NewsHammer Exclusive The big showdown yesterday June 15 between Big Oil's Top 5 and Chairman Ed Markey's House Subcommittee had about as much impact as a quart of oil spilled on the floor. Exciting at first, embarrassing and then slippery to talk about, but nobody bothered to clean it up. In the end there wasn't much anyone could do on the spot except blame BP and look forward to nuclear energy, what? Just 2-word bombshells going off now and then carelessly dropped into every Green energy future, oddly by the same people who were going mission critical on dirty dangerous BP oil destroying our way of life.

Riveting at first with BP America's Chairman looking stone-cold sober and ready to be lead to the gallows for about the first hour of opening remarks. Markey as Chairman sliced and diced first, kicking some BP walruses clean out of the Gulf as well as walruses found in 3 other Spill Response Plans just like BP's, all 4 with the same 500 page format and 90% identical even Shell's, all 5 with about the same cover art, but at least Shell with some background in fossils and maybe fossil fuels knew that there haven't been walruses in the Gulf for 3 million years, as Markey lectured the other Chairmen of Big Oil.



The other tipping points scored could have been boiled down to 5 minutes from the 5 hour hearing and have been of course even down to less than 2 minutes by AP video (alternate link) and by other media where just about everybody looks good. Not in the video above, some other essential answers wrung out later from 4 of the 5 Chairmen with Yes or No like admissions that they wouldn't have been ready either for a BP Size Spill. BUT they all said they wouldn't have had a BP Spill anyway if they had been drilling and filling BP's Well according to their own Better Industry Practices. Even so they didn't want to say that much, and Markey had to hit them again with Yes or No to get some answers. Even on the 14-page letter from Subcommittee members Waxman and Stupak to BP CEO Tony Hayward that rips out the bleeding heart of BP incompetence before the Deepwater Horizon "nightmare well" explosion and fire, the Big 5 were going to demure. Yes or No? Well, only if the facts were true, so Yes like 5 bad boys down the line.

For the first major confrontation between Capitol Hill and the Big 5, covering the BP backend disaster, the current BP hopeless mess and America's safe and maybe Green energy future and maybe without BP, only BP's Lamar McKay looked like he passed the audition for the Movie. Better at emotional depth as the scared shitless corporate martyr, saying nothing while waiting for a miserable end that might go on forever. One after another 30 committee members sharpened their opening remarks on his stony face and frozen dead body. An amazing study, but cut from the news videos.

It could have worn him down, but surprisingly he got used to it and thawed with only a few other House Members up to Markey's sharp facts and pointed go for the jugular style. Once the give and take of Q for A started an hour later you had to love the game change flip from Exxon Mobil. With that effortless industry leadership you might expect, the whole deal was cookie-cuttered into a Forbes Magazine spread. Exxon Mobil out in front, McKay had some cover and soon he was able to step out of his catatonic disaster suit into just another one of the guys from Big 5 eyeballing shareholders from another planet, the gentlemen and gentleladies from a House Subcommittee on Planet Washington.

It wasn't long before McKay got his clichés in a row. Still waiting for the investigations [elsewhere of course] and the final reports [years away]; and it hasn't been decided yet, escrow funds [BBBejesus]; BP will pay for the spill cleanup [good] and will mitigate its effects [not so good] and ducking and sliding by the storm of leading questions.

But McKay had one ace up his sleeve. Though it fell on the floor instead of on the table. Unified Command was responsible for Spill cleanup, so Unified Command was the shield for BP's slow and ineffective post-spill actions. Everybody's working together, BP hasn't held anything back. McKay didn't hammer it home, but he could have. There was still a backup ace, that could have piqued MMS and drawn blood from the Government that so far has approved everything BP wanted. It must have been a tough call with the long knives out. But it seems McKay remembered it was a hearing after all, a public relations exercise, and not a fight to the death in a dangerous fire and brimstone court of law. Why push his luck when the other Big 4 were circling the wagons around him? If they'd been out to burn British Petroleum in the interests of Industry Safety or business as usual, as rumor had it, well then nothing could have saved BP. They weren't, so relax. Oil was still in bed with Gas.

To be fair it is a good take on what happened and the shared responsibility for the Spill and cleanup that McKay left instead for the armies of lawyers to come and courts to settle maybe 20 years later. McKay's unspoken inference that everybody's to blame for all the failures and setbacks through Unified Command, notably the US Government including President Obama who took charge of operations through the USCG and his National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen way back as of May 1, and the dozen other agencies involved, was lost in the shuffle and spark of brittle questions and watered down answers.

Lowballing Estimates, Who's On First?

McKay did underline NOAA's 5,000 barrels per day estimate, as though BP did not lowball the estimates. Markey shot back but McKay noted that BP's, if in-house and confidential, original estimate was 1,000 per day up to 14,000, everybody in Government knew that.

Nobody told us though or Congress either until Markey went fishing.

Though everybody knows BP did say 1,000 barrels a day in public and then disputed NOAA's 5,000 estimate. Then BP tolerated NOAA's estimate while not bothering to analyze its own data, and not releasing video of the leaks until Markey jumped all over BP. Not wanting live feeds either of Top Kill until kicked by Capitol Hill. And still doing nothing on its own. Finally the Government got some hi-res video from BP for analysis of flow after Cut and Cap started, and still nothing more from BP until the Government recently figured out they needed some actual sensors in the Cap to monitor flow that BP was ordered to install finally. Now the Government's Flow Assessment Team is saying up to 60,000 barrels a day. But the same team had earlier also reported numbers that were oddly taken to be the full range of the leak at least in the media, that was in fact its low range of 12-25,000, with no upper range then possible according to Dr Ira Leifer in NewsHammer, "BP's Big Fix".

So who has been lowballing the numbers? Why everybody. But why? Easy for BP as huge and deadly eventual fines would be based per gallon of oil spilled. Why everyone else? Confusion, incompetence, stupidity or maybe just bureaucracy and its many insulting brain-numbing states? It has to be on form 1006.

Markey hit BP hard anyway on BP lowballing its numbers which had the disastrous effect of a minimal spill response. Everybody should have been prepared for a much bigger spill and they weren't because of BP. And BP wasn't either. Since it was their Spill and they were responsible they should have acted right away to contain a big spill underway with their 500 page plan. That was useless anyway, but anyway it was their Spill.

McKay on auto-pilot carelessly repeated BP's misleading smoking-gun soundbite hammered into the media, that the numbers had nothing to do with stopping the Spill as BP was always considering the kill of the Deepwater well as a worst case scenario. And anyway the Government had BP's data and BP's estimate. Which brings us to:


The Obama BP Inaction Plan

Is that why Obama has been playing Mr Nice President Guy? First saying it was BP's Spill and BP would clean it up. Then taking over after finding out he had to under law and BP was dragging its heels? Then still playing partners with BP on it until the media screamed and the people too that he wasn't taking the disaster seriously enough, wasn't even angry when everybody else was. So he got angry for awhile, for Larry King Live, and that wore off too by the time he figured he had to do something from the Oval Office. A talk with the American people. No, it wasn't exactly Obama in action, it was Obama politics.

These guys at BP who he even avoided talking to, if they weren't going to act decisively had to be given enough time to do it or enough rope to hang themselves. As much as possible he had to get some action from BP, not through confrontation and the courts, but playing along. Playing along because the ass he wanted to kick was technically out of reach, his own ass especially. The Buck Stops With Me came out so late because well he and the US government were co-responsible with BP since May 1st when he formally took over through Admiral Allen to run the Unified Command show. So BP messed up but Obama managed to get BP to pay for the cleanup, disregarding the $75 Million corrorate lifesaver cap law, that limited BP's liability in the Spill. Managed to get BP to start paying some claims from those suffering in financial hell.

