Prairie Weather

Depleted uranium

Depleted uranium, about which a rumble has been going on for over a decade, may turn out to be another weapon used in the legal case being put together against the Bush adminstration.  The United Nations Environment Program met yesterday in Jordan to discuss measuring the effects of DU.  A British psychiatry journal suggests that it is responsible for some mental illnesses associated with PTSD. 

The BBC reports that the Bush administration is not supportive of measuring the extent of the use of DU in Iraq.  Surprise.

Whipped and chainsawed

Deborah Solomon is one of the worst interviewers around and damn proud of it, I sometimes think.  In her weekly spot in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday, she did a number on Larry McMurtry.  Well, in truth, he wound up doing a number on her...

[McMurtry observes] Cowboys aren't always popular. You can look at the rise and demise of the western movie. It's not like there are hundreds of westerns being made now, as there were in the 40's and 50's.

How do you explain their decline?

There's no money to be made in them anymore. It costs too much to deal with animals. If you want a bear in your movie, it costs you $60,000 for one day.

Still, there's ''Deadwood'' on HBO. And we now even have a White House West.  You're a native Texan -- what do you think of the president's ranch in Crawford?

Memo to the new third-party President, 2016

James Fallows has constructed an imaginary memo, in the July-August Atlantic, to the sure-fire, third-party winner of the 2016 presidential election from his campaign manager.  The Democrats and Republicans have lost almost all support and are known as "the legacy parties."  The new party is a shoo-in.

When it comes to the old parties, the story boils down to this: the Democrats can't win, and the Republicans can't govern.

Politics is about stories, the campaign manager writes.

The story we will tell them begins fifteen years ago [2005], and it has three chapters. For public use we'll refer to them by the names of the respective administrations. But for our own purposes it will be clearer to think of the chapter titles as "Cocking the Gun," "Pulling the Trigger," and "Bleeding."

President falls apart disassembles

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. [From a transcript of today's press conference, at Whitehouse.gov.]

Ah, Mr. President, the absurdity, I fear, is yours. 

But perhaps not entirely.  I'd say those guys in Gitmo would like to disassemble right quick, go home, take a shower, get the pickle tickled, and lead a normal life.

Instability in Saudia Arabia

The unofficially permanent US military bases in Iraq are being built in (large) part because the future of Saudi Arabia is in doubt.  The Asia Times today has an article about what's ahead for the Saudis.  Al Qaeda is certainly part of the equation.

Plan B

Pepe Escobar writes about the French EU referendum and what will happen next.  He also writes something which needs to be reckoned with: 

The bottom line is that the Anglo-Saxon "liberalizing" model is a bonanza for a very limited class of already wealthy, basically white, Western men, but not exactly adjusted to increase social justice around the world.

Do we get that?  Do we understand it?