On this day

In 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama embarked from Lisbon on his first direct voyage to India.

In 1775, the Second Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania signed the Olive Branch Petition. The Petition was an attempt made by some of Britain's American Colonies to avoid a total break the mother-country and thus a revolutionary war. It was co-authored by John Dickerson and Thomas Jefferson with Dickerson being the primary author. Britain's King George III rejected the petition, thus preparing the Colonies for the escalation of the War and the Revolution effected by the War.

In 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in public by John Nixon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1822, the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelly died at sea near Viareggio, Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

In 1839, the industrialist, co-founder of Standard Oil and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York.

In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy sailed into Tokyo Bay. Perry would eventually force a reluctant Japan to open itself to relations with the United States.

In 1857, the psychologist Alfred Binet was born in Nice, France. Binet invented the first practical intelligence (IQ) test.

In 1885, the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch was born in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Bloch's interpretations of Marx and Hegel were of such a kind that they produced a body of work which eventually influenced theologians, philosophers and political activists in the New Left and elsewhere. His most notable book: Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope).

In 1908, the businessman, art collector, philanthropist and politician Nelson A. Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, was born in Bar Harbor, Maine.

In 1962, the philosopher and archivist Georges Bataille died in Paris.

One man’s experience with big Oil

A guest article

I asked and received permission to reproduce a discussion group post written by Wayne Marshall. (The original post can be found in a political debate that took place on a baseball website!) I asked because of Mr. Marshall's past experience as an activist who worked hard to defend his home environment in Alaska against the depredations of big oil and, more importantly, because of the intelligence and spirit expressed by his writing. I believe both testify to the pluck needed by those who wish to contest the power belonging to these mammoth corporations and to the governmental bodies which so often remorselessly serve these corporate interests.

Steve Zielinski

* * * * *

Is it not apparent by now that there has been little government oversight and regulation, and that this is what numerous presidents and congresses have expected or assented to by their actions and inactions. Those who have cried out for better standards — such as double hulled tankers — were ridiculed as causing too much cost. I find it sad that the State of Florida successfully lobbied for years to prevent any oil lease sales in federal waters near their shores, but now they are suffering from BP's failures in the Gulf.

My current position has not involved working with oil and gas industry issues, but I was heavily involved in the past.

In the later part of the 70's I worked with local communities on Kodiak Island, Alaska who expressed their opposition to OCS lease sale #46. That sale ultimately was cancelled. While the press release announcing the cancellation spoke to concerns expressed at the public hearing, most understood the main reason it was cancelled was because the oil industry was not prepared to pay any real dollars for the lease rights. This was sadly confirmed a year or so later when the Federal Government went forward with OCS lease sale #60 in the Shelikoff Straits; an oil and gas lease sale on the westerly side of the Island that locals protested with equal or greater vigor.

My work with oil industry issues continued off and on throughout the 80's and came to a close when I left Alaska in 1989; just 6 months after the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster. The community I worked with was located over 1,000 miles from the main site of the spill, but I was involved with preliminary preparations in case the oil reached our shores. I offer a few notes from my experience:

The industry always touted the quality of their technology, their ability to respond to a problem, and their track record in not experiencing a major spill. Unfortunately, as proved to be the case with the Exxon Valdez and now the Horizon, the track record of avoiding major disasters means nothing once the disaster occurs. The industry can tout a record of not having any tanker spills of greater than 500,000 gallons in a year, but if the net result is to have a tanker disaster of about 10,000,000 gallons every 20 years, the yearly avoidance record means little. Similarly, if the record is not having any deep water wells blow out and cause spills (spill — what a cute word for the amount of doom that has befallen the Gulf, like I accidently spilled a glass of milk) of less than 100,000 gallons in any particular year, that record means nothing if the net result is to have a disaster every 30 years or so that fouls the Gulf with more than 100,000,000 million gallons of oil. In short, the industry speaks to their record of avoiding problems, but once a major problem occurs, the industry is ill prepared to respond.

