It might be more difficult for Republicans to bash President Obama for being “timid” in his comments about the Iranian government’s violence against protesters if the U.S. media didn’t consistently censor US-Iranian history.

Take CNN’s recent Iran timeline, titled “A brief look at Iran’s history.”

According to the timeline, which begins in 1979, Iran has “been at odds with the West and some of its neighbors” since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It refers to the Shah as having been “pro-Western.” Yet in the mother of all omissions, CNN leaves out how the US government was directly involved in bringing the Shah to power in a 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Full Story »

What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18^th.

Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Full Story »

The revolution will not be brought to you in 140 characters or less from anonymous sources half-a-world away and repeated as the whole truth by talking heads with an agenda. It will not star your internet friends or make you vicariously courageous.

And what business is it of ours in any case? If you’re so excited about freedom on its bloody march, then start walking. But my best honest guess is that the majority of Americans now weighing in on a contested election in a country that a good many of them can’t find on a map don’t even understand what’s happening in Iran.

That’s the problem.

Full Story »

• Study says offsets make ACES carbon cap almost meaningless
• China rejects binding GHG cuts
• USGS study suggests peak coal may be closer than previously thought
• FutureGen coal CCS pilot project revived
• EU needs to upgrade its electricity transmission
• Deep water wind turbine undergoing testing
• More wind power means fewer hydroelectric dams?

Michael Shellenberger is one of environmentalism’s persona non grata de jour. He and Ted Nordhaus founded the Breakthrough Institute in order to push for technological solutions to environmental problems instead of policy solutions that both men have argued are doomed to failure from the word “Go.” This was not exactly a popular thing to say in the halls of Congress or around the water cooler at any number of large environmental organizations dedicated to creating policy solutions.

An analysis of the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) by Shellenberger and Jesse Jenkins, Breakthrough’s Director of Energy and Climate Policy, found that the offset provisions of the legislation are so loose that they essentially make the carbon cap portion of the ACES-defined “cap-and-trade” system almost meaningless. Full Story »

I’d like to thank President Obama for giving me a $400 payroll tax cut. I’d sure like to help out with the economic recovery.

But that tax cut, thanks to 41 consecutive days of gasoline price increases, now amounts to only $150. Figuring my local commuting habits and trips to visit family and friends, I’ll pay about $700 to fill up my little Scion for the rest of the year at the current national average of $2.62 a gallon. I’ll be spending about $250 more at this price than I would if gasoline had remained near the December average of $1.62.

If the price of gasoline rises more (wanna bet?) over summer, I’ll be handing even more of my payroll tax cut to Big Oil.

So why the sharp, 62 percent increase? Why did the “experts” who are supposed to understand gasoline and oil markets get it wrong? Journalists have indeed been telling us the “experts” were wrong and what factors have been driving gasoline prices higher — but not why the “experts” erred in missing those factors.
Full Story »

The Deproliferator

The 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons review conference is just around the corner. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty awaits ratification by the U.S. Senate. The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is being negotiated by the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. What do they have in common?

I mean besides the new age that would be ushered in if all three were implemented. The correct answer is that should that come to pass, it would be the result of men and women from different nations working together and perhaps even bonding over a common cause. Full Story »

Part nine in a series

Nothing says “China” quite like a panda.

It’s no wonder, then, that the Chinese have used these famous black-and-white faces as emissaries around the world. There’s even a term for it: “panda diplomacy.”

Over the years, some 100 pandas have been sent to foreign countries as ambassadors of good will. Currently, around twenty-five countries host pandas, including four zoos in the United States.

I get to see them up close and personal, on their home turf. Full Story »

It is a dark time for the rebellion.  Although the Bush administration has been defeated, imperial troops have co-opted groups like MoveOn and vast swaths of the Democratic Party in their continued pursuit of global dominance.

Evading the Imperial Department of State, a group of freedom fighters without a leader has withdrawn to the remote corners of the blogosphere.

The evil lord Barack Obama, obsessed with imperial glory, is dispatching thousands of new storm troopers and imperial governors into the far reaches of South Asia…

Full Story »

Thomas E. Ricks, erstwhile journalist and author of The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, has become the embodiment of the warmongery’s moral and intellectual duplicity.

