Hope is not a plan

George Bush has, unsurprisingly, vetoed the current military spending bill with its withdrawal clause, despite being urged to sign the bill by an experienced military officer.

"Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible," Bush said in a televised address after the veto.

He's right. You can't just rush a failure. Something that's merely a terrible failure that's cost us thousands of lives right now could really blossom into a spectacular failure that costs us tens of thousands of lives. As long as we don't set a date, or define success, or have clear goals, there's always room for more failure.

CNN article
BBC article
al Jazeera article

This is isoprene. It's a required chemical intermediate in the biology of every plant as well as being a byproduct of petrochemical production. You almost certainly own many products derived from isoprene.

In this perspective piece in Science magazine, Manuel Lerdau reviews an important interaction between human pollutants and isoprene that is actively shifting the landscape around us.

All plants use isoprene, but as Lerdau tells us, some plants produce an excess of isoprene. They generate so much, in fact, that this volatile, organic compound actually outgasses from the plant and into the air. Once it hits the air, isoprene can do two very different things -- it either decreases ozone levels, or increases them. This is happening at ground level, where increased ozone is bad, so it's vitally important to know why isoprene does one thing or the other.

As it happens, the determining factor is us. When nitrogen oxide levels are low -- say, in clean air -- isoprene effectively "pulls" ozone out of the air. Less ground-level ozone, and we're happier all around. When nitrogen oxide levels are high -- as happens in areas with cars, or lots of fertilizer -- isoprene, nitrogen oxides, and ozone combine to generate even more ozone. Naturally, that's not good. But it's even less good than you think.

You may be wondering why plants would make excess isoprene. What do they get out of it? Evolution isn't perfect, but it is pretty stingy, and all that isoprene costs the plants energy. There is a point, though -- the isoprene protects those plants that generate it from oxidative damage. Like the kind of damage caused by ozone.

Perhaps you've just seen the nasty feedback loop here. We put ozone and nitrogen oxides into the air, via cars and other pollution sources. Those already cause oxidative damage, so plants with more isoprene survive, replacing non-isoprene producers. These plants put out more isoprene. The isoprene interacts with our nitrogen oxides and ozone to make even more ozone -- more oxiders in the air. More non-isoprene plants die and are replaced by isoprene plants. There's more isoprene in the air, it helps generates more ozone...and so on.

Here, the climate change isn't one of heat, but of toxicity. By making the air harsher, we're selecting plants that, by protecting themselves, will make the air harsher still, and a system that's been in balance for a long time tilts progressively toward disaster.

The BBC's radio news roundup is reporting today that the Iranian government is considering easing off on its gas subsidies and limiting buyers to four liters of gas a day. Translating that into American, that's a gallon of gas a day. The Iranian government faces the basic problem that although Iran is awash in crude oil, it has comparatively little refining capacity. As a consequence, most of its refined gas is imported and subsidized to keep the price down -- the report cited a price of about 18 cents a liter, or 72 cents a gallon.

Actually imposing these limits, and raising gas prices, would both be spectacularly unpopular moves. So unpopular, in fact, that it's been nearly a year since anyone suggested such a move, and it still hasn't been done. There are real worries that if something isn't done, however, the damage to the Iranian economy could be profound.

(...and, in a quirky twist on the 1970s, the BBC reporter points out that western nations could actually put in place a gasoline embargo against Iran, perhaps as a means of punishing them for continuing their nuclear program.)

In a wholly different category of mismatch, the UAE has seized twelve Iranian divers, accusing them of violating UAE territorial waters. This is just another episode in a long-running dispute between the two countries over owneship of several islands in the gulf. These islands, comprising Lesser Tunb, Greater Tunb, and Abu Musa, were abandoned by Britain in 1971, seized by Iran, and claimed by the UAE.

All of this comes just ahead of Iranian president Ahmadinejad's visit to the UAE.

Finally, the Iranian parliament has banned al Jazeera from entering, pending a formal apology to Iraqi Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. al Jazeera's crime occurred when one of its show hosts questioned the legitimacy of al-Sistani's rule, which apparently was "...a plot of the enemies of Islam and Iraq and news networks like Al Jazeera committed this insult because of their influential role."

So even al Jazeera can't catch a break. Darned liberal media.

