WA State Clean Energy Rep.

Here's the introduction to an interview with Jay Inslee by David Roberts of Grist.

Full Article

Rep. Jay Inslee's two central passions, clean energy and global warming, received scant attention during his last eight years in Congress. Now, after a power shift on Capitol Hill, he's at the center of high-profile efforts to attack climate change and promote a new energy economy -- not to mention get his colleagues up to speed on the issues.

The Democrat from Washington state's first district, which encompasses suburbs north and west of Seattle, holds spots on two House committees that will play key roles in debates over how to tackle the climate crisis: the Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created this year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Happily, he's prepared. Inslee has focused on energy issues since the early 1970s and amassed a wonk's expertise. This fall, he will release a book called Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, about the challenges and opportunities facing America as it navigates the twin crises of global warming and peak oil.

I caught up with Inslee at a Seattle café, where he enthusiastically dove into the weeds of energy and climate policy, all the while cautioning the environmental community to be realistic and understand that Congress is at the beginning of a long journey on these issues.

It is illegal to have a different opinion...

...than your own President.

Evidently this is the case, or that is what is being determined right now in court. But this is what is being argued in a case brought by two people who were ejected from a public appearance of the Prez because of an anti-war sticker on their bumper. No, they didn't heckle, according to the story, but since it was clear that they had a different opinion from the Commander-in-Chief they were booted.

It should be an inalienable right to disagree with anyone, particularly elected officials that represent us. George Orwell says 'i told you so'...

Link to Full Article

Stewart and Colbert Viewers Get the Facts Straight

Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites

..and several years of war, many many Americans and Iraqis dead, and billions and billions spent and wasted or lost...and less than 1/3 of those polled could name one of the largest populations of Iraqi citizens? makes me want to shake my head at the level of ignorance. It also begs the question, are most people in the world this way? is it only a small percentage of the people that care to be informed about what is happening in the world? in their own country? in their own state or city? and why is that?

Full Article

A new survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. For example, only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, while 74% could identify Dan Quayle in that post in 1989.

Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.

Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.

Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name "Sunni" as the other key group.

J.R.R. Tolkien's New Book

...newly resurrected by his son Christopher, here is the new book coming out April 17th that follows the figure of Turin.

Watch the Online Preview with Art by Alan Lee

Full Article

You'd think the horns of the Valar had been sounded and the island of Numenor had risen from the Western Sea.

If that sentence means anything to you at all, you may already know that on April 17 the first book in 30 years to be published under the name JRR Tolkien is released worldwide. The Children of Hurin, started in 1918 but abandoned, has been 'reconstructed' by the writer's son Christopher.

The story promises to be darker than anything seen in Tolkien's other books, including scenes of incest and suicide. While his other work was influenced by English medieval literature, Hurin is more indebted to the Finnish national epic Kalevala

Bees Vs. Mobile Phones?

An eery quote by Einstein is in this article...in which he states that the disappearance of bees marks only 4 more years of life for us all...

Link to Article

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

Pleiades: The Seven Sisters

Brought to you by HUBBLE...

that thing rocks...

Yangtze River Beyond Repair?

Well, this shows little faith in the ability of Nature, or the planet, to heal itself. Now, in our lifetimes? well that could be very well stretching it. Until then, this is the reality on the ground...

Full Article

China's massive Yangtze river, a lifeline for tens of millions of people, is seriously polluted and the damage is almost irreversible, a state-run newspaper said Monday.

More than 370 miles of the river are in critical condition and almost 30 percent of its major tributaries are seriously polluted, the China Daily said, citing a report by the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

..snip..

"The impact of human activities on the Yangtze water ecology is largely irreversible," Yang Guishan, a researcher at the institute, was quoted as saying.

..snip...

The Yangtze accounts for 35 percent of China's total fresh water resources, the report said.

..snip..

The Yangtze is about 3,860 miles long and runs from the Tibetan plateau to the sea near Shanghai, passing through some of China's major cities, such as Chongqing and Nanjing.

Bumble Bees Dissappearing from Britain

Just as recently reported in the US, where honey bees are dissappearing from 22 States and threatening a breakdown in the ancient cycle of nature's pollination of fruits and vegetables, so too is this danger being realized in other parts of the world.

