September 2007 archive

All the news that fits.

As of this first week in September 2007, I am not confident that the Democratic nominee will win the 2008 presidential election. Rather, I have been growing increasingly more pessimistic the party’s will make the vote even close.

Right now, the Republican Party’s 2008 strategy appears to be distraction, disruption, and delay. And despite the enthusiasm and optimism found on left-leaning blogs, a collectively small community, in the greater electoral playing field, I see signs of the Republicans’ 3d strategy working.

1. Hurricane Felix has weakened some, but is still deadly. Reuters has the details as Felix hits Central America. “The highly dangerous Hurricane Felix ripped into Central America on Tuesday, smashing up a port on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and threatening deadly mudslides in Honduras and Guatemala… ¶ Felix struck the coast as a potentially catastrophic Category 5 storm… The area where Felix hit is sparsely populated and dotted with lagoons and marshes, but the storm threatened many poor Honduran and Guatemalan villages further inland that are perched on hillsides and vulnerable to mudslides… ¶ Felix weakened to a Category 3 hurricane as it crashed through northern Nicaragua but was still very dangerous.” There have been two fatalities.

2. The Los Angeles Times gives this bleak assessment of the Iraq occupation and summer ‘surge’. “The U.S. military buildup that was supposed to calm Baghdad and other trouble spots has failed to usher in national reconciliation, as the capital’s neighborhoods rupture even further along sectarian lines, violence shifts elsewhere and Iraq’s government remains mired in political infighting… ¶ The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased… ¶ Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions… ¶ At best, analysts, military officers and ordinary Iraqis portray the country as in a holding pattern, dependent on U.S. troops to keep the lid on violence.”

3. The Financial Times is reporting that the Chinese military hacked into the Pentagon this past June. “The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.” While off the record, the fingers are pointing to China’s People’s Liberation Army and Beijing, of course, has declined to comment. “Hackers from numerous locations in China spent several months probing the Pentagon system before overcoming its defences… The Pentagon is still investigating how much data was downloaded, but one person with knowledge of the attack said most of the information was probably ‘unclassified’.” The operative word is probably, meaning they don’t really know.

4. The switch to biofuels can have negative impacts. In The Independent, Last refuge of the orang-utan, the sad fate of the orangutans is examined. “The orang-utan, one of our closest animal relatives and the largest tree-living mammal on the planet, is in deep crisis. A once-mighty orange army of 300,000 that swung through the dense forests of much of south-east Asia has dwindled to fewer than 25,000 concentrated on the two Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, conservationists say. There, they cling precariously to life on government-protected nature reserves that are under siege by developers of one of the world’s most lucrative commodities: palm oil. ¶ Illegal logging, fires and clearances have decimated the tropical rainforest that is the exclusive home of the primates, who nest high above the forest floor.

So, what else is happening?