June 2007
Monthly Archive
June 18, 2007
Danish scientists have determined that spring is arriving in the Arctic a full two weeks earlier than just a decade ago.
Ice in north-east Greenland is now melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s. In a region where the period between snow melt and freeze up has normally been just a few months, the lengthening summer is a marked change.
The Danes acknowledge that some critics consider the 10-year study period as not long enough to reach their conclusions but note that their findings have been put to independent peer review and were found satisfactory by the consistency of the results.
June 18, 2007
The global warming deniers like to trot out graphs to lend credibility to their claims. One of the current stars of their community is a German school teacher E.G. Beck. In books and pamphlets and through television appearances, Beck disputes the notion of man-made global warming. He’s even come up with the graph above to prove his contention that it was warmer in medieval times than today and that all we’re experiencing today is a peak in a natural, 1500-year cycle.
The chart above shows temperatures climbing and dropping in wonderfully predictable sine wave cycles. Clearly Beck has proved his point. But wait. What are those two broken, diagonal lines on the bottom time line? If you notice carefully, to the left of the break, time is measured in 400-year gradations. To the right, it’s in 200-year spans. But, then again, manipulating time lines is necessary for Beck to come up with his tidy little graph.
But note also that Beck shows temperature peaks at 400 BC and 12oo AD, a 1,600 year cycle. Fair enough. Add a 1,600 year cycle onto a 1200 AD baseline and when will Beck’s next peak be? He claims it’s now, year 2000. By his own math it’ll be the year 2800 AD.
Just another trick of the trade for the global warming denialists.
June 18, 2007
Stephane Dion doesn’t have to worry about my vote and he probably doesn’t have to worry about yours either. That said, your vote and mine aren’t going to make or break Dion and the Liberal Party in the next election. That fate rests in the hands of the great many, uncommitted Canadian voters. They’re the votes that Dion has to win over and, according to the latest Angus Reid poll, he’s not doing it.
At 25 per cent approval, Dion’s numbers are well behind those of the Liberals who sit at 34%. That suggests there are quite a few people willing to support the Liberal party despite Dion’s lacklustre leadership. For a leader whose claim to fame is the environment, the poll numbers are even more gloomy. While the Greens came out as the top party on the environment, the NDP outpolled the Libs on Dion’s forte issue 2:1.
The incredible shrinking Liberal leader needs to get his act together – pronto! If he continues to be seen as a milquetoast, the party will pay a big price for it in the next election. When the Tories ran those ads attacking Dion as a leader, they weren’t trying to change public opinion, merely reinforce it. They had obviously done their own polling and determined this was where Dion was truly vulnerable.
So, Stephane has to show he’s not what so many now think he is. He’s got to come out as bold and dynamic and even aggressive. This is not a time for wallflowers. With an election as potentially close as the next one, perception becomes almost everything.
You see, this problem goes far beyond the next election. Dion needs solid public support and trust, not just to oust the Harper conservatives but to make real progress on selling the Canadian people on the sacrifices that will be necessary to begin combatting global warming. If you can barely get elected, you don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting anywhere on global warming.
June 18, 2007
They’re not even denying this one. “US-led coalition jets” brought the gift of modern aerial bombs to a compound in Afghanistan today killing “some” insurgents and 7-children.
For all our side says, and they say it so very often, that they’re trying to really stop this sort of thing, their actions put the lie to their claims.
They like to use words like “compound” instead of “a cluster of houses.” Compound doesn’t sound like a place where kids would be sleeping when you drop a few 2,000 pounders on them.
The day that the US and NATO want to stop killing civilians is the day they use soldiers, not air strikes, against residential targets. Until that day comes, all those soothing assurances are plain old barnyard bullshit.
June 18, 2007
Danielle Trussoni’s dad fought in Viet Nam and it took his life last year at the age of 61.
Trussoni’s father died of the effects of Agent Orange as she related in an editorial in today’s New York Times:
“I had seen a video of the C-123 cargo planes swooping low, just above a blanket of crenellated canopy, the fusillade of white clouds fanning out, pretty as powdered sugar. The chemicals worked through the top layers of foliage, moving down to the rice paddies and sinking into the red soil. In the video, the defoliant appeared almost tonic, like cool talcum powder falling from heaven.