Full Article

Britain's bumblebee population is under threat in a crisis that could wipe out entire species and have a devastating knock-on effect on agriculture, scientists say.

The furry yellow-and-black creatures, essential for pollination, are being killed off by pesticides and agricultural intensification, which have cut back on hedgerows and removed their source of food.

"There just aren't enough flowers around," Professor Dave Goulson, the director of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust at the University of Stirling in Scotland, said on Monday.

"If we knock out an important group like bumblebees, it can have a huge knock-on impact on other things, such as the pollination of important crops and flowers."

Britain once had around 25 native species of bumblebee, but three of those have been wiped out in the past 50 years and 10 more are now "severely threatened," Goulson said.

"There are two that are teetering on the edge of extinction and could be gone in five to 10 years quite easily," he said.

The loss of species could lead to sweeping changes in Britain's countryside, with many rare plants disappearing and the production of crops such as raspberries, oil-seed rape, runner beans and broad beans sharply curtailed.

Contaminated Food Imports

The recent death of many American pets underlines a time for a wake up call. But not for pet food, but for all food that is imported into the country. Only a tiny percentage of the imported food into the US is inspected, and out of that a significant amount is found to have hazardous toxins and contaminants. So what are we consuming that we don't know about?

Full Article

Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are inspected — yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

Frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, baked goods from Canada, India and the Philippines — the list of tainted food detained at the border by the Food and Drug Administration stretches on.

Add to that the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that poisoned cats and dogs nationwide and led to a massive pet food recall, and you've got a real international pickle. Does the United States have the wherewithal to ensure the food it imports is safe?

Food safety experts say no.

With only a minuscule percentage of shipments inspected, they say the nation is vulnerable to harm from abroad, where rules and regulations governing food production are often more lax than they are at home.

..snip..

Last month alone, FDA detained nearly 850 shipments of grains, fish, vegetables, nuts, spice, oils and other imported foods for issues ranging from filth to unsafe food coloring to contamination with pesticides to salmonella.

And that's with just 1.3 percent of the imports inspected. As for the other 98.7 percent, it's not inspected, much less detained, and goes to feed the nation's growing appetite for imported foods.

Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported foods, including processed, ready-to-eat products and single ingredients. Imports account for about 13 percent of the annual diet.

"Never before in history have we had the sort of system that we have now, meaning a globalization of the food supply," said Robert Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

..snip..

Consider this list of Chinese products detained by the FDA just in the last month: frozen catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs, fresh ginger polluted with pesticides, melon seeds contaminated with a cancer-causing toxin and filthy dried dates.

But even foods expected to be safe can harbor unexpected perils. Take wheat gluten: Grains and grain byproducts like it are rarely eaten raw and generally pose few health risks, since cooking kills bacteria and other pathogens.

Even so, the FDA can't say for sure whether the ingredient used in the pet foods was inspected after it arrived from China. And if the wheat gluten was, officials said, it wouldn't have been tested for melamine. Even though the chemical isn't allowed in food for pets or people, in any quantity, it previously wasn't believed toxic.

The Bear Whisperer...

...or, how one man has used food training to cross boundaries with the wild bears of Alaska. Another Treadwell? It must be an exhilarating experience, being with animals and particularly wild animals, is and can be a magical experience. The hard questions are when and how can it become a dangerous thing for the animals? we take for granted it is already dangerous for the man and that he excepts that danger as part of it. But when is it a true disservice to the wild?

Full Article

Fifty miles northwest of Anchorage, the roadless hills and swamps of the Yentna River Valley have for years hidden the secret of bear man Charlie Vandergaw.

Far from the bear-viewing spectacle of Katmai National Park — and farther still from the hype that made a celebrity of the late Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who lived among the park's grizzly bears for more than a dozen seasons before he and his girlfriend were killed and partially eaten by a bear in 2003 — Vandergaw has quietly transformed himself into what Treadwell only dreamed of being: a true bear whisperer.

What goes on each summer at the retired Anchorage science teacher's remote homestead is so far from the ordinary as to be almost unbelievable. Visitors tell of him petting black and brown bears, playing with grizzly cubs while sows stand by, sitting on bears and teaching them tricks.

