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d r i f t g l a s s: Oklahoma? Militia? State Sovereignty? Where have we heard that before?

Seeing the Forest: The Story of Cap & Trade

[Caution: graphic video not suitable for work or children. Full-length version here.]

On the fifth of April, WikiLeaks released a classified US military video from an Apache helicopter gunship as it killed over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007, including two Reuters new staff, as well as seriously wounding two young children. One of the journalists, gravely wounded in the attack, was then shot in a second barrage as he tried to crawl away, and his body run over by a Humvee. Since the attack, Reuters had been attempting to obtain this video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success. Now it is public for the first time.

Wikileak’s organisers were given the footage by an unnamed source, which they then decrypted and posted on-line. So far, the Pentagon has had no response. The high-quality video, according to BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington, appears to be authentic, and includes the recording of the pilot’s radio transmission and troops on the ground. Wikileaks has also published a statement from Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlessinger saying that the video was ‘graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result’.

Wikileaks has complained of surveillance and harassment by the US and other governments, primarily for their role in leaking documents on sensitive subjects, from the assassination of human rights lawyers in Nairobi, photos of murders committed in Tibet followed by a mass attack on Swedish servers by Chinese computers in retaliation, threats by the head of Germany’s BNP of prosecution over a report of CIA involvement in Kosovo, and more. This tiny blogsite, which won Amnesty International’s 2009 media award, is nearly broke and has depended on donations from human rights groups, journalists, technology experts and simply concerned individuals for survival, a ludicrous game of David and Goliath of the internet.

But it seems someone within the DoD or US Army Counterintelligence or CIA or somewhere still believes in the public’s right to know what our elected government is up to. According to documents leaked to Wikileaks, even our own government has conspired to shut down the organization, including exposing sources and identifying whistleblowers and retaliating by termination of employment, criminal prosecution, defamation of the organization to weaken its credibility. The lessons of Valerie Plame and the Freedom of Information Act be damned.

Be warned. This video is not for the faint-hearted. I watched the whole thing. It made me feel ill, but I watched it all. It's the least I could do for those people who lost their lives. At one point you can even see one of the men from the van trying to rescue the wounded journalist looking up at the helicopter, he knew it was there. He knew what he was risking, and tried to help anyway. The bravery of that man is astounding. And he died. If it were left up to our own government, he would have died without you or me or anyone else ever knowing, our ignorance the biggest weapon in any military arsenal. If this ungodly, horrible war is ever to end, it is not only the public’s right to know what we have done and are still doing in Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is our responsibility to demand to know.

What truly bothers me is the absolute callousness of the conversation going on in the Apache helicopter. Beyond the 'fucking prick' and the 'bastards' comments, it's the laughter, particularly during the shooting as if it's all just a video game, cheering each other on as the wounded journalist crawls on the ground, willing him to reach for a ‘weapon’ so they can shoot him again, laughing when his body is run over by a military truck. The comment when the crew realized children have been wounded was shocking: ‘Well, it’s their own fault for bringing their kids to a battle.'

Bringing their kids to a battle? Those children live there! This wasn't a 'battlefield' - it was just an ordinary neighbourhood that got pasted by an American helicopter, twice. We brought the war to them. Where the hell were the kids supposed to have been? Loma Linda? Ann Arbor? Tampa?

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Fox's War on Global Warming continues.

Yesterday, both Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity featured segments on their Fox shows jumping on the climate-change denialists' latest fake controversy: the bogus claim that climate scientist Phil Jones' interview with the BBC somehow included admissions that global warming isn't real.

Beck's teaser called it "the biggest scam of the generation," and wondered: "Anybody seen Al Gore?"

Beck himself claimed that Jones suggested that another warming period recorded in Europe during the Middle Ages was as deep as the current period, but that there was no consensus on whether the warming was global:

Phil Jones admits, yes, no real consensus on this one. Too much debate on whether an event known as the medieval warming period, yes, was global in nature and hotter than it is like right now.

So, to quote, obviously, the late 20th century was not unprecedented. Oh, good.

Beck also argues that the Jones interview should cause every government in the world to halt their efforts toward curbing greenhouse gases: "If this were about science, wouldn't science matter just a little bit?"

Hannity repeated all of Beck's claims. Hannity sneered that Al Gore should be happy that he doesn't have to feel guilty about "hopping on that private jet anymore."

