Re: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution
giving up on the constitution would just give the US a new constitution. tradition and respect? that's all well and good, but somebody's going to want to write it down sometime or another, and it'll be the same rusty old arguments with a different piece of parchment two hundred years from now... there's no such thing as new. Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 23:54:37 +0200 To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org From: ke...@journeytoforever.org Subject: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33506.htm Let's Give Up on the Constitution By LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] How millions of farmers are advancing agriculture for themselves
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-f or-themselves/ The world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the United States, but by a farmer in the state of Bihar in northern India. Sumant Kumar, who has a farm of just two hectares in Darveshpura village, holds a record yield of 22.4 tons per hectare, from a one-acre plot. This feat was achieved with what is known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).To put his achievement in perspective, the average paddy yield worldwide is about 4 tons per hectare. Even with the use of fertilizer, average yields are usually not more than 8 tons. Sumant Kumar’s success was not a fluke. Four of his neighbors, using SRI methods for the first time, matched or exceeded the previous world record from China — 19 tons per hectare. Moreover, they used only modest amounts of inorganic fertilizer and did not need chemical crop protection. Origins and principles of SRI Deriving from empirical work started in the 1960s in Madagascar by a French priest — Fr. Henri de Laulanié, S.J. — the System of Rice Intensification has shown remarkable capacity to raise smallholders’ rice productivity under a wide variety of conditions around the world. From tropical rainforest regions of Indonesia, to mountainous regions in northeastern Afghanistan, to fertile river basins in India and Pakistan and to arid conditions of Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali, SRI methods have proved adaptable to a wide range of agroecological settings. With SRI management, paddy yields are usually increased by 50–100 percent, but sometimes by more, even up to the super-yields of Sumant Kumar. Requirements for seed are greatly reduced (by 80–90 percent), as are those for irrigation water (by 25–50 percent). Little or no inorganic fertilizer is required if sufficient organic matter can be provided to the soil, and there is little (if any) need for agrochemical protection. SRI plants are also generally healthier and better able to resist such stresses as well as drought, extremes of temperature, flooding, and storm damage. SRI methods frequently result in dramatically improved plant and root growth (SRI rice, left — conventional rice, right). Photo courtesy of Amrik Singh. SRI methodology is based on four main principles that interact in synergistic ways: Establish healthy plants early and carefully, nurturing their root potential; Reduce plant populations, giving each plant more room to grow above and below ground; Enrich the soil with organic matter, keeping it well-aerated to support better growth of roots and more aerobic soil biota; and Apply water purposefully in ways that favor plant-root and soil-microbial growth, avoiding the commonly flooded (anaerobic) soil conditions These principles are translated into a number of irrigated rice cultivation practices that are typically the following: Plant young seedlings carefully and singly, giving them wider spacing, usually in a square pattern, so that both roots and canopy have ample room to spread; Provide sufficient water for plant roots and beneficial soil organisms to grow, but not so much as to suffocate or suppress either. This is done through alternate wetting and drying, or through small but regular water applications; Add as much compost, mulch or other organic matter to the soil as possible, ‘feeding the soil’ to ‘feed the plant’; and Control weeds with mechanical methods that can incorporate weeds into the soil while breaking up the soil’s surface. This actively aerates the root zone The cumulative result of these practices is to induce the growth of more productive and healthier plants (phenotypes) from any genetic variety (genotype). Using SRI methods, smallholding farmers in many countries are starting to get higher yields and greater productivity from their land, labour, seeds, water and capital, with their crops showing more resilience to the hazards of climate change. These productivity gains have been achieved simply by changing the ways that farmers manage their plants, soil, water and nutrients. These altered management practices have induced more productive, resilient phenotypes from existing rice plant genotypes in over 50 countries. The reasons for this improvement are not all known, but there is growing literature that helps account for the improvements observed in yield and health for rice crops using SRI. The ideas and practices that constitute SRI are now being adapted to improve the productivity of a wide variety of other crops. Producing more output with fewer external inputs may sound improbable, but it derives from a shift in emphasis from improving plant genetic potential via plant breeding, to providing optimal environments for crop growth. The adaptation of SRI experience and principles to other crops is being referred to generically as the System of
Re: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution
Hi Jason giving up on the constitution would just give the US a new constitution. tradition and respect? that's all well and good, but somebody's going to want to write it down sometime or another, and it'll be the same rusty old arguments with a different piece of parchment two hundred years from now... there's no such thing as new. Paper shredders? :-) Sorry... He does have a point though, more than one, IMHO. From another old bit of parchment: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Would that it were still so. Until not very long ago, people were born, and not long after that they'd die, and between the two events very little changed, if anything. Now, for many or most of us, change is about the only thing you can rely on (seven billion humans ain't new?). The Bible is a wonderful book to go cherry-picking in. I suspect it's the same with the other great religions. And I think the US Constitution is often just the same - I posted a recent article explaining the crucial difference between what it actually says and what most Americans think it says about gun rights, for instance. Too often, it's just dogma. You don't need it. Other countries don't even have a constitution, like the UK, for instance. Literal, or legalistic, interpretations of the past aren't always the best guide to dealing with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. Things do change: And a genocide, and a civil war, over slavery. The interesting thing for me is that slavery was not a problem for Jesus (I'm not sure about most other major religions but I think this is true of them also), and nowhere does He mention democracy, equal rights, or any of the current cornerstone concepts we take for granted as truth. That is a surprise to me, and I wonder why, and I wonder what deep and complex lessons that might have for us, and what it tells us about our new thinking. And if democracy was not mentioned as a system of government, then what was, and why? They had the Roman Empire on one hand and kings and priests on the other, there probably wasn't much left to discuss. But then they didn't argue about healthcare either, nor women's rights, or racism, the environment, libraries, education. We do make progress, we humans, we have a much better class of problems now. All best Keith Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 23:54:37 +0200 To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org From: ke...@journeytoforever.org Subject: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33506.htm Let's Give Up on the Constitution By LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
Re: [Biofuel] How millions of farmers are advancing agriculture for themselves
