Posts from — April 2009

Australian Broadcasting is reporting Pirates attack US-flagged ship:

Pirates have attacked a US-flagged cargo ship off the coast of Somalia with rockets and automatic weapons, but failed to board the craft, the ship’s owner says.

The crew of the Liberty Sun was unharmed, but the vessel suffered damage, according to a statement from the New York-based Liberty Maritime Corp.
…

Liberty Maritime said the pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the vessel, which was carrying US food aid for African nations and was en route to Mombasa, Kenya, from Houston.

These US-flagged vessels are carrying food aid for African nations, and are under government contract. There isn’t going to be any ransom, and if they keep it up, the pirates will find themselves in the sights of US attack aircraft. This action will push the US into dispatching a carrier battle group into the area, and that is not something the pirates will enjoy.

Australian Broadcasting reports that they have gone back to work: Somali pirates seize 2 more cargo ships.

Here is the main problem: one of the ships is the MV Irene EM – Greek-owned, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines-flagged, and the 22 crew members are all Filipinos. It was sailing from Jordan to India. No mention of who insured the cargo, or who insured the ship.

The nearest naval vessel is the Portuguese warship, NRP Corte-Real.

Who makes the decisions about what to do?

Here’s a picture of the MV Irene EM. Kingstown is the capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The second ship, the MV Sea Horse, is Lebanese-owned, and Togo-flagged. No word on the crew. It is a quarter the size of the Irene EM.

While the problems in the US are receding, Manitoba’s problems are getting worse, and, the CBC reports, entering new territory.

After the 1997 Red River floods a lot of changes took place in Canada as well as the US to overcome the problems that occurred, and they have worked well in both areas. Unfortunately Nature is not content to continually repeat exactly the same script, and while this flooding is similar to 1997, there are some differences that have caught people off guard.

Over the weekend ice was pushed out of the river and caused a lot of damage floating in the flood waters.

The temperature has risen and rain is melting snow, while culverts and small rivers are still frozen. Flooding is occurring in unusual places from unusual directions. This is happening while the flood crest on the Red River is still moving North.

Manitoba is flat, there is no real “high ground”. When the rivers and streams go over their banks they spread out for miles. The ground is saturated where it isn’t frozen, so flooding to some extent is going to happen until there is a complete thaw.

Both Sean-Paul at The Agonist and the Pensacola Beach Blog write about the proposed changes to the Federal student loan program.

The current system has the program administered by private banks, but almost totally guaranteed by the Federal government. This is another example of socializing the risk and privatizing the profits. To make it worse, even with these minimal risk conditions for the banks, they aren’t loaning money, so the Federal government is having to step in to provide that.

This is wasteful. Most of the work is done by colleges and universities in their financial aid offices, so there is no value added by having banks involved in any way. If banks want to make student loans, there is nothing stopping them, but there is no need for the government to provide the money and take the risks.

The government should return to the direct loan program where the risk and profit are both assigned to the government. The banks provide nothing to the program and increase its cost.

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It is being reported that Comissioner Don Amunds resigns from Sheriff’s Office. This is known as covering your butt, because being associated with Charlie Morris’s Sheriff’s Office is not going to be a good thing for any local politician and it takes a while for the anger to die down.

It should be illegal to hold down more than one government job at a time, but that’s not how things work around here.

On the national front, Atta Turk has a picture of President Obama at the White House Easter Egg Roll wearing a plain black windbreaker and reading a book.

If it had been the Shrubbery, it would have featured the Presidential seal, his name and title [Bunny in Chief?], and probably have been festooned with red, white & blue Easter Eggs. He would have been standing behind a podium with the Presidential seal on the front.

The NWF Daily News reports: one struck by lightning, one tornado [probably came ashore on Hurlburt Field], all of the recent road repairs undone, and the rivers are raising again.

They have video of a street two blocks from where I am sitting with the water up above cars’ axles and the idiots driving through it. Even if you were in good shape when you entered, the wake from the 4WD coming the other way will probably flood you out, and the waves were obviously washing into the Gas Company office. They don’t actually show that happening, but the office is at that location and it is on a ground level slab as it was formerly a service station. [Storm drains? We don’t need no stinkin’ storm drains! You just want to raise taxes!]