This year's first issue of the McKinsey Quarterly has several research summaries devoted to environmental concerns. As is the McKinsey way, these are heavily devoted to the economics of these situations, rather than the environmental or moral factors. Thus, instead of asserting whether one should or should not attempt to curtail global warming, they address the costs of various components of that effort.

In other words, if I decide to improve my energy productivity and decrease greenhouse gas output, what's the most cost-effective way to do each?

Diana Farrell, Scott Nyquist, and Matthew Rogers address the first concern. "Energy productivity" is "the ratio of value added to energy inputs." More plainly, how much money do you make per unit of energy consumed? This has an obvious link to environmental concerns, inasmuch as low energy productivity means that you're burning a lot more energy to get the same economic output. You can, then, increase overall economic output either by dumping more energy into the system (costly, environmentally untenable) or increasing your energy productivity (a net gain for you and the world). McKinsey sees extant opportunities to increase productivity and thus reduce growth in global energy demand from a projected 2.2% per year to less than 1% per year. And, as they point out, increases in energy productivity are net moneymakers, so you don't even need to subsidize them -- in theory.

So where are the opportunities?

The report identifies substantial room for improvement in residential heating and lighting (a whopping 25% of global energy demand), in electricity generation and distribution, and in various refinery processes.

So what stands in the way of increasing energy productivity?

There are a couple big roadblocks to tapping into the potential of increased productivity. First off is the "if I ruled the world" problem, which crops up again when discussing greenhouse gas reduction. Sure, 25% of global energy demand is in residential heating and lighting, and sure, an average family might get a net savings in energy expenses after a couple years if they just reinsulated their place, but it's awfully hard to inform consumers about this, and convince them to spend money on new double-paned windows instead of something that rewards them right now. When you can't even convince people to stick money in the bank and let it earn interest, it's awfully hard to get them to spend money because it'll save them money three years from now. So, even though it would be great if all the individuals of the world made their homes more efficient, you just can't magically mobilize them all. Second is the problem that energy is not a major expense for business. As curious as that may sound, the average business may well see many other places where it can earn a better productivity increase than by upping energy productivity. Finally, a lot of government policies distort people's economic relationship with energy. The article cites fuel subsidies in the Middle East as well as the fact that residential gas is effectively free in Russia as two major examples of policies that motivate people away from increasing their energy productivity. Of course, as they know in Tehran, it's politically tricky to try and revoke this kind of subsidy.

In a second article, Per-Anders Enkvist, Tomas Naucler, and Jerker Rosander take a look at the costs of greenhouse gas reduction. Once again, the question is not "Should you do this?" but rather "If you decide to do this, how much do various measures cost?" They set as their upper bound a cost of 40 Euros per ton (of carbon dioxide not emitted) in 2020, and then look at the various measures that make it under that line, from cheapest to most expensive.

The first, and most important, realization here is that there's a whole chunk of this cost curve that's negative. In other words, many carbon-reduction measures make you money. Most of these money-making measures are, unsurprisingly, efficiency related. The top winner is building insulation, followed by a host of efficiency increases in subsystems, efficiency increases in vehicles, and so on, with sugarcane biofuel as the only big contender that isn't based on increases in efficiency.

The second major realization, and one that ties into the energy productivity issue as well, is that a lot of the cheapest emission-reduction measures lean on developing nations. There's much more opportunity for gains from energy efficiency there, precisely because many of the infrastructure components are being built right now. Making the coal industry in the United States more efficient involves rebuilding plants; making the coal industry in a developing nation more efficient involves building them efficiently the first time.

Here, again, we hit the "if I ruled the world" problem. Looking at the situation globally, it's obvious that you want to make all the gains you can in the areas where they're most affordable. However, if you're a local administrator somewhere in a developing nation and you need to power a growing city, you can't justify throwing extra money into a more efficient power plant just because it makes economic sense on a global scale. And until we can arrange things such that that does make sense, a big chunk of the most effective climate-saving measures just won't happen.

In an ideal world, an effective carbon cap-and-trade system would motivate players in industrialized nations to push money into increased efficiency in developing nations, making it a win-win all the way around. In the meantime, fragmentation and local politics will block many of the best opportunities to prevent climate damage.

As discussed before here and here, GAO thinks that the DOD's procurement methods are broken. Unsurprisingly, this problem is not limited to the purchase of physical items. In a report titled Defense Acquisitions: Improved Management and Oversight Needed to Better Control DOD's Acquisition of Services, GAO points to poor business practices and disorganization in DOD procurement of services -- and how this presents risks to the military.

