Video: Winning Hearts and Minds in Iraq

This video was released by Wikileaks.org a non-profit organization that has drawn the ire of the military/intelligence complex because it has made public classified information concerning the US war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008 the Army Counterintelligence Center said Wikileaks was a security threat.  During the incident in which mostly unarmed Iraqis were blasted by the crew of an orbiting Apache helicopter, a Reuters reporter and his driver were killed. This event took place in 2007. US soldiers on the ground driving Humvees in the area were directed to the killing zone by the crew after the "bastards" were lying prostrate, dead or dying*. Notice that even after the reporter was clearly wounded and unable to escape their fire, the Apache crew shot up the reporter and his rescuer in a van. The US military has admitted the authenticity of the video which was decrypted by Wikileaks. If you can spot the man with an RPG launcher give US Person an email with the digital time frame and you will receive virtual credit at Persona Non Grata.



*And in Afghanistan, the Special Forces, the elite of America's military establishment, have been forced to admit that two pregnant Afghan women were killed in a raid. Alexander Cockburn reports:  "[T]he US military has finally admitted that Special Forces troops killed two pregnant Afghan women and a girl in a February raid in which two Afghan government officials also died. Brilliant reporting by Jerome Starkey of the Times has blown apart the US military's cover-up story that the women were killed by knife wounds administered several hours before the raid.  It now appears that the knife wounds may have been inflicted by the Special Forces troops retrieving their bullets from the dead or dying women's bodies. Starkey reported that Afghan investigators had determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also "dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath" and then “"washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened".

Indigenous People Win Land Battle

The battle was not fought with spears, bows and arrows, but with legal arguments before the Sarawak High Court in Borneo. Palm oil leases granted by the state government to IOI Corporation were declared null and void by the court because they violated the customary land rights of the villagers whose communal boundary encompassed the leased areas {"Borneo"}.  The decision in the class action suit took twelve years to be handed down. The court also awarded exemplary and aggravated damages to the Long Teran Kanan native community for the trespass on native land.  IOI has attempted to present a public image of sustainable palm oil industry, but investigations by the BBC and Friends of the Earth found the corporation responsible for denuding vast swaths of rainforest to install monoculture plantations, leaving a "a vast scar on the landscape". The growing market in the west for palm oil as a food additive and biofuel is leading to increasing deforestation [image courtesy treehugger.com]. Environmentalists and supporters of the indigenous are urging the Sarawak government not to appeal the ruling.

Trouble in Paradise

No explanation has yet been offered by the Chinese as to why a bulk coal carrier was sailing well within a restricted marine sanctuary when it ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef on April 2nd. The 230m long bulk carrier Shen Neng 1 was 9 nautical miles off it's set course near Great Keppel Island, well outside the shipping channel. The ship hit the reef at full speed. It is carrying 65,000 tons of coal as well as estimated 975 tons of heavy fuel oil. A relatively small leak has been spotted coming from the stranded vessel, but the ship is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. Fuel oil is a toxic goo that kills any biological organisms it comes into contact with. Dispersants have been sprayed from the air on the relatively small leak of about 3km by 100m. Booms have not been deployed due to a heavy ocean swell. Intial damage reports indicate a breached engine room and a seriously damaged rudder. The captain says there is a hole in the outer hull of the ship. Meanwhile, the heavy vessel continues to grind away at the reef on which it is perched. Salvers are aboard, tugs are in route, and hopefully Australian maritime officials can prevent further environmental damage.  There were no local pilots on board the ship when it ran aground, a circumstance an Australian senator called "reckless", but the authorized shipping channel is not considered risky and the Shen Neng 1 was miles away from it when the grounding occurred.  Plans are afoot for even more shipping traffic in the channel to export natural gas and coal. The reef is a UN World Heritage Site.

[photo: Maritime Safety Queensland]

Chart of the Week: Fighting for Pay

Another inconvenient fact is that the biggest US jobs program is run by the Pentagon as this chart indicates:

Even though the absolute number of military employees is declining due to population growth, the amount the Pentagon spends on our volunteer warriors is growing.  The growth in the Pentagon's budget ($708B) is not envisioned to decrease despite the drawdown of troops in Iraq.  There is something to be said for compulsory national service when the cost of a completely professional standing army gets more burdensome over time. Perhaps if the responsibility for fighting our nation's frequent wars were not shunted aside to a tiny minority of citizens, we would not be subjected to a seemingly endless, costly series of conflicts by executive choice. As any competent historian will tell you, paying for a bloated military establishment has contributed greatly to the ending of empires. See Rome; see Great Britain; see Soviet Union, etc.

