Agreement Reached on New Automotive Regulations

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:01 p.m. ET, Sept 19

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers negotiating a broad energy bill agreed on a modest measure Thursday that supporters said would reduce the amount of gasoline used by sport utility
vehicles and small trucks.

    But advocates
of tougher fuel economy efforts said the requirements were so modest and
contained so many loopholes that they are likely to produce little if any
fuel savings and have virtually no impact on U.S. dependence on foreign
oil.

    “The
compromise does virtually nothing,” complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.,
who had argued for stronger measures, but acknowledged most lawmakers were
in no mood to go along.

    The compromise,
agreed to by Senate and House negotiators, would require that minivans,
sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks in models years 2006 though 2012
use at least 5 billion gallons less gasoline than the 2002 model year fleet.

    It is
essentially what the House had approved in its energy bill passed more
than a year ago.

    The fuel
economy measure is part of broad energy legislation that House and Senate
negotiators are trying to agree on and to give final approval. Prospects
for passage remains uncertain as major issues from expansion of ethanol
use to drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge remain to be worked out.

    Rep.
Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House-Senate conference on energy
legislation, called the measure a significant step in curtailing fuel use
and characterized it as “a chance for the country to tell Saddam Hussein
`We don’t need your oil’.”

    But opponents
said the 5 billion gallons amounts to only about a 1 mile per gallon
increase in fuel economy for sport utility vehicles, minivans and light
trucks, which currently are required to meet less stringent fuel economy
standards than other passenger cars.

    The
gas savings amounts to about 20 million barrels, or as Markey said, just
a little more than one day’s consumption of oil in the United States.

    Rep.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif., argued that even those oil savings could disappear
because of a provision that continues to give automakers fuel economy credits
for making vehicles that can use corn-based ethanol. Waxman said only a
handful of those vehicles actually use ethanol, while most run on gas.

    But
Congress appeared in no mood for tougher requirements to curtail fuel use
in transportation, although motor vehicles are by far the biggest consumer
of oil.

    Both
the House and Senate had rejected more ambitious attempts to require automakers
to improve fuel economy when it passed their separate energy bills. The
House rejected a requirement for sport utility vehicles to achieve a fleet
average of 27.5 miles per gallon, the same as cars, when it passed its
bill in August, 2001..

    Last
summer, the Senate refused to go along with a proposal by Sen. John Kerrey,
D-Mass., to increase overall motor vehicle fuel economy to 35 mpg. Kerrey
called Thursday’s deal “a reasonable compromise” considering what both
chambers had approved previously.

    Senate
Democrats turned back efforts to include in the legislation requirements
that would have made it harder for the Transportation Department to develop
stricter fuel economy measures. Senate and House Republicans had wanted
the department to specifically take into account potential job losses and
overall safety in establishing fuel economy standards.

    Critics
of the government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy program have frequently
argued that more stringent fuel economy requirements would force automakers
to produce smaller, less safe vehicles, and would force elimination of
some product lines, jeopardizing jobs.

    But supporters
of tougher standards argue that fuel economy improvements can be made through
technology, without making vehicles smaller, eliminating larger models
or closing manufacturing plants.

Blast
2 ˆ War Number

Facsimile edition edited
by Wyndham Lewis

The second and final issue
of Lewis’s BLAST ˜ The War Number ˜ appeared in July, 1915, and is a very
worthy successor of the first BLAST published in 1914. It features a dynamic
cover by Lewis and more of his highly charged propaganda on behalf of Vorticism
in painting, sculpture and literature. It also contains prose and poetry
by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and the historic instructive aesthetics
of ”Vortex (written from the Trenches)” by Gaudier-Brzeska ˜ a piece
composed just before the sculptor’s death in France.

L o n g   L i v
e   t h e   V o r t e x !

Long live the great art
vortex sprung up in the centre of this town!

We stand for the Reality
of the Present ˜ not for the sentimental Future, or the sacripant Past.

We want to leave Nature and
men alone.

The only way Humanity can
help artists is to remain independent and work unconsciously.

WE NEED THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS
OF HUMANITY ˜ their stupidity, animalism and dreams.

We believe in no perfectibility
except our own.

Intrinsic beauty is in the
Interpreter and Seer, not in the object or content.

WE ONLY WANT THE WORLD TO
LIVE, and to feel its crude energy flowing through us.

Blast sets out to be a venue
for all those vivid and violent ideas that could reach the Public in no
other way.

Blast will be popular, essentially.
It will not apppeal to any particular class, but to the fundamental and
popular instincts in every class and description of people. TO THE INDIVIDUAL.
The moment a man feels or realizes himself as an artist, he ceases to belong
to any milieu or time. Blast is created for this timeless, fundamental
Artist that exists in everybody.

We want to make in England
not a popular art, not a revival of lost folk art, or a romantic fostering
of such unactual conditions, but to make individuals, wherever found.

We will convert the King
if possible.

A VORTICIST KING ! 
WHY NOT ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,794130,00.html

Saddam’s concessions will never be enough for the US

Unless it can engineer a war, Bush’s administration is political roadkill

Simon Tisdall

Wednesday September 18, 2002

The Guardian

To the “man in the street”,
on whose support Tony Blair and George Bush ultimately depend, it looks
like a fair enough offer. For months the US has been huffing and puffing,
mouthing and mithering, making waves over Iraq, demanding that it do what
Washington wants. Now, finally, it has received a simple answer: yes. So
what does the US do? Ask for more.

    It is
worth recalling how this pseudo-epiphany was reached. The build-up began
in earnest with Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in January; then came his
doctrine of “pre-emptive attack” (what security adviser Condoleezza Rice
sweetly calls “anticipatory defence”). Then a startled world learned that
“rogue states” holding weapons of mass destruction were more or less on
the team with Osama and al-Qaida. That, it transpired, made them legitimate
targets for America’s “war on terror” and “regime change”.

