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Democrats have finally come together on Iraq, issuing a joint statement signed by 12 leaders (including Pelosi, Reid, and Murtha) calling for commencement of troop withdrawal by the end of the year.

Hallelujah and glory be. They’re finally enunciating what Americans already know to be true: “Over 2,500 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice and over 18,000 others have been wounded,” the statement said. “The Iraq war has also strained our military and constrained our ability to deal with other challenges.” Bush’s “open-ended commitment” to Iraq should be abandoned, the statement said, in the interest of “American national security, our troops, and our taxpayers” who have paid $300 billion in three years and are paying $3 billion a week now.

The Republican response was the typical “cut and run” drivel, as they continue to stick their heads in the sand and ignore the reality of the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in a generation that Bush has inflicted on this country.

We have been in Iraq for three years, losing our friends and family members to a war without purpose. We have held fast for those three years and tried to make the best of a grave mistake. We have allowed the Treasury to be bled dry, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent against future generations that could have been used to greatly improve America’s own future at home. We have CREATED terrorism instead of stopping it by giving great cause for the rest of the world to detest us. We have been crippled in our ability to respond to real threats to America like Iran and North Korea. America’s experiment in imposing democracy in a manner that was not wanted has been a complete failure. Here we are, three years later, and we are WORSE off by far than we were before.

What the Democrats propose is not “cut and run.” It’s called “cutting your losses short.”

It’s time for the Iraqis to realize that we are getting ready to leave and will not be able to use our military presence as a crutch anymore. They need to understand that if they’re serious about not having a bloodbath on their hands they better get their act together quickly on government and civil order. Iraq is comprised of people who absolutely hate each other and who apparently require a brutal regime to keep them living together in some semblance of harmony. There may simply be no way to keep a united Iraq in a democracy, and leaders on all sides need to put all options on the table for a quick resolution. America’s presence there has facilitated postponement of these difficult issues as Iraqis engage in endless debate while they kill each other and destroy each others’ mosques. Iraqis clearly have no respect for America’s puppet government in Baghdad, so let them determine their own fate in a manner of their choice.

It’s time to stop imposing our view of the world on people who do not want it..and it’s about damn time we brought our troops home and out of harm’s way.

I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve just been following technology news more closely lately or if it’s some other reason, but recent news of technological advances seems to be spinning further and further into the realm of science fiction. It seems that a clearer picture of what’s coming in the medium and long term is starting to emerge, and the results seem astonishing to me.

Centerblue.org will cover technology news occasionally given the importance of research in maintaining America’s technological edge and standard of living.

Computers/Artificial Intelligence/Robotics:

• Quantum Leap. Emerging technology in quantum computing will allow a laptop to have more power than trillions of today’s supercomputers. “The age of computing has not even begun,” says one research scientist. “What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus.”
• Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves. Forget keyboards and mice. Soon, perhaps as early as 2012, we will command computers with our thoughts. As if that weren’t enough, communicating with another human being by using thought alone is not far behind (think instant messaging without having to type.) Yea, telepathy. Already it is possible to do things like open email and play Pong using thought alone. You won’t even need an implant to do all of this, but simply wear a cap.
• Brainy robots start stepping into daily life. Last year, a Pentagon-funded competition succeeded in getting a car to cross over 100 miles of desert with absolutely no human intervention. Next year, a similar competition will attempt to maneuver a car through urban traffic without human help. Additionally, within three years you’ll be able to parallel park a BMW simply by pushing a button.
• This is a computer on your brain. A new brain-machine interface allows image recognition faster than human consciousness currently allows.
• MIT researchers watch brain in action. New technology allows scientists to observe the brain in real time as it responds to experiences. Unlocking the keys to the brain’s functionality will accelerate the development of artificial intelligence.
• Robot destroys lung tumors quickly. “Synchrony” can track and target tumors that move as a result of breathing, allowing targeted bombardment with radiation. It can reduce treatment of lung cancer from dozens of hospital visits to 1-3 sessions.
• Wine-tasting robot to detect fraudulent bottles. A new robot will be able to verify that the wine in a bottle matches its label.

