I would like to offer a short tutorial on hydraulics which might help some Cafe members better understand some aspects of the discussions about shutting down the flow of oil from the runaway well in the Gulf. I have no formal training in the areas I will address and welcome any corrections. What I know, and which I believe applies to a relief well, should be understandable by any shade tree mechanic who has worked on his auto's brake system or any person who has hooked a water sprinkler to their lawn faucet. All figures I use regarding pressure and area are arbitrary and made up for the purpose of an explanation.

Consider completely opening an outside faucet at your house and then attempting to stop the flow of water by pushing the palm of your hand over the opening. You will not be able to do it. Now, turn off the faucet, attach a splitter [manifold] which has two valves so that two different hoses can be attached. If you now open both valves you will  be able to push your palm against the reduced pressure at one opening and stop the flow through it as long as the other is open and the water can flow out freely.
 Why is this so? It is because the water line exiting from your house carries water at a pressure of fifty pounds PER Square Inch and has a cross section area of ONE Square Inch and each valve opens to an area of one square inch. A pressure of fifty pound per square inch will push water through the pipe at some fixed rate. To move more water requires a bigger pipe and the same pressure or more pressure in the same size pipe. In my example, the exit area through the two opening manifold is increased while the available volume through the one inch house pipe stays the same and so the pressure per square inch at the two openings drops.

 When both valves are open water flows from each at half volume and because of a pressure of twenty-five pounds per square inch and you are able to exert that much pressure with your hand. Cap one with your hand and the pressure of the other rises to fifty pounds per square inch and the flow through that one goes back up.

 If you were to attach a manifold with fifty faucets and all were closed each one would be holding back fifty pounds per square inch of pressure. Open any one valve and you get a fast hard flow. Begin opening the other valves and with every one you open the flow through each will diminish because the small pipe leading to that manifold cannot carry any more volume at the same initial pressure.  


 I believe, the idea behind a "relief" well, if the term is used properly, is to open another faucet which directs the oil to a tanker or pipeline and reduces the pressure at the damaged well enough that it can be dealt with. Even with the relief well flowing, oil will exit the damaged well, but at a reduced volume, until it is successfully capped.   Open another spigot so that the pressure per square inch is reduced and the capping methods they have tried might work.

Here are some of the problems. The underground pool must stretch over a wide area. The oil is in porous ground and flows towards the opening because of the high pressure of gas which is trapped in the same field. It flows to where the pressure is reduced by the oil and gases exit through the pipe. If the relief well does not tap the pressure from very close to the underground opening of the first well it will not relieve the pressure. At a sufficient distance from the first opening it would be as a single well in its own environment.
 To better visualize this go back to the example with your homes water supply. The feeder pipe, or the "main" carrying water to the whole neighborhood is much larger than the one from it to your yard. It has many square inches of cross section, say sixty, each square inch with fifty pounds of pressure. It can supply a very high volume before the pressure drops.You could  turn on the faucets of fifty of your neighbors and you would still not reduce the pressure at your single faucet.  
 So, the relief well must go to a point quite close to the underground opening of the first well to have any beneficial effect as a "relief well". This is also important for a second reason. If attempts to cap the original well still fail even with the reduced pressure then mud and/or cement can be piped down to where they stop up the damaged well from the bottom. If the well is used in this way I believe it is wrong terminology to call it a relief well, relief being a reduction of pressure.
 There are two additional wells being drilled at this time that they are calling relief wells. I have not seen any warnings pointing out that both of these wells are being drilled under the same conditions as the first and that both operations carry all the risks that the first one did if they intend to go to the same depth and enter the same pool of pressurized oil.
 

Oil Well safety Scheme

 I just got home from a small chore and during the drive I heard a short part of NPR's Science Friday program. The subject was a public call put out in the internet by a person or group for ideas of how to deal with the ongoing oil well problem in the Gulf of Mexico.
 It was said that they were getting many good and well developed ideas. One was to  use explosives to cover the opening with debris and seal the leak.
 It occurs to me that if, as a safety measure, a parallel shaft had been drilled a thousand or so feet deep prior to the main shaft being sunk, and had explosives put in place, that it would have been very easy to quickly collapse the shaft in which the blowout occurred. Just flip one switch.

