You Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Here Before?

The flags those protesters are waving represent the Libyan Republic, which was the ruling entity before Gadaffi (or however you spell it) took over 42 years ago. It made me wonder: Where did all those former Libyan flags come from? Were they lying around somewhere in Libya for the last half-century? Then I remembered an article called "The Man Who Sold the War" that ran in Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago. That article was about a guy named John Rendon, whose PR firm, The Rendon Group, helped market the first Gulf War.

From the article:

After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American - and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."

How indeed did those Kuwaitis get those flags? And how did the Libyans get theirs? Then as if on cue, Eman al-Obeidi manages to provide this war's humanitarian crisis to Western TeeVee audiences, just like good ol' Nayirah al-Sabah did back in 1990. Of course, we have since learned that Nayirah al-Sabah was the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Saud bin Nasir al-Sabah, and that her testimony was written and arranged by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton. So then one wonders which PR firms are responsible for the flags and for al-Obeidi's performance.

UPDATE: Oddly enough, The New York Times spells it all out for us:

WASHINGTON — In 2009, top aides to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.

If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.

And Russ Baker has a quiz:

Embattled Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi: Good or bad? How about GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt?

The Right Wing Consists Entirely of Cheaters

From Thom Hartmann:

Beside screwing with EPA regulations – meddling in Wisconsin – and courting Supreme Court Justices - what else are the Koch brothers up to now? Try rewriting Wikipedia. ThinkProgress has uncovered evidence that the Koch’s employed a PR firm to act as a “sockpuppet” for them on websites.

A “sockpuppet” is Internet lingo to refer to someone who creates a fake online identity to hype up himself or herself or a company they work for on message boards or social networking sites. If a sockpuppet is found out – it usually leads to the person’s account being disabled. The Koch’s “sockpuppet” edited their several Wikipedia pages to remove any references to the Tea Party – hype up George Soros conspiracy theories – and delete any citations to progressive media outlets – essentially scrubbing the Internet of any potentially embarrassing or damning facts about the Kochs.

The Kochs have contracted with dozens of PR firms – they are BILLIONAIRES – to ensure their political agenda is kept under wraps. But thanks to some great reporting nowadays – these guys aren’t in the shadows anymore.

ThinkProgress fills us in on the details:

Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor.


But New Media Strategies isn't the only PR firm engaged in this type of deception. As George Monbiot reported in the Guardian, a PR firm called the Bivings Group specializes in "internet lobbying," which is corporate-speak for creating false consensus. And the Bivings Group wasn't content to post inaccurate Wikipedia entries; they actually sought to ruin the reputation of a scientist named Ignacio Chapela, whose research found fault with Monsanto's patented "Roundup Ready" crops. Of course, as we learned last month, thanks to the efforts of Anonymous, The Bivings Group isn't the only PR firm employed by Monsanto to game the system.

Back in 2001, the PBS programs FRONTLINE and NOVA teamed up to address the question of genetically modified crops in a segment entitled Harvest of Fear. Their extremely balanced approach included a 12-part questionnaire designed to offer valid "for" and "against" arguments regarding the use of genetically engineered crops. Readers were encouraged to view all 12 arguments -- six "for" and six "against" -- and then cast a final vote on where they stand. However, the site administrators for the questionnaire were forced to suspend the final vote and tallying options of the questionnaire because:

"In late May 2004, thanks in part to the vigilance of several outside readers who phoned in, we discovered that some person or persons had tampered with this feature's tally. Specifically, on May 16-17, 1,540,016 'Yes' votes and 33,641 'No' votes were cast via just four IP addresses. (Prior to May 16, a total of roughly 124,000 votes of any kind had been cast since the feature launched in April 2001.)

"Deeming the credibility of the tally to have been compromised, we made this page unavailable for several days while we decided how best to address this problem. In the end, we threw out these suspicious votes and recalculated the remaining response numbers and percentages. Then we did a more thorough scouring of votes from before May 2004.

