Another British treasure hunter strikes it rich

Wow, what an amazing find.

A treasure hunter has found about 52,500 Roman coins, one of the largest such discoveries ever in Britain, officials said Thursday.

The hoard, which was valued at 3.3 million pounds ($5 million), includes hundreds of coins bearing the image of Marcus Aurelius Carausius, who seized power in Britain and northern France in the late third century and proclaimed himself emperor.

Dave Crisp, a treasure hunter using a metal detector, located the coins in April in a field in southwestern England, according to the Somerset County Council and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The coins were buried in a large jar about a foot (30 centimeters) deep and weighed about 160 kilograms (350 pounds) in all.

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Attorney General Holder may also be investigating BP partners

BP wasn't alone in this failed process though they may have been leading it. That others are called to answer for their behavior makes sense.

Companies partnered with BP in developing the crippled Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico could possibly also be targeted in the sweeping criminal investigation under way in Washington, Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, will say this morning.

Any switch of attention to the other players in the disaster, likely to include Transocean, owner of the doomed rig, may offer partial relief for BP which so far has been alone in taking the wrath of the White House and shouldering the costs of the catastrophe, which last week topped $3bn (£2bn).

"There are a variety of entities and a variety of people who are the subjects of that investigation," Mr Holder says of his department's probe, in an interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS, to be broadcast in the US today. "For people to conclude that BP is the focus of this investigation might not be correct."

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No one is asking Obama to be perfect. We're asking him to simply try to keep his promises.

The Obama administration is engaging in a bit of legislative bait-and-switch with supporters who are increasingly frustrated at the President's lack of commitment to his own campaign promises. Here is the latest administration spin from Obama adviser David Axelrod, via CNN:

On criticism of the Obama administration from liberals and progressives

AXELROD: My admonition would be, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. We've achieved more in these two years in terms of advancing a -- a solid progressive agenda for this country that will help working families and make this a better and more balanced economy than anyone has done, you know, in our generation.

That isn't the problem at all. And if Axelrod actually believes it is, then the President's advisers are seriously misreading the mood of his own supporters, let alone the country.

No one thinks Obama is God, perfect, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We do, however, expect him to at least try to accomplish the goals he set out for himself during the campaign. People are not upset with President Obama because he didn't accomplish everything. They are upset that he often doesn't seem to try to get the most out of a deal. He settles for less at the outset, when the political dynamic would have permitted him to get far more than what he settled for.

Yes, now the President isn't doing very well in the polls, and the Democrats in Congress are running scared. But it wasn't always this way. A good year-plus ago, when we were first talking about a stimulus and health care reform, the President was at 70% in the polls, the Dems in Congerss were riding high, and the Republicans were on the verge of committing mass suicide. There was no excuse, then, for settling for a weaker stimulus than was needed (the results of which, nearly 10% unemployment, are dogging us all today). And there was no need to shove the public option overboard from the outset (the President made clear that he wasn't going to demand its inclusion). So while it's convenient to argue that "now" the President has no choice but to compromise, he had a choice a year ago, and he compromised at the git-go anyway. It's who he is as a person, and it's the reason so many are so frustrated. (And one could argue that a good part of the reason the Democrats are in such trouble today is because of the President's penchant for capitulation.)

This isn't about people's unacceptably high expectations. We simply expected him to try to do what he promised. Read the rest of this post...

Tar balls now showing up in northeast Florida

Whether the oil is from the Deepwater leak or anywhere else, it's disgusting. The problem of leaking oil from the tens of thousands of wells needs to be addressed one of these days. Read the rest of this post...

Weekend thoughts: Being the torturer

It used to be said of slavery that the master was a slave as well, to his need for slaves. In the same way, there are many victims of torture — and one of them is the torturer.

Sometimes the torturer is already cruel — with a childhood spent blowing up frogs, for example. But often the torturer is just a kid who joined the army, went through training, and got sent to hell. After a while, you do what others are doing, and what you're ordered to do. Then you go home — and deal with your memories and your guilt for the rest of your life, however long or short.

Over at Harpers, Scott Horton has a six-question interview with Joshua Phillips, author of a book on the subject, the appropriately named None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture. From the Amazon book description: 'The legacy of torture in the “War on Terror,” told through the story of one tank battalion.'

A taste (my emphasis):

2. Much of your narrative focuses on two soldiers from the same unit, Adam Gray and Jonathan Millantz, both of whom died under tragic circumstances after returning home. What are the common strands of these two stories?

Gray and Millantz were very different people. Gray was planning to be career military; Millantz was a combat medic who left shortly after his tour in Iraq ended, and joined the anti-war movement. While both soldiers had other traumatic experiences during their combat tour in Iraq, they also admitted that their involvement with prisoner abuse deeply troubled them. Millantz told me he felt Gray was distraught over the abuse he had been involved in, and believed that it partly led to his tragic demise. Millantz was also haunted by his own history with prisoner abuse—not just because of what he saw and participated in, but because of his inability to stop it. He and his family considered that experience to have been especially traumatic for him, and it partly explains his involvement in the anti-war movement. I interviewed other whistle-blowers who were also distressed by their inability to effectively report prisoner abuse, and some felt they had been disregarded, even discarded, by the military they served.

