Rotting Fish

As published on Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch and Online Journal, 7/31/10:






Congress has just failed to pass the 9/11 health care bill, which would have compensated and provided medical care for thousands of first responders, those who have become gravely ill from breathing toxic dust at the World Trade Center nearly nine years ago. Hundreds have already died. At the time, our government declared the air at Ground Zero safe, just as it had vouched that Agent Orange was harmless several decades earlier, or Corexit innocuous now. Soon enough, thousands of BP clean up workers will have to litigate, and many, if not most, will die before they’ll see a penny. Same old, same old.

Opposing the 9/11 bill, many congressmen complained about its 7.4 billion price tag. Enough of big government, it’s belt tightening time! We’ll only loosen our purse string, of course, to assist distressed banks. In 2008, Washington gave $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs, which came to $42 for every American man, woman and child, including the unemployed and the homeless. Come on, man, don’t be so stingy! It’s Goldman Sachs, dude! The 9/11 health bill would have cost each of us 24 bucks, but you must get your priorities straight, and our leaders, whether Republican or Democratic, always know whom they must take care of, first, last and always. Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street run in a loop.

Unlike Salahi or Lewinsky, Goldman Sachs alumni don’t need ruses or tricks to party inside the White House. Guess whose head’s been bobbing all this time? Speaking of noggins, here are some good news: Unlike in the Third World, where there’s corruption at every level, where nearly everyone with any power, whether a policeman, fireman, clerk or teacher, uses it as leverage to earn a few extra bucks, we are, for now, only rotting at the top. Only our head stinks.

And boy, does it stink! This week, we learn that the Pentagon has “misplaced” $8.7 billion in Iraq reconstruction fund, money made from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas, and from assets frozen before we invaded. We stole their money, in short, and they are suing to get it back. White-collar thieves normally tweak ledgers, but the Pentagon was so corrupt, it didn’t even bother. Billions have disappeared before without provoking an outrage. With our beer and SUV peddling media spewing nonstop garbage, nothing of consequence can stay in focus for long. Today’s headline: “Animal Experts Debunk the Alpha-Dog Myth.”

Until now, corruption has remained an abstraction to most Americans. That’s why it doesn’t quite hurt. Soon enough, however, expect to experience it up close. As all of our governments, from federal on down, continue to operate in the red, municipal wages will fail to keep up with costs of living. That’s why petty graft will become a part of daily life, just like in the so-called developing world.

In fact, we already belong to the undeveloping world. Are we not men? We are undevo. As we unravel, be prepared to pay traffic cops when they stop you for any violation, real or imagined. "Speeding? But I wasn't speeding, officer!" "Of course you were speeding." Be ready to tip teachers so they will give your kids a better grade and won't ignore them in class. As we slide, government will become much more inefficient, to the point where you must pay a bribe to get anything done. If you need a passport or a driver's license, there’s no harm in greasing the palm of that unsmiling clerk.

The poorest Americans already know about the insolence, contempt or brutality of some petty officials, for they have longed experienced Third World conditions inside this “greatest of nations.” For most of us, that sucker punch still coils. We’re still number one, if only in our minds. Why, there’s an impressive new skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, catty corner from the site of the World Trade Center. It’s the new headquarters of Goldman Sachs. With a timely assist from American working stiffs, the world’s leading swindling outfit is not doing too badly, it is clear. Should this gleaming edifice ever blow up, however, I’d advise future first responders to think twice before inhaling the pulverized banksters. These silk-suited gentlemen are more toxic than anything you can imagine.






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Critical Ocean Organisms Are Disappearing

Science Now, July 28, 2010:


The number of marine phytoplankton, the microscopic organisms that gobble greenhouse gases and directly or indirectly feed every animal in the ocean, has been declining by about 1% of the global average per year, according to a new study. If the trend continues, it could decimate ocean food chains and accelerate global warming.

