The Flashlight, Oct. 20-26, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, October 20-26, 2007

International

Iraqi Oil

Truthout.org editorial. 10-25, Jack Miles, “Endgame for Iraqi Oil?” (The author is professor of English and Religious Studies at UCal Irvine). Iraq’s oil reserves are worth about $30 trillion in today’s prices. Alan Greenspan recently acknowledged that “everybody knows that the Iraq War is largely about oil.” Gen. John Abizaid (retired) said of the War “of course it’s about oil, we can’t rely deny that.”
Maliki’s government is likely to follow the example of its neighbors and outlaw foreign control over the nation’s oil development. Only short-terms contracts for specific tasks by foreigners are likely to win Iraqi acceptance.
A bill, approved by the US Congress that would give control of Iraqi oil development to the US and British oil companies, is now pending in Iraq’s Parliament, But it is unlikely to pass because of the opposition of both politicians and the Iraqi oil workers union. One signal of its coming rejection is the vigorous protest of the Maliki government against the operations of foreign mercenaries in Iraq (Blackwater and Dynacorp). Another signal is a bill passed on October 17 by the Maliki government giving $1.1 billion in contracts to Iran and China to build power plants in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala.
The editorial concludes: “The eerie silence of the Bush Administration about oil grows all the more deafening as the price of crude climbs toward $100 a barrel. Blood for oil may never have been a good deal, but so much blood for no oil at all may seem a far worse one.”

World Oil Production

Guardian 10-22. The German-based Energy Watch Group reports that the peak in world oil production was reached in 2006, much earlier than expected. Production of gas, coal and uranium has also peaked and is expected to fall from now on.


Education Excellence: Multinational Study

The Economist 10-20, p. 80. In a comparison between nations in producing educational excellence, it was found that the US lagged behind its peers. There were three main reasons: 1) The US recruits its K-12 teachers mostly from the bottom third of college graduates. In peer industrialized nations, teachers are recruited in intense competition from the best college graduates. 2) The US does not get the best out of its teachers because it does not systematically reward excellent and creative performances. 3) When pupils lag behind, the US does not intervene early enough with tutoring et al.
All these faults can be corrected without excessive cost.

US News

Health and Stress
Medical News Today 10-25. A national study of the American Psychological Association found that one third of all adult Americans felt extremely stressed. One half of all American felt that stress damaged their health, their personal relationships, and their productivity at work. This upward trend has occurred over the last five years and is expected to worsen on account of the housing finance crisis.

Homelessness
The Economist 10-20, p. 46. It is no longer true that most of the homeless are single men troubled by mental illness or drug addiction. About half of the homeless are families with young children who cannot afford housing: about 1.35 million children and 600,000 families . The prospect of home foreclosures ahead should increase the numbers of homeless families. Each homeless person uses about $40,000 a year in public services, mainly hospital care and jail time. Punitive measures are useless. When shelter and counseling are provided they are no more expensive than the less useful services currently offered.

Wildfires in Southern California
CBS 10-21, Fires are worse now: they are hotter, bigger, and more destructive. This is because in recent decades the weather has been the hottest in a thousand years. On account of climate change the fire season has been extended two months each year. Southern California has received only three inches of rain so far this year. The air is drier and the winds are stronger.
CNN 10-22. The fires in Southern California within seven counties are out of control. This is worse than anyone predicted. The fires extend from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. The dry Santa Ana winds are blowing westward from the desert. The National Guard has been asked to send 800 men from guarding the border to help firefighters. Thick smoke is hazardous to asthmatics and others and prevents airplanes from dumping water and fire retardants on the blazes. In Orange County some fires were started by arsonists. In San Diego emergency services are operating efficiently providing housing, food, and medicine to residents forced
to flee their homes.
CNN and PBS 10-23. 1300 homes have been destroyed. 600,000 acres are burnt over or burning. Strong winds and high temperatures are expected to last until Wednesday evening (10-24).
Guardian and CNN 10-24. There is over one billion dollars of damage from these fires. Nearly one million people have been evacuated from their homes. The Federal Government has classified this as a major disaster, thus releasing more funds. The FBI has been called in to investigate.
NYTimes 10-25. San Diego County is the largest county in California without a county-wide fire department (local departments only). The taxes are low in relation to the growth of population.

Lousiana Election
The new governor of Lousiana is a Republican, Bobby Jindal, whose parents, both scientists, are Hindus from India. Bobby graduated from Brown University Phi Beta Kappa and is a Rhodes Scholar. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he is a proponent of the theory of “Intelligent Design.” He want to solve the health insurance problem by free market measures.

