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Archive for August 5th, 2008

The Price of Oil, Tripled? An Attack on Iran Could Make It Happen

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted August 5, 2008.

A war with Iran would ruin our economy and finally kill off our

weakened, anemic democracy.

An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.
“In short and simple terms, we would be plunged into a depression that would make the Great Depression of the 1930s in which I spent my childhood look like boom times,” said William R. Polk, former professor of history at the University of Chicago and a member of the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy. “Industries would fail, banks would collapse, government revenues would dry up, universities would have to close, health care, even as limited as it now is for roughly 75 million Americans, would virtually cease. In short, something like [what] the South suffered at the end of the Civil War would plague the country.”
The passage of vast amounts of oil and liquefied gas through the Persian Gulf would be disrupted. Iranian attacks, carried out with rocket- and bomb-equipped speedboats and submarines, would be deadly and effective. A classified Pentagon war game in 2002 simulated these swarming attacks by Iranian speedboats packed with explosives in the gulf; the Navy lost 16 major warships, according to a report in The New York Times. Iranian oil, which makes up 8 percent of the world’s energy supply, would instantly be taken off the market. And oil would jump to over $500 a barrel and perhaps, as the conflict dragged on, to over $750 a barrel. Our petroleum-based economy would come to a halt.
Israel would be hit by Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Hezbollah, with its new store of Iranian-supplied rockets that allegedly can reach any part of Israel, including Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona, would enter the conflict. Israel would lash back. Terrorist attacks on U.S. targets would become frequent. U.S. casualties in Iraq would mount as the Iranians rained missiles down on U.S. bases and installations, including our imperial city, the Green Zone. Chaos and mayhem would grip the Middle East. The world financial markets would go haywire.
“Even at today’s price, as you know, 14 airlines have gone out of business while others are hovering on the brink of bankruptcy and most have curtailed service and laid off personnel,” said Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars of the Arab world. “At double or triple today’s price, none could fly unless nationalized. A whole range of other industries would be quickly drawn into the quicksand. Ironically, war would push America into a form of socialist economy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Economy, *Energy, Bush Administration, Environment, Foreign Policy, Global Economy, Iran, World Affairs | Leave a Comment »

Obama Gets High Marks for New Energy Plan

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

By Joseph Romm, Huffington Post. Posted August 5, 2008.

This is the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee, especially in comparison to the plan by John “Nothing but Nukes” McCain.

Senator Barack Obama has fulfilled the promise of his earlier climate plan with a detailed and comprehensive “New Energy for America” plan.
This is easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party. By comparison, the plan of John “Nothing but Nukes” McCain is a joke, with nothing on energy efficiency and a pointless $300 million battery prize and long-standing opposition to renewable energy.
In contrast, Obama’s plan has real depth and breath:

  • Increase Fuel Economy Standards: Obama will increase fuel economy standards 4 percent per each year while protecting the financial future of domestic automakers….
  • Invest in Developing Advanced Vehicles and Put 1 Million Plugin Electric Vehicles on the Road by 2015: As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama has led efforts to jumpstart federal investment in advanced vehicles, including combined plug-in hybrid/flexible fuel vehicles, which can get over 150 miles per gallon of gas… [more details below]
  • Partner with Domestic Automakers: Obama will also provide $4 billion retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that the new fuel-efficient cars can be built in the U.S. by American workers rather than overseas.?
  • Mandate All New Vehicles are Flexible Fuel Vehicles
  • Develop the Next Generation of Sustainable Biofuels and Infrastructure
  • Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: … The standard requires fuels suppliers in 2010 to begin to reduce the carbon of their fuel by 5 percent within 5 years and 10 percent within 10 years.

This is the only way to jumpstart an end to our addiction to oil in a climate friendly way. Indeed, an accelerated transition to plug-in hybrids and electric cars — a core climate solution– must be the cornerstone of any serious effort to dramatically reduce oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“). That is the crucial litmus test for any presidential candidate’s energy independence or clean transportation policy.
As for the test of a candidate’s grasp of electricity policy, energy efficiency is obviously The only cheap power left and a limitless resource and THE core climate solution.
Obama understands energy efficiency in a way few other major politicians do, as his plan makes clear:

  • Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source–Energy Efficiency: Barack Obama will set an aggressive energy efficiency goal–to reduce electricity demand 15 percent from DOE’s projected levels by 2020. Implementing this program will save consumers a total of $130 billion, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 5 billion tons through 2030, and create jobs. A portion of this goal would be met by setting annual demand reduction targets that utilities would need to meet.
  • Set National Building Efficiency Goals: Obama will establish a goal of making all new buildings carbon neutral, or produce zero emissions, by 2030. He’ll also establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help us meet the 2030 goal.
  • Overhaul Federal Efficiency Standards: The current Department of Energy has missed 34 deadlines for setting updated appliance efficiency standards….
  • Reduce Federal Energy Consumption: … He will make the federal government a leader in the green building market, achieving a 40 percent increase in efficiency in all new federal buildings within five years and ensuring that all new federal buildings are zero-emissions by 2025. He will invest in cost-effective retrofits to achieve a 25 percent increase in efficiency of existing federal buildings within 5 years.
  • Invest in a Smart Grid: … Obama will pursue a major investment in our national utility grid using smart metering, distributed storage and other advanced technologies to accommodate 21st century energy requirements: greatly improved electric grid reliability and security, a tremendous increase in renewable generation and greater customer choice and energy affordability.
  • Weatherize One Million Homes Annually….
  • Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities….
  • Flip Incentives to Energy Utilities: An Obama administration will “flip” incentives to utility companies by: requiring states to conduct proceedings to implement incentive changes; and offering them targeted technical assistance. These measures will benefit utilities for improving energy efficiency, rather than just from supporting higher energy consumption. This “regulatory equity” starts with the decoupling of profits from increased energy usage, which will incentivize utilities to partner with consumers and the federal and state governments to reduce monthly energy bills for families and businesses. The federal government under an Obama administration will play an important and positive role in flipping the profit model for the utility sector so that shareholder profit is based on reliability and performance as opposed to total production.

Finally, a presidential nominee that really gets it (see “Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively?“).
The proposal has lots of other details on short-term solutions and promoting the supply of domestic energy. But let me focus on his low-carbon electricity supply plan:

  • Require 10 Percent of Electricity to Come from Renewable Sources by 2012 [and 25 percent by 2025]. Barack Obama will establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012. Many states are already well on their way to achieving statewide goals and it’s time for the federal government to provide leadership for the entire country to support these new industries. This national requirement will spur significant private sector investment in renewable sources of energy and create thousands of new American jobs, especially in rural areas. And Obama will also extend the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) for 5 years to encourage the production of renewable energy.
  • Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology….
  • Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: … It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option. However, before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation…. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority. In terms of waste storage, Obama does not believe that Yucca Mountain is a suitable site. He will lead federal efforts to look for safe, long-term disposal solutions based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available.

He also repeats his climate pledge and his jobs pledge:

  • Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
  • Invest In A Clean Energy Economy and Help Create 5 Million New Green Jobs. Obama will strategically invest $150 billion over 10 years…

Finally, back to the details of the plug-in hybrid proposal:
As president, Obama will continue this leadership by investing in advanced vehicle technology with a specific focus on R&D in advanced battery technology. The increased federal funding will leverage private sector funds and support our domestic automakers to bring plug-in hybrids and other advanced vehicles to American consumers. Obama will also provide a $7,000 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles as well as conversion tax credits. And to help create a market and show government leadership in purchasing highly efficient cars, an Obama administration will commit to:

  • Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to plug-ins as security permits; and?
  • Half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012.

This is an aggressive, achievable, and most important of all, a necessary energy plan. Kudos to Senator Obama and his energy team.
Maybe he is The One.

Posted in *Energy | Leave a Comment »

How News is (Instantly) Manipulated into Partisan “Tactics” Insulating the Bush Administration from Accountability

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

Marty Kaplan | The Huffington Post.com

Ron Suskind’s new book reports that in 2003, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter to “prove” that Iraq had a hand in 9/11 and that Saddam was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger for his WMD program with the help of Al Qaeda.

When this came up on MSNBC, moderator Chuck Todd asked Politico’s Mike Allen whether this would lead “the anti-war crowd” in Congress to call for impeachment. Allen replied that it would “give the lefty blogosphere something to grab onto.”

And so, in less time than it takes to say “Dick Cheney,” the subject is changed from what would be one of the most outrageous violations of the Constitution in the history of the Republic to a left/right issue. Instead of taking a breath to consider the merits and consequences of Suskind’s charges, MSNBC’s It’s-Always-Super-Tuesday-Over-Here reframing machine instantly transforms a shocking allegation about the abuse of power into a piece of political football, a tactic, an occasion for the players in the grand political theater that cable news says Washington really is to assume their designated roles, like a Punch and Judy show.

Only it’s not that funny, is it? I don’t imagine that the families of the tens of thousands of American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq think that wanting to hold the president and vice president accountable for breaking the law means you’re part of “the anti-war crowd” (meaning, the un-kewl kids). If the White House asked the CIA to cook up this disinformation aimed at the American people, why shouldn’t the righty blogosphere, too, be up in arms? Why doesn’t every American, regardless of political party, have a stake in the truth and the rule of law?

