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Women More Likely To Regret Tattoos and Seek to Remove Them
According to a report in the July issue of Archives of Dermatology more women than men visit dermatology clinics for tattoo removal and maybe motivated by the social stigma associated with tattoos and negative comments by others. The main reasons listed for seeking tattoo removal included just deciding to remove it (58 percent), suffering embarrassment (57 percent), lowering of body image (38 percent), getting a new job or career (38 percent), having problems with clothes (37 percent), experiencing stigma (25 percent) or marking an occasion, such as a birthday, marriage or newly found independence (21 percent). 2006 survey also found that participants were more likely to be women (69 percent vs. 31 percent men) who were white, single, college-educated and between the ages of 24 and 39.

Tattoos Often Have Hidden Health Consequences
Everyone knows that non-sterile tattoo needles can lead to AIDS and hepatitis. However, according to research by Ronald Petruso, lecturer of chemistry at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, PA, there are other, overlooked, risks of getting a tattoo. At Northern Arizona, Ingram has found traces of lead in tattoo pigments. Meanwhile, at Delaware Valley, Petruso with the help of two students found carcinogenic substances in a common tattoo pigment.

Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Weight Gain
Want to lose weight? It might help to pour that diet soft drink down the drain. A study appearing in the February issue of Behavioral Neuroscience cites laboratory evidence that the widespread use of no-calorie sweeteners may actually make it harder for people to control their intake and body weight. Authors Susan Swithers, PhD, and Terry Davidson, PhD, theorize that by breaking the connection between a sweet sensation and high-calorie food, the use of saccharin changes the body’s ability to regulate intake. That change depends on experience. Their findings match emerging evidence that people who drink more diet drinks are at higher risk for obesity and metabolic syndrome, a collection of medical problems such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure and insulin resistance that put people at risk for heart disease and diabetes.

Generation Warfighter
When did American troops become members of "Generation Kill" instead of citizen-soldiers? And when did we become so proud of declaring our military to be "the world's best"?

Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war
BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan. > For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?

GOP cyber-security expert suggests Diebold tampered with 2002 election
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections. Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.

Al Gore inches toward Solar
This week he advocated getting to an electric power system that is "carbon free" within ten years. It comes alongside the equally telling move by oil baron T. Boone Pickens to invest $2 billion in wind power. Gore has reportedly raised some $300 million (that's not a typo) to spend on moving pubic opinion to support the transition to a totally "carbon-free" electric supply system. That idea has been around at least thirty years, and is a sub-set of the Solartopian demand that our entire energy economy become free of all fossil and nuclear fuels.

Drilling Ourselves Deep in a Hole
At one point in his masterful People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn reflects upon the unspeakable carnage wrought by the Conquistadors in South and Central America, all in the pursuit of gold, and wonders at how those obscene riches sustained imperial greatness… for barely a hundred years. All that bloodletting, enslavement, massacres — genocide in places — for a temporary wealth that quickly vanished on the stage of history. It reminds me of our current oil craze: in one century we have plundered billions of years of stored hydrocarbons, and what do we have to show for it? Fleeting prosperity — one that is hardly shared by all — a highly volatile Middle East, and awesome ecological devastation that will require centuries of recovery. And now, as the age of oil finally signals its inevitable demise, our president and his allies in Washington announce that their grand response is … to drill for more oil. In his latest book, former World Bank director Joseph Stiglitz claims that the war in Iraq will end up costing three trillion dollars. Imagine if that amount had been dedicated to researching and sustaining the transition to renewable energies. A mere trillion dollars would have gone a long way towards remodeling American suburbia for lifestyle and transportation changes. Instead, we have sacrificed unimaginable funds (from future generations, Stiglitz tells us), and tens of thousands of lives (at least) for a resource that is soon to be economically irrelevant!

Worries About War Crimes Heat up in the White House
Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints on U.S. torture policies.

Profiting from Iraq
There is a lot of money to be made in Iraq. Apparently, all it takes is the right connections to get a piece of the action. Halliburton Co. had those connections. The Houston-based oil services company that was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney set the gold standard for war profiteering. Now comes word that Dallas billionaire Ray Hunt, a crony of President Bush’s and a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is getting his share of the spoils.

Africa: The Next Victim in the U.S. Quest for Cheap Oil
Resource wars that are already well under way. In mid-June, a Shell facility was attacked by local militants, disrupting production and sending the already sky-high price of oil to further heights before coming back online a week later. Attacks like those have increased in frequency, as Nigerian factions have fought for control of the nation's lucrative petroleum resources, which are the largest in Africa. The problem, especially as indigenous populations caught between Nigeria's prosperous rich and their oil industry's environmental devastation see it, is that viable land and resources have been wasted on a handful while the majority of the country falls into further disrepair and depression. From natural gas flares and oil spills to the destruction of native plants, animal species and other salable commodities, Nigeria's oil industry has wreaked havoc across the land and its people. And it's only getting worse. And if you think it doesn't affect America, think again.

George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has rubber stamped an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. Senator Barack Obama’s previous opposition to the war in Iraq, and his apparent doubts about the urgency of the Iranian threat, have intensified pressure on the Israeli hawks to act before November’s US presidential election. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t wait,” the Pentagon official added.

'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes
During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him. But let's unpack McCain's week in a little more detail.