Hi David http://journeytoforever.org/farm.html#sri A French Jesuit priest working in Madagascar stumbled on a system that raises typical rice yields from 3 to 12 tonnes per hectare. The trick is to transplant seedlings earlier with wider spacing; to keep paddies unflooded for much of the growing period; and to use compost rather than chemical fertilisers. Some 20,000 farmers have adopted the idea in Madagascar alone. In tests of the system, China, Indonesia, Cambodia and many other countries all raised their rice yields. Now the SRI revolution is sweeping the world. -- An Ordinary Miracle, New Scientist, 3 February 2001. http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Let-Weeds-Do-Work.htm See: Madagascar non-GE rice trials lead to agricultural revolution: http://www.gene.ch/genet/2001/Jan/msg00083.html SRI manual: How to Help Rice Plants to Grow Better and Produce More: Teach Yourself and Others-- the original SRI manual, developed jointly by CIIFAD and Tefy Saina to explain SRI to persons working with farmers to communicate the main ideas underlying SRI. (pdf 175 kb) http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/srimanual.pdf SRI FAQ: Questions and Answers about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) for Raising the Productivity of Land, Labor and Water -- Norman Uphoff, Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (pdf 236 kb) http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/sriqanda.pdf Father de Laulanié's original research paper on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI): Technical Presentation of the System of Rice Intensification, Based on Katayama's Tillering Model -- Henri de Laulanié, Association Tefy Saina (pdf 208 kb) -- a good read! http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Laulanie.pdf SRI homepage: The System of Rice Intensification -- a collaborative effort of Association Tefy Saina in Madagascar and Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD), hosted by CIIFAD Director Norman Uphoff. http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/ List archives: 224 matches http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=sril=sustainablelorgbiofuel%40lists.sustainablelists.org All best Keith http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves/ The world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the United States, but by a farmer in the state of Bihar in northern India. Sumant Kumar, who has a farm of just two hectares in Darveshpura village, holds a record yield of 22.4 tons per hectare, from a one-acre plot. This feat was achieved with what is known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).To put his achievement in perspective, the average paddy yield worldwide is about 4 tons per hectare. Even with the use of fertilizer, average yields are usually not more than 8 tons. Sumant Kumar's success was not a fluke. Four of his neighbors, using SRI methods for the first time, matched or exceeded the previous world record from China - 19 tons per hectare. Moreover, they used only modest amounts of inorganic fertilizer and did not need chemical crop protection. Origins and principles of SRI Deriving from empirical work started in the 1960s in Madagascar by a French priest - Fr. Henri de Laulanié, S.J. - the System of Rice Intensification has shown remarkable capacity to raise smallholders' rice productivity under a wide variety of conditions around the world. From tropical rainforest regions of Indonesia, to mountainous regions in northeastern Afghanistan, to fertile river basins in India and Pakistan and to arid conditions of Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali, SRI methods have proved adaptable to a wide range of agroecological settings. With SRI management, paddy yields are usually increased by 50-100 percent, but sometimes by more, even up to the super-yields of Sumant Kumar. Requirements for seed are greatly reduced (by 80-90 percent), as are those for irrigation water (by 25-50 percent). Little or no inorganic fertilizer is required if sufficient organic matter can be provided to the soil, and there is little (if any) need for agrochemical protection. SRI plants are also generally healthier and better able to resist such stresses as well as drought, extremes of temperature, flooding, and storm damage. SRI methods frequently result in dramatically improved plant and root growth (SRI rice, left - conventional rice, right). Photo courtesy of Amrik Singh. SRI methodology is based on four main principles that interact in synergistic ways: Establish healthy plants early and carefully, nurturing their root potential; Reduce plant populations, giving each plant more room to grow above and below ground; Enrich the soil with organic matter, keeping it well-aerated to support better growth of roots and more aerobic soil biota; and Apply water purposefully in ways that favor plant-root and soil-microbial growth, avoiding
[Biofuel] The Hoax of 'Entitlement' Reform
The world economy 2013: Illusions and reality 8 January 2013 http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/08/pers-j08.html Save Social Security: Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary Sunday, 06 January 2013 15:31 By Robert Naiman, Truthout | Op-Ed http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13735-save-social-security-paul-krugman-for-treasury-secretary Tax Avoidance On the Rise: It's Twice the Amount of Social Security and Medicare Published on Monday, January 7, 2013 by Common Dreams by Paul Buchheit http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/07 Fox News Takes on the No Billionaires Campaign Monday, 07 January 2013 15:11 By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks , The Daily Take | Op-Ed http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13760-fox-news-takes-on-the-no-billionaires-campaign --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/07-3 Published on Monday, January 7, 2013 by RobertReich.org The Hoax of 'Entitlement' Reform by Robert Reich It has become accepted economic wisdom, uttered with deadpan certainty by policy pundits and budget scolds on both sides of the aisle, that the only way to get control over America's looming deficits is to reform entitlements. But the accepted wisdom is wrong. Start with the statistics Republicans trot out at the slightest provocation - federal budget data showing a huge spike in direct payments to individuals since the start of 2009, shooting up by almost $600 billion, a 32 percent increase. And Census data showing 49 percent of Americans living in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit - food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker's compensation, or subsidized housing - up from 44 percent in 2008. But these expenditures aren't driving the federal budget deficit in future years. They're temporary. The reason for the spike is Americans got clobbered in 2008 with the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. They and their families have needed whatever helping hands they could get. If anything, America's safety nets have been too small and shot through with holes. That's why the number and percentage of Americans in poverty has increased dramatically, including 22 percent of our children. What about Social Security and Medicare (along with Medicare's poor step-child, Medicaid)? Social Security won't contribute to future budget deficits. By law, it can only spend money from the Social Security trust fund. That fund has been in surplus for the better part of two decades, as boomers contributed to it during their working lives. As boomers begin to retire, those current surpluses are disappearing. But this only means the trust fund will be collecting from the rest of the federal government the IOUs on the surpluses it lent to the rest of the government. This still leaves a problem for the trust fund about two decades from now. Yet the way to deal with this isn't to raise the eligibility age for receiving Social Security benefits, as many entitlement reformers are urging. That would put an unfair burden on most laboring people, whose bodies begin wearing out about the same age they did decades ago even though they live longer. And it's not to reduce cost-of-living adjustments for inflation, as even the White House seemed ready to propose in recent months. Benefits are already meager for most recipients. The median income of Americans over 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of them depend on Social Security for more than half of this. The average Social Security benefit is less than $15,000 a year. Besides, Social Security's current inflation adjustment actually understates the true impact of inflation on elderly recipients - who spend far more than anyone else on health care, the costs of which have been rising faster than overall inflation. That leaves two possibilities that entitlement reformers rarely if ever suggest, but are the only fair alternatives: raising the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes (in 2013 that ceiling is $113,700), and means-testing benefits so wealthy retirees receive less. Both should be considered. What's left to reform? Medicare and Medicaid costs are projected to soar. But here again, look closely and you'll see neither is really the problem. The underlying problem is the soaring costs of health care - as evidenced by soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles that all of us are bearing - combined with the aging of the boomer generation. The solution isn't to reduce Medicare benefits. It's for the nation to contain overall healthcare costs and get more for its healthcare dollars. We're already spending nearly 18 percent of our entire economy on health care, compared to an average of 9.6 percent in all other rich countries. Yet we're no healthier than their citizens are. In fact, our life expectancy at birth (78.2 years) is shorter than theirs (averaging 79.5 years), and our infant mortality (6.5 deaths per 1000 live
