Emissaries of the Shadow Governments

If Darth Cheneyburton can't get his Iran on, he'd love some borsch. In fact, it's a long-time wet dream of his, that soggy red beet and cabbage soup. That's just the kind of guy he is.

The puppet-designate of the Reptilican Party likes it too.

Digby:

...I remember reading some stuff recently about how it was unseemly for Barack Obama to go on an overseas trip. Why, he was acting like he'd already won! Now, we have McCain making statements on television that are having an actual impact on an international crisis, and which might even be illegal, and I'm hearing gasbags say he looks very presidential. It looks more like presumptuousness to me.

But then a grizzled old veteran's presumptuousness isn't the same as a young, African American upstart's, is it?


Update: Even Jonathan Martin at the Politico sees something amiss with this one:

I think Greg Sargent is on to something regarding McCain's announcement at his press conference today that Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — his two closest friends in the Senate — will be heading to Georgia soon.

Yes, they're both members of the Armed Services Committee. But McCain's declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he's sending his own emissaries into the war zone.

Try to imagine if Obama had announced that he was sending Biden and Levin to the war zone...

Well, that's because everyone knows the Democrats might get the crazy idea to try to negotiate peace or something.

Not part of the plan. It's Endless War, remember?

Krugman sees the event horizon:

...I found myself wondering whether this war is an omen — a sign that the second great age of globalization may share the fate of the first.

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, here’s what you need to know: our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies — but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.

Writing in 1919, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes described the world economy as it was on the eve of World War I. “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth ... he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world.”

And Keynes’s Londoner “regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement ... The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion ... appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.”

But then came three decades of war, revolution, political instability, depression and more war. By the end of World War II, the world was fragmented economically as well as politically. And it took a couple of generations to put it back together.

So, can things fall apart again? Yes, they can...

Almost no one wants the Endless War. Except, of course, Bu$hie's Ba$e, the oil barons and the warborg of Northrop-Grummon, Boeing, Lockheed, and the Barons of Wall Street. War is bad for business, you say? Exactly whose business are you talking about, comrade?

Certainly not the business of the would be oligarchs who've clawed their way into Power again in the 21st Century.

Here and in Russia, too.

Incidently, while you weren't looking, Bu$hie's Company has decided to build missiles in Poland, with the excuse that we'll use them against the Muslim Menace.

You know, the one with all the ICBMs on Russian soil.

Looks like Russia doesn't believe that one either, and if the Reptilicans want to serve up the Cold War all over again, they may have just pissed off a really big Bear looking for a good meat side for its own beet soup.

Endless War is after all an old world standard recipe for control.

Star Assassin Wars

We don't have to have red commie spies steal information about our Top Secret weapons.

We have the new Free Market to do it for them.

ST. LOUIS, Aug. 13, 2008 -- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has successfully completed the first ground test of the entire weapon system integrated aboard the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) aircraft, achieving a key milestone in the ATL Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program.

During the test Aug. 7 at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., the ATL aircraft, a C-130H, fired its high-energy chemical laser through its beam control system. The beam control system acquired a ground target and guided the laser beam to the target, as directed by ATL's battle management system. The laser passes through a rotating turret on the aircraft's belly.

"By firing the laser through the beam control system for the first time, the ATL team has begun to demonstrate the functionality of the entire weapon system integrated aboard the aircraft," said Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems. "This is a major step toward providing the ultra-precision engagement capability that the warfighter needs to dramatically reduce collateral damage."

After conducting additional tests on the ground and in the air, the program will demonstrate ATL's military utility by firing the laser in-flight at mission-representative ground targets later this year.

On May 13, the high-energy laser was fired aboard the ATL aircraft for the first time, demonstrating reliable operations previously achieved in a laboratory. During that test, an onboard calorimeter captured the laser beam before it left the aircraft.

ATL, which Boeing is developing for the U.S. Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations. Boeing's ATL industry team includes L-3 Communications/Brashear, which made the laser turret, and HYTEC Inc., which made various structural elements of the weapon system.

This is known as advertising, in case you didn't notice.

David Hambling over at Danger Room says:

Boeing announced today the first ever test firing of a real-life ray gun that could become US special forces' way to carry out covert strikes with "plausible deniability."

In tests earlier this month at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser -- a modified C-130H aircraft -- "fired its high-energy chemical laser through its beam control system. The beam control system acquired a ground target and guided the laser beam to the target, as directed by ATL's battle management system."

"By firing the laser through the beam control system for the first time, the ATL team has begun to demonstrate the functionality of the entire weapon system integrated aboard the aircraft," Boeing exec Scott Fancher said, in a statement.

But what Fancher didn't mention (and what I explore over on the New Scientist web site) is that this capability will allow Special Forces to strike with maximum precision, from long distances -- without being blamed from the attacks. "Plausible deniability" is how the presentation put it.

The claim that a laser strike could be carried out without attribution appears in two separate (.pdf) briefing documents (.ppt) by Air Force personnel, describing the benefits of the new directed energy weapon.

The Advanced Tactical Laser, weighing twelve thousand pounds and mounted in a Hercules transport plane, is intended to give Special Forces Command "ultra-precision strike capability" against a wide range of ground targets. Its power is somewhere in the hundred-kilowatt range.

According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it...

One suspects the military wants the other side to have this weapon. After all, once everyone's got Star Wars energy weapons, the Mutually Assurred Destruction schtick is an old hat. The militaries of the world can get down to trench warfare again just like the good old days. They were good for the Generals and the arms makers, anyway.

The Hangover's a Bitch

Dear Leader's recovering from his weekend bender to one helluva jet-lagged hangover, at the same time Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's discovering his cease-fire orders to Pootie's Kremlin on the scene in Georgia mean about as much as the title "President" does in the 21st century.

What a better time for the irate and weak-minded Bu$hie to, you know, listen to Uncle Dick and the NeoCon PNAC gallery.

MOSCOW — With the fragile truce in Georgia on the brink of collapse Wednesday, President Bush announced that the United States had begun a humanitarian aid mission there and said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region to work for a settlement of the conflict with Russia...

Speaking of delusions, no doubt Condi feels she's right in the center of it all and in control, when really her entire entourage is likely a massive trojan horse that nobody except the idiots in the state department believes in.

Humanitarian aid? Oh come now. Look at what's in those carriers, dearie. There might be some rice and antibiotics on top, but chances are there's a whole bunch of DARPA toys underneath the Company's been dying to test out.

They, you know, lie routinely.

