This is an OPEN THREAD. Here are four stories in the news at 4 o’clock to get you started.

1. When George W. Bush decided to go after Iraq’s oil rather than finish the job in Afghanistan, I wonder if he thought he would see this headline, Afghan president offers to meet Taliban leader, in the Los Angeles Times four years later? Heckuva screw-up, George. “President Hamid Karzai, expressing horror at a suicide bombing here in the Afghan capital that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more, offered today to meet with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to stop the carnage. Karzai spoke at an emotional news conference hours after an early morning blast tore through a bus carrying soldiers to their posts.”

   Saturday’s appeal, aimed directly at fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, carried more raw urgency than the U.S.-backed president’s previous overtures.

   “If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me — I’ll personally go there and get in touch with them,” Karzai told reporters at his presidential palace.

   Apparently paraphrasing the question he would put to them, he asked: “‘Esteemed mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?’ “

   There is more on the Kabul suicide attack in the Washington Post, suicide bomb attack kills dozens in Kabul. “The massive explosion, one of the largest suicide attacks in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion almost six years ago, ripped through the roof and sides of the bus, leaving it an unrecognizable chunk of twisted and charred metal. The blast broke shop windows up to a block away and scattered splinters of glass, chunks of flesh and chards of metal for hundreds of yards… ¶ The 6:45 a.m. blast in the central Kabul neighborhood of Baharistan could be heard for miles in a city that was just waking up… The explosion occurred in front of a large movie theater, at a place where Afghan soldiers gather every morning to be picked up by a bus that takes them to their jobs, army spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said in a telephone interview. He said the bomber, apparently wearing an explosive vest, boarded the bus at the stop dressed in a regular Afghan army uniform and blew himself up almost immediately.”

   The explosion comes on days after NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Army General Dan McNeill expressed doubts the Taliban was ever defeated by the American invasion and said he didn’t have enough troops to hold captured ground. McNeill told the BBC that he expected the Taliban will recapture territory this winter. With the United States’ attention not diverted to Iraq, things in Afghanistan could have been different as this Washington Post story, A haven of prosperity in Afghan’s Panjshir valley suggests. “This is the way reconstruction in Afghanistan was supposed to be. A little bit of U.S. pump priming, combined with profit motive and human need, would be harnessed by a grateful, liberated population to transform their lives and country. In the process, the people would become loyal allies in the fight against terrorism. ¶ It hasn’t always worked that way. Instead, Afghanistan is besieged by a growing insurgency that is shifting U.S. money and manpower from reconstruction to security, undermining vital road, electricity, school and other projects that are designed to extend the authority of the national government and win hearts and minds.” The U.S. never secured Afghanistan and defeated al-Qaeda and the Taliban before going after Iraq’s oil. Now the Afghans and the West will be paying the price of the Madness of King George.

2. I appears that early September’s propaganda surge by the White House and Gen. David Petraeus could not withstand reality for even a month. The Los Angeles Times reports, Petraeus acknowledges rise in Iraq violence. “Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, acknowledged today that violence had increased since Sunni Arab militants declared an offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ¶ ‘Certainly Al Qaeda has had its Ramadan surge,’ Petraeus said in his first comments to reporters since he returned from Washington to give lawmakers a status report on the war in Iraq. But he said the level of attacks was ‘substantially lower’ than during the same period last year.” Right… Petraeus “saw no need to revise the projections he presented to Congress” regarding the planned-since-the-Spring troop withdrawal due.

   After years of war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, their is finally recognition that the troops face a serious threat from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Washington Post reports they are ‘The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces’. The first IED attack was on the morning of March 29, 2003, over a month before George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” day. “Since that first fatal detonation of what is now known as an improvised explosive device, more than 81,000 IED attacks have occurred in Iraq, including 25,000 so far this year, according to U.S. military sources. The war has indeed metastasized into something ‘completely different,’ a conflict in which the roadside bomb in its many variants — including ‘suicide, vehicle-borne’ — has become the signature weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan… ¶ IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of yesterday had killed or wounded 21,071 Americans, is both a proximate cause and a metaphor for the miscalculation and improvisation that have characterized the war… ¶ Despite nearly $10 billion spent in the past four years by the department’s main IED-fighting agency, with an additional $4.5 billion budgeted for fiscal 2008, the IED remains ‘the single most effective weapon against our deployed forces,’ as the Pentagon acknowledged this year… ¶ In Afghanistan, although IED attacks remain a small fraction of those in Iraq, the figures also have soared: from 22 in 2002 and 83 in 2003, to 1,730 in 2006 and a thousand in the first half of this year. Suicide attacks have become especially pernicious, climbing to 123 last year, according to a United Nations study, a figure that continues to grow this year, with 22 in May alone.” I think it can be argued that the Taliban learned IED tactics from observing their deadly effectiveness in Iraq.

