areas collapsing high rise apartments and burying residents in rubble. Even "off target" humanitarian UN schools and facilities were bombed, more than once, causing heavy fatalities.
The Netanyahu-assigned kill-zone where the Israeli "Defense" Force ( IDF) is now operating is an outdoor, urbanized prison where 1.8 million Palestinians live cheek by jowl in an area the size of six Manhattan Islands. Even on Manhattan island-- one can readily leave by roads, bridges, and ferries, but in Gaza the Israeli barbed wire and machine gun nests have sealed off the enclave tightly since 2007. Its inhabitants have no possibility of escape. The IDF has been literally assigned by its political leaders to shoot "fish in a barrel". As the dead pile up in the streets, one wonders how the proud IDF...professional soldiers all--can stomach being ordered to target buildings and structures they know are filled with unarmed children, women and old people. The body count is now ( July 30) well over 1000 dead...largely women and children, and as as many seven thousands wounded of all ages. The Palestinian body count belies the Israeli propaganda machine which claims "pin point" strikes and "restrained" action on Hamas tunnels. Sadly these exaggerations and untruths are routinely parroted by US media. It makes one gasp with incredulity upon hearing these statements, first put forth (perhaps understandably) by professional defenders and representatives of the Israeli government, but then repeated verbatim by so-called US "journalists". As the propaganda is repeated in the American press and on air, one can sit there and view other pictures and commentators on the internet which tell a completely different story. That story is one of the illegal and disproportionate use of force by one heavily armed and militarized people brutishly visited on another group trapped and almost wholly unarmed populace. One wonders do these Israelis remember their own heroic history of resistance to the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943? Can they no longer empathize with suffering that they or their grandparents may have experienced. There is an embarrassing and disturbing parallel here.
The world rightly erupted in agonized and angry resentment at the outbreak of the Israeli attack against Gaza..and Israel's disproportionate and inhumane attack on essentially unprotected, unarmed civilians being punished as a community only because they are Palestinians and who as children are innocent of any wrong doing--- and can not escape. Massive, demonstrations against Israel's actions took place in the UK, France, Australia, Canada, Germany and many other nations. But here at home in the US, there was little anger or resentment....only bland statements by President Obama offering Mr. Netanyahu cover for his brutal actions by claiming Israel had the "right to protect itself". Left unsaid by the American media were the underlying facts of the illegal occupation, the unending expansionism of settlements, the daily humiliations, beatings, killings and attacks on Palestinians. Most importantly, what has been ignored here in the US were the provocations by Mr. Netanyahu, who, Bush-Cheney-like used the abductions and brutal murder of three Israeli boys as a pretext for war. Mr. Netanyahu was quick to blame Hamas for the abductions (without any proof or evidence to support his claim) and used this causus belli to run rough shod over Palestinian communities in the West Bank, breaking into homes, killing and brutalizing innocents in his quest to "find and return the boys to their parents". Though he well-knew at the time that the abducted youths were already dead. The three were killed almost immediately as one of the teenagers tried fruitlessly to make a covert call to the police. Mr. Netanyahu hid this fact and continued to claim, without proof, that Hamas was to blame for the abductions, and to stir up his nation to acts of hatred, violence, and support for war. His obvious goal in all this brutality was to undermine Hamas, and somehow abrogate the recent unpalatable agreement between Hamas and Fatah to form a joint government. Unsaid also was that Hamas had kept to its 2012 agreement with Israel regarding restraining rocket fire, but during that same period Israel had not modified its policy of keeping Gaza's borders sealed and limiting inflow of goods and supplies into the Gaza ghetto. So here at home, the citizenry of the nation which claims to lead the free world and prides itself on its penchant for protecting the downtrodden, and righting injustice remains ignorant of the whole story. Our government, its hands tied by a complacent and /or ignorant populace looks on and either ignores this unprecedented act of perfidy and brutality and/or encourages the perpetrators and instigators of violence. The US news reports in our papers and on the air focus on other stories--like the Ukraine-- and the streets here--unlike in the rest of the world--were essentially quiet.
The oft claimed myth that American Jews control the US press and other media might be offered as an explanation for the paltry (and where it occurred, misleading) coverage. But in this I agree with Abe Foxman of the AIPAC. The Jews who support Israel do not control the media. The US media actually police themselves. Out of habit or fear of reprisal they simply conform to the story-line handed to them by the Israeli propaganda machine.There are very few examples of journalists in the US media who step out of line. For US journalists there is no "positive" outcome in writing stories which criticize Israel. The result is, with few exceptions...they simply avoid the topic. This leaves the American public with only one view--a biased and inaccurate one. Why expose oneself to the calumny of an angry and powerful minority, and be unfairly branded as "anti-Semites" or as Jews, as facilitators of anti-Semites, in the process?
Better to focus on writing about the Russians and the Ukraine.
But perhaps when these journalists do write about the Ukraine, they might ask themselves this question--just so they can continue to call themselves "journalistssts". If Mr. Putin is "responsible" (as our government spokespersons repeat over and over again) for the acts of the
Think of that....or at least just THINK.
rjk
Monday, June 16, 2014
POACHING OF ELEPHANTS MUST STOP! USE THE ECONOMIC LEVER
WE NEED AN ECONOMIC BAN ON THE IVORY TRADERS
The poaching of African elephants has reached a terrible crescendo. Thirty thousand of these magnificent, intelligent beasts were slaughtered in Africa in the last year just for their tusks. Their bodies are left to rot. The ivory is surreptitiously purchased by the newly wealthy classes in Vietnam and China. Our dollars, euros, and pounds are supporting them in their new found wealth. We must dissuade them from their madness. We must stop this crazy ignorant slaughter which will exterminate these wonderful creatures within a decade.
I am proposing a world ban on products from those countries found to be trafficking in ivory. The economic button is the only way and the best way to get the attention of the leaders of those countries who have the means to stop the illegal trade but turn a blind eye to the activities of their wealthy countrymen and women. They must actively stop ivory imports and sales. It's illegal already you say. But the legal constraint is not effective.
When massive numbers of people around the world agree to turn away from manufactured products or other goods of those countries which ignore and flaunt the ivory laws...their leaders will wake up and begin the necessary and effective crack down.
Let's do it !
Send emails, texts, twitters...Stop the elephant slaughter!
The poaching of African elephants has reached a terrible crescendo. Thirty thousand of these magnificent, intelligent beasts were slaughtered in Africa in the last year just for their tusks. Their bodies are left to rot. The ivory is surreptitiously purchased by the newly wealthy classes in Vietnam and China. Our dollars, euros, and pounds are supporting them in their new found wealth. We must dissuade them from their madness. We must stop this crazy ignorant slaughter which will exterminate these wonderful creatures within a decade.
I am proposing a world ban on products from those countries found to be trafficking in ivory. The economic button is the only way and the best way to get the attention of the leaders of those countries who have the means to stop the illegal trade but turn a blind eye to the activities of their wealthy countrymen and women. They must actively stop ivory imports and sales. It's illegal already you say. But the legal constraint is not effective.
When massive numbers of people around the world agree to turn away from manufactured products or other goods of those countries which ignore and flaunt the ivory laws...their leaders will wake up and begin the necessary and effective crack down.
Let's do it !
Send emails, texts, twitters...Stop the elephant slaughter!
Saturday, May 3, 2014
REPLAY OF SABINE ABDUCTION IN NIGERIA
SAY NO TO "HELP" FROM OBAMA TO RESCUE GIRLS
The Boko Haram of Nigeria seem to have taken their clue from the early settlers of Rome.
According to Virgil and the formation myth of Rome, the first generation of Roman settlers, single male immigrants from Troy, acquired wives from the local Latium Sabine tribe in 750 BC by simply abducting them during the festival of Neptune Equester.
Nigeria, a state in south west African, which is Islamic in the north and Christian in the south, has been torn by religious strife since 2009. That date marks the emergence of a quasi religious-political group known as " Boko Haram" which has been responsible for over 1500 deaths, bombing, and abductions since its formation in 2009. The name "Boko Haram" ( apparently derived from the French, "boucoup", and the Arabic ( ? )"harram" meaning "sinful" thus: " very much sinful") and is often interpreted in the west as: "sinful western culture" or "sinful western education", tells much about what they are about.
On April 14, in the State of Borno in Nigeria, the schools in the district had all been closed due to the danger from attacks by the BH Islamic extremists. One school in the district remained opened where young women, aged 15 to 18 years of age, were assigned to take their exams. It was at this school that more than 300 young women were abducted by the Boko Harram. Subsequently, some fifty young women escaped and revealed that the abducted girls were forced into marriage contracts with either the Boko Harram or other Islamic men. Some claim the Boko Haram sold the women for a $12 dollar marriage contract. Others assert that the women were taken into neighboring Niger, and Chad and dispersed widely over the countryside. Their parents are understandably aroused and concerned. They have demonstrated for the return of their children.
This is a sad and strange story. But President Obama's recently reported promise to "help" the Nigerians find and return the girls seems another ill advised move into an area of sectarian conflict in a Moslem world where we have little experience and could only make things worse. He would be better advised to send humanitarian supplies and keep our troops and military help at home.
The Boko Haram of Nigeria seem to have taken their clue from the early settlers of Rome.
According to Virgil and the formation myth of Rome, the first generation of Roman settlers, single male immigrants from Troy, acquired wives from the local Latium Sabine tribe in 750 BC by simply abducting them during the festival of Neptune Equester.
Nigeria, a state in south west African, which is Islamic in the north and Christian in the south, has been torn by religious strife since 2009. That date marks the emergence of a quasi religious-political group known as " Boko Haram" which has been responsible for over 1500 deaths, bombing, and abductions since its formation in 2009. The name "Boko Haram" ( apparently derived from the French, "boucoup", and the Arabic ( ? )"harram" meaning "sinful" thus: " very much sinful") and is often interpreted in the west as: "sinful western culture" or "sinful western education", tells much about what they are about.
On April 14, in the State of Borno in Nigeria, the schools in the district had all been closed due to the danger from attacks by the BH Islamic extremists. One school in the district remained opened where young women, aged 15 to 18 years of age, were assigned to take their exams. It was at this school that more than 300 young women were abducted by the Boko Harram. Subsequently, some fifty young women escaped and revealed that the abducted girls were forced into marriage contracts with either the Boko Harram or other Islamic men. Some claim the Boko Haram sold the women for a $12 dollar marriage contract. Others assert that the women were taken into neighboring Niger, and Chad and dispersed widely over the countryside. Their parents are understandably aroused and concerned. They have demonstrated for the return of their children.
