Tag: 4@4

1. The NY Times reports Wind energy bumps into power grid’s limits. The nation’s “power grid that cannot handle the new demand” from added renewable energy. “While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.”

   The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already…

   The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles…

   The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners…

   Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.

2. The Oregonian reports that Black helicopters startle Portlanders. Portland was invaded by the U.S. Army and Navy special operation forces. Armed men in four MH-6 black helicopters startled and scared Portlanders and “generated dozens of calls to emergency dispatchers and the mayor’s office”. The operations were part of a joint-training exercise.

   The crews practiced drills including aerial maneuvering, landing and dismounting in an urban setting, said Lt. Nathan Potter…

   “We routinely train in places that we’re not familiar with,” he said. “The first time our guys are in a large, unfamiliar city, it should not be in combat.” …

   The Defense Department held training in June in Denver, he said. It also conducted previous training in other cities, including Los Angeles, Boston and New York.

   I suspect the U.S. military is planning to fight in U.S. cities… against Americans.

Four at Four continues with a top U.S. diplomat ambushed in Pakistan, Taliban gains in Afghanistan, suicide attack that killed 25 people in Iraq, three U.S. soldiers that executed Iraqis, and China to surpass the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions from energy generation.

1. Reuters reports the U.N. says has evidence air strikes killed 90 Afghans.

   “Investigations by UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men,” U.N. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide said in a statement.

   The airstrikes came from U.S.-led coalition forces in a move against the Taliban in western Afghanistan. According to the AFP, the airstrike’s death “toll is one of the highest for civilians killed in military action” since 2001. “The US-led coalition had initially said only 30 Taliban had died, but acknowledged on Tuesday that five civilians — two women and three children — were dead in the strikes that also killed a Taliban target.”

   The NY Times reports Afghanistan wants stopped the airstrikes and raids. “The Afghan Council of Ministers… demanded a status of forces agreement, which would stipulate that the authority and responsibilities of international forces be negotiated, and they said that aerial bombing, illegal detentions and house raids by international forces must be stopped.”

   The council condemned the rising number of civilian casualties and said: “The issues of uncoordinated house searches and harassing civilians have also been of concern to the government of Afghanistan, which has been shared with the commanders of international forces in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, to date, our demands have not been addressed. Rather, more civilians, including women and children, are losing their lives as a result of air raids.”

   Meanwhile, the Taliban win over locals at the gates of Kabul according to The Observer. “The real strength of the insurgents lies not in their ability to ambush convoys or plant roadside bombs but in the parallel administration they have managed to establish in huge areas across the south and east of Afghanistan. There they make the law, enforcing a harsh, but sometimes welcome, order while intimidating any dissenters. Their strategy is deliberate and long-term.”

Four at Four continues with a reassessment of poverty in New York City, the Big Coal lobby at the conventions, and the Bush administration plans to scale back whale protection.

1. Politico reports Jackson compares Obama to Jackie Robinson.

   Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) told convention-goers Monday that Barack Obama is like baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson – enduring jeers without the ability to hit back.

   “Barack Obama has the capacity to hit,” Jackson said a breakfast panel just before the opening of the Democratic National Convention. “But he is in the situation where he can’t hit back, which Jackie Robinson could not do. … He had to be able to run the bases, even though the crowd was jeering the first African-American on the field.”

   Jackson, son of the civil rights leader, said Obama is in the same situation: “He has to keep smiling, because no one wants an angry African-American man in the White House.”

2. The NY Times reports Three years after Hurricane Katrina, the military is a fixture. “Three years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans still needs the military to help keep some semblance of order in certain neighborhoods… This year alone, New Orleans has had at least 127 murders, a stunning statistic given that roughly a third of the city’s population – 454,000 before the hurricane – has so far not returned.”

   In June of 2006, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin asked the governor to deploy the national guard. “More than two years later, 300 soldiers remain, with the Louisiana National Guard still operating its command post from the Dixieland conference room in a downtown Holiday Inn. The plan, officers say, is to end the mission by the new year, giving the police department more time to replenish its ranks.”

   “These soldiers do not make arrests, but they can cuff and detain suspects until the police arrive”.

Four at Four continues with propaganda job at the Pentagon and a human-powered gym.

