All the media hype notwithstanding, this year's arctic ice isn't going to disappear.  In fact, there is today more ice in the arctic than this day last year.  In fact, there is almost 1 million square kilometers more.  In fact, there is more ice today than there was on this date in 2006 and in 2005.  There is more melting to be done but we are, this week, in the period of greatest melt and 2007 is losing ground to 2007.

The loss of ice over the past couple of years appears to have been more to do with changes in wind patterns than with changes in temperature.  Arctic air temperatures have not been unusually warm and ocean temperatures globally have cooled somewhat in the past few years. It appears that the winds pushed more of the ice than usual past Greenland into warmer waters where it melted away.  This year's wind patterns are apparently more benign in that regard.

This past winter showed the fastest and most extensive sea ice recovery every documented. Media outlets have been reporting that since this year's ice was new ice, it would be easier to melt.  That is because first-year ice has a higher salt water content and melts at a lower temperature. Multi-year "old" ice is also more compressed and denser causing it to melt more slowly at a given temperature.  It seems this year's ice is thicker than previously thought and this summer has not been as sunny in the arctic resulting in lower melt rates than predicted.

The major media can be expected to pick up on this story and widely report this year's great arctic ice recovery ... well ... probably when we see Satan on skis.

On 13 July 2008, 45 paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade along with 25 Afghan soldiers defeated a coordinated attack by 500 Taliban in Kunar province Afghanistan. Nine of the paratroopers were killed and 15 were wounded leaving 21 paratroopers and 21 Afghan soldiers to fight off an attack of 500 enemy.  Not only did they manage to kill dozens of the enemy, they also succeeded in repelling the assault. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this generation of Americans have stood and answered the call with amazing heroism.  Words fail me in my attempt to describe the pride and the gratitude in my heart.  The 173rd is based in Italy.  There will be no homecoming here in the US.  But if any unit in this war deserved a parade, it would be those of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.  What an amazing group of young Americans!

Well, first of all, it has been a long time since I wrote a blog entry here.  Life has been hectic with the tragic loss of a spouse, suddenly being a single parent of two elementary schoolers, and changing jobs in the middle of that adjustment.  But we adapt and life goes on. Now to blogging!

I thought something was fishy with the employment numbers released today when all I heard on the radio on my way home from work was that the US "lost" some 60,000 jobs but no mention was made of the unemployment rate.  So I went and looked it up a few minutes ago and as I suspected, the unemployment rate was unchanged from last month.  How, you might ask, can the economy "lose" 60,000 jobs and the employment rate remain unchanged?  Easy; companies are cutting unfilled positions.  They are eliminating jobs that they have been unable to fill.  And this phenomenon is going to become more common as more of the "baby boom" generation retires.  We are going to see a period where workers will be leaving the workforce at a faster pace than people are entering.  In other words, the reverse of the situation we saw in the 1960's and 1970's when we had more people entering the workforce than the economy could absorb and saw rising unemployment.

All of the reports seemed to be grasping for bad news.  They were along the lines of "while unemployment remained steady at 5.5%, May's rate jumped by the largest amount in ...". In other words, they had to reach back a couple of months and regurgitate May's bad news.

The perceptions of what constitutes a good economy and what constitutes a bad economy were formed back when we had the largest single generation of Americans in history in the job market.  That generation is now on its way to retirement.  A 5.5% unemployment rate is right at the edge of "optimal" unemployment rates.  4.5% to 5.5% is considered the desired range that is sustainable over time.  The double digit unemployment rates of the late 1970's is apparently gone from the American memory.

The loss of jobs when an economy is losing workers is actually a GOOD thing.  You do not want a situation where unemployment drops much below 4.5% because then there aren't enough workers "between jobs" for business to hire new workers simply to replace ones that leave over the normal course of career advancement.  Below 4% you get into a situation where businesses begin to "bid up" salaries in order to attract what labor you can get and that labor is probably less qualified because at that point, all the people who are sharp at what they do are already working.  That was the situation in Silicon Valley during the dot-com bubble.  Companies could not find workers at any price and the salaries being paid to even entry-level employees were through the roof.  That situation is not sustainable over the long term for an economy as a whole.  What actually happens is that companies start trading workers around as they bid salaries up.

So today's unemployment numbers really aren't such bad news at all.  Business cut 60,000 jobs but they were either unfilled positions or a corresponding number of people who had been out of work in May had been able to start new jobs or a combination of both.  The place where I work added two new job openings in the past month and we have two positions to fill due to people changing jobs on their own.