This is a sad and strange story. But President Obama's recently reported promise to "help" the Nigerians find and return the girls seems another ill advised move into an area of sectarian conflict in a Moslem world where we have little experience and could only make things worse. He would be better advised to send humanitarian supplies and keep our troops and military help at home.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
APARTHEID ISRAEL :NOT KERRY BARAK FIRST
EHUD BARAK MOST DECORATED MAN IN ISRAELI HISTORY FIRST TO WARN ISRAEL MAY BE APARTHEID STATE
"As long as in this territory, west of the Jordan River, there is only one political entity called Israel. It is going to be either non-Jewish or non-Democratic. If this block of millions of Palestinians cannot vote that will be an apartheid state.” Prime Minister Ehud Barak (as Minister of Defense) at National Security Conference, Feb 2, 2010 in Herzilya, Israel.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who was probably only expressing his disappointment at the failure of peace talks and concern for Israel's future when he warned Israelis and used the "A" word. Kerry faced a withering storm of vituperation after his speech in which he warned that if the Netanyahu government does not follow through on peace negotiations leading to a two state solution the result may be an apartheid state. Kerry's words caused a great stir in the pro-Israel US press, with knee jerk Republicans, cowardly Democrats and with the far right. Poor Mr. Kerry had to bend his tall angular frame down in abject obeisance and beg forgiveness as the Republican press, right wing radio and other attack machines went into full swing. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee called the remarks "deeply troubling". "Any suggestion that Israel is, or is at risk of becoming, an apartheid state is offensive and inappropriate," they stated, also adding, "The Jewish state is a shining light for freedom and opportunity in a region plagued by terror, hate and oppression." While Abe Foxman of the ADA, called Kerry's remarks "startling" and "repugnant language".
A little bit of research regarding the term "apartheid" turned up the fact that Secretary Kerry was not the first to use the "A" which suggests the worrisome concept ( for the Israeli's) that they are morphing into South Africa and like that nation might be forced to the bargaining table where they would have to make unwanted compromises with the Palestinians as a result of unfavorable international public opinion. The first was Ehud Barak a distinguished Israeli decorated war hero, and former Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak is no shrinking violet, he has had a distinguished military career. He joined the military in 1959 and served in the IDF for 35 years rising to position Lt. General and Chief of General Staff. He was awarded many medals and decorations for his heroic service as a commando and military officer in the too numerous battles and conflicts of his nation. He is frequently noted as the most highly decorated military man in Israeli history. He served as Prime Minister and again as Defense Minister. If war hero and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak can use the "A" word to point out the dangers of the present policy of the Netanyahu government for Israeli future and claim that Israel may become an "apartheid state" in that future, certainly others who are equally concerned about the Israel and peace in the Middle East can too.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
CIA's TOUGH GUY MICHAEL HAYDEN, CALLS FEINSTEIN "EMOTIONAL"
Appearing on Chris Wallace's Fox News last Sunday (April 6,2014) , where he was surrounded by other Fox tough guys who like to swagger behind their desks and heel-click their patent leather shoes as they support sending other people's kids to war, little Micky Haden (former CIA director under George Bush and Dick Cheney) characterized Senator Dianne Feinstein as "emotional" and her CIA torture report non-objective, though he had not even read the summary of the report.
“That sense that the motivation for the report may show deep emotional feeling on the part of (Sen. Dianne Feinstein), but I don’t think it leads you to an objective report,” Hayden said on "Fox News Sunday."
Hayden, used the "emotional female" card against Feinstein, suggesting that she could not be "objective" about torture. The catty, ad hominem attack by Hayden to Wallace's question left little Micky look looking "emotional" as he squirmed with obvious anxiety concerned that his own culpability in the torture revelations of the CIA will be exposed.
I image Haden labors under the "tough-guy-behind-the-desk" opinion that you are only a "real man", when you can order six big guys to tie down a scared, struggling individual to a gurney, then stub out cigarette butts on his bare chest, or pour water down his mouth and nose, or stick the handle of plunger up his anus, or tie electric cables to his testicles, then be able to laugh about it when he screams in agony. Yeah, maybe Diane Feinstein can't countenance such behavior, but a "real man" like little Micky Haden can do it.
Friday, April 11, 2014
OBAMA LEADS FROM BEHIND ON SENATE CIA REPORT, LETS CIA DECIDE
Obama Leads from Behind, Lets CIA Torture Advocates Decide What to Release of Senate (Torture) Report.
Today (April 11, 2014) we learn of another example of President Obama taking the lead by turning on his heel and doing a one-eighty. It was revealed today in the guardian.com, (see:“CIA and White House under pressure after Senate torture report leaks”) that Mr. Obama will let the CIA decide what portions of the Senate report (devastatingly critical of the CIA) will be revealed to the public.
The Senate Intelligence Committee under the leadership of Senator Dianne Feinstein spent years and $40 million dollars of taxpayers money to prepare the now infamous Senate report on CIA operations, misinformation policies and efficacy of torture during the Bush Years. Recent revelations by Ms. Feinstein on the floor of the Senate and leaks to the press indicate the report is highly critical of the CIA. That organization has been understandably fighting tooth and nail to suppress the report. Feinstein claims that organization has spied on, threatened and blocked her committee staffers. Admittedly those years were a time that perhaps many Americans now wish had never happened. (Though many in the USA urged the CIA on, others quietly let them get away with clearly illegal and immoral policies..Ms Feinstein among them..and the rest did not have the fortitude to stand up to voice their objections.). Somehow after 9-11 some elements in our government seem to have morphed into the very “evil doers” our uncles and fathers fought and died fighting against during the Second World War. I'm glad my uncles, one of whom was tortured by the Japanese, did not survive to to this day and have to contemplate these sad revelations. I can only imagine what he would have said.)
Senator Feinstein has urged the President to release the findings of her hard working, courageous committee expeditiously and with few redactions so that this awful “experiment with torture” could be seen for what it was---an utter failure and a moral lapse. But Mr. Obama, who too often seems to have the capacities and determination of TV characters Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza, was not up to the task. As in the Seinfeld “Cheever Letters” episode, George states (on the ease of building a log cabin) “We could do it.”; Jerry’s response: “Well maybe not us, but two men could.”
So as a result, with a President who can’t stand up to the CIA himself, but might let ”two men from the CIA do it”, it seems the public will learn next to nothing about how the CIA misled the Congress, while it tortured, renditioned and snatched unknown numbers of people off the streets of their native lands and into “black sites” around the world during the Bush war years. Obama might as well have had Mr.Brennan and his torturing co-conspirators write the report in the beginning. It would have saved the Nation $40 million dollars and the embarrassment and revelations about the shameful inner workings of the American government of the early 21st Century.
Today (April 11, 2014) we learn of another example of President Obama taking the lead by turning on his heel and doing a one-eighty. It was revealed today in the guardian.com, (see:“CIA and White House under pressure after Senate torture report leaks”) that Mr. Obama will let the CIA decide what portions of the Senate report (devastatingly critical of the CIA) will be revealed to the public.
The Senate Intelligence Committee under the leadership of Senator Dianne Feinstein spent years and $40 million dollars of taxpayers money to prepare the now infamous Senate report on CIA operations, misinformation policies and efficacy of torture during the Bush Years. Recent revelations by Ms. Feinstein on the floor of the Senate and leaks to the press indicate the report is highly critical of the CIA. That organization has been understandably fighting tooth and nail to suppress the report. Feinstein claims that organization has spied on, threatened and blocked her committee staffers. Admittedly those years were a time that perhaps many Americans now wish had never happened. (Though many in the USA urged the CIA on, others quietly let them get away with clearly illegal and immoral policies..Ms Feinstein among them..and the rest did not have the fortitude to stand up to voice their objections.). Somehow after 9-11 some elements in our government seem to have morphed into the very “evil doers” our uncles and fathers fought and died fighting against during the Second World War. I'm glad my uncles, one of whom was tortured by the Japanese, did not survive to to this day and have to contemplate these sad revelations. I can only imagine what he would have said.)
Senator Feinstein has urged the President to release the findings of her hard working, courageous committee expeditiously and with few redactions so that this awful “experiment with torture” could be seen for what it was---an utter failure and a moral lapse. But Mr. Obama, who too often seems to have the capacities and determination of TV characters Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza, was not up to the task. As in the Seinfeld “Cheever Letters” episode, George states (on the ease of building a log cabin) “We could do it.”; Jerry’s response: “Well maybe not us, but two men could.”
So as a result, with a President who can’t stand up to the CIA himself, but might let ”two men from the CIA do it”, it seems the public will learn next to nothing about how the CIA misled the Congress, while it tortured, renditioned and snatched unknown numbers of people off the streets of their native lands and into “black sites” around the world during the Bush war years. Obama might as well have had Mr.Brennan and his torturing co-conspirators write the report in the beginning. It would have saved the Nation $40 million dollars and the embarrassment and revelations about the shameful inner workings of the American government of the early 21st Century.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
SUPREMES GIVE RIGHTS TO POLLUTERS IN MCCUTCHEON DECISION
Clearing the smoke from the Recent Supreme Court Decision (Or how the supremes give the right to pollute the airways.)
The Roberts Supreme Court has misinterpreted the First Amendment to favor the fat cats... again. First there was “Citizens United” which gave the big corporations the status of individual voters. Now they have treated us to the recent McCutcheon decision which removed the caps on how much any one donor can legally give to a candidate.
The way we see things in the clear cold air from the tops of the still snowy Greens here in Vermont resolves into two basic issues. One, can money corrupt the democratic process? And two, does permitting one small elite minority (perhaps less than a thousand individuals) the ability to disperse unlimited funds into elections have the effect of drowning meaningful discourse and the voices and will of the vast majority of the the electorate?
The answer to the first question is easy. Can anyone imagine that the “quid pro quo” effect is not in operation when one donor gives millions of dollars to one party or one gang of candidates of the same party? Anyone who doubts that has only to recall how the Republican 2016 presidential “hopeful candidates” showed up at the Sheldon Adelson “primary" in Las Vegas last month, arriving on bended knees to swear allegiance to Adelson’s view of Israel, his green backs and Sheldon’s persona. That event underscored with finality how money “talks” and controls. There is no question that there is a quid pro quo and the more money involved the more powerful the effect.
The second question is analogous to the old and discredited “right” to pollute question. In my old home town of Riverhead, the original settlers raised ducks on the banks tidal rivers. The tide came in twice a day to remove the duck wastes and carry them down stream. The awful stench and suffocating pollution which made vast areas downstream, smelly, lifeless toxic zones was the problem of the poor fool who chose to live down stream of a duck farm. The wealthy and powerful old duck farmers thought it was their “right” to use “their” river as they saw fit. In like manner does the right to smoke an expensive cigar after dinner in a posh restaurant take precedence over those of other diners who would rather breathe fresh air and smell the aroma of their fragrant foods rather than that of smouldering tobacco? In this McCutcheon decision the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, in effect, awarded the paramount right to the water polluters and smokers. After McCutcheon, the rights of those who would “pollute” the election atmosphere with cash and the repetition “ad nauseum” of their opinions on the airways, drowning out opposing views and eliminating the possibility of legitimate discourse, now take precedence over the rights of those in the vast majority who may not agree or have an opposing view. To the Robert’s Court the “rights” of perhaps less than one thousand elites beats the rights of 300 million Americans to have meaningful political,discourse. Its that simple. And these men are the so-called “conservatives” who make me laugh when they tout their putative adherence to the “original intentions” of the founders. The founders would cringe at this decision.