The Flashlight, Oct. 13-19, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, October 13-19, 2007

The Woman and the Python

ABC News, 10-18. On Monday just before dawn a Brooklyn woman, Nadege Brunacci, 38, was washing her hands in her bathroom when she saw the head of a snake peering out of her toilet. She slammed down the lid of the toilet and called for help. The snake turned out to be a seven foot long python. Plumbers had to tear apart the downstairs neighbor’s pipes to capture it.

Pakistan

CNN 10-18, NYTimes 10-19. In Karachi a huge crowd gathered to welcome home, after an eight-year absence, Benazir Bhutto, a woman politician trained in the US and UK (Harvard and Oxford) and an ally of the US. Her favorable rating is 63%, double that of President Pervez Musharraf. They have formed an alliance, giving her the post of Prime Minister while he retains the Presidency. Unfortunately, jihadists launched multiple attacks in the crowd in the form of two explosions, killing 136 and wounding hundreds more. Ms. Bhutto, unhurt, reached the safety of her fortified home in the city.

France

NYTimes 10-19. French President Nicholas Sarkozy announced the end of his eleven-year second marriage. On the same day public sector employees declared a national strike. Power was cut off even in the presidential residence in Versailles.

Religion International

Vatican Sex Scandal
Guardian 10-15. A young man carrying hidden audio and visual equipment recorded a Vatican official, Msgr. Thomas Stenico, 60, inviting him to engage in sado-masochistic sex. The official expressed disappointment that the youth “did not fancy him.”


Dalai Lama Award

PBS 10-17. The US Congress awarded a gold medal to the Dalai Lama, 72, in Washington. The government of China expressed outrage because it regarded the Dalai Lama as a “divider” seeking to separate Tibet from China.

The United States

Attitudes toward Iran
NY Times 10-18. Pres. Bush warned that if Iran obtains nuclear arms it could lead to World War III.
The day before, Gen. John Abizaid, retired, said “There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran.”
This week Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iran and said “there is no evidence” that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Cancer
PBS 10-15. Most rates of death from cancer have declined: this is true of prostate, lung, breast and colorectal caner. Only liver cancer death rates are up. Earlier detection and treatment are responsible for the improvements. However, the aging of the population is expected to push up cancer death rates again.

Politics
CNN 10-18. According to a new Reuters-Zogby Poll, the favorability rating of Pres. Bush is 24%. That of Congress is “lower.”

PBS, CNN 10-18. Sec. of Defense Gates says approval of the Armenian Genocide bill might involve reparations [to the Armenians from Turkey] and even border changes [between Armenia and Turkey]. He opposed its passage

NYTimes 10-19. David Brooks recommended Gov. Mike Huckabee, R, for President. He is likeable, a former Baptist minister but not at war with mainstream US culture, in tune with the white working class, and a successful governor who worked well with a 90% Democratic legislature.

The Arctic

NYTimes 10-19. The US Coast Guard is planning its first operating base in the Arctic at Barrow, Alaska. It will deal with ships plying the increasingly ice-free waters of the long desired Northwest Passage. This passages cuts 5,000 miles off the trip between Western Europe and East Asia, which now requires going through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. Initially the base would have a helicopter and some small boats.

The Flashlight, Oct. 6-12, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, October 6 - 12, 2007

China and Religion

NY Times 10-11. China no longer tries to crush all religions in its territory because religion can be a force for stability. Instead the government is trying to “manage” religion. For example, Order #5 of the State Administration of Religious Affairs:
“The Management Measures for the Reincarnation of Living Buddhism in Tibetan Buddhism” says that monks are prohibited from returning from the dead without government permission. No one outside of China can influence the reincarnation process; only monasteries in China can apply for permission.

US News
The Armenian Genocide Recognition Bill and it Enemies.

