"Readjustment" is the Plan

You know, back to the feudal ages. Think of it as social policy by financial policy.

Mike Whitney on Ben Bernanke:

...What are they thinking? Bernanke helped Greenspan inflate the biggest speculative bubble of all time, and still maintains that he never saw it growing. Right. How can retail housing leap from $12 trillion to $21 trillion in 7 years (1999 to 2006) without popping up on the Fed's radar?

Bernanke was also a staunch supporter of the low interest rate madness which led to the crash. Greenspan never believed that it was the Fed's job to deal with credit bubbles. "The free market will fix itself", he thought. He was the nation's chief regulator, but adamantly opposed to the idea of government regulation. It makes no sense at all. Here' a quote from Greenspan in 2002: “I do have an ideology. My judgment is that free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies. We have tried regulation, none meaningfully worked.” Bernanke is no different than Greenspan; they're two peas in the same pod. Everyone could see what the Fed-duo was up to

Now Bernanke is expected to carry on where his former boss left off, using all the tools at his disposal to offset the atrophy that's endemic to mature capitalist economies. "Stagnation", that the real enemy, which is why Bernanke supports this new galaxy of oddball debt-instruments and bizarre-sounding derivatives; because it creates a world where surplus capital can generate windfall profits despite chronic overcapacity. It's financial nirvana for the parasite class; the relentless transfer of wealth from workers to speculators via paper assets. Marx figured it out. And, now, so has Bernanke.

Bernanke is just following Greenspan's basic blueprint. It's nothing new. Unregulated derivatives trading is just one of the many scams he's thrown his weight behind. The list goes on and on; one swindle after another. Just look what happened when Lehman Bros blew up. Just weeks earlier, Bernanke and Co. had worked out a deal with JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns with the proviso that the government would guarantee $40 billion in Bear's toxic assets. Fair enough. The whole transaction went by without a hitch. Then Lehman starts teetering, and Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decide to do a complete policy-flip and let Lehman default. Their reversal stunned the markets and triggered a frenzied run on the money markets that nearly collapsed the global financial system.

Why?It was because Bernanke knew that the big banks were buried under a mountain of bad assets and needed emergency help from Congress. The faux-Lehman crisis was cooked up to extort the $700 billion from taxpayers via the TARP fund. Bernanke and Paulson pulled off the biggest heist in history and there's never even been an investigation.

Bernanke was in the wheelhouse when the subprime bubble blew and carved $13 trillion from aggregate household wealth. Consumers are now so deeply underwater that personal credit is shrinking for the first time in 50 years while unemployment is hovering at 10 per cent. If Bernanke isn't responsible, than who is?

...Bernanke's latest stealth-ripoff is called quantitative easing (QE) which is being touted as a way to increase consumer lending by building up banks reserves. In fact, it doesn't do that at all and Bernanke knows it. As an "expert" on the Great Depression, he knows that stuffing the banks with reserves was tried in the 1930s, but it did nothing...

Bernanke QE is a joke. He's just creating a diversion so he can shovel more money into insolvent banks, pump-up the stock markets, and recycle Treasuries. Otherwise why would Obama's Chief Economic Advisor, Lawrence Summers say this:

"In the current circumstances the case for fiscal stimulus... is stronger than ever before in my professional lifetime. Unemployment is almost certain to increase -- probably to the highest levels in a generation. Monetary policy has little scope to stimulate the economy given how low interest rates already are and the problems in the financial system. Global experience with economic downturns caused by financial distress suggests that while they are of uncertain depth, they are almost always of long duration." ("A Bailout Is Just a Start", Lawrence Summers, Washington Post)

QE is monetary policy writ large and--by Summers’ own admission--it won't work. It won't reduce unemployment or spark a credit expansion. That's why total consumer spending is falling, retail sales are flat, and wages are beginning to tank. Everywhere businesses are trimming hours and cutting salaries. Bernanke's $1 trillion in excess bank reserves has had no material effect on lending, credit expansion or jobs...

Bernanke, Summers, Geithner and Obama have all misrepresented quantitative easing (QE) so they can improve the liquidity position of the banks without the public knowing what's going on. The fact is, the banks are not "capital constrained" by lack of reserves. Therefore, extra reserves won't lead to increased lending. Billy Blog clarifies how the banking system really works and how that relates to QE: "Does quantitative easing work? The mainstream belief is that quantitative easing will stimulate the economy sufficiently to put a brake on the downward spiral of lost production and the increasing unemployment. It is based on the erroneous belief that the banks need reserves before they can lend and that quantitative easing provides those reserves. That is a major misrepresentation of the way the banking system actually operates. But the mainstream position asserts (wrongly) that banks only lend if they have prior reserves. The illusion is that a bank is an institution that accepts deposits to build up reserves and then on-lends them at a margin to make money. The conceptualization suggests that if it doesn’t have adequate reserves then it cannot lend. So the presupposition is that by adding to bank reserves, quantitative easing will help lending. But this is a completely incorrect depiction of how banks operate. Bank lending is not “reserve constrained”. Banks lend to any credit worthy customer they can find and then worry about their reserve positions afterwards...”

...The Fed is engaged in various covert-strategies to recapitalize the banking system. At the same time, Bernanke, Summers, Geithner, and Obama have stated repeatedly, that they're committed to slashing the long-term deficits. This means that they plan to reduce liquidity and push the economy back into recession so they can launch a surprise attack on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Last Thursday, Bernanke announced that he will begin to tighten the noose as early as March 31 2010, when the Fed ends its $1.65 trillion purchases of agency debt, mortgage-backed securities, and US Treasuries. That's why stock market volatility has picked up since the Fed released its December 16 statement...

Just in time for the mid-term Congressional $elections.

If the Reptilian Party can't get the popular vote, well maybe they can get the voters so pissed at the DINOcrat they'll just stay home next November. Which is just part of the plan for the Right sort of people controlling everything in a finance driven neofeudal post-industrial world.

On Healthy Kool-Aid

Myiq2xu: Failure is the plan.

Now where have I heard that before? Still, it's nice to see people waking up and smelling the coffee.

Now we just have to figure out what to do about it.

Avatar

Definitely worth a look. See it in IMAX and 3D. You won't be disappointed.

Pale Blue Dot

Just watch it, okay?

Stabilizing the Winners and Cannibalizing the Losers

Says Dennis the Menace:

"The class warfare is over -- we lost," Kucinich said before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "I want to make that announcement today. Working people lost. The middle class lost..."

"Don't tell me about class warfare," he continued. "Come to my neighborhoods in Cleveland. I will show you class warfare. I’ll show you hollowed out areas. I’ll show you businesses that went down because they don’t have access to capital. And on Wall Street it is fat city. Don’t tell me about class warfare..."

"All across this country people are starved for capital," Kucinich said. "Small businesses are failing, you have shopping centers that are becoming vacant because people can’t afford the rents anymore because the people who own the malls the developers are getting cash calls and credit is tightening."

"The separation between the finance economy and the real economy is real. This is not some fake idea. You can’t call that class warfare. That’s a fact..."

"The wealth of this nation is being accelerated upward," Kucinich said. "That’s one of the problems that I had with the bailout."

"You could say that it helped stabilize the American economy, but what I see is the separation between the real economy and Wall Street. Wall Street is stabilizing, markets are a lot better, banks are doing well -- they parked their money at the Fed for a while so they could get higher interest rates."

189,000 in Afghanistan

Already. Pre-surge. It's just most of them are mercenaries.

