Failing bridges

The Bay Bridge that carries upwards of 260,000 vehicles a day failed again last week. Metal parts in a brace that was installed Labor Day weekend to relieve stress on a cracked structural beam called an eyebar cracked and the bridge had to be closed. It sent 5,000 pounds of metal into rush-hour traffic. (Miraculously no one was killed, one person suffered minor injuries and three cars were damaged.) The first repair cost an estimated $1.5 million. The second repair had the bridge closed for six days, the longest closure for the bridge since part of the span collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Caltrans doesn't yet have figures available on cost of the second round of bridge repairs. The Bay Bridge was built in the 1930's and is in need of constant repair. According to the Associated Press, "The parts that failed had been installed over the Labor Day weekend...[and] were expected to last until a new bridge opened in 2013."

Why would the American taxpayer possibly be in favor of spending billions to build infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan when America's own infrastructure is falling apart? Deteriorating bridges have been in the news of late, but in the next few years expect to see a deluge of stories about disintegrating and failing urban water systems. Most water mains in major United States cities, especially east of the Mississippi River, are approaching their useful age limits. Far too little has been spent on their maintenance in recent decades. Yet America is pouring billions into providing potable water to Iraqi and Afghani citizens.

Longest serving prisoner

The longest serving prisoner in America has been behind bars for 63 years. He was known in the day as the "Lipstick Killer." A seventeen year-old University of Chicago student when he was arrested, William Heirens, turns eighty-one next week. There is still quite some debate about whether or not he committed the horrific crimes he was convicted of.

CNN quotes his lawyer, "Heirens was subjected to days of brutal interrogation. He also was beaten and given sodium pentothal to make him tell the truth, Drizin (the lawyer) said. He underwent a spinal tap, another extreme measure to compel him to talk."

Ugly.

The crimes: one Josephine Ross was the first victim, a forty-three year-old, she was found stabbed to death in her own apartment. Five months later a Frances Brown was discovered in her bathroom. She was stabbed through the neck and shot in the head. CNN reports, "The killer left a message on the wall. It said, "for heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself." It was scrawled in red lipstick." A sensationalist press in Chicago dubbed it the work of the "Lipstick Killer." The final gruesome murder followed the abduction of a six year-old girl. Her dismembered body parts turned up individually.

William Heirens was busted by Chicago cops five months later for burglary near the home where the sleeping six year-old had been kidnapped from a second story bedroom.

Sixty-three years later some believe a brutal murderer is behind bars, others an innocent or at least redeemed man.

Read CNN's whole story here.

Mega Meth bust

The Clarion Content stumbled across this story earlier in the week in the San Jose Mercury News. It details a huge drug sting by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The reasons we wanted to highlight it were two-fold. One it demonstrates that despite relaxing restrictions on marijuana the Obama administration is actively pursuing the enforcement of drug policy when it comes to other nefarious narcotics. Duly noted.

Secondly, we feel that it sadly points out the likelihood of the inherent failure of said enforcement policies. The DEA can bust meth lab after meth lab, dealer after dealer, but if there is still massive profit in selling these (illegal) narcotics production merely shifts elsewhere. In this case, aggressive battling against domestic Mom-n-Pop meth labs has pushed production south of the United States border with Mexico. (Much as aggressive coca spraying pushed coke labs from Columbia to Bolivia, note a similar thing is on-going in the valleys of Central Asia involving the production of opium.)

This was a huge meth bust, the Mercury News reports that, "Nationwide, more than 300 people were arrested in an operation that demonstrates (the "La Familia") Mexican cartel's vast reach north of the border. Arrests of alleged members...took place in 38 cities, from Boston to Seattle and Tampa to St. Paul and in (total) 19 states...authorities seized 156 pounds of methamphetamine, 22 weapons and about $111,000 (in California alone)."

Sadly, this will constitute no more than a tiny blip on the radar of global drug production. The former head of the DEA says that Mexican meth super labs can produce 100 lbs of product in as little as eight hours. The only way to fight that is by curbing demand, and concomitantly reducing the profitability of pursuing the life of an illegal narcotics dealer. People do it for the money.

Read the whole San Jose Mercury News story here.

Huge explosions rock Iraq

This time they were big enough to catch the attention of the Western media. Two huge car bombs exploded near the central Baghdad compound known as the Green Zone. The BBC is reporting that as many as 90 people may be dead, as many as 265 may be wounded. The force of the explosions was so great that it was felt miles away by their correspondent.

Stability in Iraq exists in name and statistics compiled by Western invaders only. In a dangerous sign of things to come, the Shi-ite spokespeople of the Iraqi government immediately blamed either al-Queda or former Baathists, two groups neither united nor allied, other than in their virulent opposition to the Shia minority running the State.

A bathrobe or jail!

Wear a bathrobe or face jail, apparently that is the policy in the community of Springfield, Virginia. One man found out the hard way. Eric Williamson, 29, stands accused of making coffee naked in his kitchen. It was 5.30am and Williamson who grew up in Hawaii had not anticipated the peeping tom, stalker culture perpetrated by the over crowded mcmansions and condo-villes of NoVa.

Could there be a more ludicrous affair for the State to thrust its nose into? One of his neighbors, a woman, who for reasons unclear, was outside Williamson's window at 5.30am with her seven year old son pushed the cops to press the charge of indecent exposure.

What makes this case even more ridiculous Williamson was home alone!?! If making coffee naked when you are home alone is a crime, what next? Wtf? What is the compelling interest for the State to get involved? He faces a maximum sentence of one year in jail and $2,000 fine.

Read more here at, where else, Fox News naturally.

What isn't fixed in Illinois?

In a state who's last two governors are serving prison terms, what is left uncorrupted? Illinois is the place, namely Chicago, where machine politics reached its penultimate height and maintained its last bastion. There are people who still believe Mayor Dayley's (senior) Chicago vote fixing swung the 1960 Presidential election in Kennedy's favor. So why not admissions to the state's premier public university?

The University of Illinois chancellor resigned this week in a scandal over admissions at the state’s once highly regarded publicly funded university. The core of the scandal was that the University of Illinois gave admissions preference to unqualified applicants with connections. According to an outside commission the chancellor, Richard H. Herman, was the "ultimate decision-maker" to help favored students.

The New York Times reported, "(the chancellor) is the latest of several officials to leave as details of the scandal have come to light. The university’s president, B. Joseph White, resigned last month...Most of the members of the university’s board have also resigned."

Way to go Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, indeed.

Smoldering

The violence in Iraq continues unabated. Since America sliced off the tentacles of authority maintained by the ghastly dictator Saddam Hussein no one, and no one group, has been able to regain control of the state.

Violence smolders on, and tragically those allied with the forces of peace and reconciliation are among those most often targeted.

We at the Clarion Content feel a duty to continually remind our readership about this story because of the lack of play it receives in the Amerikkan media now that American soldiers are no longer frequent victims.

Northeast Passage Open for business?

BBC Map

Last month two German freighters sailed into Rotterdam Harbor after completing an historic month plus journey from Vladivostok, Russia, in the Pacific Far East, through the once frozen and impassable northeast Arctic route. The German company that operates the two specially reinforced cargo ships, said that taking the Arctic passage saved 10 days and $300,000 per ship over the standard 11,000 nautical-mile voyage through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean in order to reach the North Atlantic.

However, the Christian Science Monitor reported that, the ships were accompanied "by a nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker for part of their journey, though they apparently did not require any assistance." It is unclear if the passage will be permanently open. The retreating polar ice cap has stimulated talk of opening a Northwest Passage above Canada, too.

The geopolitical consequences of either of these routes coming into frequent use would be significant. Can you say Siberian pirates anyone? Seriously though, the Monitor quotes the Russian Ministry of Transport's chief of Sea and River Transport, Alexander Davydenko, "Scientists tell us that we face warming, and that the boundaries of the Arctic ice are receding. Therefore we are taking a variety of measures ... to safeguard the interests of the Russian Federation in the Arctic region." They report that, "a new department to administer the northern sea route is being created to build infrastructure and oversee tariffs... the ministry is also building at least one massive new nuclear icebreaker to supplement its current fleet of six."

We will keep you posted as the situation develops. Read the whole article here.

War, what is it good for?

Iraq violence spirals on

Despite the American media's loss of interest, despite the Nobel committee's premature award to President Obama, violence continues to mar the day-to-day lives of Iraq citizens, over 100,000 of whom have perished in King George the II's, Dick's and Don's foolish war.

The quieting of the media din has created a false perception in America that things are getting better in Iraq. Unfortunately not true, the reality is America has created the conditions for a vicious civil war that it can do nothing about. There are no safe places in Iraq to hide. Last week during Vice-President Joe Biden's visit there were mortar attacks launched into the ostensibly safest place in Iraq, the heavily fortified Green zone, home of the palatial, Kremlin-esque, United States embassy. Ironically, the bumbling Biden was one of the first to recognize and admit the inevitability of a split in an Iraqi state drawn on a map with little or no consideration of tribal, ethnic and religious divisions.

The chaos is spreading its net wider daily as the United States prepares to drawn down its forces. Fallujah where so many United States servicemen valiantly gave of their lives has seen a recent spike in violence, as competition for control with the central government flares.


Note: It took less than 30 minutes to find the links for this post to ten different incidents of tragic violence in Iraq in the last two weeks. None were in American media sources.