NY Times, Guardian 10-11. The US House of Representatives is considering a non-binding bill, which affirms as a genocide the attempt of Turkish government leaders in 1915 to exterminate the Armenian minority in what is now Turkey. 1.5 million Armenians were killed. This resolution was approved by the House Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 27 to 21. A bipartisan majority in the House supports the resolution. The Senate is considering a similar resolution.
Armenian advocacy in the US is especially strong in California, Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, where large Armenian populations reside. The Armenian Assembly of America, one of three Washington based advocacy groups, has a budget this year of $13.6 million for all purposes. The Turkish government has hired three lobbying firms in Washington and has spent about a million dollars this year alone, just on trying to fight this bill.
The current government of Turkey says that if the resolution is approved by the whole House, Turkey would reconsider its support of the war in Iraq. The official Turkish government response: “It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in history.” 10-11 CNN. Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador to the US in protest.
The White House vigorously opposes the resolution, calling the 1915 events “mass killing” instead of “genocide.” Sec. of Defense Gates said that 70% of air cargo for Iraq passes through or comes from Turkey,
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, 53 non-Armenian ethnic groups and a number of Jewish organizations support the resolution. Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, also supports it. He said that Turkey needs the US more than the US needs Turkey.
However, Rahm Emanuel, fourth ranking Democratic House leader, opposes the resolution. So does the Anti-Defamation League, a powerful Jewish lobbying organization led by Abraham Foxman. In Aug. 21 the ADL admitted that the massive number of Armenian deaths was tantamount to genocide, but that the Turkish government did not “intend” to exterminate the Armenians. Furthermore, he called the resolution pending in Congress “a counterproductive diversion.”
In order to understand the prolonged denial of the Armenian Genocide by the government of Israel and some American Jewish leaders, it is necessary to know that Turkey is one of the few Muslim countries which recognizes the state of Israel.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that the resolution will be brought before the whole House before Congress adjourns this year.

The most recent and very well received book on the subject of the Armenian Genocide is written by a Turkish scholar, now living in the US, Taner Acsam. The book is called A Shameful Act; The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. 2007. Paperback, $11.56 from Amazon.com.
Yair Auron, an Israeli professor, has examined Israel’s position in The Banality of Denial; Israel and the Armenian Genocide.
2004, paper, available from Amazon.com.

The Israel Lobby: a Debate
On 10/10 PBS News held a brief debate between John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby, and Abraham Foxham, Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxham has just published a book called The Deadliest of Lies an attempted refutation the work of Mearsheimer and Walt.
Foxham said that Mearsheimer exaggerated the power of the Israel Lobby in the US, and the such exaggeration is typical of anti-Semites. Mearsheimer answered that the best evidence of the power of the Israel Lobby is that although all American presidents have condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, and the planting of illegal Jewish settlements in that territory, not one president has had sufficient power to bring about the evacuation of those Palestinian lands.
Foxman said that Mearsheimer was wrong in blaming the Israel Lobby for starting the current Iraq war. He said, and Mearsheimer admitted, that the great majority of American Jews opposed the war. But Mearsheimer insisted that AIPAC (the American-Israel Political Action Committee) and the neoconservatives (mainly pro-Israel Jews) pushed hard for the war because they thought it was in the interests of Israel. He admitted that oil corporations played some role, but asserted that the Israel Lobby (as distinct from American Jews in general) was the most important cause of the war. He said the same groups were now pushing for an attack on Iran.

Note on the bios of Mearsheimer and Foxman.

Abraham Foxman, born in 1940, survived the Holocaust as a baby cared for by nuns. His parents also survived, but he lost many relatives. He graduated from CCNY with a B.A. and from New York University with a law degree. For details, see his Wiki biography on the Internet.

John Mearsheimer graduated from West Point in 1970, and then switched to political science. He earned his Ph.D from Cornell in 1981, and is a distinguished service professor of government at the University of Chicago.

US Policy on Torture

PBS 10-5. The White House refuses to release two memoranda of May, 2005, which authorized “harsh interrogation techniques” that are actually torture.
NY Times 10-7 Editorial. It said that the Bush Administration has led a systematic campaign to mislead Congress and the American people with regard to torture and abuse at secret prisons. The methods used have been considered torture for decades by civilized nations: simulated drowning, extreme heat and cold, prolonged stress positions, and isolation. The Bush Administration has used legal sophistries to justify these methods.
Comedy Central, Jon Stewart 10-10: We have made the “ultimate sacrifice” of our definitions of “torture” and “cruel,” words that are called up now to serve at the pleasure of the President.

Other US News

Gail Collins on Fred Thompson, new Republican candidate for President:
NY Times 10-11. “Thompson is now a Gucci wearing, Lincoln driving, Perrier drinking, and Grey Poupon spreading millionaire and Washington special interest lobbyist and actor…. He not only isn’t charismatic , he doesn’t even seem pleasant. If Fred is a man of the people, I am Jennifer Lopez.”

