Read All About It In the Sunday Papers-June 28, 2009

LEAD STORY-Asia Times: Anatomy of a Pentagon Coverup

As was predicted here several weeks ago, US media lost whatever little interest they had had about recent U. S. air strikes killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

So, when the Pentagon released its ‘study’ a week ago Friday, it disappeared into a media black hole. Which is just as well, as there were apparently serious ‘omissions’ from the story:

WASHINGTON – The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the United States command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the “Taliban” were fraudulent.

 The declassified “executive summary” of the report on the bombing issued last Friday admitted that mistakes had been made in the use of airpower in that incident. However, it omitted key details which would have revealed the self-serving character of the US command’s previous claims blaming the “Taliban” – the term used for all insurgents fighting US forces – for the civilian deaths from the airstrikes.

An analysis of the report’s detailed descriptions of the three separate airstrikes also shows that the details in question could not have been omitted except by a deliberate decision to cover up the most damaging facts about the incident. 

While it is unfortunate that one has to seek out the Asia Times to get serious reporting on stories like this, ‘bulo is thankful that at least someone, in this case, Gareth Porter, seeks to hold the Obama Administration and the Pentagon accountable for their behavior.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Part of I-95 to Be Torn Down??

El Scoobnambulo sez, “Ruh-roh.”

Urban planners are encouraging that a portion of I-95 south of Center City be torn down as a way to reconnect Philly to the waterfront.

Actually, what Hack and Steinberg envision is less a Big Dig than a No Dig.

Instead of burying the highway in an expensive tunnel, they would entirely rip out a stretch of I-95 that runs south of the Ben Franklin Bridge and I-676. Traffic volume drops off there, proponents argue, because the bulk of the highway’s users are commuting into Center City from the north. Airport travelers, they point out, can take I-676 to I-76.

With I-95 out of the picture, cars would flow along the Delaware River on Columbus Boulevard. That road would still give drivers access to Penn’s Landing, the South Philadelphia retail chains, and the sports complex. But drivers would be traveling on a city street bounded by sidewalks and bike lanes and regulated by traffic signals. The highway could pick up again around South Street, or perhaps Washington Avenue.

The transition would be similar to what happens near Cape May where the Garden State Parkway downsizes to a local boulevard.

Opponents, who include planners and traffic experts, point out that tie-ups can overwhelm the southern end of Columbus Boulevard, near the big box stores. But Philly Dig supporters maintain that problem is manageable.

Now, lissen up, the Beast Who Slumbers is only gonna say this once (deep cleansing breaths to lower his pulse rate…) Don’t do it, you bleepers!! People driving I-95 don’t want to ‘connect’ with the waterfront. They don’t want to ‘connect’ with Philly! They just want to get the bleep through there with minimal agita! 

Aaaarrrghhh!

(One needle later). We now return you to the calm and collected Beast Who Self-Medicates…

Washington Post: More Women Running Farms

 Bringing sustainable practices and serving as both antidote and alternative to corporate agribusiness:

While men tend to run larger farms focused on such commodity crops as soybeans and wheat, women tend to run smaller, more specialized enterprises selling heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef to well-heeled, eco-conscious consumers.

These smaller enterprises have gotten a boost from the popularity of farmers markets and programs in which people pay in advance to receive weekly produce baskets, as well as renewed consumer interest in buying locally.  

Women say they are drawn to farming for a number of reasons. Many like the independence and flexibility that comes with running a farm. Many younger women choose farming to do something positive for the environment by employing sustainable farming techniques, said Amy Trauger, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Georgia who has studied women in agriculture.

While the global warming deniers who have migrated to this site in droves recently will no doubt scoff, El Somnambulo sees this as yet another very encouraging trend. When in doubt, eat local, and you too can be a locavore. Or don’t, and you can be loco.

