‘Monster(s)’
Filed Under Economy, Environment, Finance, Madness | Leave a Comment
Take heart everybody, the situation is actually worse than we think, so there’s no need to panic…yet.
Yesterday, there were a couple of ‘monster‘ reports — one in climate science, the other in economics — that explained in detail why both our environment and our state-of-living is in bad shape, and why the US and the world night be on the brink of some nasty consequences for years of a self-centered lifestyle.
Despite the Rolling Stones’ song to the contrary, time appears not on our side.
From the BBC and that nasty Greek problem — Luc Lampiere, executive director of Oxfam in France, and the shameful Cannes G20 gathering: “There are problems across the planet. The issues that were a victim of this agenda, of this very European agenda, are issues of poverty in the world – issues of food supplies, the fight against climate change…. This is a big failure for leadership from those countries.”
People need to listen and take great action.
(Illustration found here).
As these world leaders fiddle about with themselves, problems beyond the near-petty Euro-zone are reaching bad-news highs.
Especially in climate change, where it butts heads with economics.
Via Time magazine:
The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009.
That’s an increase of 6 percent.
That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
It is a “monster” increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.
And once again, that old ‘worse than anticipated’ line:
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
Finances must come first:
India and China are huge users of coal.
Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.
“The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?” Reilly (John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change) said Thursday.
“Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people.
Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world.”
…
“Really dismaying,” Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures.
“We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren.”
Joe Romm at Climate Progress adds: Chinese emissions now exceed ours by a whopping 50%. They will be double ours by 2010 if they keep on their rapacious, immoral path of weekly coal-plant building — and we keep on our rapacious, immoral path of doing nothing.
No happy campers here.
And the other ‘monster’ in the room is poverty in the US — the Brookings Institution released on Thursday a study which concluded that those living below the poverty line (defined in 2010 as having an income of $22,314 for a family of four) appears to be getting worse, and it’s widespread.
The study says populations of extreme poverty neighborhoods grew by one-third over the last 10 years.
From Reuters:
“You can think of this in two ways: One is how deeply poor someone is and the other is how persistently poor the community is,” said Steve Suits, vice president of the Southern Education Foundation, noting that since the end of the Civil War, poverty has become increasingly concentrated in the South.
In studying the effects of extreme poverty on education, the foundation found that in 2009, nearly 6.5 million children lived in households with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty threshold.
The South accounted for nearly half of the nation’s increase in extreme poverty, it found.
“In 2009, people in extreme poverty was the fastest- growing income group in America,” Suits said.
“Most households in this economy are in jeopardy of falling into poverty or extreme poverty.”
The U.S. Census recently reported the ranks of the poor rose in almost all states and cities in 2010.
About 40 percent of the poor live outside major cities, Brookings said, showing poverty is rolling into the suburbs.
“While large metro areas experienced the largest absolute increases in extreme poverty neighborhoods and concentrated poverty, small metropolitan areas were home to the fastest growth in extreme poverty tracts and the number of residents living in them,” Brookings found.
So that’s one in 15 people are way poor.
Is there any economic solution to climate change?
In creating a robust economy, the future is dark — what good is money is you’re not alive to spend it.
‘Farewell Friday’ — Why Don’t The Sonofabitch Leave?
Filed Under Double Standard, history, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
As simple as one, two — bye, bye.
(Illustration found here).
As events in Egypt reach once again a kind of flash point Friday after Hosni Mubarak showed himself as mentally-unhinged in not only not stepping aside, down or in some kind of way displaying a sense he needs to get the shit out of Dodge (or Cairo), but he also rubbed the faces of Egyptian peoples in bullshit.
In a turnabout bit of spin control Thursday evening, the old corrupt bastard was defiant, self-centered and a liar: He said he was talking to Egypt’s people via a “speech from the heart.”
And from the hearts of thousands in Tahrir Square was the desire to beat the freakish asshole to pieces with their shoes — to say Mubarack’s speech was a let-down is a gross understatement as everybody on the planet apparently figured the old fuck would make some move to leave.
Anyway, that’s what everybody figured.