In the last decade, DOD has shifted a lot of labor over to contractors. As a consequence, those outside contractors are pulling down a lot more money (over $151 billion in 2006, up from $85.1 billion in 1996) and DOD has less control over outcomes:

Within this environment, our work, as well as that of some agency Inspectors General, have identified numerous instances of weak business practices—poorly defined requirements, inadequate competition, insufficient guidance and leadership, inadequate monitoring of contractor performance, and inappropriate uses of other agencies’ contracts and contracting services. Collectively, these problems expose DOD to unnecessary risk, complicate efforts to hold DOD and contractors accountable for poor acquisition outcomes, and increase the potential for fraud, waste, or abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Perhaps the central problem with this shift over to contractors for services, as identified by GAO, is the lack of a systematic or managed approach to this problem. Rather than a conscious, unified decision to lean more heavily on contractors -- and thus, a developed scheme for doing so -- DOD has "migrated" that way in aggregate. Without a sound policy, and under time pressures, especially in wartime, contracts are often awarded for undefined tasks:

We noted, for example, the statement of work required the contractor to provide water for units within 100 kilometers of designated points but did not indicate how much water needed to be delivered to each unit or how many units needed water

Note that in cases like this, it's not just a cost and waste issue -- it's also a matter of not supplying military forces with needed supplies or services. Nor is this necessarily a matter of contractors trying to take advantage of the situation. Given the job of "supplying water in this area", even the most well-meaning, honest of contractors can't do much without DOD telling them who they're supplying.

What GAO is pointing to here is a culture of haphazard, poor planning that seems far more prevalent these days than it used to be. The unfortunate fact is that is does not require that a lot of people in the armed forces and the rest of DOD to be like this to have this kind of sloppiness ripple down through the organizational structure. Having a Wolfowitz-style declaration that 'privatization will solve all problems' made at the top leaves everyone else in these organizations to do their best to implement that declaration, all in the absence of an actual policy about how to do so.

Right now, the executive culture that accepts a half-assed PowerPoint presentation as if it were a plan is still damaging DOD by throwing down directives without a plan.

In a report titled Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq: Coalition Support and International Donor Commitments, GAO checks in with our "coalition of the willing" and with the pool of international donors providing grants and loans to Iraq.

GAO includes this chart by way of showing how non-US coalition participants have dropped off the scene in the last year or so. Currently, American forces are 92% of what's on the ground in Iraq, and 2006 was the first year we lost coalition partners with no new ones to replace them.

This chart is perhaps even more notable for how directly it illlustrates the lie of the surge. In December of 2005, coalition forces numbered 178,100. We recently "surged" up to a whopping 157,600. In other words, the "surge" took us to just 88% of a historical troop level that didn't stop the violence back in late 2005. Do you really feel the need to "give the plan a chance" at this point?

The report also includes a view of our current force structure in Iraq, which I've included in the extended. Our major partners in Iraq at this point -- that is, those nations actually in charge of a region of the country -- are the United Kingdom, Poland, and South Korea. Although the Korean role in Iraq is rarely reported on in the US, the Korean force is in charge of operations in the northeast of Iraq, from Irbil to Kirkuk. They're also planning on leaving the country in 2007.

In addition to the force structure chart, I've also included GAO's coalition participation chart in the extended. As mentioned above, 2006 was the first year that saw only dropouts from the coalition, with no replacements:

• 2004: Japan and Singapore join, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Hungary, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philippines, Spain, and Tonga drop
• 2005: Armenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina join, Singapore drops
• 2006: Estonia, Macedonia, Mongolia, and Netherlands drop

The remaining coalition is mostly a "who's who" of former Eastern bloc nations.

The US has spent about $1.5 billion in support of coalition partners since the start of the war, with nearly $1 billion of that going to Poland (as befits their relatively large contribution of troops and concomitant inability to transport or house them). The second-place recipient here is actually Jordan, to whom we've paid about $300 million to help them secure their border.

The report also takes a look at international (non-US) aid offered to Iraq. About $15.6 billion in aid has been offered to Iraq, with the substantial caveat that 70% of this is as loans, rather than as outright payment. The biggest "givers" overall are the European Commission ($921 million), Iran ($1 billion), Japan ($4.9 billion), and the IMF and World Bank (which together amount to at least $5.5 billion in proposed loans).