PBS 10-8. California is not only the biggest center of stem cell research in the US, and Stanford University is the biggest center in California.

CNN 10-12. Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global warming.
Doris Lessing has received the Nobel Prize for literature.

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The Flashlight Sept. 29 - Oct. 5, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, Sept. 29 – Oct. 5, 2007

Iraq: Blackwater USA in Trouble

CNN 10-1. The incident of September 16 in Nisour Square, Baghdad in which Blackwater gunmen killed helpless civilians, continued to make news. The Iraqi government accused the Blackwater men of opening fire first. An FBI team has been sent to Iraq to investigate.
NYTimes 10-2. Since 2005 Blackwater men have engaged in 195 shooting incidents in Iraq. Their total employees there = 861. The State Department, with whom they have a contract to protect diplomats in Baghdad and vicinity, has failed to oversee them.
PBS 10-2 In Iraq 25 Blackwater employees have been killed. Rep. Henry Waxman stated that private security contractors are too expensive, and that they anger the US military and the Iraqis. In 80% of shooting incidents in which they have been involved, the Blackwater gunman shot first. Waxman concluded that the actions of Blackwater undermined the US mission in Iraq.
NY Times 10-3. The latest report on the Nisour Square incident found that 17 Iraqi civilians died and 24 were injured. Blackwater helicopters overhead fired at cars in the square. A second Blackwater convoy at the opposite end of the square also fired.
CNN 10-4. The House voted to bring private contractors in Iraq under the jurisdiction of US criminal law. The Senate is considering similar legislation.
WPost 10-5. The US military report on the Nisour Square incident found that the Blackwater men opened fire without provocation and used excessive force against civilians. This corroborated the Iraqi government report.

Russia

PBS 10-1. Pres. Putin is planning to run for a seat in Parliament. He cannot serve another term as president, but he evidently plans to become prime minister.

US Politics
NY Times 10-1. James Dobson and other Christian evangelicals are threatening to third party candidate because the Republican frontrunner, Giuliani, believes in abortion rights for women.

W Post 10-3. Hilary Clinton has strengthened her lead over other Democrats: she has 53% of their votes compared to 20% for her nearest rival, Barack Obama. She also leads Giuliani in national polls.
CNN 10-3. Democratic candidates for 2008 have raised a total of $200 million dollars, which is double that raised by Republican candidates.
Among Republican candidates for President Rep. Ron Paul surprised observers by raising $5.1 million in the third quarter, almost equal to that raised by John McCain. Much of Paul’s money was raised on the Internet. He is firmly against continuing the Iraq War and Bush’s militaristic foreign policy. He is also concerned about threats to the civil and privacy rights of Americans.
CNN 10-4. Paul by profession is an obstetrician. He has been married to the same woman for fifty years.

CNN 10-3. The bipartisan bill in Congress to extend health insurance coverage to children whose parents cannot afford private health insurance was vetoed by Pres. Bush. There were enough votes in the Senate to override his veto, but not in the House. The Democrats have allowed themselves two weeks to solicit additional House votes to override. The $7 billion cost of the bill per year would be paid for by taxes on tobacco. The President claims this is unfair because it is actually a tax on the poor, who are most likely to smoke. While spending $10 billion a month for the war in Iraq, he said he is trying to save money.

CNN 10-4. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho has decided not to resign his office after all. He wants to finish his term and then retire. Republican leaders appear to be upset about this.

CNN 10-4. Sen. Pete Dominici of New Mexico has decided to retire on account of “neurological disease.” He is 75. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is under discussion as a candidate to replace him.


US Torture

NYTimes 10-4, 10-5. The Times revealed that the Justice Department holds two secret memoranda justifying torture issued in 2005. These memos gave the CIA approval for harsh interrogation techniques such as head slapping, exposure to cold, and simulated drowning. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested Acting Attorney General Peter Heisler to turn over the texts of all documents relating to interrogation since 2004.

US Education

PBS 10-1 and 10-2. In a special report on the worst urban schools in America, PBS focused on new superintendents with strong political backing to bring about change.
In the District of Columbia, a woman of Korean descent, Michele Rhee, is the new superintendent. She is negotiating a new contract with the teachers’ union that will enable her to get rid of incompetent staff more easily, She is focused on results, not process. The schools opened on time, were clean, and the textbooks were ready.

In New Orleans, where the state has taken over the schools, the new superintendent is Paul Vallas. The state is providing free laptops for all students. On the first day there was some confusion over scheduling, and many no-shows.