I know, I know: that’s not Chuck Todd’s or Mike Allen’s jobs. Unfortunately, the closest that the MSM usually comes to weighing the evidence is saying: Ron Suskind charges X, and the White House denies it. This is what is now called reporting.

Posted in Bush Administration | Leave a Comment »

Book claims President Bush ordered forgery to justify Iraq war

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

Posted: 04:58 PM ET

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

A new book says President Bush committed an impeachable offense, ordering the CIA to forge a letter to bolster his case for war in Iraq.

These explosive charges are contained in a new book, “The Way of the World” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind. He says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who said that President Bush was informed in January 2003 that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. The president’s response to this information was reportedly “F— it. We’re going in.” Three months later, the U.S. invaded Iraq using a forged document as its rationale, according to Suskind.

He writes that the White House called on the CIA to concoct the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. It was backdated to before 9/11 and indicated that one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, had trained for his mission in Iraq, according to Suskind. The phony letter, he writes, was designed to prove a non existent link between Hussein and al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, that head of Iraqi intelligence, who told British intelligence sources that Iraq had no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and no WMD was “resettled” in Jordan with the CIA’s help and paid $5 million in hush money, Suskind writes.

Suskind calls Mr. Bush’s actions “one of the greatest lies in modern American political history” and suggests they constitute a crime worse than Watergate.

The White House is pushing back hard, calling Suskind’s claims “absurd” and describing his work as “gutter journalism” including “wild allegations that no one can verify.” Former CIA director George Tenet ridicules the credibility of Suskind’s sources and calls the White House directive to forge a letter “a complete fabrication.”

Here’s my question to you: What does it mean if the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter in order to bolster its case for war in Iraq?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

Tom from Boston writes:

It means we should be ashamed as Americans. Bill Clinton was impeached for not being honest about his sexual indiscretion. George W. Bush misled Congress and the public about Iraq, condoned the torture of prisoners, authorized illegal electronic surveillance, and refused to comply with subpoenas to name a few. And yet he will walk away scot-free. It’s times like this that make me want to move to New Zealand! Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Bush Administration, Iraq War | Leave a Comment »

Book says White House ordered forgery

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

POLITICO

By MIKE ALLEN | 8/5/08 11:51 AM EST Updated: 8/5/08 11:51 AM EST
  
 
 

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC‘s “Meet the Press.”

“Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe,” Suskind writes. “Fox’s Bill O’Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, ‘Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.’”

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.” 

The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: “The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd.”

The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: “Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence.” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Energy, Bush Administration | Leave a Comment »

June Inflation Drags on Shopper

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

Drop in Buying Power Has Retailers on Edge

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Office Depot shoppers Callan Garber, 10, right, and her sister, Lane Barber, 14, left, shops for school supplies at Office Depot in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, July 29, 2008. The Commerce Department reported Monday, Aug. 4, 2008, that consumer spending dipped by 0.2 percent in June, after removing the effects of higher prices, the poorest showing since a similar drop in February. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) (Paul Sakuma – AP)

By Ylan Q. Mui

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 5, 2008; Page D01

Consumers’ buying power was dragged down by inflation in June, according to data released yesterday by the Commerce Department, dealing another blow to a retail industry already beset by economic woes.

In current dollars, consumers spent 0.6 percent more in June than during the previous month. But after adjusting for inflation, spending dropped 0.2 percent as inflation reached its highest monthly rate since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, signaling that shoppers are paying more to get less. Personal income rose 0.1 percent, but disposable income plummeted 2.6 percent adjusted for inflation as the impact of the economic stimulus checks began to wear off.

“Inflation is still an issue, and certainly the first half of the year was a big burden on consumer spending,” said Alan Levenson, chief economist of T. Rowe Price Associates.

The skyrocketing price of oil, which reached a record $147 a barrel in July, pushed gas prices over $4 per gallon and inflated consumer spending. Oil prices have since settled to about $121.41 yesterday, and Levenson said he expects the monthly inflation rate to begin moderating.

The average price of a gallon of regular gas dropped to $3.88 yesterday, down 7.5 cents from a week ago. Such considerations make it unlikely that the Federal Reserve will change interest rates when it meets today, he said. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *Economy | Leave a Comment »

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

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He lived not by lies.

