byte&chew

A GPS moment

What's in a "spat"?

Today (9/20/11) I read in The Berlin Daily Sun where Laidlaw and Cate Street are having a “spat”, how interesting! It would be more interesting reading about what’s really going on, what “the rest of the story” might be. I find it hard to believe that Cate Street is just “stiffing” Laidlaw for no reason and there lies the problem with the lack of depth by the local media. Could it be that the cozy relationship between the staff at the Sun and the staff at City Hall and mayor Grenier in particular makes this issue a “hands off” issue? Not investigating why Cate Street is not paying the alleged $5M due Laidlaw is a story in itself and it deserves more than the report of “spat”. I can speculate about the reason for the spat and I can come up with several guesses, but my guess is just that, a guess. Newspapers are given the power to investigate these types of issues by our constitution and when they fail to do their job the citizens are left in the dark about issues that might change their opinions about public policies and their public servants. Am I surprised about this “spat”? Hell no, I’m surprised something like this or worse hasn’t happened before now. Two or three years ago when I spoke to public officials in Ellicottville NY and then to others who had working relationships with Laidlaw, the advice and warnings about the company were unanimous, “be careful when dealing with Laidlaw or best of all, don’t deal with them at all if you have a choice”. There was a reason that the Bertrand administration was less than enthusiastic about dealing with Laidlaw and that one of their first moves was to hire a good lawyer. The handwriting was on the wall as a result of learning that Laidlaw had sued Ellicottville NY for $10 million. The City is lucky to have dodged the Laidlaw bullet and that the “spat” is between Cate Street and Laidlaw and not between Berlin and Laidlaw.  It’s interesting that our mayor is silent about this “spat”. In the past he hasn’t been shy about his praise of Laidlaw and Mr. Bartoszek, but I guess he now finds himself between a rock and a hard place with this “spat”.

Tuning in

Although I consider myself a news junkie I have to admit that I’m already sick and tired of the next election and it’s a whole year away. What is most disturbing to me is the fact that it seems that nobody is listening. It appears that nobody is taking the time to listen to a point of view that may be different than their own. In real life, meaningful dialog is usually the “center piece” of positive outcomes and paying attention to a variety of views enriches that outcome, but in today’s political climate it is seen as a weakness. This trait was evident during the debt ceiling showdown when the tea baggers were prepared to have the country face default with unknown economic ramifications rather than accept any compromise of their position. If there’s one issue that really threatens the future viability of our country it’s probably this notion of things having to be “my way or no way”. In reality nothing in life works in this uncompromising manner.  If I had to point to one fatal flaw I find with most tea baggers, it’s that they’ve convinced themselves that, theirs is the only one and true point of view worth considering and that every issue is black or white. Again it’s been my experience that in life that there are very few things that fit inside those two “neat boxes”. For those who are shy on facts or insecure, it sure makes it easier to deal with issues by reducing all options to two. You’re with them or against them in their black and white world and if you can’t agree with them, you’re automatically on their hate/shit list. It’s a short distance between dealing with an issue on a philosophical level to one on an emotional level. Once on the emotional level facts don’t matter, feelings matter and usually the original issue is transformed to a personal attack on the person who dares having a different point of view. Many of the tea baggers also have their self righteous attitudes bolstered by their religious beliefs. Now who can argue with their interpretation of Gods position on issues? After all, if God can speak to them about these issues, who cares what anybody else thinks? I must confess that God has never spoken to me and, I’ve wasted a lot of time looking at issues from different perspectives. I wish I could convince myself that I have a superior insight into issues and then I could tell you that you’re an ass for disagreeing with me. I think I’ll pin a tea bag to my hat and hold a copy of the constitution in one hand and a bible in the other. I just need to see if I can hear voices of certainty and wisdom from beyond the present.

This will sting

And here's Tom................

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Is Washington Out of Gas?

Posted by Michael Klare at 9:27am, September 15, 2011.

Way back then, the signs out on the streets read: "No Blood for Oil," "How did USA's oil get under Iraq's sand?" and "Don't trade lives for oil!" Such homemade placards, carried by deluded antiwar protesters in enormous demonstrations before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq in March 2003, were typical -- and typically dismissible.  Oil?  Don't be silly!

True, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz spoke admiringly about Iraq “floating on a sea of oil,” but that was just a slip of the tongue.  President Bush was so much more cautious.  Despite his years in the energy business and those of his vice-president (not to speak of the double-hulled tanker that had been named after his national security advisor while she was on the board of Chevron), he almost never even mentioned oil. When he did, he didn't call it "oil," but Iraq’s “patrimony.”

Back then, of course, everyone who mattered knew that whatever the invasion of Iraq was about -- freedom, possible mushroom clouds rising over U.S. cities or biological and chemical attacks on them, the felling of a monster dictator -- it certainly wasn’t about oil.   An oil war?  How crude (so to speak), even if Iraq, by utter coincidence, happened to be located in the oil heartlands of the planet.

