18 September 2008

People in (shattering) glass houses...

"I refer... to Russia's intimidation of its sovereign neighbours, its use of oil and gas as a political weapon... its threat to target peaceful neighbours with nuclear weapons... and its persecution - or worse - of Russian journalists and dissidents." Thus spake Condoleeeza yesterday, in a speech evidently attended by people who've been living in Western Sahara or the Papuan rain forest for the past 8 years - anyplace bereft of world news feeds. She went on to add, "What has become clear is that the legitimate goal of rebuilding Russia has taken a dark turn - with the rollback of personal freedoms, the arbitrary enforcement of the law [and] the pervasive corruption at various levels of Russian society." One also has to assume that no one in attendance recently spent a week in St.Paul-Minneapolis, where US cops arrested hundreds of political demonstrators along with more than a few journalists.

It seems like a waste of time to deconstruct these remarks, so i'll just note that under Condi's watch, the US has built a wall along its border with Mexico, tried to overthrow the sovereign govt of Venezuela and the democratically elected govt of Palestine (and recently Bolivia as well - or so it appears), succeeded in overthrowing Aristide in Haiti, Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban govt in Afghanistan, maintained its support for Karimov in Uzbekistan - the list of dark turns is long and, after eight years, feels too tedious to type out. i might add that these only touch on the international-level hypocrisy in her speech; when we look at what's gone on inside the US' borders, it just gets more hypocritical - shamefully so. This kind of rhetoric makes americans look like total idiots to the rest of the world; it's no small wonder that Putin's grin won't go away and NATO heads of state are counting the days till Condi & C0. pack up their rolodexes and return to their old jobs in the corporate sector.
This is getting downright CREEPY... the next revelation (pun definitely intended) will be that Sarah Palin is actually a Raelian. Given the extent to which the republican party has fucked things up on planet Earth, it actually makes a whole lot of sense that bizarre religious fundamentalists strike them as viable candidates. While i can get into the imagery of Sarah's great-grandma taming a stegasouras, it's not a graphic i would hold up to indicate i understood anything about the realities of the 21st century.

16 September 2008

The advantage to being poor is that when the whip comes down, you stay sane while those who've been living in the bubble of runaway wealth falter and freak. That's now gotta include the inept deciders in the oval office, as evidenced in this statement by the US Secretary of the (now defunct?) Treasury. "Henry Paulson, assured the public they could remain confident in the 'soundness and resilience' of the financial system. He reserved the right to bail out struggling firms but said: 'We don't take lightly ever putting taxpayers' money on the line to support a financial institution.'" After the Bear Stearns bailout, who does he think he's kidding here? No, i think finally they're starting to lose it and another debt-dependent war isn't going to solve the problem.

15 September 2008

Lame Phuck #2

Breaking news on the BBC informs us that Pakistani soldiers have taken a stand against US troops attempting to cross the Afghan border into Waziristan. It's about time someone said NO to the Pentagon, but perhaps the bigger issue here is what the Confounder and Thief thinks he's doing by sending US troops into yet another hostile country. As far as i can tell, the objective of the flailing W Dick administration is to destabilize as many countries as possible before they leave office: Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Pakistan, Afghanistan - hard to say who's next on the list but i wouldn't be surprised to read that Cheney's decided to stop over in Baku on his way back from Georgia. (Enticing more Russian troops to set up camp close to the Iranian border may look like a way to put a wedge in Russian-Iranian relations, but Putin is so much cooler and shiftier than W, the chances of seeing the Russians get buried in a meaningless regional conflict that destroys their ties with Tehran seem pretty slim.) The reason for sending more US forces to Afghanistan is now blatantly clear, even while attempts to start fighting inside Pakistan's territory have surely been pulled out of the Bush dynastic ass. One wonders if this will give Sen. Obama pause the next time he waxes urgent about putting his foot down with the Pakistanis. In the long term, Pakistan probably deserves as much of a political overhaul as the US, but in the short term, this isn't gonna happen at gunpoint - one of the many ironies may be that with US forces now grouping along its border and launching attacks inside the country, Pakistan's many internal divisions may actually dissipate under a common banner: US OUT NOW!

Another irony, pointed out in the Times of India, is that if Little Bush opts to go to war in Pakistan, US forces will be facing their own sophisticated weaponry. " In July, the Bush administration sought to shift $226.5 million in US counterterrorism aid for the F-16 upgrades." Pretty groovy, eh? Nothing like having your own misguided missiles come back to kill your troops. Irony No. 3 is that these raids across the border are inciting Pakistani tribes to join forces with the Taliban - or at least that's what they're threatening, according to this report.

