Protecting hearts and minds and big pharm wallets

It's not just Global Warming that Dear Leader wants people to keep quiet about.

Bush Aide Blocked Report
Global Health Draft In 2006 Rejected for Not Being Political

By Christopher Lee and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 29, 2007; Page A01

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Richard H. Carmona, who commissioned the "Call to Action on Global Health" while serving as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, recently cited its suppression as an example of the Bush administration's frequent efforts during his tenure to give scientific documents a political twist. At a July 10 House committee hearing, Carmona did not cite Steiger by name or detail the report's contents and its implications for American public health.

Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was "called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, 'You don't get it.' " He said a senior official told him that "this will be a political document, or it will not be released."

After a long struggle that pitted top scientific and medical experts inside and outside the government against Steiger and his political bosses, Carmona refused to make the requested changes, according to the officials. Carmona engaged in similar fights over other public health reports, including an unpublished report on prison health. A few days before the end of his term as the nation's senior medical officer, he was abruptly told he would not be reappointed...

The original draft Henry Waxman had archived for posterity here.

Steiger's bullshit censored report is archived here.

Mr. Waxman did his best to tear the HHS Secretary a new one in the letter described here.

"...A comparison of the two drafts reveals striking differences. Dr. Carmona’s draft includes extended discussions of the impacts of women’s rights, poverty, climate change, tobacco, and obesity on global health. Mr. Steiger’s draft omits or barely mentions these topics. Dr. Carmona’s draft describes a U.N. declaration that establishes health as a human right. Mr. Steiger’s draft omits this language. Dr. Carmona’s draft contains references to condoms. Mr. Steiger’s draft does not mention condoms.

"Mr. Steiger’s draft is considerably shorter than Dr. Carmona’s draft: 11,400 words compared to 17,000. Despite the shorter length of Mr. Steiger’s draft, it contains many more references to President Bush (ten references) than does Dr. Carmona’s draft (two references). Mr. Steiger’s draft also contains extended discussions of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Carmona’s draft does not.

"In yesterday’s Washington Post, Mr. Steiger asserted that Surgeon General Carmona’s report was blocked because it was “often inaccurate or out-of-date” and contained “sloppy work, poor analysis, and lack of scientific rigor.” A comparison of the drafts does not support these assertions. Dr. Carmona’s draft thoughtfully covers a wide range of global health topics. Mr. Steiger’s draft ignores or glosses over serious global health problems and emphasizes the achievements and policies of the Bush Administration..."

Of course, that would assume the member of the Cabinet actually bothers to read letters from Congress. That is something I sincerely doubt. But, unless Steiger is as cozy with Bu$hie as Harriet Meiers, it does look like he will have to appear in front of Mr. Waxman personally and talk about his actions.

Of course, that's become a status symbol among the True Believers who get to demonstrate their unwavering Faith and support .  ¶ 6:58 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Ship of State Meets Iceberg



...and insists that it will keep making its own reality, while the rest of us in the reality-based community react to the oncoming collision.

Kaleem Omar in Common Dreams:

Two issues are being debated concurrently in the United States these days. On the one hand, critics of the Bush administration say that, from the look of things, the Bush/Cheney regime has been working assiduously to pave the way for a declaration of military rule in the US, such that at this point, in the words of one critic, “it really only lacks the pretext to trigger a suspension of Constitutional government.” In an article published by CommonDreams.org on July 27, 2007, Dave Lindorff, author of the book “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), says that Bush and Cheney “have done this with the support of Democrats in Congress, though most of the heavy lifting was done by the last Republican-led Congress.”

On the other hand, talk of impeachment is getting louder. In an article published by the Seattle Post Intelligencer on July 27, 2007, Hubert G. Locke, former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, says that “on the eve of a congressionally mandated assessment of the unending madness in Iraq, strange and ominous signs are beginning to appear in all sorts of odd and curious quarters that this nation (the US) should not have to endure another 18 months of the George W. Bush administration and that, if we do, it might well be at the nation’s peril.”

As Locke notes, “Much of the current dismay swirls around Vice-President Dick Cheney, who is busily ignoring rules of government he doesn’t like and declaring his office to be beyond the purview of anyone’s scrutiny, while actively setting about to demolish any government agency that has the impertinence to suggest otherwise.”

Locke says, “Cheney’s advocacy of interrogation techniques for ‘enemy combatants’ that many think tantamount to torture, of monitoring phone calls and e-mails without bothering about (court) warrants, and of ignoring the niceties of the Geneva Convention when dealing with terrorists has put him out of favour even with a growing number of conservatives. Some want to jettison him as a hopeless drag on the Republican Party’s electoral prospects next year; others are beginning to join the throng that is convinced Cheney is out of control and needs to be dispatched for the health and safety of the republic itself.”

Arguing that the threat of martial law in the US is real, Lindorff says, “The first step, of course, was the first Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used to claim improperly (but so what?) that the whole world, including the US is a battlefield in a so-called ‘War’ on Terror, and that he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress.”

As constitutional scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes, that one claim, that the US itself is a battlefield, is enough to allow Bush or some future president to declare martial law, “since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All he would need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside the US.”

The AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the US Bill of Rights. The PATRIOT Act is an assault on constitutional protections so atrocious that legislators in several US states and local officials in more than 200 cities, towns and counties across the land have passed resolutions or ordinances condemning and rejecting its abuse of civil liberties.

More than 25 million Americans live in states or communities that have officially declared that they oppose those parts of the PATRIOT Act and the even more draconian Homeland Security Act of January 2002 that trample on their freedoms. Yet the Bush administration has continued to ignore such protests and has continued to press ahead with an agenda that has had the effect of turning America more and more into a police state.

Even libraries in America are under siege. Under the PATRIOT Act, which was enacted by Congress with hardly any debate, the FBI has the right to obtain a court order to access any records that American libraries have of books borrowed by customers. Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act allows law enforcement agencies to peer into Americans’ reading habits and Internet activity, not only at the nation’s libraries but in bookstores as well.



Around the same time that the PATRIOT Act was passed in October 2001, President Bush began a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA), conducted without any court warrants or other judicial review. As Lindorff notes, the campaign “was and remains a programme that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and the administration’s political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) would never have raised objections to spying on potential terrorists.”

This, and other government spying programmes, have resulted in the Bush administration having a list now of some 325,000 “suspected terrorists”!

In October 2006, Bush and Cheney, with the help of a compliant Republican-controlled Congress (as it then was, before the November 2006 mid-term congressional elections in which the Democratic Party won control of both the Senate and House of Representatives), put in place some key elements needed for a military putsch.

As Lindorff notes, “There was the overturning of the venerable Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which barred the use of active duty military inside the United States for police-type functions, and the revision of the Insurrection Act, so as to empower the president to take control of National Guard units in the 50 states even over the objections of the governors of those states.”

Put this together, says Lindorff, “with the wholly secret construction now under way - courtesy of a $ 385-million grant by the US Army Corps of Engineers to Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc - of detention camps reportedly capable of confining as many as 400,000 people, and a recent report that the Pentagon has a document, dated June 1, 2007, classified Top Secret, which declares there to be a developing ‘insurgency’ within the US, and which lays out a whole martial law counterinsurgency campaign against legal dissent, and you have all the ingredients for a military takeover of the United States.”

It is no coincidence that the contract for the building of detention camps in the US has been awarded to Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), the construction subsidiary of Houston-based oil services giant Halliburton Corporation. Before Dick Cheney became George W. Bush’s running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign, he was Halliburton’s CEO for five years (1995-2000). When Cheney left Halliburton, he was given a $ 37 million severance package by Halliburton and continues to receive $ 100,000 a year from the company under a deferred payment arrangement. He also has stock options worth $ 18 million in Halliburton. The company’s share price has shot up over the last four years as the result of the huge profits it has earned from well over $ 12 billion worth of reconstruction, supply and services contracts it has been awarded in Iraq by the Bush administration through a manifestly non-transparent no-bid process. If Cheney were to cash in his stock option today, he would earn a windfall profit of more than $ 49 million.

Says Lindorff, “As we (Americans) go about our daily lives - our shopping, our escapist movie watching, and even our protesting and political organising - we need to be aware there is a real risk it could all blow up, and that we could find ourselves facing armed, uniformed troops at our doors.”

Former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein is not an alarmist. He says he doesn’t see martial law in the US coming tomorrow. But he is also realistic. He says, “This is all sitting around like a loaded gun waiting to go off. I think the risk of martial law is trivial right now, but the minute there is a terrorist attack, then it is real. And it stays with us after Bush and Cheney are gone, because terrorism stays with us forever.”

Bush claims that the 2001 AUMF makes him commander-in-chief of a “borderless, endless war on terror.” It may be significant that Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president, has called for the revocation of the 2002 AUMF against Iraq, but not for the revocation of the 2001 AUMF.

As Locke notes in his article in The Seattle Post Intelligencer, the US “media are also speaking these days of a looming constitutional crisis as committee chairs in the House and Senate confront a White House refusal to provide requested documents regarding the firings of US attorneys by the Justice Department.”

One curious thing I find is the assertion that the military will protect us from Cheneyburton declaring martial law. Let's repeat that: many people think the military will protect us from a military takeover of the United States. Which is kind of like thinking John Negroponte will save us from the takeover of the CIA by the Company, or the Iraq Study Group and Poppy will save us all from Cheneyburton and Junior.

Got your lifejacket and/or lifeboat ready?  ¶ 9:49 PM 0 comments links to this post

  A Crude Awakening

Read the review on Crooks and Liars then check out the movie when you can.

The issue isn't so much whether there are renewable energy sources that could translate solar energy into hydrocarbon or electricity. There are. The issue is whether that wealthiest 0.1% of our society, the people who control our ability to finance the development of these resources, are willing to see the research and development needed to turn them into commercially viable enterprises.

The big money doesn't want it. Perhaps the largest part is apathy, but there's more to it. There are major corporate families that realize controlling the decline of the world into a post-industrial Iron Age state will place them firmly in control. After all, if all the gasoline and electricity and guns and people who have the guns belong to a few, that few become aristocracy, and the many become chattels for the new feudal order of things.  ¶ 7:09 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Avoiding the Center

A fantastic jumble of young blue star clusters, gigantic glowing gas clouds, and imposing dark dust lanes surrounds the central region of the active galaxy Centaurus A. This mosaic of Hubble Space Telescope images taken in blue, green, and red light has been processed to present a natural color picture of this cosmic maelstrom. Infrared images from the Hubble have also shown that hidden at the center of this activity are what seem to be disks of matter spiraling into a black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun! Centaurus A itself is apparently the result of a collision of two galaxies and the left over debris is steadily being consumed by the black hole. Astronomers believe that such black hole central engines generate the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy radiated by Centaurus A and other active galaxies. But for an active galaxy Centaurus A is close, a mere 10 million light-years away...

You know, it's no wonder the TheoCons hate that Hubble telescope.  ¶ 8:44 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Mining Instead of Plumbing

Lambert takes note of The New York Pravda's front page tip that hey, Abu Gonzo is up to something funny with this data mining for Terra biz.

What's the bottom line? The surveillance- keeping records of every electron sent in cyberspace- is incredibly inefficient. Trying to sift through it all for real information about terrorism is impossible. Ask engineering or computer science experts. The size alone presents difficulties, not to mention the cryptic problems of tracking information of any one or group who really wanted their plans to take over the world secret.

On the other hand, if you wanted to merely keep tabs on your political rivals, or opposition engaged in totally legitimate activities, the electronic surveillance capabilites of the NSA is your cup of tea.

Or, if you were a private contractor- most of the email interception is carried out by paid spooks- and you wanted to make sure your Congressional overseers stayed bought, keeping track of your Representative's secret love life affords all kinds of lucrative potential.

Who need Plumbers to keep track of an Enemies List, when you've got Miners?  ¶ 10:30 AM 0 comments links to this post

  More Paleocon Outrage

Even the mercenary are starting to get uneasy with the New World Feudalism. Ben Stein:

LET’S start with the obvious. Hedge funds have created a terribly wealthy new class. Although the data is overwhelming that the mass of hedge funds have not been outperforming the market after fees, money still pours into them. This has often made their proprietors terribly rich.