'Toontime: Wolves Among Sheep

credit: Mike Lukovich

"...It would be better for anyone who leads astray one of these little ones who believe in me, to be drowned by a millstone around his neck in the depths of the sea...woe to that man through whom scandal comes."

                           --Matthew 18:5-7

Betraying the Whales

This is what Forty-four wrote in response to a Greenpeace questionnaire dated March 16, 2008 when he was running for the office of President:

"As president I will ensure that the US provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including the strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling.  Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable."

Actions always speak louder than words, even when they come out of the mouth of the President of the United States.  If Forty-four means what he said, then the US delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), hand picked by him, should not be supporting the vote to reinstate commercial whaling or pressuring other countries to do the same!  Japan continues to push hard for a resumption of commercial whaling, and a small working group within the IWC has recommended that commercial whaling be reinstated.   The issue is set for a vote at the June meeting of the IWC. The draft proposal would allow hunting in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica and grant Japan new hunting right in its coastal waters. Countries in the middle of the fight such as New Zealand see compromise on the moratorium as the only way out of the impasse. Australia is prone to take Japan to international court to oppose the use of the scientific research exception to the moratorium used by Japan as cover for its Southern Ocean whaling operations.   Iceland may have to drop its miniscule whaling industry as a condition for joining the EU.  That leaves Norway as the only other country that actively hunts whales.  Countries supporting Japan's demands to resume commercial whaling are doing so only as payback for Japan's support on other diplomatic issues such as status of forces agreements.  The Administration must step up and be counted on this important international agreement, and insist that the moratorium in place since 1986 be maintained.  Whales are fighting for their lives against habitat loss, ship collisions, pollution and entanglement in discarded fishing gear.  They need us to fight for them against whaling.  Countries around the world support continuing the ban, so tell Obama to match action with his words.

The Dirty Koch Empire

Those of you who watch PBS might be familiar with the name David H. Koch [photo courtesy Koch Industries, Inc.].  His foundation is often given screen credit for supporting PBS programing such as "The American Experience".  But behind the benign facade of charitable giving is the fact that billionaire oilman David Koch and his brother Charles are responsible for a nearly $50 billion campaign to deny climate change and stop policies and regulations intended to reduce global warming.  Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in America behind Cargill.  It has a very poor environmental record according to Greenpeace.  In 2000 the EPA fined Koch Industries $30 million for its part in 300 oil spills that leaked more than 3 million gallons of crude into ponds, lakes, streams and coastal waters.  Greenpeace has released a report exposing the connection between the Kochs and the coordinated oil industry campaign to deny climate change and stop or delay any regulation associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Koch out spent Exxon-Mobil in funding front groups opposed to clean energy and climate policy in recent years.  From 2005 to 2008 Exxon-Mobil spent $8.9 million compared to Koch Industries and its controlled foundations spending $24.9 million.  In 2007 Koch funded a non-peer reviewed article by climate denier scientists that concluded western Hudson Bay polar bears are not being threatened by anthropogenic climate change*.  The paper was debunked by independent bear experts.  You can visualize the web of obsfucation and mis-information weaved by the Koch brothers in support of "market based solutions" to the climate problem by visiting Greenpeace's interactive chart. It shows the $37.9 million in lobbying activity, campaign financing of $5.74 million since 2006, and the foundations and institutes beholding to Koch Industries Inc.  The company and its foundations are the single largest obstacle to advancing clean energy and climate policy in the US.  And you can thank the US Supreme Court for recently guaranteed their right to be so.

* An adult polar bear was found washed ashore alive but totally exhausted on the Scottish island of Mull.  The bear was discovered on Wednesday by a Scottish police officer on a routine patrol of the shore.  The nearest populations of polar bears live in Greenland and Svalbard archipelago.  The bear may have drifted to Mull on an ice floe.  The officer took some pictures [link] and went to get help.  When he returned to the spot, the bear was gone. A search of the island is underway.  It is believed to be the first time a polar bear has been found in UK waters since before the last Ice Age.