3. The scrutiny on Blackwater USA by the traditional media thankfully continues.

   • The AP reports that five Blackwater incidents in question. “Five cases this year in which private Blackwater USA security guards killed Iraqi civilians are at the core of a U.S. review of how the hired protection forces guard diplomats in Iraq, officials said Friday. Iraqi authorities are also concerned about a sixth incident in which Blackwater guards allegedly threw frozen bottles of water at civilian cars, breaking windshields. No one was killed.” Only five or six? Come on, they’re barely looking.

   • MSNBC’s Richard Engel reports on Blackwater’s Ugly Americans. “They are becoming the poster boys for excess. A new ‘photo cartoon’ circulating in Baghdad among security contractors and some U.S. soldiers – and the laughter it’s generating here – speaks for itself.” Engel reports that “a picture is emerging” of the September 16th Nisour Square massacre. “Two American sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity have told me that during the incident at least one Blackwater guard ordered his colleague to ‘stop shooting.’ The guard went so far as to draw a weapon to try to force him to stop. ‘It was a Mexican standoff,’ a contractor said.” Engel writes:

     I met Mohammed Abu Razak today. He’s a well-spoken automotive parts importer, who survived the Sept. 16 incident. His 10-year-old son Ali did not.

     Ali was in the seat behind Abu Razak when a bullet hit him in the head, shattering his skull. Abu Razak picked up the pieces of his son’s skull and brain with his hands, wrapped the boy in a cloth and buried him in Najaf.

     “I can still smell the blood, my son’s blood, on my fingers,” he told me, looking down at his hands, fingers spread wide.

     Razak gave NBC News cell phone video (available here) he took shortly after the shooting. “Abu Razak says the shaky video proves that Blackwater did not fire with directed shots at clearly defined targets – the standard of military professionals – but shot multiple times at unarmed civilians cars like his.” The horror no father, no parent should ever have to face. The murder of their child. Congress needs to outlaw Blackwater and the rest of these mercenaries immediately. The murdered must be brought to justice and held accountable.

   • The Washington Post reports more on Krongard intimidation threats in State Department agents say their jobs were threatened. “Two career investigators in the office of State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard have charged that they were threatened with firing if they cooperated with a congressional probe of Krongard and his office. ¶ Told by Terry P. Heide, Krongard’s congressional liaison, that he should not agree to a request for a ‘voluntary’ interview by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Special Agent Ron Militana said he was then advised that reprisals could be taken against him. ‘Howard can fire you,’ he said Heide told him. ‘It would affect your ability to get another job.'” “In recent weeks, the agents relayed their concerns about Krongard to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the oversight panel. Waxman has said he is investigating allegations that Krongard has repeatedly thwarted investigations into alleged contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and weapons smuggling allegations against Blackwater USA, a private security firm working under government contract in Iraq… ¶ In a letter, Waxman “included an internal e-mail that indicated Krongard had intervened to stop his office from cooperating with a Justice Department investigation into alleged arms smuggling by Blackwater. In a North Carolina case, two Blackwater employees have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are cooperating with Justice officials.”

   • A bit more on the cancelled Blackwater real estate deal in North Carolina first covered in yesterday’s Four at Four. The News and Observer reports Amid uproar, Blackwater stops land deal. Blackwater “canceled a $5.5 million real estate deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg”. The real estate deal was initiated by another company. “TigerSwan wanted to set up a training center near Fort Bragg with firing ranges, Miller said. TigerSwan planned to train soldiers from Fort Bragg, as well as corporate executives from Research Triangle Park and elsewhere.” The seller, Wayne Miller, president of Southern Produce Distributors, “said he was impressed with [TigerSwan President Jim] Reese and his project but wanted to know whether TigerSwan could finance such a land purchase… ¶ Miller said he had a hunch that Blackwater was backing the deal. When he asked, Reese confirmed it.” The contract allowed Blackwater to backout of the sale through September 27. What I am really curious about are these corporate executives that are being trained by Blackwater. If that doesn’t smack of class warfare, then I don’t know what would. (Hat tip Anglico.)

