You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2009.
Barack Obama: Incompetency’s Gift to Big Oil?
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No ‘Daylight’ Between White House & Pentagon On Afghanistan, Gen. Jones Says • July 2nd
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U.S. Marines Try to Retake Afghan Valley From Taliban • July 1st
Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan early Thursday morning to try to take back the region from Taliban fighters whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in Helmand provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency.
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At about $2,000 per acre, no annual crop can match poppy in terms of gross revenue. (This is an average—prices are higher for farmers closer to the Pakistan border and thus the international market.) Even at the historically high prices of 2008, wheat didn’t clear one-fifth of that. This is a staggering sum for Afghan farmers, most of whom work small farms of less than two jiribs (that’s about one acre). But due to the labor investment, the actual profit on one acre of poppy (about $850), while still higher than wheat ($200), is far less than for other traditional Afghan crops like grapes ($1,000), pomegranates ($5,000), and almonds ($6,000). Unfortunately, without international aid—which is difficult to deliver in Taliban-infested regions like Helmand—most Afghan farmers can’t afford to wait the few years it takes to get a fruit or nut orchard up and running
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Captured, Tortured, Still in Prison
Jawad also complained about being mistreated at Guantánamo, saying he had been moved with absurd frequency from cell to cell — the idea being to deprive him of sleep. A check of the official prison logs showed that Jawad had in fact been moved 112 times, without explanation, from one cell to another in a two-week period — an average of eight moves a day for 14 days.
As Colonel Vandeveld said in his affidavit: “Upon further investigation, we were able to determine that Mr. Jawad had been subjected to a sleep deprivation program popularly referred to as the ‘frequent flyer’ program.” The colonel said he lacked the words “to express the heartsickness” he felt as he came to fully understand the way Jawad had been treated by American soldiers.
On Dec. 25, 2003, Jawad tried to kill himself by repeatedly banging his head against a wall of his cell.
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Few Bidders to Develop Iraqi Oil and Gas Fields
After the day long event, which was broadcast live on national television, the government came away with just a single deal struck from among the six giant oil fields and two gas fields it had put up for bid.
The single successful contract went to a pairing of BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation for the largest field on offer: Rumaila, near the southern city of Basra, which has proven reserves of 17 billion barrels.
This is not a test. This is real.
JR, while looking for the song “Clubbed to Death” (from the album Furious Angels) by Rob Dougan, I found this vid, where someone has applied the song as a soundtrack for scenes from Blackhawk Down. Creepy song, scary movie.
JR, I hope you don’t mind if I slip this one in. ~BB
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The War Nerd on Iran
by Gary Brecher • June 18th
Imagine the other way around; imagine Iranian Islamic tv covering, say, a classic culture-war US election like Nixon in 1972. You’d see Persians in expensive turbans blanket-covering every demonstration, every love-in (well, maybe not those so much), every draft-card burning…and then the US government announces that Nixon just stomped McGovern in the biggest landslide ever. Who’d believe it? That is, unless you knew that for every loud camera-hog hippie you saw on tv there were about a hundred fat nobodies wishing Kent State was a daily event.
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Hedgehogs and flamingos in Tehran
By Spengler • June 16th
Iran: Past the Paranoia
by Peter Hitchens • TAC June issue
Jefferson and/or Khomeini?
by Leon Hadar • June 18th
Elections
by Daniel Larison • June 16th
Outlasting the Ayatollahs
by Pat Buchanan • June 15th
Silence Is Golden
by Daniel Larison • June 15th
Iran’s Election: None of America’s Business
So far, we’re staying out of it – but for how much longer?
by Justin Raimondo • June 15th
By popular demand… pictures of Farrah. [Yes, we can have the blue bike photo first. ~BB]
May she rest in peace. Fighting cancer is hard painful work. And, as we all know, death don’t have no mercy.
Sensible Shoes
Farrah head shot
Farrah on the beach (from Playboy images)
Playboy, December 1978
Farrah The Diver
“The Burning Bed”
Farrah smiling
Interesting exit interview of Colin Campbell in Berlin, May 2009. Retiring at 78.
A gentleman and a scholar and… (the Guiness in this photo is making me really thirsty, gotta go)
http://www.lifeinfo.de/inh1./texte/colin_j._campbell_intervie.html
- hat tip to Autonomous Unit for the link.
No, Bif gets zulukilo. … NO dude, there was never any doubt. Did you see the monkeys on her?
Lydia Guevara and bandoliers of carrots
Yes. I freely admit to adding this one. ~BB
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“Monday, Monday… can’t trust that day.” I haven’t even checked to see if there are any grenades waiting in my mail box. Anyways… this is probably the best energy article you’re going to find today. Trust me. Granted, some of the stuff is “duh, no shit”, but it’s a clear-eyed overview and provides an interesting USGS update with regard to coal.
U.S. Foresees a Thinner Cushion of Coal
By REBECCA SMITH
Every year, federal employee George Warholic calculates America’s vast coal reserves the same way his predecessors have for decades: He looks up the prior year’s coal-reserve estimate, subtracts the year’s nationwide production and arrives at a new official tally.
Coal provides nearly one-quarter of the total energy consumed in the U.S., and by Mr. Warholic’s estimate, the country has enough in the ground to last about 240 years. A belief in this nearly boundless supply has led officials to dub the U.S. the “Saudi Arabia of Coal.”
But the estimate, recent findings show, may be wildly overconfident.
I hate to do this. I hate pimping this site (that’s why I don’t). And I’m not pround of myself. I just do this because I want to let people know I sometimes socialize. I don’t expect anyone to come and join me. I’m just saying. I am enjoying myself on this site. But I hope I last. Because I am tearing it up. I have a longterm goal here, which I cannot disclose, because it would compromise that, but otherwise, I don’t give a fuck who I piss off as Johnny Rico, this is somewhat recon.
These guys think they are tough, but I’ve been scoping them, and I’m waiting for a fight. And I will knock the heads off the first three morons that come at me.
I will only show respect to Abu Mook and his crew.
This was weird for me. I hung around, and lurked, and did a few minor posts over about 4 or 5 weeks. But basically today I just said fuck it. I’m an expert. I’ve done the reading. Fuck these mutherfuckers. And just jumped in.
Like I say. If I’m still alive tomorrow, I’m in.
Clowns to the left of me / jokers to the right
Okay, so here’s the deal. I don’t have anything against Abu Mook. We will probably end up being friends.
Abu Mook is Abu Muqawama aka Andrew Exum of CNAS with a regular gig on Rachel Maddow. In future years this will all make sense. But for now I ain’t talkin.
I still have no idea why Exum is so popular. I hesitate to compare him to the Jonas Brothers but 99% of the time he strikes me as empty of anything.
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Back to me. I have been to the mountain and spent 40 days in the desert… or wait… a cave. And I’ve been reading Justin Raimondo and Kelley Vlahos at antiwar.com. I actually went in thinking they were goofs, since I went following Tom Ricks’ suggestion.
I came out thinking I had found two new brilliant political writers that the world had never heard of. It’s a weird time for me. People I had been programmed to ignore since I was a kid (Tom Hayden) I was all of a sudden blown away by.
Just political. The music all stayed the same.
It’s like I became more independent. More neutral. How can that be.
Mama tried. I was looking for this one concerning Amanda Knox in Italy (you all are following this case, right?). I was surprised to see they played it at Woodstock. 6 days before I was born. An omen. Didn’t know it was Merle Haggard. Learn a knew thing every day.
Found a way to watch pirated French flicks with subtitles on my widescreen. So I have a backlog to clear. I’ll be back.
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