Welcome to phone-it-in Friday. Where I’m off in the wilderness, totally oblivious to whom Obama has chosen as a running mate and any other breaking news story. So, please post a news story or two and help fill in the gaps.

1. The CS Monitor reports on Germany’s key to green energy.

   Germany is in the throes of a green revolution that has made it the global leader in solar- and wind-power generation.

   The reason? A pioneering law that requires utilities to buy electricity from renewable sources at premium rates. This means anyone with a rooftop solar generator or a small water turbine can sell the energy they produce at a healthy profit.

   The Congress and six states, according to article, are weighing similar bills here in the U.S. “The goal behind feed-in tariffs is to foster a growing network of small and medium-size energy producers.”

   Supporters of the policy argue that such a grass-roots movement is the only way renewable energy will ever be deployed on a large scale. “The big energy companies have too many vested interests in sticking with conventional energy sources,” explains Hermann Scheer, a veteran parliamentarian who pioneered Germany’s feed-in tariff. “They will never be the driving force behind renewables.”

   Meanwhile in Back to whale oil, Grist reports that John McCain claims “the truly clean technologies don’t work”. “Late last year, after his campaign tanked, no one was paying much attention to McCain. As a result, some of the amazing things that he believes didn’t get a lot of attention”:

   John McCain: “When you say wind solar and tide, most every expert that I know says that, if you maximize that in every possible way, the contribution that that would make given the present state of technology is very small, is very small. It’s not a large contribution. It’s wonderful, it’s great to have it, I encourage it everywhere. I hope everyone will, for Christmas, buy their family a solar panel. But, that would be exciting. But they, but, I’d be glad to send you the figures that there’s the amount of — even if we gave it the absolute maximum, uh, wind, solar and tide, uh, etc. The clean tech — the truly clean technologies don’t work.”

   (Town Hall Meeting; Portsmouth, N.H. 12/04/07)

   And here’s the video on YouTube proving McCain, once again, is an idiot.

   John McCain shouldn’t even be in the U.S. Senate, let alone be running for the presidency.

Four at Four continues with stories about a man eating mountain in Bolivia, smart magpies, solving a 100 million-year-old galactic mystery, and a BONUS Bus GAME.

1. McClatchy Newspapers report a Key U.S. Iraq strategy is in danger of collapse. “The Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who’d joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country’s security forces.”

   The Sunni Awakening is credited “with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to” parts of Iraq. But the Shiite-le Iraqi government has made it “clear that they don’t intend to include most” of the 100,000 militia members in Iraqi security forces. Despite “the surge”, little has changed in Iraq over the past year.

   “All the Americans are doing is paying them just to be quiet,” said Haider al Abadi, a leading member of Maliki’s Dawa political party and the head of the economic and investment committee in the parliament. The Iraqi government, he said, can’t “justify paying monthly salaries to people on the grounds that they are ex-insurgents.”

   Privately, American officials are concerned, but they will not speak on the record. “The United States has 103,000 militia members on its payroll.” According to one senior U.S. intelligence analyst, “If they only take a portion of them it’s possible they will return to their insurgent ways… [Without jobs, they will] revert back to how they received money before.”

   Also, the Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. and Iraq have a draft agreement to keep U.S. forces on Iraqi soil. “The draft agreement sets 2011 as the date by which U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter… The White House softened its stance over a pullout date after it became clear that Mr. Maliki was adamant that the agreement contain at least a vague timetable for a U.S. withdrawal. The administration also dropped its insistence that American contractors remain immune from Iraqi law.”

2. The NY Times reports A trained eye finally solved the anthrax puzzle. “A group of scientists working secretly for some seven years” solved the anthrax case by connecting a thousand distinct samples. The breakthrough was identifying a laboratory flask as the source.

   They succeeded by using a combination of new techniques not even invented in late 2001 when the anthrax-laced letters were sent, and that most old-fashioned attribute of expert scientists and detectives: a trained eye…

   The scientists say they are confident the F.B.I. has identified the source of the anthrax, a flask in the custody of Bruce E. Ivins, whom the F.B.I. considers to have been the perpetrator of the attacks. But almost a hundred other people were known to have had access to cultures from the flask, and the scientists say they have no opinion as to whether Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide last month, was the culprit.

Four at Four continues with Russian troops in Georgia and oil speculators.

