The Geoengineering Option  

Words can't express how annoyed I am with Blogger and Firefox, having just had a largish rant almost completed....

Here's a brief retry which will be longer on links than commentary than originally intended.

Jamais from Open The Future has a column at Futurismic up called "The Geoengineering Option", which follows on from his pieces at WorldChanging on "Terraforming Earth" (thankfully he's emphasising that geoengineering/terraforming is a last-ditch option).

Here's the good scenario: we have maybe a decade, fifteen years on the outside, before we need start seeing a significant and sustained global reduction of greenhouse gases if we are to avoid absolutely catastrophic environmental results. You know the litany by now: unstoppable sea level rise, famine from loss of agricultural land, countless deaths around the world from the heat and opportunistic diseases, extinctions galore, and on and on. Ten years is enough time to implement significant improvements in our transportation and energy technologies, our consumption patterns, and the design of our communities. We know the pieces that we need to put into place, it's just a question of getting them assembled in time.

Here's the not-so-good scenario: you know that decade we thought we had? It's more like a year or two. Good luck.

Nearly every plan for dealing with disastrous climate change depends on there being enough time to boost energy efficiency, redesign urban systems, change to cleaner transportation, and so forth, all to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late. If we don't make it, we likely hit a climate transition point where the global climate system finds a new stable state -- a "tipping point," if you will, into a climate this planet hasn't seen in a million years or more. The answer is simple, if daunting: we need to make sure that we start reducing anthrogenic carbon emissions before we get to that tipping point.

Newsweek has an article on the "big, big problems" facing big oil (poor little petals - how will they get by ?). The problems - rising costs, falling reserves and resource nationalism. Unmentioned is the underlying cause - peak oil.

Under the 11-year leadership of Lord John Browne, BP cultivated a reputation as a different kind of oil company, kinder and gentler on everything from the environment to the issue of women in its work force. Browne has often topped lists of "most-admired CEOs." But in recent months BP has suffered a deadly refinery explosion in Texas City, an oil spill in Alaska, and accusations that the company's trading arm manipulated energy markets. Key investors have asked whether there is a systemic problem at the company. U.S. congressmen have lambasted BP executives over safety standards. The U.S. Justice Department and other agencies are investigating; BP has appointed an ex-judge to review claims of whistle-blowers, some of whom allege a cover-up, which the company flatly denies. As Lord Browne told NEWSWEEK this summer, "We're moving from a situation of business as usual to a situation of business as unusual."

That transition doesn't end with BP. While the world's third largest oil company (after ExxonMobil and Shell) is undoubtedly in the hottest water, John Browne is by no means the only oil chief worried about the future. From the outside, the oil industry may look like a bunch of fat cats enjoying record prices, profits and CEO salaries. But what many executives dwell on are costs—which are rising as fast or faster than profits—and past experience, which tells them not to enjoy high prices because they are likely not to last.

Most see the recent price dip below $60 a barrel as only the first sign of a slide that will take prices below $40, even $30, as new supplies come on line. Indeed, the oil industry was so focused on containing costs for so many years before the recent runup in prices, many analysts say it was only a matter of time before a giant like BP found itself accused of cutting corners on safety and maintenance.

Implausible as it may seem for oil CEOs to plead hard times, the truth is that Big Oil is not much richer in absolute terms than it was before the price spike. For the past six years, returns have been flat—according to Goldman Sachs, the average integrated Western oil company will earn a 19 percent return on capital employed, up only about 2 percent since 2000. In the supremely capital-intensive oil industry, return on capital is a key measure, because it reflects not just how much profit a company made, but the cost of making it.

The bottom line: value creation at oil companies is stagnating. Companies are making more than ever before, but they're also spending unprecedented amounts to generate those profits. The problem is a perfect storm of factors: two decades of underinvestment, rising oil nationalism, the maturing of old reserves and more and more risky exploration projects. All of which has conspired to limit Western majors' access to easy oil, and to send costs spiraling out of control.