Jeremy Scahill:

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts...

Just in case you forgot the real reason for the war, the Cowboy hasn't.

What Dean Said v.2

In case you didn't catch it earlier this week:

...Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to...

Sirota:

...In coming out against the Lieberman-gutted health insurance "reform" bill, Dean is leveraging every shred of power he can muster to create the political space for the final bill - whether passed now, or later after going back to the drawing board - to be better and more progressive. He has made a compelling case that the bill "would do more harm than good," as he says in his Washington Post op-ed today - and in doing that he has made the power struggle between Joe Lieberman's Palpatinian forces of insurance/drug industry darkness and the progressive movement far more symmetrical.

Before Dean's move, the fight was asymmetrical, as Chris Hayes noted in my interview with him on my radio show yesterday. Before Dean's move, Lieberman had the upper hand in that he was the only one who didn't seem to care whether he alone killed the bill by joining with Republicans for a filibuster. Now, though, Dean has said to progressive members of Congress that they should be OK killing this bill if that's what taking a stand for a better bill means. And you see some of them potentially starting to follow.

This is why the White House and the Beltway media is now publicly freaking out at Dean in a way they never freaked out on corporate Dems (Lieberman, Baucus, Nelson, etc.) who were previously obstructing the bill: Because Dean is threatening to change the dynamic that the Beltway was always counting on - a dynamic that relied on progressives ultimately capitulating to the Joe Liebermans, the Rahm Emanuels, the insurance industry and the drug lobbyists. That dynamic only exists if progressive members of Congress - and the larger progressive movement and general public - believes passing the bill is more important than killing it to make it better. If they and we don't believe that, as Howard Dean doesn't and as new polls show we don't, then suddenly progressive members of Congress and the progressive movement can feel free to be as cutthroat as Lieberman himself...

And that scares the bats out of the belfry. Dr. Dean had best avoid riding in small airplanes anytime soon.

Declaring Victory and Going Home

Ah, the art of the Deal $teal:

...The plan does not firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The accord is nonetheless significant in that it codifies the commitments of individual nations to act on their own to tackle global warming...

Perhaps it's just as well. It's not really clear to me that good science is guiding this. The Best and the Brightest of the Oborg seem to be more into global engineering that would profit cronies instead of simply controlling carbon emission pollution.

Global engineering would at best only hide not solve the problem, and will require increasing perturbations with unknown consequences. You don't treat your world as a test tube especially if your inability to accurately forecast the ramifications of your actions has already created the greatest mass extinction event since the end of the Mesozoic.

Solstice Blues and Greens

This terra'ist bin married 22 years today.

It's hardly a flash in the cosmic lightshow.

Just sayin'.

Would You Buy a Used War From This Man?

...and not from his girlfriend there either.

What Greenwald says holds for me:

...I've honestly never understood how anyone could think that Obama was going to bring about some sort of "new" political approach or governing method when, as Kilgore notes, what he practices -- politically and substantively -- is the Third Way, DLC, triangulating corporatism of the Clinton era, just re-packaged with some sleeker and more updated marketing. At its core, it seeks to use government power not to regulate, but to benefit and even merge with, large corporate interests, both for political power (those corporate interests, in return, then fund the Party and its campaigns) and for policy ends. It's devoted to empowering large corporations, letting them always get what they want from government, and extracting, at best, some very modest concessions in return...

But only the concessions that are good for the Business.

... it's about more than just letting corporations do what they want. It's about affirmatively harnessing government power in order to benefit and strengthen those corporate interests and even merging government and the private sector. In the intelligence and surveillance realms, for instance, the line between government agencies and private corporations barely exists. Military policy is carried out almost as much by private contractors as by our state's armed forces. Corporate executives and lobbyists can shuffle between the public and private sectors so seamlessly because the divisions have been so eroded. Our laws are written not by elected representatives but, literally, by the largest and richest corporations. At the level of the most concentrated power, large corporate interests and government actions are basically inseparable.

The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry -- regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry -- tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations -- and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model...

Whether it is Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton or the Oborg, the same pattern, the same tactics, the same strategies, and often the same Players hold.

...Whether you call it "a government takeover of the private sector" or a "private sector takeover of government," it's the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else's expense. Growing anger over that is rooted far more in an insider/outsider dichotomy over who controls Washington than it is in the standard conservative/liberal ideological splits from the 1990s. It's true that the people who are angry enough to attend tea parties are being exploited and misled by GOP operatives and right-wing polemicists, but many of their grievances about how Washington is ignoring their interests are valid, and the Democratic Party has no answers for them because it's dependent upon and supportive of that corporatist model. That's why they turn to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; what could a Democratic Party dependent upon corporate funding and subservient to its interests possibly have to say to populist anger?

One might suggest it is time for the populace to cease listening to Company owned populists.

But that's not likely. They are the only ones with the microphones.

"There's throwing people under the bus, and then there's throwing people under the bus..."

Lambert catches a live one via McClatchy from the Oborg mortgage plan.

...In the fine print of the form homeowners fill out to apply for Obama's program, which lowers monthly payments for three months while the lender decides whether to provide permanent relief, borrowers must waive important notification rights.

This clause allows banks to reject borrowers without any written notification and move straight to auctioning off their homes without any warning...

It must be nice to own your very own preznit, while maintaining plausible deniability.

Cat Wearing Mittens

Jelperman at Avedon:

...If I had slept through the last eighteen months and woke up this morning and you had told me that it’s 2009 and we have a new President who:

a) not only refuses to prosecute known war criminals and torturers, but whose DoJ files legal briefs to stop all inquiries in the matter, AND promises to keep “terrorist” defendants locked up no matter the results of their “trials” (including Bush’s kangaroo military commissions)

b) escalated the war in Afghanistan while continuing to occupy Iraq

c) Let Republicans, right-leaning Democrats, and the Pentagon set the agenda for his four-year term

d) promised health care reform, but only offered a larger version of the incestuous insurance company/government circle-jerk enacted in Massachusetts

e) fired minor government employees at the behest of Glenn Beck

f) gave numerous other gifts to the Right and corporations, while slapping the liberals in the face at every opportunity

I would have thought “Well, maybe President Romney will only last one term.”

Still, it beats having someone who views global apocalypse as a good foreign policy.

Barry O.'s bipartisan crew simply thinks they can limit it to the golden crescent.

There's nothing like consistency...

...and Barry O.'s policies are nothing like consistent:

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry Thursday further signaled that a strong American military presence will remain in Afghanistan long after July 2011, when President Obama plans to end his troop surge.

Speaking at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Relations before a group of diplomats, non-governmental organizations and Afghan citizens, Eikenberry drove home the Obama administration's sometimes contradictory message.

To the Afghan government: act with urgency. To the Afghan people: We will not abandon you...

To the American public: we're out of there- real soon!

To Joe Lieberman: whatever you and Poppy say, Boss!

“Our own TV signals,” he said, “have already passed this star.”

Close but it seems no one's listening.

In May, Zachory Berta, a first-year graduate student of Dr. Charbonneau, called the group’s attention to blips in the Ophiuchus star that seemed to be happening every 1.6 days. If he was right, Mr. Berta said, the next transit would occur at 6 a.m. on May 13.

Dr. Charbonneau was in Washington later that day preparing for a State Department dinner when he got a group e-mail message that began: “We have a winner. Congrats Zach!”