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Delphine "Dey Dey" Nguyen,

world popping champion, has traveled back to Vietnam, birthplace of her parents, to give workshops. When I lived in Vietnam for 2 1/2 years from 1999 to 2001, I talked to no classes, and no journals published my poetry. My poems are still unpublishable there. In the U.S., poets are invisible. In Vietnam, they are slightly more relevant, but also potentially more threatening.

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Afghanistan war logs: How US marines sanitised record of bloodbath

Guardian, 7/26/10:




War logs show how marines gave cleaned up accounts of incident in which they killed 19 civilians


Brevity is the hallmark of military reporting, but even by those standards the description of one disastrous event is remarkably short: "The patrol returned to base."

It started with a suicide bomb. On 4 March 2007 a convoy of US marines, who arrived in Afghanistan three weeks earlier, were hit by an explosives-rigged minivan outside the city of Jalalabad.

The marines made a frenzied escape, opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded.

None of this, however, was captured in the initial military account, written by the marines themselves. It simply says that, simultaneous to the suicide explosion, "the patrol received small arms fire from three directions".

And the subsequent rampage as they drove away – which would later be the subject of a 17-day military inquiry and a 12,000-page report – is captured in five words: "The patrol returned to JAF [Jalalabad air field]."

The soldiers' initial concern, it appears, was a wounded marine – their only casualty. Forty-nine minutes after the initial bombing, they requested a "routine medevac" for a private with "shrapnel wounds to the arm". He was evacuated to safety.

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Hugh Kaufman talks about Corexit

on Democracy Now, 7/21/10:


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Well, Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye. In this case, these dispersants were used in massive quantities, almost two million gallons so far, to hide the magnitude of the spill and save BP money. And the government—both EPA, NOAA, etc.—have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to use these dispersants to hide the magnitude of the gusher that’s been going on for almost three months.

Congressman Markey and Nadler, as well as Senator Mikulski, have been heroes in this respect. Congressman Markey made the BP and government put a camera down there to show the public the gusher. And when they did that, experts saw that the amount of material, oil being released, is orders of magnitudes greater than what BP and NOAA and EPA were saying. And the cover-up started to evaporate.

But the use of dispersants has not. Consequently, we have people, wildlife—we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic—it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.

Now, the one thing that I did want to mention to you, Amy, that’s occurred in most investigations, back even in the Watergate days, people said, "follow the money." And that’s correct. In this case, you’ve got to follow the money. Who saves money by using these toxic dispersants? Well, it’s BP. But then the next question—I’ve only seen one article that describes it—who owns BP? And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it’s the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Summers and others in the administration. So I think what’s needed, we now know that there’s a cover-up. Dispersants are being used. Congress, at least three Congress folks—Congressman Markey, Congressman Nadler and Senator Mikulski—are on the case. And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf.

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I have an essay

in the new issue of the Japanese journal, Monkey Business. It's translated from this piece. What I'm really happy about, however, is a porfolio of 16 photographs taken from my blog, State of the Union:

Top to bottom: Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Bethlehem; Philadelphia; Camden; Philadelphia; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Atlantic City; Philadelphia; Philadelphia; Philadelphia; Washington; Los Angeles; New York.

Poet Lynn Behrendt just bought two of the above images, by the way.




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Toxic Manicure

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What If He's Right?

James Howard Kunstler, July 19, 2010:


Just when America was celebrating the provisional end of BP's Macondo oil blowout, and getting back to important issues like Kim Kardashian's body-suit collection, along comes Matthew Simmons with a rather strange and alarming outcry on doings in the Gulf of Mexico that contradicts the mood of renewed festivity, as well as just about every shred of reportage from any media outlet, mainstream or otherwise.

Matt Simmon's Houston-based company has been the leading investment bank to the US oil industry for a long time, financing exploration and drilling in places like the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons, 68, recently retired from day-to-day management of the company. For much of the decade he has been what may be described as a peak oil activist. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert, warned the public that Saudi Arabia's oil production had reached its limits and, more generally, that an oil-dependent world was entering a zone of serious trouble over its primary resource. He took this aggressive stance despite risking the ire of the people he did business with.

