Letters to the Editor
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Nasturtium
"Any tropical American plant of the genus Tropaeolum having pungent juice and long-spurred yellow to red flowers"
Huh?
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Money matters
Changing reserve currencies isn't as uncomplicated as it sounds, nor would it necessarily favor any specific political agenda. China can't dump dollars, nor can world markets re-price oil in Euros just because they're pissed at the U.S. Like it or not they have almost as much a stake in what we are as we do.
Over time, the dollar will lose its hegemony, of that there is no doubt. How quickly that happens, or whether or not the dollar is replaced by a single currency or a basket of currencies is not something that even folks with a whole lot more expertise than any exhibited here feel confident in predicting.
If China wanted to, China could really fuck us up. All they have to do is.... I hear that all the time, but the frequency with which it's said doesn't make it any more true.
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@bucky1
A question for you. If we ever get out of this mess in the middle east in out lifetime; how do we stop some other damn fool president from invading some poor little country to 'help them' and with 'the best of intentions'; how do we stop the next one?
Hopefully, once people have a little hindsight on these years and after the results of Bush's economics inevitably gain more prominence, all we'll have to do is say:
"Gee, frankly, to me it sounds like something Bush would have done." *make distasteful face here*
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Retired Military Patriot
I didn't support the first Gulf War, but I understand your feelings. I DID support our invasion of Afghanistan. Now , I wonder how much human misery rests on my soul.
Ali Fadhil and Sinan Antoon were brave to express their heartfelt pain and anger at our ignorance. Soon, if anyone in the MSM takes notice, they will be branded as terrorist sympathizers. There is a Catch-22 to all opposition to our national disgrace. Glenn does a great job of pointing that out. No one who was right is seen as "serious". And only Iraqis who praise Saddam's demise can avoid the terrorist label.
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@ Ché Pasa
But none of that now.
Nope.
Not a bit of it.
Why is that?If you ask me, the sine qua non for nearly everything that's wrong with American culture these days is the absence of an effective public education system. And no, I am not a teacher. I'm just the lucky beneficiary of a decent education, and a big believer in the difference it makes.
Americans are notoriously ignorant, incurious, anti-intellectual, and largely incapable of critical thought. This is perhaps the natural pathetic state of humankind, but the cure is to instill not only knowledge of the larger universe but also the sense of curiosity and multiple perspectives that comes from any real education. So if you want to look for a single overarching cause for the current state of our society, you could to a lot worse than to examine the woeful state of our public schools. We have never funded them well enough, and in the past three decades -- with my own California leading the way -- we have gutted them to finance tax cuts for patricians. As one result, among many, we have killed hundreds of thousands of people in a country most of us cannot even find on a map -- including, I daresay, many of those we have sent there to kill and die.
But every cloud has a silver lining, and an ignorant populace, easily led by appeals to emotion, fits quite nicely with a Straussian society controlled by a benign intellectual oligarchy operating behind a veil of democratic ritual.
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Willilam T. & Tone in DC...
I keep mentioning that PBS American Masters series on Pete Seeger... because things keep reminding me of it, this time WT's post on Symbology and TiDC's response re: the Potomac.
So, I did a little searching to see if I could find any pieces of it, and there is actually a preview available, and it does show a little bit about the Hudson River, where he has lived for so many years, and the enormous lengths he went to in order to get it cleaned up. He promised his daughter, for one thing, that she'd be able to swim in it as an adult. And, then he convinced a bunch of folks to spend a year or two building a sloop so they could sail up and down the river. And they did that. Lots more music.
The preview also includes one of his former students crediting the FBI with the resurgence of American folk music. One of my favorite anecdotes.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/seeger_p.html
Still, if you can see the whole thing, I highly recommend it, especially for you, Tone in DC, because it will life your spirits. Guaranteed.
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Charlie Rose's Fakery
Greenwald's expose of Charlie Rose reinforces my reasons for never watching Rose's TV program. Rose is a fake journalist and a fake intellectual, an empty shell who talks, discusses, asks "searching" questions of his chosen guests but plays a very safe game - - and puts on his fake demonstrations exploring such "serious" matters. In a certain sense so does Jerry Springer, whose TV program I also never watch.
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Jkalos
Yes, it's true. I thought everyone knew that.
*touches clown nose sadly again*
That provoked audible guffawing -- the kind that makes people near you think you're crazy when they hear it.
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Another side of the oil question
One interesting aspect of today's increased violence in Iraq is that the heaviest fighting, and most casualties, appear to be in Basra, referred to in the press as "the southern oil city of Basra".
I find the timing of the outbreak of hostilities in Basra to be very interesting, especially given the perspective ondelette just gave us on al Sadr's party being the nationalist party. Trolling recently for news articles on Glenn's pen pal Steven Boylan, I found a very interesting UPI analysis published March 18, during Cheney's visit to Iraq. It turns out that Petraeus, while not cooking up evidence of Iran shelling the Green Zone, is busy trying to get the major oil companies to take a larger role in oil production in Iraq:
"The prime minister is very keen on getting large Western corporations re-engaged in the oil and electricity sectors," Petraeus said Monday at a news conference in Iraq with Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.
/snip/Exactly how that investment will funnel to the respective sectors isn't clear. U.S. and international post-war demands are Iraq should privatize its economy. While in many aspects the government is making that transition, most Iraqis support a nationalized energy sector, especially oil and gas production.
/snip/
"Sometimes to get the ball rolling it takes a senior leader to engage other senior leaders in the corporate world to have a discussion" on the realities of security in Iraq, Boylan said. Boylan added it's part of the U.S. effort to help Iraq's government build its capacity. He said the level of security for these companies depends on the area of the country.
/snip/
At least Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total are negotiating Technical Support Agreements with the ministry. Iraq would pay transfer technology, training and equipment transfer to increase production in at least five of the largest oil fields. The ministry said the deals would increase production by about 100,000 barrels per day in each field.
Iraq is producing 2.4 million barrels per day now and is exporting about 1.9 million bpd. Iraq has set aside $2.5 billion over two years for the TSAs, according to U.S. State Department Minister for Economic Affairs and Coordinator for Economic Transition in Iraq Charles Ries, and dedicated more than $3 billion of its $13 billion capital investment budget in fiscal year 2008 to the Oil Ministry. Iraq has been able to annually spend only a fraction of the capital budget, however, as it's plagued by real and perceived corruption and a lack of institutional capacity.
Is it any wonder that "al Maliki" is calling for a give-away of billions of dollars to large international oil companies for a 25% increase in oil production in Iraq as Cheney passes through the area? Is it any wonder that the forces most closely allied with Iraqi ownership of the oilfields springs to action in response?
The longer we stay, the worse it will get.
(Aside to Jkalos: I was just as unaware as you on the Euro issue; we learn every day, don't we?)