The other and only straight option was go in guns blazing and sink BP's Corporate Ship. Charge them, lock'em up for the Deepwater Spill in light of their reckless record and hundreds of safety violations. Put BP in receivership where it belongs. Send in the Army and clean up the horrendous mess. That would have been the Change We Need, but as a political cat with 9 lives behind a podium, Obama didn't want to risk his Presidency on a gamble with American Oil or these 5 guys who might cut and run further Offshore to any of the many regulation-free Tax Havens abroad or to Dubai like Haliburton did, or try to anyway. So reform the whole rotten industry that's destroying the planet? Extreme, well not if you read up on it.

Even during the Oval Office Address that night, when everybody thought there would finally be some action from the White House, it was more the winter fireside chat, fire out, without the Christmas Tree.

June 16 Update: Obama Inaction Plan Wins Big: $20 Billion From BP

If Obama is smart as a politico, is he smart enough to lead the nation? Or did he outsmart America's gut instincts and instead doom the Gulf to save some BP Corporate Paper and billions of lousy bucks? Stop and contain the Spill or get the money? Two long months later too late for anything else, there's only one smart choice left, play along and get the money.

Shaking down the BP Empire, the BP Corporate heads marshalled at the White House today to play ball, Obama scored an escrow account as promised at a tidy $20 Billion yet for those hurt by the BP Spill. To be run independently from BP and from the Government, the new setup is another chance for Gulf residents denied their money or nickel and dimed by BP. Plus another $100 Million for lost wages for rig crews idled by Obama's expanded 6 month moratorium on deep sea drilling until it's safe. Though BP gets a beak. Not $20 Billion now, but the damage fund topped up from time to time from BP's deep pockets, hopefully deep enough.

The new claims procedure is better and doesn't limit anyone or any State's rights to sue BP and the $20 Billion doesn't cap the damages either for BP. It's a win-win for everybody except BP and its shareholders who won't see a dime in dividends for at least a year.

Hopefully it will be easier to get claims processed and paid than understanding the White House video (CNN alternate link).



The White House Tries To Explain How To Get Money

Obama's other promise last night to capture Up To 90% of the Spill with built-in loads of room for error, is still weeks away. At least some sort of murky future is coming into focus. It could take years to bring back the Gulf and the Gulf way of life, but Obama also said he's getting a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan in motion that he's asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, to develop. And on top of that big plans for a new Greener energy economy.

Wow. Good enough for starters. Better than we hoped from yesterday's homily, as long as BP keeps paying the bills. But how long do we have? Dr Leifer who's in charge of the Government's flow assessment said that if the Deepwater well can't be capped, it could spew oil for another 20 or 30 years.

Getting it right when it's too late?

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive 34 days and counting at the Deepwater Horizion Blowout. Just a stone's throw from the last major disaster to hit Louisiana, the FEMA/Bush relief effort before and after Hurricane Katrina rolled into New Orleans in 2005.

Apart from Obama's rhetoric which always sounds great, the biggest offshore oil spill since Mexico's IXTOC I, has blown away a big chunk of Obama's credibility, at least a million tons of media inspired paper since Yes We Can.

Obama Strikes Oil

Not only did the Obama Administration approve without any review, the BP permits for offshore drilling at the Deepwater site, a month before the BP accident Obama called for an end to the 20 year moratorium on offshore drilling in most US coastal waters. Or Blast foreign oil. Fire all torpedoes. Not the environmentally friendly Obama we expected, but the way out of left field way beyond more oil, the new let's go nuclear Obama. What? What happened? No nukes but go nuclear?

Time for a rethink. Here's half the answer, through the Wall Street backdoor to the dirty BP Meltdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Do we need the other half, a big bucks nuclear meltdown to stop being stupid about energy?

Back to square one: New offshore drilling on hold pending a 30 day review says Obama. Exciting turnaround, but a bit late for Deepwater spewing death in the Gulf. Then let's not get too serious in Washington when there's a slew of new permits to approve anyway, another 30 odd for more offshore drilling. Now granted according to The New York Times despite the new emergency moratorium. Not a real moratorium on drilling, just one for Public Relations purposes it seems. Frightening coming from the government, when as Obama said back at his Inauguration "Words mean something." Even old Deepwater-type do your own thing permits to be outlawed still handed out lately like candy thanks to the same loophole in permit regulations that covers exemptions like building outhouses from government scrutiny, that covered BP and Deepwater Horizon.

Shows you can't make policy when you don't know the industry in question. Whether it's Oil & Gas or nuclear. Same problem in Congress when lawyers and moneymen (the usual credentials for office) want to improve things or muddle into war. Worst of all, is the lame billions of dollars more of public money to be thrown at a nuclear renaissance because nuclear is the Green Option to energy independence and carbon capping. Wrong again, Mr President. Sorry. Stick to law on this one, like "certain unalienable Rights...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


BP or MMS in Deepwater

Though the old Obama surfaced for awhile and kicked some ass at Mineral Management Service which collects Oil & Gas royalties for DOI (the #2 US revenue source after the IRS) while awarding permits for exploration like it did for Deepwater. Obviously a federal department based on conflict of interest, money or safety, should be split. Obama ready to swing the ax, got a bonus when the Head of deep sea oil exploration, Chris Oynes, rolled out of his MMS office on May 18, a month after Deepwater Horizon blew up. Now a followup report on MMS shows just how cozy the relationship to Big Oil was, with freebies and other incentives for some staffers, some resigning, some fired, others up for criminal prosecution.

Hope some of the guys at BP's Head Office noticed that for a disaster of this size, fallguys are mandatory. So far there haven't been any pleas of Mea Culpa at BP. No they're all doing their best. Always have, goes without saying. It's all over the BP corporate website if nowhere else. No one at BP seems to be remotely responsible for what happened in the best of all possible PR worlds. An "incident" or PR jargon for accident we're investigating. We're on it. We'll clean up every drop of oil. There's that at least. BP is doing everything it can (34 days later).

What is BP Doing?

"22,000 personnel deployed"
Says the BP website. Yeah? Where? Whose personnel? BP's? Has everybody in BP London or BP Houston been schlepped over to the wetlands of Louisiana in Wellington boots? Doubt it. Maybe if you count the Coast Guard, NOAA, maybe 800 or so crew on 10 BP ships and platforms at Deepwater now, maybe a thousand BP engineers world-wide on cell phones, but there's still a big shortfall. Well, add thousands of BP made redundant Louisiana fishermen donating their time to lay boom and contain the spill. I guess you've still got to add the Louisiana State Legislature and Congress too, plus a few thousand concerned citizens wringing their hands in the neighborhood. Oh yeah, and just how many rapid response 12 man teams from BP in the Gulf? One fat guy?

"1,100 vessels on site"
Says the BP website. That explains it, not BP vessels, not 22,000 BP personnel, but BP takes the credit. Terrific PR!

If BP has bleached its record clean on its website, past and present, and in soundbites for the media, Obama has been in Make No Mistake mode, knocking BP for lack of transparency and action. It's BP's oil spill and BP will pay. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who might be the cowboy in charge of this BP mess, has his boot on BP's neck he said. But so far government heavy breathing hasn't been effective either on the oil spill or on BP. But Obama is gearing up for more effective invective with a new bipartisan commission to investigate BP. Good luck. Last time the EPA investigated BP in 2006 for negligence on the Alaska North Slope BP pipeline spill, BP buried the investigation with 62 million pages of documents. Blink, it's no typo. And that was for a small BP spill of 250,000 gallons.