But that's loans. Who's giving the most money outright? It turns out that the big gift-giving nations (again, non-US) are Japan ($1 billion), the United Kingdom ($775 million), Korea ($153 million), Canada ($110 million), and Spain ($100 million).

The GAO gave no specific recommendations in this informational report. I do think the total troop levels over time shown in the very first chart provide mute witness to George Bush's lies about Iraq.

Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development. This position rotates between world regions on an annual basis, and this time around it was Africa's turn to vote. In a secret ballot, Zimbabwe won 26-21.

So, to clarify, Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe gave land to people who didn't know how to farm, where a country that used to export food now can't feed its people, and where inflation is a cool 1,700 %, is in charge of sustainable development.

Right.

Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the UN, Boniface Chidyausiku, said before the vote that his country was entitled to hold the chairmanship.

He said the real objection came down to Britain's criticism of Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme.

If you say so, Mr. Chidyausiku.

US and Iraqi forces are conducting a massive search for three soldiers missing since their patrol was attacked south of Baghdad on Saturday.

Five soldiers were killed in the insurgent attack on the patrol of seven Americans and their Iraqi interpreter near the town of Mahmudiya.

...

In the past year, six US soldiers have been abducted and killed by insurgents in two similar incidents.

The bodies of two soldiers were found days after they went missing in the same area last June, while four soldiers were abducted and killed by insurgents in Karbala in January this year.

...

US commanders say the "surge" in troops has reduced the number of sectarian murders in the capital but the number of car bombings remains undiminished at more than 100 a month, says the BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad.

BBC article

Time online has an article about oft-reclassified "terror" suspect Jose Padilla, whose case is now going to trial.

Padilla has been shuffled around quite a bit, and was used as a scary emblem of the "terrorist threat" as long as George Bush could get away with it. Faced with the problem of actually making a case against Padilla, the administration suddenly reclassified him as an "enemy combatant," despite his being an American citizen, picked up on American soil. That was very late in 2001. Ahead of Supreme Court review of his illegal detention, the administration shifted Padilla over to civil custody and charged him the normal way, in Federal court.

But in pre-trial motions, Padilla's attorneys have consistently tried to steer attention to what happened to Padilla during his three years and eight months in military detention — and to some degree Cooke has allowed them to do that. They contend that Padilla was tortured: fed LSD and other drugs, exposed to extreme temperatures, shackled in "stress positions" and deprived of sleep. The torture, they argue, made Padilla mentally unfit to stand trial and so undermined his constitutional right to a fair process that the whole case should be thrown out.

What prosecutors are left with, then, is an underwhelming case involving cryptic evidence of a murder and terrorist conspiracy that lacks names, places or pretty much any other specifics. Even if they manage to pull off a conviction, we still won't know whether Padilla really was the Dirty Bomber. And if they don't? The government has the option of reclassifying him as an enemy combatant, which, believe it or not, could start the process all over again.

Jose Padilla's case is representative of all that is most grotesque about George Bush and his facilitators. He is not John walker Lindh, picked up in the middle of open warfare in Afghanistan. He is an American citizen, taken into custody at an American airport, then denied the basic Constitutional protections that were put in place at the founding of our nation to prevent exactly this kind of abuse.

Some pertinent quotes. Bonus points if you know where they come from off the top of your head:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Last week I was a little incredulous about the election of Zimbabwe to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Economic Development.

They're not really proving the naysayers wrong.

With two weeks to go in the planting season, only 10% of the country's wheat crop has been planted. Zimbabwe is similarly facing a big corn deficit this year, and is also coming up short on sugar. Households are being limited to four hours of power per day, so that capacity can be dedicated to irrigating the barely planted wheat fields.

March set a new high-water mark for inflation as it hit a monthly rate of 2,200% -- the highest in the world.

BBC article

The BBC reports that traffic police in Calcutta are going to be given supplementary oxygen to help them keep going in the heavily polluted air of the city. The pollution is tremendous -- the pictures in the article are quite telling -- and leads to Calcutta having the highest lung cancer rate in India, in addition to a host of other medical problems among its residents.

The oxygen, while thoughtful, is unlikely to do much to ameliorate the effects of a whole day spent in the heart of traffic.

