(’cause it belongs on the FP – promoted by LithiumCola)

If you read some newspapers, you’ll find global warming is good for business. No, strike that. Global warming is GREAT for business. This is how the “science” journal at the Wall Street Journal enthusiastically describes what Global Warming means to its readers.

Researchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy are mapping claims to the spoils of global warming.

North of Alaska, the 23 scientists of the Healy are gathering the data legally required to extend national territories across vast reaches of the mineral-rich seafloor usually blocked by Arctic ice. Fathom by fathom, multibeam sonar sensors mounted on the Healy’s hull chart a submerged plateau called the Chukchi Cap, in a region that may contain 25% of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas.

In an era of climate change, these frozen assets are up for grabs, as melting ice allows detailed mapping and, one day perhaps, drilling.

The faster the ice goes, the sooner the oil flows. And vice versa. The faster we burn oil, the sooner the ice goes. Where there’s oil, there’s money to be made. The stunning, accelerating loss of the polar ice cap merely opens up the Arctic for oil and gas exploitation. If the polar bears go extinct along the way, then sobeit — no cost to doing business.

In the hunt for Arctic oil, the U.S. has joined Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Russia. No country ‘owns’ the North Pole, but in August, Russia went and placed a flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole claiming it for Moscow. “If recognized, the claim would bring 1.2 million square kilometers of seabed under Russian influence. Current laws grant countries an economic zone of 200 nautical miles beyond their land borders, but the zone can be extended where a country can prove a geological relationship between its own territory and the land beyond.”

While Russia is busy placing flags, the United States is trying to determine what’s at stake. As an article in Spiegel Online, USGS Looking for Fossil Fuels in the Arctic, explains:

While countries surrounding the Arctic get geared up for what promises to be a drawn-out diplomatic tiff over who owns what beneath the polar ice cap, the US Geological Survey is busy trying to figure out whether that territory is even worth owning.

For the next several months — until the presentation of its final report in the summer of 2008 — the USGS will be conducting an assessment of just how much oil and gas might be hiding under the ice. By analyzing rock types and formations and by looking at geologic history, the team hopes to provide accurate guesses as to where deposits are to be found and whether they contain natural gas, crude oil — or nothing.

According to OPEC, “Oil exploration can cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.” But the price tag for the Healy expedition is a mere $1 million and the entire proposed budget for the USGS in 2008 is only $1.033 billion. If researchers can find where are likely oil fields, then expeditions like the Healy and research done by USGS scientists are a ‘bargain’. Because not only do the U.S. taxpayers foot the bill, but it saves money for the oil corporations that would have been spent on exploration and that’s good for their bottom lines.

The Bush administration has mobilized the government to hunt for the last, untapped oil fields across the earth. The Christian Science Monitor noted that not only has the US Coast Guard joined in the Arctic oil rush, but “the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been conducting similar surveys over the past several years around the Marianas Islands, the Gulfs of Alaska and Mexico, and off New England”. From the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the using government agencies to hunt for oil, it’s as if the Bush administration has transformed the U.S. government into a tool for oil corporations.

In lamenting the appalling fate of the polar bears, The Independent wrote, “polar bears – the very symbol of the Arctic’s looming environmental disaster – are crashing towards extinction as a result of global warming, the US government has found. The admission, the result of a massive investigation by the Bush administration, could force the President finally to take action against climate change…” But, why would George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two oil men, take any action to reverse global warming?

Polar bears don’t drive SUVs. Polar bears don’t need plastic bottles of water. Polar bears don’t use oil to heat. In reality, polar bears are “giant, marauding, godless killing machines” [Warning Colbert on O’Reilly]. If anything, the polar bears must be eliminated and global warming isn’t doing the job fast enough. Because, according to The Independent, “American hunters exploit a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows them to get licences to import polar bear trophies from Canada. Some 953 have been granted or applied for since 1994.” Dick Cheney would be proud.