His own photographs show even more. They capture him easing to within feet of breeding grizzlies and nursing an injured brown bear.

Enemy of the State...?

Granted, this is one person's account of an event...and how a person got onto a 'List'...but this is still a messed up example of how all these new security measures are being used.

What does it take to be labeled a potential 'Terrorist Threat'... evidently all it takes is to either speak your mind, or be vocal for PEACE. Peace being a good antithesis of Terror this makes perfect sense.

From the political blog Balkinization:

Another Enemy of the People?

Mark Graber

I am posting the below with the permission of Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. For those who do not know, Professor Murphy is easily the most distinguished scholar of public law in political science. His works on both constitutional theory and judicial behavior are classics in the field. Bluntly, legal scholarship that does not engage many themes in his book, briefly noted below, Constitutional Democracy, may be legal, but cannot be said to be scholarship. As interesting, for present purposes, readers of the book will discover that Murphy is hardly a conventional political or legal liberal. While he holds some opinions, most notably on welfare, similar to opinions held on the political left, he is a sharp critic of ROE V. WADE, and supported the Alito nomination. Apparently these credentials and others noted below are no longer sufficient to prevent one from becoming an enemy of the people.

"On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving."

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."

"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. "

"After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical."

"I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture's argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who had "had other priorities" than to risk their own lives when their turn to fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticizing Bush's false claims by "outing" his wife, Valerie Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. ..."

"I have a personal stake here, but so do all Americans who take their political system seriously. Thus I hope you and your colleagues will take some positive action to bring the Administration's conduct to the attention of a far larger, and more influential, audience than I could hope to reach. "

Posted 11:17 AM by Mark Graber [link]

Katrina VandenHeuvel on the Colbert Report

Katrina VandenHeuvel doesn't mince words, and didn't on last night's Colbert Report, particularly when talking about the Iraq war "The Most colossal foreign policy disaster this country has ever experienced" and standing behind The Nation's coverage of and opposition to it from the get-go "We never lost our head — while too much of the media gave head....we need watchdogs, not lapdogs".

Solomon Island Raised by Tsunami Earthquake

The island of Ranongga has been raised by over 10 feet by last week's earthquake. Now, pristine coral reefs are sitting out of the water and dying. A way of life is in peril as fish and the diving industry that sustains the Solomon Islands is in serious jeopardy.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, all around the ring of fire there is intense activity. How will this increase is activity affect us all? It makes you wonder what will be next...

Full Article

The seismic jolt that unleashed the deadly Solomons tsunami this week lifted an entire island metres out of the sea, destroying some of the world's most pristine coral reefs.

In an instant, the grinding of the Earth's tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 foot).

Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.

Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.

The stench of rotting fish and other marine life stranded on the reefs when the seas receded is overwhelming and the once vibrant coral is dry and crunches underfoot.

Dazed villagers stand on the shoreline, still coming to terms with the cataclysmic shift that changed the geography of their island forever, pushing the shoreline out to sea by up to 70 metres.

Aid agencies have yet to reach Ranongga after the quake and tsunami that killed at least 34 people in the Pacific archipelago but an AFP reporter and photographer on a chartered boat witnessed the destruction first hand.

At Pienuna, on Ranongga's east coast, locals said much of their harbour had disappeared, leaving only a narrow inlet lined by jagged exposed coral reefs either side.

Villager Harison Gago said there were huge earthquake fissures which had almost split the island in half, gesturing with his hands that some of the cracks were 50 centimetres (20 inches) wide.

Further north at Niu Barae, fisherman Hendrik Kegala had just finished exploring the new underwater landscape of the island with a snorkel when contacted by the AFP team.

He said a huge submerged chasm had opened up, running at least 500 metres (550 yards) parallel to the coast.

Rove Superhighway of Backdoor WH Access?

It appears that the RNC set up a second system for communication for key WH officials to use in order to avoid anything getting on the record and to avoid the laws which are meant to guarantee access to what our President is doing. Shocking? or not noteworthy? Well, when the likes of Abramoff are the people getting access to the WH through the system you have to wonder what else has been going on...

