Tinkerbama, Clapping Louder Doesn't Do It

The vote on telcom immunity and giving the Company all your email/ phone calls/ IMs fell out about as expected.

Somehow, I don't think this guy's believing it, either.

The Unibama's speechification justifying his Quisling:

..."Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people..."

Unless, of course, Dear Leader thinks he neeeeeds to, and writes a secret note to himself to that effect.

The illegal part is indeed over, since with this legistlation he can do legally whatever the frak he wants to do whenever he wants.

The Oborg Prime Unit is lying, and he knows it.

Here's one possible excuse:

...I believe the very top leadership of the Democrats know that an attack on Iran is imminent, and the political fallout of that will dwarf this FISA matter. They do not want to be in a position of being blamed for withholding spying powers from Bush that could have prevented the "catalyzing event" which will be the causus belli for an attack. -sunny

Another Northwoods op just in time to rescue the Mc$ame campaign and give Cheneyburton drilling rights in Iran, and/or the spineless DINOcrats afraid of being too soft on Terra. It figures one of those explanations is correct. However, they are not mutually exclusive.

War Without End, Amen

Or Toast, baby.

PRAGUE — The United States signed a pact on Tuesday to build part of a U.S. missile defence shield in the Czech Republic, prompting neighbouring Russia to warn it will react with military means if the shield is deployed.

The U.S. and Czech foreign ministers toasted with champagne after signing the accord to place a tracking radar southwest of Prague as part of a system to protect against the perceived threat of missile attack from countries such as Iran.

But Russia, in a statement reminiscent of Cold War rhetoric, warned the United States against deploying the shield close to its borders.

"If the real deployment of an American strategic missile defence shield begins close to our borders, then we will be forced to react not with diplomatic methods, but with military-technical methods," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its www.mid.ru website...

The deal is opposed by many in the Czech Republic, where it requires parliamentary approval. Many Czechs are wary of any foreign military presence after the Soviet invasion in 1968 and the ensuing two decades of occupation. An opinion poll last month showed 68 per cent of Czechs were against the shield.

"We believe that this could start another arms race," said Frantisek Smrcka, who with other protesters in the Czech capital unfurled a huge banner shaped like a bull's-eye...

Could? It's supposed to start a new arms race.

One can only hope that the Czech Republic has more democracy than the Amerikan Empire, where 80% of the people can oppose the government by voting Congressional control to an opposition without it changing things in the least.

Death of a Thousand Cuts for the Constitution

Although tomorrow this one would seem to knick the Constitution's carotid nicely.

Still, it's interesting that the same cyberspace crowd that was all atwitter about how Fitzmas was going to bring down Bu$hCo is now eager to get your bucks- and your ID too- on the list of people against telcom immunity at the exact moment it's a done deal.

The Unity Company

Today the Company's Fixer, James A. Baker III, and the voice of DINOcrat Company policy, Warren Christopher, argue for dissolving the War Powers Act in The New York Pravda.

And fitting the Consiglieres of both wings of the Amerikan Eagle, it is done in a very reasonable fashion, invoking the Unconstitutionality of

...a resolution of the Congress of The United States of America that stated that the President of The United States of America can send troops into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or if the United States of America is already under attack or serious threat. The War Powers Act requires that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops to military action and forbids troops from remaining for more than 60 days without an authorization of force or a declaration of war.

I kid you not. One of the better shackles on the Unitary Presidency, one that every Preznit since Ronald Reagan has pretty well ignored, is being attacked with soft-spoken voices used to giving the Orders. Which means that, since the Wise Old Men of both sides of the government are for trashing it, like telcom immunity, this sucker has legs.

Now if you look up what's available about Warren Christopher, you'll find nothing but sweetness and light. He's been an integral part of every Democratic administration since LBJ: Deputy Attorney General for Johnson, Deputy Secretary of State for Carter, and Secretary of State for Clinton.

About the only thing a cursoral search will pull on him is a lot of Right-wing grumbling about peace breaking out all over when he's around. It's not like he's Poppy Bu$hie's boy Baker, who more or less stands out in his roles leading the Carlyle Group and being the legal advisor for the Saudi Royals.

Christopher's more main$tream in his side occupations outside of the White House. Okay, so he defended Exxon. So he's been on the Boards of Lockheed.

So Al Qaeda was founded in the Carter era. So during the 8 years of the Clinton administration Christopher ironed out the differences between the Balkans and mollified the Turks and the Kurds and Saddam and quietly made sure business from the West included our good Afghani brothers and their curious major export that no one Serious in Washington talked about or will talk about, to this day.

Although it's taken for a given elsewhere:

...Speaking to BBC radio, Antonio Maria Costa of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC] said Afghan insurgents collected a 10 per cent tax on the earnings of opium poppy farmers and processors in Taliban-controlled areas.

There were also other ways that the group skimmed money from the more than $1 billion generated last year by Afghanistan's opium trade, Costa said.

"One is protection to laboratories and the other is that the insurgents offer protection to cargo, moving opium across the border," he said.

Since the Taliban were forced from power in Kabul by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan has become the world’s leading producer of opium.

By some estimates, more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin originates in the opium poppy fields that can be found in almost all 34 Afghan provinces...

Yes, now the Idiot Prince's job is done, more reasonable men like Christopher and Baker can emerge from behind the scenes to Pontificate on the Wise Thing to Do, and profit even more from the new world order that will certainly break out all over once the Reasonable govern again.