Newsweek is also asking if the oil boom is over - reading this you'd think there is a wall of oil about to hit the markets (its written by an Eni executive), but it smells more like pre-election propaganda to me. My prediction (widely shared) - the price will be heading north again after the election. The funniest part is the claim that rising Chinese demand is a myth (China oil imports - up 15% in 8 months).

Understanding the oil market is difficult. Making reasonable forecasts is almost impossible. That's why most analysts were surprised by the dip in prices from the Aug. 8 historic high of $79 per barrel to below $60 in recent days. Suddenly the alarmists who foresaw an imminent era of oil scarcity are silent, OPEC is again discussing supply cuts, oil share prices are down. And new conspiracy theories are flowing, like the one about the Republicans' pushing down gas prices before the U.S. midterm elections.

What's going on? Over the last few years the public has been bombarded by pessimistic warnings about a world inexorably running out of oil, in the midst of growing instability in oil states from Iran to Nigeria, and rising demand—particularly from China, India and other emerging economies. As this bleak scenario gained acceptance, it became easy to assume that the price of oil would defy the laws of gravity and break the barrier of $100 per barrel.

In fact, the current oil crisis has nothing to do with a catastrophic shrinking of global oil resources, while the specter of rising Asian demand is largely a myth—China has huge potential to reduce its oil consumption. Supply is tight because two decades of low prices discouraged the exploration and development of new fields in the world's most oil-rich areas. That has cut spare production capacity—the critical cushion needed to cope with crises—to just 2 to 3 percent of global consumption. This makes the price of oil a hostage to political and climatic events. There has been no objective rise in oil-state instability, only in the market's vulnerability to speculation—gloomy or not.

Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University has a column in, of all places, the Lebanon Daily Star, looking at the futility of neoconservative strategy in the middle east.

It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the conversion of Britain's navy from coal to oil at the start of the last century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments and taking sides in wars in the supposed "great game" of energy resources. But the game is almost over, because the old approaches are obviously failing.

Just when one is lulled into thinking that something other than oil is at the root of current US and UK action in Iraq, reality pulls us back. Indeed, President George W. Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world 50 years from now. He did not have in mind the future of science and technology, or a global population of 9 billion, or the challenges of climate change and biodiversity. Instead, he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world's oil.

Whatever we are worrying about in 50 years, this will surely be near the bottom of the list. Even if it were closer to the top, overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure oil supplies in 50 years ranks as the least plausible of strategies. Yet we know from a range of evidence that this is what was on Bush's mind when his government shifted its focus from the search for Osama bin Laden to fighting a war in Iraq.

Saddam's overthrow was the longstanding pet idea of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which was already arguing in the 1990s that Saddam was likely to achieve a stranglehold over "a significant proportion of the world's oil supplies." Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated those fears in the run-up to the Iraq war, claiming that Saddam was building a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to "take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies."

Cheney's facts were wrong, but so was his logic. Dictators like Saddam make their living by selling their oil, not by holding it in the ground. Perhaps, though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions to French, Russian, and Italian companies rather than British and US companies.

In any event, the war in Iraq will not protect the world's energy supplies in 50 years. If anything, the war will threaten those supplies by stoking the very radicalism it claims to be fighting. Genuine energy security will come not by invading and occupying the Middle East, or by attempting to impose pliant governments in the region, but by recognizing certain deeper truths about global energy.

First, energy strategy must satisfy three objectives: low cost, diverse supply, and drastically reduced carbon dioxide emissions. This will require massive investments in new technologies and resources, not a "fight to the finish" over Middle East oil.

It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through research and development, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological progress.

Japan seems to be in some danger of missing out on the chance to exploit Iran's giant Azadegan field.

apanese and Iranian developers failed to reach an agreement on tapping Iran's giant Azadegan oil field by the Tehran-set deadline on Saturday but the talks will continue until Monday, a news agency run by the Iranian Oil Ministry reported.

