Time Warps:VP Cheney 1994,Hoosiers 2006,Hairspray 1962,Dem. Iowa Debates 0, Argentina BioFuelFuture
Stafford Williamson
August 20, 2007
WARRANTLESS WIRETAP LAW CHANGES EXPLANATION
In Iowa this week, the Democratic Presidential Candidates debated before the television audience for This Week with George Stephanopolous in what was rather a lack lustre matchup. The most interesting item was the public poll rankings of the top 3 candidates announced as George introduced the candidates. Obama led with 27% and Clinton and Edwards tied at 26%. Sen. Mike Gravel (0% in the polls)babbled incoherently at times and while Rep. Dennis Kucinich looked and sounded like a real candidate, expressing a lot of ideas and opinions I liked (along with ones I don't like that include abandoning NAFTA and WTO) was almost ignored by the moderators until it came to a question of prayer and faith to which he responded wittily, "I've been praying here for 45 minutes that you would ask me a question." The best response of the day, however belonged to Senator Barack Obama who, in many defensive responses to multiple claims that he lacks the experience of other candidates on the platform, that, "Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war and it indicates how we get into trouble when we engage in the sort of conventional thinking that has become the habit in Washington." Obama also got laughs when his opening remark was that in preparation for today's debate he practiced on the bumper car ride. Senator Clinton fairly handily turned aside a quote from Karl Rove that emphasized her strong negative polling by saying that she, "hardly expected Karl Rove to be endorsing me." But on the whole substantive material was in short supply, and what there was turned into a rehash of the songs we have heard before.
Oh, yes, the date reference in the title of this article for the Democratic Iowa Debates was probably not accurate. It just SEEMED so boring time seemed to have STOPPED!! (Well, not quite, but close at times.) It is definitely time for Senator Gravel to step aside and let the more serious contenders speak to the people without him crowding and clouding the view.
Last week I promised to talk about, even explain about the recent changes in the situation on American National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of telephone calls (and other communications) of Americans in America. I will get to that in a minute, but first, I want you to consider an unusual source for a "voice of reason" with respect to the American invasion of, and war upon, Iraq.
The unusual source is Vice President Dick Cheney. Take a look at the video that shows him in a CSPAN video clip from 1994 that was rebroadcast on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The clip,itself(sorry, the link will include the pre-mercial ad as well) is more than just Cheney's original comments on Iraq, Baghdad and Saddam Hussein, but is from the more than slightly biased and liberal editorial point of view of Mr. Olbermann. The above linked clip is over 7 minutes long by the time you get through the "analysis" discussion with a guest commentator. A shorter version appeared in the even more liberally slanted (but praiseworthy) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in a segment of the episode of the Aug. 15, 2007, entitled, "Even Dick Doesn't know Dick." However, the real point is that Cheney was wise beyond all reason considering the actions the government took after September 11, 2001 to invade Iraq, which had nothing whatever to do with that attack. You see in 1994 Mr. Cheney was justifying (explaining at least) why Operation Desert Storm, the first (defensive)[?] military push against Iraq after Iraq and Hussein had invaded neighboring Kuwait had failed to push on to Baghdad and unseat the powerhungry dictator. Cheney said that to topple the Hussein regime would be a "quagmire", with a power vacuum left without anyone we would be happy to see fill that vacancy. And further, that we would like see "part of Iraq fly off" it would be so destructive to remove the strong central government that existed at the time.
Who knows what secret ambitions he might have held back even then in covetousness of Iraq's oil, but starting in 2002 it must have been a rush to correct the "blunder" of Desert Storm (1990 – 1991) not unseating Hussein at the time when the opportunity looked to be such a small extension of the already highly successful operation (Desert Storm) to push them back from inside the borders of Kuwait. Politics is always a factor, and since Hussein was not only a cousin to the Jordanian royal family but a Sunni Moslem like much of Saudi Arabia (and their royal family) it would appear logical to conclude that the Saudis would not have been pleased to have seen Saddam toppled at that time (when our entire base of operations to launch Desert Storm had been inside the borders of Saudi Arabia, since neither Kuwait nor Iraqi territory was hospitable in those months). As a practical matter, it seems in retrospect that putting together the kind of regional coalition that we are now attempting to assemble of Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, in hopes of being able to place more of the responsibility for stability in Iraq on the community of nations in the region as a whole, that it would have been even easier to do so back in 1991. If that is true, and I tend to think it is, those who felt failing to take Baghdad was a mistake are still being vindicated, in spite of what Cheney's pronouncements were at that time, or in 1994. He had a clear idea of what the problems were, but was unwilling to face them in 1991. In 2002, or rather, more accurately the day this administration took office in 2001, Mr. Cheney's perspective seems to have clouded into a fog of a mixture of testosterone and oily lust.