We're so beyond Liberal and Conservative, so beyond Republican and Democrat, floating along on the Unity of the Free Market and Rational national interest.



[Thanks to The Dark Wraith for the graphic. Again]

Removing the Stain from the Homeland Brain

Yesterday in The New York Pravda, Tim Weiner, author of History of the CIA, gave a run-down on the history of that great 'Merikan mental passtime, brainwashing.

I always enjoy Time Weiner, because reading his work is another exercise in catching the subliminal message. He's either doing his damndest to get the intelligentsia to see the world is a little deeper than they might suppose, or framing the argument in a way to say, "that was then, aren't you glad we don't do this now?"

Or maybe both.

...The concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of Edward Hunter, a newspaperman born in 1902, who had covered the rise of fascism in Europe before joining the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. The Korean War had just begun in 1950 when The Miami News published his article, “ ‘Brain-Washing’ Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party.”

He determined that “the Reds have specialists available on their brainwashing panels,” experts in the use of “drugs and hypnotism,” as he later told the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Their ultimate goal was conquering America.

“The United States is the main battlefield,” he testified, “the people and the soil and the resources of the United States.” He warned that brainwashing would make Americans “subjects of a ‘new world order’ for the benefit of a mad little knot of despots in the Kremlin...”

We would much rather want this country to serve the new world order of a mad little knot of despots in Kennebunkport. Or Houston. Or Dubai. Real Communism being about as real as Free Market Capitalism- and about as state-run.

...Orwell’s hero in “1984,” Winston Smith, holds out hope against Big Brother and his minions: “With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking.”

But the threat that they could riveted Americans — and the C.I.A.

Finding out what others are thinking was (and is) the job of spies. The Korean experience spurred the C.I.A.’s search for mind-control techniques to grill suspected double agents. The agency took on a task described in its documents as “overseas interrogations.”

Clandestine prisons were created in occupied Germany, occupied Japan and the Panama Canal Zone. “Like Guantánamo,” said a charter member of the C.I.A., Thomas Polgar. “It was anything goes.” In these cells, the agency conducted experiments in drug-induced brainwashing and other “special techniques” for interrogations. These continued inside and outside the United States, sometimes on unsuspecting human guinea pigs, long after the Korean War ended in 1953.

“There was deep concern over the issue of brainwashing,” Richard Helms, the former director of central intelligence, told the journalist David Frost 25 years later. “We felt that it was our responsibility not to lag behind the Russians or the Chinese in this field, and the only way to find out what the risks were was to test things such as L.S.D. and other drugs that could be used to control human behavior. These experiments went on for many years.”

While the government chased after truth serum, fiction raced behind reality. The theory of a robot-like Manchurian Candidate was posited by the C.I.A. in 1953, six years before Richard Condon published the novel of that name, nine years before the book became a movie. William Burroughs, in “Naked Lunch” (1959), created a drug-addled mad scientist, Dr. Benway, “an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control.”

In the 1960s, brainwashing began to fade as a nightmare, though it was revived when captured soldiers and pilots released by North Vietnam made antiwar statements. In 1967, a Republican presidential contender, Gov. George Romney of Michigan (Mitt’s dad), was ridiculed when he said he had been brainwashed by American generals about how well the war in Vietnam was going...

Of course, it's not brainwashing when we do it. It's Right-thinking. And a lone gunman doing the shooting, with Saddam being behind 9-11.

...Brainwashing was bunk: no secret weapon to control the human mind existed, America’s best experts concluded in the 1960s. Yes, the Communists used time-honored and terrifying interrogation tactics during the cold war. Some, like waterboarding, had been perfected during the Spanish Inquisition. But Mr. Biderman concluded that “inflicting physical pain is not a necessary nor particularly effective method” to persuade prisoners of war.

Some veterans of the war on terror say that lesson should have been relearned, despite the urgent need to uncover whatever possible about terrorist planning — the administration’s principal justification of its harsh interrogation policies.

Alberto J. Mora, the Navy’s general counsel from 2001 to 2006, told a recent Congressional hearing, where the Biderman chart resurfaced: “Our nation’s policy decision to use so-called ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques during the war on terror was a mistake of massive proportions.”

That's right. There are far more effective methods for mind control. There are much better ways to indoctrinate and enslave a populace than torture and barbed wire.

For example, can I interest anyone in a low adjustable-rate mortage?

It could happen to anybody who sees more than they ought to

Britain's leading spymaster, who is in a coma after apparently being struck down by a mystery illness, was found covered in blood...

Alex Allan has been described as "very, very seriously ill" and is under police guard in the intensive care unit of a west London hospital.

He was found by Dominique Salm, a painter who rents an artist's studio in his west London home.

According to neighbours she found him slumped unconscious with "blood everywhere"...

Doctors have run a battery of test to try and establish why the 57-year-old Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee collapsed at his home on Monday.

Government sources insist there is no evidence of suspicious circumstances, but Miss Salm's account will add to speculation that Mr Allan may have been targeted by a foreign spy...

The Counter Terrorism Command has investigated but is so far treating the illness as non-suspicious.

A police source said: "Because he is a person of significance, investigators made sure nothing untoward had occurred. But it was quickly established there was a medical reason for how he was found."

Whitehall sources are blaming the collapse on pneumonia, and experts agree that prolonged coughing can bring up blood.

