|
| |
Archives
end of empire
The Sole Superpower in Decline
The Rise of a Multipolar World
|
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall -- militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century," with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.
Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy -- Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The Bush administration's debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, over-extending itself. To the relief of many -- in the U. S. and elsewhere -- the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking limitations of power for the globe's highest-tech, most destructive military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two U.S. presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, "We are being wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organized state adversary."
The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba, along with the widely publicized murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America's moral self-image. In the latest opinion poll, even in a secular state and member of NATO like Turkey, only 9% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the U.S. (down from 52% just five years ago).
Yet there are other explanations -- unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures -- for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
| |
[more]
This is a very interesting series, written by Stan Goff, from the group blog Insurgent American. It seems to not be complete so watch for more.
Homeland Security: what we need to know that politicians and pundits will never say — Part 1
|
On February 28, 2004, I managed to fight my way through frantic crowds at the Toussaint L’Overture International Airport in Port-au-Prince to board my scheduled flight back to Miami. The general panic grew out of the near-certainty of an impending coup d’etat against the democratically elected and still popular government of Haiti’s President Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party. The coup was planned and conducted with the direct assistance of the United States Department of State and Aristide was effectively kidnapped by US armed forces at his Tabarre residence on the next evening, February 29. US Marines were summarily posted throughout the capital to protect the Haitian coup-making class from the wrath of millions of Haitians who were conducting angry demonstrations throughout the city (which were never covered by the US press).
| |
[more]
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
|
After World War II, the US inherited three M’s: Military superiority, Monetary dominance, and the Middle East. This 3M inheritance would eventually bring us to where we are today… talking about “Homeland Security” as a political device, while our political practice has set us on an unspeakably dangerous course of insecurity.
| |
[more]
thanks to wood s lot
photography
I recently picked up a macro lens for my Spotmatic SLR. I've long been fascinated by the world of the small that our human eyes can't resolve. (At my age that world is getting larger all the time!) This is an inspiration.
Igor Siwanowicz
[more]
iran
Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran
|
Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had, as they neared Baghdad, been fired on by an artillery unit using shells filled VX nerve gas — an attack that would have lasted minutes before a U.S. aircrew had taken out the battery, and may have brought a horrible death to a handful of American soldiers. Imagine, further, that the conquering troops had later discovered two warehouses full of VX and mustard gas shells. And later, that inspectors in a science lab had discovered a refrigerator full of Botulinum toxin or even anthrax.
The Administration and its allies in the punditocracy would have “proved” their case for war, and the media would have hailed President Bush as the kind of Churchillian visionary that he imagines himself to be. And goodness knows what new adventures the Pentagon ideologues would have immediately begun planning.
Now, ask yourself, had the above scenario unfolded and the “case for war” (on the terms accepted by the media and the Democrats) been proven, would Iraq look any different today? Would it be any less of a bloodbath; any less of a quagmire for U.S. troops; any less of a geopolitical disaster; any less of a drain on U.S. blood and treasure? Would the U.S. mainland or U.S. interests and allies worldwide be any safer today? In short, would the Iraq invasion seem any less of a catastrophic strategic blunder had the U.S. discovered some caches of unconventional weapons in Iraq?
The answer to all of those questions is obviously no.
And it’s from that point that we must begin our discussion on Iran, and the media’s role in preparing the American public for another disastrous war of choice. The “necessity” in the American public mind to go to war in Iraq was established through the mass media — a failure for which there has been precious little accounting. But that failure runs far deeper than is typically acknowledged even by critics: It was not simply a case of the media failing to properly and critically interrogate the spurious claims by the Administration of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction capability. Sure, even the likes of France and Germany suspected that Saddam may, in fact, have still had a few piles of chemical munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq war. The point, however, is that they did not see these as justifying a war. They recognized from the outset that invading Iraq would cause more problems than it would solve.
| |
[more]
US steps closer to war with Iran
|
The Bush administration has leaped toward war with Iran by, in essence, declaring war with the main branch of Iran's military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which it plans to brand as a terrorist organization.
A logical evolution of US President George W Bush's ill-defined, boundless "war on terror", the White House's move is dangerous to the core, opening the way for open confrontation with Iran. This may begin in Iraq, where the IRGC is reportedly most active and, ironically, where the US and Iran have their largest common denominators.
| |
[more]
US 'poised to strike Iran'
Bob Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the next couple of months because things could be about to change.
|
Baer, in an interview with The Weekend Australian, says his contacts in the administration suggest a strategic airstrike on Iran is a real possibility in the months ahead.
