All so you can have cheap gas

Word Games and Atrocities
via counterpunch.org
By DAVE LINDORFF

The people of Afghanistan know who was flying the two helicopter gunships that brutally hunted down and slaughtered, one by one, nine boys apparently as young as seven years old, as they gathered firewood on a hillside March 1. In angry demonstrations after the incident, they were shouting "Death to America."

Americans are still blissfully unaware that their "heroes" in uniform are guilty of this obscene massacre. The ovine US corporate media has been reporting on this story based upon a gutless press release from the Pentagon which attributes the "mistake" to "NATO" helicopters.

The thing is, this terrible incident occurred in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where US forces have for several years been battling Taliban forces, and from which region they are now in the process of withdrawing. Clearly then, it is US, and not "NATO" helicopters which have been responding to calls to attack "suspected Taliban forces."

So why can't the Pentagon say that? And if they won't say that, why won't American reporters either demand that they clearly state the nationality of whatever troops commit an atrocity, or exercise due diligence themselves and figure it out?

There is a second issue too. Most publications appear to have followed the lead of the highly compromised New York Times, and are going with the Pentagon line that the boys who were killed were aged 9-15. That's bad enough. It's hard to see how helicopter pilots with their high-resolution imaging equipment, cannot tell a 9-year-old boy when they see one, from a bearded Taliban fighter. But at least one news organization, the McClachy chain, is reporting that the ages of the boys who were murdered from the air were 7-13. If that latter range of ages is correct, then it is all the more outrageous that they were picked off one by one by helicopter gunners. No way could they have mistaken a 7-year-old for an adult.

No wonder the even the famously corrupt Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to accept an apology proffered for this killing by Afghan War commander Gen. David Petraeus.

Calls by this reporter to the Pentagon for an accurate report on whose troops were flying those two helicopters, and on an accurate accounting of the ages of the nine victims, have thus far gone unanswered. This, I have discovered, is fairly standard for the Defense Department. If it's a story about some big victory, or a new eco-friendly plan for a military base's heating system, you have to beat the Pentagon PR guys off with a stick, but if you call them about something embarrassing or negative, you get passed from Major Perrine to Lt. Col. Robbins to Commander Whozits, and nobody give you an answer. Finally you're given someone to email a question to, and that message goes into the Pentagon internet ether and never gets returned.

So let's give an honest report here. Two US helicopter gunships, allegedly responding to a report of "insurgent" activity on a hillside in Kunar Province, came upon the scene of 10 young Afghan boys who were collecting brush for fuel for their families. The gunships, according to the account of a lone 11-year-old surviver who was hidden by a tree, systematically hunted down the other nine boys, hitting them with machine gun and rocket fire and killing them all--their bodies so badly damaged that their families had to hunt for the pieces in order to bury them.

This atrocity is being described as a "mistake," but it was no mistake, clearly. The crews of the helicopters were shooting at fleeing human beings who made no attempt to return fire (obviously, because all the boys had were sticks, which they surely dropped when the first shots were fired).

They almost certainly saw that they were dealing with kids, because it would be hard to mistake even a nine year old for an adult, particularly in a country where young kids go around with their heads uncovered, and don't have beards, while adult males generally wear head coverings, and have full beards. But killing kids is part of the deal in America's war in Afghanistan. Even in Iraq, 12 year olds were being classified by the US military (in contravention of the Geneva Conventions) as being "combat age," for example in the assault on the city of Fallujah.

Let's also be clear that this slaughter of nine Afghan children is the ugly reality behind Gen. Petraeus's supposed policy of "protecting civilians." Here's a number that tells the true story about that policy: since Gen. Petraeus assumed command after the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US airstrikes in Afghanistan have gone up by 172%. That's not counting attacks by remote-controlled, missile-firing drone aircraft, which are also up by a huge amount. Those airstrikes and drone attacks are notoriously deadly for civilians--far more so than ground attacks, but of course they have the advantage for our "heroes" in uniform of reducing the number of US casualties in this hugely one-sided conflict.

There are so many aspects to this story that are disturbing, it's hard to know what's worse. Clearly we are deliberately murdering kids in Afghanistan, and this particular incident is just an example we know about. The men who did this will hopefully pay for their crimes by living with their guilt, but hopefully there will be an honest investigation and proper punishment too by military authorities (I'm not holding my breath). Petraeus and his boss, Commander in Chief Obama, should also be called to account and punished for implementing a war plan that calls for this kind of brutal slaughter of civilians.

But the US media are also guilty here. How can Americans reach proper conclusions about this obscene war against one of the poorest peoples in the World if our supposedly "fair and balanced" media simply performs the role of Pentagon propagandist, running Defense Department press releases as if they were news reports?

The blood of these poor Afghan kids is smeared on the desks and keyboards of American newsrooms.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.

Is anyone Listening?

By Subhankar Banerjee

05 October, 2010

ClimateStoryTellers.org

via countercurrents.org

The person in the above photo is Malkolm Boothroyd. He is 18 and lives with his parents in the Yukon province of Canada. Behind him we see a carved wood sign that says Welcome to Alaska. He looks a bit tired, because he is. He started his journey in Alaska and biked 1060 kilometers on the Alaska Highway to reach Fort Nelson in British Columbia. He has a warm smile on his face but his posture is firm and his eyes are open and locked directly into our eyes, a bit confrontational, because it is. Unlike macho explorers of yesteryear, Malkolm is on a mission, and he is addressing us directly. We do get a hint of the nature of his journey by zooming into the photo: the bag that is attached to the front wheel of his bike says, 'Shut Down - Tar Sands.'

On June 25, Democracy Now presented a powerful interview with Clayton Thomas

Müller, a Cree indigenous activist and the tar sands campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Müller talks at great length about the massive devastation being brought by tar sands oil production, but he also brings attention to the human-rights issues far too often ignored by the mainstream environmental groups. "The impact is absolutely catastrophic," he states, "particularly to local Dene, Cree, and Metis peoples, who have subsisted and relied on those sacred lands in northern Alberta for time immemorial. And these communities have been put on the sacrificial block of American and Canadian energy and climate policy."

In late August I wrote a piece on how bark beetles are killing forests all across the world due to global warming. And because of this, some boreal forests in British Columbia and Yukon provinces in Canada have already turned from being a carbon sink to a carbon source. But I did not point out then that tar sands oil production in Alberta, Canada, is a major killer of boreal forests, contributing significantly to climate change. If you're interested, you can check out this report, "Tar Sands and Boreal Forest" from Greenpeace [pdf 2 pages].

Right now, the U.S. is considering approval of the massive Keystone XL pipeline project to bring tar sands crude from Alberta all the way down to Texas and the Gulf Coast refineries. Several U.S. congressional delegations have recently visited Canada to learn about tar sands oil. Earlier last month Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gave vague soothing comments to both sides after her visit there with Representative Ed Markey (D-MA). Most recently, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the tar sands oil field "really blends with the natural habitat" after his visit there with Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Kay Hagan (D-NC). You'd have to be really 'high' to make a statement like that about tar sands and natural habitat--Senator Graham must have been looking at those fields from a very high altitude, where everything peacefully blends into a holistic picture. I suggest you take a look at these photos from a low altitude, no more than table high, and then decide for yourself.

As I was finishing this piece I saw an ad that said, "Tell it like it is," on Huffington Post. It was posted by the Government of Alberta, Canada, to promote tar sands oil production.

The question is: To whom should we listen about the devastating impacts of tar sands oil - the inexperienced Canadian youth Malkolm Boothroyd from Yukon or the experienced Canadian politicians from Alberta?

Malkolm writes in his blog that he is now cycling from Alaska to Washington, D.C., and then continuing on to the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun in December. He is riding solo from Alaska to Missoula, Montana, where he will meet up with other people and continue on. I learned from a letter that he wrote to his family before he started his journey that his ride is part of several larger initiatives: in Minneapolis he'll take part in the 'Global Work Party' on 10/10/10; his journey is part of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, which is "a united front of youth from across Canada tackling the biggest challenge of our generation, the emerging climate crisis"; and he is excited to have been selected as one of 25 youths for the Canadian Youth Delegation to Cancun.

The best part to me is something he wrote in his blog on September 5: "It can be very lonely and dull cycling alone through the BORE-eal forest. I've passed many hours pretending I'm talking to Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada) or Jim Prentice (Environment Minister of Canada). I say things to the Prime Minister like, "you have asthma so you care about air quality, but you also have children so I can't understand why you don't care about climate change," or "can you look me in the eye and tell me that your government is doing enough to prevent my generation from inheriting a world devastated by climate change?"

See what I mean by his direct gaze toward us in that photo? It's no surprise that Malkolm is doing imagine-talking with Harper during his bike ride. Last year Canada ranked last among the G8 nations on climate change action. I'm sure you're wondering: How did U.S. fare? A whopping 7th place. I bet both Canada and U.S. will be vying for the last two spots again this year.

This is not Malkolm's first big bike ride, though. When he was 15 he went on a yearlong fossil-fuel-free bike ride with his parents in search of birds. They called the journey "Bird Year". They biked 21,144 km, identified 548 different bird species, raised more than $25,000 for bird conservation, and in the process became convinced "that climate change was more serious than they had thought."

[snip]

In 2009, he biked more than 5,000 km, from Whitehorse, Yukon, to Ottawa, Ontario, as part of Pedal for the Planet. When the group got to Ottawa, the Harper government refused to meet with the young cyclists. Does that remind you of a recent episode when Bill McKibben and young students arrived in D.C. with their "put solar panels on the White House roof" proposal?

Malkolm began his current journey in Alaska, a place that has become like a second home for me through my decade-long work on Arctic Alaska issues. So I was curious about youth and climate change in Alaska. Two weekends ago, as I started writing this piece, the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action was finishing their Youth Climate Change Summit.

read the whole thing here.

A Short History of Oil Addiction

This Oil Ride
by Linh Dinh
1861 - The first major oil well in the world started pumping. Christened "Empire," it stood on Funk Farm in Pennsylvania.

1908 - The Anglo-Persian Oil Company discovered oil in Iran. This was the first major oil field in the Middle East. APOC would become the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then British Petroleum, in 1954.

1913 - Inspired by disassembly lines inside Chicago slaughterhouses, the Ford Motor Company perfected the assembly line. From this point on, a man must strive to become as efficient and mechanical as a machine.

1927 - The Turkish Petroleum Company struck oil in Iraq. Despite its name, TPC was a conglomerate of European companies, with the biggest shareholder the Anglo-Persian Company, i.e., British Petroleum.

1933 - In New Jersey, the first drive-in theater opened. Thanks to the car, even a lumpen could have his private carriage. Now, he also had a private box in a theater.

1944 - The G.I. Bill helped returning veterans to buy homes, with stipulations that these were detached and in homogenous neighborhoods, i.e., the white suburbs. Like many American laws, this was designed to enrich real estate, car and oil interests.

1953 - The C.I.A. orchestrated a coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, i.e., British Petroleum.

1956 - President Eisenhower began the largest public works project in history, the Interstate. What it is is a generous and continuous system of multi-laned highways. It is never intersected, not even once, by a lesser road. One needs not pause on one's life's journey as long as one's traveling on the Interstate. It is eternity made real and proven, a diagram of heaven (or hell) for the wordless masses.

1962 - The Beverly Hillbillies debuted, to become one of the most popular television series of all time. Resonating deeply within the American psyche, its premise might as well be our national myth: a family of hicks struck it rich through oil.

1963 - The C.I.A. orchestrated a coup against Abdul Karim Kassem of Iraq. Kassem had begun nationalizing foreign oil companies, most prominently the Iraq Petroleum Company, formerly known as Turkish Petroleum, i.e., British Petroleum.

1967 - In "The Graduate," Mr. McGuire advised Ben, "I just want to say one word to you-just one word."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you listening?"

"Yes, I am."

"Plastics."

"Exactly how do you mean?"

"There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?"

"Yes, I will."

Plastic is oil, hardened. By 2010, there would be plastic patches the size of Texas to choke both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Thanks to the chemical phthalate in plastic, male genitals are shrinking worldwide, and sperm counts are way down, though not low enough, unfortunately, to slow down this full-throttle-ahead "love" boat. World population is approaching seven billion, with about 30,000 people starving to death each day.

1990 - The Gulf War ignited. Eyeing Kuwait's rich oil fields, Iraq attacked its tiny neighbor. Iraq was bankrupt after its eight-year-long war with Iran. During this previous conflict, the U.S. openly backed Iraq even as it sold weapons to Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

2000 - Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq would now only accept euros, and not dollars, for its oil exports. This prompted the U.S. to invade 18 months later.

2001 - Dick Cheney, "The American way of life is not negotiable." Before becoming vice president, Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, an oil services company.

Ari Fleisher, Press Secretary to President Bush, was asked, "Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?"

He answered, "That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one."

With 1/21 of the world's population and less than 3% of its oil reserve, the U.S. uses 25% of the world's oil .

Draped in cheap oil and sweating oil, under an increasingly hot sun, I steer an oil car, on oil, towards an oil job. Before meals, I pray and take an oil pill. To feel upper or downer, I chug a lug oil.

2003 - Using various pretexts, none convincingly and long since discarded, the U.S. invaded Iraq. The invading force was mostly Anglo. Augmenting 248,000 Americans, the United Kingdom contributed 45,000 troops, Australia 2,000 and Poland 194.

2008 - During a debate between Vice Presidential candidates, Joe Biden said, "The only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must," only to be corrected by Sarah Palin, "The chant is drill, baby, drill! And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies, because people are so hungry for domestic sources of energy to be tapped into."

2009 - Thanks to the U.S. invasion, British Petroleum could do business again in Iraq after 37 years.

2010 - Floating 5,000 feet above the ocean floor, a British Petroleum rig was drilling 30,000 feet into the earth's crust when it exploded, then sank over its drill hole. 210,000 gallons a day are spilling as I'm writing this, and they won't be capped any time soon. This is no tanker breaking up, my friends, but the raped earth spewing what we've been demanding so relentlessly for over a century now. A monstrous ecocide, this is too fitting an end to our reckless oil ride.