B12 Solipsism

Nice – weapons of mass destruction are fine to stockpile if your military is by far the biggest in the world.

Under the gun to destroy the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile — and now all but certain to miss their deadline — Army officials have a plan to hasten the process: Blow some of them up.

The Army would use explosives to destroy some of the Cold War-era weapons, which contain some of the nastiest compounds ever made, in two communities in Kentucky and Colorado that fought down another combustion-based plan years ago.

Some who live near the two installations worry it’s a face-saving measure, driven by pressure from U.S. adversaries, that puts the safety of citizens below the politics of diplomacy and won’t help the U.S. meet an already-blown deadline.

[Click to continue reading US to blow up its chemical stockpiles Army struggles to meet deadline for weapons disposal- Salon.com]

and the US Army is really taking its sweet time to comply with various treaties calling for destruction of these stockpiles

Richmond has far fewer chemical weapons than Pueblo but a wider variety, including the deadly nerve gases sarin and VX. Of the 15,500 mustard rounds housed at the Kentucky depot, as many as 9,300 could be corroded and therefore considered a risk to workers if they leaked and required emergency repairs.

Chemical weapons have horrified the world since they blinded and crippled thousands of soldiers in World War I. Mustard gas can disable an opposing army by causing severe, painful but nonfatal blistering. It can also cause cancer, and even low levels of exposure may threaten workers and the public.

Scientists developed even deadlier chemical bombs during and after World War II. All of them were supposed to have been destroyed in the U.S. by 1994 under a directive from Congress. In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention enacted an international deadline of 2012. The U.S. now acknowledges it will certainly miss that too.

A few interesting links collected December 8th through December 9th:

• News America Paid $29.5M in Mysterious Floorgraphics Acquisition | BNET Advertising Blog | BNET – The suit has a certain chutzpah to it. A source tells BNET that FGI had sales of less than $1 million. Many outside observers believed that at the time of the deal, FGI existed mostly to resolve its litigation against NAM, not as a functioning business. It’s hard to believe NAM thought it was buying a genuine business and not settling a lawsuit, which is essentially what NAM is arguing in its suit.
• Stooper supports a family by cashing in erroneously discarded betting slips Boing Boing – (Image: OTB and me, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from swanksalot’s photostream)

• 

• The Spending Wars | The American Prospect – How did military spending become sacrosanct? – Excellent question: How did military spending become sacrosanct?”When Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, recently proposed a surtax that would pay for the Afghanistan War, the collective response from most of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle was, “Are you nuts?” Nancy Pelosi quickly put the kibosh on Obey’s “Share the Sacrifice Act,” and all talk of funding the war has been banished. Meanwhile, Democrats have spent untold hours debating how to finance health-care reform, all while Republicans carp about how doing so is just too darn expensive, what with our ever-climbing deficit.”

• 

Reducing human bodies to a sum of financial calculations is perhaps part of a cynical equation to end the war, but our society values debating costs for items as mundane as Hollywood films, so why not? How much is a 19 year old from Yazoo City, Mississippi or Rantoul, Illinois worth anyway?

The budget implications of President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan are adding pressure to limit the commitment, officials say.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.

Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, appears almost constant. [Click to continue reading High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War]

The thing is, the soldiers themselves are not earning but a fraction of that – so where is the rest of the $1,000,000 going? To KBR? To Boeing? Seems outrageously expensive, doesn’t it? For a legacy war?

And this tidbit is horrifying:

And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.

Ten percent higher of a Pentagon budget than the budget created by war-monger Republicans? Scary. Obama had better not listen to his military advisors then, if he wants a second term in office. Aren’t there more important items we could spend money on besides the Pentagon?

For the fun news of the day – in all the GOP haste to smear ACORN based on the actions of a couple of rogue employees, the language of the bill does the one thing I had suggested in jest as an answer to an unrelated topic. Namely, be more harsh on corporations that break laws. Except in the actual bill as written and voted on, any crime charged to a corporation would bar it from feeding at the public trough. Ooopsie!