EPA and BP: Clash of the Titans

According to CNN the other day, the EPA is on BP's case again, this time ordering BP to stop using a toxic dispersant that's been airplane sprayed over the gigantic oil slick, and injected by ship into the undersea plume, about 715,000 gallons so far. BP has disputed the order saying that Corexit is better than what the EPA has approved, yet BP had already purchased an EPA recommended substitute, Sea Brat 4. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of this less toxic dispersant are idling on the mainland in the hot sun, waiting for who knows what as the oil slick moves into the wetlands of Louisiana where it has already fouled 65 miles of shoreline there.

The injection by BP of Corexit into the undersea plume of oil, also ordered stopped by EPA, is potentially the more serious problem long term. BP has always minimized the amount of the spill, relying on surface oil slick and sheen to estimate the flow, ignoring the outflow from the ruptured riser and the Blow Out Preventer. That BOP malfunctioned and failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform from exploding when a giant bubble of gas ruptured it and caught fire. The BOP a mile down on the seafloor still capping the wellhead still doesn't work. Otherwise it would have been possible to simply shut off the well.

Besides BP and the BOP, MMS is also in the loop for blame. It granted BP's drilling permit without any impact or safety study on a very deep well in very deep water, a mile down to the seafloor and drilling another 4 miles down to the oil. That's five miles of rock and water pressure on the BP oil under the seafloor.


BP's Top Kill Next

Stopping the leak with mud, cement and junk shot, what BP wants to do as early as May 26, chances are will only plug the BOP. Is that enough to stop an extremely high pressure leak? Probably not. It might reduce the flow. Though BP will try to go down deeper below the BOP and plug the well itself. If the well can't be filled with mud and cement, then a partial BOP cap could blow out of the water. Tremendous oil pressures, 5 miles of rock and water on the oil bed, could pop a few tons of plugged up BOP clean out of its way. Then we could have a much bigger eruption of oil, totally out of control. Deepwater could spew for months and destroy the the entire US Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The IXTOC I spill of 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured for 9 months before it was finally plugged. And it was a much easier to control 2 mile well in 160 feet of water west of the Yucatan. It wound up fouling Texas beaches 600 miles away.


Underestimating The Deepwater Spill

Initially BP claimed the spill was 1,000 barrels a day. Outflow based on surface water conditions analyzed by NOAA was revised to 5,000 barrels a day. BP disputed NOAA's figures. But BP said it was also impossible to measure the undersea flow, and the actual flow was irrelevant. Now BP is siphoning off about 2,000 barrels a day from the leaking well to a surface ship--and yet that's only sucked up a modest amount of what is still leaking out furiously. How wrong can you get BP? Try 50,000 barrels a day.

Other estimates in the NYT based on analysis of video of the leaks have gone as high as 100,000 barrels a day of oil/gas mix leaking, though as the flow seems to be about half gas/ half oil according to BP, the oil volume has been adjusted down to about 50,000 barrels of pure oil escaping into the Gulf per day or maybe twice the oil spill of IXTOC I.

So why does the still enormous spill look smaller on the surface water than it should be if we do have 50,000 barrels a day leaking? Enter Corexit. As a dispersant it acts on oil to break it down into small droplets by binding to the oil molecules. But Corexit is itself toxic according to the EPA. The resulting droplets although more easily biodegradable than liquid oil, are even more toxic to marine life breathing it in like fish do. Using Corexit doesn't reduce the amount of oil pollution. It's still there. Diluted oil should be less likely to foul shorelines and birds though it still does as we've seen from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's presentations, fouling 65 miles of shoreline so far while BP and the Feds dither about what to do next. In an emergency you've got to have action as Katrina should have demonstrated. Instead according to Jindal there's a terrible shortfall in equipment needed while some resources available are tied up in approval procedures so committees can sit around calling for studies before they approve anything Jindal wants to do.

Dead Zones Underwater

If there's some surface benefit to dispersants, injected directly into the undersea plume of oil there are other effects. It's happily preventing more oil from reaching surface waters, but at the same time this oil is now trapped under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico where it may persist for a much longer time. Oil under water doesn't biodegrade easily, in the absence of sunlight, mechanical wave action and bacteria. Huge plumes of treated oil from Deepwater have been discovered underwater 20 miles away creating giant dead zones. They too could move into ocean currents while some of the oil may be settling on the seafloor contaminating shellfish.

This trapping of oil probably occurs even without dispersant applied, as the BOP leak is a mile underwater, the deepest oil spill yet. As oil/gas mixture rises in extremely cold water, the temperature is so cold and the pressure of water so high, that there is already a tendency for oil to congeal and in the case of gases like methane involved, for the methane and seawater to freeze forming methane ice or hydrates as they're calling them on the news. Hydrates formed in the containment cofferdam over the BOP in BP's first attempt to seal the leak and the cofferdam was abandoned.

The EPA did order BP to stop such injections of Corexit. But BP continues to use it underwater and on the surface spill. If the oil spill looks better that way, appearing to be a much smaller spill, all the spilled oil is still there underwater or on the surface except for some natural evaporation of volatiles like gasoline in the oil. By underestimating the flow and stubbornly refusing to measure the actual outflow from the leaks, by using a lot of dispersant, BP may be counting on not only better public relations fallout from a smaller looking spill, but less liability if it comes down to eventual court actions including possible criminal charges filed by the US government or by other claimants for damages. It's cover your ass time at BP and in Washington.


The BOP and BP's Safety Record

Fixing blame might never happen. Who did what? Besides BP, Transocean the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that was destroyed in the accident, Halliburton which did the cement work on the well and the maker of the failed BOP, Cameron International, are blaming each other. Yet it's clear from the recent House subcommittee investigation of the accident that there were many defects in the BOP, from poor modifications to it to improper maintenance. Its failure has to be the main cause of the explosion and fire that killed 11 workers, and for the continuing disastrous oil spill as well.

There's a lot of anger and grief too as the oil washes into wetlands and birds, potentially a greater tragedy in the wings if the oil isn't stopped soon. So far BP has been getting all the heat, partly because of warnings before the Deepwater Horizon fireball and their US corporate record on maintenance and safety, the worst by far in the entire industry.


BP makes more money than 90 Oprahs in a bad year. $19 Billion profit in 2005, $25.59 Billion in 2008 and $13.96 Billion in 2009. It has pursued an aggressive expansion of its business and has never been much impressed with government meddling in its affairs. Being big is good and drowning in money helps. Its PR machine and army of lawyers are up to any environmental challenge as BP has demonstrated twice over the last 5 years.

Besides the 2006 Alaskan North Slope BP pipeline spill due to maintenance issues, BP's Texas City refinery explosion and fire of 2005 killed 15 people and injured another 180. BP negotiated a settlement with the Bush Justice Department of $20 Million for the first accident, and $50 Million for the second. Chump change, considering the seriousness of the violations that the lead EPA investigator Scott West wanted to pursue for the BP Alaska spill. At that time the EPA was considering damages of $672 Million from BP plus possible felony charges against some BP executives just for the Alaska spill.

If that was then and this is now, here's what the BBC reported recently on Deepwater:

In BP's 2009 exploration plan for the well, the firm suggested an oil spill was unlikely or virtually impossible, AP news agency reports.

Breaking News

CNN reports that 51 minutes before the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20, there were several warnings of trouble on the rig. Witnesses said there were 3 ruptures of fluid and pressure on the drill pipe "unexpectedly increased".

Read The New York Time's account of the Deepwater Horizon's last troubled hours, based on reports from the Congressional Committee investigating.

In the Los Angeles Times, Kent Wells a senior BP Vice President said that the Top Kill could start Wednesday May 26 or later this week.

See the CNN animation of the Top Kill for what to expect if it works.

Live BP video of the Top Kill attempt, in some doubt until Capitol Hill pressure was applied, will be available on the BP website and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Every New Year's we look back or look ahead. I tried it myself and I can't say I was particularly thrilled by any defining moments knocking out what's on tap for next year. Things sucked for most of us and the world. On the plus side Obama got elected and won a Nobel Prize for getting elected, so he had a good year, while for the rest of us cheaper Blue-ray players are now an option.

