Bombs Away

A beachcomber found a rusty object on Pensacola Beach yesterday and hauled it home to the 15th floor of Portofino's tower No. 3. After the beachcomber sent a cell phone photo of the curiosity to her boyfriend, he called back to say it looked like a bomb. The tower was evacuated.

Turns out this evil fruit of the sea was an unexploded W.W. II practice bomb. Just a taste of what many countries, including the United States, face in trying to rid the soil of similar stale war munitions. It's been estimated that at the current pace it could take up to 150 more years to rid just Germany, alone, of unexploded W.W. II munitions.

Luckily, no one was hurt yesterday on Pensacola Beach. Not so lucky? The people who live in some eighty other countries where cluster bombs and land mines litter the landscape. Tens of thousands, predominantly children, are killed and maimed every year.

Guess who is a major manufacturer, stockpiler, and user of cluster bombs?

The United States used cluster munitions in Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) in the 1960s and 1970s, Persian Gulf (Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) in 1991, Yugoslavia (including Kosovo) in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, and Iraq in 2003.

Apparently, we lie a lot about that when it comes to Iraq, too, although this much is known:

The U.S. military has a staggering arsenal of these weapons. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, the Army holds 88% of the Pentagon's CBU inventory -- at least 638.3 million of the cluster bomblets that are stored inside each cluster munition; the Air Force and Navy, according to Department of Defense figures, have 22.2 million and 14.7 million of the bomblets, respectively. And even these numbers are considered undercounts by experts.

In what could be a dark footnote to the Portofino story that is exciting so many beach goers, this week the U.S. refused even to attend, much sign, an international treaty banning cluster bombs.

Klotzbach Keeps Hurricane Forecast

Phillip Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray have issued their traditional seasonal start hurricane forecast update. Predictions remain essentially the same as in April:

We estimate that 2007 will have about 9 hurricanes (average is 5.9), 17 named storms (average is 9.6), 85 named storm days (average is 49.1), 40 hurricane days (average is 24.5), 5 intense (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (average is 2.3) and 11 intense hurricane days (average is 5.0). The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 140 percent of the long-period average. We expect Atlantic basin Net Tropical Cyclone (NTC) activity in 2007 to be about 185 percent of the long-term average.

The Colorado State team explains that this year's predictions are based on "a new statistical scheme" that "utilizes a total of only three predictors."

Two of these predictors are derived from sea surface temperature data obtained from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The third predictor is the previous year’s early December prediction of the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM).

AMM is an abbreviation for the measurement of sea surface temperature gradients between the northern tropical and southern tropical Atlantic ocean. So, if we read it right, it looks like what Klotzbach and Gray are saying is that for all the hoopla about the complex and difficult business of predicting hurricanes their own forecasts are based on not much more than sea surface temperature data.

Here's what you think you want to know: the Colorado State boys are saying there's an 81% chance of a hurricane hitting the Gulf coast and a 49% chance it will be a Category 3 or worse.

Coastal Region	TS	Category 1-2 HUR	Category 3-4-5 HUR	All HUR	Named Storms
Entire U.S. (Regions 1-11)	95% (79%)	88% (68%)	74% (52%)	97% (84%)	99% (97%)
Gulf Coast (Regions 1-4)	80% (59%)	64% (42%)	49% (30%)	81% (60%)	96% (83%)
Florida plus East Coast (Regions 5-11)	73% (50%)	66% (44%)	50% (31%)	83% (61%)	95% (81%)

As Klotzbach and Gray caution, however:

[T]hese seasonal forecasts are based on statistical schemes which, owing to their intrinsically probabilistic nature, will fail in some years. Moreover... the probability of landfall for any one location along the coast is very low... .

In other words, this hurricane prediction stuff is still a mug's game. It just not that far removed from roulette.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and study this map of where the hurricane researchers live:

Ferry Service to Fort Pickens

Over the long weekend the News Journal reported that "Ferry service to Fort Pickens on Gulf Islands National Seashore is now available." Catch the ferry at "the Chulamar Shack at Sabine Marina on Pensacola Beach."

$25 per adult; half price for children under 10.

Memorial Propaganda - Just Like Them

WaPo's Edward J. Cody writes today ["Drawing a Blank on a Party Hero"] of the "national campaign" in China over the once-obscure and now cancer-ridden "Comrade Fang Yonggang." It seems the Fang Yonggang campaign is only the latest propaganda initiative "launched recently by the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department in Beijing."

The enduring use of study campaigns and role models, sometimes with the help of fictional embellishments, illustrates the party's abiding determination to mold public opinion in China, hiding inconvenient truths through censorship and creating useful truths through the promotion of popular legends.

And why would the Propaganda Department engage in such deceptions? Reporter Cody helpfully explains --

Since coming to power in 1949, the party has made this two-pronged control of information one of its principal weapons in retaining a monopoly on power.