"What I'm getting is a sense that their sentiment is they are going to hit the Iranians and not just because of Israel, but due to the fact that Iran is the predominant power in the Gulf and it is hostile and its power is creeping into the Gulf at every level," Baer says.
He says his contacts have told him of his book: "You better hurry up because the thesis is going to change. I told them submission is in January but they said, 'You're probably going to be too late'."
| |
[more]
thanks to Antiwar.com
Prelude to an Attack on Iran
by Robert Baer
|
Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.
And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
| |
[more]
birthday
I had a birthday today. This magazine was out the week I was born.
movie recommendation
When the Levees Broke:
A Requiem in Four Acts
by Spike Lee
Zoe had this on HBOtonight. I missed the beginning fixing dinner but heard it in the background. Then I got sucked in. A terrible story well told. Not only does it relive the events but covers well the aftermath. This is the definitive documentary of this disaster. This country is so fucked to let this happen. Watch it.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
|
As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster, but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to document this modern American tragedy, a morality play witnessed by people all around the world. The result is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. The film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans.
| |
[more]
photography and music
Music & Photography - Photo-Rock
|
So what if I formed a band consisting solely of photographers?
What would be a good band name?!
| |
The Darkroom.
Goth-metal outfit. Performs under a red light.
Hit single: “In a Fix.”
[more]
iraq
"Iraq Does Not Exist Anymore"
Journalist Nir Rosen on How the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Has Led to Ethnic Cleansing, a Worsening Refugee Crisis and the Destabilization of the Middle East
|
NIR ROSEN: Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don’t think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a name like Omar, he’s distinctly Sunni -- it’s a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they’re never going to let it go.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Senator Levin calling for the Maliki and the whole government to disband?
NIR ROSEN: Well, it’s stupid for several reasons. First of all, the Iraqi government doesn’t matter. It has no power. And it doesn’t matter who you put in there. He’s not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn’t really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq. These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that’s the first point.
Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he’s going to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a democratic election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian Shiite group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr Movement. These are movements that are popular among the majority of Shias, who are the majority of Iraq. So it doesn’t matter who you put in there. And people in the Green Zone have never had any power. Americans, whether in the government or journalists, have been focused on the Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it’s never really mattered. It’s been who has power on the street, the various different militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious, criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi politics. The government doesn’t do anything, doesn’t provide any services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms. Ministries attack other ministries
| |
[more]
thanks to The Washington Note
Here are words from 7 boots on the ground:
The War as We Saw It
|
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
| |
[more]
thanks to Informed Comment
Beyond Disaster++++
|
The war in Iraq is about to get worse—much worse. The Democrats’ decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests.
Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground. There are 2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes and are internally displaced. Another 2 million have left the country, most to Syria and Jordan, which now has the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on Earth. An Oxfam report estimates that one in three Iraqis are in need of emergency aid, but the chaos and violence is so widespread that assistance is impossible. Iraq is in a state of anarchy. The American occupation forces are one more source of terror tossed into the caldron of suicide bombings, mercenary armies, militias, massive explosions, ambushes, kidnappings and mass executions. But wait until we leave.
| |
[more]
thanks to Antiwar.com
Four Million Iraqis on the Run
|
Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.
| |
[more]
Militias Seizing Control of Iraqi Electricity Grid
|
Armed groups increasingly control the antiquated switching stations that channel electricity around Iraq, the electricity minister said Wednesday.
That is dividing the national grid into fiefs that, he said, often refuse to share electricity generated locally with Baghdad and other power-starved areas in the center of Iraq.
The development adds to existing electricity problems in Baghdad, which has been struggling to provide power for more than a few hours a day because insurgents regularly blow up the towers that carry power lines into the city.
The government lost the ability to control the grid centrally after the American-led invasion in 2003, when looters destroyed electrical dispatch centers, the minister, Karim Wahid, said in a news briefing attended also by United States military officials.
The briefing had been intended, in part, to highlight successes in the American-financed reconstruction program here.
But it took an unexpected turn when Mr. Wahid, a highly respected technocrat and longtime ministry official, began taking questions from Arab and Western journalists.