Matt Simmons is a sober individual and a very nice man (I've met him twice over the years), a button-downed corporate executive who's been around the oil business for forty years. His knowledge is deep and comprehensive. From the beginning of the BP Macondo blowout incident in April, he's taken the far out position that the well-bore is fatally compromised and that BP has been consistently lying about their operations to stop the flow of oil. Perhaps most radically, Simmons claims that an oil "gusher" is pouring into the Gulf some distance from the drilling site itself.

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Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball

Joe Bageant in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, 7/6/10:



Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse


Joe7-5 As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringo's hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you -- the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts -- who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones.

After twelve generations of lavish living at the expense of the rest of the world, it is understandable that citizens of the so-called developed countries have come to consider it quite normal. In fact, Americans expect it to become plusher in the future, increasingly chocked with techno gadgetry, whiz bang processed foodstuffs, automobiles, entertainments, inordinately large living spaces -- forever.

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Juarez Mayor: Criminals used terrorist tactics

EL PASO TIMES, 7/16/10:


JUAREZ - Criminals using terrorist tactics detonated the car bomb that killed three people in the Downtown district, Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said today.

Ferriz said law officers were lured into the deadly trap Thursday night at a busy intersection on the 16 de Septiembre Avenue. Police thought they were responding to a homicide in which a city officer was the victim.

When police and paramedics arrived, they found a man impersonating a city police officer still alive. They noticed that his uniform was slightly different from others and that he was not wearing a badge. Still, they proceeded to treat the area as a crime scene. Then a Ford Focus at the intersection exploded about 8 p.m.

So forceful was the blast that it reduced the car to a metal pancake. Shrapnel hit two federal police trucks.

Police have not identified the federal officer who died. They said he was between 25 and 30 years old.

Also killed were the man who posed as a police officer and a paramedic.

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And William S. Lind from 2006:



Boomerang Effect

Last week, one of my students, a Marine captain, asked whether I had heard a news report about an "IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati, and if I thought we would soon start seeing IEDs here in the U.S. I replied that I had not heard the news story, but as to whether we would see IEDs here at home, the answer is yes.

One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state. Most American troops will see this within the framework of counterinsurgency. But a minority will apply their new-found knowledge in a very different way. After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state. It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities.

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[Yours truly on bridge between El Paso and Juarez, 2006. I would love to see Juarez again. Had some excellent tripe there. Here's a piece I wrote in Vietnamese about Juarez, Ojinaga and Tijuana.]



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THE D

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Corexit

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["Top Killing"]



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Deepwater Horizon: The Best Case, Worst Case and Most Likely Case Scenarios

Richard Heinberg, 7/2/10:




Reports from the Gulf of Mexico just keep getting worse. Estimates of the rate of oil spillage from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead continue gushing (the latest official number: up to 60,000 barrels per day, with BP now saying the maximum potential leakage rate could be 100,000 b/d). Forecasts for how long it will take before the leak is finally plugged are pluming toward August—maybe even December. In addition to the oil itself, BP has (in this case deliberately) spilled a million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersant. Biologists’ accounts of the devastation being wreaked on fish, birds, amphibians, turtles, coral reefs, and marshes grow more apocalyptic by the day—especially in view of the fact that the vast majority of animal victims die alone and uncounted. Warnings are now being raised that the natural gas being vented along with the oil will significantly extend the giant dead zones in the Gulf. And guesses as to the ultimate economic toll of this still-unfolding tragedy—on everything from the tourism and fishing industries of at least five coastal states to the pensioners in Britain whose futures are at risk if BP files for bankruptcy or is taken over by a Chinese oil company—surge every time an analyst steps back to consider the situation from another angle.