The retirement of the baby boom is going to challenge all the notions we have about economics.  We are going to see people retiring in droves within the next few years.  Businesses are going to have a hard time finding the labor to fill those positions.

Happy Independence Day!

I hear a lot of highly charged rhetoric when it comes to the proposed immigration bill and I sense a lot of emotion in the argument from all sides.  I want to take a moment to share a view from a different perspective that is not based so much on political position and is one of basic mathematics and economics.

The unemployment rate in the US is currently a little under 5%.  When unemployment drops too low, business has a hard time growing because they can not expand without difficulty.  When all people in a given field are working, a business must raise wages to attract a worker away from another business. This results in everyone raising their wages to keep the workers they have and raising their prices to pay for it.  And so begins a spiral of inflation as wages and prices go up but one's standard of living doesn't improve in real terms.  A pool of unemployed acts as a lubricant on the economy to allow business to operate without causing wage-based inflation.

There are 6.8 million unemployed Americans according to the Department of Labor.  Depending on who you listen to there are 12 to 20 million illegal workers here.  If they were deported, our economy would face a disaster.  We don't have enough unemployed to take the jobs of the illegals.  In fact, America is going to be facing an increasing worker shortage as the boomers leave the workforce.  The generation coming up to replace them is smaller in number.  The boomers are still the largest single generation in our population.

I understand that people should not benefit from breaking a law and it bothers me that we might be letting some off the immediate hook with this proposed legislation but to do otherwise at this point might be cutting off our nose to spite our face.  We can turn the Mexican border into a fortress but that solves nothing.  We still have 12-20 million undocumented workers here and the influx of them would be cut in half but their numbers would still continue to increase.  Only half of illegals cross that border.  You can not deport them because it would hurt the economy and cost a lot of money.  You can't imprison them because we don't have the prison space.  You can't fine them because most are already living hand to mouth.

We need to know who is here.  We need to have them documented.  We need to create some serious incentive for them to get registered.  They need to pay their share of tax, particularly social security tax.  The boomers are going to be needing it. As much as I hate the thought of allowing someone to skate, I also believe that there is a time and a place where an adult must look at things and decide on a course that might be unpleasant but in the long term interest of the country.  I believe this proposal is better than anything I have seen to date in finding a way not to wreck our economy yet getting those people some kind of status where they can be kept track of.

In the 1970's and early 1980's our economy struggled as the boomers started coming into the workforce in great numbers.  Unemployment was high. Business was unable to expand at the pace that new workers were entering the workforce.  Many of our attitudes toward foreign labor are based on that era that we lived through.  Things are changing and in a hurry.  We are soon going to be faced with exactly the opposite problem. Our economy is going to shrink if we don't find a source of additional workers.  A guest worker program is the best option that I can see available at the moment.  Tossing out 12 million workers would leave about 6 million unfilled jobs in this country.  There is simply no way any of us can afford that.

Mohammed Abdullah Abbas Al Issawi was killed on April 20 in a coalition operation northwest of Baghdad. Officials said Al Issawi's cell used 12-year-old children as VBIED drivers.

May he burn in eternal Hell fire.

A story appearing on Reuters today has me enraged.  Terrorists in Iraq are now using children in car bombs to appear less threatening and get through checkpoints without close inspection.  But the real horror is that the drivers are leaving the vehicles and allowing the children to be blown up with the vehicle.

I am the father of two small children who are taught to respect their elders.  That adults would abuse the natural trust a child has in an adult as a figure of authority in order to transit a checkpoint is bad enough but that the adults would not even bother to save the children from slaughter when the bomb exploded is an unspeakable horror in any culture.  This crime defies any justification on any terms by anyone.  There is absolutely no justification anyone can give for it.

As far as I am concerned, it is time to break out the flame throwers.  We are not fighting civilized human beings with an ideological goal, we are fighting animals who would slaughter babies.  All restraint can now be taken off.  These animals must be wiped off the face of the earth.

I have nothing more to say.

There is evidence that Saddam's top command staff expected a long air campaign prior to a ground offensive.  Apparently the Iraqi strategy was to play up casualties and damage from air bombardment in the arena of world opinion in order to get any ground offensive stopped before it could begin.  But we took Iraq and indeed many military analysts completely off guard with a lightning fast advance that started at the same time as the air offensive.

