THE FLASHLIGHT, April 14-20, 2007
THE FLASHLIGHT, April 14-20, 2007
The World
Climate Change
PBS 4-13, In a book called Deep Economy, Bill McKibben said that we must cut down drastically on carbon emissions during the next ten years. This will require Americans to scale down the size of their economy and to change their life style. He recommended increased use of farmer’s markets (now booming) to cut down on the cost of gasoline for transporting food over long distances to market. He recommended that solar panels be routinely placed on the roofs of houses. By these and other measures we should aim at cutting carbon emissions by 80% in 2050.
NYT 4-15. Americans used 100 billion plastic bags a year. They are made from petroleum and are it takes a thousand years, more or less, for them to biologically degrade. San Francisco is the first major city to ban plastic bags from large grocery stores and drugstores. It’s aim is to cut plastic bag use by 80%.
PBS 4-14. Terrorism: Suicide Bombing
The global war on terrorism is failing: suicide bombing is on the rise. Some Muslim clerics are trying to legitimize by portraying it as a heroic attack on an enemy target. They depict he occupation of Iraq, a Muslim country, as evil.
Suicide bombers are seen by many as “martyrs without borders.” Suicide bombing is globalized: Al-Qaeda is on the march, not on the run.
Iraq
` PBS 4-14. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for bombing the Iraqi Parliament Building.
PBS 4-17. Four car bombings in Baghdad, 183 dead, mostly Shia. Moqtada as-Sadr demands that Maliki set a deadline for US withdrawal.
NYTimes 4-20. Harry Reid, Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate, says that the “surge” is useless and the Iraq War is lost.
CNBC 4-15. George Tenet has written a book which is about to be published. In it he defends himself and the CIA against charges that they distorted or manipulated intelligence on the prospects for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He denies the famous “slam-dunk” quotation, saying that the CIA warmed that even if the invasion was easy, the aftermath would be very difficult to manage. Tenet says that Vice President Cheney was responsible for the manipulation of intelligence.
One CNBC commentator, David Ignatius, said that blaming the CIA was incorrect because both American political leaders and the American public were very ignorant about the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In an article in the New York Review of Books, “Israel, America, and AIPAC,” (April 12, 2007” billionaire George Soros, a non-practicing Jew, accused the Bush Administration of making a major blunder by refusing to recognize the Palestinian Unity Government so long as it includes Hamas. Soros says that Hamas is not monolithic, and its political arm is more interested in compromise with the Israelis than its military arm. Moreover, he said that no peace settlement is possible without the support of Hamas. He said it was also a blunder to support Israel for withholding millions in taxes owed to the Palestinians.
Soros said that the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, is close to the neocons, and was an “enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War.”
[The text of this article may be found on the Internet.]
US Politics: Justice Department Scandal
NYTimes 4-19. On Thursday Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put on a miserable performance testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and all but one Republican Senator express strong dissatisfaction with him. Senator Spector said that the testimony of Gonzales was “significantly if not totally at variance with the facts.”
CNN 4-13. It was also reported that five million emails messages sent from Karl Rove to the Republican Naitonal Committee have been deleted. Senator Leahy (D) said that deletion was nearly impossible. Deleting or damaging White House documents was made illegal after the Watergate scandal.
Washington Post 4-4. In an article, “Delete does not mean disappear,”
It takes years for a computer, especially one with a big hard drive, to chew up deleted messages. Even encrypted mail cannot conceal the subject, addresses, date, and time of the message.
Science: Sexual Abstinence Program Fails Completely
Associated Press 4-14. This study, by Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, N. J. had a control group: students outside of the government’s multimillion dollar program promoting sexual abstinence among young teenagers. Those studied were 16 years and six months at time of study. Those who had been in the program were given no information about condoms and other forms of birth control.
The students in the program and those in the control group had the same average time of first sexual intercourse: 14 years and 9 months. They had the same number of sexual partners. In both groups half of the students had sex before the age of sixteen years six months, and half did not.
In the current year $100 million dollars of federal money were spent on the program. The report recommended that the program be discontinued.
