The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits in print – for Wednesday, September, 1, 2010, are:
Soldier tells lawmakers his unit is unprepared for Afghan war
Lobbyists undermine bipartisan support for transparency
Gulf Coast seafood “‘all clear’ is being sounded way too early”
Irrigation, T. Boone Pickens put Texas aquifer in severe decline
In wake of massacre, Latin nations getting citizens out of Mexico
Germany, Britain secretly concerned about ‘peak oil’
Gaddafi wants billions to stop black “barbarian invasion” of Europe
UN report calls Congo corrupt, rotten, lacking rights, justice, values
Enough wheat to feed 100 million rots as Indian children go hungry
Soldier tells lawmakers his unit is unprepared for Afghan war
Chicago Tribune
(9/1/10)
Army reservist says unit not ready for fall deployment
A Chicago sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve bypassed the chain of command and asked two Illinois lawmakers to intervene when he thought his unit, set to deploy to Afghanistan this fall, was woefully unprepared.
Alejandro Villatoro, 28, is one of about 160 soldiers from across the Midwest in the 656th Transportation Company, based in Hobart, Ind. He said he didn’t want his unit to be unprepared like his was in 2003.
In Kuwait, Villatoro said, his unit conducted missions with trucks used in the Korean War and trained using Vietnam tactics, like digging foxholes. When his unit invaded Iraq, some soldiers did so with scant bullets.
“This is an example of what a commander does, where they put the mission first before the safety,” said Villatoro, of Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. “My concern is I want to put safety first to make sure that our soldiers are properly trained before we take on a mission.”
Villatoro contacted the offices of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Staff members from each office said they attended a joint meeting in August with an Army Reserve official about investigating Villatoro’s concerns.
Lobbyists undermine bipartisan support for transparency
The Boston Globe
(8/30/10)
Contractors resist US disclosure effort
Defense companies and other major industries are hoping to block disclosure of their own fraudulent or substandard performance in federal contracts, despite a mandate this year by Congress that such potentially embarrassing information be released to the public.
Sensitive to concerns raised by the companies, the White House has delayed enacting the little-known disclosure provision while it studies the issue, officials said.
The controversy highlights the extent to which efforts to make the government more transparent often garner bipartisan support but then stall in the face of powerful interests seeking to limit public disclosure …
At issue is a database that is cur rently kept secret, called the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System. Companies are required to fill the database with information about their failures on federal contracts, including civil, criminal, and administrative findings against them.
The database was established in 2008 for the private use of government officials who oversee contracts, but was not intended to be made public.
Contractors complain that disclosing all that information could lead to the unfair use of damaging information by watchdog groups, the media, and their rivals.
But Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent who managed this summer to win a disclosure provision in a war spending bill that was signed by President Obama, said the public has a right to know when taxpayer dollars are improperly used or criminally misspent.
“We hand out over $500 billion a year to federal contractors, many of which have well-established histories of systemic illegal, fraudulent, and incompetent behavior,’’ Sanders said in a statement. “We cannot let these corporations continue to rip off American taxpayers. I strongly expect that this new public awareness will go a long way toward putting an end to handing out taxpayer-financed contracts to corporations with a history of fraud.’’
The disclosure requirement marks a major victory for government watchdog groups, which have long maintained that billions are lost to fraud or shoddy work. One group, the Project on Government Oversight, identified $12 billion paid in fines by federal contractors between 1995 and 2006, an indication of serious problems with many contracts.
Gulf Coast seafood “‘all clear’ is being sounded way too early”
AOL NEWS
(8/31/10)
Lab Results Raise New Concerns Over Gulf Seafood
A Boston lab hired by the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association to analyze coastal fishing waters says findings suggest the government’s claim that Gulf of Mexico seafood is safe to eat may be premature.
The lab, Boston Chemical Data Corp., said it found dispersant in a sample taken near Biloxi, Miss., almost a month after BP said it had stopped using the toxic chemical to break up the record amounts of crude spewed by the Gulf oil spill. The leak was finally capped on July 15.
The lab posted its data today on the website of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network in a move that could fuel the debate over the status of the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico.
Parts of the gulf have been reopened to fishing and shrimping after the federal government declared the waters safe.
The lab’s findings “again point to evidence that the ‘all clear’ is being sounded way too early,” said Stuart Smith, attorney for both the fishermen’s union and LEAN, which is suing BP on their behalf. “I do not believe a robust statistical sampling has occurred to prove that it’s safe.”
Water samples analyzed by Boston Chemical show oil and toxins in crab. But the key finding, according to Marco Kaltofen, the lab’s president, is the presence of the Corexit dispersant used to break up the oil in coastal water near Horn Island, off Biloxi.