Cash corrupts and introducing more cash corrupts more fully and effectively. The supremes of the Roberts Court have brought us back into the bad old days of the 19th and early 20 centuries when the robber barons dumped their pollution into the air and drinking water of the nation, owned and controlled the local newspaper (and the later radio stations), and openly bought their Congressman and Senator.....and who were convinced it was their God given right to do so.
The Roberts Supreme Court has misinterpreted the First Amendment to favor the fat cats... again. First there was “Citizens United” which gave the big corporations the status of individual voters. Now they have treated us to the recent McCutcheon decision which removed the caps on how much any one donor can legally give to a candidate.
The way we see things in the clear cold air from the tops of the still snowy Greens here in Vermont resolves into two basic issues. One, can money corrupt the democratic process? And two, does permitting one small elite minority (perhaps less than a thousand individuals) the ability to disperse unlimited funds into elections have the effect of drowning meaningful discourse and the voices and will of the vast majority of the the electorate?
The answer to the first question is easy. Can anyone imagine that the “quid pro quo” effect is not in operation when one donor gives millions of dollars to one party or one gang of candidates of the same party? Anyone who doubts that has only to recall how the Republican 2016 presidential “hopeful candidates” showed up at the Sheldon Adelson “primary" in Las Vegas last month, arriving on bended knees to swear allegiance to Adelson’s view of Israel, his green backs and Sheldon’s persona. That event underscored with finality how money “talks” and controls. There is no question that there is a quid pro quo and the more money involved the more powerful the effect.
The second question is analogous to the old and discredited “right” to pollute question. In my old home town of Riverhead, the original settlers raised ducks on the banks tidal rivers. The tide came in twice a day to remove the duck wastes and carry them down stream. The awful stench and suffocating pollution which made vast areas downstream, smelly, lifeless toxic zones was the problem of the poor fool who chose to live down stream of a duck farm. The wealthy and powerful old duck farmers thought it was their “right” to use “their” river as they saw fit. In like manner does the right to smoke an expensive cigar after dinner in a posh restaurant take precedence over those of other diners who would rather breathe fresh air and smell the aroma of their fragrant foods rather than that of smouldering tobacco? In this McCutcheon decision the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, in effect, awarded the paramount right to the water polluters and smokers. After McCutcheon, the rights of those who would “pollute” the election atmosphere with cash and the repetition “ad nauseum” of their opinions on the airways, drowning out opposing views and eliminating the possibility of legitimate discourse, now take precedence over the rights of those in the vast majority who may not agree or have an opposing view. To the Robert’s Court the “rights” of perhaps less than one thousand elites beats the rights of 300 million Americans to have meaningful political,discourse. Its that simple. And these men are the so-called “conservatives” who make me laugh when they tout their putative adherence to the “original intentions” of the founders. The founders would cringe at this decision.
Cash corrupts and introducing more cash corrupts more fully and effectively. The supremes of the Roberts Court have brought us back into the bad old days of the 19th and early 20 centuries when the robber barons dumped their pollution into the air and drinking water of the nation, owned and controlled the local newspaper (and the later radio stations), and openly bought their Congressman and Senator.....and who were convinced it was their God given right to do so.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
GOV. CHRISTIE APOLOGIES IN LAS VEGAS, LOSES CACHET
A RJKS Tongue-In-Cheek Report.
Governor Christie Apologies To Flat Earthers and Loses His Tough-Guy, Straight-Shooter Cachet
Governor Chris Christie, "mis spoke" at the Las Vegas gambling palace of super wealthy Vegas tycoon and casino owner Sheldon Nobelson. Nobelson was hosting the Republican Flat Earth Coalition where GOP supplicants were gathered to vie for the flat earther's financial support in the 2016 campaign During his presentation, Christie, trying to re-float his swamped electoral canoe after the devastating "GW Bridge traffic tie-up scandal" got himself in bad doo doo again, when he verbally slipped when suggesting that the earth might be a sphere. Christie's speech was an attempt to underscore his strong commitment to the planar earth theory by recounting the events of a 2012 family sea voyage. Christie, waxing eloquent, added a short digression from his prepared remarks intending to underscore his devotion to the widely-questioned “earther” hypothesis. Christie remarked at one point that even though "he was far out to sea, he didn't fall off the edge". But a murmur of disapproval arose among his listeners when, attempting to gild the lilly, he added the further remark that he was "so far out to sea, that he lost sight of land". At that point, a low murmur arose among the fur-coated and bejeweled crowd who shifted around in their seats and looked at each other in disapproval. The term "losing sight of land" is verboten among flat earthers, since the phrase suggests that the earth is actually spheroidal and it is only upon such a surface that the sight of land could diminish then disappear. Such terms are banned in the world of the flat earthers.
Allies of Mr Nobleson quickly caught up to Christie after his presentation and alerted him of his error. According to reporters from the Washington Times, National Review, Spectator, The New American who were attendees, Christie immediately sought out Nobelson and offered him an apology, claiming that he "misspoke". "The earth IS really flat. I believe that in my heart!” said Christie, some said, with tears in his eyes. Mr. Nobelson is reported to have "graciously" accepted the governor's apology. But, Sallus Little, one of the Nobleson's entourage, was not so satisfied with the governor's apology, even if if was delivered on bended knee. Little concluded to reporters that the Governor "either does not understand the issue or is hostile to the flat earth agenda."
The whole affair brings disappointment and trepidation for those of us who saw the Governor as a courageous, straight-shooter who could speak out and tell it like it is. He was so up front, blunt and one might even say a bully, with the likes of school teachers, voters, Jersey Shore residents and others who had little power or leverage. But he was a mumbling schoolboy, unable to state the accepted facts to the flat earthers. Of course these latter were all sitting on wallets bulging with cash. The affair in Las Vegas makes the rest of us, who accept the world as it is, wonder about the ability of the Governor to function effectively in a solar-centric planetary system and scientific based universe. One wonders is Mr. Christie ready for prime time? And what about his ability to make decisions for all the rest of us, the not so wealthy, the powerless, the majority who live in the real world?
Get the picture?
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
OBAMA WANTS US TO PAY FOR HIS MISTAKES IN THE UKRAINE!
President Obama and the Bush neocon holdovers in his State Department and CIA, blundered in their handling of the Ukraine dossier. The US and the EU overplayed their hand in their illegal and counter productive attempts at prying the Ukraine away from the hug of the great Russian Bear--which lives right next door. Their blunders led to the crisis in the Ukraine we face now. In an attempt to save face, as this crisis unfolds, the Obamians, who should have known better (it was quite obvious what Putin would do in regard to Crimea if he was pushed into a corner), are now attempting to placate the unhappy House and Senate left and right...by senseless and counter productive sanctions, fleet movements, saber rattlings, and vituperation.
But what is worse is having to PAY for the stupidity of our leaders too. Funds spent on the Ukraine come out of an already over the top budget...so the money has to borrowed. It means less for educating our kids, repairing our infrastructure and providing for the health of our citizenry. So as it stands now Mr. Obama and company are asking us to take scarce funds from those worthy and necessary expenditures and send it off the the impoverished Ukraine. A black hole for money if I ever saw one. Ask Mr. Obama to turn his attention to the home front. We have Americans as needy as the Ukrainians right here in Peru, Vermont.
Get the picture?
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
CRIMEA: RUSSIAN ATTEMPTS AT REGIME CHANGE IN MEXICO
IMAGINING THE TABLES TURNED ON THE USA. HOW WOULD WE RESPOND?
There has been unrest in Mexico City, where anti-government demonstrators have been camped in the Plaza Central for several weeks. The demonstrations and counter measures by the government have recently turned violent. Twelve indigenous people and two Mezitos were killed when gunfire erupted from the demonstrators and government troops sent to evict the demonstrators from their encampments returned fire. The conflict centers around the opposition of Mexico’s indigenous populations to what they describe as “overly pro-American” anti-native polices and the questionable “financial ties” of President Orlando O’Ryan-Gutierrez to American interests. O’Ryan-Gutierrez, the scion of an American-Mexican family has been in power for the last six years. O’Ryan- Gutierrez’ recent decision to permit the American Company, Ryan Holdings LLC of San Antonio Texas to evict natives and small scale farmers from their land to exploit, vast areas of Mexican natural gas reserves in the southern states of Veracruz and Oaxaca, became the flashpoint incident which set off the original demonstrations.
Gutierrez and his supporters claim that the demonstrations are being incited and supported by foreign interests. They specifically point to Gazprom, the giant state-owned Russian natural gas company, as an instigator. Gazprom is openly supported by Russian-government “KGB” elements who have been actively involved in inciting and supporting anti- government demonstrators. These Russian infiltrators have carried literally carloads of rubles to Mexico where they are converted to Mexican Pesos and passed out to the most violent type of demonstrators. These foreign funds are also used to purchase damaging anti government propaganda. Russian Parliamentarians, Duma members and other officials have actually flown in to Mexico City to encourage and support the demonstrators. A leaked telephone conversation from a Russian agent to the notorious KGB operative, Виктория Ηоваяземля operating in Mexico City, revealed that Ηоваяземля was supplying money, food, tents and even Kalashnikov weapons to the demonstrators. (Ηоваяземля is a well-known former KGB agent who is a supporter of violence and regime change in other countries. Ηоваяземля while in Mexico uses the Spanish “nom de guerre” "Nuevatierra"). Intercepted messages sent by “Nuevatierra” to her handlers in Moscow also revealed that the ultimate goal of the infiltrators from Moscow was to delegitimize, undermine, and remove the pro-American Gutierrez government and replace it with a pro-Russian regime. The new pro-Russian client state is expected to be more compliant to Russian directives. The new Mexican government would distance Mexico from its military commitments to the USA and direct it into the financial and political sphere of Russia.
These events in Mexico have caused great fear and consternation in Washington. Such an outcome is seen within the Beltway as an existential threat to our nation. Military experts in Washington reveal that were this regime-change to take place, literally right on our doorstep, it would have drastic financial effects on the USA, and likely deepen our present economic downturn. Furthermore, if Russia were able to establish a home-port for its new submarine fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, they could literally threaten Washington DC and all US financial centers with their new Dolphin Class sea-to-land rockets.
Mexico is an important element of the USA’s sphere of influence, both politically and economically. Fifty percent of Mexico's foreign trade is with the USA. It is a political ally, as well as a source of massive profits to US and US-based industries, such as those of the electronics, automotive and petroleum sectors. The President and his cabinet shivered at the prospect of these sectors falling away from the grasp of Americans and into the hands of a foreign power. President Obama has been meeting with his cabinet and military planners in secret sessions in the sub-sub-basement war room. They are very puzzled why Russia would be so unthinking and so unaware of the consequences of their actions. Surely the Russians should have known that such threatening behaviors were likely to generate a firm response. How did they think they could get away with it?
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MEXICO CRISISf
The massive demonstrations in Mexico City have taken a bad turn. In the face of increasingly violent acts of civil unrest, the legitimately elected President of Mexico, Orlando O. Gutierrez, has fled that City and taken refuge over the border in San Antonio, Texas. From there he has repeated again and again to US news outlets that he is still the legitimate president of Mexico. However, the indigenous rebels, with support from Russia have actually taken over all of the government buildings in Mexico, City. They have the central radio and TV stations and have posted armed men with Kalashnikov assault rifles at the train stations and airports.