On the scale of global affairs it may not be even a major "blip" but in the biodiesel industry a very major event has happened in the past week, Imperium Renewables new plant at Gray's Harbor, Washington state, opened for business. The National Biodiesel Board recently had a press release which revealed that: "The biodiesel industry produced 250 million gallons in 2006, and is on track to produce 300 – 350 million gallons in 2007. There are 148 plants operating nationwide." According to the article that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the 100 million gallons per year capacity of this plant will add approximately 30% to the current capacity of all USA based biodiesel plants. The quiet harbor will be a lot busier soon, I suspect. The location of the plant is particularly well chosen in terms of both receiving foreign sources of oil and shipping out their finished products to other markets (if the price is high enough to justify the costs). But meanwhile it is poised to serve the Seattle and Tacoma areas with minimal transportation costs. I must say I have been impressed with almost every aspect of this project that I have heard about so far. My sincere congratulations to everyone involved.
EXCITING (old) NEWS on the biobutanol front: Japanese Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, it was announced in "Hoosier Ag" and confirmed on the Euro-African energy co-op site BioPact that they have developed a process using modified microbes to process cellulosic materials into biobutanol, the favored fuel of British Petroleum (pardon me, BP)(as evidenced in their development agreement with British foods giant ABF and duPont). Oddly, "Hoosier Ag" offered this report on their web site on August 14, 2007, while the news release on the RIITE web site is dated almost a year ago. Honda was a partner in this research and they report that biobutanol can be mixed with petro-diesel with hardly any noticeable effects. Specifically they said, "negligible effects on vehicle performance," but didn't mention what percentage mixture was used. If biobutanol substitutes one-for-one with gasoline, AND blends with diesel to form what might, in effect, be called BB85 or even BB20 it is one more argument in favor of this more recent arrival on the renewable fuels scene. Don't count biobutanol out of the race yet, to be sure. Oh, yes, what makes this old news "exciting" news is that they were projecting commercial development to take as little as 3 years, and that was almost a year ago. By my superior math skills, I have deduced, via elaborate calculations (3-1=2) that the projection means we might be hearing a lot more about this process in the not too distant future.
A few days ago I got a note indicating that biodiesel was, or was about to be, making a big surge in importance in Argentina. Argentina is reported to be a strong exporter of vegetable oils, and has substantial plantings of soy beans, most of which is destined for the export market. While I tend to favor non-food sources for our feedstock for biodiesel whenever practical, it will be a while before sufficient feedstocks from either algae or jatropha (or castor beans, or whatever) are available to meet the demand. Argentina is offering tax incentives to the industry too, which should also help stimulate growth. It is mandating minimum biodiesel use of 5% by 2010. However, before everyone rushes out to buy "gaucho" outfits and head to the pampas, there are also some restrictive conditions including that to qualify for the tax incentive, "the majority ownership of biodiesel production facilities corresponds to farming and agricultural firms." (in accord with National Decree 109, the Biofuels Law and the Biofuels Decree). Regulations also state that exporters will only be granted a license to export provided there are sufficient supplies to meet domestic needs in years after 2010. (That could leave a couple of freewheeling export years, depending on how long it might take to have your plant up and running.) It would appear then that these conditions are an attempt to encourage minority ownership investments (not meeting the ownership requirements to qualify for the tax incentives would be a tremendous disadvantage for foreign owned firms to compete against locally owned firms), and gambling on the industry's ability to meet demand in order to be allowed to export the production of your factory. It seems that the government of Argentina has charted a course that is very specific for the industry in Argentina, one whose constraints tend to chafe on the freewheeling preferences of the American entrepreneur, but ask the telephone companies how they feel about living under the protection of the government. Even after the breakup of (old) AT&T, they have done extremely well, while moaning and groaning about their enslavement to government regulations.