                   Robots Guided by the Lizard Brain                
 
 Decisions made about who to kill and how to kill them have psychological effects that travel in all directions. Sometimes the intended affect of the choice of how to kill is to remove the shooters psyche from the reality of the act. A big part of a combat soldiers training is to get him to put his conscience in neutral and his ass in gear.

 I recently saw a modern computer game in action for the first time. On a big hi-def screen I watched as my son, wearing a headset to talk to and work with his team, directed his soldier figure through urban combat. He was on a team connected through the computer with four others, one he knew and three strangers, fighting five other strangers. He talked to his teammates as they went through the rubble of a city shooting at any enemy that popped into view. The running score was posted at the bottom of the screen. The game had killer graphics. The sound was turned down out of deference to others in the house who were doing other things, but I assume there was some screaming going on.

 Nobody got hurt in that living room in real life, everyone had fun.
 
 So, in another aspect of real life, come election day we vote for "leaders" who appoint generals who carry out the policies formed by academics and CEO's of arms manufacturers and those generals  order their colonels who pass on the orders to majors who really, really, want to be colonels by next week and the orders sift down through the ranks until some private sticks his bayonet into the stomach of some poor foreign bastard who screams his last scream in the earth's original international language. Nobody back home hears that scream and they wouldn't understand it if they did. They have their headsets on, their blinders in place, and their mind somewhere else. Let's not force them to look at the body because that act of killing didn't give a single voter back in the States PTSD and the whole point of the whole thing is to keep them safe. Right?  Or is it the economy, stupid?

 We live in strange times but I suppose that has always been true for every human who ever walked the earth. I digress. Every damned chance I get.Whether I intend to or not.

 As U.S. citizens, unless we make a deliberate effort to see the affects of war we are shielded from the carnage, but since we were young children we have been seeing on the screen bad guys in the act of being such bad guys that when the good guy says "Make my day" we are happy to see him have his day made. The bad guy who was created to fill a role is now dead. That settles that, everyone is safe now. Let's go get some ice cream, kids.

 We are lied into war with false justifications and when our guys get in charge we justify the reasons they give us to continue the war. We feel a bit of abstract pain for our soldiers when we hear of casualties among them unless we are one of those pathetic sociopathic pricks who says, "Hey, they joined, nobody made them." When the media gives us a glimpse of an injured soldier it always shows some strong person who is dealing well with his adjustment to his new mechanical limbs. This makes it easier for the rest of us try to ease our mildly disturbed consciences by calling every one of them "heroes". Gee, thanks for your service, fella.

 Regardless its utility, robot war is a further step towards making war a bit more abstract and easier to sell by making it easier to keep the voters and the players psychically one step further removed from reality. Mind games and mindless killing machines to keep the war games going. That's why I'm bullish on drone stock.  

Set My Country Free, Starting With the Soldiers

I offer the following link only for those who, after reading this blog, disagree with my conclusion because they think my premise is weak.

If you click on the link PLEASE do not click on the video without giving due consideration to the warning. The warning is an understatement, but if you watch then keep in mind that the images are just a few of the metaphorical roaches as might be spotted in a vast warehouse late at night with only a penlight to see by. If all the lights were to suddenly come on there would be seen thousands of those roaches scurrying for the hidden corners and the cracks in the foundation.

I believe that it was correct for the US courts to decide that a person's conscientious objections to war are sufficient and just reason to free them from the the draft. I also think that a person can legitimately participate in one war and be a CO in another. I offer Wikipedia's definition.

"A conscientious objector (CO) is an individual who, on religious, moral or ethical grounds, refuses to participate as a combatant in war or, in some cases, to take any role that would support a combatant organization".