Lest we feel too smug or scandalized over such inscrutable Oriental outrages, this week Michael Shapiro explores in Silicon Valley's Metroactive.com a substantially identical phenomenon a bit closer to home -- The Ballad of Pat Tillman:

Norman Solomon, author of the book War Made Easy, agrees with the Tillman family that Pat was used to promote the wars. "This was a perfect storm of idolatry from the Pentagon standpoint: a football hero sacrificing himself for patriotic reasons—it was central casting as far as the Rumsfeld gang was concerned," he said. "The mythology was so wonderful that the facts were inconvenient and unnecessary."

What's astonishing is not just the lengths the Army went to create a fictional account, which included changing the testimony of soldiers who witnessed the friendly fire shooting and the destruction of evidence such as the burning of Tillman's blood–stained uniform. It's that this was not an isolated incident but rather part of a pattern of deception.

In recent months, several other families have pressed the military for details about their loved ones' deaths, uncovering similar fabrications. These revelations, coming to light after soldiers' relatives demanded details about their family members' final hours, may represent a fraction of the military's effort to conceal friendly fire or accidental deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the April 24 Congressional Oversight hearing, Lynch, portrayed in spring 2003 as the "little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting," testified that the story the military told about her was a blatant lie. Lynch never fired a shot when her caravan was ambushed. After being severely wounded, she was kept alive by Iraqi doctors and nurses, who donated their own blood to keep Lynch alive.

Most shocking: according to sworn testimony during the Oversight Committee's hearing, Lynch's "rescue" from the Iraqi hospital was delayed by a day so that the Army could bring in camera crews. After stating Lynch was being held by hostile forces, the military waited 24 hours to rescue her so they could make a propaganda film.

Suggesting the potentially broad scope of the military's deception: Tillman was just one of three soldiers with South Bay (San Jose and Silicon Valley) roots killed in Iraq or Afghanistan during a two–month period whose families were lied to about their deaths.

You don't suppose, do you, that the reason behind our government propaganda is anything like the reason for theirs? "Retaining a monopoly on power"?

Stool Pigeon

Bush: "Some dirty pigeon stooled on me."


More from ABC News. And, Paul Baruth worries that "the enemy may very well see the video, follow us home, and potentially poop on us here."

September Song

Glenn Greenwald has everyone's number:

The central unyielding truth in our political landscape is that -- no matter what -- the War in Iraq is not going to end before the end of the Bush presidency. That has been obvious for a very long time, and that is why it is so bizarre to watch the Beltway establishment continue to pretend that there is some Big Decision Day coming in September -- the day when Republicans take a stand and our political elite put their foot down.

Nothing has changed. Republicans and media-war-proponents are far too invested in the war to do anything other than claim it is finally going well. And there are more than enough Democrats who either (a) believe we should stay in Iraq indefinitely, (b) perceive political benefits from staying, and/or (c) fear forcing withdrawal.

Wisdom from Argentina

No Comment has it: "The Talisman of Torture."

New NOAA Hurricane Forecast

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its various subsidiaries -- the Climate Prediction Center, the National Hurricane Center, the Hurricane Research Division, and the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center -- say today that there's "a very high 75% chance of an above-normal hurricane season" starting June 1.

They caution, however, that there is "considerable uncertainty in forecasts" owing to the remote possibility of "La Niña conditions during August-October" and related dynamics.

Expected Activity - 75% chance above normal, 20% chance near normal, 5% chance below normal

But it's still May on Pensacola Beach, and a glorious May at that -- high temperatures, low humidity, and sunny days.

Bank 'em. You'll want to remember what makes Pensacola Beach such a livable place if one of those "13 to 17 tropical storms" happens to make landfall here.

The 'Don' at Justice

Eugene Robinson in WaPo:

It just gets worse and worse. We already knew that Alberto Gonzales -- who, unbelievably, remains our attorney general -- was willing to construe the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions however George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wanted. We knew he was willing to politicize the Justice Department, if that was what the White House wanted. Now we learn that Gonzales also was willing to accost a seriously ill man in his hospital room to get his signature on a dodgy justification for unprecedented domestic surveillance.

The man Gonzales harried on his sickbed was his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft. The episode-- recounted this week in congressional testimony by Ashcroft's former deputy, James Comey -- sounds like something from Hollywood, not Washington. It's hard not to think of that scene in "The Godfather" when Don Corleone is left alone in his hospital bed, vulnerable to his enemies, and Michael has to save him.
***
This is the attorney general of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven help us.

Wolfowitz 'Resigns' from World Bank

NYT: Paul Wolfowitz has resigned from the World Bank. But no one's talking about the money:

[T]here was no information Thursday night on whether he would receive any sort of severance package or pension, or be reimbursed for legal fees from his long battle.

Yeah, sure. It was all about principle, right?

Meanwhile, WaPo reporter Karen DeYoung, with help from the redoubtable Walter Pincus and others, details the incredibly long list of miscalculations, mistaken analyses, bonehead ideas, and just plain stupid moves Wolfowitz has made over his career of forty-some years. Can there be many Americans with a track record as dismal as Paul Wolfowitz'?

Pointers and Setters

It seems the alleged "Irish humor" on the rest room entrance doors at McGuire's Pub in Pensacola isn't appreciated in Destin.