Ricks’s most recent 15 minutes of fame involved an appearance at a Firedoglake book forum. In reply to a commenter who asked if “more deaths in Iraq are worth it,” Ricks said, “I think staying in Iraq is immoral. But I think that leaving Iraq is even more immoral.” In a nutshell, Ricks framed the core fallacy in the long war philosophy: that two wrongs can make a right. This theme dominates Rick’s work these days. The Gamble and the media blitz that accompanied its debut were dazzling examples of what Voltaire was talking about when he said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Full Story »

The U.S. Navy is fumbling a blue and golden opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of its maritime global reach capability (and justify its phony baloney budget) in the age of fourth generation warfare. Admiral Gary Roughead, who as Chief of Naval Operations is the service’s senior officer, says sea power is not sufficient to combat the Somali pirate threat. “Pirates don’t live at sea,” he recently told reporters at a Navy League conference. “They live ashore. They move their money ashore. You can’t have a discussion about eradicating piracy without having a discussion about the shore dimension.”

A mind that astute could only have been shaped at the United States Naval Academy. Yeah, Gary: all of Yamamoto’s people lived ashore too, but you didn’t get to bomb their homeland until you sank their fleet. Full Story »

Technically, Burma’s 2007 Saffron Revolution wasn’t saffron. The term was coined out of deference to the saffron-yellow robes that Buddhist monks in Asia usually wear. The robes of Burmese monks’ robes are, in fact, plum colored (the better to hide the blood?).

The Saffron Revolution was triggered by Burma’s military dictatorship when it took the International Money Fund and its trademark “structural adjustment program,” as well as the World Bank’s advice, a little too literally. In one bold stroke, the junta, which has been ruling Burma with the proverbial iron fist since 1962, stopped subsidizing fuel. Prices rose at least 50%.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the United States Government pulled a stunt like that? Triple the effects on a semi-impoverished state like Burma. Full Story »

If you look up the word sanction, the definition that occupies pride of place in most dictionaries is permission or approval for a specific course of action. But, one of those words that gives English a bad rap, sanction’s got two other meanings that are the exact opposite. To wit: a penalty to ensure compliance and coercion to stop a nation from violating international law.

Even then, perhaps because it’s too close to sanctuary, the worst sanctions seems to bode is a slap on the wrist. In fact, all too often, that’s its effect on its intended targets in a state’s government, while the public suffers instead. Full Story »

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

– Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

A new world order began when the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989. The next new world order began when the U.S. Army staged the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue after the fall of Baghdad in late 2003. A brave new world order, the one we’re now in the early stages of, began in late 2008 when the U.S. economy dropped down a rabbit hole that may go all the way to China. The trajectory should look familiar; it traces a path taken by hegemons throughout the ages, straight to the cliff they fell from. As with great powers before us, the military might that created our empire has become became the instrument of its downfall.

Full Story »

Thailand seeks to mediate peace talks between Burma’s ruling junta and the Karen ethnic group that it’s been trying to wipe out for 60 years. Norway, meanwhile, hopes to heal the rift between warring Karen factions.

When we think of the face of the opposition to Burma’s ruthless ruling junta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi usually comes to mind. Now in her fourteenth year of on-again, off-again house arrest, she emerged as a national leader when thousands of protesting students and monks were mowed down by the junta on August 8, 1988. The 8888 Uprising, as it came to be known, was reprised, if on a lesser scale, in 2007 when over 100 civilians and monks were killed during the “Saffron Revolution.” Full Story »

We’re a decade into the new American century, the neoconservatives are still leading the country on a march to the cliff, and most of the citizenry still hasn’t caught on to what’s happening.

I’ve been bumping into a wandering soul at various stops along the information highway of late who claims to have “lost soldiers in war.” In one discussion thread, this ostensible leader of lost soldiers insists that the surge in Iraq was successful because “we had the lowest number of casualties ever last month, which sounds like a win to me.”