Because of the lack of functioning dispatch centers, Mr. Wahid said, ministry officials have been trying to control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the south, north and west by calling local officials there and ordering them to physically flip switches.
But the officials refuse to follow those orders when the armed groups threaten their lives, he said, and the often isolated stations are abandoned at night and easily manipulated by whatever group controls the area.
| |
[more]
thanks to dangerousmeta!
The Death Mask Of War
American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity.
|
All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations."
In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.
The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing -- the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm -- to murder -- the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.
| |
[more]
US braced for bloody pull-out
|
AT THE Army College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Major Daniel Morgan is studying the lessons for Iraq of the Soviets’ chaotic exit from Afghanistan in the late 1980s. The roads were choked with tanks and heavy weaponry, making the demoralised soldiers easy prey for guerillas.
“The Soviet Army actually had to fight out of certain areas,” said Morgan, who has served twice in Iraq.
There is no easy exit from Iraq, but defence secretary Robert Gates has admitted for the first time that the Pentagon is poring over the options. Under pressure from Hillary Clinton, the senator for New York, defence officials are to give a “closed door” briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week about US troop withdrawals.
“You may rest assured,” Gates wrote to Clinton, “that such planning is indeed taking place with my active involvement.”
The Soviet rout from Afghanistan is one of the worst-case scenarios that a rapid withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq could provoke. “They had to airlift out of Kandahar, the fighting was so bad,” Morgan recalled. Another nightmare image remains familiar decades on - the helicopters taking off from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, leaving desperate Vietnamese allies to their fate.
| |
[more]
phototgraphy
I've mentioned before my interest in the whole plate format 6 1/2 x 8 1/2. Now there is a blog for the format. Although most of the printing I want to do is digital there is part of me that wants to make platinum contact prints. Whole plate negatives would work just fine.
Whole Plate Camera
|
Welcome to the whole plate camera blog-er-whatever. This will be a place where information will appear on an occasional basis dealing with whole plate format cameras. This old format, nominally a rectangle of 6-1/2 inches by 8-1/2 inches, was long thought dead. Many think it only refers to cameras that take old wet or dry glass plates. But this format actually continued to flourish well into the age of film. It began to lose popularity in the US about the same time that the flappers starting getting a little long in the tooth. But with the resurgence of interest in alternative processes, this format has been resurrected by a few oddball iconoclasts who recognize that it represents the perfect ‘Goldilocks’ view camera format: not too small to see the groundglass and not too large to hump over a mountain. It makes a wonderful contact print, yet is still small enough to fit in commonly available enlargers (and now film scanners). The lenses are not the size of sealed beam car headlamps, and many lenses that are used on either 5×7 cameras or 8×10 cameras are perfect matches. I intend to post an occasional photo, and occasional technique or equipment thread, and any lyrical odes to the format that get sent to me. This will not be a read-it-every-day blog, but it might be worth checking out once a month. Hope you find the information useful.+
| |
[more]
thanks to Large Format Photography Forum
oil
Entering the Tough Oil Era
|
When "peak oil" theory was first widely publicized in such path breaking books as Kenneth Deffeyes' Hubbert's Peak (2001), Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over (2002), David Goodstein's Out of Gas (2004), and Paul Robert's The End of Oil (2004), energy industry officials and their government associates largely ridiculed the notion. An imminent peak -- and subsequent decline -- in global petroleum output was derided as crackpot science with little geological foundation. "Based on [our] analysis," the U.S. Department of Energy confidently asserted in 2004, "[we] would expect conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century."-
Recently, however, a spate of high-level government and industry reports have begun to suggest that the original peak-oil theorists were far closer to the grim reality of global-oil availability than industry analysts were willing to admit. Industry optimism regarding long-term energy-supply prospects, these official reports indicate, has now given way to a deep-seated pessimism, even in the biggest of Big Oil corporate headquarters.-
The change in outlook is perhaps best suggested by a July 27 article in the Wall Street Journal headlined, "Oil Profits Show Sign of Aging." Although reporting staggering second-quarter profits for oil giants Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell -- $10.3 billion for the former, $8.7 billion for the latter -- the Journal sadly noted that investors are bracing for disappointing results in future quarters as the cost of new production rises and output at older fields declines. "All the oil companies are struggling to grow production," explained Peter Hitchens, an analyst at the Teather and Greenwood brokerage house. "[Yet] it's becoming more and more difficult to bring projects in on time and on budget."
| |
[more]
astronomy
This is just too cool. On Google Earth you can put in a location and it takes you detail satellite picture of that area. That's pretty cool. But now you can click on an icon and it shows you the universe above.