Somehow, by some alchemy of brilliant tax lawyers, these people are paying long-term capital gains rates of 15 percent on their compensation (even though much of their pay is tied to trades with holding periods that last seconds). Doctors and lawyers and writers and actors pay about two times that amount.

Then there are the private equity people. They buy and sell companies, usually with other people’s money. They put up a tiny slice of their own capital and multiply it with investments from pension funds, very wealthy families and foreign government investment authorities, and they buy companies. They shake the companies up, cut spending, cut reserves and then resell them to us patsies in the public markets for huge profits. “Rip, strip and flip,” as they say. I am not saying all of them do, but some do.

The private equity people get an immense interest in the profits, vastly outstripping whatever capital they had on the line. This “carried interest,” as they call it, is then taxed at low capital-gains rates. If the private equity companies play their cards right, they use yet another loophole involving amortization of good will to eliminate any tax at all if and when they go public.

Now, all of the above appears to be legal, in that it conforms to laws made by Congress and regulations adopted by the Internal Revenue Service.

So what? The fact that the law is such and such as of July 2007 does not mean that it has to be that way in July 2008 or even in September 2007. The laws of taxation, like all laws, are political...

The law can be changed. Laws are changed all of the time in the tax arena. The oil companies used to get immense tax allowances that they don’t get any more because of political pressures. The tax rate on the last dollars of high-income people used to be above 90 percent. It’s not like that any longer. Why? Political change. It applies to the tax code as well as to all other laws.

Now, let’s think about what’s going on in America right now. We are in a war. We are apparently not winning the war. The military is desperately shy of funds, to the point where our fighting men and women are being shortchanged in training and equipment.

We also need more money for our soldiers’ pay, so their families do not have to live like church mice while their spouses are deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. In these circumstances, is it fitting and morally right for the richest of the rich to be paying either very low taxes or no tax at all?

Is it right or even admissible in the human conscience that while teachers, emergency room technicians, police and firefighters are taxed at full earned-income rates — and often underpaid — that the highest-earning people in this country should pay at either very low tax rates or none at all?

Or, put it like this: do we dare send our men and women to fight for an America in which the very rich are so favored by the government that it amounts almost to an aristocracy?

Long ago, I had a European history teacher named Mrs. Enright. She explained to me that one of the causes of the French Revolution was the sad truth that the aristocracy was not taxed at all, while the workers and burghers were taxed highly. Is this our future?

...please, let’s not haul out that old chestnut about having tax incentives to encourage entrepreneurship. We already have enough people who want to be rich (which is another phrase for “entrepreneurship”). What we are lacking is oil and gas. Maybe we should give the oil exploration people lower taxes. What we are lacking is people willing to fight the war on terror.

Why don’t we just have a tax holiday for people who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for five years after they get back? This would be the tax code addressing real shortages, not an imaginary shortage of money mania (oops, I mean “entrepreneurship”).

Let’s keep it real: Congress can take notice of a mammoth inequity in taxation during wartime and make the tax on private equity and hedge funds approximate the treatment of other highly paid people — or it can continue down the road to the Bastille.

Welcome to the reality-based community, Mr. Stein.  ¶ 7:32 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Feeling Chipper Today?

You obviously need an upgrade.

Bill Gates will love this one:

Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) have developed chips which someday might be inserted in the brains of people affected by epilepsy or who have lost a limb. These neuroprosthetic chips ‘can interpret signals in the brain and stimulate neurons to perform correctly.’ ... the researchers are currently studying these chips with rats and hope to have a prototype ready within 4 years that could be tested on humans.

...“The chip UF researchers are seeking to develop would be implanted directly into the brain tissue, where it could gather data from signals, decode them and stimulate the brain in a self-contained package without wires. In the interim, UF researchers are studying implantable devices in rats and are evaluating an intermediate form of the technology — placing electrodes on the surface of the brain — in people.”

The researchers add that they “have developed new techniques using surface electrodes to access signals almost as precisely as they could with sensors implanted in the brain. Developing these techniques is a big step forward in understanding how to best decode a patient’s intent from their brain waves and should have broad implications for delivering therapy, Sanchez said...

Certainly a laudable goal if there weren't so many extremely powerful people who would like to be able to control your software with implanted hardware.  ¶ 1:51 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Bursting Bubble of the Hollow Men

...It was the worst week for the American stock market in nearly five years, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropping nearly 5 percent, after a sharp sell-off in the last half-hour of trading. The Dow fell 208.10 points yesterday after dropping 311.50 points on Thursday; it declined 4.23 percent for the week.

Investors took little comfort from a government report released yesterday that showed the economy grew at a strong pace in the second quarter, which Bush administration officials cited in an effort to assuage the public after the rout in the market on Thursday.

The stock market has become increasingly volatile in the last several months as the slumping housing market and problems in the debt markets are taxing the American economy. At the same time, stronger growth is China, India and Europe have kept the global economy humming.

“The economy is still strong, job growth is still healthy, the unemployment rate is low, and the global economy is booming,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at the brokerage firm Charles Schwab. “But there are cracks here and those cracks seem to be gaining more of the market’s attention than the stronger components. We’ll have to see which one takes hold.”

Early yesterday, President Bush and four of his top economic and financial officials went on the airwaves to try and dispel worries about the economy. They cited a Commerce Department report that showed that the economy rebounded in the three months that ended in June; it grew 3.4 percent, which was up from a pace of 0.6 percent in the first quarter.

“And so I want the American people to take a good look at this economy of ours,” Mr. Bush said. “The world is strong — the world economy is strong. I happen to believe one of the main reasons why is because we remain strong.”

While markets did bounce up briefly early in the day, investors found little solace in the latest economic report or the soothing words from Washington...

Darth Cheneyburton should tell Commander Bunnypants to put a cork in it. Nothing panics Ma and Pa these days more than the Idiot $on telling them their money is working as well as the War on Terra. And the neighbors are noticing the problem.

...Mr Paulson said the world's biggest economy was moving to a sustainable pace of growth after official figures released in Washington showed a stronger trade performance and inventory-building by companies helped the US to grow at an annual rate of 3.4% in the second quarter.

After meeting his economic team at the White House, Mr Bush said: "The world economy is strong and I happen to believe one of the main reasons why is because we remain strong."

Markets were unimpressed, with some analysts warning that the high-profile intervention may do more harm than good. "By appearing on television in an unprecedented group interview, the White House is validating concern about the credit markets," said Tony Crescenzi, chief bond market strategist with Miller, Tabak and Co.

Other analysts said there were reasons to fear that worse was to come, with warnings that the tightening of credit conditions meant the bubble had burst for private equity. "When there is uncertainty about financing, then private equity is not so quick to make deals. It would take out one of the props for the market," said Elliot Spar, market strategist with Ryan Beck & Co.

Julian Jessop, international economist at Capital Economics, said markets were being complacent in believing confidence would quickly return once the US housing market recovered. "For a start, the US housing market will not bottom out any time soon. Second, a much broader reassessment of risk appetite may only just have begun. Third, other factors might drive markets down further even if there is no more bad news from the US. Top of the list is the prospect of a disorderly unwinding of the yen carry trades..."

The Dark Wraith goes into gory detail about why the markets are so unstable and why you're still broke.

Lambert quotes a modest summary of the situation by Jerome à Paris here:

...the current boom was the cause of much of the increasing inequality in recent years, and has been the source of many extravagant fortunes. As the bubble unwinds (or pops), it is essential to make it clear that it should not be workers, or taxpayers, that end up paying for the recklessness of the financiers, and that those that gorged on the good times should bear the pain of the new, leaner times.

The dismantling of all the barriers between commercial banking and investment banking unsurprisingly took place near the beginning of the great Greenspan Bubble, it might be necessary to reconsider it. Taxes on capital gains, and on income on capital, have been lowered in the past; maybe it’s time to change that again. The crushing of labor, and the erosion of labor rights, has made ever-increasing profits a reality and has fuelled the ever-more optimistic expectations of the financial markets. That should also be reconsidered.

The focus on financial profits over industrial ones, unable to provide the same instant returns, has skewed the economy ever more towards financial services rather than other “real” activities...

Altogether, the politics of individual greed over those of a collective future need to be blamed...

Not likely. With the most powerful members of our country the most involved with the manipulation of money, it is more likely they will place the burden of their errors on the backs of the majority who actually produce things and services for a living, since they view us as servants and simple beasts of burden.  ¶ 7:07 AM 0 comments links to this post

  A "fat Barney Fife without the twitch."

You have to be as stupid as a Mayberry Machiavelli to unleash forces like this to try to take over the world.

Along these lines, let me suggest two great posts from The Dark Wraith:

The Prime Minister of the United States of America.

and

History of the Future.

It's a good thing the Teacher of the Dismal Science is cheerful, I think.  ¶ 9:59 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Pravda Cycle

Tom Tomorrow has a firm grasp on how things are done.

  ¶ 12:24 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Dark Horse of the Shadow Government

NEW YORK Ira Stoll admits that his paper's pushing for Vice President Cheney to run for president several months ago was widely mocked. And he admits that a Washington Post pollster has pointed out that with a favorable rating of only 18%, Cheney is less popular than Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson -- after their trials. Yet he is standing by his man, and re-iterates today in the New York Sun that he hopes the Veep takes a look at the current GOP field and throws his hat in the ring.

Stoll, managing editor at the New York daily, uses a review of the new Stephen Hayes biography of Cheney to make this plea, claiming that the positive virtues revealed in the book proves his case.

"The book quotes Senator McCain as saying, 'Dick doesn't like campaigning.' Nothing in the Hayes book suggests that Mr. Cheney is about to do it — except for that the vice president spent nearly 30 hours cooperating with the author and apparently gave the okay for many of his friends and colleagues to grant similar access," Stoll observes. "The Richard Cheney described in this book isn't vain enough to do that simply for his reputation in history. My own guess — okay, hope — is that Mr. Cheney has taken a look at the Republican presidential field and sees an opening. If Iowa and New Hampshire Republicans start receiving copies of 'Cheney' in their mailboxes, Mr. Cheney's popularity may yet begin to climb..."

Much depends on whether Congress can summon enough courage to face the Constitutional crisis the Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton administration presents, with its open mocking of Congressional power, its endless war, and its embrace of the fourth branch of government.

Cheney will likely wait until the last possible moment to bother campaigning, reminiscent of his self-appointment as Vice-Presidential candidate at the last possible moment for Bu$h.

It really makes no difference if his approval ratings are down even to the single digits. He will merely growl there is no balance among traitors and claim that the polls are run by treasonous enablers of the enemy. He will walk in and simply be handed the Rethuglican nomination, because his competition will be broke- or broken.

He won't bother to campaign either, except in carefully selected venues and debates run by Faux News and his own secret police.

And on election day? Despite exit polls predicting a landslide victory of his opponent, Cheney will win handily.

Night will only grow deeper as his shadow falls upon us.  ¶ 8:09 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Knowledge and Curiousity in a World of Muggles and Death Eaters

Like everyone else with teenagers now, my kids have learned to read with the Harry Potter series.

Rowling's work certainly meets my approval. In the last three books, what started off as a groundswell against a government and a system of tyranny has turned into a tidal wave against the unfairness of power for power's sake and its inevitable blind self-destruction. As I've pointed out, the Dominionists hate it, and so will the Rethuglicans, as soon as someone will explain it to them. Slowly.

For someone used to reading several papers on molecular biology a day just to figure out his next step in the lab, they're a cakewalk and a pleasure to read.

Something that stands out though, is the oddity of a world of magic totally devoid of curiosity about the magic.

Even the most learned, bright, and curious individuals in the series look upon knowledge of the world as a way to do things. The operative term is "power". Nobody asks about why the wands do what they do, or where and how a whole world of mystical beasts came to be, or its relation to the muggle world, which coexists right along side of it.

Nobody tries to explain what time and space are doing in those pocket universes where Hermione stores her stash or where, exactly, Dumbledore's army trains.

No one in Harry's world even thinks about it.

Nobody much has more than a high school education, or seems to see the need for more, either.

No one cares about the forces that keep a broom, or a dragon, in flight, against all the rules of muggle physics.

No one thinks about the genes that make you a muggle. Or a wizard. Or a werewolf virus.

In this, the inhabitants of the muggle world, whether in Rowling's books or our own bubble of the multiverse have much in common.