From the drop in starlight, the astronomers could calculate the diameter of the Ophiuchus planet, known now as GJ 1214b. Then they used a sensitive spectrograph on a 3.6-meter telescope in Chile to measure its gravitational tug on the star, thus deriving the planet’s mass. Using those two numbers, Dr. Charbonneau and his colleagues could calculate the density of the planet, about one-third that of Earth.

“What we probably have here is a water world,” Dr. Charbonneau said.

Dr. Charbonneau said the weight of the new planet’s presumptive atmosphere kept the water liquid rather than just boiling into space. He acknowledged that a different recipe, with more rock and a very puffy atmosphere, would also fit the data. That is unlikely, he and other planet experts say, but the steam-world theory may be soon tested.

The new planet is close enough to be studied directly by telescopes on or near Earth. Indeed, Dr. Charbonneau said his team had already applied for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope...

Talk to the Hand

This seems to be exactly what the bankster CEOs said who were "'pozed" to meet with the One to get a public chastizing.

...Obama’s stern rhetoric apparently did not move the top banking honchos who failed to show up for this week’s White House meeting with the president. The heads of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley waited until the morning of the Monday meeting to catch a plane and then claimed that fog prevented their journey.

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram S. Pandit couldn’t make the meeting with the president who had saved his corporation from bankruptcy because he was too busy lining up new private financing to allow Citigroup to escape the bonus confines and other limits stipulated by the government bailout program.

No bank bears greater responsibility for the economic debacle that has caused such worldwide suffering than Citigroup, whose immense growth was made possible by legislation that Summers and his then-mentor, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, successfully promoted in the late 1990s. Rubin was rewarded for his efforts with a top job at Citigroup, which was formed from one of the largest mergers in history and which paid him $120 million before its fortunes plummeted. The bank is by no means out of the swamp of its own creation, as it still holds a huge portfolio of toxic assets, is still sustained by substantial public assistance and was trading Tuesday at less than $4 a share—a tiny fraction of its value before Rubin led it astray.

It was Rubin, as an Obama adviser, who pushed for Pandit’s selection as head of Citigroup. Perhaps Obama could enlist Rubin’s aid in getting Pandit to accept the president’s invitations to the White House. But of course there is no expectation of getting Rubin and Pandit to pay back the bankrupted homeowners they swindled.

Meanwhile, it is still Joe Lieberman's country.

The Best Weapons the Empire Can Buy

Of course, it's totally a co-incidence they happen to be made of nuclear waste, too:

For decades, depleted uranium (DU) has been the material of choice for anti-tank projectiles — despite a series of controversies about its potential health hazards. But for the near future, at least, the U.S. military will keep on using DU. Alternatives based on tungsten haven’t panned out. Now, the Army is upgrading to a new 120mm Advanced Kinetic Energy round, and about the only thing we know for sure is that it will be made of DU. The generation after that … may be an improved version of DU called Stakalloy.

Kinetic rounds are slim metal darts fired from tanks like the MAA1 Abrams at very high velocity. The preference for DU is not based, as some conspiracy theorists would have it, on a diabolical scheme to dump nuclear waste in developing countries. It’s because in addition to its high hardness and density, it has a property called adiabatic shear banding. Essentially, DU is crumbly rather than squishy. During the process of high-speed penetration through metal armor, fragments flake off a DU projectile. This means that a DU projectile is “self-sharpening” (compared to tungsten, which tends to deform in a blunted, mushroom shape.) It also means that DU produces a pyrophoric effect, filling the vehicle hit with a lethal fireball of tiny burning particles. That too makes it more effective...

From the earliest days of uranium processing, natural uranium was known as Tube Alloy (from “Tube Alloys”, a codename for the Manhattan Project), while enriched uranium was Oralloy (”Oak Ridge Alloy”) and the depleted remnant was known as Staballoy.

Staballoys containing DU with a small admixture of titanium (from 0.75 percent to 3.5 percent) have been the basis of anti-tank rounds for decades. However, now researchers are experimenting with a new version, known as Stakalloy, which combines uranium with niobium and vanadium. This is said to have improved hardness and ballistic properties compared to traditional uranium-titanium Staballoys.

In 2007, the Army requested the processing of “U-V-X Alloy Ingots,” described in the solicitation as Stakalloy. The document noted that “previous development work over the last few years at Aerojet for the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has produced new alloys with interesting properties and test prototypes for ballistic evaluation at ARL.” The idea was to find the best method of turning the ingots into “full-scale kinetic-energy penetrators.” (A two-stage quench process is suggested to prevent cracking.)

A detailed description of the new Stakalloy can be found in the patent for it...

As I read it, that's a round of 95% pure uranium.

Somehow it doesn't sound like a real healthy thing to be alive on a battlefield after thousands- maybe millions- of rounds of these munitions have been fired, burned, and turned to hot uranium oxide dust.

the Dem Suicide Act of 2010

What Atrios said:

Now that one senator has the power to torpedo the bill, a few more will get some ideas. And demand things. And it will get worse and worse until it is the Dem Suicide Act of 2010, if it isn't already.

This wasn't a suicide, it was an outright murder by Reptilians and DINOcrats.

What Dean Says

Kill Bill.

This is nothing like real health care reform. Instead, it is guaranteed income to insurance banksters, it is a private mandate with no public option or medicare expansion. As such it should be killed immediately.

First as we see, they'll try to take away medicare in a bait-and-switch for public health care reform. Next, they'll try again to eliminate social security. Doubtless they will have some high sounding title for it.

No Hits for You

Exactly who is whom's puppet?

Quoth the Gray Lady, but not in the sequence in which she speaks:

...As a son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a leading mujahedeen fighter against the Soviets who is now aged and apparently confined to bed, Siraj Haqqani is keeper of a formidable lineage and history.

In the early 1970s, the father attended a well-known madrasa, Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqaniya in the Pakistani town of Akora Khattack in North-West Frontier Province.

In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani received money and arms from the C.I.A. routed through Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, to fight the Soviets, according to Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the Afghan Taliban and the author of “Descent Into Chaos.”

In the 1990s, when the Taliban ran Afghanistan, Jalaluddin Haqqani served as governor of Paktia Province.

The relationship between the Haqqanis and Osama bin Laden dates back to the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, according to Kamran Bokhari, the South Asia director for Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company.

When the Taliban government collapsed at the end of 2001 and Qaeda operatives fled from Tora Bora to Pakistan, the Haqqanis relocated their command structure to North Waziristan and welcomed Al Qaeda, Mr. Bokhari said.

The biggest gift of the Pakistanis to the Haqqanis was the use of North Waziristan as their fief, he said.

The Pakistani Army did not appear to be assisting the Haqqanis with training or equipment, he said. More than 20 members of the Haqqani family were killed in a drone attack in North Waziristan last year, showing the limits of how far the Pakistanis could protect them, Mr. Bokhari said.

Today, Siraj Haqqani has anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000 Taliban under his command. He is technically a member of the Afghan Taliban leadership based in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province.

That leadership is headed by Mullah Omar, the former leader of the Taliban regime. But Mr. Haqqani operates fairly independently of them inside Afghanistan.

He funds his operations in part through kidnappings and other illicit activities. The Haqqani network held David Rohde, a correspondent for The New York Times, for seven months, seeking ransom until he escaped in June.

Siraj Haqqani maintains an uneasy relationship with the Pakistani Taliban, said Maulana Yousaf Shah, the administrator of the madrasa at Akora Khattack.

Mr. Haqqani believed the chief jihadi objective should be forcing the foreigners out of Afghanistan, and he had tried but failed to redirect the Pakistani Taliban to fight in Afghanistan as well, he said...