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.

Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who’s Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.

The language was written by the GOP and filed as a “motion to recommit” in the House, where it passed 345-75. It carried the Senate by an 83-7 margin.

POGO is reaching out to its members to identify other companies who have engaged in the type of misconduct that would make them ineligible for federal funds.

Grayson then intends to file that list in the legislative history that goes along with the bill so that judges can reference it when determining whether a company should be denied federal funds.

[Click to continue reading Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud]

Too funny.

[Buzzards circling in a park probably built by Brown and Root, LBJ's favorite defense contractor, now owned by Halliburton and/or KBR]

The Project On Government Oversight gives a little perspective:

Bear in mind that, since 1994, ACORN has reportedly received a total of $53 million in federal funds, or an average of roughly $3.5 million per year. In contrast, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman respectively received over $35 billion and $18 billion in federal contracts last year. (Their totals since 2000 are $266 billion for Lockheed and $125 billion for Northrop.)

Congress should clamp down on contractor fraud and waste, but it needs to keep a sense of proportion. If ACORN broke the law it, should be punished; however, Congress also needs to crack down just as rigorously on the contractors who take an even larger share of taxpayers’ money and have committed far more, or far more egregious, acts of misconduc

[Click to continue reading The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog]

late update: one of the ACORN employees caught on tape, Juan Carlos Vera, actually reported the incident to the police. The police said they would need more information.

Police say he contacted law enforcement two days later. The detective consulted another police official who served on a federal human smuggling task force, who said he needed more details.

The ACORN employee responded several days later and explained that the information he received was not true and he had been duped.

[Click to continue reading Police: ACORN worker in video reported couple - Yahoo! News]

Still was fired, and made the butt of a thousand jokes on Fox News…

Dan Froomkin asks a good question:

A healthy majority of the American public now opposes the war in Afghanistan. More and more Democrats, some leading Republicans, and even members of the military are calling for, if not outright withdrawal, at least an exit strategy.

So where’s the peace movement?

Where are, if not the massive peace marches, at least the quiet peace vigils? Where are the letters to the editor, and the sermons, and the city council resolutions?

[Click to continue reading Watchdog Blog » Blog Archive » Where’s the Peace Movement?]

I don’t know if there are peace demonstrations being held, and not being reported, or if there just isn’t enough public engagement on the issue, yet.

Mr. Froomkin wants journalists¹ to dig a little deeper:

Nevertheless, it’s astonishing how little public expression there is of such a dominant public sentiment.

Or is it that the media just aren’t paying attention?

So here are my questions to my fellow journalists: Where is the peace movement? Where is the coverage of the peace movement? And is the absence of the latter actually contributing to the absence of the former?

1. and readers too, presumedly [↩]

If I ever had plans to do anything illegal, like break a law that has been on the books since at least 1878¹, I’ll just get John Yoo to write a memo saying it is ok. Law, hunh, what is good for, absolutely nothing. I’ll say it again.²

Torture, Posse Comitatus, does anything else have your bloody fingerprints on it, Mr. Yoo?

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

[Click to continue reading Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests - NYTimes.com]

and then cite the memo right before doing the illegal act:

Those who advocated using the military to arrest the Lackawanna group had legal ammunition: the memorandum by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty.

The lawyers, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the Constitution, the courts and Congress had recognized a president’s authority “to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such actions to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and before.”

The document added that the neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Fourth Amendment tied a president’s hands.

I certainly do not understand why Berkley employs this Yoo character, he is such a stain on the legal profession.

The Wikipedia entry for Posse Comitatus Act:

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.
The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime.

[Click to continue reading Posse Comitatus Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Seems clear enough. Except for John Yoo.

