Peter Krupa

That’s right folks. Hamdan: War criminal. Basically, the crime was “material support” of someone else who committed war crimes.

… although the terminology “material support” may not have existed historically, the laws of war have long prohibited stealthy attacks on civilians, the mainstay of terrorism groups and the target of material-support charges.

Totally. And representatives of the U.S. government have never offered material support to any war criminals who committed stealthy attacks on civilians. We don’t do that sort of thing. Unless we need to Protect Your Freedoms, in which case, that information is classified.

Excuse me while I go throw up in the corner.

There is this principle in economics - and I have no idea what it’s called - that goes something like this: With certain commodities, supply and demand are always chasing each other, and therefore overcompensating.

We therefore see cycles of highs and lows. If there is a glut of, say, pork on the market, prices will go down, and farmers will raise fewer hogs. Their decision to raise fewer hogs isn’t felt until a year later, when suddenly there is less pork on the market, so prices go up. Farmers then decide to raise more hogs, and the cycle repeats itself.

Or something along those lines.

Applying that basic observation to oil, Portfolio columnist John Cassidy says we’re in for a big price drop. The reason is simple: High prices have encouraged an overwhelming amount of oil exploration, projects which take several years to bring online. Within the next few years, there will be a lot more oil on the market, bringing prices down:

Already, in Texas and California, hundreds of mothballed, low-producing stripper wells have been brought back into production. In Africa, the Chinese government is making development deals with Sudan, Chad, the Congo Republic, and other impoverished nations with unexploited reserves. In the Canadian province of Alberta, Shell and other energy companies are building massive strip mines to access local tar sands, which can be converted into synthetic oil or refined directly into petroleum at a cost of roughly $30 a barrel. Some experts believe the sands contain more oil than the subdeserts of Saudi Arabia.

Not very long ago, energy companies were slashing their exploration and drilling budgets, refusing to finance any project unless it could generate crude for $15 or $20 a barrel. But since 2003, when the price of crude rose above $30 a barrel, the industry has relaxed its financial assumptions and beefed up capital spending. In the past four years, Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, has invested more than $60 billion in exploration and development. Between now and 2010, the company plans to begin pumping oil or gas from no fewer than 20 new projects.

It’s an interesting observation, and makes quite a bit of sense. It would be nice for me, since currently gas in Costa Rica is over $4 a gallon. It would be extremely bad for Venezuela, however. That country’s national budget - with its massive social handouts - assumes oil prices of well over $40 a gallon.

How to write about Africa:

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African’s cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Political jawboning aside, what do investors - i.e. people who can make and lose money based on reality - think about Bush’s surge? Not much: “As for the investors, the data shows that the chance the Iraqi government will default on its debt has increased by 40 percent since the surge,” says Portfolio.com’s Odd Numbers blog. “That’s hardly a vote of confidence.”

The basic idea is that the price of Iraq bonds - debt issued by the government - has gone up since the surge, indicating that investors think the bonds are now riskier.

Hard to spin that one.

French intellectual rabble-rousers are in a tizzy over their new president’s jogging habit:

“Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade,” said (Alain) Finkielkraut. “Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation.” 

The British, of course, find this hilarious:

“I am not deterred . . . by the accusation that jogging is right-wing,” says (MP Boris Johnson, a confirmed jogger). “Of course it is right-wing, in the sense that the facts of life are generally right-wing. The very act of forcing yourself to go for a run, every morning, is a highly conservative business. There is the mental effort needed to overcome your laziness.” 

What with all the pets and Panamanians dying from Chinese food and drug exports that were tainted with various degrees of poison, China should be a little worried about the ol’ international image.

So the leaders of this Communist country put their heads together and decided something needed to be done to demonstrate to the world that China was serious about reforming its food and drug regulations.

And they wanted to do it old school.

Hence, the former head of China’s Food and Drug Administration has been sentenced to death “after pleading guilty to corruption and accepting bribes.”

Now I totally feel better about buying Chinese consumer goods.

There’s an almost good story in the New York Times about an Iraqi sheik who’s had his house commandeered by the Americans. I say “almost” because among the heart-rending pathos of the sheik’s visit to his old mansion - the wistful remembrances, the garden smashed by Humvees, his “sandals scraping against the tiles he had laid” - one question is never raised: How in the world did this sheik get rich enough to own such a beautiful house?

In a simple policy discussion, that would be irrelevant, but this isn’t policy, this is pathos. Should I really feel sorry for a Sunni sheik who’s lost a mansion that was in all likelihood the fruit of his loyalty to a brutal fascist dictator?

Of course the sheik mourns Iraq’s good ol’ days. He wasn’t the one getting gassed.

Interesting things going down on Capital Hill. Bush having vetoed the Democrat’s withdrawal time-table/military funding bill, Sen. Clinton is going all scorched earth on him and proposing a vote to reverse the authorization of force that Congress granted the President five years ago.

A couple of thoughts come to mind. First of all, this kind of makes me like Hillary. Not because I think we should pull out of Iraq immediately, but it’s nice to see someone in the legislative branch finally play hardball with this president. A leader, she is? Maybe?

The second thought is the one most constitutional scholars are probably having at the moment: Is Congress even allowed to do take-backs on war authorizations? It’s never happened before, but speaking as a non-lawyer private citizen-type person, I think it would be a wonderful development.

It would be wonderful because, historically, American presidents have shown a penchant for duping the American people into wars. Spanish-American War, Vietnam War, Iraq War, etc. The idea has been, basically, if you can get Congress to write you that blank check, you’re home free, and who cares if it turns out you were lying through your teeth? There’s a war on!

But if Congress can do take-backs? That might make these war-mongering, chest-beating tough guys think twice before they climb into their tanks (metaphorically speaking of course).

Anyway, we’ll see how it shakes out. Oh, and speaking of scorched earth, that Washington, D.C., madam will be naming names on 20/20 tonight. If I only had a TV.

From The Onion:

Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.

In the aftermath of a whole series of incidents, there have also been troubling reports of just fill in the blanks. Middle East experts say the still somehow worsening situation has inflamed age-old sectarian tensions between the Sunnis, Shiites, Semites, Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Persians, Wahhabis, radicals, extremists, Baathists, mullahs, clerics, et al, which is likely to lead to more gurgle-gurgle over the coming weeks and months. 

…

Also, Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear program, bin Laden at large, Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, Fallujah, renegade mullahs, embedded and/or beheaded journalists, oil revenues, stockpiles of former Soviet armaments, freedom, racism, Halliburton, women’s role in Islamic society, the Quran, withdrawing troops, economic disparities, Sikhs, Pakistanis, oil, rebuilding, stories of hope, the Saudi royal family, the Holy Land, insurgents, and the tragedy of Sept. 11th. 

And that about sums it up. I think I’ll give up newspapers for awhile. Or probably not.

The Iraq War’s dogged supporters look increasingly desperate as they frantically try to control the message, grinning wildly and pointing at anything that’s not fucked up as if to say, “See! That’s kind of nice! That person’s not dead! The system works!” It’s reminiscent of Communist governments all throughout the 20th century (and hell, even today) who had this idea that if you said things were going great for long enough, people would believe you.

All that to say, John McCain led a Congressional delegation on a visit to an open-air market in Iraq recently:

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

Indiana Republican Mike Pence declared it, “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana.”

Kinda makes you worry about what’s going on in Indiana.