Wars And The Economy


Next year we could get lucky, but the rules of the game haven't changed enough to make any kind of recovery happen soon. War in Iraq, War in Afghanistan, and more Terror. Any correlation there for our politicians? Don't think they see it yet. And if there's no peace recovery, economic recovery isn't likely either. Any thinkers or tinkerers in Washington see that? When you spend all your money on war and bailing out bankers and banks and Wall Street and Detroit, there's not much left in the pot for Main Street except for potholes. In the meantime all you guys without a paycheck, put on your best torn T-shirt and get into construction before everybody else figures out it's the only real Stimulus we'll get in 2010.

H1N1 Swine Flu

Other big stories weren't good news either. H1N1 Swine Flu did make a two stage attack, as I forecast on NewsHammer months before anyone else did. Now it's over 12,000 dead says the WHO, but the media after going whole hog on the story, are now critical of a massive over-response to a pandemic that missed the boat.

Sorry, it's not over yet. Viruses mutate and this one has developed into several strains. Ordinarily those who got their shots based on the initial virus type or who caught an airborne version of it already, will largely be protected from the new strains. Those still at risk will not have had either, and that means most people everywhere. As it looks like a weak pandemic now, the demand for inoculations is way down, with people ignoring or postponing a shot.

This is an iffy choice that could backfire. Getting the shot and so playing it safe, is the way to go for most of us. The problem is like with all vaccines, a risk of side-effects. The worst case is autism in young children, still debated as a maybe disease from vaccines, and Guillaume Barré syndrome, a dangerous neurological disease that can leave children and adults permanently damaged. A few cases have been reported among many who have had the new H1N1 vaccine. But over the years other flu shots have been blamed for thousands of cases of this otherwise rare neurological disease. Anyone already very sick or immune compromised, could die of complications.

With the heat off for now, it's a good time to talk to your doctor on whether or not to get a shot. It's still possible we could see a million or more dead in countries ill-prepared for another resurgence of H1N1.

Michael Jackson: Dead Like Elvis

The shock of Michael Jackson's death also took our breath away. With a media life of its own, as reported and forecast in NewsHammer, it rivaled and then eclipsed the media hounds hunt for Wacko Jacko, the child molester who never was. A sad comment on them and us, being sucked in for years by bloodthirsty journalism out for a buck. The orgy of how this could have happened, never looked far enough back into how it did happen, just catching the endless parade of weird rumors, alibis and genuine worldwide remorse. Journalists should have fried some of their own for Michael's premature death as well as the standup comics who pulled out their knives nightly for our Caesar of Pop, sorry King of.

Google And The Death Of Newspapers

Another big story on NewsHammer this year still revving up slowly in the press, that newspapers and magazines are being Googled to death. Bleeding slowly at first I guess they didn't notice. Now hemorrhaging they're talking of fighting back, Murdock & Co. Why here's the answer: We'll charge the freeloading downloading bastards! Wrong again. We'll sell our stuff on Kindle! Sure you will. Who's gonna pay though for dull and boring rubber-necking journalism, especially from Iowa if you're in Colorado?

Magazines and newspapers wrecked their future long ago, when they raised prices up and up instead of getting more readers and more from advertisers, and then cut back on journalists and meaningful coverage from City Hall, to city, town and country, while boiling down Culture to gizmos and fashion statements. To relying on the wire services for big stories and forgetting they were the conscience of their town and nation. Now a paper from City X is largely the same paper from City Y and Z. Try selling that. Try selling bloated or useless magazines or cut to the bone crap sheets. It looks like half of all newspapers and magazines today will fail in the next 10 years, only the best surviving and those with a niche somewhere in OpraLand and GossipWorld.

This is also Google's fault as I said this year in 2 stories on NewsHammer, but Google, the Gentle Giant of Publishing, crushes every little thing as it goes for a walk to find some more money. Can't see what's going under its footprint even when it bothers to look.

Well Google is not some mad post apocalyptic monster out to destroy everything, but still we're getting what's good for Google must be good for everyone else outside of GogglePlex. Shades of the old GM philosophy that killed streetcars, trains and the electric car, with their hands out now for more government money for GM's poor starving brother, GMAC.

Why do the Feds listen to these guys in suits? Hey Buddy, can you spare a Billion? Might as well give it to winos or druggies and street people. At least they'd spend it or give it away and provide some real Economic Stimulus.

Will Google be taking corporate welfare handouts one of these days? Well, if it's not blushing now as it steamrolls over journalism and publishing, what will stop it? Not that Google is mainly to blame. By dominating web advertising Google only collects all the loose change we click into big bucks for them without writing one word of copy. Come on Google, play fair, Do No Evil. Rewrite the AdSense rules on web ads and who gets what and how, charging advertisers for display ads and not just click-throughs and share all the revenue with your publishers as the real solution. Google could make even more money this way, but we'll save journalism, get more jobs, more people working again like the good old days before these guys made billions putting Google together for fun in a garage on pizza and credit cards.

Will they? No, Google won't even answer an email, never mind coming to the rescue of an industry they're nailing into a coffin. Can't you hear 2009 scratching the lid to get out and live again! Hey Google! Write home before your old lady croaks and you're up shit creek.

There were other big stories in 2009 like Global Warming, but politicians think it can wait. We're all too busy with the future, Googling for the Apple Tablet and other wonders soon to drive us crazy everyday, worrying about Tiger Woods ever golfing again and Charlie Sheen overdosing on his own persona in Two and a Half Men. How could they do that when they were so cool? This is the world that matters, I keep forgetting. Oh well there's 2010 and parties tonight. Happy New Year!

--Alan Gillis

Since the big Latino Show on the White House lawn, and some State Dinner party-crashing, the Tiger missing an easy shot around a fire hydrant, I thought there might be some connections to the War in Afghanistan. Yesterday night after 200 assessments of the situation, President Obama gave Afghanistan his best shot.

A bit of déjà vu like Bush at Annapolis for starters, dragged into a full blown time warp. Not hearing anything new as in the Bush Standard in how to win the War on Terror, I was fidgeting, half expecting Rumsfeld to take the stage and liven things up a bit.

If the war is winnable we've got twin it. When you're down, you raise the stakes--(cell phone rings) Right. And stay the course!

What about cashing out? Turn the whole thing over to the UN? Where was all that electrifying Obama spin on reality? Not there, not even reflected from his audience, respectful and subdued but missing the old Obama. The Obama recap of the war with no fresh insights, disappointing. No one totally sure what happened with all the self-serving justifications of a gung-ho Bush era or why we're still there 8 years later. Where was Obama's easy Latino beat? Easier to throw a party or crash one. Harder to get things done.

OK, if the Taliban ran a hard line Islamic State, like Iran, like Saudi, wasn't that their business? Once upon a time they weren't the bad guys. They were popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Started by an idealistic group of Afghan students with the backing of the mujaheddin who fought the Russians, supported then by America. Trying to rebuild a war-torn Afghanistan. Stopped the opium War Lords and banned opium farms. Back then who ever heard of them? Who helped them?

Looks like Americans are fighting the wrong war again. Now another 30,000 soldiers to fight the Taliban. Al Qaeda too, but where are they in such a vast inhospitable wilderness of high mountains, snow and desert? Will 30,000 more Americans find them all? If they are still in Afghanistan? The Taliban though are everywhere and the easy target. They're fighting. Opium is back and so are the War Lords. The Taliban are behind it, is the conventional view. Maybe they are or maybe like the Americans and NATO they're turning a blind eye, while fighting for their lives. There's a war on.

