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Archives
we have ignition!
A quick update on the Epson 3800 17" wide printer. It's plugged in and printing. Woo hoo! Jenny will be glad to hear this. Now I can print her pictures on the good printer. The printer came with 10 sheets of premium luster. I have 4 left. I have 50 sheets of premium luster and 50 sheets of enhanced matte that should be here in the next couple of days. Now that I can print I'm also putting together a 4x5 Burke & James press camera as a field camera and hand held camera. More on that when I can.
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Wednesday November 7 2007
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give us this day our daily photograph
John Wayne, John Wayne Airport, Costa Mesa, California
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The last picture from our California trip. This kind of sums up Lower California. An homage to unreality.
israel/palestine
Jewish Glasnost Update: Zionist Panic!
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Apropos my earlier piece arguing that the ferocious backlash by the Zionist right against Jewish critics of Israel — also targeting as ‘anti-semitic’ those like Archbishop Desomand Tutu who seek to judge Israel by universal moral standards — is a sign of panic over losing their claim to a monopoly on representing Jews, evidence is growing that they are increasingly aware of their own predicament. One reader (thanks, Sasha!) pointed out this glum editorial by arch-Zionist and neocon Daniel Pipes, warning that even if it overcomes all the mortal threats that neocons like to see all around Israel, that won’t help it cope with what he calls Israel’s ultimate challenge — “a Jewish population increasingly disenchanted with, even embarrassed by, the country’s founding ideology, Zionism, the Jewish national movement.” (Actually, Daniel, I’d call it the Jewish nationalist movement, but let’s not quibble here.)
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A Land With People, For a People with a Plan
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
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Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, "beautiful, but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, the indigenous inhabitants had to leave. Where should the people of Palestine go? Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel´s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy that it led to. It has remained insoluble. Ghada Karmi's new book, Married To Another Man, Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine, (published by Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor) shows that the major reason for this failure was the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. Zionism was never able to resolve the problem of "the other man".
There are only two ways: Either the "other man" had to be eradicated, or the Jewish state project had to be given up. Israel did not do either. It succeeded in 1948 in expelling and keeping out a large number of Palestinians, but Israel was never able to "cleanse" the land of Palestine entirely. The fundamental mistake of the Zionists was their belief that "the entire land of Palestine was Jewish and the Arab presence in it a resented foreign intrusion". All in all, the Zionists were "relatively" successful, but for the indigenous owners of the land it was a catastrophe which has been going on until today. "If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel, " as Akiva Eldar quoted the former Mazpen member Haim Hangebi in the Israeli Daily Haaretz on August 8, 2003. The author concludes: "Zionism´s ethos was not about peaceful co-existence but about colonialism and an exclusivist ideology to be imposed and maintained by force."
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book recommendation
No Simple Victory:
by Norman DaviesWorld War II in Europe, 1939-1945
by Norman Davies
To make sense of the world today it really helps to have an understanding of history based in reality. That doesn't hapen in this country. For example, WWII didn't begin in 1941 as most people in the US think. It was 1939. And it wasn't the landing at Normandy that put the nail in the German coffin. The Allies made their first European landing in Sicily in 1943. And that wasn't even the mainland. As the Allies landed in Sicily the USSR had just broken the German's back at Kursk. Kursk was the last German offensive. WWII was a clash of Titans except the Titans were Germany and the USSR. From Amazon:
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The typical Western view of WWII's European Theater—as a struggle between freedom and fascism that climaxed with the Normandy landings—is harshly critiqued in this scathing reappraisal. Historian Davies (Rising '44: The Battle of Warsaw) argues that British and American campaigns were a sideshow to the titanic conflict between the Wehr-macht and the Red Army on the Eastern Front, where most of the fighting and decisive battles occurred. The war was therefore not a simple victory of good over evil, he contends, but the defeat of one totalitarian state, Nazi Germany, by another, the Soviet Union, whose crimes were just as vast, if less diabolical. Davies's topical approach judiciously surveys the military, economic and political aspects of the war, often from an Eastern European perspective. He observes, for example, that the region that suffered the most civilian deaths was Ukraine, and that the Soviet Union was initially as much an aggressor—against Poland, Finland and the Baltic states—as Germany. (Poland's travails, Davies's professional specialty, are somewhat overemphasized.) Davies cuts against the grain of popular war histories like Stephen Ambrose's accounts of D-Day and the Bulge, but his interpretations rest on solid scholarly work.
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Clash Of Evils
Review of: No Simple Victory
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"No Simple Victory" (Viking, 490 pages, $30), Mr. Davies's new book, is the latest installment in his project of illusion-demolition. This is a revisionist history of World War II, designed to shake the complacency of British and American readers who are accustomed to thinking of it as "the good war." It is not that Mr. Davies has uncovered any important new facts, or even launched any shocking reinterpretations. His purpose, rather, is to remind the world of two truths that, while well-established, he believes are not sufficiently reckoned with.