BP has said repeatedly the last day it used any dispersant was July 19. Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Alicia Johnson confirmed the agency believes that to be the case.
But Kaltofen said the time frame raises a question.
“Why on Aug. 9 did we find on a relatively concentrated pool of dispersant on the surface, well outside where the dispersant was going to be sprayed? It shouldn’t have been there,” Kaltofen told AOL News. He added that the high concentration in the sample suggested the dispersant was not carried inland from open water.
“What person or process got this dispersant with such a high concentration into inshore waters?” Kaltofen said.
Fishermen working the gulf say flatly they don’t believe that BP actually stopped using the dispersant. But Kaltofen said he has talked to scientists who are searching for a more scientifically sound reason. One possibility: Could the dispersant have reconstituted itself on the surface?
Irrigation, T. Boone Pickens put Texas aquifer in severe decline
Texas Observer
(8/31/10)
The Late, Great Ogallala Aquifer
I’ve got a story coming out later this week on a Panhandle water fight. The story focuses on Hemphill County, an interesting corner of the state that’s taking a different approach to the Ogallala Aquifer. While much of the rest of the Panhandle has severely depleted the aquifer to irrigate crops or is plunging into water mining projects (think T. Boone Pickens), people in Hemphill are trying to leave their groundwater in the ground. It’s an effort to preserve the area’s unique prairie ecology and a traditional way of life …
We know that the Ogallala hardly recharges and that it’s been drawn down significantly in many places. We can also safely assume that farmers and cities like Amarillo and Lubbock aren’t going to stop pumping anytime soon. Those facts mean that a Day of Reckoning will eventually come. But when?
Out of necessity, cities in the Panhandle and West Texas are coming to rely more and more on the Ogallala.
Lake Meredith, a drinking water reservoir near Amarillo that serves 11 cities, has been plummeting in volume for a decade and is rapidly approaching the “dead pool” level, at which point no more water can be withdrawn. Just today, the lake set a new record – less than 2 percent of its volume remains …
With no end in sight, the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority and the city of Amarillo are scrambling to open up new well fields in Roberts County, a relatively untapped part of the Ogallala. Roberts County is also home to the majority of Pickens’ water holdings. If Meredith doesn’t bounce back, CRMWA estimates that it has enough groundwater to last over a hundred years.
Meanwhile, water planners in intensively-irrigated counties are planning to drain 50-60% of the aquifer’s current volume by 2060 …
… the overall picture is one of severe decline. Unfortunately, there are no do-overs in the Ogallala. Once the water is pumped out and used, it’s gone for good. For decades, there were no limits on pumping. Indeed, it was widely believed that the Ogallala was a free-flowing subterranean river that could yield as much as man demanded.
It wasn’t until well into the 19th century that farmers realized that they were depleting their lifeblood and began to move towards some semblance of conservation. Still, the rate of decline hasn’t appreciably slowed.
I should also note that over the years a host of Cassandras has predicted the rapid, even apocalyptic, demise of irrigated farming. Nothing like that has come to pass – yet. More likely is a slow, halting decline in High Plains agriculture and the regional economy. Like so many other natural resources, the Ogallala is entering an Age of Scarcity in which rationing becomes a matter of economic survival. In concrete terms that means increased regulation and pumping limits …
There are no engineering miracles that can solve the withering-away of the Ogallala. No amount of rainfall will replenish the aquifer, either. The choices that face everyone in that region are difficult. You can’t turn off the spigot and destroy an ag-based economy. Nor can you pump full-bore until the water is gone. So for now the region walks a middle path, gradually cutting back and preparing (hopefully) for the day when the well is dry.
In wake of massacre, Latin nations getting citizens out of Mexico
TIME
(8/31/10)
Mexico’s Next War: Against the Narcos?
The Ecuadorean government couldn’t get its citizen out of Mexico fast enough. The young man had been making his way to the U.S. last week when he and 72 fellow Latin American migrants, he told authorities, were abducted by one of Mexico’s most vicious drug cartels, the Zetas, in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas. When the migrants refused to pay ransom, the narcos shot each of them in the head at a remote ranch house, leaving their corpses in heaps inside a grain barn. Only the Ecuadorean, who was shot in the neck but played dead, survived. He was put under Mexican military protection.
But Ecuadorean officials whisked him back home early Monday morning — and who can blame them? A day after last week’s Tamaulipas massacre, believed to be the worst drug-related crime ever in Mexico, a state investigator probing the atrocity, Roberto Suárez, and a police officer accompanying him went missing. The only thing more troubling is how little a surprise that was: Mexican cops, detectives and judges are often murdered while working narco cases, as are witnesses supposedly under government protection. After a top drug lord was killed in a shoot-out with federal agents late last year, officials in the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón were even clueless enough to trumpet the identity of a Mexican marine who died in the operation — and narcos then murdered his unprotected mother and sister in retaliation.