All the Taliban ever did was provide safe-haven for Al Qaeda. According to the Bush Doctrine those who harbor enemies are enemies. So we get them all! Well just what kind of harboring was that? Like Iraqis harboring Saddam, or like harboring a brother the police are after?

Isn't Pakistan doing the same thing? Harboring Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Not officially, but sympathetically and effectively? They're all Muslims after all. Is paying informers, is blood money working? Somewhat.

Should America invade Pakistan then? The logical next step. Obama wouldn't do that but what if the war drags on? Past Obama into Palin territory?

Obama wants the war over by 2011, a colossal job. He's counting on something else besides fighting, a bit of sanity delivered into the mix of his low key speech at West Point. Work towards co-opting the Taliban, in effect get them on our side. Which translates into buying them off. At this stage you can't get their real support as you've been smashing them for 8 years for what exactly? And destroying house by house what's left of their country. Is this a workable plan? Looks modest and very long term, something for another generation of Afghans and Americans. Wasn't Obama elected for leadership? Then why not take a quick and effective approach? Turn over Afghanistan to the UN? There's a good chance it will work, an honorable American exit, honorable for the Taliban too, the war finally over for everyone. Isn't that the UN's job anyway, to keep the peace?

Of course in this war the Taliban will pocket American peace dollars, but what will they do with them? What's Karzai doing with his? Not much progress everyone says. Obama wants more money for the Afghan Army, the Afghan Police. Way more soldiers, way more police. Who's side are they on? Many in it for themselves at least, in a lawless and dangerous land where official corruption and abuse of power is once again a way of life. Of course they need better training. I almost fell off my chair! Are we on the same page, in the same world?

By the same token what's happening in Iraq now? Same sort of thing, Obama's Taliban strategy a leaf from lessons learned in Iraq as it happens. Though it seems to be working in Iraq on the surface at least, except Iraqi infrastructure is a war-torn mess, and very high unemployment undermines what forced American Armed Forces stability there is. Just how much goodwill is there left that Americans truly enjoy, indeed in the entire Middle East? Enough for an end to terror and a real peace?

Little enough as we'll find out once Americans leave. Or will they? Is yes we can now yes maybe we can? The unpleasant reality is two Arab countries wrecked. Who is to blame? Stability in any case remains a dream. If most Iraqis didn't like Saddam, most now don't like Americans either, their lives still in ruins, everywhere the shadow of more terror around the corner. Terrorists and bombs, but also official corruption and abuse, police you can't trust, police you fear, and more and more crime on the streets in the crossfire of war. In Afghanistan it's worse. There was no corrupt regime to begin with. Just a backward-looking Islamic State, not despotic but legitimate, not initially anti-American, just ultra-conservative, looking to revitalize itself.

If Obama follows through on his forced pacification of Afghanistan with some more American troops and dollars to grease the wheels, will it work?

Not unless he knows the Arabs better. These are a passionate people from the Middle Ages. They're nurture their grudges and their pain and fight again. Unless they get honorable terms.

But Obama's plan is better than trying to kill every last American enemy. For every dead martyr as Bush saw, another dozen martyrs rise. Even during World War II, was it the goal of the Allies to eliminate every last German soldier, every last Japanese soldier to win the war? Or eliminate even those who harbored them, their wives, their children?

It might also be useful to find out why a handful of Arab terrorists, largely from Saudi, attacked the US anyway? Even Bin Laden hasn't told us yet.

To stop the war shouldn't we find out why everybody is fighting?

--Alan Gillis

A lot of things come up every week. Though we don't have time for them. Since most of us are media addicts, we also get what's left of our lives second hand from the media. We complain about the programming or say how cool XYZ was on TMZ or did you see last night's game/grope/Gummy Bears? This is where our real life begins after work if we're still working. Don't know how long that will last. We could all be outsourced next week in this economy. So let's get real while there's still time. Have a look back at the week that was.

Too much like work? Right. OK, well it was a lousy week. Even Lou Dobbs quit CNN. And he owns a big chunk of it, but I'm guessing here as no one else will investigate CNN. Probably fired himself because ratings were down on Lou Dobbs Tonight. Like Sarah Palin who also quit her day job, I bet Lou will run for President. Trying to fire illegal alien Obama on his show didn't work. Smuggled in from where Lou? Jersey? Daily reruns of what kind of a democracy have we got? And more gosh darnnit illegal aliens picking our lettuce, taking jobs away from Americans!

Right about the War on the Middle Class though. Bet Lou knows where all the bodies are buried under Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Years anchoring Moneyline on CNN in another incarnation. And no slouch either. The guy went to Harvard like Obama.

Sure Lou knows we've got bodies everywhere, on the CNN foreign news segments. But Lou blustered on as though he might spill the local beans, on and on through the American outsourcing to death, just sickening, the downsizing of America to what? Subsidized by the same idiot Feds who were too busy ignoring Madoff and Co and and and.

True enough but it didn't catch fire. The economic crash pre-empted all that talk about what's wrong with America. Time to scramble and fix it before everybody goes under. Bush's answer, spend more money, print more money, bail them out. Then Obama to the rescue. Same thing, bail them out before we all crash. But the causes of the crash are still there and pumping more money into them for life support months later, doesn't look like working in the long run. The economy? Some relief for some, but DOA for the middle class, downsized daily into the largest growth industry, the unemployed. So what if there are some scattershot stock market rallies? Is there anything to cheer about?

The middle class is key to any country. They do the work and they pay the taxes. The people with money make more money as they always do. They still get bonuses for that. While we bail them out with a Trillion Dollars. What are they doing for us? Wait, wait and see. Probably nothing.

With world governments behind a sinking economy, my money's on feudalism. Meanwhile some idiots might be gritting their teeth if Lou has any smoking guns lying around. He's still got his radio show. Either he gets more political or he fades out.

--Alan Gillis

Like everybody else I've been dazzled by the New President. Nothing like the old Bush, cooler even than Clinton in his best suit. I'm still charmed. Obama wow! Here's a guy who knows how to talk.

On the eve of his first hundred days I wonder if there's anything more to him than saying all the right things, at least to Democrats and European lefties and doggone it the G20 to boot. A huge accomplishment right there that eclipses the standard notion of American Literacy, doing great on a Spelling Bee or making a dumb feelgood movie about it.

I'd give him another 100 days to deliver on what he says so well, but some Americans don't feel that's a good idea I was mildly surprised to find out on a long train ride through the still glacial forests of North Ontario. In the Via Rail dining car the steward sat me down with a table full of Americans doing the continental tour east of BC.

It wasn't long before the small talk turned to Obama. What do Americans back home think of Obama? It's hardly scientific posing the big question to 3 Floridans on vacation who just might be representative of some other Floridans or Southerners or Americans at large or Americans in general. But they looked mainstream middle-aged, so it was worth a try. Is Obama as popular as he was at the Inauguration?

More popular outside the country. One hit, one miss. I didn't have to ask if they were Republicans, nor would you if you wanted to be polite and get at how they honestly felt, politics aside. Still I was a bit puzzled that the tone had changed at our table from yes we can to no we shouldn't have done it.

The odd thing was though if they didn't like Obama much, point after point, except for a few points, I kept hearing that Obama was doing more or less what Bush had done. Though they were for Bush they weren't for Obama.

Whatever Obama said, Obama like Bush was still pushing for a victory in Iraq with Bush's main man Gates. Leaving 50,000 soldiers behind after the pullout to make sure, is hardly the pre-election promise of our troops are going home. But that was a pretty good way out my friends agreed.

After the war and why hit Iraq in the first place, we digested the economy. If Bush started the bailouts -- I said, and they jumped in with -- what did Obama do except throw more money out the window? Bush didn't start the bailouts either, but his hands were tied by the Democrats who controlled the House and pushed for the bailouts. Which measure Bush could have vetoed I forgot to say.