“My father walked in the wake of those planes. He remembered the defoliants’ descent over the jungle, slow as snow. He recalled the white coated leaves, the way his throat burned when he breathed the humid air, the strange discoloration he found when he blew his nose. He remembered bathing in a bomb crater, dead birds floating on the surface. Last year, after five years fighting throat cancer that he and his doctors attributed to exposure to the dioxin in Agent Orange, my father died. He was 61.
“Today the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, is scheduled to hear oral arguments against Dow, Monsanto and 35 other companies that manufactured Agent Orange and related herbicides used during the Vietnam War. In addition, 16 appeals by American veterans will be heard, as well as an appeal by a group that represents Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.
“One of the Vietnamese civilians taking part in this appeal is a woman named Dang Hong Nhut, who lived in Cu Chi during the war, the very same part of Vietnam where my father spent his tour. After losing numerous babies to miscarriage and deformity, Dang Hong Nhut sent a biopsy abroad for analysis. The results showed that, years after the war, her body still retained traces of dioxin. In a television interview, she said: ‘It doesn’t matter if the companies won’t admit their crimes. What really counts is that people see that a crime took place.’”
June 18, 2007
British police have instigated a world-wide sweep that has bagged 700-suspected pedophiles from 35 countries.
It all began with the arrest of a 27-year old Briton ten months ago. That ped pleaded guilty to 9 counts of possessing and distributing indecent images. The British police then used that arrest to infiltrate the peds’ chat room and collect evidence against the other members.
June 18, 2007
The troop ship Canberra returns to Southhampton
after the Falklands are retaken.
I have a crisp recollection of the time. I was lunching in the faculty lounge with law professor Donovan Waters (if you’re a lawyer you get it). A couple of days earlier Margaret Thatcher had sent a slapped-together fleet into the South Atlantic.
The subject came up and Dr. Waters asked what I thought. I told him that British air power was going to doom the Argentinians who had seized the Falkland Islands. A day or two earlier I’d gone through some reports dealing with the remarkable performance of the Harrier in an lengthy battle test. Seems it was an astonishingly reliable and resilient aircraft. I assured my English friend that the Argie A-4s and Mirages didn’t stand a chance. A number of weeks later Donovan told me how relieved he was that I’d been right. Unable to maintain air superiority, due mainly to the Harriers’ presence, the Argies couldn’t reinforce or resupply from either sea or air. Nor could they prevent the British landings.
Why does this come up? Only because I just found an item in The Guardian about a 25th anniversary victory fly-over in central London. Twenty five years? My lord, there was a time I would have considered 25-years a rough approximation of a lifetime. Now I can recall some events 25-years past clear as day.
Next to watching your children grow up, that sort of news flashback really reminds you that this is a one-way street and you’ve been on it for a while. Happy Father’s Day!
June 17, 2007
If Hillary Clinton has any serious skeletons in her closet, expect to hear about them soon, very soon. As the Democratic frontrunner, she’s become the prime target for a right-wing smear job.
A movie is in the works which is intended to “expose the truth about her conflicts in the past and her liberal plot for the future.”
The anti-Hillary campaign is being modeled on the highly successful Swift Boat campaign that was used to defeat John Kerry and its backers’ names include the usual suspects.
Anti-Hillary web sites are popping up including the likes of StopHerNow, StopHillaryPAC and HillCAP. One of them even accuses Clinton of illegal fundraising and seeks to have her prosecuted.
Then there will be the books. These include “The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton”, by Bay Buchanan, sister of former Republican presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan, and “Whitewash” by Brent Bozell, a veteran conservative who will try to show that Clinton is a pawn of the liberal media. Another book, “God and Hillary Clinton”, will look at her religious beliefs and her pro-choice position on abortion.
“The Republican approach has been to maintain a distance between the dirty tricks-style operators and their senior figures. ‘It is all based on plausible deniability, so that mainstream Republicans can dissociate with anti-Clinton activists,’ said Shawn Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California.
“However, there is some clear overlap. For example, Texan businessman Bob Perry has joined Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign as a fundraiser. In 2004, Perry gave more than $4m to the Swift Boat campaign.
