A Gun to Bin Laden’s Head, But No Trigger Pull From Bush

I have to admit this is a dated story, but amidst all the spin about “who will make America safer,” there is this elephant in the room by the name of Kabir Mohabbat. Mr. Mohabbat is an Afghan-American businessman who at one time acted as a go-between for the U.S. government and the Taliban government of Afghanistan. This is a story about George Bush, our war-on-terror guy, giving up the opportunity to get Osama Bin Laden in a cage or a crater, his choice.

Here’s a link to the complete story by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch.

Here is the summary: Back in 1999, the Taliban were feeling isolated. They were harboring Bin Laden and his people, despite various embassy bombings and other nasty acts. Their only real ally, Pakistan, was getting edgy about this, because General Musharrif was cozying up to the U.S. Osama was, as Mohabbat quotes the Taliban representative, “just a damned liability.” Through channels in the European Union, Mohabbat opened up negotiations between Kabul and Washington on how to dispose of Bin Laden. After the bombing of the USS Cole in October of 2000, the negotiations heated up. To quote the Counterpunch article:

“Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.

After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed," Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two Cruise missiles."

Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.”

So there you have it. As of mid-November, 2000, Osama Bin Laden was a dead man walking. So were all his closest associates. The Clinton administration handed over the package to the incoming Bush people. All that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their cohorts had to do was decide what mottos they would paint on the cruise missile nosecones.

Why didn’t they pull the trigger? It is inconceivable that they would have any twinge of conscience about dropping a bomb on the guy. They had the means and the opportunity. The answer has to lie in their motives.

The only thing that makes sense, and it is the obvious thing, is that Osama Bin Laden was more valuable to them alive and free than dead or captured. He was the poster boy for the continuing threat of terrorist attack, the bogeyman of militant Islam, the very face of world terrorism. Any scriptwriter will tell you that every movie needs a villain, an individual villain with a face and a personality. Bin Laden provided that at a time when the Bush/Cheney administration needed a frightened citizenry that would accept their wars and attacks on civil rights. With Bin Laden and his top men dead, the invasion of Afghanistan would have been unnecessary. Al Qaeda would have been decapitated. Much of the emotional justification behind the anti-constitutional offensive would have drained away. The attacks of 9-11 might have been disrupted.

As I said at the beginning, none of this is breaking news. It’s just that this story is the one that lays bare the power hungry immorality of the present administration. Their only excuse could be a level of incompetence beyond comprehension. It is the great, yet little known crime of the people who now run the country. It has yet to enter the general American consciousness, while sexual scandals and suicidal gunmen suck up airtime and column inches. It deserves a wider hearing. I have never asked my readers to forward a story, believing that a story should propagate by merit. I’ll break my rule this time and ask you to send it around.

Living on the Plateau, or You Don't Know Jack #2

I am sure you have noticed the recent drop in crude oil and, therefore, gasoline prices. Much of the drop is the loss of the “OhmygodtheMiddleEastisgoingtoblowup” factor, what with Iran negotiating with the Europeans and Israel withdrawing from Lebanon. The other big factor is the much-celebrated success of the Jack #2 oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Chevron, the company doing the exploration, announced that there could be as much as 15 billion barrels of oil down there. Well, happy days are here again. Go buy that Hummer you always wanted.

Mmmm…..maybe you ought to wait on that Hummer.

The very existence of Jack #2 sends a message that all is not well in the oil exploration business. Chevron went 175 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico in 7,000 feet of water and drilled 28,000 feet down. It was a record-breaking effort that yielded 6,000 barrels per day. When a major international oil company is crowing about finding oil under a mile and a half of water and five miles of rock, it means that they aren’t finding any in the easy places.

As for the flow and predicted reserves, consider that the U.S. uses about 21 billion barrels a year. The headline number for Jack #2 in the news media has been “15 billion barrels,” but the actual report was “between 3 and 15 billion.” So, if Jack #2, meets its expectations it will someday produce between 52 and 260 days of oil for us, total.