The government attempted sweeping pollution reforms, but they didn't last:

In May 2005, the government set a deadline which ordered all vehicles in Calcutta manufactured before 1990 either to be off the roads or convert to greener fuel like LPG.

Only 10% of Calcutta's vehicles have converted to greener fuels like LPG.

Did you catch that last line? "Only 10%" have converted to green fuels. Although presented as a disappointing low performer here, Calcutta with its 10% gives America's record a huge stomping. Consider the 1.5 million E85 flex-fuel vehicles on the road in America, many of which aren't actually running on E85. With 243 million vehicles on our roads, that's a paltry 0.6%.

There's room to improve everywhere.

In its report Climate Change: Financial Risks to Federal and Private Insurers in Coming Decades are Potentially Significant, GAO evaluates a frequently overlooked area of high impact for global warming -- insurance.

The report opens by reviewing the likely outcomes of continued global warming. As ever, the GAO's eye is focused on financial impacts, in this case specifically focusing on financial impacts on property insurers:

This table, although instructive, is a little bit dry and hard to draw financial conclusions from. Fortunately, the GAO has some real numbers to work with:

You can easily pick out two disasters by eye -- the WTC in 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Absent those extraordinary cases, the trend is still obviously toward greater property damage over time. Two additional tables in the report clearly show that both flood and crop damage claims are trending upwards over time. Although flood damage increases (again, not counting Katrina) can be at least partially attributed toward cyclical upswings in hurricane activity and unwise coastal building, crop damage has nothing to do with choosing to live anywhere new or foolish.

As it happens, many private insurers are taking measures to try and account for this apparent increase in risk. After all, it affects their bottom line.

In addition to managing their aggregate exposure on a near-term basis, some of the world’s largest insurers have also taken a longer-term strategic approach to changes in catastrophic risk. Six of the eleven private insurers we interviewed reported taking one or more additional actions when asked if their company addresses climatic change in their weather-related risk management processes. These activities include monitoring scientific research (4 insurers), simulating the impact of a large loss event on their portfolios (3 insurers), and educating others in the industry about the risks of climatic change (3 insurers), among others. Moreover, major insurance and reinsurance companies, such as Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re, and Lloyds of London, have published reports that advocate increased industry awareness of the potential risks of climate change, and outline strategies to address the issue proactively.

The nonprofit Federal insurance programs, however, have not taken steps to try and model increasing risk ahead of time, preferring to operate reactively:

Neither program has assessed the implications of a potential increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related events on program operations, although both programs have occasionally attempted to estimate their aggregate losses from potential catastrophic events. For example, FCIC officials stated that they had modeled past events, such as the 1993 Midwest Floods, using current participation levels to inform negotiations with private crop insurers over reinsurance terms. However, NFIP and FCIC officials explained that these efforts were informal exercises, and were not performed on a regular basis. Furthermore, according to NFIP and FCIC officials, both programs’ estimates of weather-related risk rely heavily on historical weather patterns. As one NFIP official explained, the flood insurance program is designed to assess and insure against current—not future—risks. Over time, agency officials stated, this process has allowed their programs to operate as intended. However, unlike private sector insurers, neither program has conducted an analysis of the potential impacts of an increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related events on continued program operations in the long-term.

NFIP is Fema's National Flood Insurance Program. FCIC is the FDA's Federal Crop Insurance Program.

Reactive measures are a bit of a worry, because the rate of increase in risk appears to be outpacing the historical trend:

AIR Worldwide, a leading catastrophe modeling firm, recently reported that insured losses should be expected to double roughly every 10 years because of increases in construction costs, increases in the number of structures, and changes in their characteristics. AIR’s research estimates that, because of exposure growth, probable maximum catastrophe loss—an estimate of the largest possible loss that may occur, given the worst combination of circumstances—grew in constant 2005 dollars from $60 billion in 1995 to $110 billion in 2005, and it will likely grow to over $200 billion during the next 10 years.

As a cap to this discussion, consider the fact that insured losses account for only 40% of total losses from any typical natural disaster. Obviously, it's in everyone's best interest to consider the financial impact of changing weather.

At the most recent Republican debate, candidate Ron Paul was attacked by Guiliani and others after suggesting that the terrorist attacks of 2001 were spurred by prior American actions.

In this editorial, CNN commentator Roland Martin takes Guiliani and the others to task for their willful ignorance in pretending our actions don't have consequences, as well as the fallacious idea that by saying "Here's why they killed people" Ron Paul or anyone else is saying that it's okay that terrorists killed people.