Full Article

Snippits below..

When Karl Rove and his top deputies arrived at the White House in 2001, the Republican National Committee provided them with laptop computers and other communication devices to be used alongside their government-issued equipment.

The back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC, was designed to avoid charges that had vexed the Clinton White House — that federal resources were being used inappropriately for political campaign purposes.

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules.

In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.

Democratic congressional investigators are beginning to demand access to this RNC-White House communications system, which was used not only by Rove's office but by several top officials elsewhere in the White House.

The prospect that such communication might become public has further jangled the nerves of an already rattled Bush White House.

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

"There is concern about what may be in these e-mails," said one GOP activist who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject.

"The system was created with the best intentions," said former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to broad categories of RNC-White House e-mails.

...snip...

Waxman told RNC Chairman Mike Duncan in a letter that such exchanges "indicated that in some instances White House officials were using nongovernment accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of communications" that could be reviewed by congressional committees or released under the Presidential Records Act.

..snip..

Levine, the former Bush press aide, said he saw senior White House colleagues, including Rove and his top staff, moving fluidly between the two computer systems, which often sat on officials' desks along with their government computers.

But Levine said he found the two computers with their separate purposes and log-in procedures confusing and inefficient. So he quietly slid his RNC laptop into a desk drawer, deciding to use the telephone rather than e-mail to communicate anything that was not considered official government business.

"In retrospect," he said last week, "I was lucky."

Army Vs. Colorado Ranchers and the Old West

When the military is given the right to 'condemn' land in order to take it away from unwilling American Citizens we have situations like this...

Mack Louden worries that his 30,000-acre ranch sits in the cross hairs of the Army’s plans to expand its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site at Fort Carson, and he, along with other Colorado ranchers, are increasingly upset about the idea.

“Where we live, how we live, it’s all going to die a slow death if the Army gets our land,” said Mr. Louden, a fourth-generation rancher from Las Animas County, along the southern edge of the state.

He and other ranchers are to testify on Monday before a committee of state lawmakers in support of a bill that seeks to keep the Army from acquiring nearly a half-million acres it says it needs to train soldiers in the nuances of modern warfare.

Colorado law grants the federal government permission to condemn land for some purposes, like building courthouses and post offices. And the Defense Department lifted a moratorium this year on land acquisitions to allow the Piñon Canyon expansion.

But State Representative Wes McKinley, a Democrat from Walsh, has sponsored a bill that would try to keep the Army from invoking eminent domain in this case. The Colorado House of Representatives has passed the bill, which is now winding its way through the Senate. The legislation may not affect the expansion, however, as it is unclear if the Army would be bound by state law.

Like many cowboys and ranchers from the region, Mr. McKinley’s family settled in southeastern Colorado’s shortgrass prairie lands as part of the Federal Homestead Act of 1862. The act allowed settlers to live on public land for five years, with the promise that the land would become theirs if it was farmed sufficiently.

Now, Mr. McKinley worries that his traditional rural way of life, and that of his neighbors, will wither in the path of American military might.

“People will have their livelihoods, their heritage, their homes taken away,” he said. “Their lives will be destroyed. There’s not much demand for a 65-year-old cowboy.”

Full Article

The Cost of WAR

Justice Dept. Aide Not Willing To Testify

...yeah, you work for the 'Justice' department and you are not willing to stand up and tell the Truth? Not even in a Private meeting with Congressmen/women? What does that say about you as an individual? as a public employee? as the highest ranking aide to the the AG? and a former counsel to the White house?

Actually, it speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Full Article


A snippit...

House Democrats on Tuesday asked a top Justice Department aide to come to Capitol Hill for a private interview in the next week on the firing of federal prosecutors, arguing that she cannot simply refuse to testify on the matter.

Monica Goodling, who has said she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid appearing at Senate hearings, must tell Congress which specific questions she's refusing to answer, Democrats said in a letter to her lawyer.

Goodling was senior counsel to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and was the department's White House liaison before she took a leave earlier this month amid the uproar over the ouster of eight U.S. attorneys.