Bush's Banned Interview: An Insight Into Insanity
I came across an interview with President Bush on Irish television that caused a bit of a storm in 2004. The interview conducted by the tenacious Carol Coleman of Radio Television Ireland was not aired on American television, and Bush's press officers apparently complained vociferously about the rigorous questioning. The video shows Bush at the absolute peak of his arrogance. Coleman cut through the simplistic slogans about evil doers and freedom loving Americans and continued to ask Bush serious questions about the illegal war he had just launched. It fast became evident that this was a man who really had no idea what he was doing -- someone so removed from reality that he failed to even understand what he was being asked. The interview with Coleman should go down on record as definitive proof of Bush's utter incompetence, a priceless picture of a madman who had no business occupying the highest office of the land.

Insurance slogans fail reality test
"Like a good neighbor," "you're in good hands," "do the right thing." All are advertising slogans of insurance companies. They sound real comforting and friendly, don't they? Interestingly, all three companies represented by those slogans have ended up on the American Association of Justice's list of the ten worst insurance companies for consumers.

Lawyers Rate Allstate as Worst Insurance Company
Allstate ranks as the worst insurer for consumers, according to a comprehensive investigation of thousands of legal documents and financial filings by the American Association for Justice, a trial lawyers' group.

Cipro Warning
If you take one of a class of antibiotics that includes Cipro, the FDA wants to warn you about some potentially serious side effects. The agency has asked manufacturers to place a "black box" warning on the label, alerting consumers to the increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture. Of course, the consumer group Public Citizen started pushing for that warning two years ago.

Tell your Legislator to Support HB 6299 and HB 6300, make roads safer for cyclists
Representatives Andy Coulouris (D-Saginaw) and David Palsrok (R-Manistee) on June 29 introduced House Bills 6299 and 6300, which enhance penalties for moving violations causing physical injury or death to bicyclists and other vulnerable roadway users. A teen on a bike deserves the same protection as one driving a tractor. These bills will make Michigan roadways safer for bicyclists and all vulnerable users of our taxpayer-funded road system.

Bill Excerpts:
(1) A “VULNERABLE ROADWAY USER” IS DEFINED AS A PEDESTRIAN OR A PERSON OPERATING A NONMOTORIZED TRANSPORTATION DEVICE (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO A BICYCLE).

(2) A PERSON WHO COMMITS A MOVING VIOLATION AND AS A RESULT CAUSES INJURY TO A VULNERABLE ROADWAY USER ON A HIGHWAY WHO IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS ACT IS GUILTY OF A MISDEMEANOR PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT FOR NOT MORE THAN 1 YEAR OR A FINE OF NOT MORE THAN $1,000.00, OR BOTH.

(3) A PERSON WHO COMMITS A MOVING VIOLATION AND AS A RESULT CAUSES DEATH TO A VULNERABLE ROADWAY USER ON A HIGHWAY WHO IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS ACT IS GUILTY OF A FELONY PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT FOR NOT MORE THAN 15 YEARS OR A FINE OF NOT MORE THAN $7,500.00, OR BOTH.

Iraq Insists On Withdrawal Timetable For US Troops
Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.0708 12 The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal. President Bush [and McCain] has said he opposes a timetable.

Top Ten Things You May Have Forgotten About The Declaration of Independence
It’s the “Declaration of Independence,” not the “Declaration of World Domination.” Just in case anyone in the current White House forgot.

When Will the Housing Crash End?
The worst is yet to come. We are not even halfway into this housing price decline. In books published in 2003 and 2006, respectively, my predictions of 25% home price declines nationwide and 50% price declines in many cities on the coasts are rapidly coming true. You can see that we have a long way to go because most ARMS are just now resetting, most foreclosures to date have been 2006 and 2007 mortgages and the banks are not going to lend 10 times your combined income in the future, but rather something more like 5 times. Unless you are willing to put up 50% down payments, homes have to come down further in price.

GOP Just Can’t Give Enough To Big Oil
There are very good reasons why oily guys have been stereotyped over the years as the sorts of villains who twirl their mustaches and tie innocent young women to railroad tracks. Now, as we are nearing the end of eight years of government of, for and by the oil industry, we may have finally reached the point in our history where the oily guys who run Big Oil no longer have any power to fool us. With $4-a-gallon gas and the prospect of continuing price rises to $5 and above before the end of the summer, politicians are having a tougher job duping us into supporting more financial giveaways to the oil companies. Amazingly, though, Republicans still keep trying.

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Bush's Secret Army of Snoops and Snitches
The full scale of Bush's assault on our civil liberties may not be known until years after he's left office. At the moment, all we can do is get glimpses here or there of what's going on.

Environmental Groups Slam G8 Leaders for Not Doing More on Global Warming
In Japan, world leaders at the G8 summit have announced they would work toward cutting carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050. The White House hailed the declaration as a major step forward, but environmental campaigners criticized the lack of a commitment to midterm targets. Global warming ties into other big themes, such as soaring food and fuel prices, being discussed at the three-day summit. We go to Hokkaido to speak with Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South.

Sex Crimes in the White House
Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. I had a sense of deja vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush administration was spinning the notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples" low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a systemic policy set at the top. It's not that I am a genius. It's simply that, having worked at a rape crisis center and been trained in the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about things in certain recognizable ways.

Bush-Led 'Disaster Capitalism' Exploits Worldwide Misery to Make a Buck
It's been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that today's preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multinational corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied. And the disaster capitalists have been busy -- from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California's wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as "The Credit Suisse Plan," after one of the banks that generously proposed it.

Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?
Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent. First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Can Bush Attack Iran With Oil at $140 per Barrel?
If U.S. President George W. Bush wants to boost Republican chances of holding on to the White House and keeping Democratic gains in Congress to a minimum in the November elections, he might consider taking an attack on Iran before the end of his administration "off the table." Of course, that's probably the last thing Bush -- and his particularly belligerent vice president, Dick Cheney -- will do.