For their part, the Russian Army's feeling pretty good now, with a load of ethnic Ossetians thanking 'em, Caucasian cuties feeling their muscles, doubtless relieved to fight a stand down tank-and-artillery war instead of that awful insurgent silliness they had to deal with in Afghanistan. You know, the kind of war our kids are dealing with now, the kind of war that's frustrating the Manhood of a whole new generation of Pentagon climbers that can't quite produce the results they need for a clean promotion.

So we have two armies of raging bulls, spoiling for an open knock-down and drag-out.

The main problem of this, of course, is that American troops love to use their technological terrors.

The Russians feel they've established their own ground rules: no energy weapons in play on the field. The "precision weapons" the Pentagon loves so much all use laser sighting systems and depleted uranium munitions- and as any reader of this blog knows, that's only the beginning of the DARPA toy box.

The only fancy toys Pootie has all use the real U²³⁵ thing, and he's vowed to use them if anybody gets fancier.

If you haven't read Chris Floyd recently, you need to: here, today for example.

He's very right about many things. Two things I'd like to cover here.

First, this is Viagra to Darth Cheneyburton. Nuclear war with the Rooskies? No problem to Big Time: we'll probably only lose a million or so, a city or two, before our Death Stars obliterate them. It's be a great excuse to call off these silly elections and let the Real Grown-Ups run things without being bothered. It's only a flesh wound, and he won't be the one doing the bleeding.

Big Time Dick lives in the dangerous world of believing his own bullshit.

Second, I agree with Chris in that I in no way support the depredations of Russia.

Nor do I support the Company that controls Amerika.

The problem is, there are no "good guys vs. bad guys" when Oceania fights Eurasia fights Eastasia.

There are only the oligarchs, and everyone else who does the fighting, the bleeding, and the dying in the game of Risk that nations and the pirates who lead nations play.

Far more chicken than hawk

How does the Dear Leader of the Free Market World handle himself when his Company stooges go bear baiting and get their asses handed to them?

Why, tie one on while his handlers are preoccupied with grown-up stuff:















Of course, there are advantages to having Laura and Babs Jr. walk off in disgust. It's good to be the puppet King Preznit.

Drill Here! Drill Now! Blood and Souls for Exxon!

I don't know what's scarier. This in the Arctic:



Or this in the Arctic:



I do have a good idea which is closer to extinction, and which is more personally dangerous (hint: never comment on his blog, because he will make a note of who you are).

Apparently Darth Chertoff is heading to the North Pole to case the joint, since Darth Cheneyburton's intelligence contractors are projecting a war with Russia, or China, or somebody for all that oil. Maybe Denmark or Canada- they do own most of the turf under the ice.

Meanwhile, John Kerry seems to be making phone calls to reporters, still not realizing that he gave up most of his credibility when he capitulated Ohio almost four years ago.

Bob Herbert:

Senator John Kerry was on the phone and the words were coming in a rush.

“It’s a completely fraudulent argument,” he said. “It’s misleading. It’s snake oil salesmanship of the worst order.”

He was talking about the latest smoke screen in the presidential election, the bogus contention that lifting restrictions on offshore oil drilling would somehow, in the foreseeable future, bring down the price of gasoline for American motorists.

This absurd contention is now one of the main issues of the campaign. It’s the latest example of a very real fear (that sky-high energy prices will undermine the average family’s standard of living) being exploited shamelessly for political purposes.

Senator John McCain told cheering bikers at a giant motorcycle rally in South Dakota: “We’re gonna drill offshore! We’re gonna drill here, and we’re gonna drill now!” He told an audience in Lafayette Hill, Pa.: “We have to drill here and drill now. ... Drill here and drill now.”

With Senator McCain and the Republicans painting a false portrait of drilling as a method of relief for today’s high prices, and with polls showing the G.O.P. gaining traction on this issue, Senator Barack Obama has eased off his previous opposition to new offshore leases.

And so dies the possibility of the presidential campaign offering any real clarification of this important issue...

Clarity and honesty being the last thing a presidential candidate in the 21st Century would seem to value.

...As Senator Kerry and many others have pointed out, it would be nearly 10 years before any oil at all would be realized from new offshore leases. So your adorable 7- or 8-year-old would be just about 17 and clamoring for a license when this new oil started coming online.

Maximum capacity from these new leases wouldn’t be reached until 2030, when that 7- or 8-year-old is approaching 30, finished with college and graduate school, and very likely married with children.

And even then — after more than two decades and who knows how many graduations, weddings, funerals and family cars — even then, the amount of oil expected to come from these leases would have little or no effect on the price of gasoline at the pump.

Assuming that everything over all those years goes all right, it is estimated that an additional 200,000 barrels of oil a day would come from the additional offshore drilling. That’s a tiny share of the world’s daily output of 85 million or so barrels.

Here’s what the Energy Information Administration, the statistical agency that provides official data for the federal government, had to say about the anticipated additional output from offshore drilling:

“Because oil prices are determined on the international market ... any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”

Did anyone mention that to the bikers who were so fired up by John McCain’s “drill here and drill now” mantra? Or to the 63 percent of respondents to an ABC News poll who want the embargo on new offshore drilling to be lifted by the federal government?

I wonder how they would have responded if they had been told that lifting the offshore restrictions would risk serious environmental damage to the U.S. coastline over the next several decades while having no significant effect on the price of gasoline at the pump.

Public officials should be disabusing the electorate of its delusions, not encouraging them. The widespread mistaken notions about the potential impact of offshore drilling on gasoline prices reminds me of the large percentages of Americans who were encouraged to believe, and did believe — erroneously — that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I wonder if the electorate will ever wise up. We’ve known, or should have known, since the 1970s that the day of reckoning on energy would come. The U.S., blessed with so many resources, is no longer blessed with an abundance of oil.

Jimmy Carter, for all his faults, was on the case when it came to energy. He saw the challenge as “the moral equivalent of war,” and dared to ask the public to make sacrifices as part of a coordinated national effort.

Senator Kerry, in accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, said: “Our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.”

Former Vice President Al Gore has tried, more than any other public figure in recent years, to raise the consciousness of Americans by dramatically illustrating, not just the enormity of the energy challenge, but creative and practical ways of dealing with it.

How pathetic that in the midst of a presidential campaign the loudest voices we are hearing on this subject are crying: “Drill! Drill! Drill!”

Perhaps it is because these are the voices that have the most money to speak with.

Frozen Conflict

Yesterday on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman:

...COL. SAM GARDINER: Yes. It’s very interesting that it is probably what some analysts have called an area of frozen conflicts. After the Soviet Union dissolved, there remained areas in which, despite the fact that new states were created, there were tensions. One of those is the Ossetia or South Ossetia, which is where we’ve seen the fighting, and the other one, inside Georgia, is Abkhazia. There were agreements signed in the early 1990s that sort of solidified these as semi-independent territories. In one, there is a UN peacekeeping force, and then in South Ossetia, there is essentially independence, and, you know, they sort of ran their operations separate from the Georgian government.