[Biofuel] The Anti-Empire Report - William Blum
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer112.html The Anti-Empire Report January 8th, 2013 by William Blum www.killinghope.org Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? France no longer recognizes its children, lamented Guillaume Roquette in an editorial in the Figaro weekly magazine in Paris. How can the country of Victor Hugo, secularism and family reunions produce jihadists capable of attacking a kosher grocery store? 1 I ask: How can the country of Henry David Thoreau, separation of church and state, and family Thanksgiving dinners produce American super-nationalists capable of firing missiles into Muslim family reunions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia? Does America recognize its children? Indeed, it honors them. Constantly. A French state prosecutor stated that A network of French Islamists behind a grenade attack on a kosher market outside Paris last month also planned to join jihadists fighting in Syria. 2 We can add these worthies to the many other jihadists coming from all over to fight in Syria for regime change, waving al-Qaeda flags (There is no god but God), carrying out suicide attacks, exploding car bombs, and singling out Christians for extermination (for not supporting the overthrow of the secular Syrian government.) These folks are not the first ones you would think of as allies in a struggle for the proverbial freedom and democracy. Yet America's children are on the same side, with the same goal of overthrowing Syrian president Bashir Assad. So how do America's leaders explain and justify this? Not everybody who's participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who we are comfortable with, President Obama sad in an interview in December. There are some who, I think, have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are going to make clear to distinguish between those elements. 3 In an earlier speech, Secretary of State Clinton acknowledged the scope of the threat from such movements. A year of democratic transition was never going to drain away reservoirs of radicalism built up through decades of dictatorship, she said. As we've learned from the beginning, there are extremists who seek to exploit periods of instability and hijack these democratic transitions. 4 Extremist ... radicalism ... No mention of terrorists (which is what Assad calls them). No mention of jihadists or foreign mercenaries. Or that they were preparing their movement to overthrow the Syrian government well before any government suppression of peaceful protestors in March of 2011, which the Western media consistently cites as the cause of the civil war. As far back as 2007, Seymour Hersh was writing in The New Yorker: The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Nor any explanation of what it says about the mission of the Holy Triumvirate (the United States, NATO and the European Union) that they have been supplying these jihadist rebels with funds, arms and training; with intelligence and communication equipment; with diplomatic recognition(!); later we'll probably find out about even more serious stuff. But President Obama is simply uncomfortable with them, because Assad, like Gaddafi of Libya, is a non-Triumvirate Believer, while the Jihadists are the proverbial enemy of my enemy. How long before they turn their guns and explosives upon Americans, as they did in Libya? Seeing is believing, and believing is seeing Is it easier for a believer to deal with a tragedy like the one in Newtown, Connecticut than it is for an atheist? The human suffering surrounding the ending of life forever for 20 small children and six adults made me choke up again and again with each news report. I didn't have the comfort that some religious people might have had - that it was God's will, that there must be a reason for such profound agony, a good reason, which you would understand if you could receive God's infinite wisdom, if you could be enlightened enough to see how it fit into God's Master Plan. How could God let this happen?, asked a Fox News reporter of former Republican governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee. Well, replied Huckabee, you know, it's an interesting thing. We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we've systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability? That we're not just going to have to be accountable to the police, if they catch us. But one day, we will stand before a Holy God in judgment. If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that. So the former governor is
[Biofuel] State of Fear - Chris Hedges
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/07-0 Published on Monday, January 7, 2013 by TruthDig.com State of Fear by Chris Hedges Shannon McLeish of Florida is a 45-year-old married mother of two young children. She is a homeowner, a taxpayer and a safe driver. She votes in every election. She attends a Unitarian Universalist church on Sundays. She is also, like nearly all who have a relationship with the Occupy movement in the United States, being monitored by the federal government. She knows this because when she read FBI documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) through the Freedom of Information Act, she was startled to see a redaction that could only be referring to her. McLeish's story is the story of hundreds of thousands of people-perhaps more-whose lives are being invaded by the state. It is the story of a security and surveillance apparatus-overseen by the executive branch under Barack Obama-that has empowered the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to silence the voices and obstruct the activity of citizens who question corporate power. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, said in a written statement about the released files: This production [of information], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America. The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect. These documents are part of the plan to make us fearful, compliant and disempowered. They mark, I suspect, a government attempt to end peaceful mass protests by responding with repression to the grievances of Americans. When the corporate-financed group FreedomWorks bused in goons to disrupt Democratic candidates' town hall meetings about the federal health care legislation in August 2009, Eric Zuesse of the Business Insider notes, there was no FBI surveillance of those corporate-organized disruptions of legitimate democratic processes. There also were no subsequent FreedomWorks applications for Freedom of Information Act releases of FBI files regarding such surveillance being used against them-because there was no such FBI campaign against them. The combination of intimidation tactics by right-wing fringe groups, which speak in the language of violence and hate, with the state's massive intrusion into the personal affairs of the citizen is corporate fascism. And we are much farther down that road than many of us care to admit. When activists took up relatively long-term residence in Zuccotti Park in New York City on Sept. 17 [in 2011], their message of outrage was a mirror to my own after we bailed out the banks with our tax dollars, then watched them get off scot-free without even a token attempt to help fix the wreckage they'd created, McLeish told me over the phone when I called her home. I personally lost considerable income and my retirement with the economic collapse, as well as more than half the value of my home. I could see the people around me struggling, too. I have friends, neighbors and family members that the banks refused to help, who lost their homes or were forced to pay for costly attorneys to defend themselves against fraudulent foreclosure attempts. People couldn't sell their homes, as they were worth so much less than what they'd paid for them. Homes all over the area, including in my neighborhood right near the downtown [of Ormond Beach, Fla.], were abandoned due to the foreclosure crisis-and left to rot by the banks. Strip malls were emptied as businesses went bankrupt and closed their doors. More and more homeless people were wandering through the neighborhood-people you could tell had never been homeless, just by virtue of what and how much they carried with them. Families were sleeping behind big-box stores, and my area was featured on national news repeatedly for the number of homeless families. These are some of the things that prompted me to create a Facebook page for Occupy in my area in solidarity with the courageous activists camping in Zuccotti-the only group to fully give voice to what I saw as the issue: the corruption of pretty much everything from the economy to the environment to our social safety nets to our democratic system of