But we were ready to admit to no easy answers on what to do and plenty of risks whatever was done to save the economy. Still for them it came down to Obama as the wrong man for the job. In America it always boils down to Republicans vs Democrats. So can you have a free debate? Not exactly, as R&D runs as deep as two religions at war over Sunday dinner.

Even if the bailouts worked which the table thought unlikely, the only safe money was in T-Bills or under your mattress. Not even bonds were a good bet. The bottom of the market was coming when commercial property prices were bound to be hit hard and printing that extra two trillion dollars was probably going to mean runaway inflation like Zimbabwe. And that was going to make the next generation, though I demurred here, hard-nosed and conservative. More like desperate I thought if worst came to worst, maybe a neo-feudalism emerging from an economic collapse like some Hollywood version of a grimy broken-down future. But I wanted to hear what they had to say.

Like it or not you have to pay the bills, they said. And we all agreed that leaving that problem for later while spending madly now, Obama was asking for trouble he wouldn't have to face after he left Washington.

All hypothetical like a possible economic recovery. But with the Bush record in, with Bush presiding over the biggest combination decline in American fortunes and prestige ever, I had to wince at the fair shake he was still getting from my new friends. Wasn't Bush running two miserable wars, usually enough to fix any economy, and wasn't he minding the store when it went bankrupt?

Clinton started it! Was I hearing things? Hillary? The other Clinton who did a nice job on the economy? With Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. That's when the bad loans started to people who couldn't pay.

Can't say I remember that? With Clinton pursued 24 hour a day by media bloodhounds over his sex life? With impeachment proceedings in Congress going on straight out of The Merchant of Venice? Who was watching anything else, who would know what Clinton did with Freddie and Fannie if anything? That's America for you. You can believe just about anything happening and find something to back it up. Bill Clinton did it! Hillary shredded the Double F Memo! First Lewinski's dress, then toxic assets as government welfare. Maybe somebody should check this?

Then Obama's tax relief, they said, more handouts from Obama for people who don't make enough? If they wanted to work more they could get more money.

Sure they should make more, I said, but how? And what's wrong with a bit of welfare they need that sounds Republican?

It's not America. Every country has their way. Why can't we stick to ours? We're not Europe. We're not Canada.

I thought about that later. The big difference was share the wealth vs everybody makes their own in America. But with one in ten Americans on food stamps it wasn't working anymore. But I got the drift in time to add:

When capitalism fails, isn't it time to think a bit about socialism? Bailing out the banks, Wall Street and Detroit, isn't that socialism? Isn't Obama a socialist in the Canadian mode as the Washington Times called him before the election? Is that so bad? Isn't that why he was elected? To share the wealth even if he didn't cross that rhetorical line and promise it exactly, though promising just about anything else he just might be able to do?

That's stumbling block number one. In America it's OK to be a capitalist or a failed capitalist, but not a socialist. Deep down inside the conservative streak in the USA, you can't be a socialist. Obama has got to fail like Rush Limbaugh wants him to. Not strictly on economics, as that will hurt everyone, but on his politics. Obama's been going after Bush. That's stub your big toe for some Republicans.

Publishing the Torture Memos. Obama flips the nice guy Obama wild card for the jackpot. Bush loses, Republicans and Americans lose or that's how these people from Florida took it. America didn't do anything wrong and Obama's going after Bush for doing a good job he had to do that was tough and dangerous and dirty.

We were up against people who killed all those Americans at the World Trade Center, who cut off people's heads. They weren't fighting a war. We weren't fighting a war. The Geneva Conventions don't apply.

Simple explanations are hard to beat. If you disagree all you can do is get long winded or say hey you're wrong. I made a stab at it. Yeah, but. Then you get atrocities on both sides, was about all I could manage. Here's what I thought while while they were talking about what the terrorists were doing and how we had to as tough on them:

That's what Bush thought. Certainly Al Qaeda didn't follow Geneva Conventions. Aggressors often don't in any conflict, but that's no reason to fight terror with terror or start a war with Rumsfeld's Shock and Awe against an Iraq that never fired a bullet at the USA.

What's America anyway if not a champion of justice and liberty? Do you throw that away to fight a dirty war? When the battleground is far from home and you have overwhelming firepower, how do you look in the history books when you torture and humiliate suspects you make prisoners in Abu Graib, in CIA Secret Prisons, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

You lose that war morally. No one can trust you again, not your friends either. The rule of law is fundamental to a democracy. It's no wonder that Obama does want to do the right thing and insists on it. He values America. Words do mean something. The American Constitution means something. America means something.

Before the wars and the bailouts, when America spends 40% of the federal budget on the military, other countries and other people worry, was about all I managed to say. And then with all that firepower you still play down and dirty. No way to get respect from the world or your enemies.

Where did you get 40%? I guess that includes the Coast Guard and the National Guard? We also spend a lot on foreign aid. Or maybe we should do what that comedian George Carlin said and close all our bases and bring home all that money. Would that be better? Might be better for us? But he was joking.

We had a laugh about that. After all we were having a friendly holiday dinner on a train through the snowy woods of a late spring far from the reality of power politics. Though there was a more serious coda of sorts, back in the shambles of the economy.

I mentioned Haliburton's move from Houston to Dubai, where this push for globalization by governments and business literally led to exporting jobs and whole industries to freewheeling unregulated poorer countries where it's also cheaper to do business.

That started the home-grown recession, I said. First Nixon's visit to China slowly cooked up to a boil on Wall Street, fueled further with tax incentives by the Bush Administration into an outsourcing adventure of more empire building.

Instead of a stronger America there was a new and powerful China, a new middle class over there with corresponding higher prices for the local poor and fewer and losier jobs at home. You think that governments could see it coming? That globalization wasn't good for everybody. Good for corporations though.

Wait a minute, said my friends. Was that why Haliburton-KBR went to Dubai? Cheney's Haliburton. Donald Trump might have a laugh at that. Sometime ago he said something like whatever happens the smart people like me can move on with their money.

So why did Haliburton move? I asked.

Let's say they wanted to avoid legal trouble.

Then I remembered all those no-bid cost-plus contracts in Iraq, with $10 Billion missing, as Al Franken the former comedian used to joke about. What if Obama looks into that?

Can't say any of us were laughing, but we smiled and called it a night.

Hope the new Senator Franken by-a-hair of Minnesota remembers to remind him. With Obama taking on just about everything, he might have Haliburton for breakfast.

--Alan Gillis

With the Cease-fire in Gaza broken twice in the last few days, the chances for peace without change in the status quo are about zero. It's the only thing that both sides in the conflict are willing to bet on.

An initiative from President Obama might break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock. In his recent interview with Al Arabiya and his instructions to his new Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, we have the beginnings of a shift in American foreign policy.

"And so what I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating. . ."

The problem is if this is another fact-finding mission, all the facts are already in, and not much can be gained by rehashing what is already well known to everybody involved, except more time to do nothing. The situation in Gaza is critical.

Once the formalities are over like Mitchell's tour (another link to Reuters Video below) through Arab capitals that started with Egypt, and Israel where he is now, are we going to get any new insights or action, when no one seems to know what to do? It's not only true in Washington, it's true throughout the Arab world and right inside what's left of Palestine. Even Israelis are divided. If they want peace, few are willing to make any concessions to Palestine. Some Israeli settlers in the West Bank would even fight their own government if they should be evicted as part of a peace deal with Palestine. In Gaza, the Arabs think all they have been doing is making concessions or being forced into more of them by Israeli influence and its war machine.