It certainly makes it easier for the aspiring Dark Lords among us.  ¶ 10:01 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Underestimating the Opposition

The Editorials of The New York Pravda continue to express the views of the Soros faction of the Company about five years too late:

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War
By ADAM COHEN
Published: July 23, 2007
The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”

The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.

Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”

The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith...

On the other hand, many critics of the Iraq war know for a fact it was a scam from the beginning. Does the name Valerie Plame mean anything to you? Or Joe Wilson? How about the Downing Street Memo? Or the 1992 Master's Thesis on the Gulf War Colin Powell took to the UN as "evidence" Saddam had WMD in 2003?

.. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully created.

The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.

Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

A king? George W. Bu$hie? Kings are far too constrained, and far too tied to the welfare of their kingdoms. This intellectual orc is the foam on the beer.

George W. Bu$hie is a C-average cheerleader from Yale. He's a Death Eater, all right, just like all the rest of the crew in Washington. But he's no Dark Lord.

He's just clearing the way for one who will follow , taking the Kingdom from this little prince of shadow and turning it into a slaughterhouse, just like Bu$hie himself has taken the Republic and turned it into an Imperial playhouse for his Ba$e.  ¶ 7:16 AM 1 comments links to this post

  The Death Eaters Run Washington, D.C.

You have to love a book the fundies hate.  ¶ 8:58 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Where Congress Realizes it is Officially a Paper Tiger

Last Friday, in Pravda on the Potomac:

By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 20, 2007

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege...

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."

Yesterday, a House Judiciary subcommittee voted to lay the groundwork for contempt proceedings against White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, following a similar decision last week against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers.

The administration has not directly informed Congress of its view. A spokeswoman for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee's chairman, declined to comment . But other leading Democrats attacked the argument.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called it "an outrageous abuse of executive privilege" and said: "The White House must stop stonewalling and start being accountable to Congress and the American people. No one, including the president, is above the law."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said the administration is "hastening a constitutional crisis," and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the position "makes a mockery of the ideal that no one is above the law."

Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

Well, no, there will always be a need for a Justice Department in the New World Order. Just like Dear Leader's Armies are Peacekeepers, and War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.

What happens next, Mr. Waxman? I really hope no one has to explain it to you.  ¶ 8:57 PM 3 comments links to this post

  Retrospective Rationale

I ran into this interesting synopsis of the Civil War on a comment thread in an unlikely place. Taken aside from the context, I thought my brother and all the other sons and daughters of Nathan Bedford Forrest in cyberspace might find it interesting.

Any discussion of the Civil War must begin with a discussion of slavery. What were the origins of slavery? What accounts for the unprecedented brutality and pathological hatreds that arose from it?

Slavery arose as a labor system because there was no other reliable source of labor. It arose first as a system of indentured servitude and matured as a racially justified system of chattel slavery.

Slavery and the slave trade became not only the foundation of the economy of the US, it was the foundation upon which arose Europe's capitalist system. Its great naval and shipping fleets, its universities and industry was directly connected to the maintenance and expansion of slavery.

The slave system in the United States was a hybrid system. The slaves were slaves in the worst sense of the word. Their masters were bourgeois. This combination condemned the slave to the unregulated exploitation for profit on the international market rather than previously tolerable slave systems confined to providing for the immediate wants of the master.

Because of slavery, the United States and all its institutions developed as a southern country. The Presidency, the Supreme Court and Congress were firmly in the hands of the slave owning elite. Naturally, these institutions strengthened and protected the productive relationship between slave and master. The nature of the state militia, the police patrols, the nature of the of institutions from the army to the church had but one central purpose - the defense and propagation of slavery.

As a result, the North developed as a manufacturing and shipping adjunct that serviced slavery. As long as it played this economic role, it was a staunch and militant defender of the slave system. The free black in the South had more "rights" than the free black in the North.

Massachusetts became wealthy because it dominated the slave trade. She built the ships and carried on the commerce. Small wonder that Massachusetts along with South Carolina (the largest slave holding state) held out against the abolition of slavery at the Continental Congress and made the Civil War inevitable.

The point is that so long as the central means of production was the plow and the hoe, the nation was united to defend the productive relations of slavery. The double acting steam engine was perfected and widely applied to industry by about 1832. It was an event of historic proportions. Suddenly, the manufactures were handed the stable source of power they needed to utilize all the gears and other instruments of industrial equipment that was already perfected. As manufacturing declined and industry developed, production expanded very rapidly. Soon the productive capacity of the North out ran the consuming power of the South. At that point political antagonism began to replace the former contradictions. The Southern elite imported its luxury goods from England, and much of their foodstuffs and farm implements from the North. Tariffs between England and the United States were practically unknown. Fledging Northern industry needed protection from advanced British production in order to get on its feet. Every proposal for tariffs was blocked by the South. The North needed a government-sponsored infrastructure such as harbors and railroads. The South blocked the funding.

The turning point came with the explosive growth of the Northwest (Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota). What caused that growth and why did it tip the balance against what had become known as the "Slave power?"

A look at the map will show that large-scale migration and commerce between the east and west was almost impossible. The Allegheny Mountains were an insurmountable barrier. Therefore, all trade and migration was between north and south. Consequently, the Northwest was sparsely settled by Southerners. Since the rivers in the US run north to south, their trade was with the South. This combination made the Northwest a political reserve for the slave owners.

The construction of the Erie Canal changed all that. Suddenly the markets of New York were open to the rich farmlands of the area. Democratic-minded immigrants flooded into the Northwest. There was more money to be made trading with the east than with south. The area needed more canals, more roads and a railroad. The Southern dominated Congress, understanding the potential political danger refused to grant funds. On this basis the Northwest became a hotbed of anti-Southern and finally anti-slavery sentiment. Just as important, the rich farmlands of the Northwest wrecked the commercial farming of the Northeast. With farming and commercial slavery abolished, the Northeast turned to industry. They need expanded harbors and a tariff to assist them. Again the South, sensing the danger of an economically and hence politically independent North refused to allocate funds. Suddenly Massachusetts went from the most pro-slave to the most anti-slave state in the Union.

The economic antagonism set the stage for the introduction of new ideas. This came about with the murder of Rev. Elijah Lovejoy to stop his anti-slave propaganda. Propagandists planted the seeds in fertile soil -- the slave power is destroying the right of free speech and intends to take away the liberties of a free people. This was the actual beginning of the war.

What, then, was the Civil War? It was a struggle for political power between two antagonistic wings of the bourgeoisie. The aim of the new financial industrial oligarchy of the North was to reduce the South to a reserve of industry. The aim of the Southern elite was to transform the entire country and eventually the hemisphere into a slave empire.

Neither side intended to abolish slavery since cotton was indispensable and there was no productive force to take the place of the slave. The slaves themselves made the abolition of slavery a military, political and moral necessity. With emancipation, the war became revolutionary and it was won.

The war ended with a pro-slavery president in office, and with all the Southern legislators who had resigned their seats showing up to legally claim them. What the South had lost on the battlefield they were about to win politically. The radical wing of the Republicans looked frantically for a way to outvote the Southern elite. They came to the conclusion that they must enfranchise the freedmen. Thus reconstruction was born.

The aim of reconstruction was, on the one hand, to politically crush the Southern elite, and, on the other hand, to contain the revolutionary forces that would be unleashed by this process.

By 1875 this was accomplished and Reconstruction came to an end. Between 1875 and 1890, the political scene was re mapped. The interests of the Southern elite merged with the financial industrial oligarchy. This was the foundation for the emergence of modern American imperialism.

Northern industry was dependent upon cotton. There was no more productive energy to take the place of the slave, so the "freedmen", along with an equal number of destitute whites were driven back to the cotton fields. Real emancipation came with the invention of a more productive way to pick cotton. This came about with the perfection of the cotton-picking machine. With the economic base in place, the modern Freedom Movement was born. The social struggle for liberation broke out, ending with the de jure equality of the Civil Rights Act.

The big money gamed us into the Civil War as a struggle for primacy among competing factions of money, with centuries of bloody strife before and a century and a half of oppression, repression, and delusion after. The same kind of wealthy players and often the families struggle for primacy today, and the world reels with the inequities and bloodshed they view as the natural order of things.

Bear that in mind, cousins, as they use your fear and stoke your wrath for their own purposes in the days to come.  ¶ 11:43 AM 1 comments links to this post

  The Difference Between Leaders and Cheerleaders from Yale

Olbermann on scapegoats for Bu$hCo, with video

It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.

A country - a government - a military machine - can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation.

But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power.

The Bush administration has opened this Pandora's Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.

The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war - they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place - the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process - that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The criminal lack of planning for the war - the total "jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly" tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein - that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The utter, blinkered idiocy of "staying the course," of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed - the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake - that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total "Alice Through the Looking Glass" quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida - it isn't Mr. Bush's fault!

The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American - the now-vast majority of us - who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, "Don't take my son; don't take my daughter."

Sen. Clinton has been sent - and someone has leaked to The Associated Press - a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq," Edelman writes, "reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia."

Edelman adds: "Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman's remarks are "at once both outrageous and dangerous." Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq.

After the South was defeated in our Civil War, the scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the ideas of the "Lost Cause" and "Jim Crow" were born.

After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871, it was the imaginary "Jewish influence" in the French Army general staff, and there was born 30 years of self-destructive anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case.

After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the "back-stabbers and profiteers" at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.

And after the generation before ours, and leaders of both political parties, escalated and re-escalated and carpet-bombed and re-carpet-bombed Vietnam, it was the protest movement and Jane Fonda and - as late as just three years ago - Sen. John Kerry who were assigned the kind of blame with which no rational human being could concur, and yet which still, across vast sections of our political landscape, resonates unchallenged and accepted.

And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own "profiteer" - your own scapegoat.

Not for the sake of this country.

Not for the sake of Iraq.

Not even for the sake of your own political party.

But for the sake of your own personal place in history.

But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight not honor, but infamy.

In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive: those who have sold this country out and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve.

A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable, if you hadn't just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee of the opposition party.

And the accusation of spreading "enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia" might be some day atoned for, if we all didn't know - you included, and your generals and the Iraqis - that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later, and we are doing it even if to do so requires, first, that you must be impeached and removed as president of the United States, sooner rather than later.

You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they say, "Enough."

And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush.

When Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from leading the next charge himself.

After the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter-million Allied soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commission as a front-line officer in the trenches of France.

Those are your new role models, Mr. Bush.

Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here, who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002.

Let them try it, until the end of time.

Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail.

This, sir, is your war.

Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

Keith is a little behind the times. Bu$hie's new signing statement allows him to scapegoat anyone he wants, and take all their money, too, if he wants. At this point, he's just setting the stage. To implement the plan, he'll require an act of Terra to scapegoat as well.  ¶ 8:50 AM 0 comments links to this post

  PaleoCon Warnings

And it ain't about Al Qaeda, baby.

Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen. "If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied. However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."

Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. "It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."

Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, "the only constraints on what's going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it."

The full audio of Thom Hartmann's interview with Paul Craig Roberts can be found here.

  ¶ 10:45 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Only Traitors Read the Fine Print

Traitors like those pinkos like Robert Parry at Consortium News just read a lot faster than David Addington can classify it for Darth Cheney:

Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged as much on July 17 in releasing a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that represented the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community.

The report, entitled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” described a resurgent al-Qaeda that has regrouped in remote sections of Pakistan while exploiting Muslim anger over the war in Iraq to increase its operational strength internationally and to take aim at American targets, again.

“We assess that al-Qaeda will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the [U.S.] homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups,” the NIE said. “Of note, we assess that al-Qaeda will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaeda in Iraq [AQI], its most visible and capable affiliate and only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the [U.S.] homeland.

“In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qaeda to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for [U.S.] homeland attacks.”

In other words, Bush’s repeated warnings that the United States must fight Islamic extremists in Iraq so “we don’t have to fight them here” or so "they won't follow us home" turn out to be the opposite of the truth: because U.S. forces are occupying Iraq, al-Qaeda has more resources and more recruits determined to bring the war to the United States...

What's not to like? It's good business for the Company, and what's good for the Company is good for 'Merika!  ¶ 3:27 PM 0 comments links to this post

  HHHillary Strikes Back. Or Complains to a Don of the ISG, Anyway.