I can’t tell if this person really commanded troops in war, or is a Pentagon viral propaganda operative, or if he’s just a computer generated personality disorder. I’d like to believe that someone who led troops in combat knows that casualty rates (aka body counts) are seldom if ever accurate indicators of how a war is going. The Union suffered more casualties than the Confederacy in the Civil War. The best Vietnam casualty figures we have indicate that roughly 1.1 million North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong personnel were killed in action compared to 47,378 Americans (U.S. combat and non-combat deaths combined totaled over 58,000). Full Story »

The Limitations of Humanitarian Aid

When a people are, as the U.S. Committee for Refugees describes the Karen, “one of the most ignored groups in one of the most difficult humanitarian emergencies,” humanitarian aid is obviously of the essence. We contacted Tim Heinemann, director of Worldwide Impact, a non-profit organization currently focused on supporting the oppressed people of Burma, for insights into the plight of the Karen people.

“We are rather missing the point with humanitarian intervention as the sovereign panacea for what ails Burma,” Heinemann said, perhaps reflecting his experience in the U.S. Special Forces. That’s because, “U.S. aid goes largely to NGOs working the Thai side of the border helping refugees who have [already made it] to Thailand. The refugees back in Burma running for their lives and doing all the dying [get but] a token trickle of humanitarian aid in the form of rice and medicine that is best described as pitiful.” Full Story »

Some time ago, an idea to save Afghanistan floated on a few editorial cycles.  Afghanistan grows some of the world’s best pomegranates, coincidentally the “nature’s miracle” of the moment.  If we could just get Afghans to grow pomegranates instead of poppies, they would become wealthy by exporting fruit to the “developed” world.  Peace would follow economic stability and democracy would follow peace…or something like that.  There are countless plans to “get Afghanistan right”, but they all follow the basic path of the Great Pomegranate Plan.

They all stumble into similar failings too.  It’s hard to get delicate fruit out of a country without significant transport infrastructure.  Not many health-food companies will be overly keen to set up processing facilities in the region.  The plan will only remain successful so long as the pomegranate is not usurped as the king of live forever foods and customers in the developed world can afford to splurge on wildly expensive health food.  Oh, and the fact that huge tracts of mature pomegranate orchards were cut down and replaced with poppies over the course of the good war.

We’re not getting Afghanistan right, and nothing in the latest plans suggest that we will get it right any time soon.  Are we even sure what it is we hope to accomplish or even why we’re trying to accomplish it?

Full Story »

In their New York Times piece Navy Tracking Pirates and Their U.S. Hostage, Mark Mazzetti and Mark McDonald write:

In this case, however, the crew of the Alabama managed to disable the ship at about the time the pirates came on board, according to a senior American military official. The four hijackers, apparently overrun by the ship’s crew, then loaded the captain into a lifeboat, shoved off from the Alabama and began negotiating for his release.

American officials praised the crew’s decision to disable the ship. The Alabama’s second in command, Capt. Shane Murphy, is the son of an instructor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who teaches a course on how to repel pirate attacks. Full Story »

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. — Voltaire

The propaganda war on the American public appears to have entered a new phase.

In a March 30 post at his Foreign Policy blog, Thomas E. Ricks wrote, “I thought some of the surge-era deals in Iraq would unravel but I didn’t think that would begin happening this quickly. It’s only March 2009, and already Awakening fighters are fighting U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad.” Ricks cited a number of recent confrontations between members of the Sunni Awakening movement and Nuri al Maliki’s government and got all giddy about how he “wouldn’t be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia re-emerge.”

At the end of his blog, Ricks asks “Question of the day: What should I say the next time someone tells me the surge ‘worked’?”

Ricks will almost certainly say the same thing he’s been saying to Chris Matthews and David Gregory and Washington Post readers and everyone else who’s wasted bandwidth on him since his latest book came out: “General Odierno…would like to see 35,000 American troops [in Iraq] in 2015.” That is, after all, neocon message number one these days: Status of Force agreement and campaign promises be damned; the generals say we need to stay in Iraq so that’s what we need to do. And Ricks, along with the rest of the so-called liberal media, is falling all over himself to help the neocons echo it. Full Story »

The buzzing topic of conversation throughout liberal America appears to be just how much change the new president brings to the table.  His stalwart defenders rally to his side on comment threads, regularly regurgitating the stock phrases that appear in emails from campaign headquarters, er, the White House.  One need not look very far to find a statement like, “He’s our President and we have to stand behind him.”  That type of statement is a little too close to Bushbottery for me, but i’ve come to understand that it is, in fact, nothing of the sort because Bush was evil and Obama is good.  I won’t argue the former, but it is far too early to make the call on the latter.

Full Story »