Saturday, February 07, 2004

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration has undertaken a massive military buildup in Central Asia, deploying thousands of US troops not only in Afghanistan but also in the newly independent republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. These first US combat troops on former Soviet territory have dramatically altered the geostrategic power equations in the region, with Washington trying to seal the cold war victory against Russia, contain Chinese influence and tighten the noose around Iran. Most important, however, the Bush Administration is using the "war on terror" to further American energy interests in Central Asia. The bad news is that this dramatic geopolitical gamble involving thuggish dictators and corrupt Saudi oil sheiks is likely to produce only more terrorists, jeopardizing America's prospects of defeating the forces responsible for the September 11 attacks.

The main spoils in today's Great Game are the Caspian energy reserves, principally oil and gas. On its shores, and at the bottom of the Caspian Sea, lie the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources. Estimates range from 85 to 219 billion barrels of crude, worth up to $4 trillion. According to the US Energy Department, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone could sit on more than 110 billion barrels, more than three times the US reserves. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and British Petroleum have already invested more than $30 billion in new production facilities.

4:02 PM |

1:35 PM |

Friday, February 06, 2004

12:58 PM |

Justice Antonin Scalia accompanied Mr Cheney, an old friend, on a duck-shooting trip to Louisiana in January.
The Los Angeles Times says they travelled aboard one of the presidential jets, Air Force Two.
Mr Cheney is a defendant in a case currently before the Supreme Court over his refusal to grant access to records.
Justices regularly withdraw from cases where a conflict of interest is perceived.
But in this case, Justice Scalia has declined to do so, saying: "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.

12:45 PM |

The process the Democrats are putting themselves through resembles John Maynard Keynes' famous description of the stock market. The game isn't to figure out which stocks are most likely to do well, but to figure out which stocks other investors think are most likely to do well. And these other investors are thinking of other investors and so on. Keynes thought this helped to explain the volatility of stock price. Your judgment about other people's judgment, let alone other people's judgment about other people's judgment, is inherently less certain and more subject to breezes of false or true insight and information than your judgment about your own judgment.

12:38 PM |

Thursday, February 05, 2004

Carson provides brief but useful notes which should enable even the Greekless reader to understand some of the most important textual problems in Sappho. Carson tries to translate nothing which is not in the Greek, and to follow the original word order and line breaks as far as possible. Here is her version of Fragment 31:

He seems to me equal to gods that man

whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing - oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead - or almost
I seem to me.

But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty

And there the text breaks off. The great thing about this translation is its poverty. Unlike other translators, Carson adds no possessive pronouns or definite articles that are not present in the Greek. Sappho's speaker can no longer recognise her tongue as "my" tongue; her eyes and ears and skin are no longer her own.

7:27 PM |

Remember when the idea of having a CEO vice president was a campaign selling point?

Now we see that the only thing being sold is the public good. Exhibit A is the way Cheney's corporate cronies at Halliburton have benefited from having a friend in the very highest places.

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The latest outrage came with this week's revelation that Halliburton has consistently overbilled the Pentagon for meals at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. military base in Kuwait. According to auditors, the Pentagon paid the company $16 million for nearly 4 million meals that were never served. And Camp Arifjan is just one of over 50 dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq the company serves. Maybe Halliburton can steal a page from McDonald's playbook and put up a giant golden H outside their mess halls, with a sign keeping tabs on the number of meals they billed taxpayers for but didn't actually provide: "Over 4 Million Never Served!" And they can add a kicker to those "Halliburton, proud to serve our troops" TV spots they've been running: "... and even prouder of the money we rake in by not serving them!"

7:14 PM |

Update: Some reporter did try to ask this question today, but he was dismissed with a brusque answer from the White House press secretary. Here's the transcript from Wednesday's White House press briefing.

Q How is the President going to counter Democratic challenges that he got preferential treatment while serving in the National Guard during Vietnam?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we went through this issue four years ago and I went through this issue yesterday. And I will leave it where I left it yesterday.

Where, exactly, was that? It seems to me like the issue remained open yesterday. If someone were casting my military service in a bad light, I'd be the first guy to produce the documents that said otherwise. I can understand the impulse to play this one down, given the military credentials of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But I think that brushing aside these inquiries will only make people more curious.

6:53 PM |

In 1972, George W. Bush simply walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas Air National Guard. He skipped required weekend drill sessions for many months, probably for more than a year, and did not take a mandatory annual physical exam, which resulted in his being grounded. Nonetheless, Bush, the son of a well-connected Texas congressman, received an honorable discharge.

If an Air National guardsman today vanished for a year, military attorneys say that guardsman would be transferred to active duty or, more likely, kicked out of the service, probably with a less-than-honorable discharge. They suggest the penalty would be especially swift if the absent-without-leave guardsman were a fully trained pilot, as Bush was.

Bush's National Guard record, long ignored by the media, has surfaced with a vengeance. If the topic continues to rage, and if the media presses him, Bush may finally be forced to release his full military records, which could reveal the truth. By refusing to make all those records public, Bush has until now broken with a long-standing tradition of U.S. presidential candidates.

12:51 PM |

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

2:49 PM |

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Personal video recorder (PVR) maker TiVo says that the replay activity of 20,000 customers whose usage it was monitoring during the Super Bowl on Sunday spiked by 180 percent at the moment Janet Jackson demonstrated that bad judgment is a Jackson family trait. People rolled back the video and played the moment over and over, likely in an attempt to figure out what that elaborate piercing was all about. It was the TiVo moment seen 'round the world.

7:10 PM |

Monday, February 02, 2004

The Bush administration will ask Congress in coming months for up to $50 billion more for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House budget director said Monday.

The request would represent the third major request to pay for U.S. activities in those countries since last spring. Though Congress has approved most of President Bush's defense proposals with little complaint since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the White House is under growing criticism from Republicans for overall spending that has grown rapidly in his administration.

The money would be on top of $401.7 billion in defense spending that Bush included in the $2.4 trillion budget for 2005 he sent lawmakers Monday.

Congress approved $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in November, and had approved an earlier $79 billion package last spring. Most of those funds were for U.S. military operations in the two countries.

9:31 AM |

Sunday, February 01, 2004

With the ending of the federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program, jobless workers whose regular, state-funded unemployment insurance benefits run out before they can find a job no longer qualify for any federal unemployment aid. An estimated 375,000 unemployed individuals are exhausting their regular unemployment benefits in January without qualifying for any further assistance - and are receiving neither a paycheck nor unemployment benefits. Based on the latest data, nearly two million unemployed workers are expected to be in this situation during the first six months of 2004. (This analysis also includes state projections for the first half of 2004.)

In no other month on record - and in no other six-month period for which data are available - have so many unemployed workers exhausted their regular unemployment benefits without being able to receive additional aid. This finding holds even if the number of exhaustees in previous years is adjusted upward to reflect the growth in the labor force since then.

8:10 PM |