...Mr. Haqqani fights in Afghanistan, and is considered more of an asset than a threat by the Pakistanis. But he is the most potent force fighting the United States, American and Pakistani officials agree.

He has subcommanders threaded throughout eastern and southern Afghanistan. His fighters control Paktika, Paktia and Khost Provinces in Afghanistan, which lie close to North Waziristan. His men are also strong in Ghazni, Logar and Wardak Provinces, the officials said.

Because Mr. Haqqani now spends so much time in Afghanistan — about three weeks of every month, according to a Pakistani security official — if the Americans want to eliminate him, their troops should have ample opportunity to capture him, Pakistani security officials argue...

... The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan’s spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama’s surge, which envisions reducing American forces beginning in mid-2011.

The demands, first made by senior American officials before President Obama’s Afghanistan speech and repeated many times since, were renewed in a written message delivered in recent days by the United States Embassy to the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, according to American officials. Gen. David H. Petraeus followed up on Monday during a visit to Islamabad.

The demands have been accompanied by strong suggestions that if the Pakistanis cannot take care of the problem, including dismantling the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, then the Americans will by resorting to broader and more frequent drone strikes in Pakistan.

But the Pakistani leadership has greeted the refrain with public silence and private anger, according to Pakistani officials and diplomats familiar with the conversations, illustrating the widening gulf between the allies over the Afghan war.

Former Pakistani military officers voice irritation with the Americans daily on television, part of a mounting grievance in Pakistan that the alliance with the United States is too costly to bear...

Talk is cheap. Heroin costs money. Lives, too.

Loose weight without diet or exercise

Winning hearts and minds without bothering to learn the local languages.



Military intelligence.

Recovery without regulation.

...America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.

The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.

But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. In a memorable 2003 incident, top bank regulators staged a photo-op in which they used garden shears and a chainsaw to cut up stacks of paper representing regulations.

And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.

Given this history, you might have expected the emergence of a national consensus in favor of restoring more-effective financial regulation, so as to avoid a repeat performance. But you would have been wrong.

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.

Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.

In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” As Democrats have pointed out, three days before the House vote on banking reform Republican leaders met with more than 100 financial-industry lobbyists to coordinate strategies. But it also reflects the extent to which the modern Republican Party is committed to a bankrupt ideology, one that won’t let it face up to the reality of what happened to the U.S. economy.

So it’s up to the Democrats — and more specifically, since the House has passed its bill, it’s up to “centrist” Democrats in the Senate. Are they willing to learn something from the disaster that has overtaken the U.S. economy, and get behind financial reform?

No, Seriously.

“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” Mr. Obama said.

Tell it to Timmeh, Barry.

Forced Readjustment

But just try getting one.

Mortgage rates in the United States have dropped to their lowest levels since the 1940s, thanks to a trillion-dollar intervention by the federal government. Yet the banks that once handed out home loans freely are imposing such stringent requirements that many homeowners who might want to refinance are effectively locked out.

The scarcity of credit not only hurts homeowners but also has broad economic repercussions at a time when consumer spending and employment are showing modest signs of improvement, hinting at a recovery after two years of recession.

Refinancing could save owners hundreds of dollars a month, which could be spent, saved or used to pay down debts. Extra spending would help lift the economy, and lower payments might spare some people from losing their homes to foreclosure...

Only if.

Then, it might be the banksters have some other debts to repay at interest rates we can only guess at.

Same planet, different world

One right thinking people would be quick to discredit:



What a life that guy led.

Five years of cyberspace from outer space

That looks like a lot of curvature to cover, but the signal's barely beyond our next door neighbor.

World wide widget

I posted this up top for awhile because its a visually appealing- and quite compelling- piece of evidence of how trivial it is to spot who anyone is on the 'tubes and where you are. And keep track of the fact that you visited, too.

Not that this is a particularly new datum for anyone used to riding the range in cyberspace. But every once in awhile I encounter someone who thinks we're all just a bit paranoid.

Well maybe we are for good reason.

Conspiracy Theorists

The liberal main$treamers are wringing their hands over guys like Matt Tiabbi in Rolling Stone who have done a good job describing the lack of Change these days.

I like Matt's response:

...It is my job to point out that many of the same people who bear direct responsibility for the financial crisis were given positions of great power in the Obama White House, and that in many important ways the Obama appointments represented a resounding reaffirmation of the status quo (I didn’t even mention the renomination of Ben Bernanke), and the exact opposite of “change.” One can argue about the extent to which this is true, but I don’t think the facts are really in question.

Fact are difficult things, aren't they?

All Things to All Right-Thinking Whatevers

To paraphrase Harry Truman: When a Reptilian runs against a Reptilian, you can be sure the Reptilian will win.

Greenwald has one of the best deconstructions of Barry's Piece Prize speech I've read:

...the set of principles Obama articulated yesterday was such a clear and comprehensive expression of his foreign policy that it's now being referred to as the "Obama Doctrine." About that matter, there are two arguably confounding facts to note: (1) the vast majority of leading conservatives -- from Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich to Peggy Noonan, Sarah Palin, various Kagans and other assorted neocons -- have heaped enthusiastic praise on what Obama said yesterday, i.e., on the Obama Doctrine; and (2) numerous liberals have done exactly the same. That convergence gives rise to a couple of questions:

Why are the Bush-following conservatives who ran the country for the last eight years and whose foreign policy ideas are supposedly so discredited -- including some of the nation's hardest-core neocons -- finding so much to cheer in the so-called Obama Doctrine?

How could liberals and conservatives -- who have long claimed to possess such vehemently divergent and irreconcilable worldviews on foreign policy -- both simultaneously adore the same comprehensive expression of foreign policy?

How indeed, if there is any real difference between them.

Ian wants to blame it all on Parlimentary politics in a non-Parlimentary system, but I don't agree.

The double standard is particularly remarkable because it seems to work one way only.

Democrats working for social issues like single payer or even an honest public option get completely marginalized whether it’s a Democratic or Republican run Congress.

Supporters of the War on Terror get their funds as a given priority regardless of which side runs the Senate.

Like everything supposedly nuanced about our elected representatives, it’s only nuanced as long as the weasel words fit the bottom line.

This kind of thing seems surprising to some people. Gail Collins in Pravda today, surprised that the Companies run the Company:

... The biggest surprise was that the United States did not have its own soldiers guarding its Embassy in a war zone. We have been getting surprised like that a lot lately. Many of the worst stories involve Blackwater Worldwide, a private security contractor that changed its name to Xe Services after a series of mishaps in Iraq, one of which involved spraying bullets around a square in Baghdad and killing 17 civilians.

On Friday, James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of The Times reported that Blackwater employees had taken part in clandestine C.I.A. “snatch and grab” raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which suspected insurgents were abducted and taken away for detention and questioning.

This was, of course, in the past. In fact, on Friday, it was revealed that the C.I.A. director, Leon Panetta, had canceled a contract under which Blackwater loaded missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan — another activity that sort of came as a surprise when The Times first reported it last summer.

But Lord knows what Xe Services is up to.

What do you think Dwight Eisenhower would say about all of this? In his last speech as president, Eisenhower famously warned the country about “the potential for the disastrous use of misplaced power” if the military industrial complex got too big. That was back when defense contractors just sold the Pentagon fighter jets and wildly expensive widgets. Imagine how Ike would have reacted if they were driving the C.I.A. to snatch-and-grab dates.