The Common Lie

It's being widely reported that Paul ("they'll greet us as liberators") Wolfowitz is insisting that he be exonerated of charges he acted unethically as a condition for resigning from his position as president of the World Bank.

As all of Planet Earth now knows, he screwed the World Bank as well as Shaha Reza. But now he wants a clean reference letter? On the order of this one?

Poppycock. With these birds, it's all about money and power. Neocons like Wolfowitz don't give a hoot about their reputation with anyone except each other. What he really wants is a bag full of dough to carry out the door and across town to the nearest right-wing think tank.

'Hit List' Included North Florida U.S. Attorney

Two McClatchy journalists today report that Alberto Gonzalez' Justice Department "last year considered firing two U.S. attorneys in Florida and Colorado, states where allegations of voter fraud and countercharges of voter intimidation have flown in recent years... ." The primary source for the report includes investigators working for either the House or Senate Justice committee.

The surprise is that the Florida U.S. Attorney is not Paul Perez, the former U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Florida. Perez' recent resignation inspired U.S. Senator Bill Nelson to wonder whether it was in retaliation for sending a letter that Washington bigwigs considered disloyal to George W. Bush.

Instead, McClatchy reports the marked man in Florida was Gregory Miller, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. Miller's office serves the northern tier of the state from Pensacola to Jacksonville.

"You're telling me something I didn't know," Miller told McClatchy News Service. He denied "Washington" Justice Department officials ever voiced criticism about his office over any issue, including toeing the Bush administration line over supposed voter fraud.

Pointedly, however, when "asked whether activists outside Washington had asked his office to look into any controversial voter fraud allegations" Miller declined to comment. He said "Justice Department policy prohibits prosecutors from commenting on closed or ongoing cases."

First he says the Justice Department in Washington didn't say anything, then when asked about anyone "outside" D.C. Miller suddenly remembers prosecutors aren't supposed to talk about "closed or ongoing cases"?

The heavy implication of Miller's non-denial is that someone in Florida was pushing the northern district's federal prosecutor to feed Karl Rove's voter fraud fetish. Maybe it was Rove himself. After all, he maintains a home right here in the Panhandle.

Extraordinary Revelations

UPDATED BELOW I, II, III

John Dean is prescient. Based on yesterday's testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, it looks like, as Paul Kiel reports, "[T]he President of the United States engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, until senior members of his own administration forced him to stop."

Only threats to resign by the entire top echelon of the Justice Department and the intercession of the head of the F.B.I. brought the criminal designs of George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzalez to a halt -- for the time being.

UPDATE I
May 16 2007 pm

TPM has the video of Comey's testimony.

It shouldn't make your blood boil so much as scare you to death that the same 'midnight hospital callers' -- Bush and Gonzales -- are still in office.

UPDATE II
May 16 2007 pm

An unforgettable 20-minute video of Comey's testimony:

UPDATE III

May 16, 2007 pm

Glenn Greenwald sums it up:

Amazingly, the President's own political appointees -- the two top Justice Department officials, including one (Ashcroft) who was known for his "aggressive" use of law enforcement powers in the name of fighting terrorism and at the expense of civil liberties -- were so convinced of its illegality that they refused to certify it and were preparing, along with numerous other top DOJ officials, to resign en masse once they learned that the program would continue notwithstanding the President's knowledge that it was illegal.

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.

Class Action Redux: Ivan 'Wind versus Water'

The Pensacola News Journal today is carrying Paige St. John's report that a Tallahassee circuit court judge has again certified a class action lawsuit against state-owned windstorm insurer Citizens Property Insurance. The class action status had to be re-decided on order from the First District Court of Appeal.

Following a two-hour hearing Monday, Circuit Judge Terry Lewis declared lawyers met the burden of proving enough unpaid policyholders remain to let the aging case start anew.

Citizens' attorney Alan Howard contended hundreds of private homeowners already have sued the state-run insurer, and that Citizens is either settling those cases, or losing them in court.

According to a Citizens spokesman, "some 400 open cases" remain pending that would be included in the class action. The ruling no doubt will be appealed again, causing further delays in resolving these cases.

In most states, a class action suit would be the most efficient, least expensive, and the fairest way to resolve common issues of law, such as applicability of the then-existing Florida "valued policy" law, and common issues of fact, such as the early evening strength and lengthy duration of high, destructive winds on Pensacola Beach several hours before flood waters even touched Via DeLuna.

But not in Florida. Legislative and judicial rules have made Florida one of the least friendly states in the U.S. when it comes to consolidating multiple lawsuits which involve substantially similar issues into a single class action case.

Those rules can be traced back to long-standing efforts by politically conservative business industry lobbyists seeking to discourage enforcement of consumer protection laws. Too bad for the consumer or homeowner who can't afford his or her own attorney. But it's great for companies like Citizens Property Insurance.

Not only will Citizens Property appeal again, most insurers with hurricane Ivan or Dennis claims still open likely plan on stringing things out now until the next storm, or the one after that, when everyone's memory has begun to fade, the expert witnesses are all dead, and the original lawyers on the case have been replaced by their grandchildren.

Welcome to Bleak House:

Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.