The polar bears are standing on the last chunks of polar ice in the way of the last, great oil boom. Or, as Spiegel observes of the first Arctic oil report put out by the USGS — “even if the fossil riches were proven, there is at present no profitable way to extract reserves buried under a thick armor of floating ice.” But not for long. If you’re the oil men in the Bush administration, why would you even think of trying to halt or reverse global warming? The faster the ice goes, the sooner Arctic oil will flow.

_{Portions of this essay appeared in “The Faster the Ice Goes, the Sooner the Oil Flows” on Daily Kos.}

(because the crazy fool gave me a set of keys – promoted by pyrrho)

A few days ago at Talk Left Big Tent Democrat wrote a piece on his take on Matt Stoller’s and Glen Greenwald’s position on the Iraq war. In short he characterizes the position if not as defeatist, then somehow improperly resigned pessimism.  Big Tando Dem quotes their willingness to cede the issue to a post-Bush world optimistically also known as “2009”. I agree with him on various things here: that Stoller is an ineffective activist and pundit both, except to be fair, I’m not paying attention, he could be brilliant and I wouldn’t know, I do not follow him at all except as he arises from time to time regarding things like Townhouse List or the “More $$$ for Bloggers! Movement”™.

Glen defends himself with this reply that leads to the point here:

Feel free to cheer for the war’s end.  I do the same.  But that doesn’t make it likely to happen. 

And if Democrats are failing to stop the war – as they are – why should anyone refrain from being honest and saying so?

To which BigTentDemocrat replies:

But the question is why? To pressure them to react and do the right thing? OR to just say so?

We all have eyes. The question is what we want them to do and how to make them do it, if we can.

This is where nearly where I disagree with BigTentDemocrat. You see, I agree we should still speak against the war, and I agree with this update to this essay:

Update [2007-9-5 13:58:39 by Big Tent Democrat]: Apparently NOT just a “network of fairly well trafficked blogs” when it suits them:

  So, the progressive blogosphere just played a huge role in winning a Democratic primary for US House. this is a major accomplishment. Well done and thank you to everyone who participated in the fundraiser.

I wish Stoller and Bowers and the NETROOTS could make up their minds as to whether they just “folks with blogs” or playing “huge roles.”

So do I BigTendoDem, I wish that. But where I disagree with, you, BigTentArmando (is the moratorium on “Armando” over or what?) and always have, is where to side on this dichotomy within the blogosphere between “say what you will” vs. “use your power for good”. My take is based on a view of the blogosphere as a peer to peer phenomenon, or, really The Peer to Peer Phenomenon which is itself a storm of energy that fires up wherever it is able to. This storm could be seen on the net, and still can, everywhere, it rages through and leaves structure in its wake.

It just a few years ago now stormed onto the political landscape, where it promises to be a lasting factor of some kind.  The factor it ought to have, and I think ultimately will, is that of the people expressing themselves. If the people have inane interests (Spears) then that’ll be there… if they believe conspiracy, it’ll be there, and so on.  If you don’t like it, well, at least you get to see there is a problem there, you get to have your say to it, and thus, many people like to go to the forums of those they disagree with and correct them.  It can actually be productive, though I find you will never convince that person, you may convince a passing reader.
From that view it is clear the point of blogs is to “JUST SAY IT!”, whatever it is you want to say.  Make sure you really want to say it then go. If blogs get more controlled than that (note to self, use past tense) then that peer to peer energy will be diverted and go somewhere else.

People will experess themselves. The purpose of the public conversation on the net is for people to be able to be heard. The part where people find someone to listen is fine, but it’s the same old part, fame and attention, the new part is the expression, and the fact that there is attention and engagement without fame as well. Feedback.

You have something strong willed to say…? You are in doubt, but just say it, and then we’ll sort it out. To do anything else is manipulation… or worse, merely attempt at manipulation.

Are we here to advocate manipulation? I think we as liberals and progressives alike have ALL lamented at some time or other the manipulation of population.

Is it just that it wasn’t us doing the manipulating? Really?!? Given the chance it’s our responsibility to manipulate? Instead of relate, express, be straight?

I don’t.