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Cambodian bamboo train

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Resource Furniture: Italian-Designed Space Saving Furniture

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DecoBike City of Miami Beach Public Bike Sharing System

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Population Growth Must Stop

Gary Peters at The Oil Drum, 7/1/10:



Earth’s population is approaching seven billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day. Rich nations have long assured poor nations that they, too, would one day be rich and that their rates of population growth would decline, but it is no longer clear that this will occur for most of today’s poor nations. Resource scarcities, especially oil, are likely to limit future economic growth; the demographic transition that has accompanied economic growth in the past may not be possible for many nations today. Nearly 220,000 people are added to the planet every day, further compounding most resource and environmental problems. The United States adds another person every eleven seconds. We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now.

Much has been written about population growth since the first edition of Malthus's famous essay was published in 1798. However, an underlying truth is usually left unsaid: Population growth on Earth must cease. It makes more sense for humans to bring growth to a halt by adjusting birth rates downward in humane ways rather than waiting for death rates to move upward as the four horsemen reappear. Those who think it inhumane to control human fertility have apparently never experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns, where people struggle just to stay alive for another day.

In 1970 Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on developing new plant strains that formed the basis for the Green Revolution that began in the 1960s. However, in his Nobel acceptance speech Borlaug perceptively commented that "There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind." That was four decades ago. During that time the world's population increased by more than three billion and the struggle to feed, clothe, house, and educate ever-growing numbers of people continues. "Temporary skirmishes" seem persistent, if not permanent.

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Warning To Gulf Volunteers: Almost Every Cleanup Worker From The 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Is Now Dead

Michael Snyder at Business Insider, 6/30/10:



Are you sure that you want to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? In a previous article we documented a number of the health dangers from this oil spill that many scientists are warning us of, and now it has been reported on CNN that the vast majority of those who worked to clean up the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska are now dead. Yes, you read that correctly. Almost all of them are dead.

In fact, the expert that CNN had on said that the life expectancy for those who worked to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill is only about 51 years. Considering the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now many times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster, are you sure you want to volunteer to be on a cleanup crew down there? After all, the American Dream is not to make big bucks for a few months helping BP clean up their mess and then drop dead 20 or 30 years early.

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Earthbound

As published on Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice and Online Journal, 7/4/10:



At an airport, I saw two adjacent ads, “DENVER THANKS OUR MILITARY,” then, “LIVE. EVERY TRACK. ALL SEASON LONG. NASCAR ON SPEED.” No irony was intended by this juxtaposition, but our troops are certainly killing and dying to sustain our car infatuation. On television, coverage of the Gulf of Mexico disaster is frequently interrupted by car commercials. Our oil car habit is destroying this planet, but we cannot wean ourselves from this addiction. We express ourselves through automobiles, after all. Cars are us. In much of America, one rarely sees bodies, only cars. Our land and cityscapes have been deformed for the hurling, private steel box.

A flying car will soon be available for $194,000. Its Italianate name, Terrafugia, translates to Fleeing the Earth, so our Jetsons future is still on, many hope, even as more Americans are sleeping in their cars, and many more are struggling to fuel their lugubrious lemons. The Motor City, Detroit, has been in full collapse mode for decades, to be slowly reincarnated as an urban agrarian zone. Instead of the clanking of heavy machinery, one will soon hear cockcrows among gunshots.

We will not flee this earth. On a finite planet, growth is also finite, and we’ve already reached all limits. There will be no economic recovery, because economic growth is no longer possible. The cheapest labor has been found, and demand for all resources, primarily oil, is outstripping supply. Nearly a billion people are already starving, and a billion lack clean water. The average Mozambican uses a gallon of water a day, less than a third of what you and I flush down the toilet each time. By contrast, the average American consumes 151 gallons of water daily.

