Month: October 2007

‘Clean Coal’ Movement Seeks to Cast Itself as ‘Green’

Buck Banks

I occasionally sign one of those form letters battling some big issue. I rarely edit the form letter and usually forget about it about a nanosecond after I hit the “send” button. But recently the recipients of these form letters have been responding. Here’s an e-mail I received out of the blue today from a guy named Vic Svec shilling for Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest producer of coal:

We appreciate the concern expressed by your recent form letter, and we wish to clear up some obvious misinformation. Peabody strongly supports new clean coal electricity generation to ease energy prices, improve energy security and provide affordable electricity to help people live better and longer. Coal use for electricity generation has more than tripled since 1970, even as emissions have been reduced by more than one-third and this trend will continue. Approximately 135 new coal-fueled plants have been announced around the United States to bring about needed energy. New, clean coal-fueled generating plants will continue to provide environmental improvements, toward an ultimate goal of near-zero emissions from coal. That’s the vision of projects like FutureGen, which enjoys enormous public support and represents a coal-fueled power plant that would capture carbon dioxide emissions and produce hydrogen. Coal use will also grow through Btu Conversion technologies that turn coal into natural gas and transportation fuels.

Business will solve our environmental problems because it’ll be profitable and government should be smaller and less intrusive and we can’t expect it to fix every little problem and the president knows what he’s doing.

Then Vic invited me to learn more at http://CoalCanDoThat.com. So I did. Here’s what I learned:

Peabody Energy is the world’s largest provider of coal to fuel 21st Century energy solutions. St. Louis-based Peabody Energy fuels more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity and 3 percent of the world’s electricity. Peabody ships 7 tons of coal every second of every day — more than 250 million tons per year — to customers in 16 countries on six continents.

Peabody Energy’s mission is to be a world-wide supplier of low-cost energy, which contributes to economic prosperity and a better quality of life. A Fortune 500 company, Peabody is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the appropriate ticker symbol Btu.

In addition to leading the world in safe, low-cost, environmentally friendly coal mining and marketing, Peabody is a forceful advocate of greater coal use to provide 21st Century energy solutions. Here at CoalCanDoThat.com, you will see that current technologies can transform coal into clean electricity, natural gas, transportation fuels and hydrogen. We call it “Btu Conversion”.

In addition to providing leadership in advancing the dialogue and public support for this project, Peabody has 9.6 billion tons of coal reserves to apply to existing and emerging markets. Our coal reserves alone are equivalent of more than 240 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — or more than 10 years worth of current U.S. natural gas demand.

The main problem with the proponents of “clean coal” technology is that they focus almost solely on the conversion of coal into energy part of the equation, which, through technological innovation is not quite as nasty as it used to be. They ignore (because they really have to) the coal extraction process. Peabody is able to extract that seven tons of coal per second because the Bush administration has lifted, undermined (as it were) or blocked any environmental regulation that would have slowed the demountainification of Ohio, West Virginia and parts of Appalachia (see photo above), while “enshrining” the practice of mountaintop mining.

In 2006, Peabody, which has been shucking coal in America since 1926, had sales in excess of $5.2 billion over net income of $600 million — a 13 percent increase for the year. That’s a lot of mountaintops.

But the big coal growth market is China, and U.S. firms are rushing to get in on the coal rush. Firms like Fidelity Investments, OppenheimerFunds, Merrill Lynch, even the Teachers Retirement System of Texas.

The Big Energy machine gins up support for its politics and practices through pseudo-policy groups like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute that pooh-pooh the idea that we’re facing catastrophic climate change — NOW.

They would have you believe that Al Gore is a quack and coal means jobs (it doesn’t as it’s largely automated) and we’ve got plenty of mountains anyway and business will solve our environmental problems because it’ll be profitable and government should be smaller and less intrusive and we can’t expect it to fix every little problem and the president knows what he’s doing and that’s why government scientists rewrite and redact scientific reports that don’t jibe with the Bush admin’s version of reality.