WASHINGTON, July 20 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton strongly criticized the Pentagon on Friday, calling it “offensive and totally inappropriate” for a Defense Department official to suggest that information she requested about departmental plans for withdrawing troops in Iraq would help enemy propaganda.

Joined by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, in a conference call with reporters on Friday, Mrs. Clinton said they would introduce legislation to require the department to prepare reports and brief Congress on proposals for a phased withdrawal of American troops...

Late Friday afternoon, Mr. Gates issued a short statement, saying he would look into the issues raised by Mrs. Clinton and respond more fully next week. “I have long been a staunch advocate of Congressional oversight, first at the C.I.A. and now at the Defense Department,” he said. “I have said on several occasions in recent months that I believe that Congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive and appropriate...”

As long as said oversight is fully in line with what Poppy and the Consigliere want done anyway: withdraw from Iraqi civilian centers to the bases controlling the oil, fomenting anarchy along the way to destroy any popular resistance.

This is by no means what Cheneyburton wants to see. They would like for the ethnic strife to come to a furious boil, and use it all to expand their base of operations into Iran. But there is a whole spectrum of Company opinion on how to handle this: Evil, Really Evil, Sauron, and Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, Dear Leader signs another Writ that gives Abu Gonzales the final say over the Geneva Conventions silliness:



Now doesn't government run much more smoothly now that Congress has been taken out of the loop and Commander Bunnypants can do things cuz he Sez So? One can only imagine what Cheneyburton will accomplish in his couple of hours at the helm of State...  ¶ 7:19 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Trooping the Support

Bu$hie signs a writ saying that if you diss War on Terra, you are a traitor, and Abu Gonzo can sign you up for a trip to Gitmo, or Siberia, or whereever they want to play waterboarding with you. More on this from Sara at Orcinus.

Commander Bunnypants also sez so what if Congress slaps contempt charges on his gf Harriet about the D.o'J. takeover, nobody's gonna press charges, 'cause all the cops are his. The New York Pravda reports this a couple of days later...

Finally, Dear Leader slimes his old Texas base. Literally, with Kennebunkport Corleone style.  ¶ 9:03 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Inappropriate Behavior

You've got to hand it to HHHillary. For a shill trying to tow the Company line, she sure is a lightning rod for the ire of the Faithful.



Next comes treason charges, one supposes:

On May 23, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging him to “prepare plans for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces...”

Clinton said she conveyed similar concerns in a private meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace, and has publicly warned the administration that redeployment is “complicated” and “If they’re not planning for it, it will be difficult to execute it in a safe and efficacious way.”

On Monday, Clinton received a “biting reply” from Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, who told Clinton that "public discussion” of withdrawal is inappropriate... [and] "reinforces enemy propaganda"

Well shut my mouth and pack me off to Gitmo. Which enemy are they talking about? The Democrats, Al Qaeda, or Poppy's Iraq Study Group?  ¶ 10:04 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Projection

Right out of the Karl Rove playbook, and on Faux News, of course:

Fox News on Tuesday interviewed veteran Pentagon reporter Rowan Scarborough about his "startling allegation" that "elements within the CIA are sabotaging our own War on Terror." Scarborough, a former columnist for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times, is the author of Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA, which claims that "CIA bureaucrats are undermining President Bush and the War on Terror through disinformation, incompetence, and outright sabotage."

"The CIA ... is the only agency I know that has a retired group of officers who formed together for the sole purpose of attacking Bush," said Scarborough. "The head of the organization goes around the country giving speeches about how the government did 9/11."

This was apparently a reference to Ray McGovern of Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who has criticized the 9/11 Commission Report by saying that "to say that no one could prevent 9/11 was a bold-faced lie. It basically let the president and everyone responsible off the hook."

"That, I think, gives you a little peak inside to the bureaucracy at Langley and how anti-Bush it is, and how they will do things like leak the existence of programs or leak false allegations against Vice-President Cheney or John Bolton," Scarborough added...

You can't make this up. In fact, you don't have to. Rowan Scarborough, on orders from He Who Must Not Be Named will do it for you.  ¶ 9:24 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Probabilities and Likelihood of Exigent Circumstances

Given enough time, a monkey might type a line of Shakespeare, and even a neocon apologist like John Tierney sees a glint of reality, though he'll doubtless muddle it up if he thinks about it too much:

In 1993, J. Richard Gott III computed with scientific certainty that humanity would survive at least 5,100 more years. At the time, I took that as reason to relax, but Dr. Gott has now convinced me I was wrong. He has issued a wake-up call: To ensure our long-term survival, we need to get a colony up and running on Mars within 46 years.

If you’re not awakened yet, I understand. It’s only prudent to be skeptical of people who make scientific forecasts about the end of humanity. Dr. Gott, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton, got plenty of grief after he made his original prediction in 1993. But in the ensuing 14 years, his prophetic credentials have strengthened, and not merely because humanity is still around.

Dr. Gott has used his technique to successfully forecast the longevity of Broadway plays, newspapers, dogs and, most recently, the tenure in office of hundreds of political leaders around the world. He bases predictions on just one bit of data, how long something has lasted already; and on one assumption, that there is nothing special about the particular moment that you’re observing this phenomenon. This assumption is called the Copernican Principle, after the astronomer who assumed he wasn’t seeing the universe from a special spot in the center.

Suppose you want to forecast the political longevity of the leader of a foreign country, and you know nothing about her country except that she has just finished her 39th week in power. What are the odds that she’ll leave office in her 40th week? According to the Copernican Principle, there’s nothing special about this week, so there’s only a 1-in-40 chance, or 2.5 percent, that she’s now in the final week of her tenure.

It’s equally unlikely that she’s still at the very beginning of her tenure. If she were just completing the first 2.5 percent of her time in power, that would mean her remaining time would be 39 times as long as the period she’s already served — 1,521 more weeks (a little more than 29 years).

So you can now confidently forecast that she will stay in power at least one more week but not as long as 1,521 weeks. The odds of your being wrong are 2.5 percent on the short end and 2.5 percent on the long end — a total of just 5 percent, which means that your forecast has an expected accuracy of 95 percent, the scientific standard for statistical significance.

And you can apply this Copernican formula to lots of other phenomena by assuming they’re neither in the first 2.5 percent nor the final 2.5 percent of their life spans.

Now, that range is so broad it may not seem terribly useful to you, and Dr. Gott readily concedes that his Copernican formula often is not the ideal method. The best the formula could do regarding Bill Clinton, who had been president for 127 days when the 1993 paper in Nature was published, was predict he would serve at least three more days but not more than 13.6 more years. You could have gotten a narrower range by using other information, like actuarial data from previous presidencies, or factoring in the unlikelihood that the Constitution would be changed so he could serve more than two terms.

But the beauty of the Copernican formula is that it allows you to make predictions when you don’t have any other information, which is how Dr. Gott managed to predict the tenure of virtually every other nation’s leader that day in 1993 — a total of 313 leaders. If none of those still in power stays in office beyond age 100, Dr. Gott’s accuracy rate will turn out to be almost exactly 95 percent...

The Copernican formula predicts, based solely on our 200,000-year track record, that the human race is likely to survive at least 5,100 more years but not longer than 7.8 million — roughly the same prediction you’d make based on the longevity of past mammals on Earth, Dr. Gott says...

After all, if colonization is common and there’s nothing special about our civilization, why haven’t we already colonized other worlds? Why aren’t we colonists ourselves from a civilization somewhere else?

If you think of yourself as a randomly chosen individual among all the intelligent beings who ever lived in the universe, then the odds are you’re living in one of the larger and older civilizations — simply because a lot more people have lived in those than in small, short-lived civilizations.

“The sobering facts,” Dr. Gott says, “are that in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe, we’ve only been around 200,000 years, and we’re only on one tiny planet. The Copernican answer to Enrico Fermi’s famous question — Where are the extraterrestrials? — is that a significant fraction must be sitting on their home planets.”

It might seem hard to imagine that humans would invent rockets and then never use them to settle other worlds, but Dr. Gott notes that past civilizations, notably China, abandoned exploration. He also notes that humans have been going into space for only 46 years — a worrisomely low number when using Copernican logic to forecast the human spaceflight program’s longevity.

Since there’s a 50 percent chance that we’re already in the second half of the space program’s total lifespan, Dr. Gott figures there is a 50 percent chance it will not last more than another 46 years. Maybe the reason civilizations don’t get around to colonizing other planets is that there’s a narrow window when they have the tools, population and will to do so, and the window usually closes on them. “In 1970 everyone figured we’d have humans on Mars by now, but we haven’t taken the opportunity,” Dr. Gott says. “We should it do soon, because colonizing other worlds is our best chance to hedge our bets and improve the survival prospects of our species. Sooner or later something will get us if we stay on one planet. By the time we’re in trouble and wish we had that colony on Mars, it may be too late...”

...If it’s true that civilizations normally go extinct because they get stuck on their home planets, then the odds are against us, but there’s nothing inevitable about the Copernican Principle. Earthlings could make themselves the statistical anomaly. When extinction is the norm, you may as well try to be special.

There's actually something interesting when you look at that 46 year guesstimate.



Towards the end of it, relatively inexpensive fossil fuels will be gone.

Inexpensive energy for an industrial base for interplanetary exploration and travel needn't come from fossil fuels. It's just an awfully handy source. But they're other forces at work that keep the E.T.'s at home and may just keep us closer to the 5000 year range, too.

Jeff Wells has another post up at Rigorous Intuition that's worth reading, and quoting here:

Post-war covert history has largely been one of de-legitimizing and destroying leftist and even moderate governments and opposition groups. We've seen the assassinations, the coups and wars; the economic arm-twisting; the corruption and blackmail. Since the murder of Rabin, "Israeli society, despairing of peace, has undergone a rightward radicalization." In the Arab world the process has been compounded by the elimination of even secular options, creating conditions in which the only effective vehicle for change is aligned with individuals, ideologies and finances indebted to international fascism.

This shouldn't be news to anyone here. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned most "Jihadist" groups, was founded by Hassan al-Banna, an admirer of Hitler, and became a wartime Nazi intelligence asset. Post-war, like many such assets, it was rolled into the Western intelligence matrix. Swiss Nazi Ahmed Huber established the Al Taqwa Bank, which dispersed to bin Laden and others CIA monies seeded in the financial proxy of international terror and intelligence, BCCI.

Now where does antisemitism, and legitimate critique of Israel, fit in this complex picture?

There are at least two levels at play here for us. First to consider is politics and activism. The second is conspiracy theory.

Unapologetically I'm on the left, and I expect, to some degree or another and regardless of whether you even acknowledge it, you are as well. Broadly, or perhaps rather, ideally, taking the left implies an identification with the oppressed, the poor and the workers against the concentration of power and capital in the hands of an exploiting few. Israeli politics have taken a sharp right turn in the past 40 years, and the policies and consequences of occupation have been tragic and criminal. Perversely, and I believe intentionally for the right, the perpetuation of misery and exacerbation of tension has driven large numbers of both Palestinians and Israelis to rightward extremes. And it has carried many in the left along with it, unconsciously and uncritically, because the progressive options have already been eliminated by the fascists who play both sides...

Then there's conspiracy theory. It was 9/11 that caused many on the left to immerse themselves in it for the first time. There we found a thriving subculture, welcoming us with literature and semi-familiar jargon, telling us that "left" and "right" were fictions that divided us from together fighting the "real enemy." They too believed 9/11 was an "inside job," so even though we didn't start out from the same place, we were now on the same side - weren't we? We could learn much from them, even from the "former insiders" and veterans of the CIA and MI6 who were happy to help us find our footing, even if we weren't always sure what they meant by "international bankers" and "New World Order" - right?

...There is a subtle campaign of co-option within the subculture of conspiracy to lead nearly every issue of suppressed history and high crime back to a Jewish root. This is why the operational Arab element of the international fascist Mafia has, for many, been totally eradicated from the equation of "9/11 Truth," and the "smoking gun" has become a case of "insurance fraud" for a grasping New York Jew. If it's successful, the left option will again have been eliminated, and the only effective opposition to fascist power will be a fascist populism.