Many Americans living in the retirement communities throughout Mexico are calling for help from their government in Washington. Cell phone lines are hot with calls to the US. Smartphone videos of atrocities against pro-American elements in Mexico have gone viral on the internet. Heart-rending pictures of of tired, elderly Americans with their pets and baggage queuing up at the now-closed air terminals have aroused great consternation in the USA and Washington. Congressmen have called on the President to act. Senators are giving table thumping speeches. The President has set aside some prime time on television for a speech to the nation.
MORE REPORTS FROM MEXICO
Yesterday, without warning, the USA launched an attack on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. The president asserted he had no choice but to protect the lives and interests of American citizens caught in the civil unrest. In a long speech to the nation he pointed out the dangers of having a “foreign nation” so close to our borders. He revealed that he had sent a task force to protect our Gulf of Mexico from foreign intrusion. As he spoke, helicopter gunships from the USS flattop “Jimmy Carter” lying off the Yucatan peninsula, landed troops simultaneously at the shore sites of Cancun, Progresso, and Campeche located all along the north shore of the Yucatan. The US forces landed safely and were met with no resistance. The mostly happy and inebriated American tourists in these venues greeted the US troopers with with cold bottles of Dos Equis, opened bottles of tequila with salt and lemon wedges and frosty mojitas. Troops landing at the coastal enclave of Progresso moved quickly inland to take the largest city in the Peninsula, Merida without incident. President Obama’s actions were widely and jubilantly hailed as necessary and expedient. Vehicles all over the nation were seen sporting the Stars and Stripes taped to their radio antennae. Praise for Obama has flooded in from all over the nation. Obama’s poll numbers have soared. He has protected the nation from a terrible threat.
Mexico and the rest of South America complained to the OAS....but there was little that that organization could do.
Today local news outlets report that the shallow-sea way between Isla Mujeres and Cancun City was being dredged to prepare a secure harbor facility for the Jimmy Carter” and some of the larger American ships. A land based port facility was bing built in Cancun to supply the new dock areas designated for large military vessels. In the interior of the Peninsula it is reported from journalists that a vast forest clearing project was under way in the central Yucatan for a large US “embassy” and military installation. The new facility is to be called “Freedom Peninsula”.
Get the picture?
There has been unrest in Mexico City, where anti-government demonstrators have been camped in the Plaza Central for several weeks. The demonstrations and counter measures by the government have recently turned violent. Twelve indigenous people and two Mezitos were killed when gunfire erupted from the demonstrators and government troops sent to evict the demonstrators from their encampments returned fire. The conflict centers around the opposition of Mexico’s indigenous populations to what they describe as “overly pro-American” anti-native polices and the questionable “financial ties” of President Orlando O’Ryan-Gutierrez to American interests. O’Ryan-Gutierrez, the scion of an American-Mexican family has been in power for the last six years. O’Ryan- Gutierrez’ recent decision to permit the American Company, Ryan Holdings LLC of San Antonio Texas to evict natives and small scale farmers from their land to exploit, vast areas of Mexican natural gas reserves in the southern states of Veracruz and Oaxaca, became the flashpoint incident which set off the original demonstrations.
Gutierrez and his supporters claim that the demonstrations are being incited and supported by foreign interests. They specifically point to Gazprom, the giant state-owned Russian natural gas company, as an instigator. Gazprom is openly supported by Russian-government “KGB” elements who have been actively involved in inciting and supporting anti- government demonstrators. These Russian infiltrators have carried literally carloads of rubles to Mexico where they are converted to Mexican Pesos and passed out to the most violent type of demonstrators. These foreign funds are also used to purchase damaging anti government propaganda. Russian Parliamentarians, Duma members and other officials have actually flown in to Mexico City to encourage and support the demonstrators. A leaked telephone conversation from a Russian agent to the notorious KGB operative, Виктория Ηоваяземля operating in Mexico City, revealed that Ηоваяземля was supplying money, food, tents and even Kalashnikov weapons to the demonstrators. (Ηоваяземля is a well-known former KGB agent who is a supporter of violence and regime change in other countries. Ηоваяземля while in Mexico uses the Spanish “nom de guerre” "Nuevatierra"). Intercepted messages sent by “Nuevatierra” to her handlers in Moscow also revealed that the ultimate goal of the infiltrators from Moscow was to delegitimize, undermine, and remove the pro-American Gutierrez government and replace it with a pro-Russian regime. The new pro-Russian client state is expected to be more compliant to Russian directives. The new Mexican government would distance Mexico from its military commitments to the USA and direct it into the financial and political sphere of Russia.
These events in Mexico have caused great fear and consternation in Washington. Such an outcome is seen within the Beltway as an existential threat to our nation. Military experts in Washington reveal that were this regime-change to take place, literally right on our doorstep, it would have drastic financial effects on the USA, and likely deepen our present economic downturn. Furthermore, if Russia were able to establish a home-port for its new submarine fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, they could literally threaten Washington DC and all US financial centers with their new Dolphin Class sea-to-land rockets.
Mexico is an important element of the USA’s sphere of influence, both politically and economically. Fifty percent of Mexico's foreign trade is with the USA. It is a political ally, as well as a source of massive profits to US and US-based industries, such as those of the electronics, automotive and petroleum sectors. The President and his cabinet shivered at the prospect of these sectors falling away from the grasp of Americans and into the hands of a foreign power. President Obama has been meeting with his cabinet and military planners in secret sessions in the sub-sub-basement war room. They are very puzzled why Russia would be so unthinking and so unaware of the consequences of their actions. Surely the Russians should have known that such threatening behaviors were likely to generate a firm response. How did they think they could get away with it?
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MEXICO CRISISf
The massive demonstrations in Mexico City have taken a bad turn. In the face of increasingly violent acts of civil unrest, the legitimately elected President of Mexico, Orlando O. Gutierrez, has fled that City and taken refuge over the border in San Antonio, Texas. From there he has repeated again and again to US news outlets that he is still the legitimate president of Mexico. However, the indigenous rebels, with support from Russia have actually taken over all of the government buildings in Mexico, City. They have the central radio and TV stations and have posted armed men with Kalashnikov assault rifles at the train stations and airports.
Many Americans living in the retirement communities throughout Mexico are calling for help from their government in Washington. Cell phone lines are hot with calls to the US. Smartphone videos of atrocities against pro-American elements in Mexico have gone viral on the internet. Heart-rending pictures of of tired, elderly Americans with their pets and baggage queuing up at the now-closed air terminals have aroused great consternation in the USA and Washington. Congressmen have called on the President to act. Senators are giving table thumping speeches. The President has set aside some prime time on television for a speech to the nation.
MORE REPORTS FROM MEXICO
Yesterday, without warning, the USA launched an attack on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. The president asserted he had no choice but to protect the lives and interests of American citizens caught in the civil unrest. In a long speech to the nation he pointed out the dangers of having a “foreign nation” so close to our borders. He revealed that he had sent a task force to protect our Gulf of Mexico from foreign intrusion. As he spoke, helicopter gunships from the USS flattop “Jimmy Carter” lying off the Yucatan peninsula, landed troops simultaneously at the shore sites of Cancun, Progresso, and Campeche located all along the north shore of the Yucatan. The US forces landed safely and were met with no resistance. The mostly happy and inebriated American tourists in these venues greeted the US troopers with with cold bottles of Dos Equis, opened bottles of tequila with salt and lemon wedges and frosty mojitas. Troops landing at the coastal enclave of Progresso moved quickly inland to take the largest city in the Peninsula, Merida without incident. President Obama’s actions were widely and jubilantly hailed as necessary and expedient. Vehicles all over the nation were seen sporting the Stars and Stripes taped to their radio antennae. Praise for Obama has flooded in from all over the nation. Obama’s poll numbers have soared. He has protected the nation from a terrible threat.
Mexico and the rest of South America complained to the OAS....but there was little that that organization could do.
Today local news outlets report that the shallow-sea way between Isla Mujeres and Cancun City was being dredged to prepare a secure harbor facility for the Jimmy Carter” and some of the larger American ships. A land based port facility was bing built in Cancun to supply the new dock areas designated for large military vessels. In the interior of the Peninsula it is reported from journalists that a vast forest clearing project was under way in the central Yucatan for a large US “embassy” and military installation. The new facility is to be called “Freedom Peninsula”.
Get the picture?
Friday, March 14, 2014
OBAMA MUST SACK BRENNAN
TIME FOR BRENNAN TO GO!
"It (policies initiated and supported by Mr. Brennan) goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country*"
*US Senator Paul Rand, on floor of Senate during filibuster against Mr. Brennan's nomination as CIA director.
In my view, Mr. Brennan, is another one of the unfortunate "hold-overs" from the Bush Administration. Like some others of his vintage, he has become more of a threat to our Democracy than the bulwark against terror he claims to be. He serves at President Obama's discretion. But his past history and recent actions should make it clear to the White House that it is time for Mr. Brennan's departure.
Mr. Brennan has an unfortunate similarity to disgraced former President Nixon. Like Tricky Dick, the only President to have had to resign from office, Mr. Brennan's long training as a CIA operative, has left him tinged with a nixonian paranoia that does not serve him or the nation he serves well, at a time when the USA is attempting to pull itself away from an errant and violent past. And like Mr. Nixon, he has an unfortunate willingness to break the law or norms of morality if these serve his ambition, or those of his superiors. These are two dangerous tendencies for a supposed servant of the PEOPLE in a Democracy. They led to Nixon's utter disgrace and downfall. Evidence now on display about Brennan seem to suggest a similar path.
Let us recall that Mr. John O. Brennan organized and publicly supported the CIA torture policies and the rendition of resistant suspects to foreign countries where they would be tortured in an even more brutal manner. Due to these and other activities in the CIA his reputation only two years ago was such that he could not be confirmed by the Senate. President Obama skirted that stumbling block by setting him up in the position of "chief counter terrorism advisor", a position which did not need confirmation. In Obama's second term he was confirmed. Mr. Brennan has been cited in the past for using terms and phrases which suggest he believes his mission is a holy war against Islam. He has been the architect and supporter of President Obama's highly criticized and questionable use of targeted assassinations by drone. He is responsible for efforts to intensify the militarization of the CIA into a "uncontrolled and secrete" organization designed to terrorize and assassinate enemies of the state. He was the architect of the expansion of the drone assassination program into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, initiating world condemnation of the USA and concern about our adherence to international law and standards, and of the legality, morality and effectiveness of these efforts. He helped establish and organize the "kill list" of individuals outside of the congressionally authorized war zone for assassination by drone. He is the architect of a more permanent secret system known as the "Disposition Matrix" which is a permanent secret "tool" of the executive branch designed to track, capture, render to another venue for torture, or kill enemies of the state. His efforts during his long career have been to dangerously concentrate lethal power in the executive branch and at the same time to discourage oversight of that power, giving the executive ability to incriminate, judge, target, and execute anyone it considered an "enemy"...regardless of where that person resided in the world or even if he or she was a US citizen.