When did we decide this was a good plan?

Who is this "we" you speak of, and what makes you think that "we" every controlled anything in the Corporate States of 'merika?

Atomic-powered zombie cyborg bugs

No kidding.

10 December 2009—This week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), in Baltimore, Md., Cornell University engineers presented research that shows progress in powering cybernetic organisms with a radioactive fuel source.

Electrical engineering associate professor Amit Lal and graduate student Steven Tin presented a prototype microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmitter—an RF-emitting device powered by a radioactive source with a half-life of 12 years, meaning that it could operate autonomously for decades. The researchers think the new RFID transmitter, which produces a 5-milliwatt, 10-microsecond-long, 100-megahertz radio-frequency pulse, could lead to the widespread use of radioisotope power sources.

The work is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which also funds Lal and Tin’s work on another project, called Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS), whose aim is the creation of hybrid cybernetic organisms. In his presentation, Tin said that part of the goal of the radioisotope transmitter work is to power the insects that the group is developing for DARPA. The HI-MEMS program, which is approaching its fourth year, has already grown several kinds of insects—moths and beetles—with implanted control electronics. With such controls, they can be driven by a remote operator for ”stealth applications” and disaster response.

The insects themselves are powered by their own living tissue, but the onboard electronics (sensors and transmitters) require a separate power source. But the insects are too light to carry batteries, and logistical problems would prevent regular battery changes regardless. Therefore, Lal and his group at Cornell turned to radioactive isotopes to generate the necessary power...

-[via Cryptome]


I can't imagine what could go wrong with an idea like that.

He can't even write a new script

...The president even invoked one of the favorite qualifiers of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose legacy he campaigned against last year. Obama said, "Evil does exist in the world."

Personally, I was waiting for this in his acceptance speech:

"...That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."

McChrystal must have lifted the White House copy of the Necronomicon while Barry was penning his notes for the speech on the plane.

Xe Company Handlers

When the amateurs run the Company business.

WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials...

The Gray Lady is shocked.

The Chilling Stars

Correlation is not causation.



Again, an inconvenient question bound to antagonize people, what if global warming due to CO₂ has been the only thing keeping us from entering another Ice Age?

Just Travesty

A "Just War"? Just a pack of self-serving lies.

OSLO — President Obama used his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday to defend the idea that some wars were necessary and just, remind the world of the burden the United States had borne in the fight against oppression and appeal for greater international efforts for peace...

Wherein Barry O. nudges Henry the K. out of the way to accept the White Man's Burden.

“There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Tell it to the innocent dead.

A graduate of the Velvet Jones school of journalism

Alas, Jared Diamond has been bought.

...His title asks, “Will Big Business Save the Earth?” That’s not a difficult question to answer: No. No, big business will not save the Earth. Instead of being honest, though, Diamond, answers the question in the affirmative and subjects us to a poorly-argued, mind-warping, illogical and denial-drenched apology for some of the most destructive corporations that curse our planet with their existence.

His overall argument doesn’t hold up to even the most casual scrutiny. He spends the whole column arguing that we shouldn’t hate big corporations because market forces are causing them to make changes to help the planet. “Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run.” He attempts to show that Wal-Mart, Coca Cola and Chevron are transforming their production practices to reflect their concern for the natural world (and that this also improves their bottom line, so it’s a big win-win).

His actual agenda is revealed in the last paragraph, which is partly a plea for the government to give corporations incentives like tax breaks and money for research to facilitate these changes. But if they’re already modifying production practices to help the environment because that is good for profits, then why do they require incentives? I don’t get it.

Mainstream liberal environmentalist groups lack credibility among real environmentalists for many reasons, one of which is the presence of corporate executives on their boards, and another of which is the huge amounts of money that they accept from corporations. The World Wildlife Fund, for example, landed a $3 million contract with Chevron in the early 1990s to implement an “Integrated Conservation and Development Project” in Papua New Guinea, where Chevron’s oil drilling was vehemently resisted by the affected indigenous people. (See “Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond Greenwasher” at: http://www.counterpunch.org/proyect05092005.html).

Diamond happens to serve on the WWF board. I'm sure it's purely by coincidence that he praises Chevron’s efforts to improve the environment in his book “Collapse,” and again in this NYT op-ed piece. I can imaging him hanging out with his fellow board members, business execs who complain of being misunderstood while sending him meaningful glances brimming with unspoken promises of millions of dollars in donations. I can imagine him deciding, “Hey, these guys aren’t so bad! I’m going to convince the American people to give them some love, damn it!”

In his op-ed piece he states, “I … have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I’ve also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies.” In contrast, he seems to have carefully avoided speaking with even one of the countless victims of these companies. There’s not a single quote by an indigenous person in the Amazon whose forest home was leveled for oil exploration and contaminated by oil spills. Not a single statement by a farmer in India whose crops died because Coca-Cola depleted and contaminated the village ground water. Not a peep from a single exploited factory laborer in China suffering with illnesses caused by the pollution generated by producing cheap plastic crap for Wal-Mart to import and sell to us...

Dr. Diamond's Collapse is a detailed analyses of factors that cause human societies to fail, just as Guns, Germs, and Steel is a concise breakdown of what brought Western cultures to their 20th century ascendency.

But like many other big picture guys who sell well, his brand name has obvious value on the open market.

You want to be a successful whore? Be sure to be white, well educated, and rich to begin with. Gender is totally unimportant.

All Quiet On the Solar Front

This does not bode well:



At a time when we should be entering another peak of solar activity, we get quiet.

...Why is this important? Well, if Svensmark is right, and Galactic Cosmic Rays modulated by the sun’s magnetic field make a change in cloud cover on Earth, increasing it during low solar magnetic activity, we are in for some colder times.

Now, Watt is a global warming skeptic. I'm not. The CO₂ emission data I've seen seems real enough.

The problem is, while the energy companies suppressed global warming data during the Bu$hCo years, an entirely different Company faction is running things now, eager to make a buck off of cooling a heating globe.

The main problem being the evidence has at a minimum been muddied lately. There seem to be two disinformation camps out there, each with an economic stake in getting the public to believe one thing or another.

But they can't hide the solar data, nor the deep winter cold settling into the midwest after a cooler summer than many I've seen.



The questions get stickier. Here's one I've asked before: what if global increases in CO₂ are all that have kept us from reverting back to the Ice Ages?

CO₂ pollution is dangerous for the ecosystems of the planet. There's hard evidence for that outside of global warming. Carbon emissions should be capped and curtailed.

But let's not go artificially cooling a planet that seems to be doing it quite well on its own, thank you.

Yes, but what's good for Blackwater is good for...

Lots of pointed letters that Pravda is even printing.

I like Boyd Hight's, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Carter administration.

...There is no nation to build.

Afghanistan is a loosely aligned collection of tribal constituencies. Its people are largely illiterate. The so-called central government does not control the countryside and is corrupt.

How are Americans in a relatively short period of time going to create from this raw material a state capable of ensuring its own security?

We are also fighting the wrong enemy. The Taliban, no matter how alien to our values, pose no threat to the United States. Al Qaeda has no significant current presence in Afghanistan.

In short, we are sending a lot of soldiers at enormous cost to fight an enemy that is somewhere else, with the de facto mission of propping up a narco-state. This makes no sense.

There you go again, wanting policy to be run by logic instead of profit for those with the Right Stuff.

Someone Isn't Riding the Unity Pony

One wonders what Timmeh, Larry, and the Rahmmer think about her. Nah, who cares what those jerks think? Only your President cares what they have to say about the world.