That is if it isn’t repeatedly knocked out of action by Katrina-sized hurricanes of the future. The location of the Jack #2 well is right about where Gulf hurricanes reach maximum strength. Jack #2’s neighbor, the BP Thunder Horse platform, was found tilted 20 degrees after Hurricane Katrina, and has been experiencing technical failures. Its 2005 debut has been pushed back to 2008, with hundreds of millions added to its development costs. The deepwater Gulf is a tough neighborhood.

So what’s with all the optimism, after all the pessimism? The problem is that people in the oil trading business aren’t looking all that far ahead. The crude oil price you see on the news is what people are paying for an oil delivery a month from now. There are “long-dated” futures out to 7 years, but most of the action is for deliveries no more than 30 months away. Ten years might as well be forever.

Let me pull my crystal ball out of its velvet lined box and yank the starter cord a couple of times. While it is warming up, I’ll briefly review the Hubbert Curve. Back in 1954. M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist, correctly predicted that U.S. oil production would follow a rough bell curve and peak around 1970, which it did. It has become a generally accepted truth that any oil field or group of oil fields will follow this production curve, rising rapidly to a peak, having a plateau, and then irreversibly declining. By this model, world oil production will hit a plateau at some point. In fact, it seems to have hit that point in 2004. World oil production has leveled off and the line on the graph is wiggling up and down depending upon whether there has been a ribbon-cutting on a new oil pipeline or if a hurricane has knocked over some oil platforms.

Now, to the crystal ball. A rising oil price depresses the world economy and discourages oil use, right? Then we get a temporary oil glut and the price falls. The psychology and economics flip, and economic and social forces push usage back up, along with the price. Get in a lather, rinse, and repeat. There is a certain amount of slop in the feedback loop, and very little spare production capacity, so the price of oil will lurch back and forth, the swings getting wilder as the economic and political reactions get more extreme. Eventually the drop in supply will get large enough that it will cancel out the swings, and the price will rocket up and stay there. What we are looking at is a rough sawtooth wave in oil prices with an eventual upward “hockey stick” graph.

So, enjoy the temporary respite from $3 a gallon gas, but don’t get complacent. It is past time to think about how you are going to live your life with gasoline and heating oil prices double that and more.

Eco-Drunk-Driving-Shooters of the 21st Century

This piece is based on a few news clippings I have had sitting around. The news may be less than fresh, but the principles hold true.

RAINFOREST ALLIANCE SUPPORTS SUSTAINABLE TEQUILA RESEARCH

The headline stood out from the other news.

NEW YORK, New York, (ENS) - The Rainforest Alliance has awarded a research fellowship for a project to develop and implement sustainable management practices for the production of mezcal, an alcoholic beverage.
Tequila is the most popular and best known type of mezcal sold in North American liquor markets.

Taken by itself, this study would simply be a case of scientists finally addressing an overlooked issue: Can your average college student feel politically correct while hugging your average toilet bowl? However, another article came my way, analogous to the first. This concerns environmentally benign machine gun ammunition.

The Department of Defense buys millions of bullets every year, each tipped with a lead slug. Our soldiers spew hot lead at targets on firing ranges all across the country, creating toxic waste sites. The Pentagon solution: non-lead bullets, tipped with tungsten. Army spokespersons claim that they work just as well, and that the soldiers can't tell the difference between firing them and firing the old toxic lead ones. (Although now there are doubts about their eco-friendliness) I suppose it would be difficult to get someone on the receiving end of these eco-bullets to testify as to the indistinguishable feel of tungsten.

Eco-tequila and eco-bullets. And yet there is more. Ford Motor Company, maker of the Bronco, the Expedition, and the Split-Level-Ranch sport utility vehicles, has developed the hybrid Escape SUV. As long as you don't crush an endangered species as your vehicle rolls over, you'll feel warm and fuzzy, kinder and gentler, compassionate and yet conservative as your vehicle rights itself and then totters onto its doors for yet another revolution.

And what an insidious revolution it will be. I can imagine some rednecks of the near future, weaving efficiently along a back road in their hybrid SUV, half empty bottles of eco-tequila swilling around on the floorboards. Their laughter will seem hollow as they gamely fire non-toxic eco-bullets at lonely road signs. Each will wonder to himself, as he forces a grin at his companions, why isn't this as much fun as it used to be?

