The Next World War?

I've been thinking about oil lately.

The price per barrel is approaching record highs when adjusted for inflation, but it's not the price that has me thinking. Most OPEC countries, save Saudi Arabia, are pumping near their capacity and it takes several years to build additional capacity and all the infrastructure that supports that capacity. Large oil companies - most infamously Shell - have "re-structured" their reserves or outright reduced the amount of oil they claim in known reserves. South East and Pacific-Rim nations, most especially China, have economies and populations that are expanding at unsustainable rates. And with growing economies and growing populations come rising demand for energy. The primary oil supplying region of the world is in perpetual turmoil.

So what happens when demand, whether temporary or permanently, outstrips supply? Of course prices go up. Way up. And demand will temporarily ease. But growing third-world populations will not stand by while their standards of living stagnate and that of the first-world continues to absorb resources at prodigious rates. The Chinese will not be denied their cars and their motorcylces and their washers and dryers and their internet connected refrigerators. Nor will the Indians, Pakistanis or Indonesians.

At what point will some leader emerge in what country and claim the need for - not leibensraum - but oil? And what will they do?

Farewell, Hesiod

Counterspin Central is no more.

Hesiod is one of the reasons I started blogging. And now he's gone. Go say farewell before his blog goes down.

If Only...

If you haven't seen the Quicktime movie "Bush for Peace," you really should. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wonder who let go of the puppet's strings...

" A Little Torture..."

It is commonly said that we are a nation of laws, not men. And we are. But beyond the laws, we are also a nation of men and women with a common ethic. Some things are not American. Torture, for damned sure, is one of them.

Richard Cohen, in an opinion piece in today's Washington Post. He is dead on. Go read the rest.

Stealth Outsourcing

Hemmed in by labor contracts with United Auto Workers and perhaps sensing the public's distaste for outsourcing and the attendant bad publicity, the Big Three Automakers have hit upon a new strategy. Force their suppliers to outsource. The automakers bring prices they can get in China to their suppliers and use those as the benchmark. They threaten their domestic suppliers with going directly to the Chinese if they can't meet the price. Of course the differences are so great that the only way the suppliers can meet the price and keep the business is to move their own manufacturing to China or buy subcomponents there. From this morning's WSJ (subscription):

Both GM and Ford acknowledge that Chinese auto-parts suppliers now serve as global "benchmark" prices for quality and price on certain components, such as electric-wire cables, radios, speakers, small motors, and even brakes, suspensions and aluminum wheels. The prices reflect China's average wage costs of 90 cents an hour, compared with $22.50 in the U.S., according to Roland Berger Strategy Consultants of Munich, Germany.

"It's Economics 101, Adam Smith," Ford President Nick Scheele says in an interview. "It's the law of comparative advantage." He says the benchmark component prices Ford is asking suppliers to match these days represent "optimal" prices, and can come from anywhere in the world, including China.

You read that correctly; 90 cents and hour. You can be sure that wage does not include any kind of retirement plan or health plan. Rest assured, too that no pesky environmental laws restrain the pollution of the communities where these parts are made and no OSHA rules get in the way of keeping Chinese workers in high-pressure, long-hour, dangerous working conditions.

The results of the pressures on the parts and accessories supply industry is devastating. Think about the following numbers, then think about other industries doing similar things. Then think about the people behind those numbers. The next statistic could be you.

According to a recent study of parts suppliers by Roland Berger, 133,000 jobs, or 16% of the labor pool, in the American parts industry have disappeared over the past four years as parts suppliers cut costs by improving productivity or shifting jobs to lower-cost countries such as China and Mexico. By 2010, the same study predicts a further 127,000 jobs, or 18% of the 707,000 remaining, will disappear or move overseas, says Andreas Mai, the author of the Roland Berger study.

Call on the Hot Line, Mr. President

Barbara Brugger, from comments at Respectful of Otters, said she wished she knew a T-shirt artist to make up a shirt with one of those "While you were out" memoes. I'd tell you what she wanted to say on that T-shirt, but instead, I whipped up the graphic she wanted. And I couldn't agree more.

Thank You!

Sometime this morning, The Fulcrum Site Meter officially went over the 10,000 visitor mark since mid-November of last year. Thank you to each and every person who has come by and especially to those of you who have left comments. I've used your comments to improve my writing and the blog itself. Each of your blogs, each of your comments has also taught me a lot about keeping such a site and about writing. I hope that I've managed to live up to the wonderful examples that so many of you have set.

Thank you, all. I look forward to reaching the 20K benchmark!

Extraconstitutional Excrement

What could possibly excuse the moral bankruptcy of this administration?

They started a war on false pretenses - all the pretenses they spun out were false. They alienated our country from our traditional allies. They failed to provide enough men or protective materiel to prosecute the war and its followup. They failed to sufficiently plan for the nation building that must follow a war. They failed to maintain a command climate that would discourage acts that violate several conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

What could be worse?

How about having White House lawyers draw up memoranda claiming that the President of the United States is not bound by the laws and treaties that apply to everyone else in the country. No such privilege can exist in a true democratic nation of laws. Bush feels he is above the law - in fact he had his lackeys draw up documents to claim exactly that.