  August 5, 2008
Washington Post

ON FEB. 18, 1974, this newspaper published an essay, ” Live Not by Lies,” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who with his writings and dauntless moral courage had shaken Soviet power as no other individual had done. Written six days earlier, probably hours before the Soviet secret police broke into his Moscow apartment, arrested him and sent him into what would be a 20-year exile in the West, the essay was an ardent call for truth-telling, for spurning the monstrous lies that bore the USSR aloft. “Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me,” he wrote.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn wrote the essay in response to the officially orchestrated campaign of vitriol that greeted the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago,” his monumentally damning masterpiece on the vast network of Soviet labor camps and their tens of millions of victims. The book’s impact on the moral legitimacy of the Soviet regime was so corrosive, and so irrefutable, that it can be said to have sown the first seeds of the Soviet Union’s eventual collapse. Who again could doubt the rot that was at the system’s core or the sinister cynicism of its leadership.

In the paralysis of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union in the 1970s, Mr. Solzhenitsyn understood that direct confrontation — street rallies and strikes — were impossible. But he knew, too, that the Soviet colossus was profoundly vulnerable and could be subverted by individuals intent on telling the truth about their morally bankrupt system and brutal history. “The simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies,” he wrote in his essay. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Civil Liberties, Rights, Justice | Leave a Comment »

Stronger Than the Gulag

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

By Anne Applebaum

Tuesday, August 5, 2008; Page A19

Although more than three decades have passed since the winter of 1974, when unbound, hand-typed samizdat versions of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” began circulating in what used to be the Soviet Union, the emotions they stirred remain today. Usually, readers were given only 24 hours to finish the lengthy manuscript — the first-ever historical account of the Soviet concentration camp system — before it had to be passed on to the next person. That meant spending an entire day and night absorbed in Solzhenitsyn’s sometimes eloquent, sometimes angry prose, not an experience anyone was likely to forget

People in that first generation of readers remember who gave them the book, who else knew about it, to whom they passed it. They remember the stories that affected them most — tales of small children in the camps, or of informers, or of camp guards. They remember what the book felt like — the blurry, mimeographed text; the dog-eared paper; the dim glow of the lamp switched on late at night — and with whom they discussed it.

In part, his Soviet readers responded so strongly because Solzhenitsyn — who died Sunday at age 89 — was simultaneously very famous and strictly taboo. Twelve years earlier, the Soviet regime had serendipitously allowed him to publish, officially, the first fictional account of Stalin’s concentration camps, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” It was also the last: Too honest for the leaders at the time, the book, a publishing sensation, was quickly banned along with its author, whose later works would be “published” illegally — or abroad.

It didn’t matter: Even Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion from Russia in 1974 only increased his notoriety, as well as the impact of “The Gulag Archipelago.” Though it was based on “reports, memoirs and letters by 227 witnesses,” the book was not quite a straight history — obviously, Solzhenitsyn did not have access to then-secret archives — but, rather, an interpretation of history. Partly polemical, partly autobiographical, both emotional and judgmental, it aimed to show that, contrary to what many believed, the mass arrests and concentration camps were not an incidental phenomenon but an essential part of the Soviet system — and had been from the very beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iraq, Vietnam veterans find common ground

Posted by James O'Rourke on August 5, 2008

Soldiers have come home from war since Ulysses’ turbulent return to Ithaca — to tearful wives and cranky babies, to brass bands playing…

By Kim Murphy

Los Angeles Times

Larry Criteser, right, a Vietnam veteran from Eugene, Ore., takes part in a homecoming ceremony at Ft. Lewis for members of the Army’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry “Manchu” Regiment. Criteser and others say they feel a sense of kinship with the unit, which they were a part of during the Vietnam War.

FORT LEWIS, Wash. —

Soldiers have come home from war since Ulysses’ turbulent return to Ithaca — to tearful wives and cranky babies, to brass bands playing John Philip Sousa marches and to potlucks of casseroles and coleslaw laid out by neighbors.

For men such as Larry Criteser, though, there were no trombones or baked beans. Not in 1969, when he got off a flight from Saigon, Vietnam, at the massive Army terminal in Oakland, Calif., and spent a fitful night alone at San Francisco International Airport, unaware that the sight of his carefully pressed uniform would draw so much fire.

“I spent the night getting heckled,” recalled Criteser, 60, a retired welder from Eugene, Ore. “One of the favorite expressions was ‘baby killer.’ I have consciously tried to forget most of it. It wasn’t my job to go over there and kill babies.”

Criteser waited 39 years for his official welcome home. It came recently one chilly morning at this Army post south of Tacoma, right where it should have been — on a military parade ground with a marching band, bleachers of waving families and rows of soldiers in neat formation on a wide green lawn. Read the rest of this entry »

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