The oil industry will always find a way to go get the oil and they are willing to spend the needed money — man made gravel islands in the ice pack, the trans-Alaska pipeline, and the Deepwater Horizon as examples — but they commit few resources to effective clean-up technology. It is sad that one of the most effective clean-up methods is the equivalent of someone dropping a cloth in the ocean to collect oil, then wringing it out and repeating the action again and again. Skimmers are not that effective overall and are virtually useless in 6 foot waves, but the oil industry has always touted skimmers as an effective clean-up tool, which I guess means that the ocean is always to remain calm and compliant when a spill occurs.

The industry is a goliath. In the end, the industry always wins what they need. More areas open to leasing. More opportunities to explore and develop, even if they lack the technology to address problems that may occur. More opportunities to do business by handcuffing and co-opting the very organizations that are intended to provide oversight. After what you have seen in the Gulf — do you really believe that the oil industry has the ability to manage a spill beneath the ice pack (what is left of it) off the shores of northern Alaska? But, you and I both know that drilling will continue, and may even do so without any major disasters for years, until….

In the end, I believe the moratorium will lead to little change, that drilling will continue with little oversight, and that the story of the Gulf will begin to abate a short month or two after the well is eventually (hopefully) capped in mid-August. We will have learned a little, but not a lot, and our desire to cause real change in regulation of the oil industry will begin to abate. Unfortunately, in the Gulf, as occurred in Alaska, problems caused by this spill will continue for years and likely decades.

I believe that the Obama administration's performance in response to this spill leaves much to be desired. The best thing that has been accomplished is to establish a claim fund. The fish likely are gone for a long time, but at least fisherman may receive some financial compensation for their tragic loss. From where I sit, Obama, Bush (Jr.), Clinton, Bush (Sr.) and Reagan all bowed to the industry's interests and none have required sufficient regulation and oversight.

Wayne Marshall

Terrorism in Michigan

Michigan.com reports that:

Nearly 20 black families in one Eastpointe neighborhood received viscous, threatening letters Tuesday telling them they need to "move across 8 Mile."

"We tired of u n------ keep movin in are neighborhood!!" read the letter. "you need to move across 8 mile. we just need to start killing you n------ one by one!"

There also have been terrorist incidents related to the most recent one, and these included cross burnings and hate messages delivered to black residents.

Badenov in Washington

On this day

In 1846, troops of the United States began their occupation of Monterey and Yerba Buena; these occupations marked the beginning of the conquest of California, a campaign of the Mexican-American War.

In 1860, the composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was born in Kaliště, Čechy or Bohemia.

In 1863, the United States instituted its first military draft.

In 1887, the celebrated Russian-French-Jewish painter Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Belarus.

In 1892, militants in the Philippines formed the Revolutionary Philippine Brotherhood in order to resist Spain's Asian Empire.

In 1898, President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution. The Resolution formally annexed Hawaii, making the island chain a territory of the United States.

In 1930, the jazz saxophonist and composer Hank Mobley was born in Eastman, Georgia. Mobley mostly played in the hard-bop style that was current during his mature years.

In 1932, the jazz pianist and composer Joe Zawinul was born in Landstraße, Vienna, Austria. Although Zawinul played in many styles belonging to his genre, he is mostly remembered today for his work with the jazz-fusion band Weather Report, which he co-founded with the saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.

In 1940, the drummer, composer and actor Ringo Starr was born in Liverpool, England.

In 1953, the Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara embarked on his third Latin American tour.

In 1973, the German philosopher, social critic and political refugee Max Horkheimer died in Nuremberg, West Germany. He published his most important work, Dialektik der Aufklärung (The Dialectic of Enlightenment), with Theodor Adorno while both were living in exile in the United States.

In 1980, the Islamic Republic of Iran instituted Sharia.

On this day

In 1483, Richard III was crowned King of England. Shakespeare immortalized Richard's brief reign in his historical play Richard III. Richard died in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the decisive and penultimate battle of the War of the Roses. He remains to this day the last English King to die on the battlefield.

In 1785, the United States adopted the dollar as its official monetary unit.

In 1835, John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1854, the Republican Party of the United States held its first convention in Jackson, Michigan. The event signaled the demise of the Second Party System in the United States.

In 1855, the chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur successfully tested his rabies vaccine.

In 1887, the Monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, David Kalākaua, signed the so-called Bayonet Constitution. The Constitution acquired its peculiar name because King Kalākaua signed the document under duress. The Constitution as imposed rendered the King a figurehead and disenfranchised much of the native population and all of the non-European and -American foreign born. Hawaii, because of this imposed Constitution, became a colony dominated by the United States and Great Britain.

