From Today's Informed Comment

Hansen: Try CEOs of Big OIl for Fraud

NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen called for the CEOs of the oil majors to be put on trial for obstructing efforts to stop global warming and for misinforming the public about the issue.

Video of his testimony:



Wait that's not it:

Here it is:



Could we also try the Board and Staff of the American Enterprise Institute, which is the "think tank" weasel that Exxon Mobil used to muddy the waters on the science of climate change.

Note too a very suspicious set of coincidences. Lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2006, is the vice chairman of the AEI board.

The AEI was the major cheerleader for the war in Iraq.

So it looks like the Oil Majors are multitasking. Their "think tank" is giving out money to bribe scientists to deny global warming. And it gave out a lot of advice about how to go to war in Iraq.

My own suggestion would not be so much trial as exile. I think the American Enterprise Institute should be removed to Fallujah, where their expertise is so needed. And where they can get a taste in the summer of what real heat is.

John McCain, too, is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, saying he wants to go green but actually urging drilling off the US coast so as to put more carbon dioxide into the air.

And then McCain wants to offer a $300,000 mn. prize for breakthroughs in battery technology. He seems to live in an ancient era when lone geniuses could invent things in their guest rooms. The kind of thing he is looking for could only be accomplished by big government or big business, and he is offering chump change in corporate terms.

The problem needs hundreds of billions of dollars, not millions.

Oh, that's right, I forgot. We don't have them. Because the Republican Party spent them in Iraq.

So as to get more oil out of the ground.

Which will cause more global warming.

War, oil, it is all the same.

Only if we get big breakthroughs in solar can we avoid our asses being cooked.

No, I mean really. Cooked.

posted by Juan Cole @ 6/25/2008

EURO 2008 DIG IT!

Great

It seems that I am driving both sons crazy...

How is that? Why is that?

Sorry in advance. Now let's go driving.

Video Fun!

U R Gonna hear That I am JUST LIKE BUSH

McCain vs. Bush Issue
McCain agrees with Bush Iraq, Iran, health care, gay marriage, abortion
McCain used to disagree, now agrees tax cuts, torture
McCain used to agree now disagrees immigration
McCain always disagreed climate change, limiting nuclear weapons

HAPPY FATHER's DAY DAD!

Work Hard !

Check out this:

Juan Cole... American Patriot.

This from today's INFORMED COMMENT.  The long term impact of any pact that ignores realities in the world are destined to make our lives (both Business and Personal) much more difficult.... Watch this news tidbit carefully!

Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Friday, June 06, 2008

Bush Blackmailing al-Maliki with $50 Bn. in US Fed

The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less blackmailing the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line. Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.

Although the Bush administration is playing hardball to get this wideranging set of commitments from Iraq before July 31, and although Iraqis are eager to escape Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which limits their government's sovereignty, the negotiations may collapse in the face of widespread opposition to the baldly neocolonial terms sought by Washington. Even remaining under the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7, may be preferable to Baghdad. There were large demonstrations against the security agreement, barely covered by the US press, last Friday, and Iraqi religious and political leaders are coalescing against it. Postcolonial states of the Arab world, which only attained real independence from Britain and France with great difficulty and in living memory, are touchy about being seen as kowtowing to imperial demands. The Shah's government was overthrown in 1979 by huge crowds and a wide cross section of the public precisely on these grounds.


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AEW

Today is the Start of the new Direction! All Aboard the Peace Train!

Clearing The Bar

(click for full size)

I saw this shot about a month-and-a-half ago and have been thinking about it ever since.  It's by Callie Shell for the TIME White House Photo Blog and was taken in April at the University of Missoula's Dahlberg Arena.

I think it says a lot about Barack Obama, particularly on the last day of the primary season.  For myself, there is a lighthearted quality, almost a playfulness here, in striking contrast to the tension and pretension, paranoia and jingoism that characterized most of Bush/Cheney's tightly scripted photo-ops.  (Hence, the wonderfully extraneous nature of this flag.)

More clearly, though, what is notable is Obama's ability to pull up so high, cross the bar -- and to do so without seeming to strain much at all.

(h/t: Emily)

Jun 02, 2008 in Campaign '08 | Permalink ShareThis

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This is How I see myself... This is how other See Me...

My oh my...

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If There WAS a Blog and Nobody Came... then what?

Here's some more photos... for whoever....

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AEW