...Pundits talk about "populist rage" as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is "too big to fail." They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.

Families are ready for change. According to polls, large majorities of Americans have welcomed the Obama Administration's proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA would be answerable to consumers -- not to banks and not to Wall Street. The agency would have the power to end tricks-and-traps pricing and to start leveling the playing field so that consumers have the tools they need to compare prices and manage their money. The response of the big banks has been to swing into action against the Agency, fighting with all their lobbying might to keep business-as-usual. They are pulling out all the stops to kill the agency before it is born. And if those practices crush millions more families, who cares -- so long as the profits stay high and the bonuses keep coming.

America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking.

The unthinkable things have a way of happening just because good people don't want to think about them.

Serious Things to Serious People

Greenwald captures the essence of the bait-and-switch du jour:

...How can you have the Defense Secretary and the Secretary of State testifying in front of the Senate that the July, 2011 date is "not set in stone," that they "have not locked oursleves into leaving," and that "the target date could change," while the President is saying exactly the opposite: that "it IS locked in – there is no flexibility" and "it's etched in stone"?

Is it remotely possible that the months of extremely careful, cerebral, thoughtful deliberations produced complete ambiguity on this central point, or is it that Obama's plan is designed to be sufficiently ambiguous so that nobody knows what it actually entails and everyone can therefore be told that it means what they want it to mean? And which is worse?

One term wondering why whine

The beast comes slouching over the horizon, and our DINOrat leaders are alarmed at the lack of Unity among those that Hope for Change.

Ian has something to say you should consider:

When 40% of democrats don’t want to vote, the solution is not to tell them to vote. The solution is to institute policies which make them want to vote. That’s up to Obama and Congress, it is in their hands.

People do not get excited by the lesser evil, and while those of us who studied Obama in detail knew he was a conservative democrat, the overarching themes and rhetoric of his campaign amounted to “Big Change for the better!!”

He has not delivered on that and it is to be expected that people will be disappointed in him. To expect otherwise is remarkably naive.

Remember the last few years of Bush? All those conservatives trying to say “no really, the economy is better than it feels to you, I have numbers”?

This is the same sort of thing. Trying to tell people “no really, it’s not so bad” doesn’t work when their experience is “Yeah, this sucks and no, you didn’t do what I think you said you’d do”.

People feel betrayed, and they should, because Obama has signed on with giving trillions to rich people and screwing over the middle and working class. Trust me on this, that’s what’s happening and will happen. The next twenty years economically are going to be worse than the last twenty, and Obama had options which would have made that not so.

Furthermore, only people who threaten to walk, get things. If you will vote Obama/Democrat no matter what, why would they give you anything?

They wouldn’t, and they won’t.

If the DINOcrats don't turn over for better Democrats next year they will lose Congress.

If the One does grow a pair of balls and start dancing with the people that brought him instead of those that bought him, he will lose in 2012. But then again, give the $ystem the One presides over, without Company money and approval, his campaign is dead in the water. Egregious transgressions against Company policy will doubtless be met, as the spy novels used to say, by Sanction with Prejudice.

In fifty years, there will be no more fossil fuels. Smoke that in your electoral pipes. The oligarchs, at least the ones with eternal dynastic yearnings, have and enjoy the aroma of a set of circumstances that will leave them forever at the top of the heap.

The goal of those gaming the current politico-economic situation is to use the military industrial complex and the greatest disinformation machinery in the world to produce one thing.

A post-industrial neo-feudal society, where the Right people with the Right stuff live in a global Village supported by obedient working serfs, themselves forever grateful eloi to the Company morelocks.

It takes a pyramid to support the capstone, and what we're seeing is a populace being set into the foundations as the learned helplessness grows.

Because only the Serious criticism matters

And obviously if you're for complete withdrawal from Afghanistan you can't be Serious:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal...

Petreus Caesar clarified the issue:

...Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” General Petraeus said that the Obama administration was not planning a “rush to the exits” in Afghanistan, and that depending on the security conditions there could be tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan for several years...

The Pentagon sets the policy. The rationale? It's existential. The Good War is Good.

The Times They are a-Changin'

WGG on incongruity.

Obama has become the Token President of the military industrial complex.

We as progressives need to start now to get better Democrats in Congress, and find people good enough to wrest the Democratic nomination from Obama in 2012.

Because the way things are going no matter how batshit crazy and corrupt the Reptilians are, the progressives are going to stay home, the minorities are going to ignore it, and the Reptilians are going to win it that year.

"...the pace and endpoint of the withdrawal would be determined by conditions at the time."

So much for the de-surgifyin' in 2011.

Your basic mythical historical narrative

Facts are difficult things, and like another Great Communicator, Barry prefers to ignore them.

Go read Washington's blog:

...On October 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a neutral country if the US halted bombing if the Taliban were given evidence of Bin Laden's involvement in 9/11.

Specifically, as the Guardian writes:

Returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, the president said the bombing would not stop, unless the ruling Taliban "turn [bin Laden] over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over." He added, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty" ...

Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

"If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.

However, as the Guardian subsequently points out:

A senior Taliban minister has offered a last-minute deal to hand over Osama bin Laden during a secret visit to Islamabad, senior sources in Pakistan told the Guardian last night.

For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan's military leadership said...

Somebody's bin Laughin'

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States does not know where Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is and has lacked reliable information on his whereabouts for years, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said.

The revelation from Gates, speaking in an interview with the ABC News "This Week" program to be aired Sunday, comes days after US President Barack Obama announced he would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Asked if Pakistan was doing enough to apprehend Bin Laden, Gates answered: "Well, we don't know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we'd go get him."

Referring to the last time US intelligence had a fix on Bin Laden's whereabouts, Gates said: "I think it's been years."

Bin Laden is believed to have escaped from Afghanistan into Pakistan in late 2001...

If you really believe that we have no idea what happened to bin Laden, then the joke's on you.

Encouraging Private Enterprise

Well paid consultants, doubtless.

The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station.

The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone.

It says that pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses.

In at least one case the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship, according to one targeted shipping company.

The pirates' information network extends to Yemen, Dubai and the Suez canal.

The intelligence report is understood to have been issued to European navies.

"The information that merchant ships sailing through the area volunteer to various international organisations is ending up in the pirates' hands," Cadena SER reported the report as saying.

This enables the more organised pirate groups to study their targets in advance, even spending several days training teams for specific hijacks. Senior pirates then join the vessel once it has been sailed close to Somalia.

Captains of attacked ships have found that pirates know everything from the layout of the vessel to its ports of call. Vessels targeted as a result of this kind of intelligence included the Greek cargo ship Titan, the Turkish merchant ship Karagol and the Spanish trawler Felipe Ruano.

In each case, says the document, the pirates had full knowledge of the cargo, nationality and course of the vessel.

The national flag of a ship is also taken into account when choosing a target, with British vessels being increasingly avoided, according to the report. It was not clear whether this was because pirates did not want to draw the attention of British police to their information sources in London.

European countries have set up Operation Atalanta to co-ordinate their military efforts in the area.

[a tip o'teh tinfoil]



How can you create global post-industrial feudalism without the requisite private entrepreneurs?

Graveyard of Empires

The Brits have a little experience with this:



You have to realize who the Taliban are actually shooting at when they shoot; it isn't the Afghan army, many of which jump sides depending on what is expedient.

Here, first it's the Brits. Or the Americans. Or anyone else who is an obvious outsider.