Further, I believe, that is, I know, that a person can, through maturity, education, experience, and exposure to normally hidden facts, go from a gung-ho kid to a CO and in today's Army if a volunteer soldier comes to see that he cannot participate in and support with good conscience actions that any human of good conscience can see as completely indefensible, he should then be acknowledged as a legitimate CO. In that case he should be allowed relief from what our country, directly through the military but also indirectly through his nurture in a culture that glorifies war, first asks of him and then demands of him. He should be relieved of his commitment and he should be honorably released from service. His awakening followed by a commitment to no longer participate should be seen as an act of courage.

If some see this as an unacceptable problem to make the Army deal with I say that it is unacceptable to not deal with it in a way that serves the citizen rather than forces the citizen to serve the state. If it makes war harder to wage I would put that down as a good side affect of a policy aimed at being just.

How can a "Christian Nation" deprive a person his right to follow his conscience when it directs him in the way that Jesus preached we should go?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23944.htm

Additionally, even if a soldier supports the mission but recognizes, or others around him recognize, that what he is seeing and doing is driving him crazy, he should be released whether he wants to be or not.

November 2, 2009, 7:18PM

During the Bush administration I sometimes wondered if they were following a brilliant plan to kill any investigation of scandal or any chance that public opinion would turn into outrage at a particular crime or stupidity by simply committing another outrageous act and diverting attention. No outrage stayed up front long enough to gain traction.

Most of the worst such actions, in my opinion, had to do with waging wrongful war and then with the war crimes committed within those wars. These wars are not just wrong in a moral sense, they are pragmatically stupid.

If the cost of operating our huge military does not financially break our country it will at the very least cost us dearly in lost opportunities to better the situation for our own citizens and for others of the world. Health care comes to mind. Our inclination towards a kick-ass military solution to every international problem must change but if it doesn't I believe it will not be too long before military intervention is required within our own country to maintain order and to "keep the trains running on time".

The following link goes to an essay by Scott Ritter. It will no doubt pop up many places except anywhere in the "mainstream Media". I got it from Information Clearing House.com.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23868.htm

 

An irreverent view by a former Marine.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Look At Em

Yeah, just look at em.

I've thought about this often and started to write on this subject a few times but a comment by Stillidealistic finally got me to the keyboard.

 

"John Boehner on Hardball...what an arse. Just seeing his smug, slimy face makes me want to kick the t.v. I wouldn't buy a used car from him."

Stilli, I have destroyed a remote with a good throw at my TV screen.

So, do A high percentage, like 99%, of despicable people really look despicable or is it just that I see them that way because of how I feel about them?

Some names to consider: Oh, and I'm sorry about the accompanying visuals but this is in the interest of science.

Don't these guys all look like either pricks or idiots, or idiotic pricks. The exceptions look like mean, evil bastards. Classify them for yourself. Bill Kristol, [Smarmy, slick faced pimp] Charles Krauthhammer [should be cast as Frankenstein's fuck-up] Paul Wolfowitze, [A prick with ears], John Boehner, [Looks like a guy Perry Mason should let hang even if he could get him off] Ol' what's his name, Mich Mac the Minority Mouse of the Senate, [A perch eyed imbecile if ever there was one], Glenn Beck, [Sorry, too close to dinner time for that one], the Smirking Chimp, [Looks like a capitalized smirking chimp], Darth Chaney, [Black holes opening into chaos where his eyes should be], dough-faced Perle, [A face like a four pound sack filled with five pounds of crap.].

The list goes on. Or is it jut my bias?

Thoughts on Current Nuclear arms issues

Here are some thoughts that have come to me while listening to different aspects of the recent debates on nuclear proliferation and the reduction of nuclear weapons, possibly to zero.

My bet is that Iran is trying to [at least] reach the point that they could quickly construct an A bomb. Just because people whose foreign policy I despise say that that is the case does not make it false, but I also believe that an attack on Iran to destroy their enrichment facilities is a very bad and very wrong idea.

Iran claims they want processed uranium as fuel and that is very likely true but unlikely the whole truth.

If I ruled Iran and the geopolitical situation was as it is, I would also want the bomb. I bet you would too.

One of the threats to Iran is the cut-off of refined petroleum products. Why are they not building refineries? Maybe they are but I haven't heard anything about it. Would they be too easy a target because they could not be built in underground hardened bunkers? Do the Iranians feel that a defensive bomb is a higher first priority when they are being threatened with a cut off of the vital energy source they now depend on.

If treaties were reached that promised the destruction of all A bombs:

Russia would secretly keep some, China would secretly keep some, Israel would secretly keep some, and so would every other country that has them. The United States would definitely keep some.

As for reductions, most of the countries in the A club have so many weapons that they can deactivate 95% of them and have enough left over to likely destroy life as we know it on the entire planet and so the offer to give up ten thousand and keep only a hundred or so is a bargaining chip that would have no value if offered to me as an inducement to not get my own.

Getting the Senate to agree to a treaty giving up all A-bombs would be much harder than passing meaningful health care reform. Very much harder. A higher percentage of people would be against it to start with and by the time the fear mongers and war mongers and corporate interests held stage for a while a much higher percentage would be against it. Some people who are reasonable and wish for a safer, saner world would also think that a total ban would be un-verifiable, quickly reversible, and isn't a reality based and realistically possible way to achieve one.

If America's armed forces were actually of a completely defensive nature and not designed, and intended, to be able to bend any other country to our will, the retention of a few nukes might actually make sense by making such a defensive position possible.

If all nukes were destroyed, all fissionable material accounted for and somehow made unavailable to all entities for the quick assembly of weapons, if that is even remotely possible, and if the powers that be in the world believed it had happened, full scale conventional war between major countries might become more likely. Also,regional domination by major countries of weaker or smaller countries just by the threat of war would be more likely and more common.

The money saved by scaling back our military and using that money to invest in an honest full blown effort to reach energy independence would greatly increase our national security beyond anything we can expect by continuing on our present course of having a military capable of "protecting our vital national interests". That phrase is almost totally a reference to maintaining access to foreign oil.

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcqGbNeTVnk&feature=player_embedded

 

Http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15435.htm

The link is from Information Clearinghouse page from April, 27^th. to a documentary film made by John Pilger in 1983. I urge anybody who is interested in the history of US policy towards Central America to view it. There is so much that is relevant to the situation facing America today, [The US part of Americait, that is] so much that is pertinent to the discussions going on at TPMC about torture by the Bush administration.

I am sorry that I cannot post a good link. I typed out the address and do not know if it will come out as a clickable link or not. I cannot copy and paste a web address and I will not attempt to re-format this borrowed computer. If it is bad and someone can correct it I would be thankful.  

 

Some Thoughts on torture and Law Enforcement

I expect that every country that ever existed has sponsored or engaged in torture on some level. Every since the U S has engaged with Central America it as done so with torture as one of its tactics and methods. Most often, in the case of the U S, torture has been carried out one step removed by agents we have trained and otherwise supported. Every single President starting with Carter, and most before, are guilty of sponsoring and/or supporting interventions which used torture as one of its methods to control other populations. The School of the Americas trained soldiers who went back to their own countries and used torture to dominate their own countrymen.

There are those who consider themselves reasonably well informed about the state and nature of our country who are extremely upset that the Bush administration used, and justified, and continues to justify, torture. I would ask them for a little introspection as to why it is just now a problem to them that they see in such absolutist terms, terms that threaten to make the perfect the enemy of the possible good. I see, of coarse, that part of the reason is that the Bush administration has tried to make torture legal policy that is accepted by the American people as right and necessary. They have many who agreed all along and many converts. As the subject is addressed these people will talk more about it and mostly to people who agree with them. Their feelings will be solidified and they will bring others into their fold. I think the balance in the numbers game will go the way of defending the torturers if the whole thing is not handled with intelligence and finesse.

I believe that when a person has a vested interest in defending or selling an idea, and that person expends mental energy to argue for that idea, that they are very likely to convince themselves that their arguments are correct even if they did not initially believe so or if they initially had no strong opinion one way or the other, and even if their arguments are not good ones. Psychological tests have indicated that this is true.