That W still has the cajones to say he's made great progress in the so-called "war on terror" goes far beyond being disingenuous. He's either living in a dream world or just rubbing our noses in the fact that we've all be screwed. Impeachment looks increasingly mild, given the havoc this asshole has wreaked around the world.

12 September 2008

Canada: The next red state?

For all those Canadians wishing you had the opportunity to vote in the US elections and make sure the crazies don't win, just be patient because it seems your time is coming. In less than 20 years, the Canadian military will be fully "integrated" with the Pentagon, though it might make more sense to use the term "subsumed" since it's hard to imagine that folks south of the border who came up with this plan see it as a way to put the burden of directing the world's robocops onto Ottowa's shoulders. Check out the video, it's pretty chilling.

08 September 2008

Following up on my recent post about the US-India nuclear deal, Reuters is reporting today that at least 40 private companies (Indian) are now lobbying their government to allow privately owned and operated nuclear power plants. It's a nice idea, diversifying the energy sector and not putting the entire financial burden of that on the state. i'd put it in the same league as applauding oil companies for their leadership in finding a way out of our addiction to petroleum. As a wise man once said, "To hell with facts! We need stories!" One story we can always depend on hearing from the private sector is that in the event of fiscal or material meltdown, the burden of bailout and clean-up must fall on the shoulders of the state.

This is yet another facet of the nuke industry's self-deception. Clean and efficient electricity production? Sure, as long as one doesn't take into account uranium mining and processing, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, transportation hazards, long-term waste storage (let's say 24,000 years minimum), rampant plant cost overruns and impacts of any accidental releases or Chernobyl style meltdown. You can bet that as soon as detectors in Abu Dhabi start picking up high levels of cesium, the Indian government would be asked to step in and manage the emergency response. (If i remember correctly, Exxon was not in charge of trying to salvage the oil-soaked animals who happened to find themselves in the Valdez' spill zone... notice any kind of pattern here?) These nuke people are just living in a dream world and yes, i'd certainly add Candidate Obama to the list of dreamers. Building NPPs in a country whose basic infrastructure is either collapsing or on the verge of collapse is pure stupidity. Building them in countries which are disastrously impacted by earthquakes, monsoons, hurricanes and tsunamis increases the stupidity variable ten-fold. They consume a huge amount of resources to build and maintain, leave a wake of environmental havoc, and pose too great a risk in a world run by incompetent extremists.

......

Few days later. Reading this again, i realized that i neglected to point out that the US "civilian" nuclear power industry was privatized from the get-go and is a good case in point against privatization. elsewhere. The weapons manufacturing network is a joint private-public venture: GE, Dupont, Westinghouse.... all of whom also profit from the civilian nuke sector. (Ironically, in some aspects the two were more distinct in the USSR than the US.) The nuke lobby likes to claim that the number of accidents and other mishaps at US NPPs is very low, but they are not including the weapons plants, managed by the very same corporations. These places are so dirty, their workers suffer the same health crises as veterans of atomic tests, and the only reason we know so much more about the nightmare that is Hanford, et al. and have seen so much more effort put into cleaning them up is because they are ultimately owned by the DOE. Investigating the history of any NPP, one sees a lot more near disasters than might be expected and a whole lot less transparency. The companies have not built up the piggy banks they are required by law to have - a set percentage of plant costs, annually - to collectively pay for a permanent waste storage site. Cooling ponds are filling up, the current nuke waste dump has or will soon reach capacity and stop accepting wastes - this is a big problem, and the taxpayers are going to end up paying the utilities again (essentially) to deal with it because inaction is not an option.

Energy production is too crucial and complex to manage on the basis of profits. On the basis of economics - sure, of course, we must - but even that needs to come through a democratic decision-making process, which is not what private energy companies are about. Remain ever vigilant, the guys are not to be trusted on any continent.

06 September 2008

Check out this photo in the LA Times. Incredible!! Natural inhabitants are reclaiming lost territory in wake of housing market collapse. The next evolutionary step: interspecies cohabitation? They're looking smug, but i imagine that's how anyone living in the LA foothills and not paying taxes would look. Conceptually, it's a charmer.

05 September 2008

Did John McLame really describe Iraq War vet Adam Kokesh as "noise" and "static"?
Wow, what a heroic way to show your support for the troops.