Click here for the complete gallery of Sebastião Salgado photos, including images not included in the current issue of Rolling Stone.

As a boy growing up on a ranch in Brazil, Sebastião Salgado witnessed firsthand the destruction of the native forest. As thousands of acres were cleared for herds of cattle that demanded more and more pasture for grazing, the landscape was inexorably transformed into a dust-filled plain. “They killed the land,” Salgado says. “Today the Indians of the rain forest continue to be threatened with the same problem: massive plantations that are cutting down the forest and damming up the rivers.” (more…)

How did your senators vote on war with Iraq?

A quick reminder of how Democrats with presidential stars in their eyes cast their lots:

Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Daschle (D-SD), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Edwards (D-NC), Yea
Graham (D-FL), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Yea

And then there’s Hillary’s hook, line, and sinker speech (YouTube):

Saddam “has given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists — including al Qaeda members…. This is probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. [Smiles.] Any vote that might lead to war should be hard. But I cast it with conviction!”

We learn today that Mitt Romney is burning through more of his own money on his presidential run than flat-taxer Steve Forbes did back in 1996 and 2000.

I think the lesson to draw from this has less to do with Mitt’s millions, and more to do with how inured we’ve since become to the astronomical sums required to run for president. Forbes’s expenditures seemed outrageous at the time — he was always accused of trying to “buy the White House.”

But when Mitt spends $17 million of his own money over nine months to boost his campaign coffers to $62 million, and still has less money than Hillary had after six months… well, it’s hard to accuse Mitt of doing anything more than keeping up with the Clintons.

And it’s all the more amazing that Mike Huckabee, with only one million raised last quarter, is in third place in the latest Iowa polling.

From Jim Holt in the LRB (via the Daily Dish)

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. (more…)

Our humble correspondent reports: Stop blaming the Republicans, and start blaming the voters.