"It's just a flesh wound."

Tom Englehardt believes our government has finally reached Pythonesque levels of competence:

...It’s been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and outflanking the enemy. They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts-and-minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last...

...give credit to the victors. Their campaign was nothing short of brilliant. Like the policy brigands they were, they ambushed the president, held him up with their threats, brought to bear key media players and Republican honchos, and in the end made off with the loot. The campaign began in late September with a strategic leak of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal’s grim review of the situation in that country, including demands for sizeable troop escalations and a commitment to a counterinsurgency war. It came to include rumors of potential retirements in protest if the president didn’t deliver, as well as clearly insubordinate policy remarks by General McChrystal, not to speak of an impressive citizen-mobilization of inside-the-Beltway former neocon or fighting liberal think-tank experts, and a helping hand from an admiring media. In the process, the U.S. military succeeded in boxing in a president who had already locked himself into a conflict he had termed both “the right war” and a “necessary” one. After more than two months of painfully over-reported deliberations, President Obama has now ended up essentially where General McChrystal began.

Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was dusted off from the moldy Vietnam archives and made spanking new by General David Petraeus in 2006, applied in Iraq (and Washington) in 2007, and put forward for Afghanistan in late 2008. It has now been largely endorsed, and a major escalation of the war -- a new kind of military-led nation building (or, as they like to say, “good governance”) is to be cranked up and set in motion. COIN is being billed as a “population-centric,” not “enemy-centric” approach in which U.S. troops are distinctly to be "nation-builders as well as warriors."

And as for those 30,000 troops, most expected to arrive in the Afghan combat zone within the next six months, the numbers are even more impressive when you realize that, as late as the summer of 2008, the U.S. only had about 28,000 troops in Afghanistan. In other words, in less than two years, U.S. troop strength in that country will have more than tripled to approximately 100,000 troops. So we’re talking near-Vietnam-level escalation rates. If you include the 38,000 NATO forces also there (and a possible 5,000 more to come), total allied troop strength will be significantly above what the Soviets deployed during their devastating Afghan War of the 1980s in which they fought some of the same insurgents now arrayed against us...

... After all, three cabinet ministers and 12 former ministers are under investigation in Afghanistan itself on corruption charges. And that barely scratches the surface of the problems in a country that one Russian expert recently referred to as an “international drug firm,” where at least one-third of the gross national product comes from the drug trade. In addition, as Juan Cole wrote at his Informed Comment blog:

“Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years.”

In addition, the Taliban now reportedly take a cut of the billions of dollars in U.S. development aid flowing into the country, much of which is otherwise squandered, and of the American money that goes into “protecting” the convoys that bring supplies to U.S. troops throughout the country. One out of every four Afghan soldiers has quit or deserted the Afghan National Army in the last year, while the ill-paid, largely illiterate, hapless Afghan police with their “well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes,” not to speak of a drug abuse rate estimated at 15%, are, as its politely put, “years away from functioning independently”; and the insurgency is spreading to new areas of the country and reviving in others...

...Stop for a moment and consider the cast of characters who offered the president the full range of advice available in Washington -- all of which, as far as we can tell, from Joe Biden’s “counterterrorism-plus” strategy to McChrystal’s COIN and beyond, was escalatory in nature. These are, of course, the wise men (and woman) of our era. But just a cursory glance at their collective record should at least make you wonder:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now said to be the official with the best ties to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and so the one in charge of “coaxing” him into a round of reasonable nation-building, of making “a new compact" with the Afghan people by “improving governance and cracking down on corruption”; and yet, in the early 1990s, in her single significant nation-building experience at home, she botched the possibility of getting a universal health-care bill through Congress. She also had the “wisdom” to vote in 2003 to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, reputedly deeply trusted by the president and in charge of planning out our military future in Afghanistan, was in the 1980s a supposed expert on the Soviet Union as well as deputy CIA director and later deputy to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Yet, in those years, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that the Soviets were done for even as that empire was disappearing from the face of the Earth. In the words of former National Security Council official Roger Morris, Gates “waged a final battle against the Soviets, denying at every turn that the old enemy was actually dying.” As former CIA official Melvin Goodman has put the matter: “Gates was wrong about every key intelligence question of the 1980s... A Kremlinologist by training, Gates was one of the last American hardliners to comprehend the changes taking place in the Soviet Union. He was wrong about Mikhail Gorbachev, wrong about the importance of reform, wrong about Moscow's pursuit of arms control and détente with the United States. He was wrong about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan...”

Vice-President Joe Biden, recently described as potentially “the second-most-powerful vice president in history” as well as “the president’s all-purpose adviser and sage” on foreign policy, was during the Bush years a believer in nation-building in Afghanistan, voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and later promoted the idea -- like Caesar re: Gaul -- of dividing that country into three parts (without, of course, bothering to ask the Iraqis), while leaving 25,000-30,000 American troops based there in perpetuity, while “these regions build up their state police forces.”

General Stanley McChrystal, our war commander in Afghanistan and now the poster boy for counterinsurgency warfare, had his skills honed purely in the field of counterterrorism. He was a Special Ops guy. The man who is now to “protect” the Afghan people previously won his spurs as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ran the “manhunters” – essentially, that is, he was the leader of a team of assassins and evidently part of what reporter Seymour Hersh has termed an "executive assassination wing" of that command, possibly taking orders directly from Vice President Dick Cheney. His skills involved guns to the head, not protective boots on the ground.

General David Petraeus, the general leading everything, who has been practically deified in the U.S. media, is perhaps the savviest and most accomplished of this crew. He surged into Iraq in 2007 and, with the help of fortuitous indigenous developments, staunched the worst of the bleeding, leaving behind a big question mark. His greatest skill, however, has been in fostering the career of David Petraeus. He is undoubtedly an advisor with an agenda and in his wake come a whole crew of military and think-tank experts, with almost unblemished records of being wrong in the Bush years, whom the surge in Iraq recredentialized.

Karl Eikenberry, our ambassador to Kabul, in his previous career in the U.S. military served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and as the commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan was the general responsible for building up the Afghan army and “reforming” that country’s police force. On both counts, we know how effective that attempt proved.

And when it comes to key figures with well-padded Washington CVs like Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or James Jones, present national security advisor and former commandant of the Marine Corps, as well as the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, a close friend of Senator John McCain, and a former revolving-door board member of Chevron and Boeing, remind me just what sticks in your mind about their accomplishments?

So, when you think about Barack Obama’s Afghan decisions, imagine first that the man considered the smartest, most thoughtful president of our era chose to surround himself with these people. He chose, that is, not fresh air, or fresh thought in the field of foreign and war policy, but the airless precincts where the combined wisdom of Washington and the Pentagon now exists, and the remarkable lack of accomplishment that goes with it. In short, these are people whose credentials largely consist of not having been right about much over the years...

...The president campaigned on the slogan, “Change we can believe in.” He then chose as advisors -- in the economic sphere as well, where a similar record of gross error, narrow and unimaginative thinking, and over-identification with the powerful could easily be compiled -- a crew who had never seen a significant change, or an out-of-the-ordinary thought it could live with -- and still can’t.

As a result, the Iraq War has yet to begin to go away, the Afghan War is being escalated in a major way, the Middle East is in some turmoil, Guantanamo remains open, black sites are still operating in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s budget has grown yet larger, and supplemental demands on Congress for yet more money to pay for George W. Bush’s wars will, despite promises otherwise, soon enough be made...

"On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."

