Tag: 4@4

1. Some incredibly sad news about Senator Ted Kennedy. The New York Times reports Senator Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. “Tests performed over the weekend at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston indicated that Mr. Kennedy, 76, has a type of cancer known as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, the upper left portion of his brain.”

   News of the diagnosis was greeted by “stunned silence” at a weekly lunch conference for Senate Democrats, said Senator Ben Nelson, of Nebraska. Mr. Nelson said that Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts, who had spoken with Mr. Kennedy, reported that “Senator Kennedy is quite optimistic.”

2. According to a report in The Guardian, the World was ‘more peaceful’ in 2008. According to the Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index Ratings, the top five most peaceful countries are: Iceland, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, and Japan. The index measures “internal and external turmoil in 140 countries. Only one of the G8 countries [Japan], the world’s most economically powerful nations, makes it into the top ten of the survey”.

   Unsurprisingly, the five least peaceful nations are Israel (136), Afghanistan (137), Sudan (138), Somalia (139), and Iraq (140). But, “the survey suggests that the world is a marginally more secure place than it was a year ago.”

   Small, stable, democratic countries are the most peaceful, according to the index, but economic is not seen as a guarantee of a high ranking. Of the G8 countries, France (36), the United Kingdom (49), the United States (97), and Russia (131) did not even make it into the top thirty…

   “On average, scores for level of organised conflict (internal) and violent crime, political instability and potential for terrorist acts have all got marginally better,” according to the summary of the index. In contrast, the world’s armed services have grown on average per country, as has the sophistication of their weaponry.

   “The world appears to be a marginally more peaceful place this year,” said Steve Killelea, the Australian technology entrepreneur and founder of the Global Peace Index. “This is encouraging, but it takes small steps by individual countries for the world to make greater strides on the road to peace.”

Four at Four continues with news from Iraq and “Honey From the Hood”.

1. The Washington Post reports the Fifth top aide to McCain resigns. “Tom Loeffler, the national finance co-chairman for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, resigned yesterday because of his lobbying ties… He is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee.”

   “McCain… has been criticized for months about the number of lobbyists serving in key positions in his campaign. Until recently, his top political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., was the head of a Washington lobbying firm…”

   “Loeffler, a former congressman from Texas, is a close friend of McCain’s and took over the campaign’s fundraising last summer… His firm, the Loeffler Group, had collected $15 million from Saudi Arabia and millions more from other foreign governments. He is listed as chairman and senior partner at the firm.”

   The New York Times reports McCain to rely on Republican Party money against Obama. “To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee…

   To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf… Offering a glimpse of the kind of money that can be spread around with such a committee, $300,000 was collected from nine hedge fund executives and real estate investors at an event in New York in March…

   Lacking a robust small-dollar Internet fund-raising operation, Mr. McCain has a busy schedule of some two dozen high-dollar fund-raising events this month.”

2. Meanwhile, Barack Obama draws a crowd of between 72,000 and 75,000 people in Portland, Oregon. The Oregonian reports “Tens of thousands jammed Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland on Sunday to watch Sen. Barack Obama wrap up a busy weekend in Oregon and a historic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

   According to the Tribune Newspapers, Obama gave his standard 30-minute stump speech, but added a few Portland flourishes. “He’s added a few Oregonian flourishes, drawing big cheers when he said the country can learn from Portland’s commitment to mass transit and bicycle lanes. The biggest applause came when he denounced the Iraq war”.

   “If you vote for me on Tuesday,” Obama said, “We won’t just win Oregon. We’ll win this nomination, we’ll win this general election. And you and I together, we’ll change this country, we’ll change the world.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with a story from Guantanamo Bay and about banning cluster bombs.

1. This is what appeasement looks like. Something… From Voice of America, Bush in Saudi Arabia for Nuclear Deal. “Bush and King Abdullah… will discuss a deal to help the kingdom develop civilian nuclear power for medical and industrial uses as well as generating electricity. The agreement provides access to safe, reliable fuel sources for nuclear reactors and demonstrates what the Bush Administration calls Saudi leadership as a non-proliferation model for the region.”

   For nothing… The Guardian reports Saudis reject Bush’s plea to ease oil prices. “Saudi Arabia today rebuffed George Bush’s appeal to increase production and help cut record oil prices, the White House said. It was the second time this year that the pleas of the US president, who is visiting King Abdullah, have fallen on deaf ears. Bush’s latest request came as the price of crude oil hit a new high of more than $127 (£65) a barrel.”

2. The Great Lakes Compact is becoming more and more likely. In Cleveland, The Plain Dealer reports the Great Lakes Water Compact nears agreement in Ohio legislature. ” Lawmakers in both Wisconsin and Michigan this week nearly unanimously approved the proposed interstate agreement, which supporters say would guard the region’s water from diversion outside and overuse within its borders. That leaves only Ohio and Pennsylvania as states that have not signed on to the water deal.”

   “The Council of Great Lakes Governments conceived the compact, which also includes a less-formal agreement with the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, in 2005. Six states – Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin – have now approved the plan.” In addition to the states, Congress must also give its approval.

   According to NPR, “The Great Lakes Water Compact… lays out rules for conservation and water use in the region.” Or as the Detroit Free Press explains the “historic regional agreement that would prevent Great Lakes water from being diverted to thirsty parts of the country or globe.”

Four at Four continues with barbarisation and laissez-faire ethnic cleansing.

1. The Bush administration has yet another way to steal from America. The Associated Press reveals Defense contractors and insurance firms make millions off loose Iraq insurance rules.

   A poorly run Pentagon program for providing workman’s compensation for civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan has allowed defense contractors and insurance companies to gouge American taxpayers, a House oversight committee said Thursday.

   Insurance companies alone have pocketed $600 million in excessive profits over the past five years, says a staff report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but the Defense Department refuses to adjust its approach for managing the program…

   “What makes the situation even worse is the people this program is supposed to benefit – the injured employees working for contractors – have to fight the insurance companies to get their benefits,” committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said at a hearing Thursday. “Delays and denials in paying claims are the rule.”

   KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance giant AIG $284 million for medical and disability coverage under the Defense Base Act, a reference to the federal law mandating the insurance. Due to the way KBR’s contract is structured, this premium, along with an $8 million markup for KBR, gets billed to the taxpayer.

2. Just in case you missed it, General David Petraeus is in charge of who gets promoted in the Army. The Washington Post reports Army’s next crop of generals forged in counterinsurgency. “An Army board headed by Gen. David H. Petraeus has selected several combat-tested counterinsurgency experts for promotion to the rank of brigadier general, sifting through more than 1,000 colonels to identify a handful of innovative leaders who will shape the future Army, according to current and former senior Army officers. The choices suggest that the unusual decision to put the top U.S. officer in Iraq in charge of the promotions board has generated new thinking on the qualities of a successful Army officer — and also deepened Petraeus’s imprint on the Army.”

Four at Four continues with stories about the impact of climate change and our American history crumbling away due to neglect.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports Consumer prices up just 0.2% in April, but there’s a catch. “The government’s main inflation gauge, the consumer price index, rose just 0.2% in April, when adjusted for seasonal changes, the Labor Department reported. Since energy prices normally go up in March and April, the department said, the seasonally corrected index showed energy prices as flat… The government noted that gasoline prices actually rose 5.6% in April, which is about what is expected this time of year. The problem for consumers is that the prices were so high to begin with — the department said that in nominal terms, gasoline prices are up 20.9% nationally over the past 12 months.”

   Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Food prices see greatest monthly increase in nearly 20 years. “Food prices have risen 6.1 percent in the past three months on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. The one-month rise between March and April of 0.9 percent was the biggest since January 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics… The costs of cereal and bakery products increased 1.4 percent from March to April and have risen nearly 20 percent in the past three months on a seasonally adjusted basis. Prices for fats and oils jumped more than 5 percent in April, on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, and have increased more than 26 percent in the past three months. Prices for sugars and sweets increased more than 10 percent during that same period.”

   The Guardian reports US property foreclosures up 65%. “The wave of misery caused by America’s sub-prime mortgage crisis engulfed more homeowners in April as foreclosures leapt by 65% year-on-year… Banks filed foreclosure papers on 243,353 US properties last month according to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for repossessed homes. The figure was up 4% on March” and would be higher if not for court backlog.

   The Washington Post adds Standards of living are challenged, burdened by the weight of inflation. “Nearly seven in 10 Americans are worried about maintaining their standard of living… Soaring consumer prices are a major challenge, with many people struggling under the weight of the rising costs of fuel, food and health care… Overall, two-thirds called rising gasoline prices a financial hardship, including a third who said higher pump prices have proved to be a severe burden.” But, “U.S. gasoline consumption has continued to grow gradually over the past five years even as crude oil prices have quadrupled, but there are some signs in the poll that prices have finally hit a level that is altering driving habits.”

   But Wall Street doesn’t notice reality — just some cooked book numbers from the Bush administration. Instead, the Associated Press reports Stocks advance following better-than-expected inflation read. “Stocks steamed higher Wednesday after a better-than-expected report on consumer prices tempered some of Wall Street’s concerns about inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 100 points.”

   And the Wall Street Journal gleefully plasters across the front page: Recession? Not So Fast, Say Some. “Economists also cite swift policy responses, including a sharp reduction in interest rates by the Fed — to 2% from 5.25% last September — and the distribution of fiscal-stimulus checks to millions of Americans, as factors possibly easing the downturn.” All that was done was to shift the blame to the next administration.

   I think the problems are just starting,” said Lehman Brothers economist Drew Matus, citing high gasoline prices and tightening lending standards, saying that prolonged stagnation can be worse than a recession.

   Asked in an interview… whether the U.S. could avoid a recession, Gary Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said, “No,” adding, “But there are recessions and then there are recessions….The average resident doesn’t distinguish between whether the economy is growing half a percent or one and a half percent….It’s more, how does this feel?”

   It feels like the next administration is being set up for very bad things.

Four at Four continues with renewed fears for the Amazon, a contentious objector’s day in court, and the next low-wage stop for globalization.

1. The Miami Herald reports that Newcomers are assimilating quickly in U.S. “A wide-ranging and provocative new study of immigrants’ integration into U.S. society has concluded that newcomers today are assimilating more quickly than their predecessors did 100 years ago — with Cubans, Vietnamese and Filipinos among those leading the way.”

   Jacob L. Vigdor, a Duke University economist, authored the study which was published by the Manhattan Institute, a right wing think tank. The study found that new immigrants become part of the American society “remarkably well.” “Today’s immigrants are making faster progress. As a result, even as immigration has skyrocketed, assimilation has remained stable, Vigdor concluded. ‘This is something unprecedented in the United States,’ he said.”

   Only “Mexicans — by far the most numerous nationality — lag significantly behind other big immigrant groups, possibly because a lack of legal status keeps many Mexican immigrants from advancing.” The Washington Post adds “A major reason” why the assimilation of Mexican immigrants lags behind others is a “high percentage of Mexican immigrants who are in the country illegally… ‘If you’re in the country illegally, a lot of the avenues of assimilation are cut off to you,’ he said. ‘There are lot of jobs you can’t get, and you can’t become a citizen.'”

   Vigdor noted: “In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on… however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.”

2. The New York Times reports Defense War Secretary Robert Gates wants weapons useful in current conflicts. “Gates issued a clear warning to the military and its industrial partners on Tuesday that expensive, new conventional weapons must prove their value to current conflicts, marked by insurgency and terrorism, if they hope for a place in future budgets.” In addition, Gates indicated “the Army and Marine Corps would continue to carry the brunt of the nation’s combat effort. The Air Force and Navy, he said, would be cast as ‘America’s main strategic deterrent’ against potential adversaries such as Iran, North Korea and China.”

   He acknowledged that given troop commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, “it is true that we would be hard-pressed to launch a major conventional ground operation elsewhere in the world at this time.”

   “The risk of overextending the Army is real,” Mr. Gates said. “But I believe the risk is far greater – to that institution, as well as to our country – if we were to fail in Iraq. That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win.”

Four at Four continues with the oil pander of Congress and the real betrayal of America.

1. The Guardian reports Microloans guard America’s middle class.

   The world thinks of microfinance as a tool to lift its poorest from grinding poverty. But in an age of pricey fuel and shrinking credit, the entrepreneurial movement that began in Bangladesh is taking off in the richest country of all.

   Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus opened 11 branches of his Grameen Bank in New York City this spring, more than 30 years after he revolutionised foreign aid by delivering the first microloan to a group of rural Asian villagers.

   If Yunus is the father of microfinance, his US offspring already are maturing quite nicely. The spectre of recession, combined with a diverse array of lending models, is sparking a new demand in America for small loans and business counselling…

   Almost anyone can send a few dollars to Asia that can feed a family for weeks, thanks to Kiva and other groups that turn ordinary Americans into microlenders. But sending a few thousand dollars to a rural Pennsylvania craftsman is more difficult.

   Micro Business Development Corporation, led by Denver lender Kersten Hostetter, has created thousands of jobs and boosted the local economy by more than $15m. Still, Hostetter is so keen for more investment that she has written a unique job ad seeking a celebrity spokesman for US microfinance.

   “We’re the bridge between poverty alleviation and economic development, the guardians of the middle class,” Hostetter said. “We didn’t brand ourselves initially because there wasn’t a need for it.”

   This will probably sound elitist. I think microloans are great, but using them to protect the American middle class, I think, is alarming. Just how far has the U.S. fallen? Micro-finance is about ending poverty. This is more evidence there are “two Americas” and parts of the U.S. are becoming more like some of the world’s poorest countries.

Four at Four continues with the spread of nuclear power, mixed environmental news, and locust swarms.

1. From The Guardian comes news of Another record as oil passes $126. OPEC is going to try to increase production… to take advantage of the high prices. “The price of crude was up by around $2 a barrel in trading, reaching a new peak of $126.20, amid concerns about shortages of diesel in the United States, the weakness of the dollar and the possibility of geopolitical tensions in oil producing countries.”

   Of course, Bush has done what he could to increase “geopolitical tensions in oil producing countries”. Jerome a Paris predicts $200 a barrel oil will happen on January 20, 2009, Inauguration Day. A day when “a new president that has not prepared the ground for serious action will be blamed for everything that transpires”.

   Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Big Oil launches advertising campaign.

   Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image.

   The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation’s largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea.

   The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters — who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress — that rising energy prices are not the producers’ fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse.

   Just what we need is oil-industry astroturfing in blogs.

   The lobby has started courting online journalists as well. In November, the institute said it invited bloggers to Shell’s facilities in New Orleans and then took them to visit the offshore platform Brutus. The same month, the institute also brought bloggers to Chevron’s offices in Houston and its Blind Faith platform under construction in Corpus Christi, Tex. There are more tours in the works.

   Blind Faith: big oil is our friend.

Four at Four continues with 2 corrupt senators, Army “stop loss”, and Pelosi’s war funding bill.

1. Sometimes standing up to bullies works. The Washington Post reports the FBI backs off from secret order for data after lawsuit. First, the good news:

   The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

   Yay Internet Archive! Now, the bad news:

   It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a “national security letter,” or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order’s existence.

   Only 3 times since September 11, 2001? Gah! Part of the problem is the fascists who wrote and voted for the law included a “gag order provision” that prohibit public disclosure. “FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.” So the backdown rate is roughly 1 for every 100,000. Here is how it went down:

   The order against the Internet Archive was served Nov. 26, and the nonprofit challenged it based on a provision of the reauthorized USA Patriot Act, which protects libraries from such requests. The privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the archive in the suit, which was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union.

   The archive also alleged that the gag order that accompanied the data demand violated the Constitution.

   As part of their settlement, the FBI agreed to drop the gag order and the archive agreed to withdraw the complaint. The case was unsealed Monday. Yesterday, redacted versions of key documents were filed, allowing the parties to discuss the case.

   The Justice Department knows the gag order violates the Constitution and did not want a Supreme Court decision saying so. The Telcos that are served 50,000 NSLs a year are not refusing this unconstitutional measure. And, according to WaPo, “A bipartisan bill in the House would restore the requirement that NSLs could be used only to collect information that pertains to ‘a foreign or agent of a foreign power’ and would limit the gag order to 30 days, unless a court authorized an extension.” Let’s make Congress do the right thing. Contact your representative and senators.

Four at Four continues with U.S.-Russia tit-for-tat, Crandall Canyon Mine, and flirty flowers.

1. America’s own terrorist is partying in Miami. The Los Angeles Times reports Luis Posada Carriles, a terror suspect abroad, enjoys a ‘coming-out’ in Miami. 500 Cuban Americans honored “Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago. Posada, 80, has mostly kept a low profile since his release from a Texas prison a year ago and a federal judge’s dismissal of the only U.S. charges against him — making false statements to immigration officials.”

   Posada is the alleged mastermind of a Cuban airline bombing in 1976 that killed all 73 people on board. Plus he is a suspect in a string of hotel bombings in Havana during the 1990s and according to court documents, claims to have been involved in “some of the most infamous events of 20th century Central American politics.” Posada has also boasted of numerous attempts to kill Castro, including an attempt in 2000 that he was serving time in a Panamanian prison before pardoned in 2004 by Panama’s President Mireya Moscoso as a favor for Bush.

   The Bush administration “has never given Venezuela a formal answer to its 3-year-old request for extradition of Posada, despite a treaty providing for such cooperation that has been in effect since 1922”. “Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.”

Four at Four continues with stories about wiped emails, war funding, and the duck-billed platypus.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports Chinese firms are bargain hunting in U.S.

   Liu Keli… is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.

   Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg — less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn’t have to put up with frequent blackouts.

   About the only major thing that’s more expensive in Spartanburg is labor. Liu is looking to offer $12 to $13 an hour there, versus about $2 an hour in Dongguan, not including room and board. But Liu expects to offset some of the higher labor costs with a payroll tax credit of $1,500 per employee from South Carolina.

   The jobs are low-paying and the state will not get tax revenue – instead that money will stay in China. In just under two decades, the United States has been successfully transformed into a third world nation – unable to respond to natural disasters, collapsing bridges and deteriorating infrastructure, no health insurance, and corrupt elections and public officials. More environmental laws will be rolled back next. It never used to be like this in the U.S.

   For years, investment between the U.S. and China flowed one way, with American firms spending billions in the Asian nation. But the Beijing government’s $5-billion stake in Morgan Stanley and $3-billion investment in the private equity firm Blackstone Group brought China’s overall investments in U.S. firms to $9.8 billion in 2007, up from $36 million the year before, according to Thomson Financial.

   By comparison, U.S. investment in China was $2.6 billion last year, down from $3 billion in 2006, said China’s Ministry of Commerce.

   China out-invested the U.S. last year by $7.2 billion. Or as Mei Xinyu, an economist at China’s Ministry of Commerce, reasoned of the depressed asset prices in a sluggish American economy: “They don’t want to miss this opportunity to bottom-fish in the U.S..” America – land of the bottom feeders.

Four at Four continues below the fold with DoJ v OSC, Guantánamo Briton, and why do they hate us?

1. Over the weekend, The Observer reported Rainforest seeds revive lost paradise. The land around Samboja, Borneo resembled a “moonscape” when Dr. Willie Smits, an Indonesian forestry expert, first visited it six years ago. “The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.”

   But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world. The secret was to use more than 1,300 species of local tree and a fertiliser made with cow urine…

   Smits raised money to buy 5,000 acres and six years ago set about planting seeds collected from more than 1,300 species of tree, more even than would have lived in the original forest. These were planted with a special ‘micro-biological agent’ made from sugar, excrement, food waste and sawdust – and cow urine.

   Planting finishes this year, but already Smits and his team from the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is ‘mature’, with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orang-utans. ‘If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me.’

   Some more info is available at BOS’s Create Rainforest website.

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories about air pollution and bees, 66 deaths in U.S. immigration prisons, the U.S. military base in Ecuador, and fat cells.