Dr Keith Prowse, chairman of the British Lung Foundation, said: "If it's pneumonia it is likely to be secondary to something else. And a significant quantity of blood is more likely to come from the gut than the chest...

He was private secretary to both John Major and Tony Blair and was previously permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice and High Commissioner for Australia.

He was appointed to be chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) by Gordon Brown a year ago and took up his job in the autumn.

It is Mr Allan's job to assess the intelligence put forward by MI5, MI6, GCHQ, military intelligence and foreign intelligence sources.

He reports to the permanent secretary for intelligence, security and resilience who in turn reports to the Prime Minister.

Government sources suggest Mr Allan was "too high profile" to be a target for foreign intelligence agencies...

Move along, nothing to see here, these aren't the 'droids you're looking for.

And it most certainly isn't the act of a foreign spy.

The Noise in Your Head

Looks like the kids at DARPA have made another microwave toy for the Pentagon to play with. David Hambling:

The U.S. military bankrolled early development of a non-lethal microwave weapon that creates sound inside your head. But in the end, the gadget may be just as likely to wind up in shopping malls as on battlefields, as I report in New Scientist.

The project is known as MEDUSA – a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. And it should not be confused with the Long Range Acoustic Device and similar gadgets which simply project sound. This one uses the so-called "microwave auditory effect": a beam of microwaves is turned into sound by the interaction with your head. Nobody else can hear it unless they are in the beam as well...

...Dr. Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation has provided more details.

There are health risks... the biggest issue from the microwave weapon is not the radiation. It's the risk of brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse. Clearly, much more research is needed on this effect at the sort of power levels that Dr. Sadovnik is proposing. But if it does prove hazardous, that does not mean an end to weapons research in this area: a device that delivered a lethal shockwave inside the target's skull might make an effective death ray.

Dr. Sadovnik also makes the intriguing suggestion that, instead of being used at high power to create an intolerable noise, it might be used at low power to produce a whisper that was too quiet to perceive consciously but might be able to subconsciously influence someone. The directional beam could be used for targeted messages, such as in-store promotions. Sadovnik even suggests subliminal advertising, beaming information that is not consciously heard (a notion also spotted on the US Army's voice-to-skull page)...

Sharon Weinberger noted the Army yanked that page when it drew the interest of the Federation of American Scientists.

The principle was diagrammed on that dead link was screen-captured and has to be seen to be believed. Or disbelieved:



1974?

Well, fat lot of good it did Dick Nixon. Or did it? He could've done a whole helluva lot worse than retirement on San Clemente.

The Pre-PNAC Candidate

John Mc$ame was advocating PNAC policy before it became the kewl krew in '97.

In fact, his campaign publically uses the same foreign policy advisors- or those that haven't become too radioactive to use in front of the kids:

...Given John McCain’s firm allegiance to the core missions of PNAC, it should come as no surprise that many of the old PNAC guard have shown up as foreign policy advisers in McCain’s current presidential campaign, and are likely re-emerge as high officials in his administration if he becomes president. Here are snapshots of some of these potential members of a McCain Cabinet, giving their PNAC profiles, their advisory capacities in the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and their politics.

William Kristol
Editor and founder of Washington-based political magazine, Weekly Standard.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has consistently been wrong in his foreign policy analyses regarding Iraq. For example, on March 5, 2003, he stated, “I think we’ll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq.”

Robert Kagan
Served in State Department in Reagan administration on Policy Planning Staff.
PNAC co-founder.
Foreign policy adviser.
Has defended global expansionism by claiming it is an American tradition: “Americans’ belief in the possibility of global transformation—the ‘messianic’ impulse—is and always has been the more dominant strain in the nation’s character.”

Randy Scheunemann
Former adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Co-director and executive director of Committee for Liberation of Iraq.
Defense and foreign policy coordinator.
With regard to recent National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003, stated “a careful reading of the NIE indicates that it is misleading.” And he claimed that the NIE harmed our efforts to achieve a “greater diplomatic consensus” to crack down on Iran.

James Woolsey
Director of CIA, Clinton administration, 1993-1995. (Reported to have met only twice with Clinton during time as CIA chief.)
PNAC signatory.
Energy and national security adviser.
Speaking to a group of college students in 2003 about Iraq, he stated that “… the United States is engaged in World War IV.” Described the Cold War as the third world war. Then said, “This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.”

John R. Bolton
Former U.S. ambassador to U.N. (Nomination to U.N. rejected by Senate, but George W. Bush put him in place on a recess appointment. Name floated for possible secretary of state for McCain.
PNAC director.
Ardent supporter of McCain for president in 2009.
Publicly derided the United Nations: In 1994, he stated “there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along.” Advocates attacking Iran.

Robert B. Zollick
President, World Bank.
PNAC signatory.
Announced in 2006 he would be joining McCain presidential campaign for domestic and foreign policy but instead replaced Wolfowitz as president of World Bank in 2007.
Has touted virtues of corporate globalization under the rubric of “comprehensive free trade.” But as Kevin Watkins, head researcher for Oxfan, stated, he pays no heed to the effects of the “blind pursuit of US economic and corporate special interests” on the world’s poor.

Gary Schmitt
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (home to other PNAC members including Wolfowitz and Pearle.)
PNAC director.
Foreign policy adviser.
Defended warrantless eavesdropping on Americans by claiming that Constitution “created a unitary chief executive. That chief executive could, in times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness, dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the country and its citizens.”