"It appears that a lesser degree of multiple voting has been going on for some time, so we have decided to temporarily remove the final vote and tallying options from this feature until we can put a more secure system in place. The feature itself remains unchanged, and we encourage you to challenge your stance on GM foods by reading it. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we appreciate your readership."—The Editors

I wonder if it was The Bivings Group that was behind the fraudulent voting.

This type of online cheating has become legion. Remember last year's story about right-wingers "down voting" progressive stories on Digg.com? And who can forget this handy instructional video about how to become "digital activists."

Conservatives cannot prevail simply by stating and defending their position, so they have to cheat. It's their M.O. Sound ideologies aren't constructed with lies.

UPDATE: Please forgive the multiple fonts. Blogger's text editing is whack.

UPDATE II: The government is also getting in on the action. And if you listen to right-wing hate radio, chances are you're listening to actors.

Hypocrites to the Left of Me, Republicrats to the Right

This is awesome. Three years ago, Indiana Republicans enacted draconian voter identification legislation, and now, the Republican state elections chief has been indicted for voter fraud. Priceless.

In case you're wondering how draconian Indiana's voter ID law really is, check this out:

Retired Nuns Barred from Voting in Indiana

Wednesday 7 May 2008
At least 10 retired nuns in South Bend, Indiana, were barred from voting in today's Indiana Democratic primary election because they lacked photo IDs required under a state law that the supreme court upheld last week.


What's more, the voter fraud these laws are supposedly attempting to combat is virtually non-existent, unless, of course, you count Republicans.

The true purpose of these voter ID laws -- which, by the way, are being enacted in around seven states -- is to disenfranchise elderly and poor voters, who traditionally vote Democratic.

Meanwhile, the outgoing (nominally Democratic) Chicago mayor and brother of incoming Obama chief of staff dutifully recites GOP talking points.

Jared Lee Loughner is a Registered Republican? UPDATE

So don't let any teabagger jaggoffs tell you that he is a "leftist lunatic."

UPDATE: As Eric so gleefully points out in the comments, it appears as if this screen grab is a HOAX.

But I don't see how Loughner being "a diehard antiWar, antiBush, 9/11 Truther" establishes anything here. As publisher of LibertarianRepublican.net, Eric should know that one of his presumed heroes, Ron Paul, is anti-war. And the 9/11 Truth movement has adherents from all points on the political spectrum. Indeed, one of the leaders of the "Truth" movement is Alex Jones, who calls himself a libertarian but who ran for Congress as a Republican. And although Jared Loughner's politics seem difficult to discern, several news outlets are reporting at least passing affiliation with right-wing elements.

But why, one wonders, are so many on the left leaping to conclusions of teabaggery regarding young Mr. Loughner? And why are so many on the Right so hypersensitive to such conclusion-leaping? Could it be the Right's long, long history of political violence for which there is no lefty counterpart? Or could it be the gun-centric bombast that peppers so much of the Right's rhetoric?

Whatever the reasons, until the Right ditches its desperate win-at-any-cost approach to political discourse, the violence will no doubt continue.

Oh, The Irony

Napolitano: If you see something, say something.

Assange: Okay!

Reality - 11, Obama - 0

Obama vs. Reality

You Tell 'em, Richard. I stu-stu-stutter

Park 51 Controversy Not What It Seems

From the New York Observer:

Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque

By Mark Ames

September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m

So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.

For instance, one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group's board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization's total operating budget--though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.

Deak describes himself as a "Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt." Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye.

Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as "business consultant" for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three "strategic advisers." These include retired four-star General Bryan "Doug" Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed "all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism," and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he "managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget" and "served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001."

Besides Pavitt, Brown and a third advisor, banker Alexander Cappello, the Patriot Defense Group is so secretive it doesn't even name its management team, instead describing its anonymous CEO as a former Special Forces and State Department veteran, the group's managing director as a former CIA officer experienced in counter-terrorism in hostile environments and the group's corporate intelligence head as a "23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton."

Patriot Defense Group's primary business involves leveraging its government connections and know-how. The firm is divided into two divisions: one that "focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments," and a corporate division, which "provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises."

