TUCSON, Ariz. -- Deaths along much of the Arizona-Mexico border are ahead of the record pace set two years ago despite tightened border security expected to discourage migrants from crossing, a border county medical examiner said. The office of Pima County medical examiner Dr. Bruce Parks, which performs autopsies on many of the illegal immigrants who die in Arizona, has tallied 181 bodies or sets of remains recovered between Jan. 1 and Sept 8. (...)Many of those victims have died because of the heat, which regularly exceeds 100 degrees during the hottest part of the Arizona summer. Much of the Arizona border is the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico frontier. "We still anticipate finding remains between now and the first of the month," said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of the Tucson-based Humane Borders group, which has had search parties out looking for bodies the last two weekends. (...)Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, said he believes more skeletal remains are being found because the agency's ramp-up of personnel and resources has more agents out patrolling remote, treacherous terrain. Hoover said the Border Patrol's efforts to shut off migration have just forced illegal immigrants to cross even more dangerous ground.
The office of Pima County medical examiner Dr. Bruce Parks, which performs autopsies on many of the illegal immigrants who die in Arizona, has tallied 181 bodies or sets of remains recovered between Jan. 1 and Sept 8.
(...)Many of those victims have died because of the heat, which regularly exceeds 100 degrees during the hottest part of the Arizona summer. Much of the Arizona border is the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico frontier.
"We still anticipate finding remains between now and the first of the month," said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of the Tucson-based Humane Borders group, which has had search parties out looking for bodies the last two weekends.
(...)Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, said he believes more skeletal remains are being found because the agency's ramp-up of personnel and resources has more agents out patrolling remote, treacherous terrain.
Hoover said the Border Patrol's efforts to shut off migration have just forced illegal immigrants to cross even more dangerous ground.
The Northwest Passage, the previously impassable shortcut between Europe and Asia in the Canadian Arctic, has now opened due to the shrinking of Arctic sea ice. The European Space Agency (ESA) has said that sea ice has shrunk in the Arctic to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around three million square kilometres, which is about one million square kilometres less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006." "There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100,000 square km per year on average, so a drop of one million square km in just one year is extreme." A shipping route through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic is viewed as a cheaper option to the Panama Canal for many shippers. The most direct route of the Northwest Passage across northern Canada is now "fully navigable", while the so-called Northeast Passage along the Siberian coast "remains only partially blocked," ESA said. While the Northeast Passage remained partially blocked, it may open sooner than expected, Pedersen said.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has said that sea ice has shrunk in the Arctic to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago.
Leif Toudal Pedersen of the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around three million square kilometres, which is about one million square kilometres less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006."
"There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100,000 square km per year on average, so a drop of one million square km in just one year is extreme."
A shipping route through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic is viewed as a cheaper option to the Panama Canal for many shippers.
The most direct route of the Northwest Passage across northern Canada is now "fully navigable", while the so-called Northeast Passage along the Siberian coast "remains only partially blocked," ESA said.
While the Northeast Passage remained partially blocked, it may open sooner than expected, Pedersen said.
THE highly respected former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, launches a harshly critical attack on President George W Bush's economic competence in his memoir published tomorrow. While his declaration that America's prime motive for the Iraq war was oil will set off one political storm, his onslaught against Republican fiscal mismanagement will cause another, just as the economy becomes a big issue in the primary election campaign. Greenspan's 531-page book will do little to restore faith in the Bush administration's claims of economic proficiency at a time when the markets are deeply unsettled. He has harsh words for Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the Republicans over their big spending and lack of financial discipline. They are contrasted with former president Bill Clinton, whom Greenspan clearly admires. He writes that Bush's failure to curb spending was "a major mistake" and that Republican congressmen were "feeding at the trough". "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," he says. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose [the 2006 congressional election]."
While his declaration that America's prime motive for the Iraq war was oil will set off one political storm, his onslaught against Republican fiscal mismanagement will cause another, just as the economy becomes a big issue in the primary election campaign.