In Israel, Mitchell has been confirming the unchanging U.S. position of full support for Israel, though making it clear the U.S. still wants a Two-State solution for Israel and Palestine. Israel could have delivered this solution a long time ago unilaterally, in the same way it launched the recent war on Gaza and then its own cease-fire. Israel must know negotiations with Palestinians will always fail now, because after repeated humiliations, Palestinians can't face conceeding the loss of Palestinian territory for any other State, namely Israel which has been doing the humiliating. In the West we've learned to swallow our pride to avoid conflict, but any student of Arab culture knows that there's only one thing of more importance than saving face: Never submit to any humiliation whatever the cost.

The humiliations suffered by the Palestinians have peaked with the fierce and disproportionate retaliation on Gaza by Israel. There was a chance when Yassr Arafat was alive and a deal was close, but at the last minute, arguably one side or the other backed off, and then Arafat was bombed in Ramallah in a seige calculated to demoralize and humiliate. Falling sick, it wound up costing him his life and the chance for peace.

After his death, Hamas came to the fore, a Muslim brotherhood encouraged initially by the Israelis as a counterweight to Yassr's Fatah. But Obama's positive approach and outlook on Palestine, still looks like a good sign if he follows through. He has an ally within the Israeli Government for his old Two-State solution. The question is will he support the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert?

"I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state - I'm not going to put a time frame on it - that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people. . ."

Here's the CBS full coverage page of Obama and his message to the Arab world on Al Arabiya and a complete transcript of what he said. It's the old Two-State solution. While we're waiting on a time frame, perhaps some people in DC should do some homework.



In an interview on The Real News Network, Jan 6, 2009, Phyllis Bennis, a Senior Analyist with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, considers (video and transcript) "Historical amnesia and Gaza":

"The key question is where we start, because when you decide to start the clock determines how you define the crisis. If you start the clock on the day that a rocket from Gaza, whether it was Hamas or someone else, hit something in Sderot, then everything Israel is doing is a reasonable response to that reality, to rockets.

If you take a step back, you could begin with one week before the military strikes began, when the six-month-old ceasefire had begun to fray somewhat on both sides. And Israel responded by cutting off all entry and exit to the Gaza Strip—no food, no electrical fuel, no nothing. . .

You could go back six months and look at when the Israeli military, the Ministry of Defense, began planning for this attack, just as they were negotiating the ceasefire, according to the Israeli paper Haaretz. That was the beginning of the planning for this attack. It was not because the ceasefire didn't work. They were planning this attack even as the ceasefire was being implemented.

But ultimately you could go back and back, and you need to go back to 1967, when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip. . .Everything remained under Israeli control. So the occupation continued despite the fact that the settlers had been pulled out and soldiers were no longer permanently on the ground—they would enter, they would kill people, and they would leave.

It's that context and it's that time line that we need to start with. So the question of where do we start is exactly the most important question that is not being asked. . ."

Unfortunately, the 22 day war on Gaza is the bitter end of 60 years of conflict and neglect. It has been so devastating for Palestinians that it is in itself almost an insurmoutable obstacle to peace. In Palestine and in the UN the Israeli war has been seen not as a war against Hamas, but a war against civilians and Palestine itself, so overwhelming and brutal it flies in the face of the Geneva Convention.

The Phyllis Bennis interview continues in "Israel and international law" (transript and video) concluding with:



". . .Israel is the occupying power, and as the occupying power, it has very clear obligations under the Geneva Convention. One of the most clear, Article 33, is a prohibition on collective punishment, and it's absolute. . . you cannot punish any person in the occupied population, except for an act that he or she personally committed. . .Telling people in robocalls to their cell phones, "Your house is going to be bombed in five minutes," doesn't make it okay to then bomb a house. . .

And I would mention that Congressman Dennis Kucinich here in the United States has actually issued a call for the United Nations to investigate the violations of Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions.

Other international laws include the illegality of attacks on civilians. . .It is illegal to target civilian targets. And saying, for example, that the television station is pro-Hamas does not make it a military target; saying that the university is used for Hamas recruiters does not make it a military target. These assertions are simply false, and, unfortunately, in the mainstream Western press, certainly in the United States, they are not being sufficiently challenged.

There's another law, also within the Geneva Conventions and others, against disproportionate military attacks. That applies only when the idea of a military assault is legal. In this case, I think that's a very questionable one. But even if it's legal, you cannot use disproportionate military attacks. And in this case, the level of death and destruction should give very clear evidence that this is absolutely disproportionate."

"Allegations of (Israeli) War Crimes" go forward in this Jan 25 2009 ABC Video.



On the chances for peace, CBS News put together a segment for 60 Minutes, Jan 25, 2009, "Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?" (Video and transcript)

Fifteen years of negotiations later, even those in Palestine and Israel who think it's the best compromise, don't think it will work now. History has passed them by. Correspondent Bob Simon reports:

"Palestinians had hoped to establish their state on the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware. But Israelis have split it up with scores of settlements, and hundreds of miles of new highways that only settlers can use. Palestinians have to drive - or ride - on the older roads.

When they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank. . .

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank [280,000 Jewish settlers] and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid. . .

Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel to stop suicide bombers. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not. . .

But one very important Israeli says she intends to move them out. She's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a candidate to become prime minister in elections next month. She's also Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and she told 60 Minutes peace is unthinkable with the settlers where they are.

"Can you really imagine evacuating the tens of thousands of settlers who say they will not leave?" Simon asked.

"It's not going to be easy. But this is the only solution. . .As simple as that. Israel is a state of law and order," Livni said.". . ."

Yet the construction of new Israeli settlements and houses authorized and illegal still continues. An Israeli rights group with access to a classified Israeli Defense Ministry database says Israeli authorities are "systematically violating international law and the property rights of Palestinian residents", reported yesterday by AP.

Perhaps Livni is our last chance at peace. But critics say that the Gaza incursion just before Israeli elections, was to boost the popularity of Israeli hardliners like the current Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert and another rival, Benjamin Netanyahu. It seems to have worked with Israeli public opinion soaring in support for Olmert's successful operation in Gaza.

Meanwhile the brutal roadside bombing of Israeli soldiers 3 days ago and another massive retaliation by the Israeli Defense Forces crushes the last lingering hopes both peoples have, as in this Jan 28 2009 BBC Video, "Israel launches attacks in Gaza".

Obama isn't likely to meddle in Israeli internal affairs, like publicly backing Livni and knocking Olmert. Of course this is what all the diplomats are for. Signals in the dark, back off or else. But if Obama doesn't resort to the weapons of diplomacy, the reign of terror in Israel and Palestine will go on, as it has in the long ongoing wars in Iraq and Afganistan, largely a result of total American Foreign Policy support of Israel. Like a gift of $3 billion a year in American weapons and military aid for Israel.

Watching the event with the sound way up, brought the day in Washington zinging into focus. A thousand miles away I wanted the feel of what was happening. A cold bright sky above a people assembling for a moment in history. Not on network TV with nothing happening yet, and Dead Air to be avoided at any cost, it was the usual pre-game chatter session of anchors, reporters and analysts, plus commercials.

Luckily there was an option, 4 CNN news feeds live from Washington you could watch as clear streaming video with no distractions. For about an hour before the Obamas went to church, just the murmurs of the crowd and the sound effects from the City.The vistas and the people and more people were astounding. What makes cities so drab is all the cars and nobody on the streets. Here in Washington the cars were banished, Washington locked down for security, but packed with a million or two million, some still on the march for a better view.

On any other day you wouldn't know why they had come or what they were going to do. It didn't have any flavor of something already visited. Peaceful, polite, well-ordered crowds funneling through the streets towards the Mall. Somehow a FedEx truck managed to get in and park with all the police cars. If it was anything, the City said it was a new day, boding well for a new era.