“Her campaign is prepared for a conservative attack, no matter how dirty. On the campaign trail, one of her slogans is: ‘I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate and how to beat them.’ Her staff have vowed not to repeat Kerry’s 2004 mistake with the Swift Boat campaign when he delayed responding to their accusations that he did not tell the truth about his war record.
June 17, 2007
The latest edition of The Walrus features an interesting assessment of “the mission” to Afghanistan and how it’s really going.
The article quotes Brigadier Richard Nugee, chief spokesperson for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, as saying, “The single thing we have done wrong and we are striving extremely hard to improve on is killing innocent civilians.”
Assuming General Nugee isn’t implying that NATO needs to get better at killing innocent civilians, the question becomes how it intends to stop killing so many innocent Afghans? The way to cut civilians deaths is to stop relying so heavily on air strikes and artillery bombardment, especially in built-up areas but breaking that reliance also means massive increases in troop levels.
The authors raise and then skirt the real issue:
…even if the political will is there, the resources may be lacking. Peace-building experiences in Africa and the Balkans suggest that the overall international contribution to Afghanistan remains substantially below the levels of military and economic support usually necessary to rebuild a state. …However, this conclusion suggests and uncomfortable set of alternatives: either we aren’t truly committed to Afghanistan, or such nation-building projects are beyond our capacity.
Bingo! There it is, asked but not answered. Are we going to truly commit to Afghanistan and, if so, where are going to find another 25,000 soldiers and billions more in aid or have we taken on a task that is simply far beyond the capacity we’ve established there? Can we really achieve more in Kandahar province than the other NATO nations are willing to do in the rest of the country? Is pulling more than our fair share apt to make a lasting difference in Afghanistan’s future or are we just putting in time at the expense of our soldiers’ lives?
June 17, 2007
Tony Blair isn’t getting out of No. 10 without a few good kicks on the way. Even before he yields the reins of power former aides and associates are telling all and their accounts make Tony look like a hapless chump – at the very least.
Britain’s controversial Channel 4 has produced a documentary in which certain credible types say that, contrary to the assurances he gave the British people at the time, Blair committed his troops to battle knowing the US had no real post-war plan. From The Guardian:
“In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
‘Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,’ Mandelson tells The Observer’s chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.
“‘But I remember him saying at the time: “Look, you know, I can’t do everything. That’s chiefly America’s responsibility, not ours.”‘ Mandelson then criticises his friend: ‘Well, I’m afraid that, as we now see, wasn’t good enough.’.
“Blair’s most senior foreign affairs adviser at the time of the war makes clear that Blair was ‘exercised’ on the exact issue raised by the war’s opponents. Sir David Manning, now Britain’s ambassador to Washington, says: ‘It’s hard to know exactly what happened over the post-war planning. I can only say that I remember the PM raising this many months before the war began. He was very exercised about it.’
“Manning reveals that Blair was so concerned that he sent him to Washington in March 2002, a full year before the invasion. On his return to London, Manning wrote a highly-critical secret memo to Blair. ‘I think there is a real risk that the [Bush] administration underestimates the difficulties,’ it said. ‘They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.’
“Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s envoy to the postwar administration in Baghdad, confirms that Blair was in despair. ‘There were moments of throwing his hands in the air: “What can we do?” He was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies.’ The failure to prepare meant that Iraq quickly fell apart. Greenstock adds: ‘I just felt it was slipping away from us really, from the beginning. There was no security force controlling the streets. There was no police force to speak of.'”
These revelations, coupled with earlier insights including leaked memos, puts the lie to Blair’s flimsy claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. It is beyond dispute now that Blair had a full year before the attack on Iraq in which he knew that conditions were perfect for the whole thing to turn into a quagmire after the invasion. Despite all the warnings he still committed his forces to Bush’s folly. The interviews make clear that Blair misled his own people and stayed perfectly mute when he knew that George w. Bush was lying to his people.
Have we heard the end of this business? Don’t count on it. There are plenty of others with plenty to tell and, now that the floodgates have been opened, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be willing to put their own reputations at risk to protect their fatally-wounded former leader.
Much as Tony Blair should have been able to see the Iraq invasion as a fiasco waiting to happen, he also should have understood that he stood even less chance of his real actions remaining secret.
Never, ever let a guy who ever looked like this
send your kids to war!
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