Antisemitism is as objectionable as any hate directed towards any people for simply being. But antisemitism has a special pedigree, not because Jews are special, but because they are the historic and still-favoured scapegoats of fascists. (Some of whom, of course, are themselves Jewish, but whose allegiance is rather to criminal power.) And sometimes, when we don't reflect on the pedigree of our own influences, we're unconsciously doing their bidding. And I'd rather do nothing, and it would be better if I did, than do that.

That needed to be said in a really serious way.

As usual, there are some real pearls in Jeff's comment section. Caveat: there are also a lot of monkeys flinging their own feces around at each other. Jeff, after all, uses the conspiracy theory schtick to make a living. It can get really torrid.

But then there are gems like the iridescent cuttlefish:

...Now, I'm with Jeff and the Hemperor so far, 'cuz who wouldn't be? Who would sign up for "mean-spirited" and "fascist"? Well, okay; that was kind of Jeff's point here--the CT industry is yet another front in the War On Liberals. But then we have that notion I metioned at the top about life not being fair...why isn't it, exactly?

Because we don't have enough food to feed the poor? (Not true...)

Because there are limits to growth and if we share the resources equally Malthus's rat-humans will just exponentially multiply, eating us out of house & home? (No, Malthus never lived to see what happens when an impovershed country's standard of living is sufficiently raised--the birth rate falls, along with crime and violence of every sort. Except in America, of course, but that's another story altogether.)

No, none of these answers work (don't bother with Hobbes, either, since he was writing for the newly restored Crown and didn't know man's state of nature from a Dickensian textile mill.)

The answer is the other sort of conspiracy theory--the liberal version. Toss out the magic; forget the rituals and the bloodlines (just for conversation's sake). Concentrate instead on the very obvious.

When GM was on trial for conspiring to destroy public transportation and replace it with individually owned internal combustion cars, Charles E. Wilson, CEO of GM for eleven years (including WWII) was asked whether it ever occurred to him that destroying public transport would be against the interest of the citizenry. Wilson scratched his head and (famously) said:

"What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country."

GM was found guilty in the end, given a $1000 fine and told to keep on protecting America's interests because Wilson's remark opened too wide a chasm for the good Americans to leap: that this was not indeed the case. That scarcity and conspiracy (another quick definition: "operations and decisions undertaken in secrecy") were not in anyone's interests except those who profit from them...

When our most basic assumptions are false, we are not motivated to change them, but instead to continue down the path we're on in order to justify having taken that path in the first place.

The real conspiracy is too vast & deep to even see anymore. It's in the belief that life isn't fair and we can't afford to help the poor. It's the belief that freedom means freedom from social responsibility, freedom to make a buck...

It's the freedom of the right sorts of people to get their dues, freedom of the entrepreneurial to try to shrink governmental oversight to the point it can be strangled in the bathtub, freedom to hear only the right things being said by the serious people on T.V., freedom to know who Paris Hilton's boffing this week, the freedom of the wealthy patron to have the Visigoth private contractors man the walls of Rome to keep the other barbarians in their place.

That's what keeps the E.T.'s at home, and likely us, too.  ¶ 10:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Quantum Cheneyverse



[with thanks to Tom Tomorrow posting at Working for Change]

It looks like Darth Cheneyburton's super powers of Indeterminacy are going to be tested Big Time.

The globe may be warming, but things are definitely getting chillier with Pootie:

Russia Suspends Arms Agreement Over U.S. Shield

By ANDREW E. KRAMER and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 15, 2007

MOSCOW, July 14 — President Vladimir V. Putin, angered by American plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, formally notified NATO governments on Saturday that Russia will suspend its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a key cold war-era arms limitation agreement.

The decision ratcheted up tensions over the missile shield plan, but also reflected a trend of rising anti-Americanism and deep suspicion toward the West here as Russia’s March presidential elections approach.

Russia’s suspension will take effect in 150 days, according to a copy of the president’s decree posted on a Kremlin Web site. That delay leaves open the possibility of further negotiation on the 1990 treaty, which resulted in a huge wave of disarmament along the former East-West divide in Europe...

...spinning somewhere between dimensions, a particle when not a wave, shifting worldlines...

LONDON, July 16 — Britain’s relations with Russia deteriorated further today as the British government announced that it would expel four Russian diplomats in retaliation for Russia’s refusal to extradite the key suspect in the deadly poisoning of a former K.G.B. agent, Alexander V. Litvinenko, in London last year...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. missile-defense system will be built in Poland despite Russia's anger over the plans, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said on Monday after a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Kaczynski expressed confidence over the proposed system, although Poland has held off a formal agreement to host it and pressed for concessions on issues including related military contracts.

"The matter of the shield is largely a foregone conclusion," Kaczynski said at a news conference following the meeting.

"The shield will exist because for Poland this will be a very good thing," he said...

Then there's the Agnostic's viewpoint.

Why worry about something that can't be tested?

Indeed. The status and extent of the Fourth Branch of Government need not impinge upon our bubble of the multiverse at all. Better minds than ours are concerned about these things. Move along; nothing to see here, just this quantum black hole we've made in the National Interest.

  ¶ 10:01 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Just Not Getting It While Being Had

Digby, bless her Wes Clark-supporting soul, just doesn't get why the DINOcrats in Congress are coming out in favor of expanding the War on Terra with Iran.

There are 102 (at last count) comments in her comment thread telling her exactly why the DINOcrats are letting Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton precipitate World War III.

Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money.

The answer is revealed.

Of course, if World War III actually kicks off in earnest, that cash really will be nothing but trash. But the 0.01% who own everything, including the 'Merikan government, mostly seem to ignore that. Ignoring that does not mean they're ignorant of the possibilities. It's just when class war here shifts into World War, they figure they still have most of the gold and most of the bullets.

Let's add what's been said at Correntewire:

The government of Israel has always been the hand puppet of the Corporate State of ’Merika.

Oh, sure, the Israelis have their own fronts with strings that lead to the gullible and easily bought here in the CS’M, they have their Mossad, they take extreme offense if you suggest they’re totally dependent on Uncle Sugar, but basically it’s a dog and pony show.

It always has been. Appearances are cosmetic. They always will be. After all, there is oil under all that sand to the East and the South and the North of Israel, which itself is a lovely base of Company operations with an easily controlled paramilitary population.

Plant this into your database: the Company owns the Congress. We are going to expand the War on Terra into Iran. Chaos is the plan.  ¶ 7:06 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Cowboy (except he's scared of horses) Diplomacy

Hold on to your Stetsons after Bu$hie comes back from vacation:

Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran
· Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out
· President 'not prepared to leave conflict unresolved'

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger
Monday July 16, 2007
The Guardian

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

Now be sure to get this straight. Al Qaeda is resurging and training in Afghanistan and plans to attack us this summer. We're in deep trouble in Iraq. But Bu$hie's focussed on Iran.

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week...

The balance has tilted indeed. Iran has let in IAEA inspectors and is negotiating. If Cheneyburton doesn't act fast it will never get a chance to seize those oilfields.

Back to the Guardian:

...The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively...

Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time...

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that there are signs of Iran slowing down work on the enrichment plant it is building in Natanz. Negotiations took place in Tehran last week between Iranian officials and the IAEA, which is seeking a full accounting of Iran's nuclear activities before Tehran disclosed its enrichment programme in 2003. The agency's deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, said two days of talks had produced "good results" and would continue...

A peaceful solution? No way Dear Leader would trust that! Where's the profit?  ¶ 9:11 PM 0 comments links to this post

  $andbagged

Of course, they'd never do this in 'Merika to the next $elected Preznit, either HHHillBama or GhouliAnnie:

...RU SIRIUS: Your book shows that there was a terrible relationship between JFK and some members of his administration and the entire National Security establishment. It's all of a piece, but I think the situation with Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military really stands out...

DAVID TALBOT: They were his nemesis.

RU: They were very frightening.

DT: Yeah. The Kennedy administration was beleaguered and besieged by its own government. That was a revelation for me. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when Kennedy refuses to reinforce the CIA with U.S. troops and the Air Force, the government was pretty much at war with itself. Up to that point, they believed that Kennedy was a weak President – he was in over his head. And they were determined to run the country the way they wanted to.

RU: They suckered Kennedy into letting this invasion happen. Apparently, there was a fairly recent revelation that the CIA knew the Bay of Pigs wasn't going to work and they were sure that Kennedy would be forced to mount an invasion.

DT: That's right. I think they were trying to sandbag him. They knew he was young and inexperienced. According to the CIA's own internal history of the Bay of Pigs, which was released and de-classified in 2005, they knew that it would fail. They knew that their own motley brigade of Cuban exiles weren't sufficient to defeat Castro, and they thought that Kennedy's hand would be forced to send in the Marines and Air Force once these guys were pinned down on the beaches. But he didn't. He was very loath to widen the war. He knew — as the CIA itself later determined in an intelligence estimate — that if we were to do that, it would end up like what we're seeing today in Iraq. U.S. forces would have quickly swept aside Castro's military, they'd have marched on to Havana and then they would've gotten bogged down in a long and bloody occupation...

[thanks to the heretik and John Amato]



Unlike the stories of Saddam being behind 911 and Al Qaeda everywhere except of course, Saudi Arabia, this is doubtless baseless conspiracy theory.

After all, the D.o'D. and their Company backers for Viet Nam would never have lied to LBJ about Viet Nam. Just ask 'em, they'll tell you.

Likewise, Carter had the best possible advice from Boykin and Ollie North during the Iran hostage crisis. They would never have manipulated the situation and placed American citizens' lives in danger. Or risked the lives of the soldiers who tried, and failed, with fatal results, to rescue the hostages.

And Bill Clinton's love life was certainly never targeted by some shadow government that brought him down because the average 'Merikan was too prosperous, or because he targeted the tobacco companies and Microsoft and wanted to tax the rich to promote education and health.



Such baseless conspiracy theories, unlike the current information about how the Shiite Iranians are using the Wahhabi Al-Qaeda to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan and building nukular missiles to target Peoria, Illinois, have no basis in fact.

Besides, who would profit from such actions?



Who, indeed?  ¶ 7:49 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Iran-Ho!

This week apparently our Imperial $enate voted that Iran has conducted acts of war against the U.S. of A., although you sure wouldn't have noticed it while Lou Dobbs was wringing his hands about Messicans and Skeletor was warning about Terra'ist attacks from Canada.

...Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran's doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault...

Oh, and for the record, HHHillBamaBiden and the rest of the DINOcrats played right along. The vote was 97-0.



Now that's an Imperial $enate for History!  ¶ 6:23 AM 2 comments links to this post

  Maybe it's part of the menu

Yesterday an old friend sent me this, which upon reflection may be related to Skeletor's Gut of Prophecy.

Apparently they obtained their license to by unlimited amounts of americium-241 and cesium-137 through a P.O. Box.



You know, all the Fourth Reich of government has to do to get a terrorist attack on American soil is simply stand down. If they do that, they don't really commit a crime they can be implicated in. No Special Ops or CIA-trained islamofascists are needed.

They let something like a small dirty bomb go off in an American city, and they get to implement everything they want. Kiss your Constitution good-bye. The Rethuglicans will follow lockstep with their Reptilican Party brethren. HHHillary will lead the way for the bipartisan DINOcrats.

Dear Leader will, of course, say I-told-you-so as he opens the work camps for the main course of the meal.  ¶ 6:45 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Ghouliani Makes the Gold Trains Run on Time

via Satyam at Think Progress:

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has regularly touted his leadership in the wake of 9/11 as one of his major selling points. A host of 9/11 responders have alleged, however, that Giuliani provided them with poor radios, misled them into working amidst toxic fumes, and most recently, hastily cleared out the rubble before bodies were all recovered.

Six weeks after 9/11, Giuliani abandoned efforts to recover remaining bodies and buckled to pressure from developers eager to “scoop” the rubble...

Yesterday, Harold Schaitberger of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) — the nation’s largest firefighters organization, consisting of 280,000 members — assailed Giuliani, detailing how the mayor ditched body-recovery efforts only 24 hours after recovering the $230 million in gold. “He found the gold on October 31, and on November 1 is when he issued the order to remove the firefighters from their recovery mode...”