[Biofuel] The FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17734-the-fbi-s-manufactured-war-on-terrorism Monday, 07 January 2013 The FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all, the late great blues man Albert King sang in Born Under A Bad Sign. As Trevor Aaronson tells it in his new book, The Terror Factory: Inside The FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism (ig Publishing, 2013), that lyric is apropos to a large percentage of the so-called terrorists -- more aptly dubbed sad sacks -- nabbed by the FBI since 9/11. Take the case of Michael Curtis Reynolds. In 2005, Reynolds, an unemployed drifter with a bad employment history and a worse credit report, was living at his mother's house in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, when he unveiled a grandiose idea that would make him an object of interest for the FBI. Apparently outraged by the war in Iraq, and who knows how many other, more personal beefs, Reynolds logged in to a Yahoo forum called OBLCREW-OBL for Osama bin Laden - and shared his dream of bombing the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. When no one responded to his post, he tried again, writing, Still awaiting someone serious about contact. Would be a pity to lose this idea. Within the next twenty-four hours, Reynolds received a response; an offer of $40,000 to fund the attack, which evolved into a plan to fill trucks withy explosives and bomb oil refineries in New Jersey and Wyoming, as well as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. When Reynolds arrived at a rest stop on Interstate 15 in Idaho, instead of meeting like-minded comrades, he was greeted by FBI agents. Aaronson points out that Reynolds was eventually tried and convicted of providing material support to Al Qaeda and received thirty years in prison. And the FBI was credited with having thwarted another terrorist plot. Was Reynolds just another hapless boob, or was he a clear and present danger to the nation? Aaronson concluded that while Reynolds was most certainly a sad sack who has many of the characteristics of an all-American loser, he was not a dangerous terrorist. The Reynolds case got Aaronson, an experienced investigative reporter, interested in discovering how many other Reynolds-like terrorists had been rounded up by the FBI since 9/11. Aaronson found that FBI informants and undercover agents were at the center of many of the cases touted by the FBI as successes in thwarting terrorist plots. In fact, were it not for the FBI, most of those plots would likely have fallen apart under the weight of their own senselessness and ineptitude. Aaronson began pulling court records of cases that involved defendants who, like Reynolds, had no actual contacts with terrorist organizations and were lured into their plots by FBI informants. Trying to answer the question How many so-called terrorists prosecuted in U.S. courts since 9/11 were real terrorists? Aaronson began a systematic analysis of all terrorism cases and quickly discovered that While the U.S. Department of Justice tracked terrorism prosecutions internally, this data was not made public. Ironically, Aaronson's breakthrough came when Attorney General Eric Holder, appearing before Congress in March 2010 to assure the public that the Justice Department was not only capable of providing a secure and fair setting for the trial [of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti-born mastermind of 9/11], but also was well accomplished in prosecuting terrorists. To convince Congress, Holder provided a document containing nearly nine years' worth of data -- a list of about 400 people whom the Justice Department has prosecuted in the United States since 9/11 and considered terrorists. The Holder testimony provided the foundation for a wide-ranging investigation that involved securing some financial support, poring over thousands of pages of court records and documents, building and analyzing a database, and meeting with current and former FBI officials to help [him] understand what the data meant. Along with research assistant, Lauren Ellis, Aaronson examined court records from every case on the Justice Department's list as well as every subsequent case that fit the government's criteria for terrorism. Aaronson and Ellis were trying to sort out: How many of the defendants posed actual threats, based on the evidence? How many of the prosecutions involved FBI sting operations using informants? How many of those informants played such an active role in the investigation that they reasonably could be described as agent provocateurs? By the end of the summer of 2011, Aaronson and Ellis had compiled a database of 508 defendants whom the U.S. government considered terrorists. . Of the 508 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur. Aaronson realized he could count on
[Biofuel] Neoliberalizing Nature and Privatizing the Air
http://truth-out.org/video/item/13762-neoliberalizing-nature-and-privatizing-the-air Neoliberalizing Nature and Privatizing the Air Monday, 07 January 2013 15:59 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | Video Transcript PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to what is going to become a series of reports on environmental and climate change issues with Patrick Bond, who now joins us from South Africa. Patrick is the director of the Centre for Civil Society and a professor at the university of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He's written many books. One of his latest is The Politics of Climate Justice and Durban's Climate Gamble. Thanks for joining us, Patrick. PATRICK BOND, GLOBAL ECON. PROJECT DIRECTOR, INST. FOR POLICY STUDIES: Great to be with you again, Paul. JAY: So, looking forward to 2013, what do you think are going to be the big issues in terms of environmental and climate change questions? BOND: A lot of ground was broken in 2012 at the Rio Earth Summit-that was Rio+20-in June. And the phrases that your listeners, your audience would have heard are green economy, payment for ecosystem services, natural capital. And these were theorized, well, for many years. And the idea is that if you value the environment, you should put a price tag on it so that its destruction is not just a [free] activity-so say the proponents. But critics say this is equivalent to neoliberalizing nature or privatizing the air in the case of climate and carbon trading. And what became even trickier was in Doha the idea called loss and damage, which is another way of saying that the North owes the South a climate debt for the huge destructive force. I mean, Barack Obama just asked for some $60 billion from Congress to clean up after Sandy. And so this is the sort of huge scale of loss and damage, and even more so in the Third World, the main victims of climate change here in Africa, maybe 200 million deaths anticipated this century. And the big question we'll all be asking in the coming months: can you put a price on it? And if you do so, in order for the North to pay up, does that mean that you endorse markets for the environment? And that's a tricky situation for many environmentalists not wanting to go too far towards neoliberal nature, but on the other hand, demanding a climate and an ecological debt be paid. JAY: Well, you've got to-I guess if you need something paid, you've got to put a price on it. But that is a separate question, then, isn't it, from whether it's going to be a privatized solution or not. They're two separate issues, aren't they? BOND: That's right. And one of the finest theorists, Larry Lohmann at Corner House group, explained it to me in Rio very simply, and I think we all should learn from Larry Lohmann. He said the difference between a fine on a big corporation, for example, Texaco-Texaco, now Chevron, polluted about $8 billion worth in the Ecuadoran Amazon, and a court found them guilty. Of course, they're refusing to pay. They're a big U.S. corporation. And the idea is they should be fined and then banned from doing that again. And that is an acceptable