1. The Washington Post reports American citizens’ U.S. border crossings are being tracked. The Bush administration is using the border checkpoints “to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.”

   Officials say the Border Crossing Information system, disclosed last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, is part of a broader effort to guard against terrorist threats. It also reflects the growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt from some Privacy Act protections…

   The volume of people entering the country by land prevented compiling such a database until recently. But the advent of machine-readable identification documents, which the government mandates eventually for everyone crossing the border, has made gathering the information more feasible. By June, all travelers crossing land borders will need to present a machine-readable document, such as a passport or a driver’s license with a radio frequency identification chip.

   Bush administration is using its “final months to cement an unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security and intelligence purposes.”

2. The NY Times reports a Federal Court rejects E.P.A. limits on emissions rules. “A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting the ability of states to require monitoring of industrial emissions. The 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the most recent in a series of judicial setbacks to the Bush administration’s efforts to reshape federal policies under the Clean Air Act.”

Four at Four continues with stories about pesticides in bee hives and urban gardening in St. Paul, Minnesota.

1. The NY Times reports Taliban forces kill 10 French soldiers and raid U.S. base in Afghanistan.

   Taliban insurgents mounted their most serious attacks in six years of fighting, one a complex attack with multiple suicide bombers on an American military base on Monday night, and another by some 100 insurgents on French forces in a district east of the capital, killing 10 French soldiers and wounding 21 others, military officials said Tuesday.

   Three American soldiers were wounded and six members of the Afghan special forces in the attack on the base in the eastern province of Khost, bordering Pakistan, the Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said. The battle lasted all night, 10 suicide bombers were killed or blew themselves up, and the insurgents were repulsed without entering the base, he said.

   This was a war Bush declared as won and therefore he could go invade Iraq. 2007 was the deadliest year for allied forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. The Guardian has more, French soldiers killed in Taliban gun battle. “In the past three days, more than 100 people have died in fighting and bomb attacks around the country.”

2. The LA Times reports In west Georgia, few signs of damage by Russia.

   Government officials of this small, war-weary country invited a group of journalists for a 180-mile trip aboard a Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter Monday to Georgia’s western provinces to show the damage wrought by the recent Russian military incursion.

   Instead, the 19 international journalists on a daylong tour found just a few signs of Russian destruction, not very evident amid the sleepy resort towns of the Black Sea coast and the lush inland valleys.

   Just as Russians are suspected of having exaggerated the number of casualties and damage in the initial Georgian offensive that sparked the war in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgians appear to have stretched the facts on the extent of destruction caused by the subsequent Russian attack, at least here in the country’s west.

   “This conflict is very much about proving who is the bad guy,” said a Western diplomat in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, speaking on condition of anonymity.

   So the propaganda will continue to flow. According to The Guardian, the U.S. urges NATO to punish Russia for operations in Georgia. “Washington will urge its European allies today to introduce sanctions against Russia by freezing the six-year-old Nato-Russia council.” Because nothing works better toward achieving peace than by breaking off diplomacy.

   The LA Times adds Russia relying on its military, Rice says. Secretary of State Condoleezza “Rice, in her toughest criticism of the Kremlin to date, said Russia’s incursion into Georgia was part of a pattern in which the government has increasingly turned to its military to assert its influence.”

   “Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool it has always used when it wants to deliver a message . . . that’s its military power.”

   How Condoleezza can say this without a hint of irony is beyond me.

   Russia has reacted as expected. According to BBC News, Russia hits back at Nato warning. “Russia has dismissed a warning by NATO that normal relations are impossible while its troops remain inside Georgia.”

Four at Four continues with deadly ship pollution and planting trees around Portland, Oregon.

1. The CS Monitor reports there is now a Record number of US contractors in Iraq. The numbers are staggering.

   The scale of the use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in US history, according to a new congressional report that may be the most thorough official account yet of the practice.

   As of early 2008, at least 190,000 private personnel were working on US-funded projects in the Iraq theater, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) survey found. That means that for each uniformed member of the US military in the region, there was also a contract employee – a ratio of 1 to 1…

   The CBO estimates the total cost of these military contractor operations from 2003 through 2008 to be $100 billion. That’s about 20 percent of all US funding for operations in Iraq.

   And that’s the the contractors in Iraq.