The Iraq War Was About Oil, All Along
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator.

Trains to answer traffic, cost, and pollution
Shifting a fourth of U.S. freight from trucks to railroads by 2026 would spare each American an average of 41 hours of travel time, 79 gallons of fuel, and $985 in gas expenses each year, according to the seventh annual Congestion Relief Index. "Railroads last year were able to move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel," said railroad association president and CEO Edward R. Hamberger, speaking before the U.S. Senate last week. "It's like moving a ton from Boston to Baltimore or Eugene, Ore., to San Francisco on a gallon of fuel." He called for the government to support bills that would expand tax credits to help railways expand capacity. His group also backs public-private partnerships to fund railroads.

Is the GOP Cooking the Books to Avoid Recession Until After Election Day?
Is the worst over? Are we on the road to recovery? Will the next president take office against a backdrop of economic improvement, as Bill Clinton did in 1993? Or has something deeper and more intractable gone wrong? Thus far the dollar has fallen, but it hasn't collapsed. Will it? There are two big threats. The first is the financial crisis itself, which is a problem of trust not only in the ordinary borrower, and not only in the banks, but in the American dollar. Why is the rest of the world nervous? Because the fundamental trust that they have always had—that the United States was a safe place to put your money—has come into question. The second threat, not often mentioned, is our reckless foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq, bellicosity toward Iran, and the ongoing subtext of hostility toward China. Since the Middle East has the oil and China holds our debts, all this is spitting in the soup, big time. It may not by itself wreck the financial system. But it doesn't exactly build up the reserve of good will that we may need when the financial going gets tough.

The End of Oil
Paul Roberts tgells us in his new book, The End of Oil, that crude, besides being at the core of a host of political and economic problems, is getting harder to find, both in the Middle East and (especially) outside it -- meaning that high prices are here to stay, and that the United States can expect to become more, not less, dependent for its oil on volatile Middle Eastern countries. Roberts says that Americans are “energy illiterate” -- we only think about the nation’s energy policy when oil prices hit us hard in the pocket. If the high price of oil keeps up, it may be just be the rude awakening needed for us to pressure politicians and in turn, the energy industry, to undertake massive investment in the alternatives to oil. If we don’t, the consequences will be disastrous: economic recession, environmental devastation, and further upheaval in the Middle East.

A Metal Scare to Rival the Oil Scare
Indium, gallium and hafnium are some of the least-known elements on the periodic table, but New Scientist warns that reserves of these low-profile minerals and others like them might soon be exhausted thanks to the demand for flat screens and other high-tech goods. Scientists who have tried to estimate how long the worlds mineral supply can meet global demand have made some gloomy predictions. Armin Reller, a materials chemist at the University of Augsburg in Germany, estimates that in 10 years the world will run out of indium, used for making liquid-crystal displays for flat-screen televisions and computer monitors. He also predicts that the world will run out of zinc by 2037, and hafnium, an increasingly important part of computer chips, by 2017. Recycling of rare metals will be the only way to manufacture some gadgets and machines as demand grows in the developing world.

Will the Last Superpower Recognize In Time What We Must Do to Save the Planet?
Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet. Cheap oil is no more and the global projection of military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In May 2008 the price of oil hit a new high of $135 a barrel in contrast to the historic inflation adjusted price of $27.00. We are only beginning to awake as a nation to the reality that our reign as a global superpower is coming to an abrupt end.

The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush soon to be ex-Presidency
The Bush administration can be described as a slapstick comedy with an unusually high body count: Picture the Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops duking it out with cruise missiles. In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration's 10 greatest moments -- disastrous failures, all -- is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain.

The World's Pollution Factory
Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model. At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75% of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

Walking is 12 times better for the climate than driving
In case you missed it, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the blogosphere a few months back, concerning the climate impacts of walking vs. driving. Your mileage may vary, of course; but my shoes get about 220 miles per gallon.

Contaminated Veggies Are the Meat Industry’s Fault
While it's difficult to quantify how many vegetarians live within our borders, it's easier to observe the attitude toward vegetarians. Twenty years ago, "What're you, a Commie?" was a typical response to a confession of veggie brotherhood. Nowadays, despite the occasional stink eye, meat eaters at least understand that vegetarianism is healthy, if not a lifestyle particularly suited for them. Even though the United States is more veggie-friendly these days, it's still difficult to avoid crappy food, even if one chooses to become a vegan, as I did six years ago. Despite my decision, I found myself projectile vomiting into my toilet last week. Diagnosis: food poisoning. Suspect: tomatoes. Unfortunately, becoming a vegetarian or a vegan doesn't ensure healthiness. Sure, vegetarians enjoy many health perks (low rates of: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.) but we're still at the mercy of the meat industry in many ways. It's not the veggies that are to blame. The problem is the meat. Salmonella is an animal pathogen, so it doesn't originate from tomatoes. Most experts agree that the bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal feces. You read that right: Cow shit is in your tomatoes. Actually, cow shit is in everything: the water, hamburgers, other plant life, and if one ascribes to the hippie New Age belief that we are all one pulsating organism upon Mother Earth, then cow shit is in all of us.

Paying More, Getting Less: Just Where Do America's Health Care Dollars Go?
If people grasped the size of the health care bill they already pay (through taxes), opponents of a universal single-payer system would be in trouble.

Big Oil Returns to Iraq
Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day.

AAA Auto Club bad for the environment?
When it comes to roadside assistance, most Americans don't even think twice before making a decision. AAA has been around since 1902 and is the leading auto club in the country. But AAA, who did well to focus on roadway safety reform through the 1940s, is isolating many consumers due to its stance on a more current safety issue: the environment. Now one company, with a business strategy built around being environmentally conscious, is hoping to entice American car owners by offering a greener form of roadside assistance.

Finally, Marriage Licenses for All
The legalization of gay marriage is a huge milestone in the fight for equal rights. Still, it begs the question: why do people get married, anyway?

The Worst of All Worlds
House Democrats capitulate to pass a surveillance bill that further compromises our privacy and limits accountability of the government and telecoms. Will the Senate fight back?

A Blank Check to Continue the War
They were elected in 2006 to end the war, but House Democrats helped continue it last week with $162 billion in extra funding. "The president basically gets a blank check to dump this war on the next president," says Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern, who voted against letting Bush off the hook – and against setting up a situation where the next commander-in-chief, be he Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be "a war president."

Anatomy of a Price Surge
Oil companies, speculators and OPEC played their part, but ruinous Bush Administration policies have compounded the crisis.

Mr. Bush - Lead or LEAVE
Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.” Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.” It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better.

Witnesses link chemical to ill US soldiers
"Hundreds of American soldiers at this site were contaminated" while guarding the plant, Langford said, including members of the Indiana National Guard. Langford is one of nine Americans who accuse KBR, the lead contractor on the Qarmat Ali project and one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, of knowingly exposing them to sodium dichromate, an orange, sandlike chemical that is a potentially lethal carcinogen. Specialists say even short-term exposure to the chemical can cause cancer, depress an individual's immune system, attack the liver, and cause other ailments. Yesterday's hearing - one among several organized to hold contractors accountable for alleged malfeasance in Iraq - was chaired by Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat. "Hundreds of US troops, who may not even know of their exposure to sodium dichromate that could one day result in a horrible disease, cancers, and death," he said. Roughly 250 American soldiers were believed to have come in contact with the chemical, according to Defense Department documents. Sodium dichromate is the same substance that poisoned residents in Hinkley, Calif., an incident made famous by the movie "Erin Brockovich" in 2000.

Human link in severity of floods
Natural disasters like floods are normally blamed on nature, but some experts believe humans are at least partly responsible for this month's massive flooding in Iowa and elsewhere in the U.S. farm belt. Human re-engineering of landscapes came into question as rivers overran their banks and more than 20 levees along the Mississippi River failed, inundating thousands of acres of prime farmland and displacing nearly 40,000 people.

Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing: The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques
Intelligence saves lives. Knowing where an insurgent has buried an IED can keep a vehicle carrying Marines in Iraq from being blown up. Knowing that an al Qaeda associate visited an internet café in Kabul could be the key piece of information that unravels a terrorist plot targeting our embassy. Intelligence saves lives. But how do we get the people who know the information to share it with us? Does degrading them or treating them harshly increase the chances that they’ll be willing to help? Just a couple of weeks ago I visited our troops in Afghanistan. While I was there I spoke to a senior intelligence officer who told me that treating detainees harshly is actually an impediment – a “roadblock” to use that officer’s word – to getting intelligence from them.

What Floods?
I just got off the phone with a Congressional staffer, who couldn't quite focus on the issue we were supposed to discuss because she is working overtime on the floods in the Midwest. So I turned on cable news, and found out that the floods are plastered all over, much as the wildfires in California were in October of 2007. And just like 2007, the major environmental groups are AWOL on the most covered climate event of the year so far. Here's an answer to a vexing question for lots of liberals. If you want to know why there is no action on global warming, do the following simple exercise. Turn on cable news right now, or do a Google News search for floods. Here are some news headlines you might find. So one would think the press would cover global warming in the context of extreme weather. Of course journalists don't. But is this a media problem? Yes, but it's not just a media problem. I looked at the home pages and press pages of the Sierra Club, NRDC, Environmental Defense, the League of Conservation Voters, and Al Gore's We Can Solve It. The Sierra Club is asking for higher mileage standards on cars, NRDC is discussing lead and growing support for action on global warming, the League of Conservation Voters brags about its recent endorsement of Gabrielle Giffords, Environmental Defense asks for lower gas prices, and We Can Solve It puts its new ad front and center.

Carl Levin: Senate Floor Statement on Oil and Gasoline Prices
Mr. President, day after day record-high oil and gasoline prices are causing immense harm to millions of American consumers and businesses. Unless something is done to make energy more affordable, these record-high prices will continue to damage our economy, increasing the prices of transportation, food, manufacturing and everything in between. Skyrocketing energy prices are a threat to our economic and national security, and the time is long past for action.

China Surgest Ahead of U.S. in Clean Energy Spending
CHINA is leaving the US in the dust in its spending on clean energy - but it still has plenty to do if it is to shake off its sooty reputation. According to a study released last week by the Washington-based think tank, Worldwatch Institute, China will invest more than $10 billion on renewable energy this year - double the amount invested by the US in 2006.

Ninety-nine billion barrels of oil on the wall...
Ninety-nine billion barrels of oil, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight billion barrels of oil. A look at world oil consumption by country. The U.S. ought to be ashamed.

Vendor at Texas GOP Convention Pedals Racist Wares
Pins for sale at a convention for the Texas GOP read: "If Obama is President ... will we still call it The White House?" This isn't thinly veiled racism. It is in your face racism and the fact that a licensed booth was allowed to sell such a racist attack on the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States at the Texas Republican Convention is an absolute embarrassment. Unfortunately it is probably a safe bet to say that this is just the beginning in a wave of ignorant and intolerant political-attack materials that will grow in the coming months.