In 1892, strikers in Homestead, Pennsylvania battled agents of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency on the banks of the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The skirmish left 10 strikers dead and many more wounded.

In 1946, George W. Bush, the 43^rd President of the United States, was born in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1947, the first of the soon to be ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifles goes into production in the Soviet Union.

In 1959, the German painter, social critic of the Weimar Republic and revolutionary socialist George Grosz died in Berlin, West Germany.

In 1961, the jazz bassist Scott LaFaro died in an automobile accident in Flint, New York. LaFaro is best known for his work with the pianist Bill Evans.

In 1962, the novelist and Nobel Laureate William Faulkner died in Byhailia, Mississippi.

In 1967, Nigerian forces entered Biafra, thus initiating the Biafran or Nigerian-Biafran Civil War.

In 1971, the jazz trumpeter and singer Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong died in Corona, Queens, New York City.

In 1976, Zhu De, a Chinese Communist leader and the founder of the Chinese Red Army, died in Beijing, the People's Republic of China.

In 1989, the Hungarian communist leader János Kádár died in Budapest, Hungary.

In 2009, the one-time American Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara died in Washington, DC.

On this day

In 1687, Isaac Newton published the first edition of his seminal work, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).

In 1811, Venezuela declared its independence from Spain.

In 1830, France invaded Algeria.

In 1910, the sociologist Robert K. Merton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1934, during the 1934 West Coast Longshoreman's Strike, the San Francisco police, in an attempt to suppress labor action, opened fire on the strikers in what became known as Bloody Thursday. This led to a call for a local general strike by the San Francisco Labor Council and its member unions. San Francisco's Mayor responded by declaring a state of emergency. The strike concluded with the Labor Council choosing to go to arbitration on all disputed issues. The striking seamen chose to continue their strike, and their decision prompted government authorities to red-bait the strikers and their sympathizers, collude with vigilantes and agents of the employers and suppress the strike with violence.

In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act.

In 1943, the guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Robertson made his mark as the chief songwriter for the musical group The Band.

In 1950, Israel's Knesset passed the famous Law of Return. The law gave Jews and their non-Jewish spouses the right to immigrate into Israel and apply for citizenship.

In 1958, the cartoonist Bill Watterson was born in Washington, DC. Watterson gained his fame by writing and drawing the intelligent and influential Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

In 1962, Algeria gained its independence from France.

In 1969, Walter Gropius, a master architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, died in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon formally certified the Twenty-Sixth Amendment which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

In 1989, Oliver North was given a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service for his actions in the Iran-Contra Affair.

In 1991, the political activist and political prisoner Nelson Mandela became the President of the African National Congress. The electors voted unanimously for Mandela.

On this Day

In 1744, the Six Nations (or Iroquois League) signed the Treaty of Lancaster with the British Colonies of Maryland and Virginia. The treaty ceded a part of the Iroquois land claims located west of the Allegheny Mountains to the Colonies.

In 1776, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania adopted the United States Declaration of Independence. The Declaration famously asserted:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration also included as natural a right to abolish those institutions which impede these ends; such a claim can only entail the assertion as a right of a people to make a revolution against a despotic government.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson publicly announced the Louisiana Purchase of territory west of the United States. The land thus acquired from France doubled the then current size of the country; it includes today 23% of the total land mass of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase was, however, controversial at the time. Some Americans, including Jefferson himself, thought the treaty to be unconstitutional and too expensive, that it made Jefferson a hypocrite (he surely would have opposed the venture had it been a Federalist initiative) and that it intensified sectional jealousies in the United States. Yet subsequent history suggests that the Louisiana Purchase also greatly helped in making the United States a global power which would surpass Great Britain, as Napoleon believed it would.

In 1804, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorn was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorn is best remembered for his novel The Scarlet Letter.

In 1807, Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nizza (Nice) in what then was the Department of Alpes-Maritimes of the First French Empire and what today is in Italy. Garibaldi is considered to be an Italian patriot and national hero.