So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a "business consultant" to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

Interestingly, during the same three-year period during which the Deak Family Foundation was financing the Cordoba Initiative, Deak also donated a total of $101,247 to something called the National Defense University Foundation. The National Defense University is a network of war and strategy colleges and research centers (including the National War College) funded by the Pentagon, designed to train specialists in military strategy. The organization recently announced a November 5 dinner gala in honor of Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Robert Gates. Sponsors include Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and...the Patriot Defense Group.

Deak also sits on the NDUF's board of directors, the chairman of which is Mark Treanor, the former general counsel for Wachovia bank from 1998 through its collapse in 2008 and a major bundler of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, was recently fined $160 million for laundering "at least $110 million" in Mexican drug money between 2003 and 2008, while Treanor was Wachovia's general counsel, though the figure is likely higher since Wachovia admitted it didn't put any controls on at least $420 billion--that's billion--in cash moved through its network of Mexico currency exchanges.

Which leads to another odd coincidence: Laundering money for drug lords is what brought down Deak & Co., the company run by Leslie Deak's father, Nicholas Deak, years ago. The elder Deak, a former top intelligence commander during World War II for the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA), was the founder of Deak-Perera, which became for a time one of the world's biggest foreign currency and gold dealers. But in 1984, a Presidential Commission on Organized Crime accused the firm of acting as a money laundering operation for Columbia drug cartels, who reportedly brought sacks of cash containing tens of millions of dollars into Deak's Manhattan offices. By the end of 1984, Deak & Co. had declared bankruptcy, and a year later, Nicholas Deak was murdered in the company's headquarters at 29 Broadway by a deranged homeless woman.

After the firm went bankrupt and Leslie Deak was left on his own, the corporation was broken up and sold off in pieces. One company that traces its beginnings to the defunct Deak empire is Goldline International, a business concern well known to fans of Glenn Beck as well as California investigators. Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.

Coincidences happen, of course. (For instance, Pamela Geller, the blogger who's become the leading voice denouncing the mosque project was once, bizarrely enough, associate publisher of The New York Observer.)

But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI "consultant" and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of "[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures," he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy "White Shoes" Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Whether the Cordoba Initiative ever gets its way with the Ground Zero Mosque, it may well have a lasting legacy at odds with its stated intention: By damaging the very moderates and progressives who actually view New York, and the nation as a whole, as a tolerant melting pot, and strengthening the position demagogues on both sides, it will almost certainly deal a setback to interfaith relations. It will also help to hobble the Democratic party. Which just might have been the point all along.

Either that, or it's merely a coincidence that this controversy has erupted now, during crucial mid-term elections. In which case we can all go back to what we were doing before—either denouncing the Park51 Mosque as an affront to Americans, or championing it as a symbol of our fundamental rights-playing our accustomed roles in a drama that seems too perfect, somehow, to believe.

Jet Fuel?

Proud Member of the "Professional Left"

Radical Islam is a Neocon Invention

It's Official

We officially live in a police state now, especially if you're black.