Biotechnology

• Building Artificial Viruses. We now have the capability to create artificial viruses using information readily available on the Internet. Yes, it is now possible to create life out of non-life. While the technology has great potential for everything from creating vaccines to cleaning up the environment, it also potentially very dangerous. Terrorist groups could design super-killer microbes in a matter of days and unleash them on unsuspecting populations. It makes the recently written-about biodefense facility being built by the US all that much more relevant.
• Carbon nanotubes you can live with. Carbon nanotubes have been made bio-compatible, whereas before they were toxic to cells. This advancement opens the possibility of a machine/biology interface at the cellular level.
• Researchers transform stem cells found in human fat into smooth muscle cells. They could eventually be used to repair tissue in blood vessels, intestines, and the urinary tract.

Along with news over the weekend that Mel Gibson had been stopped for drunk driving, allegations surfaced that he engaged in a long anti-Semitic tirade against the deputies who arrested him. “F*cking Jews,” he allegedly said. “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” he also said and then asked the officer, James Mee, “Are you a Jew?”

Gibson’s post-arrest response was predictable: “I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.”

Given previous suspicions of his anti-Semitic views and his overly harsh depiction of Jews in “The Passion of the Christ,” I find his apology hard to believe–and find it more likely that he was revealing the truth of his feelings under the influence of alcohol.

This brouhaha could well put an end to his Hollywood career.

There are other controversies brewing over whether the deputies at first tried to cover up Gibson’s remarks, and also over why mainstream news outlets declined to initially report on Gibson’s tirade. I find the latter observation interesting in light of what’s going on in the Middle East right now.

Today’s New York Times editorial page endorsed Ned Lamont in his primary challenge against Connecticut’s struggling Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, and condemned the senator in stunningly harsh tones.

Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates.

Citing national security, Mr. Bush continually tries to undermine restraints on the executive branch: the system of checks and balances, international accords on the treatment of prisoners, the nation’s longtime principles of justice. His administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were “more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq” than on supporting the war’s progress.

At this moment, with a Republican president intent on drastically expanding his powers with the support of the Republican House and Senate, it is critical that the minority party serve as a responsible, but vigorous, watchdog. That does not require shrillness or absolutism. But this is no time for a man with Mr. Lieberman’s ability to command Republicans’ attention to become their enabler, and embrace a role as the president’s defender.

…

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Wow. I have to agree. Bi-partisanship is a good thing…but if Lieberman had his way he would allow Bush to trample the Constitution unimpeded. At a time when America is finally waking up to the severity and causes of its problems, we just no longer need someone like Joe Lieberman.

The State Department announced today that Israel would briefly suspend bombardment of southern Lebanon in the wake of an attack in Qana that killed over 50 people, mostly women and children. There was no announcement from Israel itself.

Could someone explain why the US State Department is speaking for Israel? Does Israel not have a foreign minister? I can’t understand why the US can’t attempt some semblance of neutrality. Instead it seems content to fan the flames of hatred in the Arab world and let them think that the US and Israel or synonymous–or worse yet, that the US speaks for and is accountable for Israel’s actions.

Just when you thought the news about the environment couldn’t possibly get any worse, it does. The Los Angeles Times is beginning a five-part series today that focuses on the magnitude of destruction we are unleashing on our unseen but essential ocean habitats.

The first article in the multimedia series, “A Primeval Tide of Toxins,” talks about how humanity is quickly knocking the oceans back millions of years on the evolutionary scale. The problem is with the huge amounts of human sewage and fertilizer run-off from farms being dumped into the oceans every day. These substances essentially serve as nutrients for certain species of weeds, algae, and jellyfish that are quickly choking all life around them. They threaten many species, from fish to coral reefs, with imminent extinction as the latter are deprived of oxygen and food.