The Luddites are at it again, in Ireland this time. A group calling themselves "South Tipperary for Clean Industry" has raises a fuss about a proposal to build a combination biogas and biodiesel plant at Castleblake near Rosegreen, near a pair of famous horse facilities in Tipperary. Apparently they roused the local citizenry to lodge over 800 statements of "concern" on the town web site. The Belfast Telegraph carried the story, reporting that the self-righteous South Tipperary for Clean Industry group is now pressuring Green Organics Energy Ltd, the developer, to drop the project entirely. I know nothing beyond what was reported in that article, but I know I would love to have the opportunity to build that facility myself. The Belfast Telegraph says they would be processing 250,000 tonnes (that's metric tons) of "animal by-products" a year.
Before today’s epistle gets any longer, I promised to talk about changes in legislation regarding warrantless wiretapping of Americans and telecommunications traffic within the United States. The explanation is really a question of changing technologies. The National Security Agency was set up to "spy" electronically on communications. The intent was to access foreign communications in order not to have to put actual living people at risk by sending them to Moscow or East Berlin or wherever to place individual listening devices in the homes or offices of foreign officials and agents of foreign governments. Saving lives while reducing labor, the plan seemed a really good idea. It was also a tremendous success. One of the main methods of listening in on these foreign conversations was by simply listening in on signals from communications satellites that carried much of the traffic, both domestic and international, long distance within and among the other countries of the world. This included incoming traffic from satellites entering the United States. Because all traffic was being monitored "in outer space", it was construed not to violate the mandate to listen in on foreign communications. A good deal of controversy was brewed up in recent years when it was revealed that federal agencies had been listening in to American citizens conversations in an attempt to intercept terrorist communications with terrorist agents and operatives in the United States. This, it was argued, was a significant erosion of citizens' right to privacy, unless a warrant had been issued by an appropriate judge that their was sufficient probable cause to listen to that person's telecommunications, just as it would be to justify intercepting, opening and reading a person's US mail. The relevant authority in this case would be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. What changed recently (and not all that recently either, which is partly why the practice has been going on in spite of lack of legislative authorization) is that international communication has flowed (percentage-wise, at least) less and less over communication satellites and more and more over fiber optic networks. Those networks, built and operated mostly by American companies generally were built to bring traffic into and out of the USA, so when other countries and telephone (and internet) systems began using these less expensive, high capacity fiber optic networks to route calls from Paris to Hong Kong, or from Bangalore to Mexico City, suddenly everything was "domestic" communications. Fiber optic networks, unlike copper networks also presented the additional "security" of not being able to be "tapped" (en masse) by simply sensing the electrical pulses passing through the cable. (As electricity passes along a metal cable, it creates magnetic disturbances in the physical world around it, so it was possible for our spies to measure and translate practically every little electronic burst that came across a metal communications cable. Not so for optical fiber, since those messages are carried on bursts of light, which have no noticeable effect outside the fibers in which they are transmitted.) The only way (that I know of, and these are some pretty smart people so they may have methods I don't know of, in fact they almost certainly do) that the NSA can "tap" fiber optic networks is to connect to the "router" machines that pass the messages from one segment of the fiber optic cables to the next. Since those machines are (in many, many cases) in the USA, this would be similar to an ordinary FBI wiretap at the telephone company's central office, except that the "target" would be foreign traffic (at least in theory). Clouding the issue a little is the fact that satellite traffic originated in the US by a foreign agent could legitimately be intercepted by the NSA as part of its overall surveillance, but domestically originating calls aimed overseas on fiber optic networks SEEMED to be the same as un-authorized, so-called "warrantless wiretapping".
What changed recently was the majority in congress went from Republican party to Democratic party. At that point, being the ones responsible for legislation, Democrats had to take a new look at the reasoning behind the warrantless wiretaps, and realizing what I have just explained in the previous paragraph, they recognized that the NSA would be crippled in its efforts if not allowed to continue with their practices as related to fiber optic networks. It also was a matter of no longer finding it useful to demonize the policy of the Bush Administration as unlawful, when the Democratic majority could/should be introducing legislation to curb such activity if it was really as heinous as they were claiming. The final result was the laws governing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts were changed to what they are today. President Bush signed into law the hastily passed "Protect America Act"(this link goes to a plain text version of the act, the first computer screen worth of which looks almost blank. Scroll down to see the whole act.) that Congress enacted before their summer recess. The act allows the administration to force communications companies to cooperate in these government authorized (essentially potentially permanent) tapping of the routers. It also called for the administration to justify the action, essentially telling the story that I have told you above. The ACLU petitioned the FISA court to reveal the reasons why the administration had sought the changes implemented to close the so-called "surveillance gap". If you know someone in the ACLU, you can point them to my explanation above. I trust that my brief summary will be far easier to understand than the avalanche of paperwork the administration is likely to send if it does decide to comply with the court's August 31, 2007 deadline to respond.