Within a few weeks we had taken Baghdad and the Iraqi Army ceased to exist as a fighting force.  But we had a significant problem.  Saddam, his sons, and many of the high command of the military and Baath party had escaped capture or death.  Now imagine if Hitler and most of his military command and high party officials had escaped capture at the end of World War 2.  Things would have been much different.  At the end of that war, we were able to place ex party members back into civil service positions.  When it came time to reconstitute the German army, many former officers and men were reinstated.  We could not do this in Iraq. These people had sworn an oath of loyalty not to the nation of Iraq but to Saddam Hussein and his sons and henchmen.  We could not place these people back into responsible positions while Saddam and his cronies were on the loose.  It would have been impossible to capture these people if the government, army, and police were manned with people who had sworn loyalty to this bunch.  Instead, we were forced to purge the government and disband the army.  In other words, we had to staff an entire national infrastructure with people that had absolutely no experience in government or military service.

This is what I consider to be an important detail that many critics of our war effort fail to appreciate and our government fails to explain to the people of this country. Until Saddam, his sons, and his cronies were caught or killed, we could not use the experienced Iraqi talent to run the country and the military.  Instead we were forced to attempt to form a "National Guard" that fell apart as soon as they were tested by Baathist loyalists.

Even so, during this phase Iraq was relatively quiet compared to recent months.  Then something important changed.  Al Qaida sensed that there was a vacuum of power and the interim government was weak.  Islamist insurgents began streaming into the country stirring up sectarian strife by staging attacks on Shiites in addition to the Iraqi police and fledgling army.  They also targeted civilians and casualty rates began to climb.  In addition to Shiites, they targeted Sunnis who supported the government.  But it wasn't long before they overplayed their hand and the Sunnis began to turn against them.

In the meantime, in the US, the news media began playing on this prolonged strife as "proof" that we had been ill prepared to "keep the peace".  I believe we were prepared to pacify the existing population and deal with Baathist dead enders but what is not reported by the media or explained by our government is who fundamentally the war changed.  The war we find ourself fighting now is a completely different war than the one that started in February 2003. Al Qaida entered the theater of battle en mass and converted it from a pacification and security operation to a full blown anti-islamist insurgency.  It was Afghanistan and Somalia added together and multiplied by four.  Al Qaida decided that they could use a marginally popular war to hand the US a resounding defeat while the attention of the world was focused on the events in Iraq.

I just witnessed the burial of as fine a man as I could ever hope to see lead our country.  There was nobody here, just me and the television.  When Taps played, I rose to my feet and gave a most solemn salute.  Gerald Ford was the first President I had served under while in the service to my country.  I thought that I might look foolish to someone who happened to glance in the window just then.  Then I wondered if other veterans had found themselves ever giving a silent salute out of heartfelt respect at the passing of a deserving soul.  I had only done that once before ... for Ronald Reagan ... again toward the television as he was laid to rest.  It's okay, they deserved it, they earned it.  Then I realized that there is only one remaining President who I served under.  I don't know what I will be doing the day he is laid to rest.  And that right there says plenty.

Our news media has become an utter failure in providing the American public with information on which to base decisions.  Its behavior, by and large, has lately been rather despicable in reporting fabricated information as fact, treating our official sources as less authoritative than sources from sworn enemies, and distributing obviously staged and/or doctored news photographs.

A recent example is the death of Taliban senior commander Akhtar Mohammad Osmani who was reported by our official government sources to have been killed by a US aircraft after having been tracked for some period of time and engaged in a remote area where collateral injuries would be unlikely.  Instead, our media reported the Taliban's own version that it was someone else who had been killed mentioning our official sources in a skeptical tone with the implication that we had missed our target and struck someone else.  This was after our officials stated that they were quite sure and only released the information after they had themselves confirmed it.

Recently the Associated Press has been caught publishing stories that  apparently never happened from a source who apparently doesn't exist.  Other bloggers on the story ( I learned of it from reading Curt's articles at floppingaces.net ) have determined that there were some 61 published articles using this source who has still not been produced.   The response by the Associated Press to date has been to go into their archives, change the articles to make it appear as if they never reported those things, attack the bloggers that called them on it, and going forward have been simply citing no sources at all for their information. 

Reuters and AP were caught distributing obviously staged photojournalism during the recent conflict in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel.  One of Reuters' photographers was caught doctoring photographs to make them appear more dramatic than they actually were.

All of this appears to stem from two different causes.  First, the wire services are creating a market for sensational journalism by repeating it without verification.  A "stringer" can get published if dramatic stories of lurid incidents with high casualty counts are brought in.  No attempt is apparently made to confirm these stories, and sources are not followed up on or named. Enterprizing locals are competing with each other to get their stuff published and reap the economic benefit.  The other shoe is an apparent desire by the press to show anything our government does in a bad light.  Coupled, these two things result in an evil synergy that result in inflated reporting of casualties and incidents to the point where nothing they publish can be believed on the face of it.