Both Gray and Millantz had strikingly similar experiences when they returned home. Both had violent outbursts, were involved in serious substance abuse, and spiraled into depression. Their families said that the military medical care and VA systems did not provide them with adequate mental health treatment, and often substituted drug treatment for therapeutic care.

Gray and Millantz each committed suicide after returning home.

The interview ranges from checkpoint experiences, to the role of popular culture, to the way torture techniques "evolve" spontaneously at locations where prisoners are abused, as soldiers put into practice things they had heard of, seen elsewhere, or experienced during their own training. The six-question format makes a good tight read.

There are many ways we're torturing ourselves with these practices — from the damage done to the Constitution, to the damage to the so-called "healing" profession by military psychologists and contractors, to the trauma of the soldiers themselves, many just men and women looking for work, or looking genuinely to serve. Check out the interview, and if you like, check out the book as well.

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Scientists claim politics over science continues under Obama

It could be a lot better but at least public policy is no longer decided by what some right wing extremist believes the Bible says. LA Times:

In Florida, water-quality experts reported government interference with efforts to assess damage to the Everglades stemming from development projects.

In the Pacific Northwest, federal scientists said they were pressured to minimize the effects they had documented of dams on struggling salmon populations.

In several Western states, biologists reported being pushed to ignore the effects of overgrazing on federal land.

In Alaska, some oil and gas exploration decisions given preliminary approval under Bush moved forward under Obama, critics said, despite previously presented evidence of environmental harm.

The most immediate case of politics allegedly trumping science, some government and outside environmental experts said, was the decision to fight the gulf oil spill with huge quantities of potentially toxic chemical dispersants despite advice to examine the dangers more thoroughly.

And the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based organization, said it had received complaints from scientists in key agencies about the difficulty of speaking out publicly.

"Many of the frustrations scientists had with the last administration continue currently," said Francesca Grifo, the organization's director of scientific integrity.

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BP removes well cap

So until their latest attempt to collect oil is placed over the leak, all of the oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at the moment. Maybe we will all be surprised and the new cap will be an enormous success.

BP engineers will spend the weekend trying to arrest the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by lowering a replacement cap over the ruptured well. If successful, the scheme could stem the spill in time for David Cameron's first visit to Washington, which is expected to be dominated by discussion of the environmental disaster.

The cap currently on the well collects only a fraction of the estimated 35,000-60,000 barrels of oil per day spewing out of the failed blowout preventer on the sea bed. Installation work on the new cap should start today, and while it is still only a temporary measure it should be able to siphon off far more oil. The spill is only likely to be fully curtailed by the relief wells BP is currently drilling more than 5km below sea level.

A new cap would, however, give BP chief executive Tony Hayward something tangible to present to politicians and investors when BP announces second-quarter results on 27 July and should be in place by 20 July when Cameron is due to arrive in the US.

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Maybe next time the AP can interview a source defending the White House who doesn't have a financial interest in lobbying the WH

If a source makes money off of his relationship with the White House, then you don't ask him what he thinks of the White House, and not disclose his financial interest, and possible bias, to your readers. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday morning open thread

Now here's something you don't see every day. A Holocaust survivor and his family dancing to "I will survive" at Nazi camps across Europe. Seriously.

Here's the YouTube description of the video:

On a recent trip to Europe, a family of three generations (a Holocaust survivor, his daughter and his grandchildren) dance to Gloria Gaynor's pop song - 'I Will Survive' at concentration camps and memorials throughout Europe.

This clip was first edited with the help of my friend Pisithpong Siraphisit who runs Compeung Art Village, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This dance is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life.

Despite the systematic brutality and cruelty endured, we have still survived.

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The Beatles - I've got a feeling

My friend from Holland led me through the Vallée de Chevreuse which is southwest of Paris which was very pleasant. We rode through one of the ugly suburbs to the south and made it past a Route National that had all of the charm of US Route 1. One quick turn later we were passing rows of corn and fields of barley. Lots of cyclists out there because it's so close to Paris and so peaceful. We passed through Versailles before heading back into town following around 80 kilometers or so of riding the hilly countryside. It was warm but thanks to the trees along the way and a few clouds later in the day it was perfect. Read the rest of this post...

Over one million march in Barcelona for Catalan autonomy

It will be interesting to see how everyone reacts. The regional politicians will be under more pressure now to find a solution to the demands of the people who have been asking for more autonomy for years.

The demonstration comes a day after a constitutional court declared that there was no legal basis to recognise Catalonia as a nation.

The ruling also said the Catalan language should not take precedence over Castilian Spanish.

It followed a challenge to the region's statute by the opposition People's Party, which favours Spanish unity.

The statute of autonomy was approved by Catalan voters in a 2006 referendum.

It gave greater powers to the regional parliament in taxation and judicial matters.

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