June 2007
Monthly Archive
June 14, 2007
According to UPI, Dick Cheney’s former right hand man, Scooter Libby, has lost his bid to avoid jail pending the outcome of an appeal against his convictions for perjury and obstruction.
The judge ruled Libby must begin serving his 2-1/2 year sentence without delay but gave the defence team 10-days in which to appeal his decision.
The decision may increase pressure on President Bus to pardon the former White House aide. Libby’s lawyers had hoped that could have been put off until nearer the end of Bush’s final term in office.
June 14, 2007
Diverting sugar and corn crops to biofuels could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, according to the UN’s frontman on the “right to food” issue.
Jean Ziegler said, “There is a great danger for the right to food by the development of biofuels. It (the price) will be paid perhaps by hundreds of thousands of people who will die from hunger.”
From Reuters:
“Ziegler said more and more sugar cane plantations in northern and eastern Brazil were being used for biofuels, leaving less land for subsistence farmers.
“Brazil is the world’s biggest producer of cane-based fuel ethanol, most of which is destined for the domestic market to meet rapidly growing demand from flex-fuel motorists.
“In some regions of Mexico, the price of maize rose by 16 percent last year, because of rising demand for use in biofuels, according to the independent U.N. envoy.
“‘I can understand the Brazilian and Mexican policies which as very indebted countries want to earn hard currency …. But from the point of view of the right to food, which must be the decisive one, it is a catastrophe,’ Ziegler said.
“Some 854 million people worldwide — or one in six — suffer from hunger, according to the sociologist and former Swiss parliamentarian, who cited U.N. figures.”
June 14, 2007
In a decision that is bound to upset the Blair government and the British Ministry of Defence, the House of Lords has ruled that the British Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights do apply to British soldiers serving abroad.
The Law Lords made the ruling in a case of Baha Musa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist who died in September 2003 after being detained by British troops. The 4-1 decision rejecting an appeal by the Ministry of Defence means that a public inquiry may now be held into the Musa death.
The Blair government argued that the soldiers should not be subject to the British or European laws because they were serving in a conflict in a foreign country.
Human rights campaigners were elated by the decision, which they said held the government to account and meant any British detention facility anywhere in the world was now covered.
“Our law lords have today ensured that there can never be a British Guantanamo anywhere in the world … there can be no British detention facility where the law does not apply,” said Shami Chakrabarti of rights group Liberty.
June 14, 2007
The FBI is about to contact a million computer users to notify them their computer has been hijacked by cyber criminals. From BBC:
The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.
The agency said the zombies or bots were “a growing threat to national security”.
The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.
This operation recently passed a significant milestone as it racked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.
The law enforcement organisation said that part of the operation involved notifying people who owned PCs it knew were part of zombie or bot networks. In this way it said it expected to find more evidence of how they are being used by criminals.
In a statement about Operation Bot Roast the FBI urged PC users to practice good computer security which includes using regularly updated anti-virus software and installing a firewall.
For those without basic protections anti-virus companies such as F Secure, Trend Micro, Kaspersky Labs and many others offer online scanning services that can help spot infections.
The organisation said it was difficult for people to know if their machine was part of a botnet.
However it said telltale signs could be if the machine ran slowly, had an e-mail outbox full of mail a user did not send or they get e-mail saying they are sending spam.
June 14, 2007
The Independent ran a feature today on the dwindling future of oil.
BP released a study yesterday claiming that we have enough reserves to meet the existing level of demand for up to 40-years. BP’s optimistic forecast was immediately criticized by the London-based, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. They maintain that the peak for regular, easy to extract and process oil passed in 2005 and that the peak for global oil production from all sources is expected to arrive in the next four years. The warning came from Dr Colin Campbell, “a former chief geologist and vice-president at a string of oil majors including BP, Shell, Fina, Exxon and ChevronTexaco.”
“This scenario is flatly denied by BP, whose chief economist Peter Davies has dismissed the arguments of “peak oil” theorists.
“‘We don’t believe there is an absolute resource constraint. When peak oil comes, it is just as likely to come from consumption peaking, perhaps because of climate change policies as from production peaking.'”
Of course economist Davies is right. He must be, he works for BP. They don’t make mistakes, not even in Alaska. Of course there is no absolute resource constraint, not if you’re willing to wait a couple of million years and put up with the inconvenience of a couple of mass extinctions. Besides we can all rely on climate change policies to dry up the demand for oil long before then, right? Big Oil really is beginning to sound exactly like Big Tobacco.
June 14, 2007
Back in February the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC released its last major update report on global warming. Unless you’ve been locked up in somebody’s basement for months you’ll know the IPCC report warned of the advance of global warming and the urgent need to take remedial action.