There are numerous examples of Mr. Brennan's deceptions, half truths and perversions of the truth. In his profession disinformation and prevarications are the stock and trade. One example: In a June 2011 speech Brennan made the jaw-dropping assertion that "there had not been a single collateral death in more than 100 CIA covert drone strikes in Pakistan". But he made that statement only three months after the CIA had rained drone missiles down on what the CIA claimed was a militant's camp, but what turned out to be a gathering of tribal leaders--a tribal council-- conducting a hearing over a mining dispute in North Waziristan. The CIA strikes killed 45 innocent men. Brennan late claimed he did not dissimulate. He was able to claim "zero collateral kills" as a result of the way the CIA counts "kills". Since all the 45 individuals were men between the ages of 12 and 65, they were all defined as "militants" and therefore legitimate targets! This is an insight into how Mr. Brennan thinks and operates.
Senator Rand Paul in his filibuster speech in the Senate stated that in effect: the thrust of Mr. Brennan's efforts in the last decades and as Director of the CIA has resulted in a process in which the chief executive can charge an individual, judge the guilt of that person and execute him or her with no oversight by Congress. He concluded that " it goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country."
Is it now such a surprise that this same individual is accused of a "flat out treason" ( by Representative Darrel Issa, chair, House Oversight Committee) for turning his organization's spooks against the Congress itself when it spied on the Senate intelligence Committee?
Two days ago, on March 11, 2014 the Washington Post reported on an extraordinary speech from the floor of the US Senate. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee openly accused the CIA under Mr. Brennan of "secretly removing documents, searching (Senate staff) computers used by the committee, and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct." Feinstein called the conflict with Brennan a "defining moment" for Congressional ability to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies. This author believes that if there is no meaningful oversight of our executive branch, we then no longer have a democracy. What we have is some form of phony "elected oligarchy". Feinstein warned that she had grave concerns that the CIA had violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution. Mr. Brennan quickly denied the validity of Senator Feinstein's charges. But this is a man who also stated with a straight face that there were "zero collateral kills after 100 drone strikes in Pakistan". I suspect that he was applying another one of his Jesuitical semanticisms. Or was it a simple prevarication?
The background behind this outburst of Senate ire is related to the long-running investigation conducted by the Senate intelligence Committee into the conduct of the CIA, during the Bush Administration post 9-11. The CIA and the Senate Committee are at odds about the long-awaited document that is being produced by Feinstein's committee. The committee's report will soon be delivered to the White House where it may remain...in a classified state ---unless President Obama gets up the cohones to release it to the public. Let's hope he does. We all deserve to know what Brennan and his CIA employees have been doing( besides burning tapes of torture procedures)..and not doing, in the name of the people.
What we do know now, based on revelations from Senator Feinstein's speech, and earlier revelations, is that the CIA and the committee disagree over the conclusions of the nearly completed 6000 page report which concerns what the CIA did and did not do to Al Qaida suspects, how the CIA tortured and how they transported these individuals to other countries (rendition) where even more excessive and brutal procedures were used. Brennan would obviously like to prevent this missive from seeing the light of day. He has apparently been doing his best to sabotage committee efforts and prevent it being published. What else would you expect? Mr. Brennan was himself an architect of the very procedures that are only now becoming public knowledge. We can expect that the report will make this clear. According to Feinstein, the torture and rendition policy was far worse than was originally revealed and a horrible example of procedures and policies that should never have been permitted to occur.
Finally, let me say this. This critically important story is indeed a turning point in our nation'a history. How it plays out will establish what kind of a nation we really are. It has also revealed the errors of Mr. Obama's policies. Our President won his first election handily and the electorate expected and deserved a change in the government's direction and policies. It sought and required a clean sweep of the elements of the Bush Administration, and the prosecution and punishment of those (Mr. Brennan among them) who broke the laws. But what we got was a motley crew. The new administration was a mix of progressive men and women mixed in with a cadre of hard-core holdovers from the discredited Bush and Clinton Administrations. As a consequence, Mr.Obama, morphed into a intellectual, dark skinned "Bush light" with better oratory. This new president obviously did not have the experience, political skill, or stomach for the confrontations that were required to take the reins of the nation in a new direction as was his mandate from both elections. He has as a result, weakened the people who supported him, his country, and his party. Perhaps he should have never run.....
Of course, we can always hope. He still has years left. Can he still become the transformative president he wanted to be?
He could start by sacking Brennan.
"It (policies initiated and supported by Mr. Brennan) goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country*"
*US Senator Paul Rand, on floor of Senate during filibuster against Mr. Brennan's nomination as CIA director.
In my view, Mr. Brennan, is another one of the unfortunate "hold-overs" from the Bush Administration. Like some others of his vintage, he has become more of a threat to our Democracy than the bulwark against terror he claims to be. He serves at President Obama's discretion. But his past history and recent actions should make it clear to the White House that it is time for Mr. Brennan's departure.
Mr. Brennan has an unfortunate similarity to disgraced former President Nixon. Like Tricky Dick, the only President to have had to resign from office, Mr. Brennan's long training as a CIA operative, has left him tinged with a nixonian paranoia that does not serve him or the nation he serves well, at a time when the USA is attempting to pull itself away from an errant and violent past. And like Mr. Nixon, he has an unfortunate willingness to break the law or norms of morality if these serve his ambition, or those of his superiors. These are two dangerous tendencies for a supposed servant of the PEOPLE in a Democracy. They led to Nixon's utter disgrace and downfall. Evidence now on display about Brennan seem to suggest a similar path.
Let us recall that Mr. John O. Brennan organized and publicly supported the CIA torture policies and the rendition of resistant suspects to foreign countries where they would be tortured in an even more brutal manner. Due to these and other activities in the CIA his reputation only two years ago was such that he could not be confirmed by the Senate. President Obama skirted that stumbling block by setting him up in the position of "chief counter terrorism advisor", a position which did not need confirmation. In Obama's second term he was confirmed. Mr. Brennan has been cited in the past for using terms and phrases which suggest he believes his mission is a holy war against Islam. He has been the architect and supporter of President Obama's highly criticized and questionable use of targeted assassinations by drone. He is responsible for efforts to intensify the militarization of the CIA into a "uncontrolled and secrete" organization designed to terrorize and assassinate enemies of the state. He was the architect of the expansion of the drone assassination program into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, initiating world condemnation of the USA and concern about our adherence to international law and standards, and of the legality, morality and effectiveness of these efforts. He helped establish and organize the "kill list" of individuals outside of the congressionally authorized war zone for assassination by drone. He is the architect of a more permanent secret system known as the "Disposition Matrix" which is a permanent secret "tool" of the executive branch designed to track, capture, render to another venue for torture, or kill enemies of the state. His efforts during his long career have been to dangerously concentrate lethal power in the executive branch and at the same time to discourage oversight of that power, giving the executive ability to incriminate, judge, target, and execute anyone it considered an "enemy"...regardless of where that person resided in the world or even if he or she was a US citizen.
There are numerous examples of Mr. Brennan's deceptions, half truths and perversions of the truth. In his profession disinformation and prevarications are the stock and trade. One example: In a June 2011 speech Brennan made the jaw-dropping assertion that "there had not been a single collateral death in more than 100 CIA covert drone strikes in Pakistan". But he made that statement only three months after the CIA had rained drone missiles down on what the CIA claimed was a militant's camp, but what turned out to be a gathering of tribal leaders--a tribal council-- conducting a hearing over a mining dispute in North Waziristan. The CIA strikes killed 45 innocent men. Brennan late claimed he did not dissimulate. He was able to claim "zero collateral kills" as a result of the way the CIA counts "kills". Since all the 45 individuals were men between the ages of 12 and 65, they were all defined as "militants" and therefore legitimate targets! This is an insight into how Mr. Brennan thinks and operates.
Senator Rand Paul in his filibuster speech in the Senate stated that in effect: the thrust of Mr. Brennan's efforts in the last decades and as Director of the CIA has resulted in a process in which the chief executive can charge an individual, judge the guilt of that person and execute him or her with no oversight by Congress. He concluded that " it goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country."
Is it now such a surprise that this same individual is accused of a "flat out treason" ( by Representative Darrel Issa, chair, House Oversight Committee) for turning his organization's spooks against the Congress itself when it spied on the Senate intelligence Committee?
Two days ago, on March 11, 2014 the Washington Post reported on an extraordinary speech from the floor of the US Senate. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee openly accused the CIA under Mr. Brennan of "secretly removing documents, searching (Senate staff) computers used by the committee, and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct." Feinstein called the conflict with Brennan a "defining moment" for Congressional ability to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies. This author believes that if there is no meaningful oversight of our executive branch, we then no longer have a democracy. What we have is some form of phony "elected oligarchy". Feinstein warned that she had grave concerns that the CIA had violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution. Mr. Brennan quickly denied the validity of Senator Feinstein's charges. But this is a man who also stated with a straight face that there were "zero collateral kills after 100 drone strikes in Pakistan". I suspect that he was applying another one of his Jesuitical semanticisms. Or was it a simple prevarication?
The background behind this outburst of Senate ire is related to the long-running investigation conducted by the Senate intelligence Committee into the conduct of the CIA, during the Bush Administration post 9-11. The CIA and the Senate Committee are at odds about the long-awaited document that is being produced by Feinstein's committee. The committee's report will soon be delivered to the White House where it may remain...in a classified state ---unless President Obama gets up the cohones to release it to the public. Let's hope he does. We all deserve to know what Brennan and his CIA employees have been doing( besides burning tapes of torture procedures)..and not doing, in the name of the people.
What we do know now, based on revelations from Senator Feinstein's speech, and earlier revelations, is that the CIA and the committee disagree over the conclusions of the nearly completed 6000 page report which concerns what the CIA did and did not do to Al Qaida suspects, how the CIA tortured and how they transported these individuals to other countries (rendition) where even more excessive and brutal procedures were used. Brennan would obviously like to prevent this missive from seeing the light of day. He has apparently been doing his best to sabotage committee efforts and prevent it being published. What else would you expect? Mr. Brennan was himself an architect of the very procedures that are only now becoming public knowledge. We can expect that the report will make this clear. According to Feinstein, the torture and rendition policy was far worse than was originally revealed and a horrible example of procedures and policies that should never have been permitted to occur.
Finally, let me say this. This critically important story is indeed a turning point in our nation'a history. How it plays out will establish what kind of a nation we really are. It has also revealed the errors of Mr. Obama's policies. Our President won his first election handily and the electorate expected and deserved a change in the government's direction and policies. It sought and required a clean sweep of the elements of the Bush Administration, and the prosecution and punishment of those (Mr. Brennan among them) who broke the laws. But what we got was a motley crew. The new administration was a mix of progressive men and women mixed in with a cadre of hard-core holdovers from the discredited Bush and Clinton Administrations. As a consequence, Mr.Obama, morphed into a intellectual, dark skinned "Bush light" with better oratory. This new president obviously did not have the experience, political skill, or stomach for the confrontations that were required to take the reins of the nation in a new direction as was his mandate from both elections. He has as a result, weakened the people who supported him, his country, and his party. Perhaps he should have never run.....
Of course, we can always hope. He still has years left. Can he still become the transformative president he wanted to be?