Members of our journalism trade have abused a trust that was gained during the Watergate era when they exposed wrongdoing by powerful people in government.  They have now resorted to publishing anything negative that fits an apparent political agenda regardless of the accuracy of it.  As the major wire services are caught more often, the impact of their reporting lessens to the point of being a mockery of journalism.  They are going to find their influence waning, their stories no longer being a valid reference, and people turning to alternative sources for information.  Being "truthy" won't work, they must be truthful.

A CENTCOM source recently told a blogger by email that the daily body counts reported on the wire services for bodies found about Baghdad, Iraq are about double the number they can confirm from their sources.  One would think CENTCOM has access to their own sources such as security forces and medical response teams in addition to Iraqi ministries including Defense and Interior.  But somehow the wire services anonymous sources are consistently double official sources and are never named so that these claims can be followed up on.  Also, the location of the various finds are never produced, only the magical daily aggregate count is ever reported.  Where did it come from?  Who knows.

The most telling action by the wire services has been their patronizing behavior toward anyone who would dare question their veracity.  That might work once.  But as their reporting is exposed as being inaccurate, their browbeating of critics begins to be seen in a different light.  They have become the very kind of monster they would have wanted to bring down in the 1970's.  They are covering up lies, they are attempting to intimidate and ridicule investigators into their behavior, they are becoming evil.

This is not the first time the media has attempted to go back in time and edit archives to cover up inaccurate reporting.  I documented a case of this by the ABC News blog The Blotter earlier this year.  Who knows what they are editing even now.  Will future historians researching events in the future find an entirely different version of history that what actually transpired?  The beauty of hard copy on microfilm is that it can not be changed at some later point in time to pretend it said something different.  The problem with electronic media archives is that they can be.  Our media outlets have already been caught changing these archives. All we are now wondering about is to what degree they will do it in the future.  The trust is gone, the media have squandered it.  I hope that some day they manage to get it back but that will take a very rare commodity in today's culture ... integrity.  Integrity is what you do when nobody is looking.  Our news media has shown us that they are lacking in this trait.

It is not the job of the journalist to make the world a better place though their work.  It is their job to reflect the world as it is.  They should not paint a picture of what they would want us to see, they should show us what is beyond our horizon as accurately as possible because once they are caught telling us lies, we may never trust them again.

Journalists and journalism teachers, you have a tough job ahead.  Convince us that you can tell the straight truth.  Then maybe your work will have more impact.  Right now I would say it is going in the opposite direction.

It appears that a new political reality is taking shape in Iraq that could be a way forward out of the current violent struggle between factional militias.  Over the past few weeks, an alliance of more moderate political groups spanning the entire nation of Iraq to include Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds has taken shape.  This group has apparently offered to put its backing behind Iraqi President Maliki so that he may address the problem of the radical militias without losing support in the Iraqi assembly.

The current Iraqi government was beset with two realities that prevented it from taking action against these radical militias.  First there was a problem with political alliances.  Shiites could only maintain their majority as a voting block in the assembly if they remained together.  A combined Kurdish/Sunni alliance could dominate if there was any fracture of the Shiite block.  Also, all sides wanted a government that was not a threat to them.  As such the government was designed to be weak so as to pose no threat.  Should the government move against any militant faction, that faction could pull out of their political alliance and Maliki's support in the assembly could be toppled.

What has now appeared is an alliance that transcends religious or ethnic factions.  Apparently the desire to stop the violence is now a higher priority than ethnic or religious concerns.  Rather than call for the ouster of Maliki, which would throw the government into turmoil for weeks or possibly even months, they have thrown their backing behind him and are encouraging him to take action with promises of their support provided some of their own conditions are met.

What is most interesting is that top Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is apparently supportive of this direction.  His blessing would pave the way for wide Shiite acceptance of this plan and the development of a pan-Iraqi alliance to fight the militias.  In particular, it makes moot any threats people such as Moktada al Sadr might make to derail this opportunity.  In fact, this entire alliance seems designed to thwart just the kind of action that al Sadr has threatened with his walkout of the assembly some three weeks ago. 

In the meantime, President Bush has met with other political leaders of this alliance who have recently traveled to Washington to present their views on this plan.  The message is simple and clear.  The Iraqis have grown tired of the violence being waged by Iraqis on Iraqis and have finally found the will to form the political backing needed for a solution.  al Sadr is now on notice as his position is considerably weaker if he chooses to remain on the wrong side of this alliance. 