strategy for progressive environmentalists. The problem is if you allow that activity to be mandated through a fee, a fee for an ecosystem service. And it's in that very nuanced distinction between putting a price on something because you value it and making someone who destroys it pay for the damage on the one hand, which I think is reasonable-on the other hand, the danger would be if you try to create markets. And this is what's really running rampant. Here in southern Africa, natural capital will soon be actually calculated as a way to correct gross domestic product, something that's way overdue, because GDP, what economists like to do to measure growth, ignores environmental destruction, not to mention women's unpaid labor or community activism or crime or family breakdown. All of these important things are not measured. And the attempt to correct it, natural capital, if it's used properly, would give us a whole new dimension on whether we should be extracting at the rate, for example, here in our platinum mines we do which led to the Marikana Massacre in August. And that's the sort of question that I think environmentalists and community activists and labor movements, women's groups, will be asking more and more. Is it really worth it? And should we not be calculating into a cost-benefit analysis the destructive capacity of capital when it meets nature, and then trying to prevent that process from becoming something like a carbon market or offsets for biodiversity? And a green economy strategy of the World Bank of many big agencies leans towards markets. And this is going to be the struggle of 2013, I predict. JAY: Well, the argument I guess you would hear from Wall Street or others that
[Biofuel] Transocean settles for $1.4 billion in criminal and civil charges
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/08/tran-j08.html Transocean settles for $1.4 billion in criminal and civil charges By Bryan Dyne 8 January 2013 Transocean Deepwater Inc. has settled for only $1.4 billion towards all criminal and civil claims relating to the company's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010, which leaked 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and killed eleven workers. The settlement was announced by the Department of Justice on Thursday. The settlement, which must still be approved by US District Judge Carl Barbier, precludes other criminal fines that would have arisen if Transocean went to trial in New Orleans over the spill, which was set to begin February 25. Furthermore, the settlement will not require Transocean to plead guilty to any crime relating to the deaths of the eleven workers killed on the oil rig, in contrast to BP, which pleaded guilty to eleven counts of manslaughter. The deal consists of criminal penalties and fines of $400 million. $150 million of the criminal settlement goes towards restoring the habitats in the Gulf of Mexico that were affected by the spill and a further $150 million will go towards oil spill prevention and response research in the Gulf. The criminal penalties are from a charge of negligence against Transocean by the Justice Department. The more serious charge of gross negligence, defined as wanton and reckless conduct, was not levied. The civil settlement is $1 billion in civil penalties for violations of the Clean Water Act. $800 million of that will be directed by the RESTORE Act of 2012 and will be used to fund environmental and economic projects for Gulf states. The civil resolution also reserves the claims for natural resource damages and clean-up costs. Much has been said about the record amount of civil penalties that Transocean is required to pay, more than BP settled for last November. Attorney General Eric Holder called the settlement significant and claimed that it is justice for the human, environmental, and economic devastation wrought by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. However, as with the $4.5 billion BP settlement, Transocean is being required to pay a paltry amount, over the course of five years, for its part in the 2010 explosion. It compares to the estimated worth of the Gulf region of more than $1 trillion, ignoring long-term environmental and economic effects. Transocean's fund for claims from individuals and business for damages relating to the spill is only $2 billion. The justice that is being meted out is merely a further signal by the Obama administration to oil drilling companies that the fines imposed for an oil spill, no matter how damaging, are not punitive but merely the cost of doing business. The response of the market to Transocean's settlement was favorable. The shares of Transocean Ltd. rose 6.4 percent Thursday and rose again Friday, by 5.3 percent, closing at $51.82. The current settlement by Transocean does not include charges against any Transocean officials. In fact, the settlement places the blame on the crew of the Deepwater Horizon. The settlement states that Transocean's crew were negligent in failing fully to investigate clear indications that the Macondo well was not secure and that oil and gas were flowing into the well. This statement is designed to shield and absolve Transocean and BP of any responsibility for the explosion. It ignores the mass of reports that surfaced in the weeks and months after the explosion that the actions of Transocean and BP were directed towards making up cost overruns caused by delays in drilling, which drove the companies to ignore safety concerns around the backlog of necessary maintenance for the oil rig and to attempt to cap the Macondo well with substandard materials. There were also reports that revealed that BP had advance warning of the explosion, but chose to continue operations to avoid another $500,000 per day rental fee on the rig. Another report indicated that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling for oil at 25,000 feet below the seabed, 5,000 feet deeper than allowed by its permit. Placing the responsibility for the explosion on the Transocean crew also allows the US government, particularly the Minerals Management Service (since renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy), to avoid any responsibility. From January 2005 to April 2010, there were sixteen fewer inspections of the Deepwater Horizon than there should have been. Inspections from 2010 had data whited out without explanation. Such actions coincide with the policy of the Bush and Obama administrations, which have both done their utmost to protect the oil industry from civil and criminal suits. BP's fund for compensation for the entire Gulf coast was only $20 billion. BP has been doing its best to avoid paying even that amount. In addition, the Obama administration has allowed oil drilling to
[Biofuel] Old and New Wars: Dehumanizing War. Armies facing Armies no longer happens?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/old-and-new-wars-dehumanizing-war-killing-at-a-distance/5318115 Old and New Wars: Dehumanizing War. Armies facing Armies no longer happens? By Lesley Docksey Global Research, January 08, 2013 Do we want a generation of veterans who return without guilt? Prof. Jonathon Moreno Last November global governance expert Professor Mary Kaldor gave a lecture at the Imperial War Museum*, London. Her theme was Old and New Wars - how the nature of warfare and the organisation of its participants have changed. Old wars, she said, were essentially a battle of wills between two states or leaders. A war of two sides, two armies, can be vicious as it progresses but sooner or later one side wins, one loses, and some kind of treaty is negotiated. In a literal sense the war ends but, as any good historian knows, each war has carried and planted the seeds of the following war. However, armies facing armies no longer happens. There is a halfway stage between old and new wars - such as happened in Vietnam and now in Iraq and Afghanistan - where an invading army finds itself at a loss as to how to fight what is essentially a guerrilla war fought by people trying to rid their country of a force that has come in from outside and is trying to impose its own solution on their state's difficulties. But when, politicians having realised they are never going to 'win' this war, the invading troops are pulled out, the fighting goes on. It morphs into a 'new' war. Afghanistan does not have a good outlook, and Iraq is still at war with itself, where no such divisions existed before the invasion. Nor does the imported heavy battlefield equipment do that well against insurgents with roadside bombs or hand-held rocket launchers - which must be a sore disappointment to those who love big machines. There is no clear way to end new wars, something which we should take account of. They are far more complicated in the make-up of combatants, but all