McCain's Playbook: Hate, Fear and Caveman Politics
Here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy -- who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans? You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"

Blanchard, Milliken: Protect the water
TRAVERSE CITY -- Two former governors -- Republican William Milliken and Democrat James Blanchard -- prodded legislators Thursday to prevent large-scale uses of Michigan water that would not be in the public interest.

Meijer gets judge to hide papers
Meijer Inc. convinced a state appellate judge to hide from public view documents related to Grand Traverse County's efforts to investigate the retailer's campaign finance violations. A motion to seal the appellate case was filed by John Pirich, a Lansing attorney hired by Meijer.

Smoke and Mirrors
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information from a corporation or organization to the public. Often time lobby and other special interest groups and will employ Public Relations firms to influence government policy, corporate policy, or public opinion. In public relations, “spin” is sometimes a pejorative term signifying a heavily biased portrayal in one's own favor of an event or situation. While traditional public relations may also rely on “creative” presentation of the facts, "spin" often implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics. The techniques of "spin" include Selectively presenting facts and quotes that support one's position (cherry picking), the so-called "non-denial denial," phrasing in a way that assumes unproven truths, euphemisms for drawing attention away from items considered distasteful, and ambiguity in public statement (promising the world, but offering no details or substance). I believe this to be the situation with the new web site MichiganJobsAndEnergy.org

No to Coal
One-hundred -plus coal-fired power plants are currently proposed to be built. If even a small portion of these plants are constructed the global warming pollution pumped into our air will make all our other efforts to reverse climate change irrelevant. Michigan is the nation’s 14th-windiest state, yet special interests in Michigan want us to embrace 19th-century energy. Coal plants are the dirtiest, most regressive source of energy possible - poisoning our communities and environment.

Michigan Leads America’s Dirty Power Grab
Clean-energy innovation is the greatest economic opportunity to come Michigan's way since the invention of the Model T assembly line. Yet, in Michigan, energy companies are headed the other way. They have proposed no less than seven new coal-fired power plants for the state—more than for any other in the nation—and that, clean-energy entrepreneurs say, will make it more difficult for Michigan to “go green.” Yet, across the country, other states are using innovative policies to attract companies that develop, manufacture, and deploy wind turbines, solar panels, other renewable power sources—and new technologies that blend green electricity into a solid clean-energy supply.

Gay unions shed light on gender in marriage
A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships. While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

Zapped!
Lab animals fed irradiated food have developed illnesses from cancer to immune system failure. So why is the government pushing the same food on you? Foodborne illness, largely the result of industrialized food production, has sown panic both here and abroad. Once-harmless bacteria are mutating into deadly strains that medicine can't keep up with. For instance, E. coli, a common bacteria in feces mutated into a the deadly 0157:H7 strain, which has killed hundreds of people. Yet very few industry and government leaders are interested in fundamental, long-overdue reforms of the food safety and inspection system that would address this issue.

Is Your Shower Curtain Killing You?
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) shower curtains are sold across the United States in well known retail stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, Sears/Kmart, Macy's, and Bed Bath & Beyond to name a few. What many consumers do not know is that their rubber ducky shower curtain could be off-gassing more than 100 different kinds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These VOCs can cause eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches; loss of coordination; nausea; and damage to the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system. Some VOCs have been known to cause cancer in humans.

A new approach for the age of $4 gasoline
Recognizing the deeper, structural issues at work, a growing number of planners and policy analysts are seeking to prepare for the future with a fundamental overhaul of the nation's systems of transportation and of land and energy use. Those systems were built on the premise that fossil fuels would serve as a cheap, abundant, and environmentally benign source of energy into the indefinite future. Demand for oil is outpacing supply, escalating prices to $140 a barrel and more. At the same time, the emerging consensus on global climate change - both presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - will inevitably reinforce the trend of higher energy costs until the transition from overreliance on fossil fuels is achieved. There is no better moment to launch a major redirection of US policy

The War in Iraq Is Pure Murder
We have embarked on an occupation that is as damaging to our souls as to our prestige and power and security.

FEMA's $85 million giveaway
Household items meant for Katrina victims were given away to government agencies for free.

Bush’s laws will be scrutinized if I become president, Obama says
Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law. If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office. Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said. During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. “I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

Kucinich Calls Upon the House to Impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
On June 9, 2008, Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman from Ohio, announced his intention to introduce more than two dozen charges for impeachment against President George W. Bush.

What To Do When There Are Too Many of Us
All historical eras are shaped by the material and environmental realities of their time. Our own reflects the adjustments society and nature have made to accommodate the unprecedented 6.7 billion human beings now alive. And those changes are dramatic. The planet is warming dangerously as a result of the heat-trapping byproducts of our daily lives. Half of the primeval forests that existed at the end of the last ice age are gone. A mist of mercury and other toxic metals from coal combustion falls continuously on land and ocean, and to eat fish is to absorb these metals yourself. Half of us are now urban, rarely if ever meeting up with creatures wilder than crows, cockroaches, and, in some cities, packs of feral dogs. And this is just where we are today, while the beat of growth goes on.

Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis
June 9, 2008. In the discussion of the global food emergency, one underlying factor is barely mentioned: The world is running out of freshwater. Climate change, overconsumption and the alarmingly inefficient use of this most basic raw material are all to blame. I wrote a book three years ago titled When The Rivers Run Dry. It probed why the Yellow River in China, the Rio Grande and Colorado in the United States, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in Pakistan, the Amu Darya in Central Asia, and many others are all running on empty. The confident blue lines in a million atlases simply do not tell the truth about rivers sucked dry, for the most part, to irrigate food crops.

Attack Iran? Cheney's Already Tried
WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.

Bush Begins Farewell Tour
On his final scheduled visit to Europe before his term ends in January, the U.S. president, George W. Bush, held a farewell summit meeting with leaders of the European Union here on Tuesday, debating issues including diplomacy toward Iran and a trade dispute over chickens.

John McCain's Inescapable Bubble
Fundamentally it is the Iraq war that that will beat McCain. Which is to say, it's the only issue he's got -- and it's not one the electorate is in a mood to hear about, not when it can't find work, can't buy food and can't afford to fill its tank to once again realize either of these. And all the while McCain is shackled to George W. Bush, who, as the Washington Post tells us, is pretty much off in presidential Lalaland these days, dreaming of a polished legacy that for now lies in ruins, comparing himself to the policy-troubled likes of Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln, and "arguing] that history will vindicate him on Iraq, terrorism, trade and other controversial issues." Good luck with that, George, since many historians have already reached a conclusion. In an informal survey of scholars this spring, 107 out of 109 historians deemed George Bush Jr. the 'worst president ever.

Will the Great Lakes become a nuclear dump?
We must join together and make our voices heard. The Canadian government plans to build a dump site right on the shores of Lake Huron to store radioactive waste from 20 nuclear plants for hundreds of years. As if that wasn't bad enough: Oil company Shell Canada wants to build a giant refinery along five miles of the St. Clair River that will process 250,000 barrels of heavy crude oil daily - and put one of our most important waterways at risk. Canada is already treating Michigan like a dumping ground, sending millions of tons of their garbage each year to our communities. Now, it wants to give us more mercury, more sulfur dioxide, more CO2 emissions, more overall pollution and radioactive waste that will put our citizens at risk for hundreds of years. Lake Huron and the St. Clair River provide drinking water to millions of Michigan citizens. They are an important waterway that carries trade and commerce on the Great Lakes, creating jobs and opportunity in Michigan. Putting a dangerous nuclear dump and a highly polluting oil refinery along these bodies of water threatens our health and quality of life. The nuclear waste site and the oil refinery pose a real danger to our families today and for generations to come.

What May Be in Store for Obama -- And the Rest of America
It is easy enough to take one's eyes off the ball when concentrating on campaign speeches and strategies for winning over the hearts and minds of Americans. So what things might change the landscape of the current contest and tilt it in favor of the McCain camp? First, the guarded optimism of Obama supporters assumes that the voting process will be largely a fair one. However, attention to past irregularities suggests otherwise. There are several familiar ways in which the election could be stolen. Some of these ways would be to disenfranchise African American voters and other would-be Obama supporters by purging them from voting lists, losing or failing to send out their registrations, deceiving these citizens about their proper voting precincts, and misallocating voting machines in precincts likely to go for Obama. These, among other illegal and unethical tactics, were employed in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. It is pie-in-the-sky optimism to think that these same tactics won't be used, perhaps even more systematically, again in 2008. Meanwhile, faulty, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines attached to malfunctioning printers will be used to record ballots. In addition to these more conventional manners of voter fraud, there are also other possible ways to steal the election. All electronic voting machines transport their data over telephone lines to a central computer where tabulations of votes are made. These telephone lines are not secure, however, because, in putting into operation its unlawful warrantless surveillance program, the Bush Administration had installed computer technology at major telecom company hubs, such as those of AT&T, which intercepts and reads messages before they reach their final destination. It is therefore quite conceivable that the balloting data being transported from individual voting precincts could be intercepted and reconfigured before it reaches its main tabulation point.

Michigan Based Mercenary Agency Blackwater is Now Offering Private Spy Services
The notorious mercenary company now offers spy "services" to Fortune 500 companies, for the right price. This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Make No Mistake, McCain Is a Neocon
Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing differences over military tactics used in Iraq. But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line neoconservative who buys into Bush's "preemptive war" theories abroad and his concept of an all-powerful "unitary executive" at home. From McCain's pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign's recent embrace of Bush's imperial presidency, American voters should realize that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the Founders' vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

Tidying up for the Revolution
Thanks to us and to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, great progress is being made in healing two old wounds that have festered for centuries on the American landscape. The two wounds are racism and sexism, and healing them means that America can reclaim its destiny as the world's leader of enlightened behavior. There is much to celebrate. The historic nomination battle between Obama and Clinton heralded the coming social revolution that will elevate feminine values and bring more balance to national life. Like Clinton, Obama represents these values -- peace, family, health, unity, compassion, and power.

The Presidential Election Will Not Be Close
The November presidential election is not going to be close. Barack Obama is going to beat John McCain by 8 to 10 points in the national popular vote and win 300 to 350 electoral votes. Obama is going to wipe out McCain mano a mano. The problem with McCain is that his brain is no longer working. There is something wrong. Many doctor friends of mine hypothesize Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is consistent with his 5½ years of great stress in prison and which can explain his violent temper, his memory lapses and his frequent mental disconnects. It also is possible that he is suffering mini-strokes, which cause momentary double vision, partial blackouts and confusion, and which could explain why he can say incredibly stupid things, sometimes the same dumb thing several times in one day, without appearing to understand what he just said. Whatever the specific cause, he is not healthy, and mentally he is struggling to hold it together. What we are going to see in the general election from McCain is a ton of mistakes. Voters are going to default to Obama because it will become obvious that McCain simply is not up to the task of being president. This is going to be the first not-close presidential election since 1988. You heard it here first.

McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps of American Citizens
WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration. In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that Mr. Bush has the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Secret Plan to Keep Iraq Under U.S. Control
Bush wants fifty military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors. A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November. The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country. America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 - 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimize the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

Winter Soldiers Hit the Streets
In a clear change of strategy to energise public anti-war sentiment, Iraq veterans led a determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets last Saturday, following regional Winter Soldier hearings at the Seattle Town Hall. A late April poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly three-quarters (68 percent) of respondents opposed the Iraq war. The strategy of the regional IVAW groups is clearly meant to capitalise on the growing opposition to the occupation of Iraq among the U.S. public. Christopher Diggins, a psychotherapist who attended the demonstration, reflected the feelings of many -- that this strategy is important. "This tactic is better because you have to get the community involved," Diggins told IPS. "You have to have community awareness and support."

Senate Panel Accuses Bush of Iraq Exaggerations
WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies. The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Earth to Hillary, it's over
It was supposed to be over last night with Barack Obama having won enough pledged delegates and super-delegates to make him the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. But then Hillary Clinton took to the floor In NYC to address supporters in what many assumed would be a concession speech. But Senator Clinton did not concede, or even ‘suspend' her presidential aspirations; she delivered a campaign speech about education and health care and bringing the troops home and ‘reached out' to the eighteen million people who voted for her in the primaries and said some perfunctory nice things about Barack Obama. She closed by reminding everyone of her dot com site, in case, anyone might want to donate to what she regards either as a victory fund or a help-me-pay-off-my-debts fund. It was a strange kind of event that left anyone inclined to scratch their head in perplexity, doing just that. Around the same time Senator McCain was delivering his remarks to a smallish crowd of well-wishers, praising Hillary - - someone he calls a friend...

Is Bush Gearing Up to Attack Iran?
Something is afoot. Just what is not clear, but recent moves by the White House strongly suggest that Bush will attack Iran in the near future. The May 8 letter from U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to George W. Bush received virtually no media coverage, in spite of the fact that it warned the president that an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be grounds for impeachment. Rumor has it several senators have been briefed about the possibility of war with Iran. Something is afoot. There is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given December's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its program to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence services. At the time, the report seemed to shelve any possibility of war with Iran. However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old "into Iraq gang" went to work undermining it.

Jury Says It's Legal to Protest an Illegal War
A rare bit of good news for the anti-war movement goes largely ignored by the media. The good news is that six peace activists were acquitted on charges of criminal trespass for failing to obey a police request that they abandon their sit-in outside U.S. Sen. Susan Collins' office in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in Maine For Hendrick, a Naval Academy graduate and former Air Force officer who volunteered for two tours in Vietnam and who now teaches peace studies at the University of Maine at Orono, the "not guilty" verdict was especially sweet. In his defense, he told the jury, "My best friend's name is on the wall in Washington, as are the names of three other teammates and nine classmates." Those deaths and the deaths of another generation of soldiers and civilians were on his mind when he refused to leave the Federal Building: "Every life lost is a heinous crime, and we are all complicit. We should all be working to stop a foreign policy run amok without conscience," Hendrick told me.

Shocking Bush 'Pep Talk' to His War Cabinet on Iraq: 'We Are Going to Wipe Them out!'
"Kill them." Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's memoirs contain a transcript from a bloodthirsty and over the top private speech by Bush.

McClellan's Memoirs Hurt McCain Just as Much as Bush
Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution. That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem. Even if he locks the president away in a private home, the war will keep seeping under the door, like the blood in “Sweeney Todd.”

Complete Streets Bicycle Bill in House and Senate
Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) took an important step last Thursday, May 1, for safer, better designed streets by introducing the Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2008 into the U.S. House (HR 5951). The bill would make sure that roads built and improved with federal funds safely serve everyone using the roadway,including pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders, as well as those with disabilities. On the Senate side, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) signed on this week as first Republican co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, S2686, the Complete Streets Act of 2008, introduced a few weeks ago by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Thomas Carper (D-DE). This is the first time that comprehensive complete streets bills have been introduced in the House and Senate.

Scott McClellan and the Politics of Profitable Hurt
Well, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan got the media firestorm he was hoping for, which will make the unemployed propagandist millions of dollars, which, I'm sure, he was hoping for even more. Old -- sometimes even young -- right wingers never seem to die; they just fade, and not even courteously away, into filthy and immensely undeserved riches. He's now being offered up by many on the left for political sainthood, because he's perceived as having turned on his old boss (which, according to those who've actually read all of What Happened, isn't quite the case). And that's the sort of Greek political drama we love. It's more than Oedipal, it's tasty. But lest we forget: If Scottie had not been pushed out of Propaganda Central, he would still be standing there at the White House podium, spewing the vilest of deceptions and lies on behalf of his criminal keepers. Setting the record straight and reclaiming his credibility, my butt. Truth is, this vengeful turncoat got his feelings hurt, as opposed to losing an arm or a leg or his manhood or his head in a cockeyed war without justification, except from a political marketing point of view.

Where Is the Outrage?
Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Because the report was widely cited in the media and easily accessed as a pdf file on the Internet, it is fair to assume that those of our citizens who remain ignorant of the extent of their government’s commitment to torture as an official policy have made a choice not to be informed.