He could start by sacking Brennan.
Monday, March 10, 2014
UKRAINE CRISIS: US MEDDLING NOT PUTIN TO BLAME
The view from up here in the snow-covered Green Mountains of Vermont is much at odds with what we read and hear from the media in rest of the nation. The news outlets are all rushing to make a Hitler out of Mr.Putin. Well don't agree, but we don't go around much up here with our jeeps and SUVs draped in the Stars and Stripes either. Not that we wouldn't protect what is ours and what’s best for the nation. Maybe it's the clear cold air...and the isolation that permits a person more time to think things over.
In the "Greens" we are not so happy with Mr.Obama’s recent Ukraine foreign policy. How we see it is this. First of all we didn't like his meddling in the internal affairs of that nation. He and his out-of control-CIA and the left-over neocons in the State Department from the failed Bush Administration went a step to far in their efforts to destabilize the Yanukovych middle-of-the-road government and replace it with a hand picked, pro- US, pro-western one. That might seem like a worthy cause to some. But given the geography, history and population of that nation, it was a dumb policy and one that was bound for obvious failure. The Obamaans should have known that.
Given the population of Ukraine, much of its russophone population is in the south and east, and many natives are sympathetic to Russia and fearful of losing their jobs in the event that nation was to hitch up with the EU. In addition, the prospect of another NATO-run entity bristling with armaments right on Russia’s doorstep made Putin squirm. With these and other facts the prospects of a successful US led coup..was not very likely and would likely just stir up dissension and cause a lot of bloodshed. In fact more than 77 people died on both sides in Kiev, partly as a result of US meddling. It looks to me like the original plan--for it was a US plan--was a step too far. Clearly it was overreaching. This by the uncertain Obama administration and the unsophisticated fringe elements in the State Department who view meddling in the affairs of another nation, regardless of the damage done, as simply part of their mandate. The vulgar “F--k the EU” comment by Ms.Nuland of State revealed just how over the top, deeply committed and involved the USA was in generating this coup.
Mr. Putin's response to US meddling on his doorstep and attempts at closing off his vital access to a warm water harbor, were readily predictable. Wiser more sophisticated leadership in Washington should have foreseen the dangers of their foolhardy “shoot from the hip” policy. The result was the Crimea takeover by Mr. Putin that left Mr. Obama and his gang of neophytes flatfooted---again. It is Mr. Putin who seems to be the much better chess player. Obama has again exposed his weaknesses to the world. Mr. Putin is probably secretly blowing kisses to our man in the White House, since he would not have been able to move into the Crimea as he has without Mr.Obama’s unwitting help.
In this dangerous game between the US and Russia the EU is (wisely) a less-than-avid player who has much to loose economically. Russia supplies it with much of its oil and gas and in turn purchases much of its manufactured goods. One would think that the EU would or should have learned its lesson after being sucked in by the US into the economic and military morass of Iraq and Afghanistan. My advice to the those in Brussels is this...start thinking on your own and stop letting Washington lead you by the nose. The neophytes inside of the Beltway do not know what they are doing. There has to be wiser more sophisticated and adult leadership somewhere in Europe. Also, its time to drop the UK! Cameron and his ilk are just a stalking horse for US interests. Wise up EU. Just say “NO” to the next dumb plan the US presents to you. More leadership from Brussels might just make the world a safer better place for us all.
In the "Greens" we are not so happy with Mr.Obama’s recent Ukraine foreign policy. How we see it is this. First of all we didn't like his meddling in the internal affairs of that nation. He and his out-of control-CIA and the left-over neocons in the State Department from the failed Bush Administration went a step to far in their efforts to destabilize the Yanukovych middle-of-the-road government and replace it with a hand picked, pro- US, pro-western one. That might seem like a worthy cause to some. But given the geography, history and population of that nation, it was a dumb policy and one that was bound for obvious failure. The Obamaans should have known that.
Given the population of Ukraine, much of its russophone population is in the south and east, and many natives are sympathetic to Russia and fearful of losing their jobs in the event that nation was to hitch up with the EU. In addition, the prospect of another NATO-run entity bristling with armaments right on Russia’s doorstep made Putin squirm. With these and other facts the prospects of a successful US led coup..was not very likely and would likely just stir up dissension and cause a lot of bloodshed. In fact more than 77 people died on both sides in Kiev, partly as a result of US meddling. It looks to me like the original plan--for it was a US plan--was a step too far. Clearly it was overreaching. This by the uncertain Obama administration and the unsophisticated fringe elements in the State Department who view meddling in the affairs of another nation, regardless of the damage done, as simply part of their mandate. The vulgar “F--k the EU” comment by Ms.Nuland of State revealed just how over the top, deeply committed and involved the USA was in generating this coup.
Mr. Putin's response to US meddling on his doorstep and attempts at closing off his vital access to a warm water harbor, were readily predictable. Wiser more sophisticated leadership in Washington should have foreseen the dangers of their foolhardy “shoot from the hip” policy. The result was the Crimea takeover by Mr. Putin that left Mr. Obama and his gang of neophytes flatfooted---again. It is Mr. Putin who seems to be the much better chess player. Obama has again exposed his weaknesses to the world. Mr. Putin is probably secretly blowing kisses to our man in the White House, since he would not have been able to move into the Crimea as he has without Mr.Obama’s unwitting help.
In this dangerous game between the US and Russia the EU is (wisely) a less-than-avid player who has much to loose economically. Russia supplies it with much of its oil and gas and in turn purchases much of its manufactured goods. One would think that the EU would or should have learned its lesson after being sucked in by the US into the economic and military morass of Iraq and Afghanistan. My advice to the those in Brussels is this...start thinking on your own and stop letting Washington lead you by the nose. The neophytes inside of the Beltway do not know what they are doing. There has to be wiser more sophisticated and adult leadership somewhere in Europe. Also, its time to drop the UK! Cameron and his ilk are just a stalking horse for US interests. Wise up EU. Just say “NO” to the next dumb plan the US presents to you. More leadership from Brussels might just make the world a safer better place for us all.
Friday, March 7, 2014
CALL IT: WEATHER INTENSIFICATION NOT "GLOBAL WARMING"
NOT GLOBAL WARMING BUT WEATHER INTENSIFICATION
Yesterday, while shoveling the fluffy white stuff during our tenth or twelfth major snow storm this year, I got a friendly glove-handed wave from my middle aged and politically conservative neighbor “Jimmy”. We were both struggling again to clear our side-by-side snow-covered driveways. Jimmy, a retired NY City police officer often chided me about “global warming”, aware of my many years of teaching meteorology and climatology. So on this obviously very cold and snowy day he called over the high mounds of snow piled between the driveways: "So are you pointy headed guys still claiming that we are having “global warming"?
“That’s a misnomer,” I countered. “A better term for what we are having is “GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.”
“Oh, so your changing your story huh? So what does THAT mean?
I waved him over into my opened garage, out of the wind and driving snow. He was cold and tired so he quietly acquiesced. I figured I had him at a disadvantage. Perhaps I could actually clear up his muddled thinking, and also avoid having to listen to ad nauseum repetitions of his "Fox News” talking-points at least about climate .
“The fact is the earth as a whole is actually warming a great deal. The reason is that we are constantly dumping increasing amounts of what are known as “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. Our cars, trucks, buses, all spew gases that make the air warmer. Then too we also release the same gases from our heating systems, we rely greatly on trucks for transport of our goods. Almost our entire economy runs on fossil fuels.Burning those fuels generate carbon dioxide gas which builds up in the atmosphere. That gas (and others too) has the property of absorbing heat and making the atmosphere warmer. The more CO2 in the air, the warmer the air gets. But we are also intensifying the problem by eliminating forests which naturally recycle CO2 and extract it from the atmosphere. As you well know we are cutting down our forests, and pasting over natural areas with asphalt, bull dozing down down green trees to make housing developments and parking lots. You just have to take a look at the pictures of the earth on Google Maps. Roads, expanses cleared land, industrial areas, parking lots, housing developments have replaced vast areas formerly covered by greenery and much of this has occurred in only the last few decades. This is not only happening here in the USA but all over the world.
He nodded his head. That seemed OK he had heard that before and it made sense. “It’s possible he admitted.”
He pulled me over to the open garage door. “Look out there! That’s what we got today. How is this snow evidence of a warmer globe?”
My response: “The earth’s atmosphere IS warming...but as in many things, the answer is not so simple. The increased warming is not ONLY manifested as warmer temperatures. (Though that is what we see here every summer). The earth’s atmosphere is a giant machine which cycles the energy from the sun. Because the earth is a near globe the heat is mostly absorbed in a belt around the equator. The atmosphere is a fluid that moves heat around. It spreads that heat absorbed in the equatorial area through the atmosphere by winds and cyclonic storms which bring rain, snow, violent winds, increased cloud cover, and hurricanes too. So when we dump “heat-absorber gases” into the atmosphere as a result of our quest for energy we also we make the earth warmer in that equatorial zone. But the EFFECTS of increased atmospheric temperatures are felt throughout the globe...because air is a fluid and it moves around. The effects of heating are:more and bigger storms, more rain, more snow, more instability and more unpredictability in the atmosphere..that is: in three words GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.
So besides pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere to make the globe warmer, we are also simultaneously intensifying the effects of this waste dumping process by decreasing those elements on the earth which actually absorb CO2---green plants. Remember in high school you learned about “photosynthesis”? Green plants convert CO2 and H2O into carbohydrates which bind much of the CO2 in an insoluble form called cellulose. This is a way to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make a solid substance of it.
That's where our carbon based fuels came from. Our fossil fuels were all produced in ancient much warmer times by photosynthesis. But eons ago..the earth sequestered or set the CO2 as cellulose aside as fossil carbon. We know of this buried carbon as :coal beds, oil deposits and natural gas pockets underground. Today we are avidly exploiting those deposits coving in it with atmospheric oxygen and and dumping the residue of combustion..CO2 right back into the atmosphere again. But that adds this old carbon to the new carbon we already had enough of.
It's like when you have a bad cold. The Doc says: "Jimmy, listen to me--you wanna get better? You rest, drink plenty of fluids and keep yourself nice and warm, that will help you fight the virus.”
His advice is to ameliorate the effects of the infective virus by following a known protocol of hydration, rest, and keeping the body warm, all of which which will slow the rate at which the virus is replicating in your system.
But instead of that you drink no water but slake your thirst with alcohol (dehydrating yourself), go out in the icy cold with no hat or coat on to shovel snow, and stay up all night. What YOU are doing is going to make that cold worse.
That’s about where we are regarding Global WEATHER INTENSIFICATION: we are doing everything to make the situation worse. Pumping more and more carbon dioxide into the air and killing off the plants which absorb it out of the air. The net result more argon dioxide in the air and more and more atmospheric heating. That external heat intensities the storms, make them bigger and more violent and gets us to where we are today...shoveling snow in March.
What we must do is SLOW our use of fossil fuels by a concerted effort at much more efficient energy use; we must eventually end our dependence on all fossil fuels; we have to stop massive deforestation and de-greening of the earth, and turn to “green” energy sources such as wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, safe nuclear, etcetera.