And then, tensions began to increase over the past few months, because the president of Georgia has promised to retake—his words—retake the—particularly South Ossetia. That was a problem, because, by now, 90 percent of Ossetians there were holders of Russian passports. They had voted to become part of the Russian Federation. There was clear movement in the direction of this enclave, closer and closer ties with Russia. And then, last week, almost without announcement, the Georgians launched a strike into Ossetia with the apparent objective of putting this back under the Tbilisi control, back under the control of the Georgian government.

The Russians responded, responded probably in a way that was a great deal surprise to the Georgians, probably was also a surprise to the United States. And as of this morning, the Georgians seem to have pulled out of South Ossetia and the Russians have control of the capital city and are beginning to put in humanitarian aid.

The one issue left up in the air has to do with the other enclave, Abkhazia. There was a small portion of that enclave that was controlled by the Georgians. It was called the Kodori Gorge. Operations were launched there yesterday, some on Saturday night, in attempt to dislodge the Georgians and turn that territory over and completely make it independent from Georgian control. So, this morning, the fighting seems to be waning, although there are reports of still air strikes going on. It appears as if we have gotten through the heavy part of the fighting, but certainly not the important strategic consequences.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about significance of this, in terms of nuclear warfare in Russia? Do we have anything to fear along those lines?

COL. SAM GARDINER: Absolutely. Let me just say that if you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been in the past few years, this would be above Iraq, this would be above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.

On little notice to Americans, the Russians learned at the end of the first Gulf War that they couldn’t—they didn’t think they could deal with the United States, given the value and the quality of American precision conventional weapons. The Russians put into their doctrine a statement, and have broadcast it very loudly, that if the United States were to use precision conventional weapons against Russian troops, the Russians would be forced to respond with tactical nuclear weapons. They continue to state this. They practice this in their exercise. They’ve even had exercises that very closely paralleled what went on in Ossetia, where there was an independence movement, they intervene conventionally to put down the independence movement, the United States and NATO responds with conventional air strikes, they then respond with tactical nuclear weapons.

It appears to me as if the Russians were preparing themselves to do that in this case. First of all, I think they believe the United States was going to intervene. At a news conference on Sunday, the deputy national security adviser said we have noted that the Russians have introduced two SS-21 medium-range ballistic missile launchers into South Ossetia. Now, let me say a little footnote about those. They’re both conventional and nuclear. They have a relatively small conventional warhead, however. So, the military significance, if they were to be conventional, was almost trivial compared to what the Russians could deliver with the aircraft that they were using to strike the Georgians.

I think this was a signal. I think this was an implementation on their part of their doctrine. It clearly appears as if they expected the United States to do what they had practiced in their exercises. In fact, this morning, the Russians had an air defense exercise in the southern part of Russia that borders Georgia in which they—it was practicing shooting down incursion aircraft that were incursion into Russia. They were prepared for the United States to intervene, and I think they were prepared—or at least they were wanting to show the United States that their doctrine of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, if the US attacks, was serious, and they needed to take—the United States needs to take Russia very seriously...

If 90% of the Ossetians have Russian passports, and Georgia really moved in to take the territory, then one can see the Russians feel quite justified as defenders.

The way Mikhail Gorbachev tells it:

...The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia's territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force -- both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar -- it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground...

Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia's territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.

The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia.

In other words, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it. Now that the Georgian military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position...

Real men don't think, do they?

Someone at the Pentagon had the brains to blink at this Bu$hCo scheme, and refused to back up Cheneyburton and the CIA's promises with bombs and American soldiers. One thanks the sensible, whoever they may be. This had the potential of escalating wildly out of control. But perhaps it's a simple matter of not being the right conflagration at the right time for the right wing.

Put this apocalyptic scenario in, say, Jerusalem, and the Dominionists might just let the nukes fly.

Endangered Species

Bush to relax protected species rules
Plan takes scientists out of decision making on species status

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Monday said it plans to let federal agencies decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

The proposal, which does not require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews that government scientists have been performing for 35 years. Developers welcomed the plan, while environmentalists derided it...

It's marvelous what the shock of prospects of a hot war with Russia will do.

If "Georgia" tries to nuke the Rooskies, Bu$hie might just throw out Social Security.

Of course, nuking the Russian Army likely would result in very few Americans being around to collect said benefits, too.

There must be some Serious People really rattled by this latest development in the New World Order. The New York Pravda editorial staff actually published one of my comments. Look quick, before one of the Big Dudes there gets a chance to read it and send it into the ether:

What are we doing even thinking about this?

The CIA established a proxy government with the “Rose Revolution” in 2003 funded by the Carlyle Group’s George Soros. Saakashvili, extremely unpopular in Georgia, decided to listen to a different faction of the Company and quelled rioting in 2007 at his so-called re-election with sonic crowd dispersal devices and gas developed by DARPA for the CIA. He should have talked to the Kurds before listening to his CIA handlers and letting them egg his ego on to fight Russia.

Now the civilians of Georgia and South Ossetia are destined to suffer for the grandoise manipulations of the Bu$h administration.

On the other hand, war with Russia may provide and October surprise beyond their wildest dreams.

Extinction, even if only electoral, is like that.

These kids don't take care of their toys

Saakashvili should have talked with the Kurds first.

David Weman at A Fist Full of Euros:

...The Americans have more or less encouraged Saakashvili’s dangerously confrontational approach to Russia, and have given them hopes of NATO membership, which was never going to happen. They may also have had unrealistic expectations about US support in the event of a war. This war would likely never have happened if the US had discouraged the Georgians [update: in the last few years. Not saying the low level visit last week was crucial, rather than telling.] The result is an probable own goal by the Bushies. In Rob Farley’s words:

Hegemony or no, the United States will have been unable to give significant military aid to an Iraq War ally facing the prospect of interstate war.” More seriously. This isn’t the end of the world, but it’s not great.

But for the people of Georgia, it’s a lot worse than “not great”...

But cry havoc, and unleash the profits of War. This looks like a net plus for the spooks. The Company got to sell a lot of hardware, a lot of field agents got a lot of on-the-job training, they got to gauge the capability of Pootie's new Russian army. There was a chance for some killer propaganda: the Terra of the Rooskies, the inevitability of the Oceania vs. Eurasia war thingie, and the awesomeness of fighting for the Global Free Market.



All that's lacking is a codpiece.

Flowers, They'll Throw Us Flowers...

Of course, while we- and our proxies- batter them with ultrasonic weapons and crowd control gas.

First, the Rose revolution in 2003 was suggested to be part of a larger CIA-supported plot to take over petrochemical-producing and exporting and (in Georgia's case) routing states around the Caspian Sea, a region that has oil reserves to match Saudi Arabia. I find this interesting because it was largely financed by the Soros branch of the Company.

Then, the CIA "uncovers" a Russian ring selling bomb-grade uranium in Georgia. A very big noise indeed is made about this. Remember, Turkey is just next door, and Iran is on the other side of that.

The problem with promising people Democracy is that when you don't deliver- or it becomes "democracy" for oligarchs only- they get a bit upset.

And when you heavy-handedly smash their protests, using CIA-supplied DARPA cutting edge technology, the $ource of your Ba$e becomes apparent to the world.



[a tip o'teh tinfoil to jones for reminding me of this]

Strangely enough, Mikhail Saakashvili won that re-election, although quite unpopular. We've had a couple of $elections like that here, too. Free Market Democracy being too important to let votes and voters get in the way, one supposes.

One can only hope this fool gets what he deserves without killing too many innocents

Follow the Black Gold

Via Sean-Paul Kelley at the Agonist, some interesting details from Deutsch Welle:

...Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Saturday called on the Russians to agree on an immediate ceasefire to fighting in South Ossetia after saying earlier that his country was in a state of war.

As a first sign of seeking a truce, Saakashvili has ordered Georgian troops out of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, a Georgian security official said on Saturday.

Alexander Lomaia, the secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, told journalists in the early afternoon that the troops were still being shelled by Russian forces.

"The troops have been positioned in nearby territory of Tskhinvali and they have also been ordered not to respond to Russian shelling to the extent possible," Lomaia said in response to questions from Western journalists...

Russian warplanes meanwhile bombed and virtually destroyed a key Georgian port and hit another city. Russian ambassador to Georgia told the Interfax news agency on Saturday that at least 2,000 civilians have died in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali as a result of fighting between Russian and Georgian forces.

Georgian officials have so far denied Russian casualty figures, saying they were blown out of proportion.

Georgian officials said a Russian aerial bombardment had hit sites near the capital Tbilisi and key oil pipelines and "completely devastated" the Black Sea port of Poti in attacks that the country's UN ambassador likened to "a full-scale military invasion." Poti is a key port and staging post for moving oil and other energy from the Caspian Sea to the West.

According to Georgian public television, Russian forces also started bombarding a Georgian-controlled section of Abkhazia, a second breakaway Georgian region, hence broadening the war to a second stage...

What precipitated this? It looks like Georgia started the shelling first:

...Georgian television showed images of hundreds of rockets and heavy artillery shells crashing into the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Shelling reduced entire city blocks to rubble, according to eyewitnesses. Counts of civilian casualties varied widely, with Georgia estimating between one and two dozen killed, and some 100 injured as of Friday evening.

Eyewitnesses said many victims lost their lives when caught out in the open by artillery fire as they attempted to flee. Georgian television showed images of corpses sprawled along sidewalks and streets, in some cases still holding luggage.

Control of Tskhinvali appeared disputed on Saturday, with Georgian officials asserting total control of the city, and Russian officials claiming that they had taken the city.

Refugees were leaving the region and heading north towards the Russian border throughout the night, at times under Georgian artillery fire.

Georgian forces late on Friday ceased fire for some three hours to allow civilians to leave, but according to Russian observers Georgian shelling interdicted roads leading north throughout the night...

So the Russians are not only accepting Ossetian refugees, they retaliated by bombing Georgian cities.

No wonder Bu$hie sez:

...Russian attacks on Georgia outside the war zone of South Ossetia were a "dangerous escalation" of the crisis and urged Moscow to halt the bombing immediately.

"I'm deeply concerned about the situation in Georgia," said Bush, who is currently in Beijing for the Olympics. "The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous of escalation in the crisis..."

And the note of panic in Dear Leaser's voice isn't because of the civilian loss of life, it's because the Russians are threatening to hit the oil:

TBILISI, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Russian fighter jets targeted the the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries oil to the West from Asia but missed, Georgia's Economic Development Minister Ekaterina Sharashidze said on Saturday...

Let me assure you, if the Russians missed, it was no accident. It was to get your attention, Commander Codpiece.

Police State 2.0

Go read Naomi Klein:

...Chinese corporations financed by U.S. hedge funds, as well as some of American's most powerful corporations -- Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell, Google -- have been working hand in glove with the Chinese government to make this moment possible: networking the closed circuit cameras that peer from every other lamp pole, building the "Great Firewall" that allows for remote internet monitoring, and designing those self-censoring search engines.

By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.

Much of the Chinese government's lavish spending on cameras and other surveillance gear has taken place under the banner of "Olympic Security." But how much is really needed to secure a sporting event? The price tag has been put at a staggering $12-billion -- to put that in perspective, Salt Lake City, which hosted the Winter Olympics just five months after September 11, spent $315 million to secure the games. Athens spent around $1.5-billion in 2004. Many human rights groups have pointed out that China's security upgrade is reaching far beyond Beijing: there are now 660 designated "safe cities" across the country, municipalities that have been singled out to receive new surveillance cameras and other spy gear. And of course all the equipment purchased in the name of Olympics safety -- iris scanners, "anti-riot robots" and facial recognition software -- will stay in China after the games are long gone, free to be directed at striking workers and rural protestors.

What the Olympics have provided for Western firms is a palatable cover story for this chilling venture. Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.

There is a bitter irony here. When Beijing was awarded the games seven years ago, the theory was that international scrutiny would force China's government to grant more rights and freedom to its people. Instead, the Olympics have opened up a backdoor for the regime to massively upgrade its systems of population control and repression. And remember when Western companies used to claim that by doing business in China, they were actually spreading freedom and democracy? We are now seeing the reverse: investment in surveillance and censorship gear is helping Beijing to actively repress a new generation of activists before it has the chance to network into a mass movement...

This is the beta testing of an operating the system the people who own the Corporate States of Amerika want to install right here at home.

Hot War On a Dog Day Afternoon

Cold no longer.

... Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, declared that Georgia was in a state of war, ordering government offices to work around the clock, and said that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of his country.

Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, eclipsing the authority of President Dmitri A. Medvedev, left the Olympics in China and arrived Saturday evening in Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia just over the border that is a military staging area. State-controlled news broadcasts showed Mr. Putin meeting generals, suggesting that he was in charge of the operations on Georgian soil.

Mr. Putin made clear that Russia now viewed Georgian claims over the breakaway regions within its borders to be invalid, and that Russia had no intention of withdrawing. “There is almost no way we can imagine a return to the status quo,” he said, according to Interfax...

At last, a situation Condi Rice was trained for. Darth Cheney is glad he finally has something big to give his generals at the Pentagon to play with. After all, aside from a new Pearl Harbor, a new Eastern Front is everything the military security industrial complex and a flailing Republican party could dream of and just the kind of diversion the DLC never planned for.

Ozymandias Where Art Thou?

It looks like Dear Leader- or Darth Cheney, it's hard to know exactly whose bright idea this was- is bankrolling and egging on a war between Georgia and Russia.

Georgia and Russia are careening towards war. And the U.S. isn't exactly a detached observer in the fight. The American military has been training and equipping Georgian troops for years.

The news thus far: Georgia, which has been locked in a drone war over the separatist enclave of Abkhazia, has launched an offensive to reclaim another breakaway territory, South Ossetia. Latest reports indicate that Georgian forces are laying siege to Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. And Russia, which has backed the separatists, is sending in the tanks.



So why should we care? Oh, just the prospect of a larger regional war that could drag in Russia – and involve the United States as well. Since early 2002, the U.S. government has given a healthy amount of military aid to Georgia. When I last visited Tskhinvali, Georgian troops patrolled the streets -- decked out in surplus U.S. Army uniforms and new body armor.



The first U.S. aid came under the rubric of the Georgia Train and Equip Program (ostensibly to counter alleged Al Qaeda influence in the Pankisi Gorge); then, under the Sustainment and Stability Operations Program. Georgia returned the favor, committing thousands of troops to the multi-national coalition in Iraq. Last fall, the Georgians doubled their contingent, making them the third-largest contributor to the coalition. Not bad for a nation of 4.6 million people.

No, absolutely insane for the oligarchs controlling 4.6 million people to be wasting their money on this. "Bad" doesn't begin to cover it. A CIA-installed coup in Georgia installed to handle their oil and gas does describe it precisely

But back to the Wired piece, now firmly identified as a steaming hunk of red, white, and blue Company propaganda:

...Leaving aside the question of Russian interference (see below), the larger concern has been that Georgia might be tempted to use its newfound military prowess to resolve domestic conflicts by force.

Newfound? Their military never lost it in the first place, boyo.

...As Sergei Shamba, the foreign affairs minister of Abkhazia, told me in 2006: “The Georgians are euphoric because they have been equipped, trained, that they have gained military experience in Iraq. It feeds this revanchist mood… How can South Ossetia be demilitarized, when all of Georgia is bristling with weaponry, and it’s only an hour’s ride by tank from Tbilisi to Tskhinvali?”

One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more bluntly. “We’re giving them the knife,” he said. “Will they use it?”

Please read Nathan Hodge's link rich original post on this. Just don't believe his perspective.

Military experience in Iraq??!!

Once again, our Fearless Leaders demonstrate a mind is a terrible thing to lose.

There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

Go read Paul Krugman on Know-Nothing Politics:

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now!...

...the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, “They attacked us, and we’re going to strike back” — and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama weren’t the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter...

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

It's not so much that the Republicans doing the driving really believe all that stupidity. Nor the Democrats doing the driving, theirs. It's just all that stupidity is an easy way to keep the marks coming in and buying the scam.

i9/11 by an iSaddam in iIran or iXinhua

There is unsurprisingly big public opposition to getting rid of net neutrality.

There is unsurprisingly a great sense of urgency among the telcoms to do just that. Nobody with any disposable income gets their worldview from the tube anymore. Everyone with a couple of neurons to slap together compares what several news and product information sources say before they buy anything, from cars, to politicians.

It is precisely that last product category- the tendency not to just buy what the Man is trying to sell you- that makes Big Brother a little uneasy about the free speech function of the internet.

Hence, this:

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that "There’s going to be an i-9/11 event" which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an "i-Patriot Act" if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled "2018: Life on the Net", Lessig stated:

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn't necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You've got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said "of course there is".

Of course. If there is some catastrophic cyber shock to use as an excuse for this doctrine, just don't expect the Internet Channel solution to come anywhere close to solving the iProblem, whichever agency precipitates it.

It's His Fault 'Cause We Say So

Glenn Greenwald goes over the evidence the Untouchables gave to Pravda to justify their wide 'case closed' stance.

Greenwald:

...What is most conspicuously absent from these FBI documents is any real forensic evidence linking Ivins to the anthrax that was sent. That's particularly striking because the FBI took numerous swabs of Ivins' residence, his office space, his laboratory devices (presumably including the lyothilizer he used), his locker, his cars. If they had discovered any anthrax traces that genetically matched what was sent in 2001, they certainly would have said so. But they don't...

Funny, I thought Ivin's email was just recounting what the Authorities said Osama bin Hidden said. That phrase as piece of circumstantial evidence? It has probably been in every piece of email anyone in the country has written anyone else about 9-11. We were all told that was the motivation, right? At least until Dear Leader started chanting, "Saddam, Saddam, Saddam did 9-11" .

Give 'em a medal

Avedon points to a recent post of Chris Floyd's:

...In a land crawling with armed - and armored - SWAT teams, with operatives from innumerable federal agencies packing heat and happy to use it, a land where more than 2 million people languish in prison (many of them captives of an endless "war on drugs" that has done nothing to curb substance abuse but has greatly augmented the power of the state and the criminal gangs whose laundered money enriches Establishment elites), a land where almost every transaction is wired up to some national grid, where national ID cards are now being imposed - a land where you literally cannot exist without placing your liberty, your privacy, your very life at the mercy of a government apparatus besotted with violence, coercion and intrusion, there is no place left for the kind of action that Thoreau advocated. His way - and that of Gandhi and King, who took so much from him - envisions a state opponent which one could hope to shame into honorable action by the superior moral force of principled civil disobedience. But the very hallmark of the present regime is its shamelessness, its utter lack of any sense of honor or principle, its bestial addiction to raw power...

I think we are far, far beyond the kind of nation Thoreau thought he lived in.

But what's the point of giving up, really? There is no point in fighting the Power to try to change it. You fight the Power to keep it from changing you.

You can not make it less evil. It's like Professor Tolkien said. The only way to fight the Power is to never use it and destroy it when you can.

This is going to be the real problem if Obama does win. We have to try to dissolve the corporate center that views Power as just another asset. The problem is global, though. The scope of the issue is as international as Dubai and as profit-driven as the Arabic, Russian, Chinese, and American syndicates that play the game for oil, money, and its own sake.

Some guys just like to be the killer ape on top.

Speaking of killer apes, orcs, and Mouths of Sauron, Greenwald has come up with some interesting facts about the social worker the FBI's used to defame Ivins to the main$tream. It turns out she's got multiple charges of DUI and drug paraphenalia pending. Plus battery charges for beating her ex-husband.

That's some social work.

Laris Alexandrovna has more details.

Once again, I'm impressed by the caliber and the integrity of the tools the FBI uses to get its man and close the case.

Maybe there's a Presidential Medal of Freedom lurking in the wings for Ms. Duley and/or her case handler(s) for the Feds.

If it's good enough for the man who ran around with his hair on fire before 9/11, it's good enough for the Untouchables framing the anthrax Terra.

Hostile Takeover

70% of the intelligence budget goes to mercenary private contractors.

Among other things, this assures that even if the Democrats win this year, the same people will be telling them what to do and deciding what to tell them about the world.

...if a foreign espionage service wanted to penetrate American military and governmental secrets, its easiest path would not be to gain access to any official U.S. agencies, but simply to get its agents jobs at any of the large intelligence-oriented private companies on which the government has become remarkably dependent. These include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), with headquarters in San Diego, California, which typically pays its 42,000 employees higher salaries than if they worked at similar jobs in the government; Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the nation's oldest intelligence and clandestine-operations contractors, which, until January 2007, was the employer of Mike McConnell, the current director of national intelligence and the first private contractor to be named to lead the entire intelligence community; and CACI International, which, under two contracts for "information technology services," ended up supplying some two dozen interrogators to the Army at Iraq's already infamous Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. According to Major General Anthony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse scandal, four of CACI's interrogators were "either directly or indirectly responsible" for torturing prisoners...

Remarkably enough, SAIC has virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government...

Just to be clear, that's also Admiral Mike McConnell, who is also Director of National Intelligence. A Company man.

Surgin' in the Cities

Just like McCain wants to see here in the Corporate States of Amerika:

The anti-gathering laws were enacted as thousands of soldiers were due to take to the streets of Italian cities for the first time on Monday under a controversial move by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to fight crime.

Massimo Giordano, a member of Italy's anti immigration Northern League party, defended the anti-gathering motion and claimed it would cut down on unruly behaviour.

However opposition councillors said it was "reminiscent of Benito Mussolini's edict of the 1920's which banned groups of five or more people".

The ban will not affect courting couples who flock to parks and gardens in the northern Italian city of Novara, where Mr Giordano holds power, but if anyone is caught in a group of three or more they face a fine of 500 euro (£350).

Mr Giordano said that the edict would ban "gatherings in a bid to protect public decorum and prevent damage to public parks and gardens" from people who gathered in them at night.

Novara, which has a population of 100,000, is not seen as a particularly crime-ridden or violent city but the mayor passed the law after several elderly residents complained of noise...

These Suicides are Murder

Elizabeth Higgs:

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Private LaVena Lynn Johnson killed herself on July 19, 2005, eight days before her twentieth birthday. Exactly how did she end her life? She punched herself in the face hard enough to blacken her eyes, break her nose, and knock her front teeth loose. She douched with an acid solution after mutilating her genital area. She poured a combustible liquid on herself and set it afire. She then shot herself in the head. Despite this massive self-inflicted trauma, she somehow managed to drag her then fully clothed body into the tent of a KBR contractor, leaving a trail of blood along the way and set the tent ablaze in a failed attempt to cover up her crimes against herself.

If this story sounds plausible to you, you may have missed your calling as an officer in the U.S. Army, because Army officers, speaking with a straight face, would have you believe that such a thing is not only possible, but actually happened...

But your government wouldn't lie to you, would it?

Don't worry. Just to, you know, keep their stories straight, the KBR Company boys are going to be baring the use of those pesky cellphones in the Big Sandpit from now on:

This weekend, defense contracting giant KBR announced it would ban the use of personal cell phones by its employees in Iraq, citing no specific reason. Though KBR has not indicated the ban is related to the numerous allegations of rape by female KBR employees by their male coworkers, the ban could endanger future victims. Jamie Leigh Jones, the first victim to come forward publicly, explained that after she was gang-raped by coworkers and held in a shipping container for days, “she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.”

Change We Can Believe In

An open letter to Barack Obama.

Dear Senator Obama,

We write to congratulate you on the tremendous achievements of your campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a vision of a better future--in which the United States sheds its warlike stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality and freedom for its citizens at home--that has thrilled voters across the political spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of young people have entered the political process for the first time, African-American voters have rallied behind you, and many of those alienated from politics-as-usual have been re-engaged.

You stand today at the head of a movement that believes deeply in the change you have claimed as the mantle of your campaign. The millions who attend your rallies, donate to your campaign and visit your website are a powerful testament to this new movement's energy and passion.

This movement is vital for two reasons: First, it will help assure your victory against John McCain in November. The long night of greed and military adventurism under the Bush Administration, which a McCain administration would continue, cannot be brought to an end a day too soon. An enthusiastic corps of volunteers and organizers will ensure that voters turn out to close the book on the Bush era on election day. Second, having helped bring you the White House, the support of this movement will make possible the changes that have been the platform of your campaign. Only a grassroots base as broad and as energized as the one that is behind you can counteract the forces of money and established power that are a dead weight on those seeking real change in American politics.

We urge you, then, to listen to the voices of the people who can lift you to the presidency and beyond.

Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.

We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.

Here are key positions you have embraced that we believe are essential to sustaining this movement:

§ Withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable.

§ A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.

§ Universal healthcare.

§ An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.

§ An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era.

§ A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services.

§ A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.

§ An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.

§ Reform of the drug laws that incarcerate hundreds of thousands who need help, not jail.

§ Reform of the political process that reduces the influence of money and corporate lobbyists and amplifies the voices of ordinary people.

These are the changes we can believe in. In other areas--such as the use of residual forces and mercenary troops in Iraq, the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan, the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the death penalty--your stated positions have consistently varied from the positions held by many of us, the "friends on the left" you addressed in recent remarks. If you win in November, we will work to support your stands when we agree with you and to challenge them when we don't. We look forward to an ongoing and constructive dialogue with you when you are elected President.

Stand firm on the principles you have so compellingly articulated, and you may succeed in bringing this country the change you've encouraged us to believe is possible.

Go to the site to see a partial list of signatories, and add your name to the list if you wish.

The Unibama Becomes One with The One

The One to buy, that is.

...This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the “expertise” of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown.

Republican candidate John McCain even appointed as his campaign co-chairman Phil Gramm, who went from being chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, where he sponsored disastrous legislation that empowered the banking bandits, to becoming one of them at UBS Warburg. Gramm was forced to resign from McCain’s campaign only after he went public with his contempt for the financial concerns of ordinary Americans, calling them “whiners” and perpetrators of a “mental recession.”

But Gramm and the Republicans couldn’t have done it without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm’s legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him—the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law only after then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill’s immediate major effect was to legitimize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin’s critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.

That is the same Rubin with whom Democratic candidate Barack Obama met, along with other influential advisers, on Tuesday to figure out what to do about the sorry state of our economy. But what in the world did he expect to learn from Rubin? And why did he appoint Rubin’s protégé, Jason Furman, who ran the Rubin-funded Hamilton Project, to be the Obama campaign’s economic director? Hopefully, during their encounter Tuesday, Rubin offered himself as a contrite model of everything that the candidate of change needs to change.

After all, Goldman Sachs, where Rubin spent 25 years of his business career before entering the Clinton administration, has been one of the prime corporate villains in the financial shenanigans that led to the subprime mortgage scandal. As co-chairman of the firm, surely he had knowledge of the financial hanky-panky that would prove so disastrous down the road. Indeed, as Treasury secretary, he favored an extension of the deregulation that enabled this explosion of banking avarice. Not surprisingly, the current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, also previously headed Goldman.

When Rubin assumed a top position at Citibank after his stint at the Treasury, he was not above influencing his former employees in the government. In one notorious instance during the fall of 2001, when Enron was going down the tubes Rubin telephoned a Treasury undersecretary and asked him to consider intervening with credit-rating agencies to hold off downgrading Enron’s ratings. When the story was leaked, some media accounts noted the possibility of a conflict of interest because Enron owed Citibank $750 million, which it could not pay if bankrupt.

Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank’s chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank’s own wild financial manipulations, which, if anything, exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice...

It's only weird if you persist in the delusion this is anything but a $election.

The Unibama now tells us, in the spirit of compromise, we have to do what McCain and his advisers from Exon say we must:

... Mr. Obama has until now opposed any expansion of lands for offshore drilling. But in a news conference here, he noted that there had been “very constructive” talks between Senate Republicans and Democrats on this issue in recent days, applauding a plan unveiled by a group of Republican and Democratic senators to permit drilling while supporting an effort to convert most vehicles to using alternative fuels in 20 years.

“If we come up with a genuine bipartisan compromise, where I have to accept some things that I don’t like in order to get energy independence,” Mr. Obama said, “that’s something I will have to consider.”

It's like Naomi Klein called it:

...This is just a classic example of what I mean by ‘disaster capitalism,’ which is using a real disaster, a real crisis, or a shock-like the oil shock-to push through policies that you can’t get through in normal circumstances. So here you have a shock, you have a real oil crisis. People are in pain, they want solutions. And you got the President, the “Extortionist-in-Chief” whose job is actually to solve the problems, but instead he holds the country hostage. And he says, “Listen, unless you give me ANWR, you’ll never drive again.”

Of course, the Prime Unit of the Oborg never dreamed that he would get assimilated too.

Let Them Shut It Down or Else

The anthrax scientists appear to be given an offer they can not refuse:

...Over lunch in the bacteriology division, nervous scientists would share stories about their latest unpleasant encounters with the FBI and ponder whether they should hire criminal defense lawyers, according to one of Ivins's former supervisors. In tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, they were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away.

...colleagues and friends of the vaccine specialist remained convinced that Ivins was innocent: They contended that he had neither the motive nor the means to create the fine, lethal powder that was sent by mail to news outlets and congressional offices in the late summer and fall of 2001. Mindful of previous FBI mistakes in fingering others in the case, many are deeply skeptical that the bureau has gotten it right this time.

"I really don't think he's the guy. I say to the FBI, 'Show me your evidence,' " said Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, former director of the bacteriology division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, on the grounds of the sprawling Army fort in Frederick. "A lot of the tactics they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons."

Investigators are so confident of Ivins's involvement that they have been debating since Friday whether and how to close the seven-year-old anthrax investigation. That would involve disbanding a grand jury in the District and unsealing scores of documents that form the basis of the government's case against Ivins.

...a government source said that the probe could be shuttered as early as tomorrow. The move would amount to a strong signal that the FBI and Justice Department think they got their man -- and that he is dead, foreclosing the possibility of a prosecution. No charges are likely against others, that source added.

Of course, if they don't close the case, the implication is one or more of the other Fort Detrick scientists will be charged.

Of course, the FBI has no interest in finding the four "investigation sources," alledgedly one of these scientists, who told ABC and the nation as quoted by Bu$hie 2003 State of the Union address that the anthrax used was contaminated with Iraqi soil.

Of course, the Fort Detrick guys were the ones who really shot down this Bu$h administration claim.

Interesting how the FBI focussed on the guys who tried to throw a wrench in the war machine as the perps, isn't it?

Closing the investigation not only means the real perpetrator never gets caught, it means that the person who provided this misinformation will never be uncovered.

And the documents that get "unsealed" are doubtless only documents that aren't Classified as part of National Security.

Not that keeping it open would mean the source of misinformation- likely Karl Rove- would ever be uncovered, either.

When the going gets chaotic,

you can rest assured chaos is the plan. For some Baron of Hell somewhere.



[tip o'teh tinfoil to Avedon]

If Exon doesn't strike your fancy, it's blood and souls for Chevron, too:

...Chevron said Friday that record oil prices drove second-quarter earnings up 11 percent to its highest-ever profit, but weak margins from gasoline production led to a big loss at its refining operations...

I'm sooo sorry, but they used the word profit. So instead of the sympathy-for-the-Devil phrase "...but weak margins from gasoline production led to a big loss at its refining operations...," they should have said "...despite weak margins from gasoline production led to a big loss at its refining operations..." Which wouldn't have induced sympathy at all.

Just sayin'.

A Leading Microbiologist Moves On with Tylenol and Codiene?

That's no certain way to die- quickly-

...Cytochromes P450 2E1 (CYP2E1) and 3A4 (CYP3A4) convert paracetamol to a highly-reactive intermediary metabolite, N-acetyl-p-benzo-quinone imine (NAPQI).

Under normal conditions, NAPQI is detoxified by conjugation with glutathione. In cases of paracetamol toxicity, the sulfate and glucuronide pathways become saturated, and more paracetamol is shunted to the cytochrome P450 system to produce NAPQI. As a result, hepatocellular supplies of glutathione become exhausted and NAPQI is free to react with cellular membrane molecules, resulting in widespread hepatocyte damage and death, leading to acute hepatic necrosis. In animal studies, hepatic glutathione must be depleted to less than 70% of normal levels before hepatotoxicity occurs.

The toxic dose of paracetamol is highly variable. In adults, single doses above 10 grams or 200 mg/kg, which ever is lower, have a reasonable likelihood of causing toxicity.[40][41] Toxicity can also occur when multiple smaller doses within 24 hours exceeds these levels. In children acute doses above 200 mg/kg could potentially cause toxicity.[42] However, acute paracetamol overdose in children rarely causes illness or death, and it is very uncommon for them to have levels that require treatment, with chronic supratherapeutic doses being the major cause of toxicity in children.

In a normal dose of 1 gram of paracetamol four times a day, one-third of patients may have an increase in their liver function tests to three times the normal value. However, it is unclear as to whether this leads to liver failure.

Since paracetamol is often included in combination with other drugs, it is important to include all sources of paracetamol when checking a person's dose for toxicity. In addition to being sold by itself, paracetamol may be included in the formulations of various analgesics and cold/flu remedies as a way to increase the pain-relieving properties of the medication, and sometimes in combination with opioids such as hydrocodone to deter people from using it recreationally or becoming addicted to the opioid substance. In fact, the human toll of paracetamol, in terms of both fatal overdoses and chronic liver toxicity, likely far exceeds the damage caused by the opioids themselves...

Evidence of liver toxicity may develop in one to four days, although, in severe cases, it may be evident in 12 hours...

You have to eat a lot of this drug to die from it, and the death is slow and painful.

The New York Pravda make a big deal of how a good catholic family man, scientist, and productive worker was in fact:

...Facing the prospect of murder charges, he had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun as he contemplated killing his co-workers at the nearby Army research laboratory.

“He was going to go out in a blaze of glory, that he was going to take everybody out with him,” said a social worker in a transcript of a hearing at which she sought a restraining order against Dr. Ivins after his threats.

The ranting represented the final stages of psychological decline by Dr. Ivins that ended when he took his life this week, as it became clear that he was a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks...

To some of his longtime colleagues and neighbors, it was a startling and inexplicable turn of events for a churchgoing, family-oriented germ researcher known for his jolly disposition — the guy who did a juggling act at community events and composed satiric ballads he played on guitar or piano to departing co-workers.

“He did not seem to have any particular grudges or idiosyncrasies,” said Kenneth W. Hedlund, a retired physician who once worked alongside Dr. Ivins at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick. “He was the last person you would have suspected to be involved in something like this.”

... W. Russell Byrne, a former colleague of Dr. Ivins at the biodefense laboratory, criticized federal agents as harassing the germ scientist and his family.

“They searched his house twice and his computer once,” he said in an interview. “We all felt powerless to stop it.”

He said Dr. Ivins was recently escorted away from the laboratory by the authorities and “disgraced in a place he spent his whole career.”

“That was so humiliating,” he said. “It’s hard to believe.”

In court records, filed after Dr. Ivins discussed his plans to kill his co-workers, a social worker who led the sessions, Jean Duley, said that Dr. Ivins’s psychiatrist had “called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions.” She went on to say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking at Dr. Ivins and that he would soon be charged with five murders — the same number of fatalities in the anthrax attacks.

“He is a revenge killer,” Ms. Duley told a Maryland District Court judge in Frederick as she sought a restraining order against Dr. Ivins. “When he feels that he has been slighted, and especially towards women, he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings...”

So he unloaded for the social worker, told her he had a gun and bullet-proof vest, and chose Co-Tylenol to kill himself with?

Exactly who signs this social worker's paycheck?

And of course, he's a sociopathic lone psychopath.

Let's forget all about this now:

...Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an internal Army inquiry show.

...More troubling to Langford than the missing specimens was what investigators called "surreptitious" work being done in the pathology lab late at night and on weekends.

Dr. Mary Beth Downs told investigators that she had come to work several times in January and February of 1992 to find that someone had been in the lab at odd hours, clumsily using the sophisticated electron microscope to conduct some kind of off-the-books research.

After one weekend in February, Downs discovered that someone had been in the lab using the microscope to take photos of slides, and apparently had forgotten to reset a feature on the microscope that imprints each photo with a label. After taking a few pictures of her own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see "Antrax 005" emblazoned on her negatives.

Downs also noted that an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car, had been rolled back to hide the fact that pictures had been taken over the weekend. She wrote of her findings in a memo to Langford, noting that whoever was using the microscope was "either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were doing."

...Documents from the inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a security guard.

...Zack left Fort Detrick in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional behavior by Zack, Rippy, Brown and others who worked in the pathology division. They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad, who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination.

Assaad said he had believed the harassment was behind him until last October, until after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He said that is when the FBI contacted him, saying someone had mailed an anonymous letter - a few days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known - naming Assaad as a potential bioterrorist. FBI agents decided the note was a hoax after interviewing Assaad.

But Assaad said he believes the note's timing makes the author a suspect in the anthrax attacks, and he is convinced that details of his work contained in the letter mean the author must be a former Fort Detrick colleague.

Let's forget all about that. Let's forget all about this, too. Glen Greenwald:

...Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in this matter.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:

The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.

Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).

Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.

That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report -- insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:

On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type -- is behind the germ warfare.

The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001 that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").

And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this claim:

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.

Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq...

There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically...

Let's forget that the government already ruined the career of Dr. Hatfill, a man they tried- and failed- to set up as the guilty party.

Let's forget that Dr. Ivin's family and lawyer still insist he was innocent, as do his co-workers.

But don't worry about that. The lone gunman is now dead, and the case is going to be officially closed.


[tip o'teh tinfoil to the RI board]

So when does the insurgency begin?

Inner city military surges to combat crime right here at home.

You can not make this stuff up.:

Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to the National Urban League, a group “devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream.” When an audience member asked him how he planned to reduce urban crime, McCain praised Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York Cirty before invoking the military’s tactics in Iraq as the model for crime-fighting:

MCCAIN: And some of those tactics — you mention the war in Iraq — are like that we use in the military. You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement...

Just like Iraq...

And if they don't, they raid their homes at 2 AM, round up all the men and boys, and the ones they don't shoot they let the Blackwater bulls send to CACI-run private prisons, where they'll confess to everything we want.

The women, the private contractors can just rape and shoot, or sell to the the nearest Saudi factor.

It's all so simple, once the world is a thousand points of light, and you can no longer see or hear what is the sunlit earth for all the money your owners give you.



Once he starts to surge up using the military- or paramilitary private contractors- on Americans, they'll not react the same way the Iraqis do. After all America's never had anything like a Revolution, or a Civil War. At least not so far as John Sidney McCain's been paid to remember.