'Climategate' inquiry mostly vindicates scientists

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer

LONDON – An independent British report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed "Climategate."
The inquiry by former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year. But he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with critics.
"We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."
Russell's inquiry into the scandal is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of the e-mails, which caused a sensation when they were published online in November, right before the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen.
The messages captured researchers speaking in scathing terms about their critics, discussing ways to stonewall skeptics of man-made climate change, and talking about how to freeze opponents out of peer-reviewed journals.
The ensuing scandal energized skeptics and destabilized the Copenhagen talks. The research center's chief, Phil Jones, stepped down while Russell, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, investigated.
While Russell's report said there was no evidence to show Jones or any other scientist had subverted the peer-review process, it did revisit the now infamous e-mail exchange between Jones and a colleague in which the climatologist refers to a a "trick" used to "hide the decline" in a variable used to track global temperatures.
Some skeptics took that as proof that scientists were faking global temperature trends. Russell's report rejected that conclusion, but did say the resulting graph was "misleading" — although not intentionally so.
Russell also criticized the university for being "unhelpful" in dealing with Freedom of Information requests — something Britain's data-protection watchdog has already scolded the university for.
University of East Anglia Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton said the report had "completely exonerated" Jones, who would now return to the Climatic Research Unit as director of research — a new position that Acton said would free him from administrative duties.
Acton also said the university has since overhauled the way it dealt with requests for data.
Russell's report follows a British parliamentary inquiry that largely backed the scientists involved and another independent investigation that gave a clean bill of health to the science itself. Yet both reports have been criticized by skeptics who alleged they were incomplete or biased.
It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the scandal, which played widely in the British and U.S. media. In Britain, there is some evidence that public concern over global warming has been diluted, although not by much.
An Ipsos MORI poll published last month suggested that 78 percent of Britons believed that the world's climate was changing, compared with 91 percent five years earlier. Seventy-one percent of respondents expressed concern about global warming, versus 82 percent in 2005. The pollster surveyed 1,822 people aged 15 and over in interviews between January and March 2010.
Some scientists say the scandal has made it impossible for researchers to hide data from their critics and has pushed those who do believe in the dangers of man-made global warming to be more vocal about their doubts.
"The release of the e-mails was a turning point, a game-changer," Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian newspaper before the Russell report was released. "Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance."
Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, agreed that openness was the now order of the day.
"There is a need to re-establish trust," he said.

Read the report here: http://www.cce-review.org/

Spitzer Gets It

Family Values Party Lobbies For and Gets Extended Bar Hours

In its latest display of hypocrisy, the Grand Old Party, longtime defenders of wholesome Christian values, has lobbied for extended bar hours during its five-day visit to St. Paul later this summer. And in its latest display of spinelessness, the Democrat dominated Minnesota Legislature caved in to the demands.

Now, as frequent BDM readers know, I am totally in favor of laxer liquor laws, especially if it means increased revenue from out-of-towners. As DFL Representative and proposal co-sponsor Phyllis Kahn says, "Las Vegas is open all night long and New Orleans is open till dawn. I spend a lot of time in cities like New York and Montreal and they all seem to have later drinking times." But when harmless neighborhood watering holes have such a hard time keeping their liquor licenses, it seems odd to toss out the rules for a five-day political convention. Why not simply follow Kahn's reasoning all the time and let bars and liquor stores stay open as late as they like? What makes this decision even odder is that the political party for whom the rules are being bent is the notorious Family Values Party, home of this guy and this guy and this guy. I'll bet they wouldn't change the liquor laws for the Green Party. [Although rumor has it local & state police are going to lighten up on marijuana enforcement during the GOP convention in order to facilitate a more subdued protest atmosphere. ;-)]

Does Somebody Feel Faint?

Spun

With Edwards & Kucinich out and Paul fading, it might be a good idea to take another look at this.

Can You Say Gulf of Tonkin?

Luckily for Bush Inc., most rank and file American dipshits never even heard of the Gulf of Tonkin.