Richard L. Armitage
Former deputy secretary of state in George W. Bush administration.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
By his own admission, was responsible for leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame’s CIA identity to the press. Allegedly involved in Iran-Contra affair during Reagan administration.

Max Boot
Council on Foreign Relations.
PNAC signatory.
Foreign policy adviser.
Stating that U.S. should “unambiguously ... embrace its imperial role,” has advocated attacking other Middle East countries in addition to Iraq and Iran, including Syria. Said McCain’s “bellicose aura” could “scare the snot out of our enemies,” who “would be more afraid to mess with him” than with other then-potential presidential candidates.

Henry A. Kissinger
President Nixon’s secretary of state.
Embraces expansionist power politics.
Consultant.
Played major role in secret bombings of Cambodia during Nixon administration as well as having had alleged involvement in covert assassination plots and human rights violations in Latin America...

I personally find it hilarious how Republicans like Armitage- or even Mc$ame indirectly- damn Dear Leader for not adhering to their version of the neocon True Faith. It's always been the Jolly Roger party. It always will be the Jolly Roger party as long as piracy and plunder are its core principles.

And they're not even particularly adept pirates.

Frank Rich on how out of touch both Parties- and especially the Republicans- are with what it takes to run things:

...For all the hyperventilation on the left about Mr. Obama’s rush to the center — some warranted, some not — what’s more alarming is how small-bore and defensive his campaign has become. Whether he’s reaffirming his long-held belief in faith-based programs or fudging his core convictions about government snooping, he is drifting away from the leadership he promised and into the focus-group-tested calculation patented by Mark Penn in his disastrous campaign for Hillary Clinton. Mr. Obama’s Wednesday address calling for renewed public service is unassailable in principle but inadequate to the daunting size of the serious American crisis at hand. The speech could have been — and has been — delivered by any candidate of either party in any election year since 1960.

What Mr. Obama has going for him during this tailspin is that his opponent seems mortifyingly out-to-lunch. Mr. McCain is a man who aspires to lead the largest economy in the world and yet recently admitted that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, the one modern tool shared by everyone from the post-industrial American work force to Middle Eastern terrorists to Pixar animators. Getting shot down over Vietnam may not be a qualification for president in 2008, but surely a rudimentary facility with a laptop is. What Mr. McCain has going for him is a press corps that often ignores or covers up such embarrassments.

The Republican’s digital ignorance is not a function of his age but of his intellectual inflexibility and his isolation from his country’s reality. To prove the point last week, he took a superfluous, if picturesque, tour of Colombia and Mexico, with occasional timeouts for him and his surrogates to respond like crybabies to General Clark’s supposed slur on his patriotism.

For connoisseurs of McCainian cluelessness, the high point was his Wednesday morning appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” The anchor, Robin Roberts, asked the only important question: Why in heaven’s name was Mr. McCain in Latin America when “the U.S. economy is really at the forefront of voters’ minds”?

“I know Americans are hurting very badly right now,” he explained, channeling the first George Bush’s “Message: I care.” As he spoke, those hurting Americans could feast on the gorgeous flora and fauna of the Cartagena, Colombia, tourist vista serving as his backdrop. “It’s really lovely here,” Mr. McCain said. Since he can’t drop us an e-mail, a video postcard will have to do.

Mr. McCain should be required to see “Wall-E” to learn just how far adrift he is from an America whose economic fears cannot be remedied by his flip-flop embrace of the Bush tax cuts (for the wealthy) and his sham gas-tax holiday (for everyone else). Mr. Obama should see it to be reminded of just how bold his vision of change had been before he settled into a front-runner’s complacency. Americans should see it to appreciate just how much things are out of joint on an Independence Day when a cartoon robot evokes America’s patriotic ideals with more conviction than either of the men who would be president...

The particularly pathetic point of the American electoral machine is that if they were really good Borg they would assimilate the ideas of their prey that worked. Obama shows a greater tendency to do this. Mc$ame is a naked Terminator 'bot with joints so rusty he can hardly move.

In the $election, this may not matter if Skynet owns the ballot boxes. Yet even that robotic strategery creaks along, squeeky joints audible to all.

Not the just Mc$ame old story

Courtesy of the Dark Wraith:



Heresy, Oborg friends? The evidence increasingly suggests otherwise. This $election is deeply rigged by the deep $tate, and if you don't agree, you haven't been paying attention.

Change in the Air

But it's purely symbolic, I'm sure:

On the eve the annual G8 Summit where NASA's Dr. James Hansen will announce that we've passed safe C0₂ levels (safe being maximum 350 ppm; we're now at 385 ppm), Hansen has penned a comprehensive letter (PDF) to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, host of the G8 Summit, requesting his leadership in addressing his findings...

The more things change the more they stay the same. Except they aren't:

...The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum lasted around 20,000 years, and was superimposed on a 6 million year period of more gradual global warming[Zachos, J.C.; Dickens, G.R.; Zeebe, R.E. (2008). "An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics". Nature 451 (7176): 279–83. doi:10.1038/nature06588.], peaking later in the Eocene at the "Eocene climatic optimum". Other "hyperthermal" events can be recognised during this period of cooling, including the Elmo event (ETM2). During these events, of which the PETM was by far the most severe, around 1,500 to 2,000 gigatons of carbon were released into the ocean/atmosphere system over the course of 1,000 years. This rate of carbon addition almost equals the rate at which carbon is being released into the atmosphere today through anthropogenic activity.