The World
Climate Change
PBS 4-13, In a book called Deep Economy, Bill McKibben said that we must cut down drastically on carbon emissions during the next ten years. This will require Americans to scale down the size of their economy and to change their life style. He recommended increased use of farmer’s markets (now booming) to cut down on the cost of gasoline for transporting food over long distances to market. He recommended that solar panels be routinely placed on the roofs of houses. By these and other measures we should aim at cutting carbon emissions by 80% in 2050.
NYT 4-15. Americans used 100 billion plastic bags a year. They are made from petroleum and are it takes a thousand years, more or less, for them to biologically degrade. San Francisco is the first major city to ban plastic bags from large grocery stores and drugstores. It’s aim is to cut plastic bag use by 80%.
PBS 4-14. Terrorism: Suicide Bombing
The global war on terrorism is failing: suicide bombing is on the rise. Some Muslim clerics are trying to legitimize by portraying it as a heroic attack on an enemy target. They depict he occupation of Iraq, a Muslim country, as evil.
Suicide bombers are seen by many as “martyrs without borders.” Suicide bombing is globalized: Al-Qaeda is on the march, not on the run.
Iraq
` PBS 4-14. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for bombing the Iraqi Parliament Building.
PBS 4-17. Four car bombings in Baghdad, 183 dead, mostly Shia. Moqtada as-Sadr demands that Maliki set a deadline for US withdrawal.
NYTimes 4-20. Harry Reid, Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate, says that the “surge” is useless and the Iraq War is lost.
CNBC 4-15. George Tenet has written a book which is about to be published. In it he defends himself and the CIA against charges that they distorted or manipulated intelligence on the prospects for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He denies the famous “slam-dunk” quotation, saying that the CIA warmed that even if the invasion was easy, the aftermath would be very difficult to manage. Tenet says that Vice President Cheney was responsible for the manipulation of intelligence.
One CNBC commentator, David Ignatius, said that blaming the CIA was incorrect because both American political leaders and the American public were very ignorant about the Middle East.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In an article in the New York Review of Books, “Israel, America, and AIPAC,” (April 12, 2007” billionaire George Soros, a non-practicing Jew, accused the Bush Administration of making a major blunder by refusing to recognize the Palestinian Unity Government so long as it includes Hamas. Soros says that Hamas is not monolithic, and its political arm is more interested in compromise with the Israelis than its military arm. Moreover, he said that no peace settlement is possible without the support of Hamas. He said it was also a blunder to support Israel for withholding millions in taxes owed to the Palestinians.
Soros said that the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, is close to the neocons, and was an “enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War.”
[The text of this article may be found on the Internet.]
US Politics: Justice Department Scandal
NYTimes 4-19. On Thursday Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put on a miserable performance testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and all but one Republican Senator express strong dissatisfaction with him. Senator Spector said that the testimony of Gonzales was “significantly if not totally at variance with the facts.”
CNN 4-13. It was also reported that five million emails messages sent from Karl Rove to the Republican Naitonal Committee have been deleted. Senator Leahy (D) said that deletion was nearly impossible. Deleting or damaging White House documents was made illegal after the Watergate scandal.
Washington Post 4-4. In an article, “Delete does not mean disappear,”
It takes years for a computer, especially one with a big hard drive, to chew up deleted messages. Even encrypted mail cannot conceal the subject, addresses, date, and time of the message.
Science: Sexual Abstinence Program Fails Completely
Associated Press 4-14. This study, by Mathematica Policy Research of Princeton, N. J. had a control group: students outside of the government’s multimillion dollar program promoting sexual abstinence among young teenagers. Those studied were 16 years and six months at time of study. Those who had been in the program were given no information about condoms and other forms of birth control.
The students in the program and those in the control group had the same average time of first sexual intercourse: 14 years and 9 months. They had the same number of sexual partners. In both groups half of the students had sex before the age of sixteen years six months, and half did not.
In the current year $100 million dollars of federal money were spent on the program. The report recommended that the program be discontinued.
posted by THE FLASHLIGHT at 11:43 AM
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