Even as it is easier to get the citizens of a country to accept the demonetization of peoples of other countries so as to get them to sponsor and approve of the killing of those people than it is to get those same citizens to look those people in the eye and pull the trigger, the acceptance and utility of torture of people that even "might" be terrorists can be sold to many of our friends and neighbors who would never be inclined to commit torture themselves. It obviously has been. Many have become willing to let their brave public servants and heroic soldiers do that dirty work for them, just please don't show us the pictures. This is the most important thing to correct.

I believe completely that it is correct that torture is not an effective tactic to gain reliable information. Speaking strictly from a pragmatic point of view and not even considering the lawlessness and immorality of torture, I believe it hurts our country's cause to carry out torture much more than it could ever help. That said, I also believe it is very poor strategy in the fight to outlaw, and stop, and prevent, future torture and to bring torturers to justice, to insist that it "never" gains valuable information. It probably has done so at some point or other.

As well as I know that I would lie or do most anything else to stop myself from being tortured, I also know that I would give up the truth that would hurt my country to make it stop. Consider that we, even most of us who thought that the invasion was both wrong and stupid when it was being promoted, probably believed that Saddam had "some" WMD program. Now consider how much our case for the criminality of starting that war would be damaged if there had been found, for instance, even one small active program or one small cache of nerve gas,. We shouldn't set the stage for anyone to claim that because they were slightly and occasionally right in one claim of utility in the execution of what they claimed to be a just cause that they were then justified in using any means to achieve their ends regardless of the legality or morality of their methods.

We also should not condemn an argument as completely invalid just because it is wrongly used as a rationalization and the described situation is extremely rare. The ticking time bomb argument, though used wrongly as a common case, could conceivably be correct at some point. Such a situation could come about. Could we not then expect that there would be people knowledgeable enough and brave enough to do what would be necessary even if illegal. If they were right in their assessment, or had damned good reason to believe they were, that the situation was that grave, could they not expect to be pardoned for doing what was necessary. As a policy this could probably not be formalized but it could certainly be known as the unspoken law. Make it the law, if it is not already, that every pardon must be publicly acknowledged along with the crime that was pardoned.

I believe that the proper sequence and hierarchy of action in persuit of results that are both valuable and possible is extremely important. If the pursuit of one desired goal, like the imprisonment of those who are responsible for justifying torture ,makes the successful realization of another more important goal less likely or even impossible then we must choose which is more important.

I have commented here before that I believe it would be better to let G. Bush walk the streets as an unconvicted criminal who was known and believed by most Americans to have been a criminal in his actions as POTUS than to make him a martyr to half the country who would conjure reasons to defend him and thus his actions and then come to believe, if they didn't already, that his actions were necessary and right because those actions protected the lives of our soldiers and "saved" the country from attack. Those people may come to power with a vengeance someday, maybe soon. If we are perceived to have our first goal convicting Bush rather than finding the truth and then doing whatever the revealed facts indicate, then I think we will lose the war even if we win a few battles along the way.

The first and most important thing is to stop the bleeding. Obama says torture has been halted. I believe that the next most important thing is to make it clear to as broad a scope of the American public as possible that what was done was shameful and despicable and that those at the top who caused these things to be done are despicable people so misguided that they seem unable to feel shame for what they have done or to understand how much damage they have done to our country. While I feel an urge towards revenge and punishment for those who are guilty, I also feel that it is much more important that our country learn a lesson than that we teach Bush and Chaney a lesson.

I believe that if Obama is seen to be leading an attack with the purpose of sending Bush and Chaney to prison for war crimes it will cause a tremendous and very damaging divide within our country. I expect that he believes this too. Just look at the nature and tactics of the opposition to what he has done in regards to this subject and the number of people who agree.

To believe that "right" always conquers evil is to be extremely naive. Like in chess, to attack the queen before establishing a strong strategic position is to invite defeat. The strategic position we should strive for is the strong weight of public opinion.