The globe was subtly different during the Eocene. The Panama Isthmus did not yet connect North and South America, allowing circulation between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Further, the Drake Passage was shut, preventing the thermal isolation of Antarctica. This, combined with higher CO2 levels, meant that there were no significant ice sheets - the globe was essentially ice free.

So what kind of climate does this bring?

...The early Paleocene was cooler and dryer than the preceding Cretaceous, though temperatures rose sharply during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. The climate became warm and humid world-wide towards the Eocene boundary, with subtropical vegetation growing in Greenland and Patagonia, crocodiles swimming off the coast of Greenland, and early primates evolving in tropical palm forests of northern Wyoming. The Earth's poles were cool and temperate; North America, Europe, Australia and southern South America were warm and temperate; equatorial areas had tropical climates; and north and south of the equatorial areas, climates were hot and arid.

If you frankly didn't care what happened to half of humanity, if you had positioned your assets to survive all economic storms, and were in the position to profit tremendously from the opening of Canada, Siberia, and the Arctic to exploitation being the main exploiter, why, global warming is precisely what you'd want to do.

Just sayin'. I'm sure our Leaders would never do anything like that.

Patriotic Motivations

The consequences of a military attack on Iran to thwart its nuclear intentions could have a devastating economic impact.

NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel warned on the July 1 “NBC Nightly News” an attack by Israel could send oil prices soaring – sending gas prices into territories never imagined.

“I asked an oil analyst that very question,” Engel said. “He said, ‘The price of a barrel of oil: Name your price – $300-$400 a barrel.’”

What would oil at those levels mean? A June 11 Time magazine story by Robert Baer put the price of a gallon of gas at $12 if oil goes to $300 a barrel. In May, Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the oil at those prices could mean $15-a-gallon gas...

[tip o'teh tifoil to chlamor]

Chaos is the plan, because "...one man's insanity is another man's Venture Capitalism"- MacCruiskeen.

Plastic Man

"Flexibility"

Senator Barack Obama said Thursday that he might “refine” his plans for a phased withdrawal from Iraq after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But later, he hastily held a second news conference: to emphasize his commitment to withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office...

Mr. Obama has long spoken of consulting with commanders in the field as part of his plan for a phased withdrawal from Iraq, but his shift in emphasis in the way he spoke about the situation on Thursday — after weeks in which Republicans and even an outside Iraq policy adviser to the Obama campaign argued against a withdrawal along the lines he had proposed — fueled speculation that he might not be wedded to his timetable...

Unless, of course, it proves more prudent not to do so once he's in office.

Assuming, of course, he has any constituency left once he leaves his constituency:

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.

Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision...

A decision doubtless augmented by the kind of outside advisors [Madeline Albright, your pudgy hands are showing] most likely to think Steny Hoyer their kind of guy.

...During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership...

Now that the Primaries are over, we can drop those silly pretenses and vote just like HHHillary again, right?

Obama takes his base for granted, and is about to lose it.

Democrats have no “leaders”. What we do have is a party structure that’s become addicted to big bucks as much as the Republicans. Where the Republicans have used religion, prejudice, and jingoism to maintain power over the rubes, the Democrats have used rights, populism, and the environment for their support.

Except, they are cheaper dates. Traditionally.

But now most Americans are totally disaffected with the Republicans. The Democrats, including Obama, figure their own base has no choice, so now they pander to the same monied interests that have ruined the Republican reputation with America.

And please, don't tell me about how great HHHillary would have been. Her voting record in the Senate was basically the same as the Unibama's. Except one vote far worse: she supported the Iraq debacle from the beginning and she knew better.

From where I'm sitting it seems like both Clinton and Obama have done an awful lot of pandering to the right wing and the christianists, and Clinton would have done pretty much as Obama is doing now if she'd won the primary.

Avedon says "...you'd almost think he was trying to throw the election." Almost, indeed.

She also tells me...He only became anti-war because he figured out that he had to appeal to the people who he needed to vote for them. He doesn't think he needs to put on a show for those people anymore...

I believe that, Avedon. What I have a hard time believing is that the situation would be improved with Clinton driving.

What I resent is the knowledge that if I don't vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is, the country and likely the outside world could go to hell in a thermonuclear handbasket.

The truth is that anyone who doesn't pander to the right will not be allowed to win the election. The question is who the real electors are. Despite what it says on paper and on the TV the real electors are certainly not "all Americans".

To make matters worse, the Obama camp is now actively lying about what their candidate supports. Either that, or the Unibama Oborg don't understand the issues to begin with. Glenn Greenwald, quoting The New york Pravda article about Obama on the FISA issue:

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

"This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip," Mr. Craig said. "Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire."

Craig's statement is flat-out false. FISA -- enacted in 1978 and amended many times to accommodate modern communications technology -- has no expiration date. The Protect America Act, which Congress enacted last August to legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, had a 6-month sunset provision and thus already expired back in February, restoring FISA as the governing law. Thus, if Congress does nothing now, FISA will continue indefinitely to govern the Government's power to spy on the communications of Americans. It doesn't expire. What Craig said in defense of Obama is just wrong.

This country is in very serious trouble, and needs other alternatives than the Rethuglicans or the “Democrat In Name Only” DINOcrats. I'd settle for a real Democrat, but they seem to have left the building.

UnRealistic Expectations

Greenwald has a dim view of the DINOcratic candidate for preznit, and Avedon gives him a big I Told You So.

