The Rag Blog

WASHINGTON (Nov. 3) – Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

“Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems,” said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (Nov. 3) – An Army dog handler convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has returned to the country with his military police unit, a spokesman said Thursday.

Sgt. Santos A. Cardona boarded a plane Monday at Pope Air Force Base, which is adjacent to Fort Bragg, for the trip to Iraq.

Cardona is assigned to the 23rd Military Police Company, said Maj. James Crabtree, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, which is headquartered at Fort Bragg.

Crabtree said it wasn’t known exactly what Cardona’s job would be. The unit will focus on law enforcement, detainee operations and route security and to a lesser extent training Iraqi police.

“We don’t know what he will be doing,” Crabtree said. “We don’t normally discuss individuals who will be deploying overseas. We speak in terms of units.”

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Nov. 3) – The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex.

The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday after being accused of paying the man for monthly trysts over the past three years.

Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations, but also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation.

“I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity,” he said in a statement. “I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance.”

Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor’s niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.

Dear Colleagues,

The situation in Oaxaca continues to change daily. The morning of November 2 brought with it yet another dramatic series of events as the Federal Preventive Police attempted to invade the Autonomous Benito Juarez University, only to be met and repelled by the largest and most firm popular mobilization since their arrival.

Narco News correspondent Greg Berger writes:

“After a six-hour siege on the Benito Juarez Autonomous University, which is the home Radio Universidad, voice of the APPO, the Federal Preventative Police was forced to retreat just moments ago.

“As helicopters, tanks, and scores of armed federal police approached the University campus, “la doctora,” the now famous host of radio APPO, urged the citizens of Oaxaca to rush to the scene to aid in the defense of the campus and particularly, of the radio station.”

Once again, the large volume of reports on the PFP attack and retreat make it difficult to send an alert for each report. We urge you to visit The Narco News Bulletin to read about all the latest events in Oaxaca, as well as other news from around Latin America.

www.narconews.com

From somewhere in a country called América,

It’s the oil, stupid!

Even as popular pressure grows around Latin America for a stronger state hand in developing natural resources such as oil and gas, Mexico’s president-elect Felipe Calderón may be forced to consider putting more power in private hands.

The country’s flagship oil company Pemex, has been a point of pride since the industry was wrenched from foreign hands and nationalized in 1938. Its revenues alone cover one-third of Mexico’s budget.

But prosperity from years of record oil prices has allowed Mexico to postpone what most agree are much-needed reforms. And now, as production at Pemex’s top oil field declines, pressure to find new fields is mounting. But industry analysts say Mexico’s constitutional restriction on foreign direct investment will hamstring costly exploration efforts, and possibly disrupt the flow of oil, 80 percent of which heads to the US.

Indeed, with his fragile political mandate, Mr. Calderón may find that oil becomes the issue that will define his presidency.

Translation: If he doesn’t co-operate with the privateers, he’s gonna find a horse’s head on his pillow and a replacement in his chair.

This is an important first battle,” says Benito Nacif, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CRTE), a Mexico City think tank. “In the industry sector, there is a consensus that this reform is necessary, that you have to open it up [to the private sector]. The question is: ‘Will [Calderón] be able to build sufficient [political] consensus?’ “

Many industry analysts had hoped that outgoing President Vicente Fox would be able to push through energy-sector reforms to open up Pemex to more private direct investment, in order to boost exploration and production.

Mexico is the second-biggest supplier of oil to the US, favored because of its proximity and relative political stability.

For “relative political stability”, read stolen elections favorable to US-backed candidates.

In the end, Mr. Fox didn’t push through a consitutional change, largely because trying to privative Pemex, even partially, is so politically unpopular.

THE UNITED STATES upset the regional balance in the Middle East when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but “cutting and running” must precede them all. Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president’s conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter’s FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh “interrogation techniques” used on prisoners.

AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) — Will Rogers said, “You know horses are smarter than people. You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people.”

However, the horses are counting on the people more than ever now. Nearly 100,000 horses are killed annually in foreign-owned slaughterhouses in America for human consumption in other countries.

With the upcoming Senate vote on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, Americans have a small window of opportunity to save a living legend.

Horses are all the things a truly evolved human should be. There are countless examples of their innate ability and desire to heal people.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.