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