are seeking some form of power. And money (or more accurately, profit) plays a large part. Nor is it easy to tell who is raising money to fund the war, or who is fighting the war to raise money to further their aims. There are too many actors - soldiers in uniform, freedom fighters, religious fighters, Mujahideen, war lords, mercenaries and. of course, men who simply love killing and migrate from country to country, conflict to conflict. They went to Iraq and now they are part of the Syrian Free Army. Foreign passports proliferate in modern conflicts. So - too many competing interests, with scant attention paid to those who are truly 'on the ground', the little people living in little villages, growing little amounts of food for their little families and sadly fertilising their fields with their blood. How many of these combatants have a natural right to be there, in that country or that province? How many are interfering in someone else's conflict? How many are making the situation worse while justifying their actions by claiming they are there to sort things out? How many are fighting for power and control over their countrymen? How many are fighting because they have a particular vision of their country and are trying to force that vision on others? For each and every one of these fighters one has to ask: what is that one trying to gain? It is a far cry from the old wars with kings or politicians deciding to go to war to protect their 'interests' and sending off hapless soldiers to do the killing and dying. Or is it? Is the difference between the old wars and the new simply that the old wars were mostly fought by national armies, not coalitions of convenience like ISAF and not splinter groups representing different interests? The desire for power, control and profit never alters. All soldiers, across all time, can and often do act in an inhumane way, committing appalling acts of cruelty. One only has to read some of the evidence given at the Baha Mousa Inquiry to understand that war insists that other people are 'the enemy' and that soldiers feel, as they did in Iraq, that they have the right to torture and beat those whose only crime is to live in the invaded country. But now soldiers are taking that one step further, too far, treading beyond the line. The tools and training of modern warfare are dehumanising them. Take drones. It is hard to believe that the first armed drones were used in Afghanistan in 2001. In less than ten years they have become an essential part of fighting war. They are controlled from half a world away by people who have never been to the country they are targeting; who have no knowledge of the way of life, the culture of the little blobs of humanity they track in their monitors; who have no understanding of the political and corporate background to the 'war' they are fighting; and, most importantly, by people who are in no danger of
[Biofuel] Turning Realities Upside Down: The Western Media's War on Syria
Syria: Why Assad May Yet Claim Victory Perhaps it's not Bashar al-Assad who is detached from reality but Obama and Hague. Intervention looks extremely unlikely By Simon Tisdall January 07, 2012 The Guardian http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33554.htm Russian Naval Force Gathers Off Syria In Warning To West By Uzi Mahnaimi London Sunday Times January 6, 2013 http://214.14.134.30/ebird2/ebfiles/e20130106913586.html --0-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/turning-realities-upside-down-the-western-medias-war-on-syria/5318124 Turning Realities Upside Down: The Western Media's War on Syria By Stephen Lendman Global Research, January 08, 2013 On January 6, Assad called for comprehensive national dialogue in the near future. He rules out negotiating with a puppet made by the West. He advocates responsibly engaging opposition elements and other political parties. Syria wants peace and reconciliation, he stressed. (A)rmed groups must halt terrorist acts. Since early 2011, Washington waged war on Syria. Proxy deaths squads are used. They're recruited abroad. They're heavily armed, funded, trained and directed. They infiltrate across borders. Syria was invaded. Nothing civil reflects protracted conflict. Syrians depend on Assad for protection. He's vilified for doing his job. He's blamed for death squad crimes. Propaganda wars target him. Media scoundrels are merciless. They march in lockstep with imperial US policy. They turn truth on its head. Doing so violates fundamental journalistic ethics. They do it anyway. They're paid liars. They mock legitimate journalism. Their reports and commentaries don't rise to the level of bad fiction. They embarrass themselves shamelessly. More on their comments below. Assad's speech was comprehensive, thoughtful, and responsible. He addressed what needs to be said. He correctly called foreign death squads armed criminals, terrorists, enemies of God, and puppets of the West. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland lied. She turned truth on its head. She ignored Washington's responsibility for nearly two years of conflict. She accused Assad of yet another attempt by the regime to cling to power and does nothing to advance the Syrian people's goal of a political transition. His initiative is detached from reality, undermines the efforts of Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi, and would only allow the regime to further perpetuate its bloody oppression of the Syrian people. She called legitimate self-defense brutaliz(ing) his own people. He lost all legitimacy, she claimed. He must step aside to enable a political solution and a democratic transition that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people. She ignored rule of law principles. No nation may interfere in the internal affairs of others. America's Constitution prohibits it. She denied reality. Most Syrians support Assad. They condemn foreign invaders. They deplore Western meddling. They alone should decide who'll govern. The Syrian National Coalition for the Forces of the Opposition and the Revolution (SNC 2.0) said Assad's speech: confirms his incompetence as a head of state who realizes the grave responsibilities he carries during this critical time in Syria's history. Furthermore, it demonstrates that he is incapable of initiating a political solution that puts forward a resolution for the country's struggle and an exit for his regime with minimum losses because he cannot see himself and his narrow based rule except as remaining in power despite being rejected by his people and his traditional allies. Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called his speech just repetitions of what he's said all along. He no longer has the representative authority over the Syrian people. Davutoglu and likeminded Turkish officials are imperial tools. They're lead Washington attack dogs. They shamelessly betray their own people. They violate international law in the process. EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton is no better. She insists that Assad has to step aside and allow for a political transition. UK Foreign Minister William Hague called Assad's speech hypocritical. Deaths, violence and oppression engulfing Syria are his own making. Empty promises of reform fool no one. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle claimed Assad's speech contained no new insights. Robert Fisk called Assad's speech his most important one. He addressed his people, Syria's army, and fallen martyrs. He praised supportive nations. He stressed Syrian unity. I will go one day, but the country stays, he said. He wants independence from foreign control. It matters most. Conflict nonetheless continues. Syria may end up entirely ravaged when it ends. Body count totals may rise exponentially. Washington takes no prisoners. Patrick Seale told Al Jazeera http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidesyria/2013/01/20131683712186168.html: If
[Biofuel] Fukushima Decontamination Measures Are Making Things Worse