What's next? Perhaps the "October Surprise" that so many on the left expect this year will be a coronation.

Bush; Setting Aside Laws and Torture

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal (via Josh Marshall) we learn that White House counsel advised that prisoners and detainees in the Middle East could be treated more harshly than would be allowed under the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions Against Torture.

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Besides the outrageous - and completely false - claim of extraconstitutional powers in this statement, it is disgusting to see the de-facto acceptance of torture in our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and GITMO. And yet, we can see from the little evidence that we have seen that, indeed, this statement was not only accepted at face value by the administration, but its propagation down the chain-of-command was "successful."

In an interesting juxtaposition, an article in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription) notes that military lawyers were, and remain, uncomfortable with the liberties being taken with international and US law by the Bush administration.

Some top military lawyers in the Pentagon are questioning the propriety of interrogation techniques currently being employed to question al Qaeda captives at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, senior defense officials said.

[snip]

Military lawyers, many of whom worked closely in drafting the interrogation rules, have conveyed their concerns to Bush administration officials in the Pentagon, the defense officials said. Their objections to many of the tactics approved for use at Guantanamo illustrate a rift between senior military lawyers and Bush administration lawyers inside the Pentagon about which extreme interrogation measures are legal.

The highlighted sentence provides a peek into this world of chickenhawks versus the military. The military lawyers know that it is vital to the interests of the soldiers that the US been seen as holding the high moral ground in how we treat our prisoners and detainees. The civilian lawyers under the thrall of neo-con Pentagon advisors and their leash holders, are more interested in results - any results - regardless of the efficacy, the legality or the morality of their methods.

Having been in the military, I can tell you that it pains me to say this, but in this instance, the military lawyers, the folks from the JAG Corps, are the ones upholding the honor and the best interests of the military. We were let down by the commanders and the soldiers - by everyone in the chain-of-command - who let the abuse and torture of prisoners happen. Cooler heads did not prevail.

I hope that they kept all of their briefing notes. They may be needed at the Hague.

The Other Quagmire?

Did you know that the US now has 20,000 troops in Afghanistan? Did you know that's the most troops we've ever had there?

I didn't either.

Read the rest of my thoughts on this in my post "The Other Quagmire?" at The Liberal Coalition.

Begin the Beatification

It's actually been underway for years now. The renaming of National Airport. The attempt to get a street in every town renamed. Redesigning a coin with his likeness. But now that Ronald Reagan is dead, the movement among the right-wingers to make him some sort of national saint will pick up speed and momentum.

Get ready: over the next week it's going to be All Ronnie, All the Time.

To hear them speak about Reagan, in hushed tones more suitable to a church than to politics, is to see visions of his face peering down from murals and up from coins in a sort of reverse Soviet cult-of-personality. To the wingers he is "The Gipper," or "Dutch" or "The Great Communicator."

What you won't hear pass their lips are phrases like "October Surprise" or "Iran-Contra" or "ballooning deficits." And if you look at the old photographs of Number 40 in office, you'll see a eerily familiar and infamous cast of characters... faces that haven't changed in the intervening years as though they've made some sort of Dorian Grey deal with the devil.

Some great things happened while Reagan was in office, as did some very bad things. There is more evidence that he was directly responsible for the latter than for the former.

Thank You

Secure, Undisclosed Location II

At first there were three, small, pale blue eggs. Nestled down into a cozy nest of straw and grass and an errant string or two. And then there were five. This afternoon, there was only one egg remaining - but this is a happy story. For the past couple of weeks, I've watched a female starling flit in and out of the fill tower to our underground propane tank. It seems her spring-time mission is coming to fruition.



A couple of sharp whistles gets these two to open their mouths, awaiting a treat. The other two must have only hatched this afternoon and have not quite figured out how to get their mother's attention. I hope the final egg hatches as well...

Overreaction and The Continued Erosion of Civil Rights

A young Boston College student decided to protest outside a local military recruitment office. His idea? To dress as that anonymous abu Ghraib prisoner pictured standing on a box in a hooded cape with wires dangling from his fingers and genitals.

Brilliant, no?

Well...

Previtera stood outside the recruitment center for over an hour. And then the police arrived. Within hours he was facing charges more serious than any US soldier is facing for their role in the actual prison abuse in Iraq. Previtera was charged with three crimes: disturbing the peace, possession of a hoax device and making a false bomb threat. If convicted he could face years in prison.

You read that correctly; making a false bomb threat. Despite that one picture beamed around the world a million times and being instantly familiar to everyone, the cops charged him with making a bomb threat.

Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department told the Boston Phoenix: "It can be implied, with fingers and wires - especially in a heightened state of alert, as we are. Mr. Previtera should know better. He's a young adult educated at Boston College from a wealthy suburb. I'm sure he knows wires attached to his fingers, running to a milk crate, would arouse suspicion outside a military recruiters' office [when he's] dressed in prisoner's garb. If he has any questions as to why people think he may've had a bomb, then he needs to maybe go back to Boston College to brush up on his public policy. Or at least common sense, but they can't really teach that there."