Greenspan's 531-page book will do little to restore faith in the Bush administration's claims of economic proficiency at a time when the markets are deeply unsettled. He has harsh words for Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the Republicans over their big spending and lack of financial discipline. They are contrasted with former president Bill Clinton, whom Greenspan clearly admires.
He writes that Bush's failure to curb spending was "a major mistake" and that Republican congressmen were "feeding at the trough". "The Republicans in Congress lost their way," he says. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose [the 2006 congressional election]."
If one were to call him a lying sack of shit, one would not be inaccurate. It wasn't the spending that exploded the deficit, it was the tax cuts that he had concluded would be no fiscal problem. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Would it surprise anyone to learn that Alan Greenspan is a very wealthy man?
Given Greenspan's affection for Ayn Rand, one wonders what thing Bush might have done that didn't meet with Greenspan's approval.
As Jane Smiley wrote at HuffPo
What amazes me is that Republicans who are now exclaiming at what has happened to the Republican Party (and yes, I talked to my mother this morning) didn't see this coming. Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction. As I've said before on the HuffPost, all of this is the necessary consequence of traditional Republican values, not an accidental byproduct. Or maybe I'll put it this way -- when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future.
TOKYO, Sept. 15 -- Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators. Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms. Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name used because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she would spend her evenings buying and selling British pounds and Australian dollars. When the turmoil struck the currency markets last month, Ms. Itoh spent a sleepless week as market losses wiped out her holdings. She lost nearly all her family's $100,000 in savings."I wanted to add to our savings, but instead I got in over my head," Ms. Itoh, 36, said.Tens of thousands of married Japanese women ventured into online currency trading in the last year and a half, playing the markets between household chores or after tucking the children into bed. While the overwhelmingly male world of traders and investors here mocked them as kimono-clad "Mrs. Watanabes," these women collectively emerged as a powerful force, using Japan's vast wealth to sway prices and confound economists.
TOKYO, Sept. 15 -- Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators.
Ms. Itoh is one of them. Ms. Itoh, a homemaker in the central city of Nagoya, did not want her full name used because her husband still does not know. After cleaning the dinner dishes, she would spend her evenings buying and selling British pounds and Australian dollars.
When the turmoil struck the currency markets last month, Ms. Itoh spent a sleepless week as market losses wiped out her holdings. She lost nearly all her family's $100,000 in savings.
"I wanted to add to our savings, but instead I got in over my head," Ms. Itoh, 36, said.
Tens of thousands of married Japanese women ventured into online currency trading in the last year and a half, playing the markets between household chores or after tucking the children into bed. While the overwhelmingly male world of traders and investors here mocked them as kimono-clad "Mrs. Watanabes," these women collectively emerged as a powerful force, using Japan's vast wealth to sway prices and confound economists.
Malthus and Mein Kampf come to Cork For those who like their environmental gloom'n'doom spread with a thick dollop of Utopian totalitarianism and garnished with a slice of Galtonian pseudo-science, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas holds its sixth annual conference in Ireland this coming week. Present will be the usual motley of silk-suited Carbohypocrites - each avidly promoting their tax-eating, alternative-energy start-ups - a gang of anti-capitalist activists, a squawk of sensescent members of the poitical elite, and a whole Bronze Age roundhouse of associated Gaia worshippers.
For those who like their environmental gloom'n'doom spread with a thick dollop of Utopian totalitarianism and garnished with a slice of Galtonian pseudo-science, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas holds its sixth annual conference in Ireland this coming week.
Present will be the usual motley of silk-suited Carbohypocrites - each avidly promoting their tax-eating, alternative-energy start-ups - a gang of anti-capitalist activists, a squawk of sensescent members of the poitical elite, and a whole Bronze Age roundhouse of associated Gaia worshippers.
6 members of the Oil Drum (where I also write) will be at that conference, including in speaking roles.... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