The first is that, in military terms, World War II in Europe was predominantly a war between Germany and the Soviet Union; the contributions of Britain and America, while crucial, were not of the same order. The second is that, when Nazism and Communism fought over control of Eastern Europe, there was little moral difference between them. The Soviet Union was one of the Allies, but it had less in common with Anglo-American democracy than it did with Nazi tyranny.
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oil
Jim Kunstler went to the Peak Oil in Houston.
Peak Universe
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The big Peak Oil conference of the year took place in Houston last week – but before we get to the substance of that, a few words about where we were. It is hard to imagine a more horrifying urban construct than this anti-city in the malarial swamps just off the Gulf of Mexico. And it is hard to conceive of a more desolate and depressing urban district, even of such an anti-city, than the utter wasteland around Houston’s convention center.
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So did the Oil Drum
Houston ASPO - the Workshop day
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Seven am breakfasts in O’Hare are not a habit I plan on developing but there was I, for the second day running, at the same table even at Wolfgang Pucks.. But all in a good cause, as I headed off to Houston for ASPO. Going to the hotel - very new and needed, as the cabby proudly told me,– he asked which Convention I was here for (there is an Olympics meeting of some sort down the hall). I explained about Peak Oil and though initially he had not heard about it, he then mentioned a Houston City Council effort to have the cab companies use hybrids. This is now on hold, since it did not appear to be a well-received suggestion. Concerns that he brought up included the small size of the cars, that they were only 4-cylinder and would not stand the wear that a cab life would impose, and that the cabbies, who have to buy the cabs, could not afford the $3,000 to replace the batteries. Apparently the cab companies had suggested that they would comply right after the police Department bought theirs. Talking at an ASPO break about this, apparently Denver are experimenting with the process, but have only just introduced it with a few cabs., and a quick Google shows that a number of cities have already bitten that bullet.
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ASPO Houston: Day 1, part 1
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The atmosphere seemed a little different today, perhaps the influence of more “energy professionals”, investment advisors and professionals made it seem more of a business conference, perhaps the nature of the message that came at us as the papers proceeded were a sobering influence. After the ASPO meeting in Cork I had become a little more worried about the approaching problems, and had, as I noted, begun to see 2009 and 90 mbd as the critical numbers. Today I think I added the first twinge of terror to my emotional lexicon. We talk about it with an academic dispassion, we list the numbers and plot the curves but the numbers that we heard today have an immediacy and an impact that indicate the anonymity with which we exist in many media is perhaps going to change sooner than many of us have anticipated. This was the day of revising numbers, of reviewing past data in light of the changes since last year, and so let me, “start at the beginning” with the first paper of the day.
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Houston ASPO Day 1 part 2
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I had left you at the end of my earlier post with George Baker reviewing the situation in Mexico. We have seen Cantarell dramatically decline from the point that it was providing more oil than Mexico exported to the United States, to the current position where it produces significantly less. I asked George later about whether, given the choice between reneging on their contracts, and dropping internal use, which they would select. In contrast to Westexas views that countries will always look out for the internal demands first, he expected that they would fulfill their contracts. He was also curious as to why Pemex had installed an FPSO at the Ku Maloob Zaap field, since there is existing infrastructure that should have handled all the product. Mexican deepwater production is likely to come on in 2013, but the issue of cross-border fields has not been addressed.
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Houston ASPO Day 2 part 1
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This is the fourth segment on the ASPO Conference and follows a report on the Workshop day, the first morning report, and the rest of Thursday. We pick up on Friday morning, which began with a talk by Peter Tertzakian on the impact of resource constraints. He began by showing the rate at which the electric light was adopted into American homes, noting that essentially 100% was not reached until the 1980’s from inception in 1890. Initially the rate of change was very slow. To make a change there has to be a compelling alternative at a cheaper price, and yet as energy consumption has grown there has been a pattern. First the economy grows, then pressure starts to build up, then there is a breaking point, with the introduction of “a magic bullet”, and the cycle restarts. We have reached a point where the cycle has reached the breaking point – and now we look for the magic bullet. He pointed out that this occurred early in Japan in the 1970’s, and that they made the switch and by adding LNG and nuclear they have been able to stabilize oil consumption.
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Houston ASPO Day 2 part 2
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We rejoin the meeting just as we sat down to lunch, and a talk by Houston Mayor Bill White who has the enviable distinction of having Matt Simmons as the Treasurer of his Campaign Committee. He acknowledged Matt as a prophet (with all that usually brings). He sees the current situation as one that comes down to a race between depletion and technology. It is not possible to give a political speech and create more oil fields. It is not possible by giving a political speech to create a hydrogen economy either immediately or in the practical future. It is not possible by giving a political speech to over-ride the laws of physics.