McClatchy Papers: Another Bush Epic Fail-Afghan Bridge Project Boon to Drug Traffickers

“Couldn’t Bush do anything right?” has long since become a rhetorical question. The answer is ‘No’. Just check this out. After all, to borrow an ill-considered statement from Condi Rice, “No one could possibly have anticipated that, if you build a bridge from Afghanistan to another country to assist Afghani commerce, the product most exported would be drugs.” Of course not:

NIZHNY PANJ, Tajikistan — In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia’s poorest countries.

Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.

Much of the ballooning supply of drugs shipped across Afghanistan’s northern border, up to one-fifth of the country’s output, has traveled to and through Tajikistan. The opium and heroin funded rampant corruption in Tajikistan and turned the country, still hobbled by five years of civil war in the 1990s, into what at times seems like one big drug-trafficking organization.

The Beast Who Slumbers will leave it to DL’s latest group of cabalistic crackpots to explain why this is all Obama’s fault. He won’t be reading what they have to say.

The (UK) Independent: Blair’s ‘Green Policies’ Were Just So Much…Smoke

Not much of a shock. Bush’s lapdog spoke ‘Pretty Words’ (Elvis Costello reference) which turned out not to ‘mean much anymore’ when it came to implementing green policies:

When it comes to environmental sustainability, the prognosis is grim: Britain is “winning battles, but still losing the war”.

 The UK is failing to hit a raft of key targets on sustainable living, according to a new report to be published this week. In its critical analysis, released on Wednesday, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) warns that progress on a number of green targets has been “undermined by stasis or even reversion”. Jonathon Porritt, outgoing SDC chair and one-time “green guru” to Tony Blair, claims sustainability plays second fiddle to the drive for consumption-driven economic growth. “The thing that stands out is the very limited progress we’ve made on reducing inequity in our society… it’s a startling indictment of this Government that more people will be living in fuel poverty at the time of next election than were living in fuel poverty in 1997,” he said.

The “review of progress on sustainable development” details how the “Securing the Future” strategy launched by Tony Blair in 2005 has failed in a number of areas. It says Britain remains the EU’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and is not on track to meet its target of a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010.

Why? Oopsies:

An apparent decrease becomes a significant increase once emissions embedded in trade and travel are taken into account.

Once again, Condi does the honors: “No one could have possibly anticipated that emissions embedded in trade and travel would have an impact on energy sustainability.” So, they just didn’t count ’em.

San Francisco Chronicle: How California Descended Into Budgetary Chaos

There’s something here for everyone. Increased partisanship due to gerrymandering, referendum and initiative leading to programs with no funding source, term limits, Prop. 13, you name it. 

A fascinating glimpse into what appears to be a case of Unintended Consequences on Steroids.

Dallas Morning News: Cowboys’ Football Bubble Collapse Result of Deliberately Shoddy Work

Here’s why all those ‘tort reform’ advocates are full of shit and why victims of shoddy work deserve their day in court:

When Cover-All Building Systems named a new engineering director in late 2003, it was just wrapping up construction on the Dallas Cowboys practice facility – and just beginning the long process of losing a lawsuit over the recent collapse, in Philadelphia, of another big tent-like building.

The newcomer, Brooke McLarty, came to believe that Cover-All’s products needed an engineering overhaul. He told The Dallas Morning News he gave management a dire warning in 2004:

“We can’t continue to operate this way or we’re going to kill somebody.”

When confronted a few years ago with the “we’re going to kill somebody” warning, Stobbe initially responded well, McLarty said. Cover-All hired a consultant to redesign its existing mass-market product lines.

But there was no systematic effort to beef up structures they’d already erected, including the customized jobs for the Cowboys and Patriots.

And, of course, the lizard-like Jerry Jones had Dallas municipal government wired, so there was no serious inspection of the facility. 

Please explain to El Somnambulo while all of those complicit in the erection of an unsafe structure should not be held liable for their actions.

Or, better yet, don’t waste your purple (or blue and silver) prose.