John Yoo and the so-called Torture memos, if you had forgotten the details:

You have to give John Yoo credit for chutzpah. The disgraced author of the so-called torture memo was back in the news last week, when the Obama administration released seven more secret opinions, all but one written in whole or in part by Yoo and fellow Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) lawyer Jay Bybee, arguing that the Bush administration had the right to override the Constitution as long as it claimed to be fighting a “war on terror.” Professor Yoo, who I am embarrassed to say holds a tenured position at the law school of my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, was already known as the official who provided a legal fig leaf behind which the Bush administration tortured inmates at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. His legal misdeeds are widely known, but now they have been exposed chapter and verse. Among the new memos is one written in 2001 [8.3 Meg PDF], in which Yoo and co-author Robert J. Delahunty advised the U.S. that the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the Army to be used for law enforcement, and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, do not apply to domestic military operations undertaken during a “war on terror.”

In other words, bye-bye, Bill of Rights. This is a prescription for a police state, where not just the police but the Army can kick your door down without a warrant or probable cause, as long as the president says he’s fighting “terror.” If Barack Obama had solicited such an opinion from an obliging Justice Department lawyer because he wanted to sic the U.S. Army on a group of domestic terrorists, the right would be screaming about jackbooted federal thugs descending from black helicopters to haul off American citizens. Strangely, no conservatives have taken to the streets to warn us of the Big Government danger posed by this radical doctrine.

[Click to continue reading John Yoo Torture Memo | Salon ]

1. and arguably one of the reasons the United States broke away from Britain way back in 1776 [↩]
2. sung in one’s best Edwin Starr voice [↩]

A few interesting links collected July 7th through July 8th:

• Fox report suggests Pentagon policy nixing religious flyover is a sign Obama is anti-Christian | Crooks and Liars – The military was regularly providing flyovers at countless evangelical Christian events all over the country, not only violating the regulations prohibiting military participation in religious events, but spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money in the process.

  MRFF began exposing these events, which included flyovers on the five holidays when flyovers at civilian events are permitted, and even a few at National Day of Prayer events, and began to see some decline in their frequency, but we weren’t sure if the number of flyovers at these events was really decreasing, or if the military and organizers of these events were just being more careful not to make the nature of the events so obvious.

  Well, needless to say, the following letter denying, for the first time in 42 years, the request for a flyover at one Christian rally…was the best 4th of July present MRFF could have asked for.

• 

• Branding blunder gives Russia-Nigeria energy linkup a bad name – Russia’s attempt to create a joint gas venture with Nigeria is set to become one of the classic branding disasters of all time ‑ after the new company was named Nigaz.

  …the name has “rather different connotations” for English-speakers.

  It recalled other international branding mishaps including the Ford Pinto ‑ which in Brazil means small penis ‑ and the Pepsi slogan “come alive with the Pepsi generation”. In Taiwan this rousing motto translated as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead”.

• 

• Living the “art” Life – … there is more, so much more to art…

KBR, the Halliburton company who specializes in cutting corners to increase profits, found an easy way to steal more taxpayer money: do a half-assed job and kiss-up to the Pentagon.

Far from suffering for its shoddy military contracting in Iraq, Congressional investigators have found that KBR Inc. was awarded $83 million in performance bonuses. Even worse, more than half came after Pentagon investigators linked faulty KBR wiring to the electrocution of four soldiers intent on relaxation. One soldier died taking a shower and another in a swimming pool.

How such settings became part of harm’s way for the military was the question put to an electrical engineer hired by the Army who reported finding that 90 percent of KBR’s wiring work in Iraq was not done safely. Some 70,000 buildings where troops lived and worked were not up to code, according to the engineer, who told a Congressional hearing of “some of the most hazardous, worst-quality work I have ever inspected.”

Officials of KBR, the offshoot of the Halliburton conglomerate once run so lucratively by former Vice President Dick Cheney, deny responsibility and say the work met the British code used in the war zone. Flat denial is an all-too-familiar refrain from this most favored and most questionable of military contractors. The electrical engineer found most wirers were not experienced in the British code and many were third-country nationals with no electrical training at all.

[Click to continue reading: Editorial - KBR Does It Again - NYTimes.com]

Take away their corporate charter, throw the executives in Supermax prison, KBR will clean up their act.