Then perhaps our kids and grandkids might see some improvement. If we don't do something..soon..we are all lost.
So remember Jimmy, stop calling it “Global Warming” the guys you hang around with at the golf course don't get it. Call it GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION, and when they can't play because it too windy, or they have a “freeze delay” in June, or the fifth fairway..with that low spot, has now become a water hazard, and the greens get dry and hard as a billiard table in early summer--that’s all part of what we pointy heads now call “GWI” (Global Weather Intensification).
Yesterday, while shoveling the fluffy white stuff during our tenth or twelfth major snow storm this year, I got a friendly glove-handed wave from my middle aged and politically conservative neighbor “Jimmy”. We were both struggling again to clear our side-by-side snow-covered driveways. Jimmy, a retired NY City police officer often chided me about “global warming”, aware of my many years of teaching meteorology and climatology. So on this obviously very cold and snowy day he called over the high mounds of snow piled between the driveways: "So are you pointy headed guys still claiming that we are having “global warming"?
“That’s a misnomer,” I countered. “A better term for what we are having is “GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.”
“Oh, so your changing your story huh? So what does THAT mean?
I waved him over into my opened garage, out of the wind and driving snow. He was cold and tired so he quietly acquiesced. I figured I had him at a disadvantage. Perhaps I could actually clear up his muddled thinking, and also avoid having to listen to ad nauseum repetitions of his "Fox News” talking-points at least about climate .
“The fact is the earth as a whole is actually warming a great deal. The reason is that we are constantly dumping increasing amounts of what are known as “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. Our cars, trucks, buses, all spew gases that make the air warmer. Then too we also release the same gases from our heating systems, we rely greatly on trucks for transport of our goods. Almost our entire economy runs on fossil fuels.Burning those fuels generate carbon dioxide gas which builds up in the atmosphere. That gas (and others too) has the property of absorbing heat and making the atmosphere warmer. The more CO2 in the air, the warmer the air gets. But we are also intensifying the problem by eliminating forests which naturally recycle CO2 and extract it from the atmosphere. As you well know we are cutting down our forests, and pasting over natural areas with asphalt, bull dozing down down green trees to make housing developments and parking lots. You just have to take a look at the pictures of the earth on Google Maps. Roads, expanses cleared land, industrial areas, parking lots, housing developments have replaced vast areas formerly covered by greenery and much of this has occurred in only the last few decades. This is not only happening here in the USA but all over the world.
He nodded his head. That seemed OK he had heard that before and it made sense. “It’s possible he admitted.”
He pulled me over to the open garage door. “Look out there! That’s what we got today. How is this snow evidence of a warmer globe?”
My response: “The earth’s atmosphere IS warming...but as in many things, the answer is not so simple. The increased warming is not ONLY manifested as warmer temperatures. (Though that is what we see here every summer). The earth’s atmosphere is a giant machine which cycles the energy from the sun. Because the earth is a near globe the heat is mostly absorbed in a belt around the equator. The atmosphere is a fluid that moves heat around. It spreads that heat absorbed in the equatorial area through the atmosphere by winds and cyclonic storms which bring rain, snow, violent winds, increased cloud cover, and hurricanes too. So when we dump “heat-absorber gases” into the atmosphere as a result of our quest for energy we also we make the earth warmer in that equatorial zone. But the EFFECTS of increased atmospheric temperatures are felt throughout the globe...because air is a fluid and it moves around. The effects of heating are:more and bigger storms, more rain, more snow, more instability and more unpredictability in the atmosphere..that is: in three words GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.
So besides pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere to make the globe warmer, we are also simultaneously intensifying the effects of this waste dumping process by decreasing those elements on the earth which actually absorb CO2---green plants. Remember in high school you learned about “photosynthesis”? Green plants convert CO2 and H2O into carbohydrates which bind much of the CO2 in an insoluble form called cellulose. This is a way to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make a solid substance of it.
That's where our carbon based fuels came from. Our fossil fuels were all produced in ancient much warmer times by photosynthesis. But eons ago..the earth sequestered or set the CO2 as cellulose aside as fossil carbon. We know of this buried carbon as :coal beds, oil deposits and natural gas pockets underground. Today we are avidly exploiting those deposits coving in it with atmospheric oxygen and and dumping the residue of combustion..CO2 right back into the atmosphere again. But that adds this old carbon to the new carbon we already had enough of.
It's like when you have a bad cold. The Doc says: "Jimmy, listen to me--you wanna get better? You rest, drink plenty of fluids and keep yourself nice and warm, that will help you fight the virus.”
His advice is to ameliorate the effects of the infective virus by following a known protocol of hydration, rest, and keeping the body warm, all of which which will slow the rate at which the virus is replicating in your system.
But instead of that you drink no water but slake your thirst with alcohol (dehydrating yourself), go out in the icy cold with no hat or coat on to shovel snow, and stay up all night. What YOU are doing is going to make that cold worse.
That’s about where we are regarding Global WEATHER INTENSIFICATION: we are doing everything to make the situation worse. Pumping more and more carbon dioxide into the air and killing off the plants which absorb it out of the air. The net result more argon dioxide in the air and more and more atmospheric heating. That external heat intensities the storms, make them bigger and more violent and gets us to where we are today...shoveling snow in March.
What we must do is SLOW our use of fossil fuels by a concerted effort at much more efficient energy use; we must eventually end our dependence on all fossil fuels; we have to stop massive deforestation and de-greening of the earth, and turn to “green” energy sources such as wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, safe nuclear, etcetera.
Then perhaps our kids and grandkids might see some improvement. If we don't do something..soon..we are all lost.
So remember Jimmy, stop calling it “Global Warming” the guys you hang around with at the golf course don't get it. Call it GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION, and when they can't play because it too windy, or they have a “freeze delay” in June, or the fifth fairway..with that low spot, has now become a water hazard, and the greens get dry and hard as a billiard table in early summer--that’s all part of what we pointy heads now call “GWI” (Global Weather Intensification).
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
US HYPOCRISY AND FAILURE IN UKRAINE
USA HYPOCRISY IN THE UKRAINE LEADS TO DIPLOMATIC FAILURE
It’s the blatant hypocrisy of the US position on the Ukraine which bothers me. Only a week ago the CIA and the State Department were secretly plotting to incite unrest and encourage the most radical elements of the Ukrainian polity to turn away from Russia and become a vassal state of the EU and the USA. The foolhardy, poorly thought out actions of the White House, the CIA and the state department were surely in part to blame for the unnecessary loss of life in and around Independence Square.
(This was a replay of what the US and CIA did in Egypt only eight months ago, when they undermined the legally elected government of Mr. Morsi, whom they did not like for--his pro Egypt policies--concluding he was not going to be as compliant as past Egyptian dictators. So he had to go. Their actions in Egypt led to the installation of another military dictator and a much more repressive regime--more repressive, more violent and prone to more bloodshed.)
In the Ukraine, the CIA was back at it..with bundles of US taxpayer money the CIA and State Department helped stir up the hornet nest in Kiev. The US policy there on the doorstep of Mr. Putin--apparently led by neocons in the State Department --left no wiggle room or escape route for the Russians. Now after the "surprise" military action of Russia..and in the apparent failure of what should have been a diplomatic effort, the President and his advisors stand hang-jawed, nonplussed and unsure of a response.
I also wonder how President Obama who has just barely extricated us from the longest, bloody, unnecessary, most ill advised and illegal war in US history doesn't blanch and choke on his perfidious words when he reads speeches written for him in which he accuses Russia of “aggression”, “illegal occupation”, and “anti-democratic” military actions and threats. He should be the last one to point the finger of blame.n
The truth is the Ukraine situation is a direct result of a failed US foreign policy, incompetent, over zealous state department personnel and an out-of-control CIA which seems to have its own independent agenda. But Mr. Obama is paying for this failure with falling popularity polls and by looking so helpless and incompetent as Russian troops encircle military installations in the Crimea. This is another embarrassment that could have been avoided.
A wiser more savvy administration in better control,of their far-flung and gung-ho departments would have realized the limits of their ability to control events on the very doorstep of the Russians and pursued a more sensible, moderate course of action.
Perhaps even now cooler heads could prevail. Start with reining in the CIA and demoting the hot heads and vulgar personnel in the state department.
Get the picture?
It’s the blatant hypocrisy of the US position on the Ukraine which bothers me. Only a week ago the CIA and the State Department were secretly plotting to incite unrest and encourage the most radical elements of the Ukrainian polity to turn away from Russia and become a vassal state of the EU and the USA. The foolhardy, poorly thought out actions of the White House, the CIA and the state department were surely in part to blame for the unnecessary loss of life in and around Independence Square.
(This was a replay of what the US and CIA did in Egypt only eight months ago, when they undermined the legally elected government of Mr. Morsi, whom they did not like for--his pro Egypt policies--concluding he was not going to be as compliant as past Egyptian dictators. So he had to go. Their actions in Egypt led to the installation of another military dictator and a much more repressive regime--more repressive, more violent and prone to more bloodshed.)
In the Ukraine, the CIA was back at it..with bundles of US taxpayer money the CIA and State Department helped stir up the hornet nest in Kiev. The US policy there on the doorstep of Mr. Putin--apparently led by neocons in the State Department --left no wiggle room or escape route for the Russians. Now after the "surprise" military action of Russia..and in the apparent failure of what should have been a diplomatic effort, the President and his advisors stand hang-jawed, nonplussed and unsure of a response.
I also wonder how President Obama who has just barely extricated us from the longest, bloody, unnecessary, most ill advised and illegal war in US history doesn't blanch and choke on his perfidious words when he reads speeches written for him in which he accuses Russia of “aggression”, “illegal occupation”, and “anti-democratic” military actions and threats. He should be the last one to point the finger of blame.n
The truth is the Ukraine situation is a direct result of a failed US foreign policy, incompetent, over zealous state department personnel and an out-of-control CIA which seems to have its own independent agenda. But Mr. Obama is paying for this failure with falling popularity polls and by looking so helpless and incompetent as Russian troops encircle military installations in the Crimea. This is another embarrassment that could have been avoided.
A wiser more savvy administration in better control,of their far-flung and gung-ho departments would have realized the limits of their ability to control events on the very doorstep of the Russians and pursued a more sensible, moderate course of action.
Perhaps even now cooler heads could prevail. Start with reining in the CIA and demoting the hot heads and vulgar personnel in the state department.
Get the picture?
*"F---K THE EU" OR EXAMPLE OF FAILURE OF DIPLOMACY
“Fuck the EU”* (And Its Consequences.)
*Quote by US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs: Victoria Nuland.
The remark above is by Ms. Victoria Nuland, of the State Department and a member of the wide-ranging and well-connected neoconservative Kagan family (she is the spouse of Prof. Robert Kagan). The notorious Kagan family are all deeply involved in efforts to support and encourage Middle Eastern war---they were particularly engaged in the failed, brutal, economically devastating US-led war in Iraq (as well as other efforts at foreign adventurism). It’s hard for me to understand how Ms Nuland (Mrs. Kagan), with her connections to monumentally disastrous and discredited policies, is now found serving in a high office in the State Department under President Obama---a supposed intelligent, thoughtful, and progressive Democrat.