Yep, we’re all screwed.

Cheney Hunts at Club Flying Confederate Flag

Trish

The vice president of the United States of America is hunting at a private club that flies the Confederate flag, the symbol of a society built on the backs of enslaved people, the descendants of whom the vice president is supposed to represent.

But hey, Cheney’s minions are saying it doesn’t count because just like Texas lawyer Harry Whittington, who he shot in the face last year, Dick didn’t actually see the flag.

A Cheney spokesman said the vice president never saw the flag…

Deer hunter Bill Tryon, 48, who works on Clove Road, where Cheney’s motorcade sped by in the morning, said he had no problem with the veep taking aim at the local game.

“As long as he doesn’t shoot anyone in the ass,” Tryon said.

But simply showing up at a hunting club that flies the battle flag is egregious, according to usually self-aggrandizing but in this case totally correct Rev. Al Sharpton.

The flag fiasco is especially upsetting because blacks have recently been subjected to an upsurge of racial threats, including nooses left in Jena, La., and Columbia University, he said.

“This is an outrage – he ought to leave immediately,” Sharpton told The News. “He ought to apologize to the American people for being there in the first place.”

You got that right, Al. And while he’s at it, Cheney should apologize to the birds who were the victims of his male potency fantasy.

Farm-bred pheasants were released on the preserve 24 hours before Cheney arrived, making them easy targets for the hunting party.

“The way they hunt, I’m not fond of,” said Linda Smith, 52, who runs a local preschool. “It’s not what I would call a real sportsmanlike activity.”

And in case you’re wondering, the scene of this rich, whites-only activity was…Union Vale in Upstate New York.

Addicted to Fear – Cowardice Has Become the Source of Republican Power

Jon Ponder

The Republican Party’s macho bluster and apparently endless appetite for war makes it seem counter-intuitive to think of them as cowards. And yet, seven years into the Bush regime, it is clear that the GOP has become dependent on fear to keep itself in power — and to support this addiction the party leadership has converted its rank and file members into America’s first generation of bona fide yellow-bellied chickens.

After the GOP took over the government in 2000 and ran all three branches for six years, the truth about the conservative movement was finally revealed. After years of unctuous claims that they were for family values and lower spending and against corruption, Republicans demonstrated that the exact opposite is true. They were caught engaging in a wide range of sleazy activities, both personal and financial, and Bush and the GOP Congress ran the Treasury into the ground, racking up more debt than all the presidents since Washington, combined. Now, with that record fresh in voters’ minds, all they have left to run on is the politics of fear.

Nearly every day, a subtle or not-so-subtle message of fear — about terrorists, Moslems, Iran, whatever works — is transmitted from the bully pulpit of the White House press room podium out to the public via the seemingly unwitting mainstream media, Fox News and rightwing talk radio. The government’s fear propaganda is mostly just noise in the background to normal people, but rank and file conservatives gobble it up like ravenous dogs.

9/11 Did Not “Change Everything”

The Republican culture of fear was born out of the 9/11 attacks — which we are told “changed everything” because they were an “attack on America.” But when the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993 by rightwing Islamic terrorists very like the ones who would take the towers down eight years years later, no one suggested that our response to this “attack on America” should be invading and occupying Iraq.

[…]

Mukasey Won’t Say Waterboarding Is Torture But in 1947 the U.S. Called It a War Crime, Sentenced Enemy Officer to 15 Years Hard Labor

Jon Ponder

Immoral Relativism: George Bush’s nomination of Michael Mukasey for U.S. attorney general — once thought to be smooth sailing — is experiencing a bit of turbulence. The problem is, Mukasey can’t bring himself to say whether or not waterboarding is torture:

“I don’t know what’s involved in the techniques. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”
— Mukasey

During his confirmation hearings earlier this month, Mukasey said he believes torture violates the Constitution, but he refused to be pinned down on whether he believes specific interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, are constitutional.

“I don’t know what’s involved in the techniques. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional,” he said.