The IAFF has produced a video entitled “Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend,” extensively documenting Giuliani’s negligence after 9/11, featuring “active and retired fire fighters, fire officers and families of the fallen speaking out about the ‘Real Rudy,’ his failed leadership and his disrespect for the recovery of those we lost...”

Now we know at least where some of the money went...  ¶ 7:24 AM 2 comments links to this post

  $urgin' Kings

Private enterprise like Cheneyburton. Like Atrios says, Entrepreneurs:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Thieves have stolen nearly $300 million from a bank in Baghdad, police and a bank official said Thursday, in what is probably one of the biggest thefts in Iraq since the 2003 war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Police said the thieves were three guards who worked at the private Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad's Karrada district.

They said that when bank employees arrived for work on Wednesday they found the front door open and the money gone. The guards, who normally slept at the bank, had also disappeared, they said.

An official at the bank said about $300 million in U.S. dollars had been stolen, as well as 220 million Iraqi dinars ($176,000). He declined to give further details...

  ¶ 10:57 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Synthetic By Design, Chaotic by Nature

Last Sunday's New York Pravda carried a pitch for investors concealed as an Op-Ed:

...Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., hope to take a giant stride in synthetic biology by creating a piece of DNA 580,076 units in length from simple chemicals, chiefly the material that constitutes DNA’s four-letter chemical alphabet. This molecule would be an exact copy of the genome of a small bacterium. Dr. Venter says he then plans to insert it into a bacterial cell. If this man-made genome can take over the cell’s functions, Dr. Venter should be able to claim he has made the first synthetic cell.

Such an achievement could suggest some new plateau has been reached in human control of life and evolution. But Dr. Venter’s synthetic genome will probably be seen to represent a feat of copying evolution’s genetic programming, not of creating new life itself.

Synthetic biologists, as they survey all the new genes and control elements whose DNA sequences are now accumulating in data bases, seem to feel extraordinary power is almost within their grasp.

“Biology will never be the same,” Thomas F. Knight of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote recently in describing the new engineering discipline he sees as emerging from it.

Adherents of the new discipline held their third annual conference last month in Zurich but their creations are still at the toy rocket stage. A dish of bacteria that generates a bull’s eye pattern in response to the chemicals in its environment. A network of genes that synthesizes the precursor chemical to artemisin, an anti-malaria drug. “The understanding of networks and pathways is really in its infancy and will be a challenge for decades,” says James J. Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University.

That hasn’t stopped synthetic biologists from dreaming. “Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

Most people in synthetic biology are engineers who have invaded genetics. They have brought with them a vocabulary derived from circuit design and software development that they seek to impose on the softer substance of biology. They talk of modules — meaning networks of genes assembled to perform some standard function — and of “booting up” a cell with new DNA-based instructions, much the way someone gets a computer going.

The first practical applications of synthetic biology may not be so far off. “The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research...

A great idea, that, but one that doesn't require making "new" cells from scratch. As I've written here before, the organisms already exist in nature.

Is this a pitch for investors, or an attempt to wake up the oil boys? But anyone who's seen Blade Runner and knows the mind of commercial science should know that making something as useful and mundane as gasoline from garbage is probably the dead last item on the list that any benefactor investor with deep pockets would promote.

The first item will be molecular and cellular barcodes to identify every piece of DNA or cellular product as proprietary.

The next item will be to engineer controls that keep it from reproducing under conditions that don't generate shareholder funds. Don't worry, the velociraptors or their equivalent will figure a workaround for that. Probably shortly after the Marines deploy them in the Middle East.

Planned obsolescence will likely also be genetically programmed. After all, we can't have things working too well for too long.



Oh yeah. And the final moneymaker?



I'll let you figure that one, but it will doubtless give a whole new dimension to the concept of labor.  ¶ 7:32 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Your Fourth Reich of Government at Work

Darth Cheney says he's not a member of the Legistlative, Executive, or Judiciary branch of government, and not subject to their rules.



Which branch does he say he's a member of? A fourth branch of government: the Fourth Reich of Government, where free enterprise takes over to do what must be done. Corporatism is the Fourth Reich for a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub, a government where the profit incentive takes care of the Right People.

Case in point, from Justin Rood:

A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say.

The $5 million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter.

The project would involve "the development of data storage and retrieval systems...for at least two years' worth of network calling records," according to an unclassified budget document posted to the FBI's Web site. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The FBI is barred by law from collecting and storing such data if it has no connection to a specific investigation or intelligence matter.

In recent years the bureau has tried to encourage telecommunications firms to voluntarily store such information, but corporations have balked at the cost of keeping records they don't need.

"The government isn't allowed to warehouse the information, and the companies don't want to, so this creates a business incentive for the companies to warehouse it, so the government can access it later," said Mike German, a policy expert on national security and privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Before joining the ACLU, German was a veteran FBI undercover counterterrorism agent...

The FBI does not identify the firms in the document, a budget request to Congress, although it said it already has contracts with them to provide information on their customers. In March, an FBI official identified the companies as Verizon, MCI and AT&T.

MCI has since merged into Verizon; neither Verizon nor AT&T immediately responded to requests for comment for this story...

In March, the Department of Justice's internal watchdog was harshly critical of the FBI's partnership effort with Verizon, MCI and AT&T, because FBI agents appeared to routinely ignore laws and policies when accessing Americans' phone records.



Even the bureau's own top lawyer said she found the unit's behavior "disturbing," noting that when requesting access to phone company records, it repeatedly referenced "emergency" situations that did not exist, falsely claimed grand juries had subpoenaed information and failed to keep records on much of its own activity.

Yes, but what about the exigent circumstances.

[thanks to Buzzflash and Not Atrios]  ¶ 8:25 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Bad Polls

Frankly, I thought they'd wait until 2008:

WASHINGTON - U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region...

Of course, Pakistan is our "ally", and we control Afghanistan. Or at least, you know, its gas reserves.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a "gut feeling" about a new period of increased risk.

He based his assessment on earlier patterns of terrorists in Europe and intelligence he would not disclose.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," Chertoff said in his discussion with the newspaper about terrorists. "We worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Other U.S. counterterrorism officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared Chertoff's concern and said that al-Qaida and like-minded groups have been able to plot and train more freely in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border in recent months. Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged region.

"The threat coming out of there is very real, even if there aren't a lot of specifics attached to it," one of the officials said...

Skeletor just has to ask Darth Cheney. I'm sure he has all the details.  ¶ 9:26 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Finally Swinging the Other Way, Ya Think?

Pendulums are not the right analogy.

So Dear Leader's going to end this cash cow, just because we want him to? Not gonna happen.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion...

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said...

A trillion dollars buys some mondo lobbying power, not to mention all the corporate spooks stirring up the pot here and there. I expect Congress to lead some kind of dog and pony show to end it. Why? A whopping 70% of the $electorate is against it.

They'll "end it" without really, you know, ending it, because the other 30% has all the money. After all, the last man standing has the oil.  ¶ 10:47 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Apples and Oranges

Let's beat a dead horse once again, because it still runs faster than anything else.

I'm still wondering where all the money and financial records went...  ¶ 10:35 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Professionals Take Care of Their Own. Not.

When four Blackwater USA security guards were ambushed and massacred in Fallujah in 2004, graphic images showed the world exactly what happened: four men killed, their bodies burned and dragged through the streets. A chanting mob hung two mutilated corpses from a bridge.

Since then, Congress and the families of the murdered private security contractors have been demanding answers: Why did the lightly armed and undermanned team go through the heart of one of Iraq's most hostile cities? Why did the two teams sent out that day have four members, not the usual six?

Some answers can be found in memos from a second team for Blackwater operating around Fallujah on March 31, 2004.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush.

The Bravo 2 team members had protested that they were not ready for the mission and had not had time to prepare their weapons, but they were commanded to go, according to memos written by team members. The team disregarded directions to drive through Fallujah and instead drove around it and returned safely to Baghdad that evening.

The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.

The Bravo 2 team memos, in emotional, coarse and damning language, placed the blame squarely on Blackwater's Baghdad site manager, Tom Powell.

"Why did we all want to kill him?" team member Daniel Browne wrote the following day. "He had sent us on this [expletive] mission and over our protest. We weren't sighted in, we had no maps, we had not enough sleep, he was taking 2 of our guys cutting off [our] field of fire. As we went over these things we new the other team had the same complaints. They too had their people cut."

The memos surface amid heightened congressional scrutiny of Blackwater, a private security firm based in Moyock, and the private security industry, which grows ever more valuable to the Pentagon. Reports last week indicate that there are now more private contractors than troops operating in Iraq. Blackwater has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts.

The aftermath of the killings shows one difference between contractors and the military. Had an officer sent four lightly armed soldiers into Fallujah, he would likely have faced public scrutiny in the military justice system. In this case, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been trying to get documents such as these memos from Blackwater without success.

The families of the four men killed in the ambush -- Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston and Michael Teague -- sued Blackwater in Wake County Superior Court in an effort to find out what happened. Blackwater countersued the estates of the four men in federal court, successfully arguing for arbitration, in which the proceedings are closed to the public and the investigation of the incident can be much more limited.

Powell, the site manager, left Blackwater shortly after the Fallujah incident. He will not discuss the event while litigation is pending, said his attorney, Clifford Higby of Panama City, Fla. Efforts to reach the other Blackwater contractors for comment were unsuccessful.

Blackwater, owned by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, did not respond to requests for comment starting in early June. A company lawyer, John W. Phillips of Seattle, sent a letter protesting the paper's possession of the memos and suggesting possible legal action if they were used in a news report.

Is there some sort of criminal action we the people can use against Blackwater for fomenting the Iraqi insurrection? Because this incident was the first.  ¶ 10:57 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Nietzsche for Preschoolers and the Market

Via uggabugga:

This week, Fox and Friends had on a guest (the "expert" in these matters, a finance professor at Louisiana State University) who was arguing that Fred Rogers was a blight on society. part of the discussion included this:



"Mr. Rogers had an optimistic message where everyone was special even if they didn’t deserve it."

Better very young children should learn what is good in life.



To crush your, enemies, to drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their mommies.

Now just wait until these guys (i.e., Murdoch) control the Dow. All Bull, all the time. Even when it's bear. You don't want all those girly facts confusing your investment decisions, do you?  ¶ 8:03 AM 0 comments links to this post

  At Last It's Come to This

The editiorial staff at The New York Pravda advocates redeployment. Sensibly. With a plan.

It's not gonna happen with Bu$hCo in charge.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit...

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda...

The United States has about 160,000 troops and millions of tons of military gear inside Iraq. Getting that force out safely will be a formidable challenge. The main road south to Kuwait is notoriously vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks. Soldiers, weapons and vehicles will need to be deployed to secure bases while airlift and sealift operations are organized. Withdrawal routes will have to be guarded. The exit must be everything the invasion was not: based on reality and backed by adequate resources.

The United States should explore using Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq as a secure staging area. Being able to use bases and ports in Turkey would also make withdrawal faster and safer. Turkey has been an inconsistent ally in this war, but like other nations, it should realize that shouldering part of the burden of the aftermath is in its own interest...

Would, should, could. Good luck airlifting out of Kurdistan if the Turks declare open war. Which will happen if Big Time Dick's Company ops have anything to do with it.

Back to the crow-eating at Pravda:

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

The irony behind that statement is almost too hard to bear.

Chaos is the plan.

Expect chaos to destroy any sensible plan to extricate ourselves from the abyss.  ¶ 7:44 AM 0 comments links to this post

  The Real and Present Danger

R.J. Hillhouse breaks The Washington Pravda:

Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.
By R.J. Hillhouse
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page B05

...The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today.

Surprised? No wonder. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune, I'm told, of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

These firms recruit spies, create non-official cover identities and control the movements of CIA case officers. They also provide case officers and watch officers at crisis centers and regional desk officers who control clandestine operations worldwide. As the Los Angeles Times first reported last October, more than half the workforce in two key CIA stations in the fight against terrorism -- Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan -- is made up of industrial contractors, or "green badgers," in CIA parlance.

Intelligence insiders say that entire branches of the NCS have been outsourced to private industry. These branches are still managed by U.S. government employees ("blue badgers") who are accountable to the agency's chain of command. But beneath them, insiders say, is a supervisory structure that's controlled entirely by contractors; in some cases, green badgers are managing green badgers from other corporations.