Here's the punchline from Martin's very cogent essay:

As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today. We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day.

Even the Bible says that the children will pay for the sins of their fathers.

Also, as Ron Paul's site points out, the idea that the terrorists who hit us in 2001 were motivated by previous American acts comes directly from the 9-11 Commission Report, so it's more than a little unsettling to hear Guiliani say he's "never heard anything so absurd."

Heck, that's unsettling even without the link to the report. What's at all absurd about the idea that our national policies may have angered people in the past? American foreign policy has angered other Americans. Surely the rest of the world might respond similarly?

Incidentally, of the Republican candidates, Ron Paul actually looks decent. I'll take an honest libertarian over a spend-crazy authoritarian pretending to be a libertarian any day.

The city of Samarra, in central Iraq, has been under curfew for just shy of two weeks in the wake of insurgent attacks. Combined with damage to the city's power and water supplies during those same attacks, the curfew is slowly killing the city off. Strict transit controls mean that the 300,000 people in Samarra are running out of fuel, fresh water, and food. Doctors for Iraq, an Iraqi-initiated NGO, is calling this "collective punishment," and it certainly seems like that's what's going on.

A spokesman for the US military in Iraq admitted the security measures had "made living very difficult", but said the local authorities had imposed them because of the risk of attacks by insurgents.

The problem is that the half-assing of security measures means that security isn't going to be achieved. Locking down a city the size of Bakersfield is conceptually fine, but you must, absolutely must, keep the people safe in all ways. If they can't move in and out, then food and water must be brought in to them. If they have no power or fuel, then power must be reestablished and fuel supplied. As it is, whatever the intent, the reality is that these people will feel like they are being punished for having been the victims of violence.

BBC article

A paramilitary commander has accused US companies which buy Colombia's bananas of financing illegal right-wing militias that have killed thousands of people in more than a decade.

In testimony to investigators, jailed commander Salvatore Mancuso named Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte as having made regular payments to the paramilitaries, according to Jesus Vargas, a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence who was present at the hearing.

The assertion is that the various companies paid "protection money" to the paramilitaries to be allowed to operate in territories those paramilitary groups controlled. Naturally, the companies involved deny this allegation.

However, lest it seem conceptually far-fetched, consider that within recent history, Chiquita Brands International admitted that it paid paramilitary groups $1.7 million over six years, and has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to the Justice Department.

Chiquita says the payments were made to protect the safety of its workers but Colombia's chief prosecutor has said companies that made such payments shared the responsibility for paramilitary murders.

Labour and human rights activists say Colombia companies and multinationals routinely paid paramilitaries to act as union busters and kill union leaders.

More motivation to buy local and seasonal foods, perhaps.

al Jazeera article

As reported by the AP, mirroring a report from Xinhua, Tibet's Communist Party secretary ranted about a perceived conspiracy between, well, everybody China's trying to suppress.

In a speech, Tibet's Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, warned that the Dalai Lama was "ganging up with Taiwan independence forces, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, democracy movements, and the Falun Gong in an attempt to establish an alliance aimed at splitting the motherland," the official Xinhua News Agency reported on it Web site.

Zhang's list includes groups Beijing has accused of threatening the communist government or Chinese sovereignty. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement has called for independence for the Muslim, Central Asian border province of Xinjiang and is alleged to have links to al-Qaida. The Falun Gong, a meditation practice, managed to draw millions of followers in the 1990s before Beijing violently suppressed the group, banning it as a cult.

The "motherland." Nice. Let's not tell him that the major dialects of Chinese are, in reality, different languages. That might harsh his Maoist mellow.

The people of Chagos were removed from their home islands in the late 60s and early 70s by the government of the UK when it leased the island of Diego Garcia to the US (we use it as a military base). Since then, the displaced Chagossians have been fighting for the right to return to the islands

They won the right of return in a court case in 2000, but following several years of inactivity, the government of the UK used royal prerogative to overturn the court decision, arguing that "it would not be right for the Chagossians to be allowed home because of security concerns." (That's an al Jazeera quote, not a quote from any British official.)

That use of royal prerogative has now been deemed unlawful.

Lord Justice Sedley, giving the lead ruling, said the government's use of the Order in Council under the Royal Prerogative - powers that allow action without reference to Parliament - was an unlawful way of preventing the islanders from returning.