But back to Greenwald:

...Feeding distortions against someone like Wesley Clark in order to please Joe Klein and his fact-free media friends, or legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and protecting joint Bush/telecom lawbreaking, or basing his campaign on demonizing MoveOn.org and 1960s anti-war hippies, is quite harmful in many long-lasting ways. Electing Barack Obama is a very important political priority but it isn't the only one there is, and his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.

The Unibama was scam from the beginning. The only problem is that HHHillary was and is at least as bad. And Mc$ame would be far, far worse still.

Then there are some of the really bad ideas the Oborg Prime seems to think are perfectly reasonable:

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — With an eye toward courting evangelical voters, Senator Barack Obama arrived here on Tuesday to present a plan to expand on President Bush’s program of investing federal money in religious-based initiatives that are intended to fight poverty and perform community aid work...

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups...”

No wonder 80% of Americans think the country's headed in the wrong direction.

Dead wrong, sir. The term "Leader" implies someone is actually willing to follow you. Which DINOcrat leader do you speak of? Joe Lieberman?

The electoral process in America is broken. Instead of an election, we have a $election.

We are given the choice of lesser evils.

Mc$ame is counting on a terror attack. Me, I'm counting on a reasonable facsimile of the Kzin to show up any decade now.

Fun House Hall of Mirrors

Laura Rozen posts a skeptical analysis Seymour Hersch's latest documentation of the Cheneyburton faction's Special Ops maneuverings to get their Iran on.

...I am also pretty skeptical about the CIA-supporting-PJAK/Baluch to destabilize the Iranian regime stuff that Gardiner, discredited former ABC news consultant and phony Obama interviewer Alexis Debat, and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been saying. Skeptical in large part because people out front saying it like Debat have shown an inclination to make things up, while well meaning and sincere people like Gardiner saying it don't offer much in the way of evidence beyond their own conviction and some charts tracking the hawks' rhetoric that make the conspiracy theorists go nuts but don't in the end really show very much but that there's a propaganda effort, which was already reported a year ago. Another of that allegation's sources cited in the piece, who I do respect, seems sometimes inclined to crowd please and sex things up for his audience on occasion, in an almost he can't help himself or unwitting way perhaps because he feels that's what his audience wants. But mostly I'm skeptical because of the fact that former US intelligence sources I consider highly credible tell me the CIA is not working with the Baluch/Rigi, certainly not to destabilize the Iranian regime, and those like British reporter James Brandon who have been up in the Qandil mountains with the PKK/PJAK say the groups have no good weapons, are extremely modestly supplied, and no sign of serious US or western support to be found. They expressed that they would welcome western support when he was up there over a year ago, but he saw no sign and they said they hadn't gotten any. And indeed far more recently the PJAK has threatened to attack US forces because of US support to Turkey in its attacks against the PKK. As well as because of the fact I talk to several Iranian diaspora oppositionists and hawks some of whom would love the US to support these groups and act more aggressively to destabilize the Iranian regime, who are pretty unhappy with the Bush administration for not doing very much on this issue.

In the end, I just don't think the Bush administration is trying to seriously destabilize the Iranian regime or change it...

Rozen's analysis boils down to this: Hersch has been warning about this for 5 years. If he's right, why haven't they done it already? Rozen suggests that it's really just an effort to milk more defense and black budget bucks from Congress.

She's right about that, at least. The dollar's the deal, always.

Ever since it was Mission Accomplished by the Codpiece in 2003, Cheneyburton & PNAC friends have been banging the wardrums for some more hot Iranian action. And ever since 2003 Sy Hersch has been doing a good job of deflating the jingo. No, we haven't gone to open war in Iran. Yet. Largely because of Hersch. And frankly, dear I don't give a damn if Sy is the mouthpiece for a more pragmatic group in the Carlyle array of investment capital.

Rozen's analysis suffers from the same set of blinders most progressives have. They expect rational movement of Cheneyburton towards its goals. They don't get that any information source from the Carlyle proxy company that runs the United States Government is disinformation even if the information is factually correct.

They don't get that the Company is composed of more than one faction. It's a band of contentious brothers bent on hegemony. But they do tend to unite around two points: money and power to get more money.

The fastest way to both isn't the linear approach, and the fastest way for one Company faction isn't the fastest way for another.

According to Hersch:

...Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, "We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America." Gates's comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates's answer, the senator told me, was "Let's just say that I'm here speaking for myself."

That's pure propaganda, alright, but in this instance it's also likely correct.

Rozen suggests her information sources tell her there have been no Special Ops in Iran. Again, she says, if there have been, where's the evidence of it?

My information sources- Special Forces PsyOps at that- tell me there have been and continue to be American forces on the ground in Iran. And the difference between my sources and Rozen's and the difference between my position and hers is I realize it's all second hand information that Somebody wants me to hear.

And it just irritates me no end that supposedly intelligent professionals can't realize that. Or try to appear as if they don't.

Spores Like Us

Like Avedon pointed out

Someone was trying to assassinate Daschle and Leahy, and John Ashcroft (who preferred to pretend it was related to "terrorism" in that new, broad, "your personal life is in danger!!!" way and had nothing to do with trying to assassinate two Democratic Senators), apparently decided it was a guy named Hatfill. Since the Bush administration apparently regarded the DOJ as just another political organization that worked on their behalf, they didn't really seem to care that FBI agents wanted to follow other, more promising leads. But they enjoyed leaking information to the press and ruining the guy's career...