Now the IPCC is only 2,500 of the top climate scientists in the world. But there are other voices. Now those other voices may be the same folks who took RJ Reynolds money way back when to boldly deny the link between cigarettes and cancer and they may be the same ones who now take the filthy lucre of Exxon to deny global warming but, hey, that are a contrary voice. That’s why Asper’s CanWest flagship, the National Post countered the February IPCC report with a whole series of articles from the global warming deniers. Scientist for scientist, CanWest gave the deniers a perversely disproportionate amount of attention.
But the best is yet to come. The February IPCC report received brief and passing coverage in the NatPo but the dodgy denial series is still front and centre on the paper’s web page. It may well be the longest lasting series in NatPo history. Who cares if it’s bullshit carefully crafted to sow confusion and doubt? Not Leonard Asper.
June 14, 2007
We know the Chretien Liberals began the Afghanistan mission and we know why. The Martin Liberals, with the support of the opposition, kept that going. However “the mission” found its natural father in the arms of Stephen Harper and, it seems, he can’t get enough of it. Harpo loves the mission so much that he’s already talking about staying past February, 2009 and making dire pronouncements of what might befall Afghanistan, its people and our friend, Hamid Karzai if we leave. The Harpies even have the Bush lexicon down pat, stuff like “cut and run” and “stay the course.”
When Harpo speaks of Afghanisnam, he’s careful to be upbeat. He knows the Canadian people aren’t happy with the war and the casualties our soldiers have been taking. So he has to talk about saving the Karzai government and driving the Taliban out of southern Afghanistan and all the success we’re having.
If he believes that upbeat pitch it’s only because he’s convinced himself. The Globe & Mail has used the Freedom of Information Act to pry a copy of the PMO’s true assessment of the situation over there and it’s markedly at odds with Harpo’s swill:
“The Taliban resurgence has been dramatic,” stated a document dated Nov. 9, 2006.
It describes how the faltering insurgency was given a huge boost by support from sources in Pakistan, the Gulf states and “Jihadi-minded groups and individuals.”
“The unpredicted success that suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had in southern Afghanistan last winter further reinforced the spiralling growth of financial assistance, recruitment, training, equipping and morale improvement” of the Taliban, it said, noting that insurgent spirits were particularly raised with the high-profile shooting down of several helicopters.
“Because of expanding poppy cultivation and the growing insurgency, the analysis noted, the deterioration of security had effectively created “two Afghanistans” with the North and West advancing while the South and East remain “fractious and relatively stagnant.”
“As for Mr. Karzai, the PCO analysis noted that his leadership is “continuously challenged and eroded by the many problems facing Afghanistan and the complex relationships over which he has no control. Consequently, Karzai’s support may be weakening to a new low.”
“It adds that Mr. Karzai faces “questions of legitimacy for his governance team – both in Kabul and out in the provinces.'”
Two remarkable aspects of this assessment. The first is that it almost precisely parallels every other objective assessment coming out of Afghanistan. The second is that it is so directly at odds with the spin and propaganda we get fed to us by the Harpies, an act of sheer contempt for the Canadian people.
June 14, 2007
Jack Granatstein has just explained to the Taliban why they should pay special attention to Quebec’s own Royal 22nd Regiment when they ship out to Afghanistan.
The Toronto Star interviewed Granatstein, a real booster of Canada’s newfound military muscle, about the Van Doos:
“Historian Jack Granatstein said insurgents know that opinion in Canada is split and will try to capitalize on that as more than 2,000 troops from CFB Valcartier, near Quebec City, begin to deploy over the coming months.
“‘I fully expect the Taliban to target the Van Doos,’ he said yesterday in an interview, referring to the famed Royal 22nd Regiment.
“‘I think (the Van Doos are) going to do very well militarily but I think they will take casualties and that’s the difficulty.'”
June 14, 2007
This is Fred Thompson – Senator, television and movie actor, and now candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Beside him is Mrs. Fred Thompson who may just become America’s next First Lady.
June 14, 2007
The United States could lose its one and only Formula One car race to – India. F1 racing is huge around the world but not in the states where NASCAR, drag racing and CART dominate. Still, F1 is the world standard.
Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone said it isn’t necessary for F1 to retain a presence in the US, “There are bigger markets for us to be in other parts of the world. We could be in India soon instead of the United States. We don’t have a lot of sponsors from the U.S., no American teams and only one driver.”
Ecclestone’s take, however, isn’t shared by some of the key manufacturers such as Mercedes and BMW. Their firmly opposed to F1 leaving America and for good reason – that’s where they sell more of their cars than anywhere else. The sole American F1 race is held at Indianapolis.
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