US Papers Sat: Top Sunni Lawmaker Killed

post from IraqSlogger.com on 13 June 2009 02:00:00 AM. © IraqSlogger.com

The top story today is the assassination of the leader of Iraq's main Sunni coalition, just after giving Friday prayers at a mosque in Baghdad.

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Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread

post from Daily Kos on 13 June 2009 01:41:54 AM. © Daily Kos

The United States imports close to 13 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products each day. Saudi Arabia isn’t the biggest supplier. Not Nigeria or Venezuela or Kuwait either. It's Canada. Nearly 20% of U.S. oil and oil products come from there. And nearly half of those come from Alberta province’s Athabasca oil sands, a reserve of bitumen, which is a semi-solid form of oil. The proven reserve may total 1.7 trillion barrels, at least 10% of which is economically recoverable. That makes the sands second only to Saudi Arabia as a reservoir of oil. In the past eight years, production from the sands has more than doubled from 600,000 barrels a day to 1.3 million barrels a day.

A recent report by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, chaired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, speculated in one of three scenarios that the amount of Athabascan oil produced could quintuple in 25 years, and the amount shipped to the United States could nearly double.

That sounds good given the traditionally friendly ties Canada and the United States. But oil production takes significant amounts of water, and the surface mining process destroys boreal forest and boggy muskeg. Companies are legally required to restore the land, but not with forest or bog. The larger problem is the emission of greenhouse gases. Canada has failed to meet its emissions goals under the Kyoto compact. And, so far, about 4% of the country’s greenhouse emissions come from oil sands production. When oil production rises, so will the emissions. The Integrated CO2 Network (ICO2N, an industry consortium, has proposed carbon capture and sequestration to ameliorate the problem.

But, as Shawn McCarthy reports in Friday's Globe and Mail:

The much-touted carbon capture and storage technology is not the answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands projects in northeastern Alberta, Environment Minister Jim Prentice says.

While Ottawa and Alberta are spending billions of dollars on CCS demonstration projects, the minister yesterday acknowledged what critics have said all along: The technology has limited application at the energy-intensive mines and in situ projects that extract the bitumen from the ground. ...

"CCS is not the silver bullet in the oil sands," Mr. Prentice told The Globe and Mail's editorial board. ...

The oil sands represent the fastest-growing source of emissions in Canada. Without dramatic mitigation efforts, Canada will find it nearly impossible to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020, according to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a government-appointed advisory group.

The rescue begins below and continues in the jump.

scorpiorising discussed Palast says "Oil and Indians Don't Mix": "His brief tale of oil exports makes you want to cry, and drastically cut back on oil consumption. Which is exactly what needs to take place in protest of the exploitation of the earth's ecology, and indigenous peoples, as the corporatocracy seeks dominion over all of the earth's resources that, quite naturally, belong to the people. ... But the Indians in Peru know all about this, as they struggle to protect their renewable resource, the rainforest, against the intrusion of global capitalism. In the meantime, companies like Chevron have already had their way in South America."

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Whats going on late Friday night Roundup
(update)

post from Where's the Outrage? on 13 June 2009 01:22:45 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

Paul Krugman had an outstanding column which posted on Thursday. He discussed the engine that may[...]

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Whats going on late Friday night Roundup

post from Where's the Outrage? on 13 June 2009 01:22:45 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

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Whats Going On Late Friday Night Roundup
(Update)

post from Where's the Outrage? on 13 June 2009 01:22:45 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

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Ahmadinejad leading by significant margin in
Iranian election

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 13 June 2009 01:13:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

Regardless of the outcome, it's difficult to see a significant difference in core policy though at least the interaction would be less controversial as it is today. The bizarre rants and Holocaust denying would be set aside. Many western newspapers are reporting the election to be too close to call but the official results suggest a strong victory for Ahmadinejad. The opposition is charging that those results are false and distorted due to allies of Ahmadinejad. CNN is reporting a strong victory for the current Iranian president, making a run-off unlikely.

Final results in Iran's hotly contested presidential race were expected soon, election officials said Saturday morning, as hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a commanding lead.

With 78 percent of ballot boxes counted, Ahmedinejad had 64.9 percent of the vote while his chief rival Mir Hossein Moussavi had 32 percent, election officials said.

Analysts expected Moussavi, widely regarded as a reformist, to do well as his campaign caught fire in recent days, triggering massive street rallies in Tehran.

The Washington Post:

A pivotal presidential election in Iran ended in confusion and confrontation early Saturday as both sides claimed victory and plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside the campaign headquarters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

With votes still being counted in many cities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was leading by a 2-1 ratio in early returns, according to Iranian Interior Ministry officials. But Mousavi's supporters dismissed those numbers, saying the ministry was effectively under Ahmadinejad's control.

"I am the winner of these elections," Mousavi declared late Friday, after heavy turnout resulted in a two-hour extension of voting across the Islamic republic. "The people have voted for me."

The Guardian reports near record highs for turnout.

The official result is due to be announced today. Interior ministry sources predicted a turnout of 70% or more, approaching the nearly 80% when the reformist Muhammad Khatami ? now backing Mousavi ? won the 1997 election and ushered in a more relaxed period at home and in Iran's relations abroad.

If no candidate gets 50%, the two top contenders go forward to a run off next week. Two other candidates would drop out.

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Helping The Back-Street Butchers

post from jobsanger on 13 June 2009 01:03:00 AM. © jobsanger

Political Cartoon is by Mike Keefe in The Denver Post.

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Women Soldiers - Some Little Known History

We will be celebrating our nations birthday in about three weeks, so I thought I'd do a different kind of post today. I'm going to put politics aside and discuss a bit of little-known history. If one were to ask how long women have been an official part of our military and fought for their country, most folks would probably talk about how the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was created in 1941 and became an official part of the Army in 1943.

In fact, over 350,000 women served in the Army, Navy and Marines during World War II. Sixteen of them were killed in action, and over 1500 medals, citations and commendations were earned. These women served with honor, and women have done the same in every war America has had since that time.

But those were far from the first women to fight for their country as soldiers. In 1778, Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man and successfully joined the Continental Army's light infantry (4th Massasschusetts Regiment). She enlisted using the name of her deceased brother -- Robert Shurtliff. She got away with it because she was tall and as strong as most of the men (from doing farm work as an indentured servant).

She was wounded in her first battle, receiving a gash on her forehead and two musket balls in her thigh. Afraid doctors would discover she was a woman, she used a penknife and sewing needle to remove one of the musket balls (most men couldn't do that). The other was too deep for her to remove, and the leg never healed right. But she was in more skirmishes and was honorably discharged on October 25, 1783.

According to CNN, during the Civil War hundreds of women on both sides disguised themselves as men and fought as official soldiers. Ostensibly, it was for the $13 a month (twice what a woman could earn), but I have to believe it also had a lot to do with patriotism and love of country.

Perhaps the most famous of these Civil War women soldiers was Sarah Wakeman (pictured above). She enlisted as Lyons Wakeman and served with the 153rd New York Volunteer Infantry. The letters she wrote home were later compiled into a book titled An Uncommon Soldier. She joined in 1862 and served until she died of dysentey in 1864.

Although it is not well-known, women have been fighting for this country as soldiers as long as men have, and they have done so honorably (if not openly at first). Bravery, honor and patriotism are not limited to just males.

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