But after World War II, the United States government was quite clear about the fact that waterboarding was torture, at least when it was done to U.S. citizens:

[In] 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he sai

Mukasey’s non-answer has raised doubts among Democrats, and even some Republicans, on the Senate Judiciary Committee:

[…]

Krauthammer: Reagan Wasn’t All That Great

Jon Ponder

Rightwing big thinker Charles Krauthammer trashes Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans,” by picking at the weakness of the GOP’s ’08 field — and then speaks ill of Reagan too, for good measure:

Major grumbling among conservatives about the Republican field. So many candidates, so many flaws. Rudy Giuliani, abortion apostate. Mitt Romney, flip-flopper. John McCain, Mr. Amnesty. Fred Thompson, lazy boy. Where is the paragon? Where is Ronald Reagan?

Well, what about Reagan? This president, renowned for his naps, granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants in the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. As governor of California, he signed the most liberal abortion legalization bill in America, then flip-flopped and became an abortion opponent. What did he do about it as president? Gave us Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, the two swing votes that upheld and enshrined Roe v. Wade for the past quarter-century.

Of course, Krauthammer then proceeds to proclaim the current crop of candidates to be an exceptional group of fellows, among whom is the party’s next great leader.

Still it’s nice that he reminded his readers what the rest of us remember all too well. Reagan wasn’t all that great. His illness was genuine cause for sympathy and the memory of his rough edges were smoothed over by the long years of suffering. Plus his image benefits from the fact that the current president is the worst one ever. Even Bush I looks better when compared to his son.

Was the Phony FEMA News Conference Illegal? Why Did One Participant Suddenly Depart to a Cushy Job at Another Agency?

Jon Ponder

In case you’re just tuning in to this story, last Tuesday, Oct. 23, as the wildfires raged in Southern California, FEMA held a news conference that was broadcast by the cable newsers. Within hours, however, it was revealed that the entire news conference was fake. That’s right — good ol’ gubmint propaganda:

The Bush administration was reprimanded in 2005 for using the taxpayers’ dime to tart up government spin as hard news.

[FEMA] had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.

But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?”

According to Friday’s Post account, which Walker confirmed, Johnson replied that he was “very happy with FEMA’s response so far.”

He also said the agency had the benefit of “good leadership” and other factors, “none of which were present at Katrina.” Chertoff was head of the Homeland Security Department during Katrina.

FEMA’s administrator during Katrina, Michael Brown, resigned amid widespread criticism over his handling of the disaster, despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s initial declaration that he was doing a “heck of a job.”

Michael Chertoff, the Republican political operative who serves as Bush’s Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), seemed angry:

“I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I’ve seen since I’ve been in government,” said Mr Chertoff.

“I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment.”

But at roughly the same time that Chertoff was declaring that “appropriate disciplinary action” would be taken, one of the participants was being transferred to another high-profile agency and, apparently, promoted:
[…]

Rumsfeld Said to Have Fled France to Avoid Torture Arrest

Jon Ponder

On Friday, while former Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld was visiting France, human rights groups based there and in the United States filed complaints against him, charging him with approving torture:

Rumsfeld is accused of authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The French complaint accuses Mr. Rumsfeld of authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and says it violated the Convention Against Torture, which came into force in 1987.

As part of their complaint, the groups submitted 11 pages of written testimony from Janis Karpinski, the highest-ranking officer to be punished in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. She was demoted to colonel from brigadier general and lost command of her military police unit. She contended that the abuses at the prison had started after the appearance of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was sent by Mr. Rumsfeld to assist military intelligence interrogators.

French prosecutors were said to have the power to pursue the case while Rumsfeld was in the country.

One source cites unconfirmed reports that Rumsfeld was abruptly whisked away from a breakfast meeting on Friday in order to avoid his arrest:

U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

The report said Rumsfeld fled to Germany because similar charges were dismissed against him there in the spring.The German court ruled that Rumsfeld’s criminality was an internal matter for the United States.