4. Finally, a story about how the Bush administration’s weak U.S. dollar and the stupidity of ethanol impacts America’s ability to provide foreign aid. Celia Dugger of The New York Times reports that as prices soar, U.S. food aid buys less. “Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year. ¶ The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture… ¶ Corn prices have fallen in recent months, but are still far higher than they were a year ago. Demand for ethanol has also indirectly driven the rising price of soybeans, as land that had been planted with soybeans shifted to corn. And wheat prices have skyrocketed, in large part because drought hurt production in Australia, a major producer, economists say. ¶ The higher food prices have not only reduced the amount of American food aid for the hungry, but are also making it harder for the poorest people to buy food for themselves, economists and advocates for the hungry say.” The New York Times also reports that ethanol’s boom is stalling as supply glut depresses price. “The ethanol boom of recent years — which spurred a frenzy of distillery construction, record corn prices, rising food prices and hopes of a new future for rural America — may be fading… ¶ Companies and farm cooperatives have built so many distilleries so quickly that the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it has not kept pace. The average national ethanol price on the spot market has plunged 30 percent since May, with the decline escalating sharply in the last few weeks.” So not enough food, but too much ethanol. Also keep in mind the story Spiegel ran earlier in the week — Biofuels ‘Emit More Greenhouse Gases than Fossil Fuels’.

So, what else is happening?

Spiegel Online has a powerful and terrifying interview with legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the man who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre and cover-up, and more recently broke the story about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison. The interview covers a lot of ground, so let’s just look at some key parts, and then you must go read it!

On Iran:

(I)t’s been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA’s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they’ve been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn’t enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

As Hersh explains- and I love this phrasing:

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them.

Yes- Godwin is a staple of American political life. Hersh points to Kruschev, Mao, Stalin, and Gadhafi, and now Ahmadinejad. Of course, we’re now on friendly terms with the apparent ex-Hitler, Gadhafi- if a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, Bush need not worry, because he appears to have no mind at all. 

Hersh also points out that Ahmadinejad is not actually in control, in Iran, so whatever rhetorical blather he blithers is not necessarily related to actual Iranian policies.

And then, there are these comforting words, about the real intent, behind Bush’s warmongering:

We’re going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can’t have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I’d actually be relieved because I’d know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he’s doing God’s work.

Worse than Kissinger. Worse than Reagan. Worse than Nixon. In American history, it just doesn’t get any worse. Or any more dangerous!

Hersh makes clear that there is only one answer, in Iraq: get the hell out! As soon as is possible! Our presence there fuels the violence. Yes, we all know that, but it’s rare to see someone in print actually say it.

And the “surge”?

Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he’s talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He’s not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You’re going to have a Kurdistan. You’re going to have a Sunni area that we’re going to have to support forever. And you’re going to have the Shiites in the South.

Now, it needs be clarified: Hersh does not seem to be saying that Bush is actively pursuing genocide; it’s that he knows that the different Iraqi factions will pursue it against each other, and he doesn’t care. To Bush, no amount of human suffering matters. He is without human conscience. He seriously believes he is doing God’s work, so demonstrable facts do not matter. Nothing in this world matters. It is all an illusion, while his own delusions are of a higher reality. If Kissinger was the personification of the sinister abuse of power, Bush is simply deranged.

Hersh says comparisons to Vietnam are absolutely valid, and that we don’t learn from our mistakes. He also excoriates the media, for having failed to prevent the war, and for having failed the Constitution. He says that the damage from those failures, and the damage from the war, will be much worse than that from Vietnam.

In case you didn’t know it: we’re going to be living with the consequences of this disaster for a very long time.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. 
~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

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There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed. 
~Mohandas K. Gandhi

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We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. 
~Native American Proverb

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Opie, you haven’t finished your milk.  We can’t put it back in the cow, you know. 
~Aunt Bee Taylor, The Andy Griffith Show

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Water is the best of all things.  ~Pindar (C. 522-C. 438 B.C.), Olympian Odes

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Water has no taste, no color, no odor; it cannot be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself. It fills us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.  ~Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939

General Water Conservation Information Resources

State Water Conservation Programs and local tips

Encylopedia of water conservation resource links

IN YOUR YARD

*Learn about plants appropriate to your climate zone that require less water
*Install a drip based irrigation system
*Install waterswitch moisture sensors onto your irrigation system that will monitor soil moisture and kick your system on only when necessary.
*Harvest Rainwater
*Reclaim and utilize your household greywater in your yard

Irrigation system tutorial

Low water Plants list

Rainwater Harvesting (pdf)

Rainwater Harvesting site

Rainwater harvest from rooftoop catchment

Rain barrels

Greywater Reclamation

“Any water that has been used in the home, except water from toilets, is called grey water. Dish, shower, sink, and laundry water comprise 50-80% of residential “waste” water. This may be reused for other purposes, especially landscape irrigation.”