Only if we let them

Ryan Grim:

...Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who has placed a hold on Bernanke's nomination, was apoplectic when HuffPost told him Bernanke was pushing for cuts in entitlement spending. "Bernanke wants to cut entitlement spending? Well, that confirms everything I'm saying," Sanders fumed.

"The CEOs and top people on Wall Street make huge bonuses, and what? We're going to cut back on Social Security and Medicare? That's what we're going to do?"

Just listen to Ben and stick your tongue on that third rail, Barry.

It's the bipartisan thing to do.

Not a Bug, a Feature

Eugene Robinson notes Obama's policy in Afghanistan won't succeed whatever glad sounds the Pentagon's press agents and main$tream make:

...my fundamental question about Obama’s approach was illustrated Thursday by events far from the war zone: In Mogadishu, Somalia, a suicide bomber infiltrated a university graduation ceremony and killed at least 19 people, including three ministers of the Somali government.

I use the term Somali government ironically, because there hasn’t really been one since 1991. A long-running, multisided battle for control among heavily armed clans and warlords remains unresolved. The most important recent development in the civil war has been the emergence of a religious-based insurgency, al-Shabab, which now controls a large swath of the country—and which was immediately suspected in Thursday’s bombing.

Where have we seen this movie before?

No, Somalia isn’t a carbon copy of Afghanistan. But it shares the distinction of being a failed state where the ideology of violent, fundamentalist Islam has taken hold and the technique of suicide “martyrdom” attacks is proving effective.

I doubt that Obama’s “extended surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops will be successful on its own terms, but let’s assume that it is. According to senior White House officials, this would mean that U.S. and allied forces are able to “degrade” the Taliban to the point where it poses no threat of taking power in Kabul and no longer controls substantial areas of the countryside.

These benchmarks have to be met, the White House says, so that it’s impossible for al-Qaida to return to Afghanistan, establish a base of operations and plan new attacks against the United States and other targets.

My belief is that if the Taliban begins losing ground, many of its fighters will just melt back into the population and bide their time until the president’s July 2011 deadline arrives. At that point, will the Afghan military really be able to stand alone against even a latent Taliban threat? If not, Obama’s deadline will be meaningless and U.S. forces will be stuck in Afghanistan, in large numbers, for the foreseeable future.

But even if the surge works, why wouldn’t al-Qaida—or some like-minded group—simply set up shop in Somalia? Or in Yemen, another failing state? Or in some other wretched corner of the world where central government authority is weak and resentment of the West’s dominant power is high?

Afghanistan happened to be Osama bin Laden’s choice for a headquarters, but he and his top aides were driven out of the country shortly after the U.S. invasion. Al-Qaida is believed to be based in Pakistan now, with the freedom of movement of its leadership severely restricted. The Pakistani government’s obvious reluctance to finish the job is problematic, but I think it’s likely that someday a missile from a Predator drone will find its mark.

The problem is that al-Qaida’s murderous philosophy, which is the real enemy, has no physical base. It can erupt anywhere—even, perhaps, on a heavily guarded U.S. Army post in the middle of Texas...

Here's where I might diverge from many progressives: I would say, just like it was designed to do under pressure.

Never forget bin Laden was at the very least trained by the CIA.

When the Company finds an endless war the key to a blank check, it knows what to do and how to do it.

Clarification in Case You Weren't Listening

Published in the BBC, of course. No need to upset the rubes:

The US won't pull out of Afghanistan in 2011.

President Obama's top national security adviser, who has played a key part in designing the new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, has been trying to clear up some confusion about the exit strategy.

Gen James Jones told me that "in no manner, shape or form" would the US withdraw from Afghanistan in 2011...

The Endless Circular Firing Squad

I think Davis Fleetwood shouldn't pull his punches so much:

Why we fight

Read this carefully:

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

By DEXTER FILKINS, MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
Published: October 27, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials...

Just in case you found Lyndon Baines Obama's explanation a little hard to understand.

Progressive Goals are Being Met

If by progress you mean the establishment of a worldwide post-industrial feudalism.

...Mr. Obama said he would entertain “every demonstrably good idea” for creating jobs, but he cautioned that “our resources are limited.”

Unless, of course, you are a bankster.

Ian Welsh doesn't seem to find the Bipartisan One so entertaining...

So far Bernanke has been succesful at making sure that the rich weren’t wiped out by their failures and retained their power.

Trillions were spent bailing out the rich, and no taxes were levied on them to pay for it. Now what will happen is that in order to balance the budget, money which primarily helps the middle and working classes will be cut, while those same middle and working classes will be forced to bail out the insurance and health industries.

At the same time, military spending is up slightly under 100% in real terms from what it was in 2000 (267.2 billion in 2000 dollars in 2000, 490 billion today). The US economy has militarized and financialized. Virtually everything that isn’t attached to one of those two streams (and remmber, the housing bubble was ultimately about financialization) is withering on the vine.

The decision to escalate in Afghanistan won’t cost 30 billion dollars a year, it will cost that money plus all the money which could have been saved by withdrawing from Afghanistan and cutting military expenditures significantly.

Coming and going, baby. Coming and going. First they used your money and credit to bail out the rich, now they are going to make you pay it all back, not the rich. Meanwhile banks aren’t lending, jobs aren’t returning and you are due for the 20 worst economic years of your lives.

This is a bipartisan project. Obama is as on board with it as Bush was. It’s not an accident that he wants to keep Bernanke or that he hired Geithner, the man who was supposed to watch Wall Street, as his Treasury secretary...

Mission Accomplished.

All in the Family

(CBS) Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton has announced she's engaged to her longtime beau Marc Mezvinsky, and plans to wed next summer...

Chelsea's fiancé is an investment banker who works for Goldman Sachs.

The two met in Washington as teenagers and both attended Stanford University. Mezvinsky, Miller said, is no stranger to life in the public eye. Both of his parents served in Congress, and his father, Ed Mezvinsky, served time in federal prison for bank and wire fraud...

[tip o'teh tinfoil to Cryptogon]

A life of prostitution really is
easier if you're rich and white, isn't it?

It's Insane if You Believe Barry

Michael Moore has it right.

"We're going to decrease the troops by increasing the troops" because, you know, war is peace.



He's also right about why the "surge" in Iraq "worked". We moved out of the cities and bought off the Sunni. Who are we going to buy off in Afghanistan? The opium growers and the international crime cartels?

Only an exercise

Obviously there is nothing to see here:

A trainee spy for Israel's secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.

The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the city.

He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.

The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise...

The bomb, of course was a fake. Nothing to see here: these aren't the 'droids you're looking for.

Move along, move along.

Al Qaeda's Dubailand Investment Property

The only problem is they weren't kidding.

The only thing worse than a bald-faced liar is a self-taken idiot who thinks he's doing the right thing as he talks up the wind.

N-dimensional Checkmate

That's what Lyndon Baines Obama gets for playing with himself.

Bob Herbert:

...President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken — school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding — yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.

I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.

...Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better.

The word is that Mr. Obama will tell the public Tuesday that he is sending another 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan. And while it is reported that he has some strategy in mind for eventually turning the fight over to the ragtag and less-than-energetic Afghan military, it’s clear that U.S. forces will be engaged for years to come, perhaps many years.

The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario...

The Reptilians will have a field day with any scenario. Only a spineless DINOcrat would worry about that. Admittedly, there are more than a few spineless DINOcrats out there.

There are far more crooked profiteering ones who are making a killing off of the Endless War than just simple cowards.