The talks have met difficulty over the amounts of additional investment to be made on the project while the Japanese government does not reportedly hope to see it launched before seeing the outcome of issues related to Iran's nuclear programs, the report said.

The Azadegan oil field is one of the world's largest, with estimated crude oil reserves amounting to 26 billion barrels.

Iran's developer, the National Petroleum and Gas Co., had warned that if the Japanese side failed to begin work by the deadline, the $US2 billion contract would be canceled, the report said.

Japanese government-linked Inpex Corp, which signed the contract with the National Iranian Oil Co in February 2004, has yet to start developing the oil field in southwestern Iran, citing a delay in Iranian demining work.

Renewable Energy Access has a post on Chinese harnessing of the seaside equivalent of a ground heat pump - the ocean.

China's first heating and cooling system to use seawater pumps is under construction in the northeast coastal city of Dalian and will begin operation this winter, according to China News Agency.

The second and third phases will supply neighboring residential areas as well, expanding the coverage to two million square meters.

The system harnesses the energy released by seawater temperature differences to provide buildings with air conditioning and heating, bringing huge potential energy savings and environmental benefits.

The project, located in Dalian's Xinghai Bay Commercial District, is an initiative of the Iceburg Group, a local large equipment manufacturer. The first phase of the project will equip the district's conference center and swimming pools with comfort heating over an area of 300,000 square meters. The second and third phases will supply neighboring residential areas as well, expanding the coverage to two million square meters.

By using seawater-derived heating and cooling, China may be able to avoid large investments in power generation and electricity grids. The systems could also bring significant environmental benefits to the nation, which generates more than half of its electricity from heavily polluting coal-fired power plants.

REA also reports that renewable energy is reaching a positive tipping point.

History will judge 2006 as the start of a major paradigm shift for the world's energy infrastructure, according to a leading environmental thinker.

Flavin said the tipping point toward renewable energy is forming now. The growing momentum will soon force the political realm and the business sector to change one another, drastically transforming the energy economy.

Speaking on RenewableEnergyAccess.com's Inside Renewable Energy podcast, Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin said, "While much more needs to be done, I think we will look back and say, 'this was the moment.'"

Flavin said the tipping point toward renewable energy is forming now. The growing momentum will soon force the political realm and the business sector to change one another, drastically transforming the energy economy.

The UK Daily Telegraph reports that the Saudis are build a 550-mile fence to shut off the country from Iraq. Presumably another part of the masterplan that was Operation Iraqi Liberation.

Security in Iraq has collapsed so dramatically that Saudi Arabia has ordered the construction of a 550-mile high-tech fence to seal off its troubled northern neighbour.

The huge project to build the barrier, which will be equipped with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, buried sensor cables and thousands of miles of barbed wire, will snake across the vast and remote desert frontier between the countries.

The fence will be built despite the hundreds of millions of pounds that the Saudi kingdom has spent in the past two years to beef up patrols on its border with Iraq, with officials saying the crisis in Iraq is now so dangerous it must be physically shut out.

"Surveillance has already been stepped up over the past 18 months," said Nawaf Obaid, the director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an institute that advises the government on security affairs.

"But the feeling in Saudi is that Iraq is way out of control with no possibility of stability. The urgency now is to get that border sealed: physically sealed."

The fence is a fresh sign that key allies of the United States in the Middle East are resigned to worsening violence and the possible break-up of Iraq, where American intelligence agencies said this week that the continuing conflict fuelled global terrorism. The National Intelligence Estimate, a report compiled by 16 spy agencies, concluded that the Iraq war had become a cause célèbre for Islamic extremists and was cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.

Past Peak reports that this year's "Project Censored" list of under-reported news stories is out. I was once again impressed by Dick Cheney's capacity for making money in any circumstance, with one of the stories being the sale by Halliburton of nuclear power technology to Iran. Next they get to support the invasion, and finally they get lots of no bid "reconstruction" contracts. the man is the master of militant mercantilism.