In fact, some inkling of how important al Sadr sees these events is reflected in reporting by the AP today where the notion of a one month unilateral ceasefire by his Mahdi Army is being floated.  al Sadr is set to meet soon with delegates from this alliance followed shortly thereafter by a meeting with Ayatollah Sistani.  The New York Times reports in an article dated December 20, 2006 that the door for Shiite participation in this alliance is to be initially open very wide to allow maximum initial participation.  As time passes, this door is expected to begin closing.  The alliance appears to have enough votes already to moot any antics by al Sadr so his room for any serious derailing manoeuvres is limited.  In other words, the specter of irrelevance is before him and if he wishes to remain a political force within the government, he needs to bring his militia under control.

This is the first post-election (Iraqi election, that is) good news I have seen and bold steps such as these are what is needed to bring peace to Iraq.  The Iraqis seem to have realized what we had been trying to tell them all along.  They have had the power to put an end to this internal violence, they simply needed the will to do so.  When if finally became obvious that the situation was not going to sort itself out and that hundreds of Iraqis were dying every month in the sectarian strife, the Iraqis have appeared, so far, to show a desire to rise above sectarian and religious differences, band together, and face the toublemakers.  And they are facing their troublemakers with an olive branch in one hand and a sword in the other.  It is up to them to choose which they want.

I wouldn't say it is a new dawn in Iraq just yet, but it does appear that I can see the first brightening of the early twilight on the horizon.

Now that 2006 has nearly come to a close, I wanted to take a moment to share what I think has been the most important story of the year.  That would be the major wire services being caught red-handed falsifying the news. From the wire services running doctored and staged news photos, false captioning, to publishing of news reports of deliberately inflated casualty counts and in some cases events that never happened, the media has been exposed due to people questioning what we are being fed.  The Internet has allowed us to access expertise of millions of other people.  What one person might have noticed in the past can now be shared and verified by a concerned public in seconds.

When the wire services published photos of the same person before several different buildings in pictures transmitted days apart, people noticed.  When pictures contained obvious doctoring to make the pictures appear worse than they really were, people noticed.  When it became obvious to some that pictures were being staged, they called attention, others looked, more dug through past photos and the fraud was brought to light.

I was greatly saddened by the death of our journalistic ethic in this country until I realized that it hasn't died, it has simply moved.  Where the major media outlets are now engaged in partisan political propaganda, the real ethical reporting seems to have moved to the blogs.  People are calling the major media on their fabrications.  They are making the obvious propaganda transparent.

I agree with Time magazine's selection of Person Of The Year.

Well done, everyone.  Now let's get back to work!

I haven't blogged here in a while.  But since we have been voted Person Of The Year by Time, I just thought I would take a moment to thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

The French now seem to be backing away from the notion that a security force should be in place in Southern Lebanon before Israel withdraws.  This worries me because the idea that Israel should withdraw and some kind of beefed up UNIFIL should "monitor" the situation seems to me to ensure that we are destined to repeat the war that is going on now.

Hezbollah is not a government.  They are a copy of Iran's ruling party (also called Hezbollah) and their ultimate goal is to copy Iran's Islamic Republic in Lebanon.  But in the meantime, they are not a government.  The world can not sanction them.  The UN has nothing in their array of options to use to enforce any resolutions they might break.  In fact, the UN can not even pass a resolution against Hezbollah because Hezbollah is not a nation-state. 

If Israel would totally withdraw, Hezbollah would return to those areas within 24 hours.  If the plan is for Israel to withdraw before deciding on any buffer force, then we are talking insanity.

The UN is a feeble, corrupt, ineffective, bunch of cronies who are unable to produce anything besides marks on paper.  And so because of this foolishness of even considering an Israeli withdrawal before putting a real buffer force into place, many more people are going to be killed.  The French and the Arabs could save many lives both now and in the future if they would agree to some mechanism that ends Hezbollah's armed presence in Southern Lebanon.  Instead, they seem to be taking a path that will increase and prolong the suffering of people on both sides.

The seems the international diplomatic community has gone completely insane and is willing to sacrifice as many lives as required to avoid actually having to act.  Frankly, it sickens me.

I am not a cartoonist but if I were, I would want to draw one that looks something like the following description:

Two guys are sitting on a park bench one looks like Nasrallah and he has a black eye and is a little disheveled.  The other guy looks like Ahmadinejad and he is reading the paper.  The headline is visible and it says something like "Multinational Force Arrives".  Nasrallah is looking at Ahmadinejad and is saying "Any more bright ideas?".