I may influence people by saying what I believe if they then arrive not at what I said, but at their own idea informed by the fact that I talked to them on the subject. That’s the only way it really works out anyway. People change themselves. When they pretend to have wholly changed to a totally newly discovered idea they are just playing with a toy, one easily picked up, easily dropped. You can manipulate people with their biases and fears but they will simply revert on their own or be manipulated by some other emotional player. That might be an effective way to sell cola but I don’t think there is long term progress for culture in that. That is just manipulating the easily swayed and cyclic swing voters of life.

When people speak their mind they refuse to let their tongues be tied, so to speak, they spit it out and speak. Now that is inspiring to others and is the source of genuine “influence” on the net. That inspiration is something wholly fantastic compared to carefully spoken “influences”.

Speaking freely, against the perceived if not actual mainstream grain often works to create popular movements. But also often, what works to dilute and defeat these same movements is the great feelings of responsibility that then well up. And by “great” I mean more like “narcissistic”.

The responsibility of someone that has gotten the attention of an audience for speaking their mind is naturally “keep speaking your mind”. Isn’t that logical? You can change if as an individual your life changes, or even career, but not because of the simple fact that people are listening. People are listening to honesty, and want to hear that.

To start speaking something else more careful is to try to turn a reputation for honesty to dishonest means.

This blogosphere is full of all sorts of people and any individual that likes to can claim outlier status and declare themselves personally exempt from my point. I mean, if Bush started blogging, yes, as President of the United States I would want him to speak responsibly. And if some blogger “breaks through” and becomes a journalist… fine, they ought to speak with reference to journalistic ethics. But the question is what do bloggers qua bloggers need to do, in general, as bloggers. If they have other roles in life I am not surprised and know those other roles give them other responsibilities and purposes… of course. But as bloggers their role is that of “peer” in a network of peers sharing real, valid, information about their state of mind. They should ideally post as citizens speaking their true minds without regard to popularity. They should be speaking or not only with regard to the importance they attach to expressing themselves on the issue in question. If it’s not a big deal to you, don’t pretend it is, if it is a big deal to you, don’t pretend it’s not.

So which are bloggers: Pundits or Activists? They can be either, or, even, both, but in all cases if they are “blogger” pundits, or “blogger” activists, they should speak their own mind freely, that is the purpose, from the point of view of our national needs, in my opinion, of blogging. Their purpose as bloggers does not lie in categories that apply to them as individuals, roles like “pundit” or “activist”. Their purpose lies in the shape of the network, in the grammar of the network and their place in that grammar. This peer to peer network on the internet should rightfully be a place for all citizens to take part in the national and international public debates now finally brought, almost, to the people.

The internet din of political conversation must, absolutely, represent what people are really thinking.

We should be able to use the internet to find out what other people are thinking, specifically people we don’t have access to in our closed groups of friends and like minded compatriots. We ought to get a glimpse into real thoughts, not just what people front to those around them to stay working or get laid… or to attempt the losing gambit of tricking a politician into a given behavior. We don’t need the internet to convey and perpetuate the type of b.s. surface layer of “things you can admit to on TV”. We don’t need it for the type of realism you get in a “gritty sitcom” that can have just as much reality as does not offend its advertiser. There is no value in transferring to teh network the type of “truth” a poor journalist conveys out of stuff an insider pulled out of their personally self-serving optimistic imagination.
(**cough** Chalabi **cough** Miller **cough**).

Politicians are hard to trick, much easier to scare them than trick them, and seeing real ideas online scares them, or … did, for a bit, until it got very solemn and, “wait, don’t rock the boat”-ish.

Bloggers at “relatively high trafficked” blogs owe it to their readers to be straight forward… and the very likely fact that they won’t be is why the peer to peer magic will move on to whomever is. People right now want to know what everyone is thinking. The topics they want to hear those thoughts on vary, but more and more, whatever the topic, they are less impressed with only expert opinions. They know experts are trained to manipulate them, and further, that each expert has some opposing expert willing and able to argue the opposite and manipulate in the counter direction. They prefer more and more to know what other people really think. Experts make better advocates than judges leaving people as the judges, our fellow people. We are interested in sharing some of their judgment without being told to accept it because of it’s higher quality.