    Last
week, Bush turned his screw yet more fiercely. If Iraq truly wished peace,
he hectored, it must not only agree to full, certified disarmament under
UN auspices (and on US terms). It must also swiftly honour all the numerous
obligations laid upon it after the Gulf war.

    But Iraq’s
weapons remained the principal focus. Some chemical and biological capability
is still most likely at Saddam Hussein’s disposal, according to the final
reports of the UN inspectors in 1998. He may since have developed more.
Scarier still, hawks squawk, Iraq may be only three years, or three months,
or who knows, three weeks away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. An image
was conjured of the Baghdad bazaar. “Pop round next Tuesday Mr Saddam.
Your package will be waiting.”

    Such
angst with all this blethering did Bush and his cohorts inspire. Such discomfiture
and war-feverish unease did they spread among European allies such as Blair
and his party followers. What strains and stresses stole like shadows of
the night over the deserts of the Middle East as Arab allies and foes alike
contemplated a coming US onslaught. How greatly did they clamour and cringe,
to the delight of the Cheneys and Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzs and Perles. One
by one, slinking Saudis followed chapeau-chomping French into the American
sheepfold.

    And then,
after all this hot and bother fuss, suddenly and out of the blue, even
before General Tommy Franks, the wannabe “Stormin’ Norman”, has unpacked
his Qatar camp bed, Iraq simply says “OK”. To all these provocations, Baghdad
puts a timely stopper.

    Nor is
there any doubting the popularity of Saddam’s shift, enough to make the
White House sick. Security council members declare themselves encouraged.
Russia looks forward to a political settlement and an end to threats of
war. China discerns a positive sign. Backsliding Germany’s Joschka Fischer
rubs it in with a told-you-so about the efficacy of the UN-centred, multilateral
approach. Even in London, predictions fly suggesting that war, if it comes,
has now been put back a year, that Bush and Blair are split over how to
proceed, and that Downing Street will be blamed by US hardliners for steering
their president up a diplomatic blind alley. Some Muslim countries, meanwhile,
demand a lifting of sanctions.

    Worse
still, the no-strings nature of Iraq’s riposte has plain-spoken appeal.
And to the “man in the street”, increasingly bowed, browbeaten and bamboozled
by the government’s line (as polls show) but now relieved and hopeful,
it seems reasonable. After all, what more do these people want?

    Quite
a lot, actually, and the Bushmen’s demands will increase rather than diminish
as yesterday’s momentary flummoxing fades. The gap between what America
might wisely do, and what it really does, may yet grow schismatically chasmatic.

    The US
has a “moral obligation”, says sensible Liberal Democrat Menzies Campbell,
to take the Iraqi offer seriously and explore it fully. Will it do so?
The initially scornful and dismissive response can be expected to harden
in the days ahead into a firm line insisting the threat has not diminished
one whit, that Iraq will be judged by actions, not words, and that merely
“tactical” manoeuvres of this sort have been seen before.

    Far from
welcoming Iraq’s prima facie compliance with weapons inspections resolutions,
the coming US emphasis will be on the several other “materially breached”
UN decrees. And whatever Moscow says, the dogged pursuit of a new resolution
authorising a yet tougher line will continue apace.

    Far from
facilitating the inspections process, quickly agreeing a timetable and
fixing an end point, as Iraq has previously asked, the stress now will
be on anywhere, anytime coercion, intrusion, paramilitary enforcement,
and re-extraction of inspectors at the first glimmer of obstruction. The
public message will be scepticism, that anything worth finding has already
been hidden, that “cheat and retreat” is Iraq’s game, and that the military
option may still be the only option.

    To this
end, despite yesterday’s developments, the military build-up will continue,
the ships and tanks, planes and carriers so vital to America’s sense of
self-worth will edge towards Iraq, the tone-deaf Rumsfeld’s Pentagon will
bang on at what Syria calls the drums of war and deathly ominous B52s,
like so many unChristian soldiers marching as to war, will once more silence
the hedgerows of Gloucestershire. Expect US pretexts for escalation, fake
and insincere negotiations, and false horizons.

    For Saddam,
with every concession, the bar will be raised ever higher. Almost whatever
he says or does, the gun will remain at his head, the trigger ever cocked
for the commencement of a battle which Bush et al will not be denied. Despite
a broad international consensus against it, regime change and nothing less
will remain the ultimate objective.

    And why,
the “man in the street” might ask, do they appear so set on violence? Because
Bush’s misconceived, over-hyped global “war on terror” has run out of targets
and is far from won. Because Iraq is oil-rich (the second biggest reserves)
and the Saudis grow unreliable. Because, purely in domestic policy terms,
especially post-Enron, this government is political roadkill. Because the
administration’s predominant, evangelical clique believes it is solo superpower
America’s historic mission (Bush says it is a “calling”) to spread its
universal values and rescue a muddled world from itself. Because the Bush
family has old scores to settle and new elections to win. Because Bush
lacks the insight and imagination to act differently. Because in their
September 11 pain and unforgotten anger, not nearly enough of America’s
“men in the street”, and in high places too, are prepared to say stop,
pause, and consider what it is they do.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-pipeline15sep15005033.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dfrontpage

September 15, 2002

CHAOS IN COLOMBIA

Blood Spills to Keep Oil
Wealth Flowing

 Colombia: Violence
explodes in province where army, under U.S. pressure, focuses on protecting
an Occidental pipeline.

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, TIMES
STAFF WRITER

ARAUCA, Colombia — Under
pressure from Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and the U.S. government,
the Colombian military has redeployed its forces to protect a key oil pipeline,
leading to an explosion of violence in the undefended countryside.