The statistics and photos in the article are sobering and heart-wrenching to me:

• 75% of kelp forests, prime habitat for many fish, have disappeared off the coast of California in the last 50 years.
• 650 grey whales have washed up sick or dead along the West Coast in the last 7 years.
• 97% of elkhorn and staghorn coral off the coast of Florida has died since 1975.
• 150 ocean-depleted “dead zones” have been identified around the world, including a huge one the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana and Florida coasts.
• 90% of the world’s stocks of tuna, cod, and other big fish have disappeared in the last 50 years.

One element in the story I found ironic is that some of the weeds that are now choking fishermen’s nets all over the world are extremely toxic to humans, even if you’re just splattered with water that contained the weeds. It is as if these life forms that are suddenly proliferating have somehow realized that humankind is really their worst natural enemy and have devised a suitable defense.

It doesn’t have to be that way, unless we cherish the idea of a planet with oceans full of nothing but slime for future generations and for millions of years.

This article not only describes how China’s increasing pollution is now reaching the US (which at times now accounts for 25% of Los Angeles’s pollution), but also summarizes the severity of China’s environmental problems. Excerpts:

• 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China.
• China suffers 400,000 premature deaths each year due to pollution.
• China builds on average one new coal power plant every week.
• Car ownership in China is soaring 10% a year.
• China will exceed the US as the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases in the next decade.
• Chinese officials estimate overall pollution will quadruple in the next 15 years.

Faced with numbers like these, it is difficult not to be pessimistic about the inevitability of global warming and extreme environmental destruction. At least China is aggressively pursuing cutting energy use and increasing energy efficiency, but it will likely not be enough.

The Bush administration is building a massive bioweapons facility and plans to cloak the entire operation in absolute secrecy.

The facility is intended to anticipate bioweapon attack scenarios and plan responses. It will involve laboratory tests with a myriad lethal viruses, bacterial, and other biological agents. Unfortunately, in order to do this the lab has to actually make small amounts of bioweapons to test against, and that may put the US in violation of a treaty banning biological weapons.

There is no question in my mind that this facility must be built. The anthrax scare of 2001 showed how vulnerable our society is to a bioweapons attack. Ever-continuing advances in biotechnology make very real the possibility of some nation creating a designer virus capable of killing millions of people, and even existing viruses like smallpox can do that. We must stay ahead of this game.

However, secrecy is not the right way to go about this. Absolute transparency should be required.

My biggest concern is with quality control: how can we ensure that a facility as secret as this (more secret than nuclear labs) will not engage in misbegotten experiments or be negligent in such a way that could somehow cause some mutagen to escape?

Another issue is the bioweapons treaty. An expansive reading of the treaty might, in the minds of some, justify creation of limited amounts of material for defensive purposes only. However, how would we react if we were informed that another nation like Iran was developing a secret lab that would create small amounts of material “for defensive purposes only?” We would have no moral standing to prevent another nation from doing something we are doing ourselves. By creating the lab and keeping it secret, the Bush administration will engender suspicion that may actually cause more proliferation of biological weapons.

Transparency–which is not the same thing as giving away all secrets–would ensure that the public knows what’s going on in this facility, that good quality control measures are being kept in place, that experiments are humane and necessary, and that other nations can be confident of the lab’s good intentions. Unfortunately, Bush’s insistence on secrecy, so that he can do whatever he wants as usual, does not engender confidence in anyone or any country, and in his hands this lab will probably do more harm than good.

Apparently the State Department has been lying to Congress about the true cost and schedules of reconstruction projects in Iraq. An audit revealed it hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs–in one case exceeding the original budgeted cost by more than 400%. It’s good to know our tax dollars are hard at work.

House Republicans are finally willing to increase the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, shortly before an election over which they are very nervous. They are refusing to do so, however, unless the minimum wage hike is coupled with a cut to inheritance taxes on multi-million dollar estates.

What the hell?!

The GOP appears completely blind to charges that it cares about the rich at the expense of the poor. In the face of the Katrina catastrophe, record budget deficits, the war in Iraq, gas prices, and all the rest, the GOP simply cannot resist the temptation to cut taxes on those who need the cut the least–and it does so by brazenly conditioning the minimum wage increase on the tax cut. Our most impoverished workers deserve better than this; they deserve a straight up or down vote.

Unbelievable.