Sensing problems -- and possibly fearing congressional action -- the CIA recently conducted a hasty review of all of its job classifications to determine which perform "essential government functions" that should not be outsourced. But it's highly doubtful that such a short-term exercise can comprehensively identify the proper "blue/green" mix, especially because contractors' work statements have long been carefully formulated to blur the distinction between approvable and debatable functions...

as the center of gravity shifts from the public sector to the private, more than one independent intelligence firm has developed plans to "raise" succeeding generations of officers within its own training systems. These corporate-grown agents will be inculcated with corporate values and ethics, not those of public service.

And the current piecemeal system has introduced some vulnerabilities. Historically, the system offered members of the intelligence community the kind of stability that ensured that they would keep its secrets. That dynamic is now being eroded. Contracts come and go. So do workforces. The spies of the past came of age professionally in a strong extended family, but the spies of the future will be more like children raised in multiple foster homes -- at risk.

Today, when Booz Allen Hamilton loses a contract to SAIC, people rush from one to the other in a game of musical chairs, with not enough chairs for all the workers who possess both the highest security clearances and expertise in the art of espionage. Some inevitably lose out. Any good counterintelligence officer knows what can happen next. Down-on-their-luck spies begin to do what spies do best: spy. Other companies offer them jobs in exchange for industry secrets. Foreign governments approach them. And some day, terrorists will clue in to this potential workforce.

The director of national intelligence has put our security at risk by classifying the study on outsourcing and keeping the truth about this inadequately planned and managed system out of the light...

Dr. Hillhouse has an excellent blog and has provided some of the most interesting information I've found on the web regarding the intelligence community. I certainly can't agree with everything she says: let's take the example of John Negroponte, an adept manipulator, the kind of classic spook Dr. Hillhouse seems to hold with some regard because of his distaste for letting the Company run the Agency. To me, he's a bad guy: slicker than most, and his politics put him in the Shadow side of the Force.

But there is one thing I agree with her, and apparently, John Negroponte on: the commercialization of the CIA is a serious threat to national security.  ¶ 9:21 PM 0 comments links to this post

  He has always been there...

call him the Highlander.

And watch it.  ¶ 1:32 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Is there a "Cheney" listed?

And more importantly, which Cheney is it? There are at least three on record that seem to like girls... not that there's anything wrong with that...  ¶ 1:20 PM 0 comments links to this post

  аппара́тчик or a member of the номенклату́ра?

So the Regentization of the government continues to pay off for Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton:

A divided federal appeals court yesterday dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge’s order that the program be shut down.

The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue.

Because it may be impossible for any plaintiff to demonstrate injury from the highly classified wiretapping program, the effect of the ruling was to insulate it from judicial scrutiny. Thus, the program’s secrecy is proving to be its best legal protection...

Over at Correntewire, Lambert calls this Government by Catch-22, and chicago dyke makes the connection to the style of the old Soviets.

From Wikipedia:

Apparatchik (Russian: аппара́тчик, IPA: [ʌpʌˈraʨɪk] plural apparatchiki) is a Russian colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party or government; i.e., an agent of the governmental or party "apparat" (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility, with the exception of the higher ranks of management.

Members of the "apparat" were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or "agent of the apparatus" was usually the best possible description of the person's profession and occupation.

You could safely assume, for example, that the Regent University kids installed in upper management levels at NASA to keep the scientists mum on global warming are аппара́тчик.

At the level of the Judiciary, this is a little different. These are trivial installations of mindless toads singing the Company song. These are hard-nosed intelligent minions of Saurons who cope with the evil of the Valley of the Shadow by being some of the biggest mofos in the darkness.

номенклату́ра

Wikipedia, again:

The Russian term nomenklatura (Russian: номенклату́ра, IPA: [nəmʲɪnklʌˈturə]) derived from the Latin nomenclatura meaning a list of names...

The nomenklatura were a small, élite subset of the general population in the Soviet Union who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of the Soviet Union: in government, industry, agriculture, education, etc. Without exception, they were members of the Communist Party.

Nomenklatura had more authority and claimed higher privileges as precisely the same kind of ruling class which Communist doctrine denounced in the "Capitalist" West. Some authors defined them as a new class. Trotskyists preferred the term caste rather than class, since in Marxist terminology nomenclatura was not technically a class...

The nomenklatura referred to the Communist party's authority to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system, as well as throughout the party's own hierarchy. Specifically, the nomenklatura consisted of two separate lists: one was for key positions, appointments to which were made by authorities within the party; the other was for persons who were potential candidates for appointment to those positions. The Politburo, as part of its nomenklatura authority, maintained a list of ministerial and ambassadorial positions that it had the power to fill as well as a separate list of potential candidates to occupy those positions.

Coextensive with the nomenklatura were patron-client relations. Officials who had the authority to appoint individuals to certain positions cultivated loyalties among those whom they appointed. The patron (the official making the appointment) promoted the interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons, such as the members of the Politburo, had many clients. Moreover, an official could be both a client (in relation to a higher-level patron) and a patron (to other, lower-level officials).

Because a client was beholden to his patron for his position, the client was eager to please his patron by carrying out his policies. The Soviet power structure essentially consisted of groups of vassals (clients) who had an overlord (the patron). The higher the patron, the more clients the patron had. Patrons protected their clients and tried to promote their careers. In return for the patron's efforts to promote their careers, the clients remained loyal to their patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron could advance his own power...

It's always good to be as precise in your terminology as possible.  ¶ 7:40 AM 0 comments links to this post

  You have a right to know, but if they tell you they have to kill you.

Spotted last night first by xan at Correntewire, a story that raised hackles over at The New york Pravda:

WASHINGTON, July 5 — A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three events in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress.

After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory’s license and said the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes.

But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped “official use only,” meaning that it was not publicly accessible.

“Official use only” is a category below “Secret.” Documents in that category are not technically classified but are kept from the public.

The agency would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were it not for the efforts of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the five commissioners. Mr. Jaczko identified the company, Nuclear Fuel Services of Erwin, Tenn., in a memorandum that became part of the public record. His memorandum said other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services.

Such secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential members of Congress. These lawmakers argue that the agency is withholding numerous documents about nuclear facilities in the name of national security, but that many withheld documents are not sensitive...

Well, maybe not for national security, but that company would have gotten in all kinds of trouble! Good thing Bu$hCo looks out for the rights of its ba$e!

...Additional details of the 2006 event are coming to light now because of a letter sent Tuesday to the nuclear agency by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee chairman, Representative John D. Dingell, and the chairman of the oversight subcommittee, Representative Bart Stupak, both Democrats of Michigan, say the commission “went far beyond” the need to protect security information by keeping documents about Nuclear Fuel Services, a private company, from the public.

The agency, the congressmen said, “has removed hundreds of otherwise innocuous documents relating to the N.F.S. plant from public view.”

Mr. Jaczko, in a telephone interview, said, “Ultimately, we regulate on behalf of the public, and it’s important for them to have a role.” He said he thought other information about Nuclear Fuel Services that should be public had been marked “official use only.”

With a resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year hiatus, agency officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between winning public confidence by regulating openly and protecting sensitive information...

Balance, that's what's needed to safeguard the rights of Free Enterprise. Just ask Fox News, the Fair and Balanced mouthpiece of Sauron.

As laid out by the commission’s report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a “glove box,” a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided it was ordinary uranium.

In fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor.

In a puddle, the uranium is not particularly hazardous, but if it formed a more spherical shape, the commission says, it could become a “critical mass,” a quantity and shape of nuclear fuel sufficient to sustain a chain reaction, in this case outside a reactor.

According to the letter sent by the lawmakers, the puddle, containing about nine gallons, reached to within four feet of an elevator pit. Had it flowed into the pit and reached a depth of several inches, it would have been in a shape that might have supported a chain reaction. The letter from the congressmen says the agency’s report suggests “that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur.”

If the material had gone critical, “it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death,” the commission said...

At least. Not to mention the solution might have heated to boiling, concentrating the solution even further, increasing the intensity of the chain reaction...

You normally find highly chemically enriched uranium in yellowcake, but this wouldn’t usually be isotopically enriched for the fissile isotope, nor hot enoguh to be alarming.

Oxidized uranium behaves somewhat like oxidized lead. It really likes biological matter- in fact, uranyl acetate is a standard tissue stain in electron microscopy. It’s quite reactive chemically. But it’s not fissile.

For a liquid solution of uranium to be isotopically enriched and high enough chemical concentration to have the potential of going critical… my gawd, that stuff was hot!

I’ll wager the flooring, the door, and the walls of the entire room it leaked from are now cooling in pieces in a radwaste pit somewhere in Tennessee, possibly on site, because they’d be too damned massive and hot to cart off anywhere else.

An anonymous commenter at Correntewire notes:

Savannah River Site in SC ships weapons surplus uranium to Erwin, TN for use in TVA reactors:

http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/speeches/2006/speech_Brooks_Up-and-Atom-SRS...

But note that in that speech the highly-enriched uranium is supposed to be diluted to “low enriched uranium” at SRS before shipment.

A ppt at:
http://www1.y12.doe.gov/community/NMA/0405NEWS02/NMA%2008_31_04%20(final).ppt

shows that SRS down-blends solution & alloyed metal material, while NFS in Erwin down-blends metal and alloy compounds (slide 11)...

Incidently, it looks like the Powerpoint link has been taken down. Need to know and all of that.  ¶ 6:48 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Seething Cauldron of Hell Calls Kettle Black

WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday made fun of former President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for criticizing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby...

You make it easy, Pony.

Clinton lied once about a blowjob.

The Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton organization lies virtually every time anyone of them takes a breath about virtually everything that has happened since January 20th, 2001.

Some incidents that are particularly jarring include the largest terrorist attack in history in America and a War against a nation totally uninvolved with that attack that has cost us our Constitution, upwards of a trillion dollars, nearly 4000 American lives, tens of thousands of American wounded, tens and likely hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead (it depends on whom you ask), hundreds of thousands of Iraqi injured, and millions of Iraqis displaced.

And Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton, along with Bu$hie's base, has profited nicely from it all.  ¶ 10:41 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Universal health care breeds terrorists.

Via Think Progress. Read it and laugh, or cry. I won't give Faux the link; no sense in encouraging the idiots with traffic.

And the trolls come out of the woodwork to comment...  ¶ 9:57 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Mutual Satisfaction Guaranteed



Not in American news sites yesterday:

Russia warned today that it would position its rockets close to the Polish border and point missiles at US bases in Europe if Washington rebuffed its latest offer of cooperation on missile defence.

Russia's hawkish first deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, made it clear that Moscow would be forced "to respond" if the Bush administration snubbed Vladimir Putin's offer to work together on missile defence using a Soviet-era radar base.

"If our proposal is not accepted we will take adequate measures. An asymmetrical and effective response will be found," he said. This response would include basing "new rocket forces in the European part of Russia" in the enclave of Kaliningrad, he said. The Russian missiles would be able to "parry the threats that will arise from the [US] missile defence system," he added.

The Kremlin's latest warning comes after two days of meetings between Mr Putin and George Bush at the US president's seaside family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine. Ahead of the talks the Pentagon had incensed Mr Putin by announcing plans to place elements of its missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Mr Putin has derided US claims that the system is aimed at dealing with rogue missiles fired by Iran and North Korea, saying it is actually aimed at Russia.

Last month Mr Putin suggested the US scrap its existing plans and instead share a Soviet-era radar station in Azerbaijan. During talks this week he went further - offering to work with the US administration over missile defence within the framework of the Nato-Russia Council, and promising use of another early-warning system in southern Russia.

Mr Bush's answer, however, was decidedly lukewarm. Although the president praised Mr Putin's offer as "innovative and strategic", he made it clear that Washington was likely to go ahead anyway with its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. "As I told Vladimir, I think that the Czech Republic and Poland need to be an integral part of the system," Mr Bush said.

Most experts now believe that Russia will take active military countermeasures. They include targeting the US's new defence bases in central Europe with Iskandar missiles based in Kaliningrad. Russia will also upgrade its nuclear missile arsenal, put more missiles on mobile launchers and move its fleet of nuclear submarines to the north pole, experts predict.