Iraq War Increased Energy Costs Worldwide
The Iraq War means oil costs three times more than it should. How are our lives going to change with oil heading toward $200 a barrel? The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war. Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. "This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil."

Ex-aide criticises Bush over Iraq
Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said US President George W Bush was not "open and forthright" on Iraq and rushed to an unnecessary war.

The Mega-Pentagon: A Bush-Enabled Monster We Can't Stop
The Pentagon has developed a taste for unrivaled power and unequaled access to the treasury that won't be easily undone by future administrations. The Pentagon's massive bulk-up these last seven years will not be easily unbuilt, no matter who dons the presidential mantle on January 19, 2009. "The Pentagon" is now so much more than a five-sided building across the Potomac from Washington or even the seat of the Department of Defense. In many ways, it defies description or labeling. The Pentagon's "footprint" is firmly planted, military base by military base, across the planet, with a special emphasis on its energy heartlands. Top administration officials began preparing the Pentagon to go anywhere and do anything, while rewriting, shredding, or ignoring whatever laws, national or international, stood in the way.

River of Resistance
How the American Imperial Dream Foundered in Iraq by Michael Schwartz On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest George W. Bush’s onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called “the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen.” The first glancing assessment of history branded this remarkable planetary protest a record-breaking failure, since the Bush administration, less than one month later, ordered U.S. troops across the Kuwaiti border and on to Baghdad. And it has since largely been forgotten, or perhaps better put, obliterated from official and media memory. Yet popular protest is more like a river than a storm; it keeps flowing into new areas, carrying pieces of its earlier life into other realms.

Prison Profiteers: Who makes money from mass incarceration?
The United States houses a quarter of the world's prisoners. Fuelling the alarming growth rate of America's prisons is the profit motive. Making money, rather than deterring crime or promoting rehabilitation, determines why and how many prisons are built...$186 billion taxpayer-funded industry. Punishment for profit is a sordid, unethical and immoral enterprise, and no other nation places more prisoners in the custody of private corporations than America.

Our Obsession with Dieting Boosts the Economy But Destroys the Earth
Our obsession with dieting, including the low-carb Atkins fad, may be good for our economy but it's a nightmare for the environment and our health. All weight-loss products and services create a bigger burden than do those old-fashioned, well-proven measures that will be recommended by any nutritionist who isn't trying to sell you something: eating less, eating out rarely, cooking with food in its least-processed form, limiting consumption of animal products, drinking mainly water, avoiding between-meal snacks, and, whenever possible, walking, running or cycling instead of driving. To have all overweight people follow that and other prosaic advice for good health would avert conflict between humans and other animals; it would emphasize our reliance on natural systems; it would be more affordable for everyone regardless of income.

Compounds from Household Products Found in Human Blood
Evidence is piling up that emissions from the production of synthetic compounds in non-stick cookware, cleaning products, and a host of other common products may cause cancer and other health problems.

The Cure That Kills
When the side effects of medications are worse than the ailments they're prescribed for. When, near the end of one of those ask-your-doctor commercials, a fast-talking disembodied voice reads off a drug's side effects, usually over a scene involving fields of waving grass and a puppy dog, it tends to sound like a lot of nasty stuff that's going to happen to someone else. But while reading and writing about the pharmaceutical industry over the past couple of years, I started wondering about what life is like for the real people who do experience those side effects.

Why We Face Both Food and Water Crises
The world renown activist reminds people that corporation-friendly economic schemes got us into this mess in the first place. Never has there been this rate of escalation in food prices worldwide as we witness now with the global integration of the food economies under the coercive and bullying force of the WTO.

Climate Destruction Will Produce Millions of 'Envirogees'
Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee. It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth's surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis -- a manufactured war with its own clock. And the clock is ticking.

Honoring Our Veterans
We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms. We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

Heal the Warrior, Heal the Country
Our troops do not enlist because they want to destroy or kill. No matter the political climate, most troops seek to serve traditional warrior values: to protect the country they love, its ideals, and especially their families, communities, and each other. If they must kill or be killed, they need transcendent reasons to do so. Throughout history, the only reason for fighting that has survived moral scrutiny is a direct attack with real, immediate threat to one’s people. PTSD is, in part, the tortured conscience of good people who did their best under conditions that would dehumanize anyone. Almost all cultures, past and present, have had warriors. They have also had complex stories and rituals to help them recover from combat and guide them through the life cycle. The occurrence of warriors is so universal that depth psychologists understand Warrior to be one of our foundational psycho-spiritual archetypes.

How the American Imperial Dream Foundered in Iraq
On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest George W. Bush's onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called "the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen." It's hard now even to recall the original vision George W. Bush and his top officials had of how the conquest of Iraq would unfold as an episode in the President's Global War on Terror. In their minds, the invasion was sure to yield a quick victory, to be followed by the creation of a client state that would house crucial "enduring" U.S. military bases from which Washington would project power throughout what they liked to term "the Greater Middle East." In addition, Iraq was quickly going to become a free-market paradise, replete with privatized oil flowing at record rates onto the world market. Like falling dominos, Syria and Iran, cowed by such a demonstration of American might, would follow suit, either from additional military thrusts or because their regimes -- and those of up to 60 countries worldwide -- would appreciate the futility of resisting Washington's demands. Eventually, the "unipolar moment" of U.S. global hegemony that the collapse of the Soviet Union had initiated would be extended into a "New American Century" (along with a generational Pax Republicana at home). This vision is now, of course, long gone, largely thanks to unexpected and tenacious resistance of every sort within Iraq.