Project Censored has published its list of the 25 most important news stories that went largely uncovered for the year. Here they are:

1. Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
3. Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
4. Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
5. High-Tech Genocide in Congo
6. Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
7. US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
8. Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
9. The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
10. Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
11. Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
12. Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
13. New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
14. Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
15. Chemical Industry is EPA's Primary Research Partner
16. Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
17. Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
18. Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
19. Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
20. Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
21. Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
22. Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
23. US Oil Industry Targets Kyoto in Europe
24. Cheney's Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
25. US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

No matter how much of a news junkie you are, many, if not most, of these stories will be news to you. Which is exactly the point. They're important stories, but media self-censorship keeps us from hearing about them.

From the "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it" files - the New York Times has a great article on an earlier War On Terror centered on the middle east that started 2 millenia ago.

The period of Pompey's war on the pirates, his triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus and Caesar's eventual establishment of the first fascist dictatorship is a very interesting one - worth reading up on some Roman history for those who have never done so.

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty.

One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”

Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul.

Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

Mother Jones has an interview with Jimmy Carter on the rise of religious fundamentalism in the US.

MotherJones: In your book, you talk about the intersection in recent years of religious and political fundamentalism. What is the origin of this merger?

Jimmy Carter:, I think it was in 1979, when future fundamentalists took control of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a very important religious and political factor in this country. After that, the Southern Baptist Convention had almost diametrically opposite basic principles than it had previously followed, and there's been an evolution within the Convention toward a more and more rigid and strict creed that embodies the fundamentalist principles that I mention in the book.

Now, I don't think there's any doubt that the elementary principle of fundamentalism has existed for ages, and it obviously permeates other religions as well, such as Islam and Hinduism and others. But this trend continued and, parallel to it, there was in effect a merger of the fundamentalist Christian leaders and the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And for the last 25 years or so, that merger has become more pronounced and more evident.

MJ.com: Which of the two strains of fundamentalism do you see as leading the other?

JC: I wouldn’t say leading, but both are influencing each other. In the past, there have been two parallel premises for the separation of church and state. One obviously is what Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, when he said we should build a wall between the church and state. And in the Christian faith, we all remember that Christ said, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.” This also indicates that there should be a clear separation.

But those premises have been publicly disavowed or challenged by Pat Robertson on the religious side, and even by the former chief justice of the Supreme Court [William Rehnquist]. But nowadays, with the allocation of billions of dollars through what President Bush calls a faith-based initiative, taxpayers' money is distributed to churches and other religious institutions that will comply with the basic principles of the present political administration. And there's no doubt that in public conventions and in individual church speeches and sermons, there's been a prevalent inclination to endorse candidates, primarily Republican candidates.

MJ.com: At this point, 25 years in, do you expect this to remain a permanent situation?

JC: In the last few months at least, I would guess, there has been a reconsideration by many American citizens that that trend was not advisable for our country. This is indicated, at least to some degree, by public-opinion polls. And obviously the popularity in polls of some Republican leaders has deteriorated as well. So there's been a re-thinking in many ways. I think part of it has been caused by some of the practical political decisions that were ill advised and were supported by the religious fundamentalists.

All of us Christians worship the Prince of Peace, but the fundamentalists I referred to earlier publicly supported what I consider the unjust and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. That was one indication of a very radical departure. The reception of public funds to go into the religious activities of a church is almost unprecedented, at least within the Baptist faith, which I share. Other aspects are the almost complete refusal of the fundamentalist Christian leaders to condemn even the torture of prisoners and the intrusion on Americans' privacy and rights as protected under the U.S. Constitution. On those kinds of issues, formerly characterized by a separate opinion on public events between the religious community and the political community, the difference has been eliminated.

...

MJ.com: You mentioned the Iraq war, and you were an early critic. Given the situation as it stands now, are you at all hopeful about the prospects for a stable democracy emerging?