In 1826, Thomas Jefferson, the Third President of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, died. His death occurred 50 years after the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

In 1826, John Adams, the Second President of the United States, died at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. Like Jefferson, Adams died 50 years after the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.

In 1831, James Monroe, the Fifth President of the United States, died while living in New York City. Monroe is best remembered as the promulgator of the Monroe Doctrine, a public declaration which warned the powers of Europe that the United States would consider their efforts to colonize parts of the Americas as acts of aggression. It is one of history's many ironies that the Monroe Doctrine was expressed an anti-imperial sentiment while cloaking an imperial intention. The Doctrine effective claimed the Americas as a whole to be the United States' sphere of influence. The Doctrine thus prefigured the development of the United States as a hemispheric and then a global empire.

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau began his experiment in simple living on Walden Pond, an experiment immortalized in his book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

In 1855, the poet Walt Whitman published the first edition of his book of poems, Leaves of Grass.

In 1865, the logician and novelist Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In 1881, the Tuskegee Institute opened in Tuskegee, Alabama.

In 1921, the economist, mathematician and Nobel Laureate Gérard Debreu was born in France.

In 1938, Otto Bauer, an Austrian Social Democratic leader and co-creator of Austromarxism, died while living in exile in Paris, France.

In 1938, the singer-songwriter Bill Withers was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia.

In 1946, the Philippines achieved independence, thus ending centuries of overt colonial domination over the islands.

In 1946, the anti-war activist, author and decorated Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic was born in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. Injured in the War, Kovic wrote the famous memoir Born of the Fourth of July about his experiences.

In 1947, the Indian Independence Bill was presented to Britain's House of Commons. The Bill proposed the cleaving of British India into the sovereign states of India and Pakistan, a proposal which came to completion with Indian and Pakistani independence (August 14, 1947) and widespread ethno-religious violence.

In 1976, Israeli commandos conducted the famous raid on Uganda's Entebbe Airport.

Pelosi fucks over the ‘lesser people’

What would a despicable coward do?

Jane Hamsher of Fire Dog Lake tells us what Polosi wanted to do and explains how she did it:

FDL has learned that in a last minute move, Nancy Pelosi sneaked language into the rule that the House is voting on tonight regarding war funding.

Embedded in the rule is the requirement that the House will vote on the deficit commission's recommendations in the lame duck session if they pass the Senate.

The commission, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is packed with members who favor the raising the retirement age to 70, means testing, and private accounts. Many also support investing 20% of the Social Security trust fund in the stock market.

It's ironic that yesterday Pelosi sent out press releases criticizing John Boehner for expressing the very same positions on cutting Social Security benefits that Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden and Steny Hoyer have. She's putting this language into the rule in order to deflect responsibility from herself when it comes to the floor for a vote during a lame duck session, since without her approval that could never happen.

Pelosi knows full well what the committee wants to do. The fix is in.

On this day

In 1646, the philosopher, mathematician, lawyer and diplomat Gottfried Leibniz was born in Leipzig.

In 1863, the three day Battle of Gettysburg began. The battle, which stymied General Robert E. Lee's Gettysburg Campaign, stands as a turning point in the American Civil War.

In 1870, the United States Department of Justice came into being.

In 1892, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers went on strike against the Carnegie Steel Company. The strike occurred in Homestead, Pennsylvania, included gun battles between the strikers and agents of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and Alexander Berkman's attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick. The strike ended as a defeat for the strikers and is known today as the Homestead Strike.

In 1896, the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe died.

In 1915, the blues musician Willie Dixon was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In 1916, the Battle of Albert initiated what became known as the First Day on the Somme in the Battle of the Somme. The battle was an offensive conducted by the British and French armies against the German army. The Somme campaign stands today as one of the bloodiest in history.

In 1921, the Communist Party of China formed.

In 1960, Somalia gained its independence and Ghana became a republic headed by Kwame Nkrumah.

In 1962, Rwanda and Burundi gained their independence.

In 1967, the European Community came into existence.

In 1968, the United States implemented its Phoenix Program in the Viet Nam War.

In 1968, sixty-two countries signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In 1974, the Argentinean politician Juan Perón died.

In 1990, East Germany accepted the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the East and West German economies.

In 1991, the Warsaw Pact dissolved.

1997, the People's Republic of China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong.