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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Terra All the Time

[thanks to maru for the pic]

Now does it strike anyone else as noteworthy that Britain gets fed up with Ian Blair and his Iraqi chimp-and-poodle routine, $elects a new Prime Minister in Gordon Brown, and the terra boys start getting all rowdy there again?

Like Larry Johnson sez, not particularly bright terra boys at that. But scary enuff for Faux, MSGOP, and CNN to show the same pics, oh, what at least 120 times an hour all day and night.

Boy howdy that sure got Dear Leader's ass kicking on the Immigration "issue-you-a-number-and-a-microchip" legistlation and Scooter's new digs off the air, didn't it?

Now I'd be the last to suggest the Company directly controls chumps like this.

What the Company does control is likely to be their bankroll, through more layers of proxies than even David Addington can keep track of. Need-to-know and plausible deniability and all that. When the Boss sez go, it's jihad-time.

Even if the trainees feel a curious need to bail out instead of immolate themselves for Allah, being insufficiently indoctrinated because they got the order to go now from Somebody with Authoriteh.

It slices with Occam's razor- because all these chumps managed to do is get themselves badly burned and arrested.

And likely a one way trip to a secret prison. Where they will spill exactly the best beans those in the know deem neccessary to keep the Endless War rockin' on a roll.

Shadow Reich

Darth Cheney considers energy pricing before the 2008 $elections


It's your basic Invisible Empire, and it's quite profitable.



Even the people busy trying to shoot it down can't believe how powerful it's become. It's like Krugman said back in 2003. There's been a revolution, and the old guard is still fighting the last campaign, unable to accept the opposition is doing the unthinkable.

Like Joe Bageant points out, the real Invisible Empire makes use of its hand puppets and gives them useful positions to defend:

... For instance, according to the famous Morris Dees, whose Southern Poverty Law Center pulls in some $40 million a year mainly from the hate crime industry, my home state of Virginia has 31 organized hate groups. Now as much as I have criticized Republican Virginia in print as one of the stupidest and cruelest damned places in America, and though the ANSWP commander Bill White lives in Roanoke, Virginia, even I don't believe there are anywhere near 31 organized hate groups here, and certainly none that are beating people in some unseen alley. Hell, ANSWP by its own count, presently has 227 members nationwide, and picks up maybe 30 more virtual members monthly via the Internet. Not too many people get beaten up in alleys by Internet Nazi wannabes who think Swastika bling is cool looking stuff.

But when it comes to beating folks up, this country has nearly a million people legally authorized to beat, kidnap at gunpoint (arrest) and kill if deemed necessary, a large portion of which exercise the first two of these rights thousands of times daily. At last count in 2002 America had 14,254 law enforcement agencies employing 675,734 sworn officers and 294,854 civilians. With the "war on terror," heaven only knows how many have been added.

Public protest usually provides a glimpse into this force, and every year we see more smuggled videotapes that somehow seldom make the news. Jumpy footage of ordinary folks beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Tasers, and riddled with rubber bullets, even while on their knees praying. Elderly protesters of Miami's free trade zone were Maced in the face and dragged across the ground in handcuffs and a female reporter testified she was forced to strip before male cops. People who bother to find and watch these videos on the Internet keep saying the same thing over and over again: "This is not America." Unfortunately, it is...

Four-fifths of the American Nazi's platform is attractive to white working Americans (the other 20%, anti-Semitism and racist, come with the package and conveniently offer someone to blame). American Nazis promote bringing all foreign jobs back to America, the nationalization of Wal-Mart, reestablishing small farms and the supremacy of working class whites. Be thankful working class Americans are not yet exposed to it in significant numbers. But as push comes to shove, and working mooks discover that the bottom has completely dropped out of all their presumed security and civil liberties, they will be ripe for the kind of change not being offered by either major party in this country.

Not offered by either major party, perhaps, but look at the security for sale to the Discriminating bidder.

Liberation Biology

What your oil company really hates about 21st century biology.

Scientists at the institute directed by J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in sequencing the human genome, are reporting that they have successfully transplanted the genome of one species of bacteria into another, an achievement they see as a major step toward creating synthetic forms of life...

His goal is to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methane, used as a feedstock for other fuels. Such an achievement might reduce dependency on fossil fuels and strike a blow at global warming...

As you all know (all of you that know me anyway), I'm just a simple biomedical research faculty at the University of Michigan given to whims and vapors and ideas that keep me employed but often upset the tenured faculty around me. This idea of Venter's is something I've been advocating ever since the Enron-Cheneyburton presidency stole the $election in 2000. The basic ideas are here, here, and here.

So this is a good thing. You can not run worldwide economies and take care of billions of people, much less move into the greater multiverse, without an economically viable source of renewable energy. Without destroying the forests.

Back to Venter:

...Biologists have long been able to move useful genes into bacteria and other organisms in a process called genetic engineering. The idea of synthetic biology is to carry out genetic engineering in a more extensive and systematic way.

Synthetic biologists, who held their third annual meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, this week, hope to create biochemical processes and then choose the gene sequences that will direct these processes and build the DNA from scratch. The scientists’ goal is to select and reorder the genetic machinery developed by evolution just as an engineer might assemble an efficient circuit board from existing components.

Dr. Venter hopes to lay the basis for a new approach to synthetic biology by first synthesizing whole genomes in the laboratory and then making them take control of, or “boot up,” a living cell. His new report accomplishes the second of the two steps, at least in Mycoplasma. His team, which includes a distinguished biologist, Hamilton Smith, purified the full DNA from one kind of Mycoplasma and showed that it could take control of another, making the host cell switch over to producing proteins specified by the inserted DNA. Dr. Smith said he was not sure whether the inserted genome destroyed the host genome or just made the cell divide, assigning the two genomes to different daughter cells.

Booting up cells with new genomes is a major limitation in synthetic biology, Dr. Venter said. With that hurdle now crossed, it will be possible to “design cells in future to manufacture new types of fuel and break our dependency on oil and do something about carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere...”

Dr. Venter is more colorful and less publicity shy than most academic biologists. But he has many solid achievements to his credit. They have so far been in sequencing, or decoding, genomes.

He pioneered methods for sequencing the first bacterium, Haemophilus influenzae, and raced the government to a draw in sequencing a draft version of the human genome in June 2000. Though unable to produce a complete version because he was forced out of Celera, the company he headed, Dr. Venter devised a better method than his government-supported rivals, one that has become the standard way to sequence genomes.

Dr. Venter has always sought academic credit by publishing his results in scientific journals and now directs a nonprofit research laboratory in Rockville, Md., the J. Craig Venter Institute. But he has another foot firmly planted in the commercial world. He has set up, and the Venter Institute largely owns, Synthetic Genomics, whose goal is to make alternative fuels to oil and coal. He has also applied for far-reaching patents on the uses of synthetic life forms.

The report today may be less significant if his research team is unable to repeat the success in more useful organisms than the Mycoplasma bacterium. Dr. Church said a quite similar experiment with Escherichia coli, a standard laboratory organism, was accomplished in 1958 by two French scientists, François Jacob and E. L. Wollman...

In truth, the technology has been around awhile. But with someone as visible as Venter espousing the use of biotechnology to overcome the dependency on fossil fuels, one can only hope it's a matter of time.

The Fourth Reich of Government

Big Time Dick has finally hit it. Last week he made prime time when he dissed the Congressional Oversight Committee and the National Archives in the same breath.

He can't move behind the scenes any more so easily from his secret undisclosed location, because face it, he's everwhere, and he can't hide it all.

Steve Clemmons points to the official litany of the Cheneyburton sins against the nation in The Washington Pravda.

So the DC cocktail weenie circuit is getting increasingly shrill. They've known for a long time the game isn't played by the rulebook. But whether it's Abu Gonzo trying to build and improve the Incredible Caging Machine or Big Time himself, the players increasingly can't hide their agenda and their lack of respect for outdated notions like the Constitution or the rule of Law.

Not that the cocktail weenie pundits care much for that rule of Law stuff either, laws being what the Man uses to keep the rabble in line, and of course not applicable to the Right Sort of People.

Look a how the insiders responded to Scooter Libby facing the slammer... but the $ystem, curiously, sent him there anyway. Hopefully to learn how to sing, but you never know. Abrams never did, and the Company repaid him quite nicely.

What makes the Party elite posture against the Endless War that's going to continue to enrich them no matter who's Codpiece in Chief? What bothers the Rethuglicans in Congress enough to buck the Company in its efforts to legalize corporate slavery? My bad, the Immigration Compromise hammered out between Bu$hCo and the DINOcrats.

Why, it's the realization of the Congresscritters in Bu$hie's own Party that they're all not Skull & Bones boys, that they don't all have a pappy like Poppy, and that if democracy is totally dead the way Shooter and the Company Board want, even in its forms, they're going to be stuck with their own little piece of the pie. They're going to be sent home and told to eat their cake just like the little people.

Intentions

[with thanks to the master of the dismal science, the Dark Wraith]

The Dark Wraith leads me to wonder if Elliot Abrams has some good friends in Afghanistan who can help the Cheneyburton administration with their creative financing of the fourth branch of government, too.

Those of you who MUST think...

...will doubtless be relieved to know corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of money in an election year to tell you what to think.

As long as they don't, you know, mention a candidate specifically.



Aren't you glad the DINOcrats in Congress united for the good of the country to allow the installation $election appointment of the two droids liver flukes men on the left?

For the rest of you who can't be bothered with that "thinking"- after all, it only hurts when you do it- Paris Hilton's been released from jail again!

Making Afghanistan Safer for Opium

Again.

VIENNA, Austria - Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by nearly 50 percent from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, a U.N. report said Tuesday.

The annual report also found that the estimated level of global drug use has remained more or less unchanged for the third year, although cannabis use continues to decline in North America.

Afghanistan's opium production increased from about 4,500 tons in 2005 to 6,700 tons in 2006, according to the 2007 World Drug Report released by the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Opium is the main ingredient for heroin...

That's a record almost every year since we made Afghanistan safer for Unocal.

It seemed at one time this was an error in the strategery.



But with every day it becomes clearer Chaos is the plan.

It's Purely a $ymbiotic Relationship

Someone who didn't know better might think Somebody was starting to worry:

Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for.

In the intervening years a huge espionage-industrial complex has developed, as government spymasters outsourced everything from designing surveillance technology to managing case officers overseas. Today less than half of the staff at the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington are actual government employees, The Los Angeles Times reports; at the C.I.A. station in Islamabad, Pakistan, contractors sometimes outnumber employees by three to one.



So just how much of the intelligence budget goes to private contracts? Because that budget is highly classified, and many intelligence contracts are allocated without oversight or competitive bidding, it seemed we would never know. Until last month, that is: a procurement executive from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave a PowerPoint presentation at a conference in Colorado and let slip a staggering statistic — private contracts now account for 70 percent of the intelligence budget...

So again we should ask: why is the Paper of Record a month behind the people who really know what's really going on? R. J. Hillhouse caught this when it happened, and gave a link to the original Powerpoint presentation this Bu$hCo idiot posted on the web. Notice: that's a .mil site that will get you noticed if you actually go there.

Of course, you're probably already noticed. You're looking at this site, aren't you?



Back to the baby food in Pravda:

...As it happened, the dot-com bubble had burst shortly before 9/11, cutting loose a generation of technology entrepreneurs who, when the government came calling, were only too happy to start developing new data-mining algorithms and biometric identification programs. New startups began sprouting in the suburbs around Washington. The number of “contractor facilities” cleared by the National Security Agency grew from 41 in 2002 to 1,265 in 2006. It was a gold rush, a national security bubble.



Seeing this emerging market, the traditional Beltway Bandits — military-industrial giants like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — established intelligence and homeland security divisions. At Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm one former C.I.A. official called “the shadow intelligence community,” revenue has doubled since 2000.



...one (very big) contractor, and one (very big) contract. In 2002, Science Applications International Corporation, a San Diego behemoth with more than 40,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue, received a $280 million contract from the National Security Agency to modernize its systems for sifting through the vast flows of information it intercepts. The project was called Trailblazer. By 2005, costs had ballooned to over $1 billion and the system had still not gotten off the ground. One C.I.A. veteran familiar with the program has declared it “a complete and abject failure.”

Trailblazer was a notorious boondoggle, but it wasn’t the biggest. That prize goes to the Future Imagery Architecture, a contract Boeing won before 9/11, in 1999, to develop a new generation of spy satellites that could photograph targets from space.

Inexperienced at building satellites with optical lenses, Boeing started missing deadlines and exceeding cost estimates almost immediately. By the time the Pentagon took the program away from Boeing in 2005, it was five years behind schedule and had cost $10 billion, including $4 billion in cost overruns. For contractors, this sort of failure is seldom punished — it’s often rewarded. Many contracts are “cost plus,” meaning there will be no penalty if a contractor wildly exceeds the initial projection. Better still, a contractor can break something, then bid for the job of putting it back together. When the N.S.A. wanted to create another program, ExecuteLocus, to replace Science Applications International’s failed Trailblazer, it needed a contractor to build it. Who got the job? Science Applications.



The orthodoxy of privatization — that it’s the government that’s mired by inefficiency and a lack of competition — has been turned on its head in the intelligence industry. However patriotic, contractors must ultimately answer to their shareholders and the bottom line. There’s more than one way to read Lockheed Martin’s recent advertising slogan: “We never forget who we’re working for.”

It’s not just the money that flows out the door, either: it’s also the people, as the companies offer hefty raises to government employees who join their ranks. A recent report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that “contractors recruit our own employees, already cleared and trained at government expense, and then ‘lease’ them back to us at considerably greater expense.”



This process — called “bidding back” — has created a brain drain. Two-thirds of the Department of Homeland Security’s senior officials and experts have departed for private industry. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, worries that his agency has become “a farm team for these contractors.”

The revolving door helps firms score more contracts. Federal law prohibits executive branch officials from lobbying former colleagues after leaving public office — but just for the first year. Can a government acquisitions officer who might someday like a job at a contractor really evaluate the contractor’s bid objectively?



William Black Jr. left the National Security Agency in 1997, after a 38-year career, to become a vice president at Science Applications. He returned to the agency as deputy director in 2000, and shortly thereafter the Trailblazer contract was awarded to his former employer. Nothing illegal here, but is there not at least the appearance of a conflict of interest? The good news is that Congress seems to have finally caught on to the scale of the problem. The intelligence authorization bill that passed the House last month included an amendment that would require the director of national intelligence to submit a report on the functions performed by contractors, the ways contracts are vetted, and the savings associated with outsourcing. The Senate Intelligence Committee explicitly chided the spy agencies earlier this month for “increasing reliance on contractors.” In response, the C.I.A. announced that it would pare the number of contractors by 10 percent...

Now that's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

Bu$hCo has thrown open the door of the most intelligent and devious people the government employs to the profit incentive. What the old Soviet bloc Spy vs Spy had to offer the enterprising spook is nothing like what the corporate empire of 'Merika can offer.

Of course, I am sure the CIA will do exactly what it says it will do.

They, of course, have the best interests of 'Merika in mind.

The War Against Liberation Biology

Avedon points towards Johann Hari's post on the ability of religious fundamentalists to halt liberation biology's drive to improve humanity's well being worldwide.

In the black gloop of down-beat news on global warming and Iraq, we sometimes forget that, in at least one respect, we are living through a shimmering moment of progress that should fill us with awe. The twenty-first century is - as the science writer Ronald Bailey puts it - an era of Liberation Biology. Every week now, scientists are steadily defusing the diseases that have cut human life short for millennia, and stolen from us the grandparents we never knew or the lovers who died too soon. They are setting us free.

Only yesterday, it was revealed by Yale University scientists that they have been able to make it possible for primates with severe Parkinson's disease to walk, move and eat unaided, by injecting them with human neural stem cells. The implications for further research into humans are obvious - and dazzling.

Even those of us who are not privileged to be scientists can get the gist of what is happening. In 1998, researchers were first able to isolate embryonic stem cells - immature cells taken from human embyros that are no bigger than a speck of dust. These cells matter because they have the potential to develop into many different types of tissue. Scientists are now slowly trying to discover which molecular signals make them develop in different ways.

If they can unlock this code - if they can make the cells grow into whatever we need - they will be able to transplant nerve cells into broken spines, making the lame walk. They will be able to inject insulin-producing cells into diabetics. They will be able to generate motor neurone cells to treat Parkinson's. And on the list goes, each one freeing millions of humans from misery.

But - incredibly - there is a large slice of humanity who stubbornly refuses to see any of this as progress. Instead, they see it as a massacre.

The religious backlash against Liberation Biology has been viciously successful, holding back scientific progress in almost every part of the world. In Nigeria, Islamic Mullahs have this year successfully prevented the World Health Organisation from finally eradicating polio from the human condition, by claiming the vaccine is part of an "anti-Islamic plot" and ordering their congregations to refuse it...

And we all know about the christianist crusade agin' evolution and stem cells in 'Merika.

...In the US, President Bush again pledged this week to veto legislation sent to him by Congress that would permit federal funds to be used for stem-cell research. And - lest we Europeans get smug - Britain is about to introduce new laws restricting the development of 'hybrid embryos' that will slowly strangle life-saving research.

This is all part of an old story: the conflict between science and religion. For all the prattling by bishops that there is "no incompatibility here", in reality they are based on fundamentally contrasting ways of understanding the world. Science is based on strict empirical observation of the world, and deductions based on reason from it. Faith is based on divine revelation (that is, hallucination), or following the words of men who claim to have experienced it.

This battle has been playing out every since modern science developed. The religious damned vaccinations, autopsies, IVF, and even the introduction of pasturised milk. Today, they are trying to halt the latest wave of Liberation Biology because they claim that blastocysts - hollow spheres of cells almost invisible to the naked eye - are "human beings," and therefore cannot be harvested for life-saving stem cells.

What fact or reason can they point to, to make this point? There are none. We can see through empirical observation that blastocysts have no brains, no thoughts, no capacity to feel pain. So the religious ignore empirical fact. Instead, they say that an invisible, intangible thing called "the soul" magically appears at the moment of conception. How do they know? They just do. Okay?

These beliefs have animated the hardcore evangelical base in the US to fight to retard and supress research - and they have won. If they can delay research in America - which is the world's laboratory, due to its pro-science Enlightenment constitution - they can do it anywhere...

Back in 2004 Stirling Newberry wrote an essay on the fusion of the chrisitianists with the aristocrat wanna-bee families here in 'Merika.

Those who would rule us are using religion and the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels to make a whole lot of money in the short-term, consolidate their version of reality in the weak-minded to the point of blind obedience, and in the long term send most of the world into a post-industrial preliterate neofeudal state over the next few generations.

Liberation biology is a great term, and exact description of the greatest danger to the plans of the hegemons in the world today.

Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter, and the next Democrat for President are All Al-Qaeda

Glen Greenwald on the latest propaganda being catapulted by Bu$hCo and whole heartedly being embraced by the Pentagram Pentagon.

...That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don't think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing "Al Qaeda fighters," capturing "Al Qaeda leaders," and every new operation is against "Al Qaeda."

The Times -- typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting "reporting" of Michael Gordon, though not only -- makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan -- that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: "Al Qaeda."

What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development -- not only from our military, but also from our "journalists" -- is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use. Even at the height of their propaganda offensives about the war, the furthest Bush officials were willing to go was to use the generic term "terrorists" for everyone we are fighting in Iraq, as in: "we cannot surrender to the terrorists by withdrawing" and "we must stay on the offensive against terrorists."

But after his 2004 re-election was secure, even the President acknowledged that "Al Qaeda" was the smallest component of the "enemies" we are fighting in Iraq:

"A clear strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy we face. The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group. . . .

"The second group that makes up the enemy in Iraq is smaller, but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein -- people who still harbor dreams of returning to power. These hard-core Saddamists are trying to foment anti-democratic sentiment amongst the larger Sunni community. . . .

"The third group is the smallest, but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda."

And note that even for the "smallest" group among those we are fighting in Iraq, the president described them not as "Al Qaeda," but as those "affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda." Claiming that our enemy in Iraq was comprised primarily or largely of "Al Qaeda" was too patently false even for the President to invoke in defense of his war.

But now, support for the war is at an all-time low and war supporters are truly desperate to find a way to stay in Iraq. So the administration has thrown any remnants of rhetorical caution to the wind, overtly calling everyone we are fighting "Al Qaeda." This strategy was first unveiled by Joe Lieberman when he went on Meet the Press in January and claimed that the U.S. was "attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we're fighting in Iraq today". Though Lieberman was widely mocked at the time for his incomparable willingness to spew even the most patent falsehoods to justify the occupation, our intrepid political press corps now dutifully follows right along...

Joe Lieberman, the Good DINOcrat, who obviously isn't Al Qaeda. He's Likud.

Greenwald goes on to chronicle the events of last week as reported in Pravda, with the surge against the Al Qaeda in Baghdad and the North, who mysteriously disappeared among the population. Because, of course, most insurgents are the population, and chances are they're using weapons against us we gave them two weeks ago. Oh: and they're also using them against the real Al Qaeda, 'cause they don't like Wahhabists.

...Making matters much worse, this tactic was exposed long, long ago. From the Christian Science Monitor in September, 2005:

"The US and Iraqi governments have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, and most of them don't come from Saudi Arabia, according to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According to a piece in The Guardian, this means the US and Iraq "feed the myth" that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they make up only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents."

And in January of this year, the Cato Institute published a detailed analysis -- entitled "The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq" -- by Ted Galen Carpenter, its vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, documenting that claims of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is "a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle."

What is always most striking about this is how uncritically our press passes on government claims...

Well, only surprising if you don't take into account that most our press is owned by the same corporations that are making money hand over fist on the Endless War on Terra.

“Far too many people know far too much.”

...but, comfortingly for the Killer Klown Kommander seem prepared to do far too little.

White House of Mirrors

President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything Americans do: our telephone calls, e-mail, and all manner of personal information. And we get to see nothing about what they do.

Everyone knows this administration has disdained openness and accountability since its first days. That is about the only thing it does not hide. But recent weeks have produced disturbing disclosures about just how far Mr. Bush’s team is willing to go to keep lawmakers and the public in the dark.

That applies to big issues — like the C.I.A.’s secret prisons — and to things that would seem too small-bore to order up a cover-up.

Vice President Dick Cheney sets the gold standard, placing himself not just above Congress and the courts but above Mr. Bush himself. For the last four years, he has been defying a presidential order requiring executive branch agencies to account for the classified information they handle. When the agency that enforces this rule tried to do its job, Mr. Cheney proposed abolishing the agency.

Mr. Cheney, who has been at the heart of the administration’s darkest episodes, has bizarre reasons for doing that. The Times reported that the vice president does not consider himself a mere member of the executive branch. No, he decided the vice president is also a lawmaker — because he is titular president of the Senate — and does not have to answer to the executive branch. That is absurd, but if that’s how he wants it, we presume Mr. Cheney will stop claiming executive privilege to withhold information from his fellow congressmen.

Since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Bush has tried to excuse his administration’s obsession with secrecy by saying that dangerous times require greater discretion. He rammed the Patriot Act through Congress with a promise that national security agencies would make sure the new powers were not abused.

But on June 14, The Washington Post reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation potentially broke the law or its own rules several thousand times over the past five years when it used the Patriot Act to snoop on domestic phone calls, e-mail and financial transactions of ordinary Americans.

We knew that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was not protecting anybody’s rights or America’s reputation. It turns out that John Rizzo, the man charged with safeguarding the Constitution at the Central Intelligence Agency, isn’t either. After serving as the C.I.A.’s deputy general counsel or acting general counsel for the entire Bush administration, he was nominated as general counsel more than a year ago. But the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, would not schedule even a pro forma confirmation hearing because the Democrats wanted documents that the C.I.A. wanted to keep, well, secret.

Last week, the committee held that hearing under Democratic leadership, and Mr. Rizzo kept insisting that he shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t give away any secrets. But he was still illuminating — in a scary way.

When he was asked his view of the administration’s infamous decision to define torture so narrowly that it allowed widespread abuse of prisoners, he merely said the policy was “overbroad” for the circumstances, raising the troubling question of when he thinks it would not be overbroad to torture prisoners. Mr. Rizzo also refused to say whether the United States had ever sent a prisoner to another country knowing he would be tortured. He made it sound like he was safeguarding secrets, but we suspect the real reason was that the answer is “yes.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Rizzo, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and the rest of the administration are still stonewalling about the existence of C.I.A. prisons. Earlier this month, the Council of Europe, a 46-nation human rights group, provided new, persuasive evidence of secret American prisons in Eastern Europe where prisoners were kept naked in cramped cells, subjected to hot or freezing blasts of air and subjected to water-boarding, or simulated drowning. American rights groups released a list of 39 men they say disappeared into secret prisons.

Incredibly, the lies and secrecy shrouding this administration are not enough for Mr. Rizzo. Sounding an awful lot like Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, he told the senators, “Far too many people know far too much.”

Governments have to keep secrets. But this administration has grossly abused that trust, routinely using claims of national security to hide policies that are immoral and almost certainly illegal, to avoid embarrassment, and to pursue Mr. Bush’s dreams of an imperial presidency.

It's always nice to see the editorial board of a major newspaper wake up and smell the coffee, even if the brew is seven years old, bone dry and moldy.

It would be a little more comforting if the press was a little more proactive.

It would be a little more comforting if this didn't have the appearance of a group of politicos primarily disturbed that even with a 25% approval rating the Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton bureaucracy is setting itself up to do in 2008 what it did in 2004 and 2000.

It would be a little more comforting if all the insiders in the opposition party didn't seem to want all the powers the Imperial preznit has claimed for his very own.

Frank Rich notices this curious inertia and sees part of the scenery behind the two mirror:

...Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"

The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure...

The reality is that success never was an option. Success tends to finalize things. This is supposed to go on and on and on, the Energizer Bunny of the war machine:

...Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan...

It is obvious the problem is far too many people knowing far too much, for our government is far too public and far too obviously far too corrupt to halt the far too profitable war machine.

Conspiracy Theory Rock

Check out videos like this compiled here at Brave New Films.

[thanks to Mike Finnigan at Crooks and Liars]

Terra Futures

The farsighted investor will doubtless know where the real money will be:

Darfur conflict heralds era of wars triggered by climate change, UN report warns

· Drought and advancing desert blamed for tensions
· Chad and southern Africa also at risk from warming

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Saturday June 23, 2007
The Guardian

The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation , which threaten to trigger a succession of new wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according to a UN report published yesterday.

"Darfur ... holds grim lessons for other countries at risk," an 18-month study of Sudan by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concludes.

With rainfall down by up to 30% over 40 years and the Sahara advancing by well over a mile every year, tensions between farmers and herders over disappearing pasture and evaporating water holes threaten to reignite the half-century war between north and south Sudan, held at bay by a precarious 2005 peace accord.



The southern Nuba tribe, for example, have warned they could "restart the war" because Arab nomads - pushed southwards into their territory by drought - are cutting down trees to feed their camels.

The UNEP investigation into links between climate and conflict in Sudan predicts that the impact of climate change on stability is likely to go far beyond its borders. It found there could be a drop of up to 70% in crop yields in the most vulnerable areas of the Sahel, an ecologically fragile belt stretching from Senegal to Sudan. "It illustrates and demonstrates what is increasingly becoming a global concern," said Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director. "It doesn't take a genius to work out that as the desert moves southwards there is a physical limit to what [ecological] systems can sustain, and so you get one group displacing another."

He also pointed to incipient conflicts in Chad "at least in part associated with environmental changes", and to growing tensions in southern Africa fuelled by droughts and flooding.

Estimates of the dead from the Darfur conflict, which broke out in 2003, range from 200,000 to 500,000. The immediate cause was a regional rebellion, to which Khartoum responded by recruiting Arab militias, the janjaweed, to wage a campaign of ethnic cleansing against African civilians. The UNEP study suggests the true genesis of the conflict pre-dates 2003 and is to be found in failing rains and creeping desertification. It found that:

· The desert in northern Sudan has advanced southwards by 60 miles over the past 40 years;

· Rainfall has dropped by 16%-30%;

· Climate models for the region suggest a rise of between 0.5C and 1.5C between 2030 and 2060;

· Yields in the local staple, sorghum, could drop by 70%.

In the Washington Post, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, argued: "Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change."



In turn, the Darfur conflict has exacerbated Sudan's environmental degradation, forcing more than two million people into refugee camps. Deforestation has been accelerated while underground aquifers are being drained.

A peace deal signed last year by rebels and the Khartoum government broke down, but this month President Omar al-Bashir said he would accept the deployment of a joint UN and African Union force. He has reneged on similar pledges, but UN diplomats are hopeful this one will stick. However, the UNEP report warns that no peace will last without sustained investment in containing environmental damage and adapting to climate change. Mr Steiner said: "Simply to return people to the situation there were in before is a high-risk strategy."

The G8 summit ended in Germany with consensus over the severity of the climate change problem but no agreement on how it should be contained. A common approach is supposed to be negotiated under UN auspices at the end of the year.

Alas, you can not negotiate rainfall, or halt the advance of the sand, or the entrepreneurial and profitable sale of weapons to people that want to use them all over the world.

The only water that will flow is the blood of those who think violence will solve the deterioration of their world.

Violence is sold as a solution by those profiting from the sale.

In a world of Endless War, the sure money's on that which the fighting's all about.

Solstice

If you could turn off the atmosphere's ability to scatter overwhelming sunlight, today's daytime sky might look something like this ... with the Sun surrounded by the stars of the constellations Taurus and Gemini. Of course, today is the Solstice. Traveling along the ecliptic plane, the Sun is at its northernmost position in planet Earth's sky, marking the astronomical beginning of summer in the north. Accurate for the exact time of today's Solstice, this composite image also shows the Sun at the proper scale (about the angular size of the Full Moon). Open star cluster M35 is to the Sun's left, and the other two bright stars in view are Mu and Eta Geminorum. Digitally superimposed on a nighttime image of the stars, the Sun itself is a composite of a picture taken through a solar filter and a series of images of the solar corona recorded during the solar eclipse of February 26, 1998 by Andreas Gada.

Leave it to NASA to be the only source on the web with this shot:



Every other web shot I can find gets the sunrise to one side of the altarstone or the other. This was the only one with the sun in the 'right' place. The astronomer writing the caption simply called it "one of Stonehenge's massive standing stones".

Some how this does not surprise me.

The Fair Folk would laugh at this erudite ignorance.

Crossing the Beams

What else do you expect but total protonic reversal?



Pravda-on-the-Hudson:

...All wanted to avoid a fire sale in the troubled mortgage-securities market, but at the same time, not get stuck with an exploding liability that could result in steep losses. The day ended with deals that appeared to have forestalled a meltdown. But questions remained about how successful they were and whether they had merely delayed the inevitable.

As the morning unfolded, lenders to two hedge funds at a unit of Bear Stearns, the investment bank, tried to ascertain what they could expect if they auctioned off mortgage securities with a face value of up to $2 billion. The solicitations were hastily withdrawn when investors reacted with little enthusiasm. But by the end of the day, some of the less-risky securities did change hands.

At the same time, several lenders, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, reached deals with Bear Stearns that forestalled a need to sell securities in the open market. It appeared that some lenders pulled back over concerns about the effect that a large liquidation would have on bond prices and investor confidence. While the securities involved represent a fraction of the market, a liquidation could have forced a bigger sell-off while setting a lower price...

He said it would take time — perhaps several days — for potential buyers to drill down into some of the more complex securities in order to value them before any bids could be prepared. From 33 to 45 percent of the $2 billion in C.D.O.’s on offer by the funds early yesterday were investments in other C.D.O.’s, according to officials who have seen the bid lists.

One worry about the possible unwinding of the Bear funds is that it will cascade into larger liquidations by other investors who hold similar securities at far higher prices. Accounting rules require investment banks to mark the value of the investments to the price of similar assets trading in the market. Many mortgage-related securities, and C.D.O.’s in particular, do not trade frequently, making them hard to value.

“I think people are nervous and trying to figure out what the best course of action is here,” said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer at the TCW Group, an investment management company with $85 billion in mortgage- and asset-backed securities. “Do you want to be the first one out and perhaps cause the lows to be hit in the market, or do you want to wait and see how this all plays out?”