JC: Well, I'm hopeful. I pray that there will be a successful democratic system established in Iraq that can keep the country together and avoid further violence. I think what we should do is get out of Iraq as quickly as possible, and this can be done in a number of ways. I think one of the best ways would be for us to surreptitiously ask the new leaders of Iraq to publicly request that the U.S. troops withdraw. Then, instead of taking the initiative and saying we have failed in Iraq, we could say that we are honoring the new democracy established in Iraq. That's one scenario that could lead to a withdrawal of U.S. troops within a year. But my own belief is that no one in the top levels in Washington now intends to ever pull all the American troops from Iraq. I think there was a strong motivation to go into Iraq to establish a permanent military presence there of some kind. And I don't believe there's anyone in the top levels in Washington who's willing to relinquish the privileged position we have in the acquisition and marketing of Iraqi oil, to open it up to France or Russia or China.

So I think there's still a strong feeling in Washington to retain a strong permanent military and economic presence in Iraq. My belief is that a lot of the violence that continues in Iraq right now between different religious groups is caused in part by the continued presence of American troops. I believe that if American troops withdrew, almost immediately the level of violence would decrease.

Its amazing how lucid an aging Carter is compared to the bumbling idiot who is in charge of the latest round of malaise in America.

Speaking of ex-Democratic presidents, Crooked Timber asks how the brownshirt contingent so keen on the elimination of habeas corpus and torturing anyone the president doesn't like might feel about the same powers being available to President Clinton (and they consider the prospect of this being Bill or Hillary - maybe revenge on the vast right wing conspiracy could be more savage than anyone ever imagined - and while torture is abhorrent the idea of a vicious harpy like Ann Coulter having a conversation with a baseball bat does have a certain unpleasant appeal...).

The passage by the US Congress of a bill that among other things abolishes habeas corpus for terrorism suspects, allows interrogation methods that would normally be classed as torture, and allows the President to declare legal residents of the United States to be enemy combatants has produced a predictably partisan divide. All but two Senate Republicans voted for the Bill (Lincoln Chafee opposed and Olympia Snowe did not vote), and most pro-Republican bloggers seem to have backed it with marginal qualifications.

Those of us who fear and distrust the Bush Administration naturally find it easy to see what harm could be done with powers like this. The Administration’s supporters, on the other hand, seem confident that only the likes of David Hicks and Jose Padilla have anything to fear.

So, for those who support the bill, it might be useful to consider the standard thought experiment recommended to all who support dictatorial powers for a leader on their own side. Think about what the other side might do with these powers.

For concreteness, suppose Hillary Clinton is elected in 2008 with a Democratic majority in Congress, and appoints someone like Janet Reno as her Attorney-General, and that some rightwing extremist takes a potshot at her. Suppose that the unsuccessful terrorist turns out to have drifted widely through the organisations that Clinton famously called the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, ranging from organisations with a track record of association with terrorism, like Operation Rescue and the militia movement, to those of the mainstream right, not engaged in violence, but prone to the violent rhetoric of people like Ann Coulter.

The bill, as it stands, would give the Clinton Administration essentially unlimited powers over non-citizens legally resident in the US (or anywhere else in the world) and over US citizens found, by the Clinton Administration, to have provided material support for those involved in the attack. Given unlimited powers of search and seizure, and unfettered use of “aggressive interrogations”, it would be easy to find evidence of some criminal offence even in cases of people who had no connection whatsoever with the original case. The Bush Administration has set plenty of precedents for the kinds of shifting jurisdiction that can keep people locked up for years without ever facing trial.

Moreover, but in the wake of a domestic terror attack, it would be just about impossible to resist a demand for additional powers, drawing on precedents established by Bush. Ambiguous provisions of the existing law could be clarified in ways that negated most of the protections currently given to US citizens.