"To accept the islanders' right to return but do nothing about it - as it did between 2000 and 2004 - would be meaningless and immoral."

The government has one final avenue of appeal open to it -- the House of Lords. They have a month to decide whether or not to file such an appeal.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

I'll quote the AP story:

China said Wednesday that the detention of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is an internal matter for the Southeast Asian country's government, declining to join other nations urging her release.

China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "the Aung San Suu Kyi matter is Myanmar's internal affair. The Chinese side hopes to see Myanmar maintain political stability and continue to make progress in the process of national reconciliation."

China and Russia both vetoed an American-sponsored resolution in the Security Council of the UN calling for an end to political suppression in Myanmar. Naturally, those two bastions of endemic political suppression really don't want to be setting precedents against these policies.

Notably, the other members of ASEAN include nations not traditionally thought of for their human rights records, such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Even they, however, are more concerned with Aung San Suu Kyi's situation than with reinforcing a precedent of allowing suppression. I'll take that as a good sign.

AP story
al Jazeera article

Here's a particularly important procurement issue -- is Pinnacle's body armor better than the current Second Chance Interceptor vests that are issued to our troops?

As I discussed over a year ago, Second Chance has an unenviable record of selling body armor that rots under that rare battlefield condition -- contact with sweat. This only came to light after a round went right through the vest of a California police officer, but Second Chance subsequently received a second chance, and swears it isn't knowingly selling defective product. Back in late 2005, many people were lobbying for the adoption of Pinnacle's Dragon Skin body armor system. The chief selling points of Dragon Skin at the time were its flexible rather than rigid structure, and its ostensibly greater protective capabilities.

Now, prompted by repeated calls for better armor and an NBC story suggesting that Dragon Skin really is better than Interceptor, the Army's armor testing program has gone on the record saying that Dragon Skin didn't work in testing last year. Pinnacle has responded, claiming that testing was both incomplete and rigged for failure, driven by the testers' discomfort with the concept of flexible armor. As they note here, the Dragon Skin level III vests passed ballistic tests at Aberdeen Test Center last year.

Soldiers for the Truth, who originally made noise about the failure of Interceptor vests, has this to say on the topic:

Well, folks, sometimes things move much faster in Washington than experience would lead one to expect. This happened Monday and yesterday (May 21 and 22) when Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. John McCain, Chairman and Ranking Minority Member respectively, of the Senate Armed Services Committee short-circuited the public dispute between the Army acquisition mafia and NBC News about recent NBC reporting (assisted by SFTT and DefenseWatch) that showed Pinnacle Armor's Dragon Skin performed "significantly better" (the words of retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing) than the DOD issued Interceptor Body Armor system in the first-ever comparative "shoot-off."

They also have a White Paper on the topic of equipping our troops with the best possible body armor. A key figure I hadn't seen before is the Armed Forces Medical Examiner analysis of torso wounds. It concludes that 80% of Marines killed by shots to the torso would have been saved by armor with more comprehensive coverage (as is provided by Dragon Skin).

It's not yet known whether Dragon Skin really is as effective as many people believe it to be. It's certain, however, that a procurement system that continues to buy body armor from a company that fraudulently sold lethally defective merchandise to soldiers and peace officers is deeply suspect when it claims to be making the "best" decision on how to protect our troops.

You may have missed this, but the Washington Post has recently covered the fact that our tax-dollar funded, theoretically American-propaganda-oriented Arabic-language news station, Al Hurra, has been broadcasting all sorts of fundamentalist rantings and ravings.

From Joel Mowbray's opinion piece in the Post:

Al-Hurra was intended to cut through the anti-West and anti-U.S. propaganda that permeates even mainstream Arab media. Stories in that vein no longer see significant airtime, and nowhere is this more apparent than Al-Hurra's new approach to the Holocaust--the treatment of which in Arab society embodies so much that is wrong in that critical region of the Muslim world.

Also broadcast unchallenged were the remarks of the infamous French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who informed Arab viewers: "Gas chambers and mass killings of the Jews, in the way that it is pretended (by the Jews), is completely untrue, and an historical lie."

Al Hurra also broadcast all of an hour-long speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Yes, that's the Hezbollah that we've classed as a terrorist group.