2. The NY Times reports from the Obama campaign with Enticing text messagers in a Get-Out-the-Vote push. “Last week, the Obama campaign said that anyone who sent a text message of “VP” to a dedicated phone number would be among the first to learn the identity of his running mate… The efforts spotlight Mr. Obama’s push to harvest millions of cellphone numbers of potential voters through text messaging, a technology that is increasingly moving into the mainstream. And it could have a significant effect in November, when the campaign plans to use the technology to get out the vote.” It’s a clever strategy that I hope works well for Obama in November.

3. The Guardian reports Millions eating food grown with polluted water, says UN report.

   At least 200 million people around the world risk their health daily by eating food grown using untreated waste water, some of which may be contaminated with heavy metals and raw sewage, according to major study of 53 world cities.

   Urban farmers in 80% of the cities surveyed were found to be using untreated waste water, but the study said they also provided vital food for burgeoning cities at a time of unprecedented water scarcity and the worst food crisis in 30 years.

   The study from the UN-backed International Water Management Institute (IMWI), said the practice of using waste water to grow food in urban areas was not confined to the poorest countries.

   With food being grown and shipped worldwide, this impacts food in America too.

4. From the Washington Post, Waterboarding on Coney Island. “Slip a dollar into a slot in the ‘Waterboard Thrill Ride,’ and watch through bars as a man in a hooded sweatshirt pours water into the nose and mouth of another man in an orange jumpsuit convulsing against his restraints.”

   “It looks like a scene from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But this is Coney Island, and the two men are motorized mannequins whose interaction takes place alongside freak shows and funnel cakes.”

1. In cahoots…

   The NY Times reports from Nancy Pelosi’s The Why-Haven’t-You-Impeached-the-President Tour!

   “When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set out to promote her new motivational book this month, she simultaneously touched off her national why-haven’t-you-impeached-the-president tour.”

   Pelosi “has been forced to defend her pronouncement before the 2006 mid-term elections that impeachment over the administration’s push for war in Iraq was off the table.”

   Of course, Pelosi wasn’t pressed very hard by the attendees of this year’s Netroot Nation. They were skillfully played and most of them liked it.

   Pressed on ABC’s “The View” about whether she had unilaterally disarmed, [Pelosi] said she believed the proceedings would be too divisive and be a distraction from advancing the policy agenda of the new Democratic majority.

   Then she added this qualifier: “If somebody had a crime that the president had committed, that would be a different story.”

   In Pelosi’s defense, she’s probably never met Rep. Dennis Kucinich or read the 35 articles of impeachment he presented against Bush. She probably hasn’t read the new book by Ron Suskind either. She’s too busy being motivational! Besides…

   Leading Democrats argue anyway that Mr. Bush has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

   “He has been impeached by current history,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “He is going down as the worst president ever. The facts are in.”

   Republicans have previously shown some appetite for luring Democrats into what they see as an impeachment trap, a set of hearings they could use to portray Democrats as bitter partisans. But Republican strategists also recognize the political danger in getting too deep in defending Mr. Bush right before the election or in justifying the buildup to the Iraq war. They might not be as eager as they once were for an impeachment fight.

   Worst in history doesn’t cut it. Pelosi should be challenged and removed from the speakership… and office. Emanuel can go as well.

   There is a silver of hope, however, in an interview with Democracy Now, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers said he has opened a congressional probe into the allegations Ron Suskind revealed of the Bush Administration ordering a Iraq-9/11 connection to be faked. See Ralph Lopez’s diary at Daily Kos for more details: Conyers Calls Committee Back from Summer Recess to Investigate Suskind Allegations. Maybe this time Pelosi will see the evidence of high crimes done by Bush and Cheney? Here’s hoping.

Four at Four continues with two press narratives about how Obama and McCain are reacting to Georgia, Bush bungling his Georgia aid plan, Pentagon investigating the brain for new ways to wage war and torture, and a bonus story about a revolution in fish protection in Oregon.

1. Expanding on the theme of the American police state, McClatchy Newspapers report the FBI is to get freer rein to look for terrorism suspects.

   Attorney General Michael Mukasey confirmed plans Wednesday to loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations, saying the changes were necessary to improve the bureau’s ability to detect terrorists.

   Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because “they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States.” However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so.