Viewing Sky
|
In addition to browsing the Earth, Google Earth allows you to view heavenly objects, including stars, constellations, galaxies, planets and the Earth's moon.
| |
[more]
thanks to Neatorama
Google's new toy that gives amateur astronomers a view of the stars
peak resources
I've posted a lot about peak oil but oil is only one resource that is being used up. All our resources are being used up. Here is a look at what this means for one resource that, while not as glamourous as oil (no wars being fought over it...yet), it may have a larger impact.
Peak Phosphorus
|
Peak oil has made us aware that many of the resources on which civilization depends are limited.
M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist for Shell Oil, found that oil production over time followed a curve that was roughly bell-shaped. He correctly predicted that oil production in the lower 48 states would peak in 1970. Other analysts following Hubbert's methods are predicting a peak in oil production early this century.
The depletion analysis pioneered by Hubbert can be applied to other non-renewable resources. Analysts have looked at peak production for resouces such as natural gas, coal and uranium.
In this paper, Patrick Déry applies Hubbert's methods to a very special non-renewable resource - phosphorus - a nutrient essential for agriculture.
In the literature, estimates before we "run out" of phosphorus range from 50 to 130 years. This date is conveniently far enough in the future so that immediate action does not seem necessary. However, as we know from peak oil analysis, trouble begins not when we "run out" of a resource, but when production peaks. From that point onward, the resource becomes more difficult to extract and more expensive.
[...]
In some ways, the problem of peak phosphorus is more difficult than peak oil. Energy sources other than oil are available, though they all have their own shortcomings. In addition, the sun provides a steady input of energy.
Unlike fossil fuels, phosphorus can be recycled. However if we waste phosphorus, we cannot replace it by any other source. Currently we are running through the limited supplies of concentrated phosphates. Phosphate fertilizer is often applied carelessly, leading to waste and pollution. Food from agriculture goes to consumers and animals, who excrete most of the phosphorus. The phosphorus in sewage mainly goes to sea or is otherwise dispersed.
| |
[more]
breaking news
It seems I didn't post anything last night as I had hoped. I was working on a proposal. It looks like I will finally be getting my hands on a printer, an Epson 3800. I've mentioned before that I've had a customer that wants me to print for him and would supply the printer. The problem was that he didn't have the money. Yesterday afternoon I received an email that he had the money. So last night I worked up a proposal for labor and material costs for making 16"x20" prints for him. And I get to use it too! Once I get it set up and get my print act together I will be making some of my prints available for sale, if anyone is interested. I will be finding more out Monday. Woohoo!!
checking in
Distractions have kept me from posting lately. Last week it was the flu. Then Thursday a new kitten came home.
That's Zoe and VAl. Maybe. His name was Bart but Zoe doesn't like that so we are trying new names out. When I last mentioned getting a kitten we had gone from one (Bubba) to two (Bubba and Bart). When it was over we ended up with one and it wasn't the original one we were going to get. Bev, who gave him to us, was going to give both because she thought they wouldn't do well separated but by the time it came to pick them up she felt comfortable they would do OK apart and she felt that Bart was the stronger of the two. Suited us. He was the one we were more taken with originally. I think Zoe likes him. We already have two cats so the last few days have been spent introducting Bart/Val. It's going well but it's time consuming. We've been keeping Val in a separate room and bringing him out periodically. Another couple of days should do it. He's going to be a great addition to our cat house.
Then a couple of nights ago I was doing laundry and went to the laundry room to move a load into the dryer to discover the floor covered with water. After moving everything out to get it cleaned up I ran the washing machine and it wasn't leaking. Not having to repair the washing machine is a good thing but I wish I new where the water came from. It's an old machine and it did have an unbalanced load. I will have to be careful loading it. Now it's off to make some camera straps and put the laundry room back together. I hope to start posting this evening. I have some very interesting stuff. And when I get down to my little studio to take some more pictures I will have things to show and tell. And there are a bunch of negatives to scan. Regular programming to resume soon.
|
|
|
|