And, although I may be corrected on this, there doesn’t appear to be any notion of prohibiting retrospectivity or of a statute of limitations. There would be nothing to stop the Clinton Administration revisiting cases of the 1990s, and applying the newly broadened definitions of enemy combatant to anyone who, for example, made threats against the government or government officials over those cases.

Of course, Hillary is just one possibility for the next president (and not one I'd particularly favour). "Avant News - predictor of future headlines - considers another, possibly more likely scenario - the next president will be a write in candidate currently working as a technician for Diebold.

In a dramatic development that has come as a surprise to pundits and the public alike, a youthful technician with Diebold, Inc. has emerged as the unlikely winner of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The president-elect, 19 year old Billy Pustule of Green, Ohio, reached via SMS at the garage apartment by his mother's house in which he currently resides, said he was "real psyched about being the president" and "had big plans for the inauguration party".
A D V E R T I S I N G

Veteran political observers including Seymour Shackleton of the Miami-Dade Political Coroner have expressed what amounts to sheer disbelief at the unanticipated outcome.

"To my knowledge, this is the first presidential election in American history won by an entirely unknown write-in candidate," Mr. Shackleton said. "No one seems to have even heard of Billy Pustule. A Google of his name turns up only five listings, all of them Amazon.com reader comments on anthologies of 19th century erotic cartoons. How the president-elect managed to build a sufficiently large grass-roots groundswell to clinch the election while operating in complete anonymity is, frankly, beyond me."

President-elect Pustule said he "has always been kind of interested in politics because of my job", a service technician and junior programmer at Diebold, Inc., the primary manufacturer of electronic voting machines in the United States. Tamper-proof Diebold electronic voting machines have figured prominently in recent U.S. elections, particularly those elections in which outsider candidates sharing a political affiliation with Diebold executives have won by bafflingly wide margins.

According to the official electronic tally, compiled and certified by Diebold voting engineers, President-elect Pustule won an impressive 59.6% of the popular vote nationwide, the strongest showing ever received by a write-in candidate since the dissolution of the Constitution in 2007. He was followed by 38% for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, and 28.6% for Republican candidate Bill Frist. The fact that the totals exceed 100% has been attributed by a Diebold spokesman to "a special kind of rounding".

Billmon (not as retired as he made out) has one of his customary paired quotes up comparing Bush and FDR.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Inaugural Address
March 4, 1933

"The only thing we have is fear."
George W. Bush
Radio Address
September 30, 2006

Billmon also has a look at the latest Republican pervert to be unmasked - who exactly is the base for these guys nowadays - when did they become the party of child molesters, torturers and gay S&M prostitutes posing as journalists ?

Six-term Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida . . . chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, said he would resign immediately after ABC News reported he sent messages to current and former congressional pages with repeated references to sexual organs and acts . . . Foley was the author of the key sexual predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which Bush signed in July.

So the congressional point man on sexual predation is -- or rather was -- a sexual predator. Why am I not surprised?

As it happens, the Showtime channel has a new show about a Miami forensic examiner (his speciality is analyzing blood spatters) who moonlights as a serial killer. I read a review just this morning in the New York Times.

Purely a coincidence, no doubt. But Jung believed, and I tend to agree, that coincidences often reveal deeper psychological truths -- about that which is observed and not just the observer.

I think there's a long post, if not a book, to be written about this particular truth, which is the Jeckyll-and-Hyde split between appearances and reality in 21st century America -- the America where prostitutes pose as journalists (or vice versa), "Christian" activists lobby for legalized torture, generals swagger like Rambo in front of the cameras but cringe before their civilian masters in private, libertarian law professors write secret memos justifying the creation of a police state, sworn enemies of big government gorge themselves on pork, vomit, then gorge some more, and U.S. Senators with the racial values of a klavern leader masquerade as "compassionate conservatives."

And then, of course, there's our president, who preaches democracy and freedom by day and rewrites the Geneva Conventions by night.