Dr. Hatfill, career in tatters after a scapegoating attempt, deserves his compensation. The Feds had no evidence whatsoever, and ignored other possible avenues of investigation because of political pressure.

But it's also worth examining some points from one of the better discussions I've encountered on the anthrax terrorism.

Fox tells us it came from high level security labs.

Not only did the anthrax come from a government lab, a week before 9-11 The New York Pravda reported the Pentagon was testing the stuff. Two weeks before the first attack Bushie and Cheney got their shots,

8bitagent:

...The FIRST victim of the anthrax attacks was the SAME Tabloid company that hosted the 9/11 hijackers in a Florida condo weeks before the attack?
The same guy that was killed by anthrax was going to the same tiny flight school at the same time as Mohamed Atta?

Yeah, lots of coinkydinks.

Whats NOT a coinkydink is that it was the two senators who OPPOSED the Patriot Act that got sent the anthrax letters...no shocker, the USA Patriot Act was rushed through immediately there after.

Not an accident at all...

Read the whole thread, there's some good stuff amidst the disinformation.

Mc$ame: War Without End, Incompetently Fought

There are many people of progressive liberal bent disappointed in the Unibama these days, for good reason.

But lest your dashed hopes of having a real progressive leader cause you to eschew the $election, consider the Endless War under John McCain. Frank Rich does, today:

... If a terrorist bomb did detonate in an American city before Election Day, would that automatically be to the Republican ticket’s benefit?

Not necessarily. Some might instead ask why the Bush White House didn’t replace Michael Chertoff as secretary of homeland security after a House report condemned his bungling of Katrina. The man didn’t know what was happening in the New Orleans Convention Center even when it was broadcast on national television.

Next, voters might take a hard look at the antiterrorism warriors of the McCain campaign (and of a potential McCain administration). This is the band of advisers and surrogates that surfaced to attack Mr. Obama two weeks ago for being “naïve” and “delusional” and guilty of a “Sept. 10th mind-set” after he had the gall to agree with the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo detainees. The McCain team’s track record is hardly sterling. It might make America more vulnerable to terrorist attack, not less, were it in power.

Take — please! — the McCain foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. He was the executive director of the so-called Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, formed in 2002 (with Mr. McCain on board) to gin up the war that diverted American resources from fighting those who attacked us on 9/11 to invading a nation that did not. Thanks to that strategic blunder, a 2008 Qaeda attack could well originate from Pakistan or Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden’s progeny, liberated by our liberation of Iraq, have been regrouping ever since. On Friday the Pentagon declared that the Taliban has once more “coalesced into a resilient insurgency.” Attacks in eastern Afghanistan are up 40 percent from this time last year, according to the American commander of NATO forces in the region.

Another dubious McCain terror expert is the former C.I.A. director James Woolsey. He (like Charles Black) was a cheerleader for Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled Iraqi leader who helped promote phony Iraqi W.M.D. intelligence in 2002 and who is persona non grata to American officials in Iraq today because of his ties to Iran. Mr. Woolsey, who accuses Mr. Obama of harboring “extremely dangerous” views on terrorism, has demonstrated his own expertise by supporting crackpot theories linking Iraq to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On 9/11 and 9/12 he circulated on the three major networks to float the idea that Saddam rather than bin Laden might have ordered the attacks.

Then there is the McCain camp’s star fearmonger, Rudy Giuliani, who has lately taken to railing about Mr. Obama’s supposed failure to learn the lessons of the first twin towers bombing. The lesson America’s Mayor took away from that 1993 attack was to insist that New York City’s emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center. No less an authority than John Lehman, a 9/11 commission member who also serves on the McCain team, has mocked New York’s pre-9/11 emergency plans as “not worthy of the Boy Scouts.”

If there’s another 9/11, it’s hard to argue that this gang could have prevented it. At least Mr. Obama, however limited his experience, has called for America to act on actionable terrorist intelligence in Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf won’t. Mr. McCain angrily disagreed with that idea. The relatively passive Pakistan policy he offers instead could well come back to haunt him if a new 9/11 is launched from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Should there be no new terrorist attack, the McCain camp’s efforts to play the old Rove 9/11 fear card may quickly become as laughable as the Giuliani presidential campaign. These days Americans are more frightened of losing their jobs, homes and savings...

There's Terra, and there's Terror, and there's more than one threat to National Security. The Republicans' venality dwarf even the stupidest DINOcrat maneuver any day. Get out and vote for Obama and the Democrats when the time comes. Even though they suck.

And give them their just desserts when you get the Republicans far away from the reins of power.

So Many Uses, So Little Crime

All for your own good, of course.

MSNBC’s Alex Witt talked to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff about a new proposal by the Bush administration to use satellites for domestic surveillance.

Isikoff told MSNBC, “The Homeland Security Department is talking about expanding the program to use military satellites really, for domestic purposes. They say the primary driver is natural disasters — like the recent flooding in the midwest — to pinpoint areas that are most hard hit and to help with responses, first responses. But they also leave open the possibility that this could be used for other purposes, law enforce many purposes. Tracking potential terrorists but also tracking potential drug operations.”

“And that is where the concerns about civil liberty abuses come in. First of all, there are strict laws about the act that limits the use of the U.S. military for law enforcement purposes. But the precision of these satellites, they can literally capture crystal clear images of your car as you leave the studio this afternoon. And capture them in computer databases — in the governmentcomputer databases. And it raises all sorts of concerns. To some degree, the administration is paying the price of what is for — what many in congress see as way over stepping — in the electronic surveillance era.”