Or are we missing the point here? Researchers will tell you that a minority of American drinkers, including underage drinkers, suck up over half of our favorite addictive drug. Less binge drinking would help spare the wild agave plant. If we used less oil from the Middle East and cleaned up our foreign policy in general, we would need fewer soldiers firing fewer practice bullets. Or non-practice bullets. And at an average of 1.2 occupants per car, do we need so many vehicles, hybrid or not, capable of carrying a platoon?

We have a bad habit of trying to put technological bandaids on human behavior problems. You can armor your thumb, or you can stop swinging the hammer at it. Not swinging the hammer involves forethought and a certain kind of maturity. In the case of alcohol and crude oil, redefining what is socially acceptable, what is truly necessary, and what is merely self-indulgence. Sure, I am all for sustainable agriculture, non-toxic materials and hybrid vehicles. However, these techniques are secondary in importance to lifestyle change. Changing our daily habits is the most important and least popular method of improving our society and our environment. Just ask the guys who replace the road signs.

A Medieval Tax in a Modern World

For a lot of people, the biggest chunk of money they hand over to a government entity is their property tax check. Here in Vermont, a small portion of it goes towards town road maintenance and the like, while the bulk of it finances our public schools. Property tax has its problems, though. It is regressive, unfairly burdening those least able to pay. It promotes reckless development. In a strange way, it doesn’t allow us to own our land – we effectively rent it from our town government. If we get far enough behind in our payments, we can be evicted and our real estate sold at auction.

How did we get here? Originally, property tax was a general property tax. Individuals were taxed on both land and personal property such as furniture and jewelry. Wealthier individuals tended to avoid full payment by moving their valuables from one household to another, avoiding the tax assessor. Partly because of this, the general property tax evolved into a tax on buildings and land, which were fixed and visible. At the founding of our country, this had an element of fairness as well. Nine out of ten people farmed. The more land someone had, the more crops they produced, and the more money they made. It was a rough income tax in a time when income was difficult to track.

The situation is now reversed. Today, around 2% of the population farms. Farmers haven’t been in a majority since 1880. For most people, their real estate holdings have no mathematical relationship to their income. Income itself is relatively easy to track, given the prevalence of the W-2 form and the mandatory reporting of interest and capital gains.

Here’s a hypothetical, round number situation. Imagine two couples who live in the same town, one a pair of working stiffs, and the other a pair of medical specialists. The first couple has a combined income of $50,000 a year and a house worth $150,000. The second couple makes $500,000 a year and lives in a $450,000 house. The income differential is 10:1, but the tax payment differential is 3:1. What’s more, there is a large disparity in disposable income, the actual ability to pay.

Vermont has tried to deal with this by instituting homestead exemptions, rebates, current use programs, and the like. All of these laws are part of an attempt to make the property tax more “income sensitive.” I’ll just let those last two words hang in the air and beg a question.

When the question is raised as to why we finance education with an archaic property tax instead of a modern income tax, a number of emotional and inaccurate responses tend to come forth. The most popular involves local control. People want to have the sense that they control their local schools. Sorry, but you don’t. The minimum curriculum, the teacher qualifications, and the funding structure are all set by the state legislature. All you can really do is reject the budget and deny your children the facilities, supplies, and teachers they need, or you can pull out your smoking checkbook and try to eat more mac and cheese. It is much like having local control of an airplane that is running out of fuel.

We should consign property tax to the same fate as its medieval cousins, medical bloodletting and witch burning. We could make education financing truly income sensitive and create a statewide education income tax.

Even now, the state has a statewide property tax and distributes block grants on a per pupil basis to local school districts. As one observer wryly put it, this shifts the tax burden from poor people in poor towns to poor people in rich towns. Considering that the state had about 16.48 billion dollars in taxable income in 2004, and raised about 815 million in education property tax revenue, then an average 5% tax would cover the whole deal. The rate should be income-adjusted, but without all the rigamarole of prebates and exemptions. Of course, we could keep taxing the property of non-residents at some rate, their income being unavailable and their second home being an indicator of ability to pay, reducing the 5% average rate.

The money would be collected by the state and distributed in its entirety to the school districts on a per-pupil basis. Individual school districts could institute local income tax add-ons if they wanted to exceed the minimum block grant, following the tax schedule set by the state.