The People and the City, they were the stars of the bright broad avenues. It wouldn't have worked in another place. The grandeur of the City made it happen, designed in fact for that by a French architect, Pierre Charles L'Enfant, with Paris and Rome in mind, designed as a new imperial city for the new world. One man's vision, like that other gift from the French, the Statue of Liberty. Here in Washington, the people had come for another man's vision, the man they elected, the man they wanted to succeed, Barack H. Obama.

I wondered what he would do for them on this day. I felt since early morning he'd do well as he'd done many times cajoling crowds to get it right. People were expecting that and they were there to root for him. It could also be overwhelming for him and them. The first black president after years of troubles and ruin. It might be a tongue-tied tired event, perhaps with all the security, the 3 and 4 block long lines to get through security checks to get near Barack Obama. Yet it was clearly a day of hope with so many people gathered to witness the passing of one president and the confirmation of another, who brought them together with "Yes, we can."

The first surprise was Dick Cheney in a wheelchair who'd strained his back moving some boxes. I wasn't expecting omens, but on the lookout for them anyway. In our times even with all our rational thinking, omens if they're noted hit us as hard as our ancestors.

George W. Bush on his way out didn't pack an omen, not until it spread over his ashen face as he heard the new president slamin' and dunkin' the last eight years Bush was in office. Flying away in his helicopter, after too many explanations why it wasn't Marine One anymore, going to catch, not Air Force One again at Andrews AFB. But fitting that Bush was whisked away into the blue as though by the Gods never to trouble Washington again. A quiet escape. I don't remember people waving, as I'd heard later on TV. Only a long zoom lens quietly following the ascent and departure.

The first of the radioactive pastors, the conservative Rev Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church, failed to detonate or produce any political fallout with a nice Invocation. The second the ultra-liberal Rev Joseph Lowery, stole the warm-up with a backward thump on the promising present and a future within reach, asking God to:

". . . help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

I liked this character a lot, injecting all his warmth and humor into the formalities. Here was a old funky black guy telling us what we and the new president should still be doing. From those who marched so many years ago with Martin Luther King like he did, chanting and praying stuff like this to keep their spirits strong. Lowery easily extracted some southern-fried amens from the crowds around and I think it was about then I heard someone in the crowd yell, "Yes we can and yes we will." A happy moment, a good sign that Lowery had broken the formal ice of the occasion. We'd all be pleased with the day ahead.

Still I had been feeling bad since I'd heard of Senator Ted Kennedy having a seizure at the Statuary Hall Luncheon and the ancient Senator Byrd with his own health issues, but as it turned out both surviving a heady day and a heavy lunch. With cellphones everywhere word must have got out to about everyone flooding the Mall, waiting for Barack Obama. Perhaps it had an unspoken effect, a damper on any vanity showing its face. That turned the Cheney Dr. Strangelove joke around for me. The signs were more like the Grim Reaper haunting the Capitol and maybe Bush next, who during the last few months seemed to be a shadow of his former feisty self, even before his pained departure from the City, which brought back an image of President Richard Nixon getting on his last helicopter the hell out of Washington.

Time will tell as we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.

But I wasn't prepared for the Oath of Office that both the Chief Justice John Roberts and Barack Obama managed to mangle when Barrack jumped the gun and started leading Roberts. Here was an omen. If we had been in Imperial Rome the Priests of Mercury, first in matters of luck and ill omens, with the backing of Capitoline Jove and the Arval and a dozen more keepers of the Temples would have barged in, and the whole ceremony would have been stopped and repeated, not just the oath, only after a new round of auguries to pick a favorable day. Doubly urgent for a Roman Emperor to get it right, as Pontifex Maximus or pope of the Roman State Religion.

Unthinkable today, but to be on the safe side of the law at least, another swearing in ceremony was done in private that night back at the White House with the Chief Justice in his robes again, no TV cameras, and somehow a Bible missing from the second swearing-in ceremony. If I were an omen-betting man, I'd say this was another one.

But while it was happening on camera at the West Front of the Capitol, the stumbling wasn't aggravated by hushing and shuddering or a plaintive cry say from three old ladies sharing one eye. I did hear cell phones ringing. It was that quiet. And the flub didn't seem to bother either Roberts or Obama who smiled through it.

President Obama, President in any case thanks to the 20th Amendment to the Constitution that might have been written for a moment like this. President Obama was President since noon with proceedings running late anyway, it had been settled by the Constitution 20 minutes before the Oath. Perhaps that's how President Obama felt. Without any nod to the moment of doubt, he launched into his Inaugural Address.

"I stand here today humbled by the task before us. . ."

The energies were high. No one was worried and I was swept along with the words that rang out with the sound way up. It wasn't Berlin or the Obama home team in Chicago. People were listening to catch the beat and the measured breath. It was fine like a fine day, stirring in places where a few buried burning emotions wafted up and away. If he'd wanted to, President Obama could have breathed fire through the Mall.

The commentators on the networks spent the following hour chewing that over, but it seemed to escape their commercial logic. President Obama had poured some water into their wine. It wasn't vintage anything, not really Kennedyesque nor even vintage Obama. He could have done a lot of other things with the speech. But at this time, for these people in this place it sounded right. It felt good. It was the President's pledge renewed for Change, the beat still coming down on the head of 8 long years of a Washington he didn't like or want and nobody there among a million and more demurring either. We had enough. Let's move on.

When it was just over I gave him a 90%. I thought that's about what everybody did, even though there were no great moments of thundering applause or shouts from the brothers, though I'd bet it was close to a 100% from all the choked-up veterans black and white from the days of marching for Civil Rights and from their children too who'd heard the stories and lived through the interminable years of growing up in a White America that had finally opened the doors of the White House to one of their own.

It was a moment of pride, and high emotion. The President hardly mentioned it, standing here in front of Washington, speaking of "a man whose father less than sixty years ago. . ." He didn't have to. It was a given, it was understood, the face of America had changed today.The President didn't have to say "Yes, we can." He wasn't campaigning. He'd won that campaign and then with his wide-ranging speech he was looking to do more. Win friends back abroad, reaffirm America's commitment to justice and people, to a helping hand for any hand that would unclench its fist. It worked. It was the right thing to say in the Land of Liberty, that had taken a powerful smack down by the Bush administration's War on Terror abroad and at home, and the other war against the middle class, the one that brought Wall Street down.

Through the glittering parade in the gathering dark behind schedule like the day, I wondered at his speech. That it was wise, I would have expected. But why with his gifts of oratory, did he tamp down the embers he flourished awhile so they couldn't ignite? But the immense crowds told me why. He had already won, America had won over 8 long years. And a million or two people who were ready to follow him, might just as easily have rushed forward and crushed each other, bringing a calamity on themselves and history. If the President had said "Go on out there and change America, you know what to do." If he'd raised them to a fever pitch, well the omens would have clicked in and nobody would have denied them their force. The cry for Social Revolution was right there on this page.



The Obama video, the full text of his speech and some excerpts:

. . . in the midst of a crisis
. . . a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable
. . . And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account
. . . and do our business in the light of day
. . . a nation can not prosper long when it favors only the prosperous
. . . As far as our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals
. . . the rule of law and the rights of man
. . . Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake
. . . know that America is a friend of of each nation
. . . we are ready to lead once more
. . . power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please
. . . for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken
. . . In the year of America's birth. . .The capitol was abandonned. The enemy was advancing. The snows were stained with blood. At the moment when our revolution was most in doubt. . . Let it be said . . . that we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

With a hard fight ahead. It would now start for all present and be won by all with hope and courage. He didn't have to say it. President Obama got the message from the medium around him before he'd said a word. The context of victory over tyranny in this place now and long ago, the City, the people, all spoke for him. He didn't have to say more.

For another view of what President Obama wisely left out, read Mike Littwin of the Rocky Mountain News.

--Alan Gillis