http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-decontamination-measures-are-making-things-worse/5318105 Fukushima Decontamination Measures Are Making Things Worse Corruption and Cover-Up Lead to SPREAD - Rather than Containment - of Radiation from Fukushima Disaster By Washington's Blog Global Research, January 08, 2013 We've previously noted: Japan has severely underplayed the amount of radiation from Fukushima, putting Japanese residents and U.S. navy sailors in jeopardy Experts call Japan cleanup effort meaningless an endless task that's simply spreading around radiation. Tepco has taken extraordinary steps to hide radiation by blocking radiation monitors with thick metal and other foreign objects. And see this In a series of essays called Crooked Cleanup, leading Japanese news source Asahi shows the level of corruption and incompetence. For example: Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste. *** The decontamination work witnessed by a team of Asahi Shimbun reporters shows that contractual rules with the Environment Ministry have been regularly and blatantly ignored, and in some cases, could violate environmental laws. *** In signing the contracts, the Environment Ministry established work rules requiring the companies to place all collected soil and leaves into bags to ensure the radioactive materials would not spread further. The roofs and walls of homes must be wiped by hand or brushes. The use of pressurized sprayers is limited to gutters to avoid the spread of contaminated water. The water used in such cleaning must be properly collected under the ministry's rules. *** From Dec. 11 to 18, four Asahi reporters spent 130 hours observing work at various locations in Fukushima Prefecture. At 13 locations in Naraha, Iitate and Tamura, workers were seen simply dumping collected soil and leaves as well as water used for cleaning rather than securing them for proper disposal. Photographs were taken at 11 of those locations. The reporters also talked to about 20 workers who said they were following the instructions of employees of the contracted companies or their subcontractors in dumping the materials. A common response of the workers was that the decontamination work could never be completed if they adhered to the strict rules. Asahi reporters obtained a recording of a supervisor at a site in Naraha instructing a worker to dump cut grass over the side of the road. Moreover: Workers involved in cleaning up the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster expressed concerns. One even apologized for what he did. But they were on the bottom employment levels in the decontamination process, and their words apparently meant nothing to their supervisors. *** The supervisor from Dai Nippon Construction told the 30 or so workers under his watch to dump whatever would not fit into the bags or to throw materials down the slope outside of the line marked by the pink tape. Whenever the supervisor was not present, the person taking his place gave similar instructions. The man questioned if the work could actually be called decontamination. He confronted the supervisor about his instructions on Nov. 27 and recorded the conversation. The man can be heard asking, Is it all right to just dump the stuff? The supervisor replied: Yeah, yeah, it's OK. It can't be helped. *** Even though I was following an order, I am sorry for polluting the river, the man said. Indeed, clean-up measures often make the radiation ariborne making it more dangerous: The airborne radiation level near the gutter before the cleaning water flowed in was 0.8 microsievert per hour. The radiation level near the cleaning water hovered between 1.9 and 2.9 microsieverts. The larger figure is close to the cutoff point in determining if residents should evacuate. *** In some cases, radiation levels at homes have even increased after decontamination, leading some workers to suspect that radioactive materials were blown into the area by wind. The only actual decontamination work which was done appears to have been right around radiation monitors, to create false low readings: We were told to clean up only those areas around a measurement site. Even worse, Japan is spreading radioactivity throughout Japan - and other countries - by burning radioactive waste in incinerators not built to handle such toxic substances. One of our main themes is that trying to cover up problems only makes them worse. Japan is once again proving that this is a bad strategy ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
[Biofuel] The Only CIA Officer Scheduled to Go to Jail Over Torture Never Tortured Anybody
Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak By SCOTT SHANE Published: January 5, 2013 WASHINGTON http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/us/former-cia-officer-is-the-first-to-face-prison-for-a-classified-leak.html?hp_r=0pagewanted=all --0-- http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/06/the-only-cia-officer-scheduled-to-go-to-jail-over-torture-never-tortured-anybody/ The Only CIA Officer Scheduled to Go to Jail Over Torture Never Tortured Anybody By: Kevin Gosztola Sunday January 6, 2013 Reporter for the New York Times, Scott Shane, wrote a feature story on the case of former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who is the first from the agency to face jail time for a classified leak. He is to be sentenced to 30 months of jail on January 25. Kiriakou pled guilty to the charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) by revealing the name of an undercover officer on October 23 in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He faced the potential of going to jail for more than a decade and did not want to be separated from his wife and five children for that long. The chain of events that led to Kiriakou becoming a target of prosecution is outlined in Shane's story. In 2009, officials discovered defense lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had obtained names and photographs of CIA interrogators and other counterterrorism officers, including some who were still under cover. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called themselves the John Adams Project and engaged in a joint effort to help defense lawyers call CIA interrogators as witnesses during military commission proceedings at Guantanamo. Photos were shown to detainees to see if they could identify their torturers and then those individuals could be called to provide testimony. The CIA and Justice Department were afraid. They opened an investigation into the photographs and found John Sifton, a human rights advocate, was helping the Project put together a dossier of photographs and names of CIA officers. Sifton was talking to a journalist over email named Matthew Cole, who was a freelancer working on a book on a CIA rendition case in Italy (that never was published). The FBI obtained search warrants and investigated Kiriakou's email account. In August 2008, Cole asked Mr. Kiriakou if he knew the name of a covert officer who had a supervisory role in the rendition program, which involved capturing terrorism suspects and delivering them to prisons in other countries. He did not know the name at first but later emailed Cole with it saying, It came to me last night, the documents show. Kiriakou did not think the agent was still undercover. He thought he had retired. According to Shane, the FBI called him to their Washington office to help with a case about a year ago. He was not told he was under investigation and they questioned him repeatedly about the name. And he realized later that he had made a mistake. He should never have talked to the FBI. The Name of the Covert Officer The name of this individual does not appear in Shane's story, but he does write, The officer's name did not become public in the four years after Mr. Kiriakou sent it to Mr. Cole. It appeared on a whistleblowing website for the first time last October; the source was not clear. In October, I reported the covert CIA officer referred to in the indictment as Official A was responsible for ensuring the execution of the worldwide Retention, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program. He had been a kidnapper. The covert officer's name appeared in a posting on Cryptocomb.org a day later: The CIA officer listed as Officer A in the John Kiriakou complaint has been revealed to be Thomas Donahue Fletcher. Born in 1953. Fletcher is currently a resident of Vienna, VA. Further - source states journalists have known identity of this person prior to August 2008, when Kiriakou allegedly confirmed the identity in an email to Matthew Cole, formerly of ABC News. . . . Thomas Donahue Fletcher was the chief of the Headquarters Based Rendition Group and was personally responsible for the rendition of Abu Zubaydah (as well as other high-value detainees) to the CIA black site in Thailand and witnessed and played a role in Zubaydah's torture When one considers the officer's background, the prosecution seems much more unprincipled. No person in government has been held accountable for being involved in rendition (or torture). Congress has been largely apathetic and disinterested in engaging in oversight by investigating officials responsible for human rights abuses. And the government has pushed the Guantanamo military commission to prevent detainees on trial from talking about their torture or abuse publicly in court without being censored to protect classified or sensitive information. Former Employees Talk to Journalists All
[Biofuel] Arab spring, act two: Are the Arab monarchies next?