Should it seem peculiar that new Al Hurra programming director Larry Register would do such a thing, consider the fact that he speaks no Arabic. In fact, most of the upper echelon folks currently overseeing the channel speak no Arabic. This may be quirky of me, but I think if I were in any way responsible for a broadcast station meant to foster good public relations with a hugely critical part of the world, I'd bust my ass trying to learn the language.

Mowbray closes his editorial with this message:

But that's not enough. The people who already monitor the network--its employees--need to be empowered to report dubious decisions without fear of reprisal. Transparency will allow concerns to be investigated swiftly. Employees simply won't come forward, though, if they believe no one in power cares. For that reason, a clear signal must be sent by firing Mr. Register.

After all, if you can't get fired for using U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide a platform for Islamic terrorists and help further Holocaust denial, then wouldn't Congress and the Bush administration be communicating that pretty much anything goes?

I agree. Write a letter to the fool we have in the executive now, as well as your Senators and Representative. The trickle-down pattern of rank incompetence costs us money and lives, and now it's promoting radical terrorism on our dime.

The full opinion piece
Another opinion piece, reprinted on Representative Steve Rothman's site

Here's a template, if you'd like to write to the President and your Senators and Rep about the travesty of Al Hurra promoting terrorist messages using your money.

[Politician's name] -

I am writing to express my deep dismay at the fact that Alhurra, a news station funded by American taxpayers, has been broadcasting extremist messages by known terrorist leaders. This negligence and disregard for the safety of the many American soldiers and civilians working in the Middle East is intolerable, and must be stopped immediately. Programming director Larry Register must be fired, to be replaced by someone who understands the driving purpose of Alhurra, and who also has the basic competence to speak the language the station broadcasts in. Alhurra itself must also be completely reviewed, especially the levels of upper management. This includes the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who have been derelict in their duty as the true directors of Alhurra.

We need quick, decisive action on this topic before any American lives are lost as a result of continued incompetence.

[My name]

As I've discussed recently, American politicians have a pathological fear of admitting that actions have consequences. Indeed, we've learned that the penalty for marketing a lethal product to American soldiers is to have your contract renewed, that we broadcast propaganda for terrorists without any oversight to stop it, that there are no real checks on failed or even corrupt procurement practices, that it's okay to redefine our goals rather than admit failure, and that the penalty for real, solid failure is either a Medal of Freedom or a job heading the World Bank.

Imagine if, instead, the penalty for dereliction of duty were death?

The former head of China's Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was just sentenced to death for corruption. Zheng stands accused (and we suppose now convicted) of accepting just shy of a million dollars in bribes to allow many drugs and other products onto the market without proper oversight. This corruption may well have contributed to many deaths over the last few years.

I'm not actually advocating execution for malfeasance that leads to injury or death, but prison and admission of responsibility would be an amazing start. A standout quality of America is our relative lack of corruption. I'm dismayed, if not surprised, that a bunch of people who like to claim moral authority are the ones most prone to corruption of the rankest, most lethal sort. Do you suppose I care more about someone's adultery, or someone else's sweetheart deal that puts our soldiers in defective body armor?

Of course, those who seize the moral high ground most stridently and publically have a long and tainted pedigree.

I'd like some more responsibility, wouldn't you?

Thanks to Tim for the original link. Two weeks ago the University of Massachusetts, Amherst piled onto the honoring mediocrity bandwagon by deciding to give an honorary degree for "public service" to Iraq war co-founder Andrew Card. The actual honor grads and the audience were having none of it:

In this article, David Leonhardt mentions several ways that Lou Dobbs misrepresents things in his broadcasts. Two key examples:

• Incorrectly saying that there have been 7,000 leprosy cases in this country the last three years (and blaming that on illegal immigration) -- in fact, that's the tally for the last thirty years, and the case total for last year was less than any single year from 1975 to 1996.
• Stating that one third of Federal prison inmates are illegal aliens, when it's actually 6%, which is lower than the percent of our whole population that is here illegally (that's 7%)

Dobbs also makes alarmist, Tim McVeighish statements about an immigration bill being a first step toward a North American Union of Canada, Mexico, and the US. Watch out, Lou -- those black helicopters may be coming for you next. Better pull the bar codes off the backs of all those road signs.

CNN's hiring of tools like Lou Dobbs and courtroom gossip columnist Nancy Grace has gone a long way to kick their reputation while it was already down and bleeding.