Isikoff in Newsweek:

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment denying money for the new domestic intelligence operation—cryptically named the "National Applications Office"—until the Homeland Security secretary certifies that any programs undertaken by the center will "comply with all existing laws, including all applicable privacy and civil liberties standards."

Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on intelligence, told Newsweek that majorities in both the House and Senate intend to block all funding for the domestic intelligence center at least until August, when the Government Accountability Office, an investigative agency that works for Congress, completes a report examining civil-liberties and privacy issues related to the domestic use of picture-taking spy satellites.

Harman, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Republicans controlled Congress earlier in Bush's tenure, said she still felt burned by the president's secret expansion of domestic electronic spying after 9/11. At the time, she and other intel committee leaders were assured that the increased intelligence activity was legal, only to learn later that the basis for the new surveillance was a set of opinions by administration lawyers that are now widely considered to be legally questionable...

...Russ Knocke, a Homeland Security spokesman, told Newsweek that fears about the program are unfounded. "We've repeatedly met with Congress to answer questions about the NAO," he said. "As we have said, the purpose of the NAO is not to expand existing legal authorities. Rather, it will allow the government to better and more efficiently prioritize the use of scarce resources in support of major disasters, homeland security efforts and perhaps—in the future—law enforcement. We have also been clear that we would brief Congress before moving to support law enforcement. Efforts to further stall the NAO are misguided and keep us from making the best use of overhead imagery for a number of public safety and security missions."

Learn to love Big Brother, and accept the rule of Skynet. It's misguided to think otherwise. And likely to be a doublebad thoughtcrime.

Stormy Weather

via Cryptogon, the London Telegraph:

Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero".

"We're in a nasty environment," said Tim Bond, the bank's chief equity strategist. "There is an inflation shock underway. This is going to be very negative for financial assets. We are going into tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth."

Barclays Capital said in its closely-watched Global Outlook that US headline inflation would hit 5.5pc by August and the Fed will have to raise interest rates six times by the end of next year to prevent a wage-spiral. If it hesitates, the bond markets will take matters into their own hands...

Meanwhile, the Pole is anticipated to melt completely this year, 50 years ahead of schedule.

But it's all good, you know:

(CNN) -- The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

"We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is 'does the North Pole melt out this summer?' and it may well," said the center's senior research scientist, Mark Serreze.

It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen in autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said.

The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, opened briefly for the first time in recorded history.

"What we've seen through the past few decades is the Arctic sea ice cover is becoming thinner and thinner as the system warms up," Serreze said.

Specific weather patterns will determine whether the North Pole's ice cover melts completely this summer, he said.

"Last year, we had sort of a perfect weather pattern to get rid of ice to open up that Northwest Passage," Serreze said. "This year, a different pattern can set up. so maybe we'll preserve some ice there. We're in a wait-and-see mode right now. We'll see what happens."

The brief lack of ice at the top of the globe will not bring any immediate consequences, he said.

"From the viewpoint of the science, the North Pole is just another point in the globe, but it does have this symbolic meaning," Serreze said. "There's supposed to be ice at the North Pole. The fact that we may not have any by the end of this summer could be quite a symbolic change..."

Of course, it's only symbolic.

...There are some positive aspects to the ice melting, he said. Ships could use the Northwest Passage to save time and energy by no longer having to travel through the Panama Canal or around Cape Horn.

"There's also, or course, oil at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean," he said. "Now, the irony of that is kind of clear, but the fact that we are opening up the Arctic Ocean does make it more accessible."

You see, it's all good.

After the Pole melts, the heat sink buffer to the North will be gone.

Greenland's next. There's a real symbolism when a subcontinent covered with ice a mile high melts, and Wall Street, and Manhattan, and Singapore, and Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and London, and Washington D.C., and all the old halls of Power lie under the wave.



Meet the new climate, same as the old climate.

Ah, the Bu$hCo-installed new generation of climate scientists. You might notice that wasn't James Hansen being quoted. He's much too concerned about circumstances that obviously could be turned to the advantage of Right-thinking people.

Me, I'm down with it. I'm planting Bald Cypress and Metasequoia in the swamps of Michigan, trees that are resistant to the emerald borer and the Japanese beetle, in their new habitat, now 1000 feet above sea level today, perhaps soon to be 600 feet above sea level when the ice is gone.

Concern Trolling is a Lucrative Occupation

They're very concerned about his turnaround on public financing, but could give a rat's ass about his turnaround on telcom immunity.

This is a great example of framing the story.

But they aren't alone, as Greenwald reports.

According to Olberman, what was

...a "shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism -- the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government."

when Dear Leader first suggested it is now

..."Senator Obama also refusing to cower even to the left on the subject of warrantless wiretapping"...

So it looks like Olbermann is about to Unity with Coulter and Obama is about to Unity with Mc$ame in declaring the lefty blogosphere traitors and Terra'ists.

But it's like Digby points out, DINOcrats like Hoyer and Pelosi and HHHillary and the Unibama are relatively cheap dates.

I suppose $500 is a lot of money to a $50 dollar whore.

Without Mind: the Replicators

If you have

Variation

Selection

and

Heredity

You MUST get design out of Chaos
without mind.

And that is dangerous.