This isn’t a new allegation¹ but still disquieting. Experimenting with mind altering drugs on your own initiative is one thing, but being dosed by your employers? Strange, and disturbing.

“The Project MKULTRA Compendium: The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification” (Stephen Foster)

“Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond” (Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain)

Gordon Erspamer [a San Francisco lawyer]…has filed suit against the CIA and the US Army on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and six former American soldiers who claim they are the real thing: survivors of classified government tests conducted at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland between 1950 and 1975. “I get a lot of calls,” he says. “There are a lot of crazy people out there who think that somebody from Mars is controlling their behavior via radio waves.” But when it comes to Edgewood, “I’m finding that more and more of those stories are true!”

That government scientists conducted human experiments at Edgewood is not in question. “The program involved testing of nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psychochemicals, and irritants,” according to a 1994 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) report (PDF). At least 7,800 US servicemen served “as laboratory rats or guinea pigs” at Edgewood, alleges Erspamer’s complaint, filed in January in a federal district court in California. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency’s infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, “The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed.” Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs “were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge.”

Erspamer’s plaintiffs claim that, although they volunteered for the Edgewood program, they were never adequately informed of the potential risks and continue to suffer debilitating health effects as a result of the experiments. They hope to force the CIA and the Army to admit wrongdoing, inform them of the specific substances they were exposed to, and provide access to subsidized health care to treat their Edgewood-related ailments. Despite what they describe as decades of suffering resulting from their Edgewood experiences, the former soldiers are not seeking monetary damages; a 1950 Supreme Court decision, the Feres case, precludes military personnel from suing the federal government for personal injuries sustained in the line of duty. The CIA’s decision to use military personnel as test subjects followed the court’s decision and is an issue Erspamer plans to raise at trial. “Suddenly, they stopped using civilian subjects and said, ‘Oh, we can get these military guys for free,’” he says. “The government could do whatever it wanted to them without liability. We want to bring that to the attention of the public, because I don’t think most people understand that.” (Asked about Erspamer’s suit, CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf would say only that the agency’s human testing program has “been thoroughly investigated, and the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations.”)

[Click to continue reading Uncle Sam's Human Lab Rats | Mother Jones]

The CIA lying to the American people? I’m sure that has only happened in the past, and not in the present day. Ahem…

From the Project MK-Ultra wikipedia page:

The Agency poured millions of dollars into studies probing dozens of methods of influencing and controlling the mind. One 1955 MK-ULTRA document gives an indication of the size and range of the effort; this document refers to the study of an assortment of mind-altering substances described as follows:^[16]

1. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.
2. Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.
3. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
4. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
5. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.
6. Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
7. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.
8. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.
10. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.
11. Substances which will produce “pure” euphoria with no subsequent let-down.
12. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
13. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
14. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.
15. Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.
16. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.
17. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever.

Historians have learned that creating a “Manchurian Candidate” subject through “mind control” techniques was undoubtedly a goal of MK-ULTRA and related CIA project

I would not be surprised to learn that the CIA has continued their experiments up until the present. They just probably outsourced the location to Gitmo and Syria and Abu Ghraib.I had not ever heard this allegation:

A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962. During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.[42] [Alexander Cockburn article at Counter-Punch]

Beginning at the age of sixteen, Kaczynski participated along with twenty-one other undergraduate students in the Harvard experiments, which have been described as “disturbing” and “ethically indefensible.

nor this one:

Jonestown, the Guyana location of the Jim Jones cult and Peoples Temple mass suicide, was thought to be a test site for MKULTRA medical and mind control experiments after the official end of the program. Congressman Leo Ryan, a known critic of the CIA, was assassinated after he personally visited Jonestown to investigate various reported irregularities [M Meier]

though I have heard this conspiracy theory, and dismissed it²

Lawrence Teeter, attorney for convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan, believed Sirhan was under the influence of hypnosis when he fired his weapon at Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Teeter linked the CIA’s MKULTRA program to mind control techniques that he claimed were used to control Sirhan.[47] Teeter’s assertions are generally dismissed due to lack of supporting evidence

1. I’ve read several books on the subject in the early 1990s [↩]
2. well, to the extent that any Kennedy assassination theory can be dismissed [↩]

Donald Rumsfeld was never a pious man, but, evil as he is, Rummy realized the easy way to manipulate George Bush was simply to cite biblical verse. So Rummy did. Bush considered himself some sort of medieval Crusador, so slurped up the rhetoric, and asked for more.