Pentagon says ships harassed by Iran
by PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.
U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats — believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy — turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. "It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman called it a "serious incident. This is something that deserves an explanation."
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the United States urges the Iranians "to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future."
The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. local time Sunday as Navy cruiser USS Port Royal, destroyer USS Hopper and frigate USS Ingraham were on their way into the Persian Gulf and passing through the strait — a major oil shipping route.
Five small boats began charging the U.S. ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and forcing the U.S. ships to take evasive maneuvers, the Pentagon official said.
There were no injuries but the official said there could have been, because the Iranian boats turned away "literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire" in self defense.
The official said he didn't have the precise transcript of communications that passed between the two forces, but said the Iranians radioed something like "we're coming at you and you'll explode in a couple minutes."
Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment Monday, and there was no news of the incident on Iranian state-run media.
At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said he was not aware of any plans to lodge a formal protest.
"Without specific reference to this incident in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States will confront Iranian behavior where it seeks to do harm either to us or to our friends and allies in the region," McCormack told reporters. "There is wide support for that within the region and certainly that's not going to change."
Whitman said the Pentagon will work with State and National Security Council officials to determine "the appropriate way to address this with the Iranian government."
The U.S. vessels were in international waters, making a normal transit into the Gulf, Whitman said, adding that the Iranian boats were operating at "distances and speeds that showed reckless and dangerous intent — reckless, dangerous and potentially hostile intent."
He said the episode lasted 15 to 20 minutes but wouldn't say whether officials know for certain whether the were vessels were Iranian Revolutionary Guard or regular Iranian navy. The Revolutionary Guard forces have been known to be more aggressive than the regular navy.
"At least some were visibly armed. Small Iranian fastboats made some aggressive maneuvers against our vessels and indicated some hostile intent," Whitman.
Historical tensions between the two nations have increased in recent years over Washington's charge that Tehran has been developing nuclear weapons and supplying and training Iraqi insurgents using roadside bombs — the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
In another incident off its coast, Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailors last March captured 15 British sailors and held them for nearly two weeks.
The 15 sailors from HMS Cornwall, including one woman, were captured on March 23. Iran claims the crew, operating in a small patrol craft, had intruded into Iranian waters — a claim Britain denied.
The weekend incident came as President Bush prepared for his first major trip to the Middle East. While scheduled to meet the leaders of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other regional nations Jan. 9-16, Bush is expected to try to bolster the troubled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians but is also likely to seek backing for U.S. concerns about Iran.
At about this time last year, Bush announced he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region in a show of force against Iran. The U.S. Navy quietly scaled back to one carrier group several months later. But while the two were there, they staged two major exercises off Iran's coast.
The war games amounted to U.S. muscle-flexing at a time when Tehran increasingly was at loggerheads with the international community over its disputed nuclear program and threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz for oil transports in case of a U.S. military strike on Iran.
Since then, there have been diplomatic overtures aimed at calming tensions.
The United States maintains nearly 40,000 troops in Gulf countries other than Iraq, with the largest group in Kuwait and others in Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
___
Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee, Robert Burns and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

Justice At Last

At last, billionaires like Richard Branson are getting a little justice.

The Bicycle Thief

From Salon:

Bike activists face an uphill climb against Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who claims bike paths are not transportation and are stealing tax money from bridges and roads.