In fact, rather than aggressively selling the assets it has seized, Merrill is quietly showing it to a small group of potential buyers, according to a person briefed on the process.

Such an approach helps to keep the pricing of the securities under wraps, allowing Wall Street firms to avoid marking down their own stakes. Keeping the sales price quiet also means that the firms may not have to add collateral immediately to shore up their portfolios...

Excuse me... but does this smell like some kind of inverted insider trading? Keeping the price of some critical holdings private so you don't loose your shirt, pants, and Lexus? Perhaps, but it's either that or the whole Ponzi scheme crashes and burns.

The Pravda article ends with some serious whistling past the graveyard:

“Yes, there was too much leverage in the market. Yes, there was too much appetite for risk and yes, that risk was underpriced,” said Mark Adelson, a senior analyst at Nomura Securities in New York. “But there has not been a lick of spillover of this situation in the corporate bond market or stock markets so I don’t think people need to start hoarding food, water and ammunition because the end is coming.”

Nah. Just gold and guns. The other stuff goes bad.

On the Irrational Fear of Hippies

What Digby said.

Just don't go all main$tream on us now, Digby, that the Big Boys know where you live!

If by some miracle the Democrats win in 2008, we'll need people like you to speak Truth Fact to Power the progressive faction of the Carlyle Group more than ever!

A Dirty 4-Letter Word Beginning with the Letter "E"

Every once in a while the hookers at The New York Pravda get tired of the bullshit of their high rolling Johns and actually tell them what they need to hear:

China and the Chest Thumpers

The latest blame China bill, unveiled last week in the Senate, is not as bad as earlier proposals...

The senators behind the bill — Democrats Max Baucus and Charles Schumer and Republicans Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham — bristle at being labeled protectionist, in part because they generally agree that free trade is superior to trade constraints...

Disclaimer: these are still the call girls and boys of the Establishment, and it's their corner.

...There’s also no telling how China would react to mounting protectionism. Weak Asian demand at a recent auction of Treasury debt is one of the reasons behind the latest increase in American interest rates. Rates could rise even more if China retaliated against pressure from the United States by further curtailing its demand for dollar-based assets.

American policy makers are betting that China won’t shun the dollar because doing so would induce losses in its vast dollar-denominated reserves. But when protectionist skirmishing starts, economic logic often breaks down. That’s why it’s better not to make threats in the first place.

It would be better if Congress focused on the problems from globalization that it could actually solve rather than blaming China for America’s economic ills. The problem of American business competitiveness — and Americans’ economic anxiety — would be best addressed by health care reform. The problem of growing income inequality could be ameliorated with a more progressive tax code.

It would also be more constructive if the United States took responsibility for its part in international imbalances. An undervalued yuan is only one aspect, allowing China to sell its goods cheaply and amass huge savings in the process. Another is the United States’ federal budget deficits — which result in large part from serial tax cuts — requiring America to borrow from China and other foreign lenders.

To help restore balance, China should change its currency practices and the United States should change its tax policy. Talks between the two nations need to acknowledge those twin imperatives. That would be a lot wiser than legislation that is based on the false notion of America as an innocent victim, unable to shoulder responsibility for its own problems.

You can bet there is Somebody from Chuckie's office trying to spank Someone for being too pouty in public. But the Pravda boys and girls can't help it. They've got a sweet racket too, and economic wars have this nasty habit of morphing into shooting wars. That would be really bad for business- if it was in their streets or mushrooming over their heads at a million degrees Centigrade.

Still, Chuckie and pals may not be worried much at all about this. Health care reform? No, there is no chance the medical profession is going to allow real health care reform to take place if it cuts their profits. After all, the system works much better if only the Right People go to medical school, and if they graduate with staggering debt, working virtually every waking hour not to heal people, but to pay off the debt and live the good life their social peers expect.

Then there's the other suggestion, that might effect the corpulent felines playing the United Mice of Amerika. Go as far as removing all the tax breaks that ensure the cats at the top stay on top of the food chain, and nothing like a real meritocracy evolves here? Ah, the Gray Lady makes a joke.

Who ever said there was no humor on the Editiorial pages?

Easy solutions. Some people just like to talk dirty, and others just get off on hearing it.

But Do They Know They Have Their Freedom® Now?

Via Think Progress:

70 percent:



Number of Americans who believe that the economy is getting worse, according to a new Gallup poll, “the most negative reading in nearly six years.”

And all this besides record highs in the stock market, record CEO salaries, record profits for the oil companies, and no-bid contracts for The War on Terra.



It's like tristero says: There Lie Monsters.



It's also like they say over at the Gallup Poll:

...The last time Americans held such negative views was in early September 2001, just before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11...

One does smell the change in the air again these days, but perhaps it's simply the tang of carbonic acid.