For something completely different, if you can deal with video, go see these amazing birds found by Mary at Pacific Views.

In their business section the Australian Broadcasting site has a long article, Financial crisis not just about greed, says ethicist

Simon Longstaff, the executive director of St James Ethics Centre, has written extensively on corporate greed.

He believes the genesis of the global financial crisis did not simply come down to greed and excess, but to a failure of ethics.

“I think the bigger story in this is although some people would attempt at the beginning of their analysis of these events to say that what was to blame was the failure of regulation, in fact the better interpretation, I think, is to say there was a failure of ethics, full stop,” he said.

While I understand Mr. Longstaff’s point of view, he is an ethicist after all, I think he misses the most salient point about the large Wall Street financial corporations – they don’t have any ethics to fail.

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A Classic [based on searches]

There have been numerous complaints received regarding the services provided under the current regime and we would like to take the time to respond to these and to help those of you in the outlying areas understand the true situation.

It has been noted that several individuals purporting to be the “Easter Bunny” do not seem to be authentic. Of course they’re not authentic. We don’t do personal appearances or take requests. As the anthropomorphic personification of a blended holiday we are entirely too involved in attempting to fulfill the unreasoned expectations of various groups. Besides which, we noticed that many of the requests came from people with French surnames, and I don’t think it is necessary to remind people what happens to rabbits in France: in Britain bunnies are found in children books; in France in cookbooks. [See also North Korea.]

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Sort of Christian matzah, as they are both sold around the same time.

Recipe and background

This says it was filed Friday at 5:38PM [EDT?] on MSNBC, Voluntary recall of sprouts

Amalgamated Produce, Inc. of Bridgeport [Connecticut] has announced a voluntary recall of sprouts because they have the potential to be contaminated with listeria monocytogenes.
…

It affects Specialty Farms, Vermont Sprout House, Nature’s Promise and BroccoSprouts distributed by API in Bridgeport with sell-by date codes of March 31 through April 27, 2009.

They must use the same PR firm as the FDIC, as both seem to make their announcements after working hours on Friday.

Shannon Colavecchio, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau, says that the GOP agenda loses traction in Florida Senate. Given that the GOP has 65% of the Senate seats, and 65% of the seats in the Florida House, the reality is that this is the agenda of the Christianists, and the GOP has been stringing them along to maintain power. There is nothing preventing the Republicans from doing anything they want – they “own” the legislature and the governor’s chair, so if it isn’t getting done, the Republicans just don’t want to do it.

This is what the GOP doesn’t want to do:

Conservative legislation going nowhere

SB 2396: Evolution — Requires that public school instructors teach a “thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution.”

SB 1360/HB 533: Inspirational messages — Gives school districts authority to allow for an “inspirational message,” including prayer or invocation, at noncompulsory high school events as long as a majority of students participating request the message and select a student to deliver it.

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Obviously County Commissioner Campbell has heard from his constituents over his statement that a fellow commissioner would “starve to death” on a salary of $67K. Unfortunately, he tried to explain what he “really meant” to the NWF Daily News: Okaloosa County commissioner says quote was taken out of larger context

When James Campbell said fellow Okaloosa County Commissioner Don Amunds could “starve to death” if he was limited to a commissioner’s salary, he didn’t mean it as an insult to everyone who makes less, he said Thursday.

“I didn’t mean it as a slur to the people that aren’t making $67,000,” Campbell said. “What I want to do is apologize … If it’s my mistake, I apologize. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Mr. Campbell doesn’t understand that all he is doing is making it obvious that he and his fellow commissioners are not very good with their own money, which is why they need to make more than twice the median income of a man in Okaloosa County. If they are this careless with their own money, why would the taxpayers trust them with their money? There are a lot of people in the county who manage to cover the cost of raising kids and making mortgage payments on a lot less than $67K. They may not live in exclusive enclaves on a golf course like Charlie Morris, but they have decent homes in nice neighborhoods.

In tough times, the county needs to have people who know how to live on less, not people who are apparently struggling to live on more.