Precedent of actions by former POTUS are given very strong weight when the Constitutionality and/or criminality of a current POTUS actions are considered. For that reason I am in complete agreement with everybody who thinks that we should look back and establish that what was done was wrong and illegal and in violation of the Constitution, but for a newly elected President to take office with the majority of his own party controlling both houses of congress and to be perceived to be leading the attack to criminalize the immediate predecessor's actions would set a very bad and dangerous precedent. This would be especially true when so many of the Presidents party in Congress supported at least some of the wrongs that the former President did. Also, in this case, so many former Presidents presided over governments that conducted or facilitated or condoned, or otherwise supported torture.

Obama will not be able to serve effectively as President without breaking, at least technically, some, laws, be they domestic or international, or defined by treaty. In fact, I believe it can be shown that he already has. We have seen the lengths to which the Republicans in power will go to demonize and remove from office a President whom they despise and fear.

My vote is for investigations that will get out the most information and inform the public of both the nature and actions of the torturers and those who are responsible for the torture becoming policy.

Obama has said that those following orders will not be convicted. Does that stop Congress from investigating and causing those deemed guilty to stand trial? Would Obama preemptively pardon them? If he were to do so after conviction it would be, in the broad scope of things, OK by me. Even if he preemptively pardoned Bush and Chaney could he prevent Congress from taking sworn testimony from any and all involved parties? If it came to a trial of Chaney, for instance, how long would the investigation leading up to charges take? How long before a trial would be set? How many decisions going to the SCOTUS about executive privilege and National security? How many legal arguments about the definition of torture?

Torture is a lot like pornography, hard to define in absolute and objective terms but easier to identify when seen and no doubt obvious as hell when experienced, though the line still falls in different places for different people. Can anyone define torture in a legal way which would not leave a thousand other ways to make a person suffer beyond their capacity to resist.

I am not sure just how this fits but I want to include a short anecdote. A friend, when in his early twenties, once had the door to his rural house kicked in by plain clothed cops. They jerked him and his younger girlfriend out of bed and made them both stand nude in the middle of the room while they ransacked his house and ogled his girlfriend and made crude remarks. After finding nothing but a gun that they stole, no killer weed, they told my friend that they were going to ask him questions and that they knew some of the answers. They then put a phone book on his head and every so often after an answer they hit it hard with their billy clubs. Never left a mark one, but he puked for a couple of days after. The last thing before leaving, one of the cops reached out and pinched one of the crying girl's nipples and while holding it he asked her how she would like for her mother and dad to find out that she was "slutting around with a dope head".

Sorry that this is so disjointed and rambles so much. My computer was recently murdered and I am posing from the library for the time being. It is only opened two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. If this blog prompts replies I will not likely be able to join the conversation until tomorrow and then only for a short while.

 

A Long Strange Trip

"i am adverse using PTSD to describe the war sickness, because it is not manifest from a disorder. it is direct proof that a person has survived war still in possession of their humanity." PseudoCyAnts.

Pseudo, I appreciate that thought and it got me to writing. Thanks, 

I left Vietnam [I Corp] on January 6, 1969. I remember getting out of the field about a week before that, but I don't remember how I spent New Years Eve, 1968. I would guess that I drank myself into the mud. I wish I could recall that night because, for some reason, I don't know why, the night of the thirty-first of December has become the night that I am likely to feel something strong about my memories of war, to let my emotions have their way with me, so to speak.

It has probably just become a mental habit. It happened once on that date so I wait for it to happen again and so it does. When it happens I sometimes cry for friends and sometimes I cry for "enemies".

One New Year's morning, after the night before when I had danced happily in the streets with some beautiful prostitutes, I sobered up and became conscious and found that I was a few miles out of Manaus. Brazil. I was alone, walking along the Amazon, or maybe it was the Rio Negras, past some houses on stilts. No memory since the fireworks of the night before, no idea why I was there, or how I had got there. A lot or raggedy people were staring and keeping their distance. They seemed to fear me, and that made me cry a bit for myself. Then I turned around and walked the other way until I found the city. Then I got on a boat for Belem. Then I went somewhere else.