And it wasn’t just the Bush administration.  You wouldn’t have found the New York Times speaking about oil wars either.  Not much has changed, actually.  As in last weekend's eight-year-late modified mea culpa for the Iraq war that former liberal war hawks conducted in that paper’s magazine section, you could find some breast-beating, testosterone-dissing, and even regret for past positions, but not a mention of oil.  And -- who would expect anything else -- never a mention either of the ignorant hoi polloi who carried such oily signs, demonstrated against war, and are best forgotten, or any stray experts who genuinely opposed Bush’s wars before they were launched.  (Here’s a little tip for those who want to make it into the Rolodexes of high-powered Washington reporters: being wrong is helpful, and wisdom is a platonic ideal not to be dented by evidence of the lack of it.)

As for our most recent (definitely not oil) war in Libya where American and NATO planes are still bombing the you-know-what out of the remnants of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, the explanations in the news pages have generally focused on preventing massacres, “humanitarian intervention,” and the felling of evil dictators.  For oil, you have to head for section D (the business pages) where, under the headline “The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins,” you could indeed finally read a comment like this: “The resumption of Libyan production would help drive down oil prices in Europe, and indirectly, gasoline prices on the East Coast of the United States.  Western nations -- especially the NATO countries that provided crucial air support to the rebels -- want to make sure their companies are in prime position to pump the Libyan crude.”

Of course, despite the best attempts of Bush’s men in Baghdad, we never did get Iraq’s oil.  But that’s the lumps you take when, as an imperial power, you don’t actually win your oil war.  And there are more lumps when you can’t win any war, oil or otherwise.  Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, is an expert on both war and oil.  In the second in a series of TomDispatch posts on American decline, he considers whether both America and oil are now on the downhill slope.  Tom

The toonist strikes again

From TomDispatch

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Tear Down the Freedom Tower

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 7:57am, September 8, 2011.

[Note to TomDispatch Readers: The remarkable Timothy MacBain’s interview with me today marks the 100th he’s done for TomDispatch.  He operates with little but his native intelligence, a great radio voice, and the most minimal of equipment.  It’s a small miracle. To catch today’s TomCast audio interview in which, among other things, I think back to the ways in which the original 9/11 rites and ceremonies led to this website, click here, or download it to your iPod here.  If you want to wander among the previous 99 interviews, click here.  Tom]

Let’s Cancel 9/11
Bury the War State's Blank Check at Sea
By Tom Engelhardt

Let’s bag it.

I’m talking about the tenth anniversary ceremonies for 9/11, and everything that goes with them: the solemn reading of the names of the dead, the tolling of bells, the honoring of first responders, the gathering of presidents, the dedication of the new memorial, the moments of silence.  The works.

Let’s just can it all.  Shut down Ground Zero.  Lock out the tourists.  Close “Reflecting Absence,” the memorial built in the “footprints” of the former towers with its grove of trees, giant pools, and multiple waterfalls before it can be unveiled this Sunday.  Discontinue work on the underground National September 11 Museum due to open in 2012.  Tear down the Freedom Tower (redubbed 1 World Trade Center after our “freedom” wars went awry), 102 stories of “the most expensive skyscraper ever constructed in the United States.” (Estimated price tag: $3.3 billion.)  Eliminate that still-being-constructed, hubris-filled 1,776 feet of building, planned in the heyday of George W. Bush and soaring into the Manhattan sky like a nyaah-nyaah invitation to future terrorists.  Dismantle the other three office towers being built there as part of an $11 billion government-sponsored construction program.  Let’s get rid of it all.   If we had wanted a memorial to 9/11, it would have been more appropriate to leave one of the giant shards of broken tower there untouched.

Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves?  If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness?  No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror.  No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money.  No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were in every sense abusive, horrific acts.  And the saddest thing is that the victims of those suicidal monstrosities have been misused here ever since under the guise of pious remembrance.  This country has become dependent on the dead of 9/11 -- who have no way of defending themselves against how they have been used -- as an all-purpose explanation for our own goodness and the horrors we’ve visited on others, for the many towers-worth of dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whose blood is on our hands.

Isn’t it finally time to go cold turkey?  To let go of the dead?  Why keep repeating our 9/11 mantra as if it were some kind of old-time religion, when we’ve proven that we, as a nation, can’t handle it -- and worse yet, that we don’t deserve it?

We would have been better off consigning our memories of 9/11 to oblivion, forgetting it all if only we could.  We can’t, of course.  But we could stop the anniversary remembrances.  We could stop invoking 9/11 in every imaginable way so many years later.  We could stop using it to make ourselves feel like a far better country than we are.  We could, in short, leave the dead in peace and take a good, hard look at ourselves, the living, in the nearest mirror.

Another loss for Berlin