This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

[Click to read more Frank Rich - Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush - NYTimes.com]

Like this one:

dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Cynical, and evil.

American Imperialism, not a topic fit for polite company, especially the pearl-clutchers in Washington, DC, and their courtiers and handlers in the US press.

Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don’t stay, often American equipment does — carefully stored for further use at tiny “cooperative security locations,” known informally as “lily pads” (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military “sites” abroad.

The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard — that is, the population of an American town — are functionally floating bases.

And here’s the other half of that simple truth: We don’t care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainst

ream media, are knee-deep in base denial.

Now, that’s the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that’s more than you care to know, stop here.

[From The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About It | | AlterNet]

Hey, at least our bridges aren’t collapsing. Err, well, at least our homes aren’t in foreclosure. Err, well, you know what I mean. Why invest in education, national infrastructure, healthcare or other such frivolity when there is a military to fund and a planet to police…

Tom Engelhardt continues:

Let’s face it, we’re on an imperial bender and it’s been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we’re still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we’re still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.

But let’s start in a sunnier time, less than two decades ago, when it seemed that there would be many tomorrows, all painted red, white, and blue. Remember the 1990s when the U.S. was hailed — or perhaps more accurately, Washington hailed itself — not just as the planet’s “sole superpower” or even its unique “hyperpower,” but as its “global policeman,” the only cop on the block? As it happened, our leaders took that label seriously and our central police headquarters, that famed five-sided building in Washington D.C, promptly began dropping police stations — aka military bases — in or near the oil heartlands of the planet (Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait) after successful wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf.

more

From John Kerry’s speech at the Democratic National Convention today.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, “Next up, Baghdad!”, Barack Obama saw, even then, “an occupation of “undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences” that would “only fan the flames of the Middle East.” Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it “the soft comfort of appeasement.” But today, Bush’s diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it “cut and run.” But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on guess what? a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

[click to read more of Remarks of John F. Kerry to the Democratic National Convention - Boston.com]

McCain is too trigger-happy to make a good Commander-in-Chief, we don’t need an aggressive, militaristic response to every world situation.

I have never been fond of the pageantry of the Chicago Air and Water Show¹. Apparently, I’m not alone, though for different reasons. Colin McMahon is an Iraq vet, and thinks the display is sickening.

Here we were, toasting our firepower even as young American men and women were dying at sickening rates in a foreign land. Oohing and aahing on the beach while the very types of warplanes we were celebrating were inflicting horror on some good, innocent people—not merely on the bad guys.

It seemed beyond anachronistic. It seemed perverse. And it was freaking me out.

That was a couple of years ago. But even if the roar of the Blue Angels no longer bedevils me, I remain convinced that the militaristic aspects of the Chicago Air & Water Show should be accorded honors and laid to rest. Especially today, with jet fuel costing what it does and all of us trying to consume less energy.

[From Ground military air show -- chicagotribune.com]

If you want to see a photo gallery of the display², Frank Hashimoto created a public Flickr group.

1. or other similar displays in other cities [↩]
2. which is actually quite aesthetically pleasing, in an abstract way. Airplanes are beautiful feats of engineering. [↩]

[The Pope checks out our Volga Blue granite table]

A mildly scary story you are bound to hear of sooner or later¹

SHORTLY before Lynn Sugarman of Teaneck, N.J., bought her summer home in Lake George, N.Y., two years ago, a routine inspection revealed it had elevated levels of radon, a radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer. So she called a radon measurement and mitigation technician to find the source.