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ASPO Houston - a comment
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I went to my usual Rotary Club meeting this morning, and one of my co-members asked where I was last week. “At a Peak Oil meeting in Houston,” I said. “What’s that?” this well-educated and generally well-informed lady asked me. To me this encapsulates the problem, not the problem we have, the problem that the general public has. They have no idea of either the size, or the immediacy of the problems that are now almost upon us. Debbie Cook and others this past week talked about the need to get administrative and legislative attention, but to tie it to some coming energy event. We talked with some dispassion about when this event might occur, and were encouraged to dream of some bucolic Houston, having survived the deluge. I don’t think that this is the way it is going to be.
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Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study
· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall by several a year
· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted
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World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.
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photography
chris harris photography
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thanks to Musings on Photography
gerry
To bring family members up to date, we went down Sunday to see Zoe's mom, Gerry. We got her to eat and drink some and she has continued to eat and drink since, but not a lot. When we got down there we also found that they had x-rayed her that morning and found pneumonia. It's day by day. The good news is that it is obvious that the people at Western State Hospital care for her. The ward she is on is for Alzheimer's and demetia. I take my hat off to the someone who can deal with that day after day.
oil
thanks to 321energy
give us this day our daily photograph
Balboa Beach, California
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water
The Future Is Drying Up
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Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”
In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River — which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains — has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government. In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West’s industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon.”
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thanks to Politics in the Zeros
New to Being Dry, the South Struggles to Adapt
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For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought. Sandy beaches have expanded into flats of orange mud. Tree stumps not seen in half a century have resurfaced. Scientists have warned of impending disaster.
And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before.
The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.
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cartoons
See Mike Draw
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thanks to Neatorama
economy
The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class
From AAA to Junk
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Congress and the White House, state governments, local legislatures and lobbyists are vested to the hilt in denial: that the downgrade by Moody's of at least $50 billion in collateralized debt from AAA to junk is a verdict on an economic model-suburban sprawl-that is torpedoing America's middle class.
At the heart of sprawl is securitization: that is to say, the packaging of mortgages by Wall Street indifferent to locale so long as the shape, size, and purpose of its components is more or less the same.
The catalogue of horrors is not exclusive to the middle class, of course. In places like Miami, the housing bubble had the collateral effect of diverting attention from the needs of the poor. While local legislatures did the bidding of the growth machine, the county housing agency was looted to a fare-thee-well.
But it is suburbia is where the financial avalanche in debt markets started-in states like Florida where a sophisticated economic elite, tied to the interests of production homebuilders, primed the pump of the growth machine.
Today, the stock market remains near historic highs but it is increasingly irrelevant to the middle class. The Wall Street press is filled with hope for another interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. There is James Cramer (who even appeared on NBC Nightly News! as a reporter from the trenches) hyperventilating over the Fed "doing something", but when it can turn its TV set off long enough to pay attention, the middle class is like a boxer looking at its face in the mirror for the first time.
Round after round of promises: low inflation, steady job growth, health care, bridges, highways, the promise of public education, social security, the environment: what stares back at the middle class is an almost unrecognizable result.
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photography
Sato Shintaro
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pakistan
The shit is hitting the fan in Pakistan. The Pakistan that has nuclear weapons.
Musharraf Declares Emergency in Pakistan
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Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on Saturday, suspending the constitution, replacing the chief justice before a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, and cutting communications in the capital.
His leadership threatened by an increasingly defiant court and an Islamic movement that has spread to Islamabad, Musharraf's emergency order accused some judges of "working at cross purposes with the executive" and "weakening the government's resolve" to fight terrorism.
Seven of the 17 Supreme Court judges immediately rejected the emergency, which suspended the current constitution. Police blocked entry to the Supreme Court building and later took the deposed chief justice and other judges away in a convoy, witnesses said.
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The Pakistani Question
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As you've probably heard by now, Musharraf has declared martial law in Pakistan. (Well, he calls it "Emergency Rule. Same thing, when you suspend the constitution.) The judiciary was about to rule that Musharraf couldn't have run for president while also chief of the army. He is going to completely purge them, and has taken 8 of the supereme court justices into custody. Word is also that the US greenlighted this, and that Musharaff will be moving the army en-masse against the northern tribal areas to route out support for al-Qaeda. Bhutto may also have been complicit (anyone who thinks Bhutto is anything but scum is quite mistaken) and may wind up in some sort of power sharing deal. Or she may turn on Musharraf, if she thinks he's weak enough.
The real question here is whether the army will break when used against the northern tribal areas. The army is the key institution in Pakistan and holds the country together, but a lot of the lower officer corp and the line troops seem very unhappy to be used to fight their own countrymen and their allies (remember, the Taliban was a Pakistani creation) at the behest of the United States.
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The Agonist has a collection of breaking news:
Musharraf imposes emergency rule
gerry
Zoe's mom, Gerry, has Alzheimer's. She has been at Western State Hospital for the past year and a half. We last visited her a week ago. She was in a lot of pain and wouldn't eat the food we brought even when her pain meds kicked in. They have been having a harder and harder time getting her to eat. Today we found out that she has stopped eating and drinking completely and they have her on an IV. We will be going down to see her. Zoe is upset. With good reason.
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