It is usually easy to find my positive note with which to end my column by turning to entertainment news, and today is no exception. Maggie and I saw, "Hairspray", the movie musical this weekend. It was a delight in many ways. The bouncy musical portrait of a 1960's Baltimore was toe-tapping good from the first note to the last. Queen Latifah belted out the first few verses of "Big Blonde and Beautiful" (or was it "Big Black and Beautiful", so many reprises of this number from so many characters left the tune in my head, but some uncertainty as to which verse came first). John Travolta was the "novelty" draw, since he played Edna, the MOTHER (yes, really the mother), of the heroine. The role was played in the original John Waters non-musical film by Devine, a female-impersonator, known mainly to the gay community before the release of the first film. Mr. Waters also appears in a cameo role as the local flasher who exposes himself to a sidewalk full of '60's housewives during the opening musical number. In spite of the anti-establishment, quirky (to say the least) tone of the first film, this one has a gargantuan heart and upbeat outlook. It is a reminder, though the nostalgia for the '60 civil rights era in America, generally, and in Baltimore in particular, that we need to be on guard against prevailing prejudices still today, despite the progress made in civil rights for non-white races. The film epitomizes the "differentness" of heroine character Tracy whose quite obviously overweight genetic pre-disposition (mother Edna is really immense, and Travolta fits into the fat-suit with amazing aplomb) is a factor that leaves her with barely a hope of ever being one of the "in crowd" who gets to dance on the local teen dance program (patterned rather closely after Dick Clark's American Bandstand, with Baltimore standing in for Philadelphia in this case). The scene is really not backdropped by the black and white separation being imposed by the television station manager (ably played by the beautiful Michele Pfeiffer) but could be more accurately described as carved into this landscape that shapes the plot. It stands as a serious tribute to the civil rights movement's accomplishments in those times. It held some emotional moments for me as they re-created a civil rights march of mostly Negroes, joined by a few whites (leading characters, Tracy and Edna) who stood by them in fearless defiance in one case, and nearly abject terror in the other, but stood by them to defend their rights nonetheless.
Also delightful, and a favorite of mine from her great work on the television series West Wing, was Allison Janney as the prudish, mother, Prudy Pringleton of the herione's best friend. Prudy is constantly trying to keep her daughter from the corrupting influence of Trudy, and is aghast at the idea that her daughter is dancing with (she'd faint if she knew she was dating, a handsome young black dancer named "Seaweed" played by Elijah Kelley. Prudy is also a devoted reader of Bible scripture, so it seems, though when she reads out the passage she is “studying” it turns out to be one of the steamiest in the entirety of scripture. Don’t miss the one line about Prudy’s husband, Penny’s father, and where he has been. Penny (Amanda Bynes) is a delight as Tracy’s best friend. Well down the cast list but "above the title" was Jerry Still (father of Ben) who played the Chris Walken part in the original 1988 version, but (surprisingly) below the title was the dynamo of energy who played the leading character, "Tracy Turnblad," newcomer Nikki Blonsky. The rotund little actress is not your typical leading lady type. But she was a two hour controlled (barely) explosion of energy that really lit up the screen.
I have long been fond of, even a fan of Christopher Walken since our paths crossed many, many years ago in Calgary. Michelle Pfeiffer's scene in which she attempts to seduce the completely oblivious Walken is underplayed, and "just right." The combination of Walken as Tracy's father and Travolta as her mother, plus the bubbling energy of Ms. Blonsky make for a family that is sufficiently quirky to give it that original John Water's feel, in a very Disney-esque package. The movie has been open for a few weeks already. I don't think there was a single person in the audience that night that did not enjoy it thoroughly.
Love,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
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