They want to see the thinking of these fellow humans with the filters off. They are brave. They are ready to hear the thoughts of others after a long and apprehensive wait.

They don’t seek some elite from which to adopt thinking. They are not on a quest to find yet another meritocracy able to identify their betters. Even when people do really seek just such a meritocracy, they are certainly not likely to think aptitude at blogging qualifies candidates for that meritocracy! Have some humility. “I’m a blogger” is not a status increasing statement in general society. I wager even among those that read blogs it’s not. Most people are listening to you because they are interested in what other people like them have to say, possibly that people like them can do neat things, but also including people stupider than themselves.

People seek to get what’s really going on in the heads of their fellow citizens, and you should just give it to them.

A progressive future needs to involve much less manipulation than the past has. Instead of manipulation we need education, public conversation, and personal responsibility. We must all learn to take responsibility for our opinions rather than put the value off to some expert. The notion that bloggers are some new expert, that the old system does work if just we have this newly chosen expert to rely on, to get an opinion from, is, frankly, laughable… not just laughable but pathetic.

Bloggers are only experts about their own opinions.

BUT THAT’S ENOUGH. Just share that.

In the ongoing struggle to pretend that, despite long-standing poll results, there is some sort of debate in America as to whether we should leave Iraq, the Republican nominees for President are coming up with the most laughable rationales for staying. 

That no one is pointing out that these statements, made on the record, out loud and in front of microphones, virtually guarantee a rout for the Democratic nominee in the 2008 national debates, is curious.  The Democratic nominee merely needs to quote some of this stuff, and ask whether anyone wants the quoted Republican near the nuclear button, or, for that matter, near large boards with nails in them.

Democrats in Washington either haven’t realized this or don’t want to admit that they have, for fear that the admission would then require them to stop worrying about “tactics” and to move aggressively in the direction of their constituents.

Senator John McCain on Meet the Press today, as reported in the New York Times:

But Mr. McCain, a Republican presidential candidate and Vietnam veteran like Mr. Kerry but also a onetime prisoner-of-war, offered an impassioned, personal argument for standing firm in Iraq:

“I know what it’s like when we have a defeated army,” he said. “It’s tough when you have an overstressed Guard and reserve. It’s tough when you have overstressed men and women serving in the military with incredible bravery and heroism. But when they’re defeated – in the 1970s after we were defeated, we had riots on our aircraft carriers. We had rampant drug use. We had insubordination. We had a broken army. And it took us a decade to recover from that.”

This “Keeping Our Kids Off Drugs” rationale for sustaining the occupation of Iraq deserves scorn, and lots of it.  Never mind that McCain is old and befuddled; he wants to rule the free world.

Of course, the idea that leaving Iraq would dampen the spirits of men and women getting stop-lossed there is not a new one for Senator McCain.  It is also not true.  Huffington Post, Feb. 8, 2006: 

A first-ever survey of U.S. troops on the ground fighting a war overseas has revealed surprising findings, not the least of which is that an overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year.

For the record, when McCain says “riots on our aircraft carriers” he is referring, I suppose, to the 1972 race riot on board the USS Kitty Hawk.  Time magazine reported that there had been 46 injuries and 28 arrests resulting from a 6-hour fight while the ship was at sea:

Some scuffling between blacks and whites began in early October. The blacks circulated-and believed-a report that the whites had hired a karate expert to intimidate them. They also took umbrage at a rumor that two blacks who had slugged whites had been thrown into the brig, while a white who had beaten up a black was given only a warning. Just before the riot, frequent fights flashed through an enlisted men’s club in Subic Bay, where the ship was docked for resupply and recreation.

The Pentagon concluded that the riot on board the Kitty Hawk as well as two previous riots on board Navy ships had been caused by systemic racism. 