Today I live in Happy Valley, USA. It is in a red state. Blood red. Every July Fourth there is a very big fire-works display at the local University's football stadium. There is a simulcast on the radio with martial music timed to fit with the display. Boom on the radio for the flash in the sky. Everybody cheers.

A few years ago, early in our latest war, I rode my motorcycle up to the mountain bench about three miles from the stadium and watched it from there. As I waited for it to get dark I thought about the state of our country and the world, and I thought about the war, and I looked down on the city that is not my home. One of the things I could see below me was the fish hatchery along the river. Square ponds with low dikes. Just like rice paddies. Then, fairly low to the ground and below my perch on the mountainside came streaking, the length of the valley, four F-16s. Just like a bomb run. Part of the patriotic fun. As they reached the stadium they pulled into a vertical climb. I felt relief as the stadium did not explode into a fireball. After all, THESE were MY people. Even though everyone screamed, they were not blown to bits. I was glad, if not happy.

As twilight turned to dark the worlds daytime noise lessened and the popping of distant fire-crackers, like the pop of distant rifles, grew to a rapid staccato. Roman candles streaked the sky like tracers. Explosions boomed from the stadium.

I started my bike and rode up the canyon road as if I could go somewhere else. I pushed the speed enough that I had to pay close attention on the curves and so could think of nothing else. Zen and the Art of Adrenalin Maintenance. Then, after a while, I turned around and rode back to the city and found my house and went to bed.

Once I went and stood with a few peace demonstrators on Main Street during rush hour. I'd been there a few minutes when on the other side a car slowed. I caught the young drivers eye. We stared at each other for a few seconds then he gave me the finger. I felt that black cloud coming over me and I wanted to climb through his window and pound the juice out of him. That's no way to demonstrate for peace, but there was a time I would have tried. There were times I did try with almost zero success. Maybe I had finally learned a lesson from war, though. I just grinned at him. The light turned green. He drove on. I knew I needed to be somewhere else, too. I turned and went back to my house in the city that isn't my home.

I often think of moving somewhere else. If I knew how to find it, and if I knew the language, I would move to America. I hear great stories about the place.

Dylan

 

These three articles I accessed through Information Clearinghouse, http://informationclearinghouse.info/index.html , a sight I pony up five bucks a month for. I think they offer some really interesting juxtapositions in their reporting. A few teasers from the first:

"By Greg Miller

February 13, 2009 "LA Times" -- Reporting from Washington -- Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb."

"Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

"U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year." [Emphasis added]

Cool, I really like that last one. Officials are publicly announcing that they don't need any new evidence to change the consensus of belief among the "experts". Also, remember the part about this year.

More:

"Obama's top intelligence official, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, is expected to address mounting concerns over Iran's nuclear program in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today.

The second article is:

US Intel Confirms Iran Not Developing Nukes
By Press TV

" The UN nuclear watchdog, which has carried out the highest number of inspections in its history on Iranian nuclear sites, has also found nothing to indicate that the program has diverted toward weaponization.

Blair also acknowledged that Tehran has made significant progress in its uranium enrichment program during the past two years.

"Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them," said the retired admiral.

He, however, did not elaborate on how his organization can assess that Tehran intends at a minimum level to keep open the option to develop nuclear weapons.

The US official added that the intelligence agency believes Iran is unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon before 2013".

The third:Economic Crisis 'Top Threat to US'

By Al Jazeera

February 13, 2009 "Al Jazeera"

Towards the end,Dennis Blair in reference to the economic crisis says,

"It already has increased questioning of US stewardship of the global economy and the international financial structure," Blair said.

He also cautioned that while US intelligence could not be certain that Iran intended to develop nuclear weapons, the nation was "keeping open the option" to develop them.

On the issue of North Korea, Blair said the country is unlikely to use its nuclear weapons unless it feels its survival is at stake.

Oh, yea, Information Clearinghouse's title for the first article was:

Manufacturing Consent For An Attack On Iran?