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Sep. 14, 2007 Imagine you're the federal official in the Bush administration charged with overseeing the nation's transportation infrastructure. A major bridge collapses on an interstate highway during rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring an additional 100. Whom to blame? How about the nation's bicyclists and pedestrians!
The Minneapolis bridge collapse on Aug. 1 led Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to publicly reflect on federal transportation spending priorities and conclude that those greedy bicyclists and pedestrians, not to mention museumgoers and historic preservationists, hog too much of the billions of federal dollars raised by the gas tax, money that should go to pave highways and bridges. Better still, Peters, a 2006 Bush appointee, apparently doesn't see biking and walking paths as part of transportation infrastructure at all.
In an Aug. 15 appearance on PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," Peters spoke against a proposal to raise gas taxes to shore up the nation's aging infrastructure. The real problem, the secretary argued, is that only 60 percent of the current money raised by gas taxes goes to highways and bridges. She conveniently neglected to mention that about 30 percent of the money goes to public transit. She then went on to blast congressional earmarks, which dedicate 10 percent of the gas tax to some 6,000 other projects around the country. "There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure," she said. The secretary added that projects like bike paths and trails "are really not transportation."
Peters' comments set off an eruption of blogging, e-mailing and letter-writing among bike riders and activists, incensed that no matter how many times they burn calories instead of fossil fuels with the words "One Less Car" or "We're Not Holding Up the Traffic, We Are the Traffic" plastered on their helmets, their pedal pushing is not taken seriously as a form of transportation by the honchos in Washington, D.C.
Bike paths are not infrastructure? "There are hundreds of thousands of people who ride to work, and millions who walk to work every day, and the idea [that] that isn't transportation is ludicrous," says Andy Clarke, executive director of the League of American Bicyclists, who has biked to work for almost 20 years on a path paid for with federal dollars. Clarke fired off an angry letter to Peters, and invited the 25,000 members of his organization around the country to do the same. "The guy in his Humvee taking his videos back to the video store isn't any more legitimate a trip than the guy on the Raleigh taking his videos back," says Andy Thornley, program director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
In fact, only about 1.5 percent of federal transportation dollars go to fund bike paths and walking trails. In the meantime, 10 percent of all U.S. trips to work, school and the store occur on bike or foot, and bicyclists and pedestrians account for about 12 percent of annual traffic fatalities, according to the Federal Highway Administration. "We represent a disproportionate share of the injuries, and we get a minuscule share of the funds," says Robert Raburn, executive director of the East Bay Bike Coalition in the San Francisco Bay Area, who calls the Peters' comments "outrageous." Plus, he notes, with problems like global warming, the obesity epidemic and energy independence, shouldn't the U.S. secretary of transportation be praising biking, not complaining about it?
What really drives cyclists around the bend is that while they're doing their part to burn less fossil fuel -- cue slogan: "No Iraqis Died to Fuel This Bike" -- they're getting grief for being expensive from a profligate administration. "War spending, tax cuts for the rich, and gas taxes are all big sources of funding. Bike spending is not," fumes Michael Bluejay, an Austin, Texas, bike activist, in an e-mail. "The few pennies we toss toward bike projects is not enough to fix our nation's bridges, not by a freaking long shot."
One of the many communities that benefit from federal dollars for bicyclists and pedestrians is the very one where the bridge collapsed. For the St. Paul, Minn., program Bike/Walk Twin Cities, administered by Transit for Livable Communities, $21.5 million of federal dough is being spent to create bike lanes, connect existing walking and biking trails with one another, and install signage to alert drivers of the presence of bicyclists and walkers. Despite the cold winters, Minneapolis is something of a biking Mecca, with 2.4 percent of all trips to work made by bike, significantly higher than the national average of 0.4 percent, according to Joan Pasiuk, program director of Bike/Walk Twin Cities.
It's hard to argue that walking paths and bike trails are robbing federal coffers when states can't even spend all the federal money they've received to repair bridges in the first place. In 2006, state departments of transportation sent back $1 billion in unspent bridge funds to the federal government, according to the Federal Highway Administration. "The fact that there is a billion dollars of bridge repair money sloshing around in the system not being spent suggests that it's not the fault of bike trails," says Clarke.
Congressional Democrats agree. "It's a red herring to point to bike paths and even imply that if we didn't build another bike path we'd have all the money we need to fix our highways and bridges," says Jim Berard, communications director for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. "You can't build very many bridges with the amount of money that you would save if you didn't build any bike paths."
So why is Peters suddenly taking on bikes and pedestrians? Her comments are especially odd since she sang the praises of bikes as transportation in a speech at the National Bike Summit in Washington, in March 2002. Has she simply forgotten the glory of two wheels? One theory: Peters is on a campaign to quash the idea of raising the gas tax, as she editorialized recently in the Washington Post. A key proponent of raising the gas tax to fund bridge restorations in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse is Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, who has advocated for bike and pedestrian paths in his district. By putting a culture-war spin on the bridge collapse, Peters is hoping to run his gas tax proposal off the road.
Does Peters herself buy this theory? Does she really think that bike paths do not qualify as transportation infrastructure? Why does she say that things like bike paths steal money from bridge repairs when states have more than enough money to fix bridges? The secretary would not respond, but Jennifer Hing, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation's Office of Public Affairs in the Office of the Secretary, would. She answered all the specific questions with one resoundingly uninformative e-mail: "The federal government should set high standards for and invest in the ongoing safety, reliability and interconnection of the nation's transportation network. State and local communities should have the flexibility to then set local transportation priorities."
For their part, cyclists have been weaving through political land mines for decades. In the perennial struggle to gain public support for bike paths, they remain philosophical. Says Thornley of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition: "Before there were automobiles, and after there will be automobiles, there will be bicycles moving people around for transportation."