We use more of everything. With five percent of the world’s population, we engorge on 24 percent of its resources. Got a problem with that? If we can pay for it, we’re entitled, aren’t we? But there’s the problem. We’re the world’s biggest debtor nation. We haven’t been paying for squat. As a starving planet looks on, we’re like the biggest pig who refuses to leave the all day, all night, all-you-can-eat buffet, with our moment of reckoning willed and deferred to our distant progeny. It’s a farce, really. As we slobber, no one dares to nudge us from the trough because, well, we’re so well-armed. We’ll kick your ass! Got a problem with that?

To maintain our position as the biggest loser, we have troops in 130 countries. With the American attention span reduced to a nano second or less, no real pretext is needed when we invade and occupy a sovereign nation. Why are we still in Afghanistan? It’s not to catch Bin Laden, that’s for sure. His name hasn’t been mentioned with any urgency for years. Though blamed for two bankrupting wars, he was invisible during our last presidential election. The Washington Post did reveal, however, that the CIA had made a video of a fake Bin Laden sitting around the fire, talking about gay sex. Though our spooks couldn’t stop terrorists from boarding four different planes on September 11, 2001, they were certainly creative, in an Animal House sort of way. Even if this video was never released, no one bothered to ask if those tapes that had circulated were real. Who cares? Have you seen Britney’s latest outfit? Likewise, whenever anyone challenges any aspect of the official version of 9/11, he’s labeled as a kook, but why should we trust Washington on anything, when it has proven, over and over again, to be incapable of telling the truths?!

Our leaders are unctuous crooks, and the country seems aimless. That’s why your average American just wants to be left alone, to resume his shopping spree when the economy does revive. Else, anticipating the worst, he stocks up on ammo, beans and tuna. What’s missing is any collective purpose or vision. With each man, woman and child hooked to his own ipod and laptop, we are alienated and alone. Thus, Gary Faulkner, armed with just a sword, knife and Chicom pistol, headed to Pakistan to capture Bin Laden. He took baby Bush’s promise to “smoke him out” at face value, not knowing that this threat was no more real than O.J.’s vow to capture Nicole’s “real killer.”

Though many still don’t know it yet, we are a poor nation. As this Mother of all Depressions becomes more undeniable, Americans will have no choice but to endure, tolerate and, yes, even enjoy and appreciate each other on a much more intimate level. Our towns and cities will become more compact, and each home will have to accommodate more bodies, from returning adult children to close, then distant relatives, to boarders. More Americans will have to share their kitchen and bathrooms with strangers. Bedrooms will be partitioned. Destitution and proximity will breed conflicts, certainly, but they will also force people to cooperate and compromise. We will become dirtier, even bloodier, but at least we will have real lives, and not virtual ones spent in front of a screen while we stuff our faces with endless poison.

The creators of the Jetsons also brought us the Flintstones, likely a more accurate portrayal of our future, but in that cartoon, there is also the personal automobile. Spoiled by a century of cheap oil, the American mind seems incapable of imagining life without a nice set of wheels at its center. Made of stones and sticks, Fred’s appears to run on nothing. We won’t be so lucky.

As the oil age recedes in the mind’s rear view mirror, science fiction will become a genre about the past. Pondering those who needed machines to do just about everything, from brushing their teeth to writing, to self pleasure, future readers will be amused, disgusted and only seldomly envious. Imagine a world where music was a nuisance because it had become repetitive and could not be silenced! Imagine people who could barely walk, yet flew!







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Live from Planet Norte

Joe Bageant, 6/27/10:


America's totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder, or, life is a titty tuck and a Dodge truck


Starting with the Homeland Security probe at Washington's Reagan Airport, arrival back in the United States resembles an alien abduction to a planet of bright lights, strange beings and incomprehensible behavior. The featureless mysophobic landscape of DC's Virginia suburbs seems to indicate that homogeneity and sterility are the native religions. Especially after spending eight months in Mexico's pungent atmosphere of funky, sensual open air markets, rotting vegetation, smoking street food grills, sweat, agave nectar and ghost orchids.

The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.

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