“He went from room to room,” said Dr. Sugarman, a pediatrician. But he stopped in his tracks in the kitchen, which had richly grained cream, brown and burgundy granite countertops. His Geiger counter indicated that the granite was emitting radiation at levels 10 times higher than those he had measured elsewhere in the house.

[Click to read more details of What’s Lurking in Your Countertop? - NYTimes.com]

For me the real crime is hinted at in a paragraph towards the end of the article:

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking and is considered especially dangerous to smokers, whose lungs are already compromised. Children and developing fetuses are vulnerable to radiation, which can cause other forms of cancer. Mr. Witt said the E.P.A. is not studying health risks associated with granite countertops because of a “lack of resources.”

What the hell is the EPA doing instead? Going to lunch with the chemical industry executives who are offering future employment? What? The Environmental Protection Agency should have the funding and desire to conduct careful study of such topics so that there is real data available for consumers to make informed decisions whether granite countertops are a risk or whether they are harmless. How about instead of buying yet another Trident Missile or B2 Spirit, the government throws a few pennies at the EPA?

–
update:
Dean Armstrong also notices this story, and writes, in part:

But is this a hazard? Granites I’ve encountered have rates ranging from nothing to about 10x background. This isn’t that much. Time spent at cruising altitude is about 40x background at 500ft. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the fuss of ripping up a kitchen, unless it was proven to be the source of elevated radon levels. After reading the literature about naturally occurring radon sources, I have difficulty assigning the radon to just a small granite piece. Any soil or rock within 4 gas-diffusion-days of the basement or slab can be a source of radon for a home, and the total amount of uranium in that quantity is going to exceed the amount in the countertop (especially the part of the countertop that is within radon’s half-life time of the surface). If you covered your walls in granite it might be different.

1. such news stories are custom made for our sensationalistic media [↩]

Part the 3244th. Eric Martin notes the ridiculous John McCain voting against Jim Webb’s GI Bill for the 21st Century (or whatever the frack it was called), then turning around and claiming credit for passing it.

That temptation would lead one astray, however, as McCain shamelessly set about taking credit for the bill’s passage at a recent campaign event:

I’m happy to tell you that we probably agreed to an increase in educational benefits for our veterans that not only gives them an increase in their educational benefits, but if they stay in for a certain period of time than they can transfer those educational benefits to their spouses and or children. That’s a very important aspect I think of incentivizing people of staying in the military.

“We”? Stay classy John. And keep up the straight talk.

Suffice it to say, Obama voted in favor of the bill (and signed on early as a co-sponsor). Which makes this McCain cheap shot even cheaper:

Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America’s veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I have earned the right to make that claim.

Talk is cheap, and tuition is expensive. You earn that “right” by backing up your lofty rhetoric with actual votes. Otherwise, your advocacy is little more than a campaign expedient.

[From Obsidian Wings: Coopt the Vote]

Bob Herbert wrote about the surprisingly dickish John McCain, on May 6th, 2008:

Who wouldn’t support an effort to pay for college for G.I.’s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in combat zones and in some cases have been wounded?

We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?

Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Senator John McCain.

and

This is not exactly first-class treatment of the nation’s warriors.

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual cost of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being spent on the wars we’re asking service members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in mind is that the money that goes to bolstering the education of returning veterans is an investment, in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the nation.

The notion that expanding educational benefits will have a negative effect on retention seems silly. The Webb bill would cover tuition at a rate comparable to the highest tuition at a state school in the state in which the veteran would be enrolled. That kind of solid benefit would draw talented individuals into the military in large numbers.

Senator Webb, a former secretary of the Navy who specialized in manpower issues, said he has seen no evidence that G.I.’s would opt out of the service in significantly higher numbers because of such benefits.

Senator McCain’s office said on Monday that it was following the Pentagon’s lead on this matter, getting guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under pressure because of his unwillingness to support Senator Webb’s effort, Senator McCain introduced legislation with substantially fewer co-sponsors last week that expands some educational benefits for G.I.’s, but far less robustly than Senator Webb’s bill.

“It’s not even close to the Webb bill,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group.