Senate Judiciary Committee members, meanwhile, are pressing Gonzales to say how he plans to deal with Goodling taking the Fifth Amendment. Her action, they say, means he can't fulfill his pledge to make Justice employees available for questioning under oath.

"Who do we talk to at the Department of Justice? The office of the Attorney General appears to be hopelessly conflicted," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary chairman, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a letter to Gonzales released Tuesday.

Yeah, it's real safe here in Iraq...IF

...if you have a fleet of armoured vehicles and blackhawk helicopters watching your ass.

John McCain, candidate for President, visited a market in Iraq just the other day and along with other members in his delegation when on and on about how things are changing and how strolling through the market place and remarking how it was nigh the same as strolling through a market in Indiana.

Except in Indiana they don't have 100 soldiers (almost a full Company) with armoured HumV's, and patrolling gunships, directing everyone away from the market except cleared people for photo ops.

Todays NY Times article interviews the actual folks who live, and die, selling their goods in the very market place that the Republican candidate visited and that his delegation spoke to. There story is a world of difference to the one that McCain wants to peddle to the voters.

Full Article

BAGHDAD, April 2 — A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, said the Shorja market was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana.”

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

But the market that the congressmen said they saw is fundamentally different from the market Iraqis know.

Merchants and customers say that a campaign by insurgents to attack Baghdad’s markets has put many shop owners out of business and forced radical changes in the way people shop. Shorja, the city’s oldest and largest market, set in a sprawling labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways, has been bombed at least a half-dozen times since last summer.

At least 61 people were killed and many more wounded in a three-pronged attack there on Feb. 12 involving two vehicle bombs and a roadside bomb.

...Snip...

During their visit on Sunday, the Americans were buttonholed by merchants and customers who wanted to talk about how unsafe they felt and the urgent need for more security in the markets and throughout the city, witnesses said.

“They asked about our conditions, and we told them the situation was bad,” said Aboud Sharif Kadhoury, 63, who peddles prayer rugs at a sidewalk stand. He said he sold a small prayer rug worth less than $1 to a member of the Congressional delegation. (The official paid $20 and told Mr. Kadhoury to keep the change, the vendor said.)

Mr. Kadhoury said he lost more than $2,000 worth of merchandise in the triple bombing in February. “I was hit in the head and back with shrapnel,” he recalled.

Ali Youssef, 39, who sells glassware from a sidewalk stand down the block from Mr. Kadhoury, recalled: “Everybody complained to them. We told them we were harmed.”

...Snip...

“This area here is very dangerous,” continued Mr. Youssef, who lost his shop in the February attack. “They cannot secure it.”

But those conversations were not reflected in the congressmen’s comments at the news conference on Sunday.

Instead, the politicians spoke of strolling through the marketplace, haggling with merchants and drinking tea. “The most deeply moving thing for me was to mix and mingle unfettered,” Mr. Pence said.

Mr. McCain was asked about a comment he made on a radio program in which he said that he could walk freely through certain areas of Baghdad.

“I just came from one,” he replied sharply. “Things are better and there are encouraging signs.”

He added, “Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today.”

Told about Mr. McCain’s assessment of the market, Abu Samer, a kitchenware and clothing wholesaler, scoffed: “He is just using this visit for publicity. He is just using it for himself. They’ll just take a photo of him at our market and they will just show it in the United States. He will win in America and we will have nothing.”

A Senate spokeswoman for Mr. McCain said he left Iraq on Monday and was unavailable for comment because he was traveling.

Several merchants said Monday that the Americans’ visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents.

“Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,” said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.

But even though he was fearful of a revenge attack, he said, he could not afford to stay away from the market. This was his livelihood. “We can never anticipate when they will attack,” he said, his voice heavy with gloomy resignation. “This is not a new worry.”

Russia Remarks on its own Intelligence Reports of the US

Russia today is verbally smacking around the Bush Administration for having drawn up plans and specific targets and, in their words, being prepared to strike Iran as early as April 6th. Russia is saying what everyone is thinking, you can attack Iran but you can't defeat them. What does that mean? It means look at Afghanistan and Iraq to see what getting embroiled in Iran would look like. No, say the Russians, it would be a disastrous political move for the Americans to do this.

What do you think?

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