A congressional subcommittee is currently investigating the Kitty Hawk riot, along with racial outbreaks on the carrier Constellation and the oiler Hassayampa, to determine whether or not such problems stem from a lack of discipline in the Navy. Meanwhile, the manner in which the Kitty Hawk conducts its courts-martial will also be watched carefully. A biracial Pentagon task-force report on military justice, released last week by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, charged that there was a definite pattern of discrimination against blacks in the meting out of punishment. The report gave substance to black sailors’ claims that recent riots have been fueled by discrimination; it also lent credence to recent statements by Elmo Zumwalt, chief of naval operations, who has attributed such insurrections to the fact that the Navy’s “middle management” has not carried out his myriad programs to ease racial tension, rather than to any lack of discipline that could be traced to his reforms of traditional Navy regulations.

The unrest was not, that is to say, caused by any military defeat; although McCain is free to argue that the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam in 1972 — months before the Paris Peace Accords — and that this defeat was the cause of racial tension in the U.S.  In fact, I encourage him to do so, on stage, next to the Democratic nominee for President.

Earlier this year, Rudy Giuliani offered the entertaining suggestion that losing our militancy in the Were Against Terror would result in a mandatory change of clothes for American women.

Be it noted that this dangerous lunatic is the Republican front-runner.

The alarming thing, then, is not that Democrats might lose the Presidency; they won’t.  Bush’s “aw shucks, so what if I’m stupid” routine won’t work for any of the Republican nominees, both because of their personas as serious men and because of the times. 

Rather, the alarming thing is that the Democrats in Washington aren’t using this Republican punt to 2012 to more effectively combat, ridicule, and heap scorn upon the beleaguered Republican party.  Taking the Republicans seriously in this election cycle is a sign of not realism but complicity.  That is what alarms.

Many of you have met my son Daniel.  He is my only child and means everything to me.  He and I along with a few hundred thousand of our best friends are marching on Washington D.C. this coming Saturday, September 15th, 2007.  We are going to demand an end to the madness in Iraq, and justice and accountability for the criminal scum in the White House.  The war may not end and there may never be any justice – but no one will ever be able to say that we didn’t demand it – and no one will ever be able to say that we didn’t put ourselves on the line to make it happen.

Natalie Merchant ~ Which side are you on?

Joan Baez ~ Where have all the flowers gone?

Bob Dylan & Joan Baez ~ Blowing in the wind

Joan Baez ~ Marching up to freedom land

Fear or Love? ~ the Revolution is Now!

Information on rideshares, room and board, kossack meet-up plans, etc. are available at Road2DC.

BREAKING!  Kossacks are meeting up at the site of the national Christmas tree from 11:00 a.m. til noon when we’ll join the rest of the march.  See ya there!  And wear some orange if you can.  🙂

And now for something completely different-

French Taunting

Oh, you wanted an argument.

Spoiler Alert!

See.  You know more already!

Your First Question- Now w/Free Answer!

So where is budhy?

budhy is now safely at his new undisclosed location.  Because of difficulties establishing secure communications he is reduced to smoke signals (translated by the local shaman).

Or that’s what he says, it would be just like him to leave me chained to this wheel forever.

Blatant Editorializing!

What’s up with you?

I mean seriously, I’ve been busy this last couple of weeks, haven’t mixed it up in the comments as much as I normally do, but I do read.  A lot.

You’re down in the mouth, discouraged, ready to give up and capitulate quicker than a Congressional Democrat.

Screw that.

Read it again, especially the parts about Torys.

Some people, even in our own party are-

Just.  Plain.  Stupid.

There you have it.  42.  The meaning of life, the universe, and well… everything.

Living in a world of idiots (and we all do) is difficult because you have to be very patient and explain things over and over again.

Slowly.

In small words that are easy to understand.

Here’s what John Kerry (yes that one) came to say to us this week-

Anyone who gives up now is as cowardly as the most craven Bush Dog.

I’m not here to talk with whiners, but with warriors.

Hey kids… you asked for it, here you go

have a pony… or two… or three

go ahead… play, talk. . .and be excellent to one another…