http://mondediplo.com/2013/01/02arab Le Monde diplomatique Arab spring, act two Are the Arab monarchies next? As the chaotic transition towards democracy continues in North Africa and Yemen, the fighting in Syria is intensifying. And, less noticed, opposition to the Arab monarchies is growing. by Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui The Arab Spring is not an outcome, it is a process. For those countries at the forefront of regional transformation, the fundamental question is can democracy become institutionalised? Though progress has been uneven and the outcomes of many state-society struggles have yet to be resolved, the answer is a cautious yes. In at least a few countries, we are witnessing the onset of democratic institutionalisation: whether the process of reform and transformation spreads to other parts of the Middle East depends on many factors - religious tensions, political mobilisation, regime adaptations, geopolitics. Meanwhile North Africa provides the most promising preview of the future. Democratic institutionalisation means the healthy convergence of politics around three arenas of competition: elections, parliaments and constitutions. When these institutions are robust and durable, then the democratic governments they engender are relatively safe from radical groups, reactionary forces and authoritarian backsliding (due to alternation: democracies that uphold the rule of law and hold regular elections require that power alternates between competing parties). In Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, this process is unfolding, if at an unsteady pace (1). All three have had founding legislative elections that were far more competitive and pluralistic than those held in their authoritarian past. In Tunisia, the project to re-craft the national constitution nears completion by the Constituent Assembly, which itself was the product of electoral competition. The crisis there has two dimensions: the new government's passivity in response to Salafist violence (which came to an end after the attack on the US embassy in Tunis) and the delay in getting economic reform under way, especially in the poorest regions. In spite of often acute tensions and conflicts between different political interest groups, all but the tiniest minority have accepted that democracy is now the name of the game. In Libya, the post-Gaddafi political order has been rockier, with armed militias initially fighting amongst themselves (2), while in Egypt, presidential elections resulted in the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi. Once in office, Morsi asserted civilian power over the military by dismissing Field Marshall Tantawi. This was a crucial step towards redefining civilian-military relations in a historically praetorian state. In these transitional states, most political actors recognise the new reality - except of course hardliners and extremists, such as some Salafists and defenders of the autocratic past. But the new reality does not mean that these institutionalising democracies will become liberal democracies. The democrats of the Arab Spring did not embrace revolution to advance liberalism - which many in the West may see in the Arab context as advancing the cause of gender equality, unshackling censorship of pornography and other immoral materials, and otherwise widening the boundaries of expression. Liberalism is in truth a body of political thought that may give preeminence to the individual and freedom, but can only emerge from a later stage of democratic consolidation. It will not result from an early showdown between secularists and Islamists, and compromise on such values at this nascent stage is unlikely. The priority for these transitioning states is not ideational, but rather the continued struggle towards institutionalisation. Democracy does not require that every citizen and every party embrace the same ideological framework, but rather that democratic rules and procedures become the definitive rules of the game. Even the Islamists are discovering that electoral triumphs require more than slogans: like democratic governments elsewhere, they need to deliver the goods through governance and policy, not empty promises of bliss and orthodoxy. The Islamist apparition From America to Europe, policymakers and publics alike were shocked to see Islamist parties like the Nahdha movement in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt emerge as winners of revolutions they did not trigger. However, fears of Islamisation must be tempered by several realities. Western observers often forget that Islamists have no symbolic monopoly over the interpretation of Islam in the public sphere. In Egypt, classical educational institutions like Al-Azhar University and doctrinal sects like the Sufis frame faith and politics in ways distinct from Islamists. Within the broad Islamist category, the Brotherhood and more hardline Salafists clash over
Re: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution
From another old bit of parchment: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun wait... that was in the bible? i always presented it as a logical argument- had reasoning and eveything. crap... anyways, i'm not saying he's wrong, i'm saying what good ol' mark twain did so long ago history might not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. its not the constitution, per se that is causing the problems, it's the fact that we didn't go right ahead and do what was suggested those 236 years ago, and re-write it every twenty-five years. i just about guarantee my kids have little or no connection to the social/political environment of even my parents, let alone that of 1776. shit happens, rules get outmoded, people die, and so on, ad infinitum. Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 20:47:05 +0200 To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org From: ke...@journeytoforever.org Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution Hi Jason giving up on the constitution would just give the US a new constitution. tradition and respect? that's all well and good, but somebody's going to want to write it down sometime or another, and it'll be the same rusty old arguments with a different piece of parchment two hundred years from now... there's no such thing as new. Paper shredders? :-) Sorry... He does have a point though, more than one, IMHO. From another old bit of parchment: The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Would that it were still so. Until not very long ago, people were born, and not long after that they'd die, and between the two events very little changed, if anything. Now, for many or most of us, change is about the only thing you can rely on (seven billion humans ain't new?). The Bible is a wonderful book to go cherry-picking in. I suspect it's the same with the other great religions. And I think the US Constitution is often just the same - I posted a recent article explaining the crucial difference between what it actually says and what most Americans think it says about gun rights, for instance. Too often, it's just dogma. You don't need it. Other countries don't even have a constitution, like the UK, for instance. Literal, or legalistic, interpretations of the past aren't always the best guide to dealing with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's. Things do change: And a genocide, and a civil war, over slavery. The interesting thing for me is that slavery was not a problem for Jesus (I'm not sure about most other major religions but I think this is true of them also), and nowhere does He mention democracy, equal rights, or any of the current cornerstone concepts we take for granted as truth. That is a surprise to me, and I wonder why, and I wonder what deep and complex lessons that might have for us, and what it tells us about our new thinking. And if democracy was not mentioned as a system of government, then what was, and why? They had the Roman Empire on one hand and kings and priests on the other, there probably wasn't much left to discuss. But then they didn't argue about healthcare either, nor women's rights, or racism, the environment, libraries, education. We do make progress, we humans, we have a much better class of problems now. All best Keith Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 23:54:37 +0200 To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org From: ke...@journeytoforever.org Subject: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33506.htm Let's Give Up on the Constitution By LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