Drug-related killings have claimed more than 28,000 lives in Mexico since Calderón began his offensive against the narcocartels three and a half years ago. The vast majority of those homicides are unsolved. But the migrant massacre and its aftermath have left Mexicans with the most sinking feeling yet that their government is impotent to shield them from the bloodshed. In two weeks, Mexico will mark its bicentennial, yet most people there say they see little to celebrate if 200 years of nationhood is culminating in a narcorepublic that can act with nightmarish impunity. “The country lives in a state of perpetual and increasing violence,” says pollster and political analyst Federico Berrueto. “Everything and everybody is paralyzed.”
As if to stoke Mexicans’ dread that the narcos plan to turn the bicentennial into a bullet fest, the cartels have upped the ante in recent weeks. Aside from murdering numerous politicians in northern Mexico — including the most recent victim, Marco Antonio Leal, mayor of the Tamaulipas town of Hidalgo, whose 10-year-old daughter was shot in the leg during the Sunday ambush but survived — they’ve unleashed explosives. Two car bombs went off simultaneously in the Tamaulipas capital of Ciudad Victoria last Friday, one at a television studio and another outside a police station. No one was hurt, but on Saturday grenade explosions in the Tamaulipas border city of Reynosa reportedly killed one person and injured 20, while another bomb planted at police headquarters in Tampico farther south wounded two …
The Ecuadorean government couldn’t get its citizen out of Mexico fast enough. The young man had been making his way to the U.S. last week when he and 72 fellow Latin American migrants, he told authorities, were abducted by one of Mexico’s most vicious drug cartels, the Zetas, in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas. When the migrants refused to pay ransom, the narcos shot each of them in the head at a remote ranch house, leaving their corpses in heaps inside a grain barn. Only the Ecuadorean, who was shot in the neck but played dead, survived. He was put under Mexican military protection.
But Ecuadorean officials whisked him back home early Monday morning — and who can blame them? A day after last week’s Tamaulipas massacre, believed to be the worst drug-related crime ever in Mexico, a state investigator probing the atrocity, Roberto Suárez, and a police officer accompanying him went missing. The only thing more troubling is how little a surprise that was: Mexican cops, detectives and judges are often murdered while working narco cases, as are witnesses supposedly under government protection. After a top drug lord was killed in a shoot-out with federal agents late last year, officials in the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón were even clueless enough to trumpet the identity of a Mexican marine who died in the operation — and narcos then murdered his unprotected mother and sister in retaliation.
Drug-related killings have claimed more than 28,000 lives in Mexico since Calderón began his offensive against the narcocartels three and a half years ago. The vast majority of those homicides are unsolved. But the migrant massacre and its aftermath have left Mexicans with the most sinking feeling yet that their government is impotent to shield them from the bloodshed. In two weeks, Mexico will mark its bicentennial, yet most people there say they see little to celebrate if 200 years of nationhood is culminating in a narcorepublic that can act with nightmarish impunity. “The country lives in a state of perpetual and increasing violence,” says pollster and political analyst Federico Berrueto. “Everything and everybody is paralyzed.”
As if to stoke Mexicans’ dread that the narcos plan to turn the bicentennial into a bullet fest, the cartels have upped the ante in recent weeks. Aside from murdering numerous politicians in northern Mexico — including the most recent victim, Marco Antonio Leal, mayor of the Tamaulipas town of Hidalgo, whose 10-year-old daughter was shot in the leg during the Sunday ambush but survived — they’ve unleashed explosives. Two car bombs went off simultaneously in the Tamaulipas capital of Ciudad Victoria last Friday, one at a television studio and another outside a police station. No one was hurt, but on Saturday grenade explosions in the Tamaulipas border city of Reynosa reportedly killed one person and injured 20, while another bomb planted at police headquarters in Tampico farther south wounded two.
Germany, Britain secretly concerned about ‘peak oil’
Der Spiegel
(9/1/10)
Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis
A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy. The internal draft document — leaked on the Internet — shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.
The term “peak oil” is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis — and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.
The issue is so politically explosive that it’s remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term “peak oil” at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.
The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.
The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.
The lead author, Will, has declined to comment on the study. It remains doubtful that either the Bundeswehr or the German government would have consented to publish the document in its current form. But the study does show how intensively the German government has engaged with the question of peak oil.
The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about a supply crisis than it cares to admit …
The relationship with Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says. “For Germany, this involves a balancing act between stable and privileged relations with Russia and the sensitivities of (Germany’s) eastern neighbors.” In other words, Germany, if it wants to guarantee its own energy security, should be accommodating in relation to Moscow’s foreign policy objectives, even if it means risking damage to its relations with Poland and other Eastern European states.
Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin’s posture toward the Middle East, according to the study. “A readjustment of Germany’s Middle East policy … in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change,” the authors write.
Gaddafi wants billions to stop black “barbarian invasion” of Europe
BBC News
(8/31/10)
Gaddafi wants EU cash to stop African migrants
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi says the EU should pay Libya at least 5bn euros (£4bn; $6.3bn) a year to stop illegal African immigration and avoid a “black Europe”.
Speaking on a visit to Italy, Col Gaddafi said Europe “could turn into Africa” as “there are millions of Africans who want to come in”.
Italy has drawn criticism for handing over to Libya migrants it intercepts at sea, without screening them first.
Far fewer now reach Italy from Libya.
European Commission figures show that in 2009 the number of people caught trying to enter Italy illegally fell to 7,300, from 32,052 in 2008. The data was collected under the EU’s Eurodac fingerprinting system.
Col Gaddafi has forged close ties with Italy since a friendship treaty was signed two years ago. It sought to draw a line under historic bitterness between Libya and Italy, its former colonial master.
“Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in,” said Col Gaddafi, quoted by the AFP news agency.
He was speaking at a ceremony in Rome late on Monday, standing next to Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
“We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,” Col Gaddafi said.
“We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”
UN report calls Congo corrupt, rotten, lacking rights, justice, values
Der Spiegel
(8/31/10)
The UN Documents Congo’s Bloodbath
Women and girls were raped. Men slaughtered. Refugees killed with machetes and sticks. A new UN report describes an orgy of violence in Congo between 1993 and 2003, meticulously documenting how law and humanity were abandoned. It also accuses Rwanda of atrocities in Congo — something that has not gone down well in Kigali.
The report is over 500 pages long. It is one of the most comprehensive investigations into war crimes in the history of the United Nations. Even though it has not even been released yet, it has caused serious diplomatic tensions in New York, Congo and Rwanda.
Two dozen UN inspectors meticulously examined the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003. They assessed reports, viewed film documents and interviewed thousands of witnesses. They collated everything that was considered significant. The draft report has already been leaked and it is a documentation of horror.
The investigators describe how for years Rwanda-backed rebel groups hunted, tortured and massacred Hutu refugees in Congo, or Zaire as it was then known. Schools, hospitals, refugee camps, children, women, the aged — nothing and no one was safe from the murderous gangs on both sides. By no means were the pursuers from Rwanda the only ones to perpetrate crimes. The report describes the massive country as corrupt and rotten, a place where human rights, justice and humanitarian values had lost any worth decades ago.
The decline of the country began long before the First Congo War of 1996 to 1998 and the overthrow and exile of the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. At the end of 1991 the Congolese from the copper-rich province of Katanga in the south of the country had started to persecute, displace and murder people who had migrated from the Kasai region. The conflict was fuelled by Mobutu, who felt threatened by many opposition politicians from Kasai.
Enough wheat to feed 100 million rots as Indian children go hungry
NDTV
(9/1/10)
Enough food to feed 100 million people rots away
At a granary owned by the government, the wheat lies in the sun. Hundreds of bags of it. The stamp on the jute bags says “2010-2011.” This batch of wheat is produced from a crop that’s just three months old. It’s rotting away.
“This is the first time wheat has been stored here in the open. Earlier they stored it in a pucca plinth. Now there are more than 1.5 lakh bags out here,” says the watchman, at Thol Storage in Haryana, which is just an open storage space with plastic sheets.
The crop is roughly the same as last year’s, but since movement out of Punjab and Haryana is less and no storage space is available, it has become a problem of plenty.
A few months ago, NDTV travelled to similar warehouses in Sirhind, Anandpur Sahib, Ludhiana and Sangrur in Punjab. There, too, hundreds of bags of wheat lay which smell very bad. Insects and rats were also present in the heap, even watchmen found it difficult to guard, totemic of government disinterest and a systematic lack of initiative.
Government acknowledges the problems and says they don’t have covered storage spaces. But now, they have floated tenders to get about 70 lakh metric tonnes of storage space in next two years, which they believe will solve the problem to a great extent.
Currently, in Punjab and Haryana, about 12 lakh metric tonnes of wheat is wasting away. That’s enough to feed 100 million people for three months.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court made its stand clear to Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, stating that earlier this month, when it asked him to ensure excess grain is given to poor people, it wasn’t offering a suggestion. Find a way to implement the order, the judges said.
Mr Pawar told an angry Parliament hours later that he welcomed suggestions from them on how to distribute grain to poor families.
The pressing need for a solution is not new. In Madhya Pradesh, six out of every ten children suffer from diseases caused by hunger or malnutrition.
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