Day: October 23, 2013

Syria Is Still There

In these days of scandal after scandal….we Americans just do not have the time to worry about those of a month ago…….we have been way too busy worrying about defunding some law…..but while you were sitting around in your Aqua Man shorts eating Cheetos the world kept turning.

If you recall awhile back we had our shorts in a twist because of the chemical weapons used by that bastard Assad…..(pause here for reflection or to use Google)……..

Part of my daily routine is to read newspapers from around the world……mostly from the Middle East….and few days ago I came across this story……

Translated From Arabic

The OPCW said on Wednesday that its inspectors had checked 11 out of 20 sites identified by Damascus and destroyed chemical weapons equipment at six sites.

Inspectors are making “good progress” in making chemical sites inoperable, he said, although “a few” sites remain inaccessible for security reasons.

The organisation, which last week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the United Nations currently have about 60 experts working in Syria to eradicate chemical weapons, around a month after the OPCW accepted President Bashar al-Assad’s application to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, in a bid to stave off a possible Western military strike.

So far Syria has won rare praise for its cooperation with the inspectors, but the UN has stressed that key deadlines in the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons should be met.

This included verifying Syria’s disclosed chemical weapons, identifying key equipment, destroying production facilities and starting the destruction of Category 3 chemical weapons by November 1.

Syria has come to its senses and is on board with the destruction of the CWs…..I keep waiting for the US news to report on this…..and so far I have been disappointed.

So far the reports, not all but most, that work in a war are not very good at their jobs……and this is especially true by those working in the Middle East……

(Newser) – Journalists have given us the wrong impression about four Middle East wars since 9/11—but how did they blow it so badly? In the London Review of Books, Patrick Cockburn looks at how the media fumbled the ball in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In each case, he argues, reporters portrayed Western involvement as humanitarian and over-emphasized its military successes. “More than most armed struggles, the conflicts have been propaganda wars in which newspaper, television and radio journalists played a central role,” he writes. But why?

  • “Irregular or guerrilla wars are always intensely political,” he writes, requiring reporters to take secondary sources with a grain of salt and confirm facts on the ground. Great example: We thought the Iraqi army was crushed in 2003 by US airstrikes, but a closer look at their tanks showed that they had been abandoned long before those airstrikes arrived. The Iraqi army “had simply disbanded and gone home.”
  • The media oversimplified the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when they “dovetailed with political propaganda” that demonized Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. “The crippling inadequacies of the opposition were ignored.”
  • Reporters soaked up the revolutionary spirit that prevailed during the Arab Spring, believing that cell phones and Facebook had swept aside ancient Middle East antagonisms. No such luck, apparently.
  • But Cockburn defends journalists against the criticism that they just hide out in hotels: “A more substantive charge is that they write too much about firefights and skirmishes, the fireworks of war, while neglecting the broader picture that might determine the outcome.”

Click for Cockburn’s full piece.

I try to do my part to make reporting more accurate on the situation in the Middle East….most of the information the average American has is mostly false!

You Are Fracking Kidding Me?

We hear so much these days about the oil extraction technique, Fracking, is a common term…….Depending on what news outlet you are a fan of…..we NEVER get both sides of the controversy at the same time….instead we get one side or the other and NO one actually works off the same data to make their points….instead they pay some think tank to come up with a position that supports whichever side you fall down on……

To make an informed decision on whether to support or oppose the issue we need info…..

(Newser) – For as big a role as fracking plays in US energy production, the national conversation about it is sadly lacking, writes Gretchen Goldman at LiveScience. For that, blame the companies involved in the hunt for natural gas—along with inept government agencies, writes Goldman, an environmental engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Companies have “fended off citizens with silence,” she writes. “They say little about the technological practices they use, including information about the chemicals they inject into the earth and the wastewater that comes back.”

Meanwhile, state and federal agencies “have been asleep at the switch,” unable to keep up with industry advances and proper regulations. All this is not to say that fracking is evil—some communities might be perfectly willing to accept higher risks for the payoff. But the point is that the entire debate needs to get better so people can make informed choices, writes Goldman. “Science is like a trusty flashlight in these contentious debates,” she writes. “Let’s let it illuminate our path, no matter which road we take.” Click for her full column, or for a “toolkit” of information for citizens from the UCS.

To me it sounds like a great way to separate the oil from the sand……but it also sounds like there are more problems with the system that solutions for our oil consumption.  Until we have a meeting of both sides and hear both sides using the same data…there is NO way that an informed opinioon can be made….all we are doing is regurgitating talking points and slogans…..not the truth.