Seems to me that Mr. McCarthy is the one in need of lessons on "common sense." And this seems to be another case where the rights of a citizen to protest peacfully is being trampled in the name of "security." But security in the defense of democracy is not served by destroying the very democracy being defended.

Via Terrette in the comments at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat.

CIA Head to Resign

No details yet, but Bush says Tenet to resign for personal reasons.

Is this the start of the unravelling of BushCo.? It will be interesting to see what details emerge about the real reasons Tenet is jumping ship.

UPDATE: Some details emerging. See here.

Bush Retains Lawyer in CIA Leak Probe

Just in case, of course...

President Bush has consulted a private attorney in case he is interviewed or forced to testify about who may have leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to the media last summer, the White House said Wednesday.

Yes, it looks like Bush is preparing to "fully cooperate" as promised. Much like the way the rest of his staff has cooperated so far...

See more here.

Blogs for Bush: Rebutted

I've accepted an invitation from a few other bloggers to participate in a new blog called Blogs for Bush Rebutted. In the spirit of other blogs whose mission is to "watch" other blogs and present a more balanced viewpoint, this new endeavor will keep an eye on Blogs for Bush (no link from me) and try to present a nuanced, fact based rebuttal to charges leveled there against John Kerry, Democrats and liberals in general.

The genesis of the Rebuttal blog was an instance of banning an opposition commenter from the Blogs for Bush comments. Since the folks who run the blog were apparently not interested in a truly open forum, we decided to provide that forum - and perhaps more.

Please drop by Blogs for Bush Rebutted, see what the opposition is up to and get an open discussion on the issues.

Twins vs. Twins

Is the fact that Julia Roberts is pregnant with twins really that much more important than the theft of twin propane tanker trucks that CNN (and most talking head news networks) lead with the Roberts story and the other - if it was covered - was well down the list?

I'm not sure if that says more about the things that most Americans care about or how our friends in the SCLM prioritize stories. Or maybe it's a sure sign of the end of the American empire...

It's All True; It's All False

All progressive bloggers - myself included - have long written about Bush's bait-n'-switch habits, making promises to fund programs and then making sure that Republicans in Congress failed to include funding for those same programs in budget bills. The past is evidence of their mendacity, but most on the Right will not learn the lessons of history when it comes to BushCo..

New evidence, though, raises the question "will they learn from direct evidence of intent to continue their ways?" My best guess is "no." From the Paul Krugman in today's New York Times:

Last week The Washington Post got hold of an Office of Management and Budget memo that directed federal agencies to prepare for post-election cuts in programs that George Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. These include nutrition for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeland security. The numbers match those on a computer printout leaked earlier this year - one that administration officials claimed did not reflect policy.

Lots of folks have commented on the fact that BushCo. officials would rather lie even when the truth would prove favorable to them; they are pathological liars. So there doesn'tnecessarilyy need to be a reason for them to lie. But in this case, Krugman thinks there really is a reason for the bald faced lie:

...whatever they may say in public, administration officials know that sustaining Mr. Bush's tax cuts will require large cuts in popular government programs. And for the vast majority of Americans, the losses from these cuts will outweigh any gains from lower taxes.

It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election.

Note closely those programs slated for cuts; programs that provide for the poorest among us and for homeland security.

When it comes time to vote in November, remember this story (and all the others) and ask yourself: "is this the kind of country I want to live in?" Vote your conscience.

Abu Ghraib - More of the Same

An article in today's Wall Street Journal claims that poor preparation was a key ingredient in the prisoner abuse scandal at abu Ghraib. The scope, type and duration of operations in the detention system were not anticipated nor planned for.

A big part of the problem was the intelligence system itself. Many interrogators and analysts showed up at Abu Ghraib with almost no knowledge of Iraqi culture. "I learned about everything I know about Islam after I deployed," Spc. Monath said.

In addition, though many of the interrogators had put in years of training in the U.S., an equal number knew practically nothing about their assignment. "We hardly got any training in interrogation before we went over," said Spc. Teaca. "It was really surprising because the job is so crucial."

[snip]

The interviews show an intelligence system ill-equipped to battle a largely faceless insurgency. Interrogators and analysts at Abu Ghraib, some of whom say they had little experience interrogating prisoners, knew little about the enemy they were fighting. And they were working within a military-intelligence system that was never designed to incarcerate and interrogate thousands of prisoners for months on end.

Problems were exacerbated by a corrosive relationship between soldiers and some of their superiors, who pressed interrogators to meet quotas on the number of interviews and reports they generated. The soldiers also faced unclear rules of interrogation that often seemed improvised on the fly.

So, instead of being an anomaly, this was another facet of the poor planning and the purposeful lack of resources given to the military in this misadventure by BushCo. Although not as deadly as sending soldiers into Iraq without the proper body armor or sufficient vehicle armor, it is, nonetheless, symptomatic of the hubris with which the whole affair was "planned."

This travesty, like the needless death of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis, rests squarely on the shoulders of Bush and his coterie of neo-con chicken-hawks.