But what was the context of her vulgar remarks?
Mrs. Kagan and her ilk in the State Department were overly zealous (gung ho) in their efforts to topple the legally elected pro-Russian Yanukovytch government in the Ukraine. They financially supported violent ultranationalistS (some report to the tune of $50 million dollars) and promoted general unrest. But her neoconservative relatives and allies were all deeply frustrated with the support and enthusiasm of our allies in neighboring Europe. The EU which has suffered the ravages of war and its economic aftermath and who get most of their energy supplies from the east were less “gung-ho ” and were proceeding more cautiously. They viewed the EU as having only tepid support for instigating further violent nationalist protests in Kiev. At this juncture, the US was threatening Yanukovytch with “economic sanctions” if he were to enlist military force to suppress the violent protesters who had occupied the central square of Kiev for weeks. The US zealots in the State department thought they had Yanukovytch cornered and buffaloed. The EU saw that as a step too far. The EU was proceeding with the knowledge that it has to live with Russia as its eastern neighbor. Ms Nuland’s angry, vulgar remark was recorded (some say by the Russians) in a conversation with the US Ambassador to Ukraine. Its meaning was simply this: we (the US) can go it alone! ”F--- the EU”, we don't need them! We can topple this government on our own.
But the consequences of this intemperate and poorly thought out form of foreign policy was that Mr. Putin simply made another end run around the US. (The last time he did this was only a few months ago in Syria where he, and Mr Levrov his Foreign Secretary, neatly hog-tied and embarrassed Mr.Obama during the Syrian chemical weapons imbroglio and strengthened and supported his ally in Syria, Mr. Assad.) This time, Mr.Putin ran a nice quarter back steal around Obama’s bow-legged inept team, saying in effect: “If that is how you are going to play, I’ll take the parts of Ukraine I want militarily and you can go F--- Yourselves.”
So what about the consequences.
The Obama Administration has again demonstrated its ineptness and racked up another diplomatic failure..by pushing Mr. Putin to the point where he had no choice but to use his military. The Russian troops were sitting there in the Crimea. What did Nuland, Kerry and Obama expect was to happen? This was all unnecessary. It could have played out very much differently if the elements on our side had a good deal more sophistication, and a lot less hubris.
Wise up President Obama, even GWB was smart enough to finally try to take control of his government from the neocons and war mongers--yes a bit too late..but he did try.
Friday, February 7, 2014
PARADOX : GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES COLD WINTERS
The Arctic Climate Paradox: recent snowy, cold winters are a result of a warming Arctic
USA Today, ran a story (USA Today Feb 6, 2014) indicating that the snowy, frigid weather of January and the tens of thousands of delayed or cancelled flights cost US airline companies some $150 million dollars. Economists estimate that that was chicken feed to the 30 million-strong flying business public who lost an estimated $2.5 billion dollars in decreased productivity, missed meals, foregone opportunities, lost contracts and lapsed hotel bookings, etc. A similar piece appeared in Bloomberg News, where the author focused on the economic impact of the unusually cold and snowy weather as a factor of these cancelled flights. Neither story mentioned anything about the probable underlying cause---global warming. In fact, the media generally present our recent spate of cold and snowy winters as a mild refutation of the “pointy headed” scientists and their unfounded” support for anthrogenic global warming. (Only a few days earlier, the NYT ran a piece on the State department Environmental Review of the Keystone XL Pipeline project which will carry environmentally disastrous tar sand product (liquified bitumen) south to Texas and other ports for processing in Texas and transport elsewhere. This will be burned as cheap dirty oil somewhere and the users will dump the considerable carbon wastes into the atmosphere and only dramatically increase global warming. Thus here we see how one group of businessmen are hit with the costly effects of global warming while another group like the Koch brothers and others exacerbate the problem and pocket the profits.)
It is a paradox difficult to accept that cold winters may be the result of arctic warming. It’s colder not warmer this year...does that not refute the concept of global warming in progress? But the difficult to understand inconvruity of this cooler-than-average winter season (for the USA) is as strong an argument--nay better-- than our recent waves of summer heat data in support of global warming.
First let us review some uncontested facts. The earth, as a whole, is warming---there is no question. According to our own government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, during the 130 year period from 1880 to 2010 the average earth temperature has RISEN just short of 1 degree Celsius (or more precisely about 0.85 degrees C which is just about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
One of the most dramatic effects of global warming has been the easily seen and documented loss of ice cover in the Arctic where the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice sheet has dramatically decreased. The North Pole is covered by an ocean, the Arctic Ocean, which in area is only slightly larger than the continental USA. That ocean has been in the past almost completely covered by thick, reflective sea ice. But in recent decades sea ice has been slowly thinning and melting away as the effects of global warming take effect.
USA Today, ran a story (USA Today Feb 6, 2014) indicating that the snowy, frigid weather of January and the tens of thousands of delayed or cancelled flights cost US airline companies some $150 million dollars. Economists estimate that that was chicken feed to the 30 million-strong flying business public who lost an estimated $2.5 billion dollars in decreased productivity, missed meals, foregone opportunities, lost contracts and lapsed hotel bookings, etc. A similar piece appeared in Bloomberg News, where the author focused on the economic impact of the unusually cold and snowy weather as a factor of these cancelled flights. Neither story mentioned anything about the probable underlying cause---global warming. In fact, the media generally present our recent spate of cold and snowy winters as a mild refutation of the “pointy headed” scientists and their unfounded” support for anthrogenic global warming. (Only a few days earlier, the NYT ran a piece on the State department Environmental Review of the Keystone XL Pipeline project which will carry environmentally disastrous tar sand product (liquified bitumen) south to Texas and other ports for processing in Texas and transport elsewhere. This will be burned as cheap dirty oil somewhere and the users will dump the considerable carbon wastes into the atmosphere and only dramatically increase global warming. Thus here we see how one group of businessmen are hit with the costly effects of global warming while another group like the Koch brothers and others exacerbate the problem and pocket the profits.)
It is a paradox difficult to accept that cold winters may be the result of arctic warming. It’s colder not warmer this year...does that not refute the concept of global warming in progress? But the difficult to understand inconvruity of this cooler-than-average winter season (for the USA) is as strong an argument--nay better-- than our recent waves of summer heat data in support of global warming.
First let us review some uncontested facts. The earth, as a whole, is warming---there is no question. According to our own government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, during the 130 year period from 1880 to 2010 the average earth temperature has RISEN just short of 1 degree Celsius (or more precisely about 0.85 degrees C which is just about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (See nsidc.org, downloaded 2/6/14) both the area of ice cover of the Arctic Sea, as well as the actual volume of Arctic Sea ice are less than their long-term averages calculated during the period from 1981 to 2010. Sea ice is without doubt melting away. So it is clear that it is warmer up there! (Warmth is relative of course. Arctic January temperatures average around -29 deg Fahrenheit, while summer temperatures hover around the freezing point of ice at 32 deg F.)
Both the area of cover of arctic sea ice and the actual volume of Arctic sea ice are considerably less than their long-term averages calculated from 1981 to 2010
In January of 2013 ice cover in the Arctic dropped to well below long term average (though it was not the lowest level reached). These January 2013 readings fall to a level just within two standard deviations (σ) from the long term mean. That means that the present low levels of ice cover are far away from the normal fluctuation around the average. The recent data ARE “abnormal”. On average, the “normal” area covered by ice is about 5.6 million square miles. In January of 2013 ice covered only 5.3 million square miles or about 300,000 square miles LESS than the the long-term average. The lost ice-cover in the Arctic Ocean is approximately equal to the combined areas of Texas (our largest State with 261,000 square miles) and Louisiana. Where has that ice equal to the area of Texas and Louisiana gone? Melted away as a result of warmer global temperatures to evaporate and enter the global ocean. That image is difficult to pass off as a fluke of nature and is difficult to deny. Just look at the aerial photographs.l
Not only has the area covered by ice decreased by the an area similar to that of Texas and Louisiana together, but new technology has permitted satellites to probe the THICKNESS of the ice as well. These data have clearly indicated that ice thickness is also decreasing.
So who cares about the loss of arctic sea ice? What effects could it have on us? The direct cause of rising sea level, altered climes, altered rain patterns,AND cancelled air flights and the indirect costs to businesses are probable effects. WARMER arctic can cause severe COLD weather in the contiguous USA and have a global impact on business too.
There is a POSITIVE FEED BACK mechanism in the Arctic ocean-atmosphere-lithosphere system or a vicious cycle at work there. The more Arctic ocean water that is exposed during the summer season to the sun’s rays as a result of retreating ice--the warmer the Arctic Ocean water gets. (Since solar radiation is absorbed better by sea water than by reflective ice and snow.) When ice-free sea water absorbs more heat in summer, it forms less ice cover in winter--the more sea water exposed--the more solar radiation penetrates its depths, the warner the Arctic sea water gets, the less ice it generates. etcetera, etcetera. (This can not happen in the Antarctic where a solid rocky continent underlies the ice sheet. There small changes in ice sheet thicknesses due to global warming may go undetected and do not have such dramatic effects.)
Now how might this warmer arctic lead to colder temperatures in Washington, DC or Peoria, Ohio ? If the air over the Arctic is even slightly warmer it can have an effect on the boundary zone known as the Polar Front. (Remember even at these recent elevated temperatures the Arctic is still on on average perhaps 40 F degrees colder in winter than the air masses over the mid-latitudes, such as New York or Washington, so even warmer polar air would feel very much colder than normal to us. In the past that cold polar air was generally confined to the high latitudes by the large differences in density between the very cold polar air and the much warmer mid latitude air.
There are physical and aerodynamic factors which control the shape of the boundary zone (the Polar Front) between the very cold polar air and warmer mid latitude air masses. These confining forces are weakened when the two air masses are closer in temperature, i.e. when the polar air mass is warmer. The boundary zone (Polar Front) between cold polar air and warmer mid-latitude air becomes more fluid under these circumstances. That fluidity generates more and deeper surges of outbreaks of cold polar air southward into the lower forty-eight. These cold air surges into warmer air initiate sever winter storms along the boundary zone. Thus warmer polar temperatures, lead to less sea ice, expanded areas of sea water exposed to sunlight, and result in higher summer Arctic sea water temperatures, causing decreased winter sea ice cover, and in the arctic summer further sea water exposed to warming sunlight, so the next summer is warmer, and so on in a vicious cycle that warms up the polar region and its air. The warmer (though still relatively cold to us) polar air is less confined by physical forces and then is more likely to “break out” forming large “tongues” of cold air which uncharacteristically penetrate far south into areas they usually do not go.
It is in this way that the unusually cold and snowy weather of our recent winter results from a WARMER Arctic Ocean.
We can only hope that humankind will come to a realization of the danger of global warming and begin to make changes which can help stabilize or reverse its effects. We hope our business leaders realize that global warming will affect profits. Let's goad government leaders, often too much in the grip of financial and business forces with short term bottom line agendas, to begin to realize and help publicize the negative effects our unthinking, irrational behaviors are having on the earth’s atmosphere and initiate corrective changes.
Get the picture?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)