Grey water systems for sustainable landscapes

Waterswitch supplier

IN YOUR HOME

*Maintenance
*Leak Detection
*Purchase water efficient fixtures and appliances to reduce water use

House2House  

This website was developed by the California Urban Water Conservation Council under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It provides a room by room guide to steps to take to increase water use efficiency. It’s link page (listed above) is a great online resource.

Fixtures and Appliances: General

EPA Watersense

Watersense Label

WaterSense, a new voluntary public-private partnership program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is making it easy to find and select water-efficient products with a label backed by independent testing and certification. WaterSense will also recognize professional service programs that incorporate water efficiency.

In order to use the label, a company must sign a WaterSense partnership agreement. Among other things, the partnership agreement defines the roles and responsibilities of EPA and the partnering organization, as well as proper use of the label on products, on packaging, and in marketing and other promotional materials. Products that bear the WaterSense label meet all the criteria in EPA’s specifications for water efficiency and performance.

High efficiency toilets

Toilets are by far the main source of water use in the home, accounting for approximately 30 percent of residential indoor water consumption. Toilets also happen to be a major source of wasted water due to leaks and/or inefficiency. WaterSense, a program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is helping consumers identify high-performance, water-efficient toilets that can reduce water use in the home and help preserve the nation’s water resources.

Under federal law, toilets must not exceed 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf). High-efficiency toilets (HETs) go beyond the standard and use less than 1.3 gpf. The WaterSense label will be used on HETs that are certified by independent laboratory testing to meet rigorous criteria for both performance and efficiency. Only HETs that complete the third-party certification process can earn the WaterSense label. link link

Bathroom Sink faucets

Bathroom sink faucets bearing the WaterSense label will use no more than 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm). If every household in America installed a WaterSense labeled faucet aerator or faucet adaptor, it could save more than 60 billion gallons. WaterSense labeled faucet accessories-products that can be easily attached to existing faucets to save water-will also be available in 2008.

link

Showerheads

Showering is one of the top uses of residential water in the United States, representing approximately 17 percent of residential indoor water use-more than 1.2 trillion gallons of water consumed each year. To raise consumer awareness and help improve the water efficiency of showerheads, WaterSense has issued a notification of intent (NOI) (PDF) (5 pp, 46K, About PDF) to develop a specification for high-efficiency showerheads. 
link

Shower start

Clothes Washers

Unlike standard vertical axis washing machines, which immerse clothes in water and scrub them clean by agitation, horizontal axis (h-axis) machines use a tumbling action to clean clothes. Clothes are gently lifted and plunged through the detergent and water.

Saves on water use
Saves on use of detergent/bleach
Saves on energy use
Saves on wear and tear of clothes, making them last longer

Consortium for Energy Efficiency – Residential Clothes Washers 

Horizontal Axis Machines

Qualifying products (pdf)

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Water is a precious and necessary thing. Use it wisely.

As I take a deep and sweeping inventory of myself in the prime middle of life I have come to realize there is an astonishingly long list of talents I lack.

Some deficiencies bother me more than others.

Despite being in the kitchen with my 85 year old grandmother many, many, times my roast beef still does not turn out as well as hers. It is good but not quite there yet. Heck, I even took notes once.

My math skills are rudimentary and I fear if went back to school I might say flunk out of grade six.

I am a procrastinator.

I have a singing voice that could be generously described as horrid. It is all the more galling because I work with an amateur opera singer, two women who sing in choirs, and a woman who does folk and rock very well. Those are just my direct colleagues all of whom share an office.

My dancing is a kind of shuffle jerk thing.

I still cannot drive stick the smooth and efficient way my mother and husband do.

I can’t draw anything beyond stick people, and I have a few friends who are pretty decent painters, plus a niece and a father who “tried it out” to “relax” and has proved to be better than mediocre.

Sigh…. Well,these folks have talent….

Did I mention I like tap? Nobody beats the Nicholas brothers.

You can just close your eyes and hear the perfection of the universe from the Queen of gospel.

The man who cheers me with soul perfection when I am grumpy.

And give it up for Dusty…

Any talents you wish y’all had?

Drop by, chit chat , but don’t rec the pony party…

this is someone’s home in a cute little village in the south of france. love the colors and the doors and shutters… the stone… all great!!!

we are back in Leiden, The Netherlands and i’m sitting at my bf’s computer.

it’s amazing, being away from DD and checking in, looking at the essays being put up… an incredible array. what i love is the call to action, not just dumping information, but formulating ways in which we can do things better and grab our country back and be a positive force in this world.

you are all amazing.

anyway, just stopped in to say hello. my bf’s son is agitating to get on the computer, so tot ziens y’all…

hugs… pf8