Mr Putin ...struck a conciliatory note today, describing US-Russian relations as "mutually satisfactory".

"I am sure that, despite known disagreements, which are unavoidable in an open and honest dialogue, the policy of comprehensive development of bilateral ties in all areas will continue," he said.

Mr Ivanov is, like his boss, a former KGB agent and he is a strong candidate to succeed Mr Putin as president next year. He said that if the Bush administration accepted Mr Putin's offer there would be no point in talking about a "new cold war".

"You, journalists, will forget the term 'cold war' after that. It will just disappear. Ground for using it will just cease to exist," Mr Ivanov said at a news conference in Tashkent.

Cheneyburton will by all means try to halt the "cold" part.  ¶ 7:05 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Iranian Terra'ist Attack on Paris Hilton!!!



Keith Olbermann adds his two cents on Scooter's unFrog March [via Nicole Belle @ Crooks and Liars].

It's a long one and a good one (with a video!) highlighted here:

...Our generation’s willingness to state “we didn’t vote for him, but he’s our president, and we hope he does a good job,” was tested in the crucible of history, and far earlier than most. And in circumstances more tragic and threatening.

And we did that with which history tasked us.

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison –at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder:

To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

...The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing — or a permanent Democratic majority — is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove.

And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government.

But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain… into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and “quaint.”

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor…

When just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable “fairness” of government is rejected by an impartial judge…

When just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice…

This President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

...It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them — or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them — we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time — and our leaders in Congress, of both parties — must now live up to those standards which echo through our history:

Pressure, negotiate, impeach — get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task.

You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed.

Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign...

Not gonna happen, Keith. These are the biggest ugliest toads in the pond, and in fact an insult to amphibians everywhere. Not only are they not going to resign, they're going to steal the $election in 2008 if they can, and every one after that too, until they get rid of the whole bothersome process altogether.  ¶ 7:16 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Everybody Knows

Jeff Wells on symbols, the Libby non-frog march, 9/11, and of course, flying sorcerers:

...the Internet reaction is as rich as it is predictable, and ineffectual. Instead of America's streets, America's chatrooms are filled, because its citizens have been given them for the appearance of a commons, and clatter with indignant typing. But 10 million people posting We're not gonna take it anymore! isn't a revolution. It isn't even a Twisted Sister song.

That's the bad news. The good news is it's a Leonard Cohen song. [my link to MJS, who also picked up on this vibe albeit in a very different way]

...What hath Bush wrought? If nothing else, he's made semiotics everybody's business, whether everybody realizes it or not. Under the Bush years, the signs by which Americans and much of the Western world have lived have become so evidently estranged from what they allegedly signify that they now suggest little more than the lies told by Power to maintain itself. "Freedom," "democracy," "justice": Everybody knows. Among other things, Bush is the Deconstruction President.

In The Trickster and the Paranormal, George Hansen has this to say:

"It is commonly assumed that there is a simple, objective correspondence between the signifier and the signified even thought they are separate entities. It is assumed that language is only a set of names for things, events, and concepts. These assumptions are incorrect, but few recognize the extent of the implications. This lies at the heart of deconstructionism, and magic."

There is power in the act of naming, because it imbues meaning to a thing - or to an event or a concept - that has no necessary correspondence to the thing itself. This was evident even on the morning of September 11, when the event of the attacks receded behind their purported meaning even as they were still under way. And then soon after, the breathless reporting of Bush's confirmation that this means war, albeit against an abstract noun which would nevertheless cost at least hundreds of thousands of actual lives.

From the start there was an institutional incuriousness about the attacks, as there so often is when the institutions themselves benefit by them ("Blair rejects 7/7 inquiry calls"; "Putin rejects public Beslan inquiry"). Naturally any circle of high conspirators would be reluctant to have any light shed on the criminal events they enabled, but there's a far broader circle of reluctance, that partakes of the Power that is enabled by the meaning of the crime. That is, those who stood to benefit by 9/11 were not limited to the relatively small number of perpetrators within the institutions of public life, because the perpetrators themselves partook of the larger circle of institutional power. Much of corporate media, including "alternative" corporate media, became co-conspirators after the fact simply by habit, because they inhabit and thrive within that outer circle. To acknowledge the possibility of a high crime of the magnitude of Kennedy's assassination or 9/11 would be an invitation, not to gentle reform, but to revolution. And institutional power sends out such invitations only when it sees how it can come out on top again.

Event and meaning is also an issue for the 9/11 Movement, which unfortunately has come to mirror some of the White House's most dumbed-down Manichaeism. For the leaders and proponents of the "New Truth" movement, as with the evangelists of the "Official Story," meaning has almost entirely effaced event. For some, the actual crimes of hijacked aircraft striking buildings have vanished all together, and in their place has been substituted "controlled demolition" and something, anything other than Flight 77 striking the Pentagon. Why? Because the actual event is perceived as of insufficient significance to support the sign of "Inside Job."

But that's a failure of political language which doesn't know the nuance of parapolitics, and it is one which allows those inside, to one degree or another, to define our terms for us. What does "Inside Job" mean? It doesn't mean Executive Branch; it doesn't mean, as with other empty jargon, "Bush knew." I've written before that many who push 9/11 as an Inside Job want to push Osama right out of the picture, but bin Laden is himself inside the security-narcotics-terror nexus, composed of factions that interpenetrate one another, which sometimes compete and sometimes strike strategic alliances depending upon what advantages they believe they can gain. Peter Dale Scott recently quoted a Russian general, who said that "9/11 changed the direction of the world in the direction desired by transnational oligarchs and and an international mafia." Scott also said, and I agree, that "I find it very hard to believe that the Bush administration either let or made it happen. It's clear that people within government were involved, but we should avoid condemning an entire administration."

I'd ask any who take exception to my position or to Scott's remark to ponder the course of 9/11 justice after the Bush administration leaves office, while the statecraft of clandestine power which preceded it, remains...

Another long ramble of a post from Jeff, but well worth reading, as are many of the comments.

So it's come down to this: we are a species that uses symbolic logic. But what happens when our premisses are invalid?

What happens when a species selects for intelligence not only for the ability to use symbols, but to lie about it?

Garbage in, garbage out. It's useful as a tactic to a point, but as a long term strategery, the Big Lie ends up only deluding the liars. Or so we'd like to think, fooling ourselves once more.  ¶ 9:16 PM 0 comments links to this post

  The Rule of Lawless


"Together, we can bring order to the galaxy!" [thanks to the Heretik]

A quick response from The New York Pravda (although the colums concerning this are total whitewash spin- the angst of Dear Leader):

When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted. For Mr. Bush, the candidate, "politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better."

Not so for Mr. Bush, the president. Judging from his decision today to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was charged with perjury and convicted, untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base.

Mr. Libby was convicted of lying to federal agents investigating the leak of the name of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. Mrs. Wilson's husband, Joseph Wilson, was asked to investigate a central claim in Mr. Bush's drive to war with Iraq whether Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Africa. Mr. Wilson concluded that Iraq had not done that and had the temerity to share those conclusions with the American public.

It seems clear from the record that Vice President Dick Cheney organized a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Libby, who was Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, was willing to lie to protect his boss.

That made Mr. Libby the darling of the right, which demanded that Mr. Bush pardon him. Those same Republicans have been rebelling against Mr. Bush, most recently on immigration reform, while Democrats in Congress have pursued an investigation into whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney lied about Iraq's weapons programs.

All of this put immense pressure on the president to do something before Mr. Libby went to jail. But none of it was justification for the baldly political act of commuting his sentence.

Mr. Bush's assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it's committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.

Within minutes of the announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush's contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were "harsh punishment" enough for Mr. Libby.

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

Exactly.

One suspects the Times editors are beginning to suspect what Some have suspected for awhile now. The Fourth Reich has no intention of surrendering anything anytime. If these people poll only 20% of the vote in 2008, they will baldfacedly steal that $election, too.

Again.  ¶ 10:14 PM 0 comments links to this post

  That's the point

NEW ORLEANS - The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.

Experts say the stronger levees and flood walls could funnel storm water into the cul-de-sac of the Industrial Canal, only 2 miles from Bourbon Street, and overwhelm the waterway's 12-foot-high concrete flood walls that shield some of the city's most cherished neighborhoods.

The only things separating Creole bungalows and St. Louis Cathedral from a hurricane's storm surge are those barriers, similar in design to the walls that broke during Katrina.

"A system is much like a chain. We have strengthened some of the lengths, and those areas are now better protected," said Robert Bea, a lead investigator of an independent National Science Foundation team that examined Katrina's levee failures.

"When the chain is challenged by high water again, it will break at those weak links, and they are now next to some of the oldest neighborhoods, including the French Quarter, Marigny, and all of those areas west of the cul-de-sac."...

The system, he said, is stronger now, but "it's misinformation to infer that it's an unintended consequence."...

The city's oldest neighborhoods were settled long ago because they were the only dry ground in a wilderness of swamp. When Katrina struck, flooding only reached the outer limit of the French Quarter, creeping into places such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the site of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's tomb.

With their open-air markets, flamboyant artists, baroque churches and carefree lifestyle, the neighborhoods next to the Industrial Canal are some of the city's most prized real estate and give New Orleans its old-world soul.

"If we lose them, gosh, New Orleans would no longer be New Orleans," Chapman said...

True enough, and doubtless pleasing to many unnamed Regent University-trained people in the government.

But if Pat Robertson's Hairy Thunderer fails to smite it anytime soon, can we fix this, please?

* * * * * *

Meanwhile I get a comment I'd like to share:

This is total rubbish. Bob Bea is the same "engineer" who tasted the water near the new floodwall in the Lower Ninth Ward and declared it too salty to be an effective storm barrier. The man is a buffoon and the main stream media are just too happy to write these doomsday stories based on Bea's babblings.

Fact: The French Quarter is some of the highest ground in the city. It doesn't matter where the next floodwall failure happens--water flows DOWNHILL. It will flood the same areas of the city again and again.

You raise a good point, one that I considered adding to the original post. Mainly, that the water will flow and accumulate again at the lowest points of the city, which in addition to being lower income also correspond to the more industrial areas. If the waters really can breach at the French Quarter, they will breach there if they are high enough, and flood the city again.

But you're also mistaken.

Salt content in water really does increase its ability to act as a catalytic oxidant (things rust faster).

Secondly, large amounts of water running through the French Quarter could do even more damage than relatively static amounts of water on top of the French Quarter. So if there is a breakdown of the levee system there, they'd get as much damage to the city as if the breach elsewhere, with the added damage of countless metric tons of rushing water flowing downhill from an area that otherwise would be unaffected.

I'd listen really carefully to warnings from an engineer from the National Science Foundation.  ¶ 7:28 AM 1 comments links to this post

  Shooting the Horse Out from Under Al

Or maybe Al was just along to boost the bidding, anyway:

The Carlyle Group is in discussions with Virgin Media, the British cable company whose largest investor is Sir Richard Branson, over a potential bid worth more than $20 billion, a person familiar with the negotiations said today.

After all, as far as Poppy and the Consigliere are concenred, any strategery to Save the Earth has to consider the oil companies first.  ¶ 3:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Just one of those things no one believes when you tell them

A couple of years out of date, but germane still. Mike Whitney, via Zack Smith (that's a great site, which you should spend some time looking at), via Lambert, via Avedon:

...Why would Homeland Security hire former Stasi chief Markus Wolfe and former head of the KGB General Yevgeni Primakov?

Is this part of the Bush anti-terror strategy? After all, Wolfe is the man who is credited with building up the feared East German secret police that was responsible for the disappearance and deaths of thousands of citizens. And, Primakov’s record is not any better. As skipper of the KGB he was driving force behind the machinery of state terror; a legacy that still has a chilling affect on many Russians.

Now, apparently, they’ve found a new place to hang their hats at Homeland Security...

Lambert also points to The Washington Pravda, which seems to have found out that all of our Iraqi intelligence is coming from private contractors, which ,of course, "extends our government's reach".

How useful. What useful idiots they are at The Washington Pravda, sipping their martinis and eating their cocktail weenies, made of the flesh of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians dying in a civil war to enrich the Cheneyburton Corporation.  ¶ 11:42 AM 0 comments links to this post