Thursday morning, the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, told the US House Intelligence Committee there was a “strong likelihood” that Hosni was step down later in the day — wrong!
Quickly, Panetta’s lackeys tried to backtrack, claiming their boss was only following media reports: But by then, the comments had ricocheted around the Internet, underscoring U.S. confusion about events unfolding in Egypt, as well as the perils of publicly weighing in on such developments while serving as director of CIA.
Instead of using the world’s supposedly most-advanced intelligence system, Leon was getting his information from TV — give us an $80-billion break.
Jason Ditz of antiwar.com nailed it:
It seems right now the indication is absolutely yes, that despite massive aid, decades of close ties, and the largest spying infrastructure on the planet, the US intelligence community appears to have no real grasp on the Egyptian situation, and really is just watching TV and hoping the media analysts are right in their predictions.
Which leads us to Friday morning.
The big question is what the Egyptian army will do.
Despite reports the military has been just watching the events unfold, the UK’s the Guardian has reported the army has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents and is torturing the shit out of them — and protesters have to only look like protesters, or even just have in possession a flyer:
“Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not,” he said.
“It’s unusual and to the best of our knowledge it’s also unprecedented for the army to be doing this.”
On midday Friday, a statement from the army said the 30-year emergency law was “to be lifted” as soon as events allow, which is the important note, as to when that time will arrive.
A sense of horror and sadness overcomes me — the images of the last three weeks is a kind of heart-lifting fling of hope for people who have had a shitty life and only, and this is the key, ‘only‘ want to live like any decent human being would want to live.
And the huge amount of young people, like real young, like children, who have come to the square to proclaim the revolt over evil.
Protest organizers are seeking 20 million people to come out into the streets of Egypt’s cities today in a push to shove the corrupt government out of the country.
Flowers or a bloodbath — I sincerely hope it’s flowers.
But in the shit-eating words of Omar Suleiman, the torture queen and Hosni’s vice president, who spoke on TV right after Mubarak’s pitiful spiel:
“Youth of Egypt, heroes of Egypt, go back to your homes and businesses. The country needs you so that we build, develop and create,” Suleiman said.
“Do not listen to tendentious radios and satellite televisions which have no aim but ignite disorder, weaken Egypt and distort its image.”
Too late, asshole!
Who Is This Guy?
Filed Under Bullshit | Leave a Comment
Despite the elements, the protests continue to grow and grow and grow.
(Illustration found here).
On Tuesday, and even after more than two weeks of protest, the crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir Square was by far the largest yet, and even into the wee hours of Wednesday, thousands are still camped there, demanding the Egyptian government cut the bullshit.
Some estimates put the crowd at two million strong at one point Tuesday — the square has been re-nicknamed, the “Republic of Tahrir” — and yesterday considered a tipping point: Tharwat, a 25-year-old musician, finally hit on a comparison: “It’s like Woodstock or something,” he said. There’s no sex or drugs – and apart from nationalist anthems blaring from tinny speakers, not much music either – but the protests that entered their 15th day Tuesday have nevertheless become this Egyptian generation’s Woodstock moment. To the protesters, Tahrir Square is the freest, safest, happiest and truest place in long-repressed Egypt, where no Mubarak joke is off-limits and nothing short of his immediate ouster is acceptable.
The people have more than spoken, they’ve screamed out their collective brains.
One of the major problems is Egypt’s nearly-brand new vice president, Omar Suleiman, one nasty sonofabitch who said earlier this week his country is not ready for democracy, Hosni Mubarak ain’t going anywhere and there’s no real need to end 30-years of emergency law.
Of course, the clueless US piped that Suleiman’s big mouth made some “particularly unhelpful comments,” but again Jumping Joe Biden talked to his Egyptian counterpart and tried to calm the waters.
The problem is that Suleiman is not a trustworthy, nice person — he’s obviously a high-strung political sadist.
Read some more background on Suleiman here.
But who, really, is this guy?
Their names sounded so much alike, I in my ignorance…
Krugman at 4 AM — Bad News on the Doorstep, and Ringing the Chimes
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Economy, Environment, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
As events continue to dramatically unfold in Cairo’s Liberty Square, the US also persists in propping up other assholes around the world beyond Hosni Mubarak, who is clinging to power despite the last two weeks.
The US hypocritically loves dictators while crying for democracy.
And this bullshit slaps the face of the Egyptian protesters:
As if deliberately bragging about this disconnect between pro-democratic rhetoric and undemocratic reality, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Arab television: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.”
The US will one day pay dearly for this two-faced slapping.
(Illustration found here).
And Jumping Joe Biden kept the family feelings all together.
In an interview on PBS (via The Hill):
When asked if Mubarak was a dictator, Biden responded, “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region, Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”
Well, what would Joe say about this list of non-dictators?
- 1 — Paul Biya, Cameroon
- 2 — Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov (or Berdymukhamedov), Turkmenistan
- 3 — Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea
- 4 — Idriss Deby, Chad
- 5 — Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan
- 6 — Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia
- 7 — King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz, Saudi Arabia
All these guys are not very nice to their own people and the US backs them to the hilt.
And they could be next in line and Jumping Joe might have to claim these assholes are not dictators either despite all kids of noted and reported human rights abuses along with all kinds of other nefarious shit.
The US needs to wake-up and smell the revolution.
Paul Krugman in his New York Times column this morning touches upon a landscape these non-dictators do not want to venture out into, despite there’s no real stopping it — food and the impact of climate change.
A couple of bits:
The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics.
After all, the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re happening now.
And there’s little question that sky-high food prices have been an important trigger for popular rage.
…
Still, food prices lagged behind the prices of other commodities until last summer. Then the weather struck.
Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the summer.
The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world production is down sharply.
The bulk of that production decline, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp plunge in the former Soviet Union.
And we know what that’s about: a record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100 degrees for the first time ever.
The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.
…
Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year.
Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area.
And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.
…
But the evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of the disruption, economic and political, that we’ll face in a warming world.
And given our failure to act on greenhouse gases, there will be much more, and much worse, to come.
Dictators or not, change is rattling its coming.
‘Instability’ of Intelligence
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Media, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
The CIA along with all the US intelligence agencies were caught with their panties down on Tunisia and Egypt:
“These events should not have come upon us with the surprise that they did,” the committee‘s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said in an interview.
“There should have been much more warning” of the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, she said, in part because demonstrators were using the Internet and social media to organize.
“Was someone looking at what was going on the Internet?” she asked.
No surprise here.
In reality, US intelligence is really not worth a shit — Stuff we should have known in advance: An entire meltdown of the governing/social order in North Africa and the Mid East, or maybe even from a few years back, another major CIA ineptness on nowhere-near predicting the collapse of Soviet Russia.
Are these people worth the $80 billion budgets?
(Illustration found here).
And to cover their intelligence-gathering asses, a mentally-unalert spokesman went whining:
“Did anyone in the world predict that a fruit vendor in Tunisia would light himself on fire and spark a revolution? No,” said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
“But had the diplomatic and intelligence community been reporting for decades about simmering unrest in the region?
About demographic changes including a higher proportion of youth?
About broad frustration with economic conditions and a lack of a political outlet to exercise these frustrations? Absolutely,” Vietor said.
What about on-the-ground human intelligence?
Jason Ditz at antiwar.com puts the mess into perspective:
The massive surveillance of social media and record intelligence budgets have given rise to the belief that this sort of thing should have been predicted, but might speak not so much to officials’ lack of attention as their lack of understanding for the notion that average citizens are just generally unhappy to live under oppressive “president-for-life” dictators.
This would explain not just the intelligence failures but the continued US funding for such regimes.
Being ahead of the curve is what ‘intelligence gathering‘ is all about, is it not?
And Hillary Clinton’s acute analysis of the Middle East caught in a “perfect storm” of awsome, groundbreaking shit — a most-useful phrase/analogy these days, ‘perfect storm,’ original words, “perfect situation“ as in meaning the coming quickly together of different phenomena, creating a perfect platform of circumstance for mega-disaster (except ‘perfect situation,’ doesn’t have the drama, wouldn’t be as catchy, wouldn’t make a nifty book title).
Hillary’s words sound really, really bad, as in ‘we’re casting stones in hypocritical hindsight‘ because the US has known all along of these festering environments, these ‘situations,’ which are now coming together big time in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and other places.
In places where life is so overwhelmed by vicious government — if the boss is a mean, nasty asshole, then most-likely people who work for him will be mean, nasty assholes, all the way down to the lowest level of mean, nasty asshole of a municipal inspector — a 26-year-old fruit vendor, whose meager income supported his mother, uncle and five brothers and sisters at home, would douse himself with paint thinner and set himself afire.
In Egypt, the US knew what a mean, nasty asshole-operation Hosni Mubarak operated.
Late last month, WikiLeaks released some US diplomatic cables pertaining to life in Mubarak’s Egypt.
From the Guardian:
“The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders.
One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharoahs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone,” one cable said.
Under Hosni Mubarak’s presidency there had been “no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution”, it said.
The police’s ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.
The Internet and Egyptian bloggers also get high play in the WikiLeak cables.
In one cable (via the Guardian) an observance: Bloggers’ discussions of sensitive issues, such as sexual harassment, sectarian tension and the military, represent a significant change from five years ago, and have influenced society and the media.
A country wanting to be free.
And where is the US/Egypt going from here.
Omar Suleiman, as a person, might be even worse than Mubarak.
Suleiman, one remembers, is now Egypt’s vice president, former head of the intelligence service, appointed by Hosni and who has now come up with a transition plan to ease Mobarak out of the picture.
Even Hillary endorses Suleiman’s plans, blubbering today in Germany: “There are forces at work in any society, and particularly one that is facing these kinds of challenges, that will try to derail the process to pursue their own agenda. That´s why it´s important to support the transition process announced by the Egyptian government headed by Vice President Suleiman.”
Egypt might horribly be caught in the old ‘frying pan into the fire’ routine.
Suleiman is one piece of work.
He was the go-to guy for the CIA’s infamous rendition program in the Global War on Terror, and, he was on the scene getting the US its needed ‘intelligence’ to invade Iraq.
According to Jane Mayer at the New Yorker:
Technically, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture.
But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
UPDATE: Further documentation of Suleiman’s role in the rendition program appears in Ron Suskind’s book, “The One Percent Doctrine.”
Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed human-rights lawyer who did legal research for my book, points out that, according to Suskind, Suleiman was the C.I.A.’s liaison for the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi.
The Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq.
…
In particular, the Egyptians wanted Libi to confirm that the Iraqis were in the process of giving Al Qaeda biological and chemical weapons.
In pushing this line of inquiry, the Egyptians appear to have been acting in accordance with the wishes of the U.S., which wanted to document its case for going to war against Iraq.
Under duress, Libi eventually gave in.
Details from his confession went into the pivotal speech that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the United Nations in Feburary of 2003, making the case for war.
Several years later, however, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq turned up no such weapons of mass destruction, or ties between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Libi recanted.
When the F.B.I. later asked him why he had lied, he blamed the brutality of the Egyptian intelligence service. As Michael Isikoff and David Corn first reported in their book, “Hubris,” Libi explained, “They were killing me,” and that, “I had to tell them something.”
And most-likely Suleiman was on the scene.
From AOLNEWS:
“He has a long history of doing all the dirty work that needs to be done in Egypt. Both domestically, and we also know that he was involved with the infamous rendition affairs with the United States,” Rime Allaf, a Middle East expert at London’s Chatham House think tank, told AOL News.
Allaf was referring to an alleged CIA program under the Bush administration in which terror suspects were secretly transported, imprisoned and tortured by U.S. allies like Egypt.
The U.S. has publicly denied the existence of any such program, but President Barack Obama nevertheless signed an executive order outlawing rendition torture in the opening days of his presidency.
“We’ve heard a lot of stories where he [Suleiman] would take a personal interest, either in the renditions or in anybody who was caught who he thought had links to Islamist groups. He was said to be personally involved in the interrogations and the torture,” Allaf said.
“He’s not a civilian, and he’s not a pleasant person.”
Intelligence has its own instability.