Posts from — October 2007

The BBC tells us that if you are a big oil company, the Supreme Court feels your pain: Exxon can appeal $2.5bn oil fine

Exxon Mobil has won the right to appeal against a $2.5bn (£1.21bn) damages bill relating to a 1989 Alaskan oil spill.

The US Supreme Court said it would hear the appeal against record damages due to victims of the Valdez oil spill.

The case has dragged on since 1994 with the US oil giant fighting to reduce the bill, which it has called excessive.

In what was one of the biggest ever oil spills, 11 million gallons of crude were released into Alaska’s wilderness after the Exxon tanker hit a reef.

About 1,300 miles (2,080km) of coastline was contaminated as a result of the oil spill.

It takes Exxon a couple of weeks to earn the money for the fine, and people have been waiting for 13 years to settle this case. Maybe Congress will grant them immunity to make the whole thing go away.

Position: 21.2 N 75.0 W. [10PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [315°] near 13 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph.
Wind Gusts: 60 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1000 mb.

TS Noel is about 305 miles South-Southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas.

Ian Welsh at Fire Dog Lake does a nice job explaining why things went to hell after the Iraqi army stopped fighting in the post: The Rules of Power.

This is very old knowledge and applies not simply to wars, but to policing everywhere. If you think about it, this is also the reason that schools should be aggressively stopping bullying, and why it is so hard to uproot gangs.

The minute that the US forces allowed looting to continue, they lost control. It is a lot easier to maintain control than to regain it.

Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat, in comments, wondered if I had seen Glenn Greenwald‘s e-mail exchange with Colonel Steven Boylan, the head of MNF-I agitprop and personal spinmeister for General David Patraeus.

I’d already read Noah Shachtman’s post, Petraeus Throws Out the Book, Launches Airstrikes (Updated), in which he notes: “Colonel Steven Boylan, Petraeus’ public affairs officer, disagrees with just about every letter and punctuation mark in this post.”

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that they didn’t have an exit plan, and went in anyway. This is a rookie mistake. Every flag officer who went along with this is an amateur not worthy of any respect for military ability. They were Judas goats leading their troops to disaster.

The BBC is running a two part television show: No plan, no peace in Iraq

“Iraq will be better,” declared Tony Blair five days after the fall of Saddam.

“Better for the region, better for the world, better, above all, for the Iraqi people.”

That contrasts starkly with the 100,000 or so civilians dead, four million refuges inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition solders who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn.

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Position: 17.1 N 72.1 W. [10PM CDT Update]
Movement: North-Northwest [330°] near 5 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph.
Wind Gusts: 70 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 115 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 996 mb.

TS Noel [pronounced like ‘Nole] is about 105 miles South of the Port au Prince, Haiti and about 295 miles Southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba.

[More than a month to go in the season.]

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

I remember when a driver’s license was proof you could drive, and nothing else.

The Associated Press has the story: Homeland Security, New York agree on new driver’s licenses

Under the compromise, New York will produce an “enhanced driver’s license” that will be as secure as a passport. It is intended for people who soon will need to meet such ID requirements, even for a short drive to Canada.

A second version of the license will meet new federal standards of the Real ID Act. That law is designed to make it much harder for illegal immigrants or would-be terrorists to obtain licenses.

A third type of license will be available to undocumented immigrants.

Oh, yeah, I can really see the undocumented standing in line to receive a license that unequivocally proves they are in the country illegally. Obviously the state of New York needs to provide a “passport,” since the Federal government can’t handle the load.

What happens if Canada and Mexico decide that US citizens need passports and visas?

On the surface Barack Obama is a great candidate with a lot going for him – he’s young, energetic, intelligent, hasn’t sold out to the lobbyists, hasn’t had enough time to be tainted by inside the Beltway thinking. Going in he looked really good, and a fine choice, but it has been down hill ever since.

While you can find out who his campaign advisors are, you can’t really know who he’s listening to when they give their advice. As a result, whatever comes out has to be assumed to be his thinking and his opinion.

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…but the new US passport is too cute by half.

Michael Currie Schaffer of The New Republic wrote an op-ed, An Embarrassingly Patriotic Passport, that contained a link the new e-Passport at the State Department site. [Warning: it’s an animation and you have to put your cursor on it to get it to stop.]

Using graphics to prevent counterfeiting is one thing, but this is going to be easy to counterfeit because it is so “busy” and distracting.

If you live in the Hudson Valley of New York, you may want to spend Monday in your basement. “Dead-eye Dick” Cheney is rumored to be murdering small caged animals in Dutchess County on that day.

If you are a lawyer, you might want to consider filing amicus briefs with the Hawaii supreme court next week or wearing a vest with your suit to avoid embarrassment.

Oh, yes, keep your birds, hamsters, gerbils, or any small animal in a cage away from your windows.

I’m getting too old to put up with this garbage. The claim that Syria was building a nuclear facility is based solely on Israeli intelligence. Israeli intelligence are the people who didn’t know that Hezbollah was building a reinforced tunnel complex throughout south Lebanon despite constant overflights, satellite imagery, agents on the ground, and military watch towers and patrols along the border. I guess the Lebanese were using invisibility cloaks and using dwarfs to do the tunneling.

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The Union-Tribune’s San Diego Wildfires Blog has a Wildfire summary for the state, and a current fire map in PDF so you can zoom in to specific areas.

The Horno fire along I-5 in the north county was burning in the area of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, so, yes, Virginia, things could have gotten a lot worse.

While it would have been nice to see an indictment for war profiteering, the Hedgemony didn’t get upset with these people until they learned that they ripped off the investor-class as well as the troops.

Body Armor Execs Indicted For Fraud

(AP) Two former top executives of the leading supplier of body armor to the U.S. military were indicted Thursday on charges of insider trading, fraud and tax evasion in a scheme that netted them nearly $200 million, federal prosecutors said.

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