   The Oregonian adds Mukasey says agents will apply methods used to investigate organized crime. But don’t worry, “Mukasey also promised to protect civil liberties and forbid the use of prejudicial investigations based on race, religion or constitutionally protected political expression.”

   According to Mukasey, such changes will transform the FBI into an “elite national security organization“!

   The McClatchy story notes civil libertarians are “alarmed” by the changes. For example:

   Michael German, a former veteran FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said if Mukasey moves ahead with the new rules as he describes them, he’ll be weakening restrictions originally put in place after the Watergate scandal to rein in the FBI’s domestic Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. At the time, the FBI spied on American political leaders and organizations deemed to be subversive throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s.

   “I’m concerned with the way the attorney general frames the problem,” German said. “He talks about ‘arbitrary or irrelevant differences’ between criminal and national security investigations but these were corrections originally designed to prevent the type of overreach the FBI engaged in for years.”

   Last year, Jeffrey Rosen writing for the NY Times, asked Who’s Watching the FBI? This was written after “widespread and serious misuse” of national-security letters by the FBI was disclosed. So who is watching the FBI, since Congress has sure proved it isn’t up to the job.

Four at Four continues with the West desperately trying to save Musharraf from impeachment, Pelosi and the Democrats can’t capitulate fast enough, streetcars, and bonus story about urban gardens.

1. The Guardian reports the western Amazon rainforest threatened by new wave of oil and gas exploration. Over 35 multinational companies are exploring for oil and gas reserves in a 688,00 sq km area (about the size of Texas), that are “peak biodiversity spots” — home to the “most species-rich areas of the Amazon for mammals, birds and amphibians”.

   Researchers used government information on land that has been leased to state or multinational energy companies over the past four years to create oil and gas exploration maps for western Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. The maps showed that in Peru and Ecuador, regions designated for oil and gas projects already cover more than two thirds of the Amazon. Of 64 oil and gas regions that cover 72% of the Peruvian Amazon, all but eight were approved since 2003. Major increases in activity are expected in Bolivia and western Brazil.

   “We’ve been following oil and gas development in the Amazon since 2004 and the picture has changed before our eyes,” said Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests, a US-based environment group. “When you look at where the oil and gas blocks are, they overlap perfectly on top of the peak biodiversity spots, almost as if by design, and this is in one of the most, if not the most, biodiverse place on Earth.”

   Some regions have established oil and gas reserves, but in others, companies will need to cut into the forest to conduct speculative tests, including explosive seismic investigations and test drilling. Typically, companies have seven years to explore a region before deciding whether to go into full production.

   American Zapatista has an essay about this report’s findings and the impact the exploration will have on indigenous peoples.

2. The CS Monitor reports Poor see gains of 1990s reversed as poverty has become more concentrated in the first half of this decade. The number of low-income people living in poor neighborhoods declined in the economic boom of the 1990s.

   But that trend has reversed during the first five years of this decade, according to a new analysis by the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. It found that the number of poor people who live in areas of concentrated poverty increased by 41 percent since 1999.

   According to Elizabeth Kneebone, the lead author of the report, increased “concentrations of poor people in specific neighborhoods create a kind of self-perpetuating economic segregation”. Midwest and Northeast urban metropolitan showed the largest increases in poverty-concentration.

Four at Four continues with the sham Olympics, the death of Hiu Lui Ng at the hands of Homeland Security, and a bonus story about Magic Mushrooms. Also available is my essay about Bush sending U.S. troops to Georgia to deliver humanitarian aid.

1. Here’s a shocker… not. The NY Times reports Mukasey won’t pursue charges in hiring inquiry.

   Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday rejected the idea of criminally prosecuting former Justice Department employees who improperly used political litmus tests in hiring decisions, saying he had already taken strong internal steps in response to a “painful” episode…

   “Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” he said.

   “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” he said.

   As the inspector general’s report acknowledged, the hiring violations were such a case, because the wrongdoing violated federal civil service law, but not criminal law, he said.

   “That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences,” Mr. Mukasey said. “Far from it. The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity.”

   Oh deary me! Negative publicity! Such a terrible burden to bare. Tsk, tsk. Remind me again why it was better to fill the position of Attorney General and not leave it vaccant until the next administration?

Four at Four continues with an Iraqi interpreter, whales, and the Olympics.