The results? True income sensitivity. Taxation based on ability to pay. Adequate school budgets. Land development decisions made on the basis of real need instead of economic desperation. Elderly people on fixed incomes able to keep their homes in gentrified areas. The ability to truly own land instead of holding it under the threat of tax sale.

It will be a fight to overcome two centuries of institutional inertia and fantasies of local control, but it will be worth it.

Off Course

There are a few courses I’d like to see added to the high school curriculum. These aren’t in what most people would consider the category of “basics.” Nevertheless, I think these courses are necessary for a young person in America today.

Course number one is “Critical Thinking.” Some colleges offer this. Put succinctly, it is a course in developing one’s bullshit detector. The course addresses such questions as:

What is a logical argument?
How can language be used to clarify or confuse an issue?
How do propaganda and advertising work?

We are all bombarded with dubious advertising claims and illogical feel-good marketing. Politicians and political activists of all stripes confront us with arguments and counter-arguments about critical policy decisions. In our own private lives we encounter complex situations that require clear thinking. A course like this prepares students to separate fluff from substance and make sound decisions.

Another required course should be “Direct Democracy and Meeting Facilitation.” Here in Vermont we might call it “Town Meeting 101.” Whether you live in Vermont or not, many times in your life you will find yourself in a room with a group of people who are trying to make a decision together. There are no courses that I know of in public school that teach people the skills they need to get through this. Thus, all the endless, unfocused, contentious, and ultimately useless meetings we know so well.

When I started being politically active in college I actually studied how to facilitate meetings, that is, how to run them and make them work. It wasn’t magic, but it seemed like it when people were able to finish a meeting early and walk out feeling good about what they accomplished. People need to learn how to run a meeting, how to efficiently participate in one, and how to achieve a unified decision. All they learn right now is how to shut up and follow.

Young people should take a course dedicated to our constitution. They don’t need the depth of instruction offered to law school students, but they should understand the framework of our country, its history, and its meaning. It is imperative that they have an understanding of how our government works and the extent and necessity of our constitutional rights.

There should be a course dedicated to the history of science and scientific method. Many people don’t understand the difference between science, non-science, and pseudo-science. They don’t understand the way scientists work, what constitutes a properly conducted experiment, or how experimental results are presented and interpreted. As with politics (and generally because of politics), we are confronted with conflicting claims in the fields of medicine, the environment, sociology, psychology, and education itself. We need the intellectual tools to sift through these claims and identify the ones with scientific validity.

I have a couple of ideas for less vital, and yet very useful courses for high school students. One would be on energy – where it comes from, how we extract it, how we use it, and the consequences of using it. Another practical course would be on “How Ordinary Things Work.” For example, most of us are utterly dependent on automobiles, but most people have only the foggiest notion of how their automobile works. Likewise our furnaces, refrigerators, air conditioners, computers, and our telephone system. Yes, there are professionals out there to repair these things, but we still need to make informed decisions about their selection and use.

How about offloading a couple of things to make some space in the schedule?

A show of hands please – How many of you have solved a quadratic equation since the final exam of your high school algebra class? Let’s see…..one……two……ok, two. My own work requires a large number of calculations, but my use of algebra is rare enough. High school students have a limited amount of time, energy, and memory capacity. Parents and educators need to make some decisions about what most students will actually need in their post-school lives, what will develop unique mental skills, and what is just another brick in the backpack.

Team sports, especially football, need to be de-funded or at least dramatically de-emphasized. Ok, these aren’t academic courses, but that’s the point. What used to be a minor diversion for school kids and parents has become, in many places, the focus. High school football, especially, diverts funding and attention away from teaching kids what they will need to know in real life. Besides, ask any orthopedic surgeon about the effects of football injuries on developing bodies.

The focus on team sports results in a bizarro world where young men with remedial reading skills (in part due to the focus on sports) get full scholarships to major universities. Meanwhile, students with reasonable academic abilities, who could and would actually benefit from a college education, are left scrounging for student loans.

Detecting bullshit, running meetings, understanding democracy, and understanding science – these are things that your average American could use all the time. The quadratic equation and the shotgun pass? Not as much.