But as Media Matters points out, their characterizations of Jones' BBC interview are typically misleading.

Most of the points they cite are distorted: Jones, for instance says that the Middle Age cooling is only significant it could be shown to have been global in nature.

Moreover, he also says that the cause of previous warming periods differs from "recent warming," which is "predominantly manmade":

During his Q&A with BBC, Jones stated that "the warming rates" of previous warming periods after 1860 are "similar and not statistically significantly different" from the most recent warming period. Jones was later asked, "If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the WMP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?" Jones responded, "The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing." He further stated that it would not be reasonable to conclude that "recent warming is not predominately manmade" from the evidence that there have been previous periods of warming since 1850.

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Five years later, the people hit by the Boxing Day tsunami are still struggling to recover:

Countries across the Indian Ocean are marking the fifth anniversary of the catastrophic tsunami that killed almost 250,000 people.

In Indonesia's Aceh province, where 170,000 died, thousands held prayers in public mosques and private homes.

On Thai beaches, Buddhist monks chanted prayers as mourners held pictures of loved ones lost five years ago.

Hundreds of tourists also returned to Phuket island to mark one of the worst natural disasters of modern times.

A moment of silence was observed on Phuket's popular Patong Beach marking the time the tsunami struck.

German survivor Ruschitschka Adolf, 73, and his wife Katherina waded into the turquoise seawater to lay white roses as a tribute to the dead.

"We [still] come and stay here because we are alive," Mr Adolf told Reuters news agency.

Other ceremonies were expected in the 14 countries hit by the massive wave.

In the meantime, agencies from around the world are still trying to rebuild in a place where all the boundaries have disappeared.

Boy, that's a pretty big jump. The new numbers include deaths indirectly caused by flu complications like pneumonia:

Swine flu has killed nearly 4,000 people in the US, including 540 children, officials said after devising a new counting method.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the new system is based on more precise figures provided by 10 states.

The previous estimated death toll from the H1N1 virus in the US was 672.

Latest figures show about 22 million Americans contracted the virus in six months with some 98,000 hospitalised.

"This is just the first six months and I am expecting all of these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise," said Dr Anne Schuchat of the CDC.

She said that, although still imprecise, the new statistics provide "a bigger picture of what has been going on in the first six months of the pandemic".

The CDC now estimates that 3,900 people in the US have died from the virus in the past six months.

Dr Schuchat said that in children under 18, an estimated eight million have had swine flu, with 36,000 hospitalised and 540 deaths.

The new estimated death toll for children is four times higher than the previous estimate.

"We will be updating the toll that the pandemic has taken... about every three to four weeks," she said.

Via Raw Story, something that proves more than ever that wingnuts are nothing but a bunch of WATBs. Now one is complaining that two years ago, Oscar the Grouch made a crack about "Pox News":

Forget Tinky-Winky, or whatever his name was. Meet Oscar the Grouch.

A conservative blogger at Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" website -- the onetime right-hand man for conservative maven Matt Drudge -- is now targeting Sesame Street for its "unfair" portrayal of Fox News as "trashy news show."

Evidently, Oscar the Grouch's "GNN" is not trashy enough. (Oscar, the furry green puppet, if you remember, lives in a trash can.)

During a Sesame Street segment, Oscar finds himself interviewing a puppet celebrity. A crabby viewer calls in to rebuke him after one of his subjects begins kissing him.

“I am changing the channel," the viewer crows. "From now on I am watching ‘Pox’ News. Now there is a trashy news show.” Story continues below...

Breitbart's "Stage Right" blogger will have none of it -- even though the episode was originally broadcast two years ago and only recently re-aired.

"If Mom and Dad watch cable news, it’s better than 50/50 they watch 'POX News,'" the blogger pens. "So what gives? PBS — a network partially funded with my tax dollars — has the right to tell my kids that their parents watch “trashy” news?

"The message is clear," the blogger continues. "I can’t even sit my kids in front of 'Sesame Street' without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority. And don’t tell me, 'If you don’t like it change the channel.' There are no channels left! It’s everywhere. Just last week I had Obama’s service and volunteerism promoted on every single major network, including Disney and Nickelodeon."

Yeah, no channels left, and certainly no conservatives. No "Morning Joe," no Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, David Frum... oh, never mind. What's the use?