The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11
That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.
That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!
That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.
That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.
That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama’s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.
That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.
That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.
The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.
That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.
That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.
That the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack, means he must not have been such a threat after all.
That whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities, suggests she lacked the big picture. And that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that "that person should be killed," suggests he should take an anger management seminar.
That on May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy which bore implications for America's military, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.
That the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11.
That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI, proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.
That Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on the surface odd, but undoubtedly there's a good reason for it, quite possibly classified.
That FBI informant Randy Glass, working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and that his repeated warnings which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities, is simply one of the many "What Ifs" of that tragic day.
That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies and governments - including those of Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Afghanistan and others - of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.
That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do with warnings regarding September 11, because he said so to the 9/11 Commission.
That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened, proves nothing but David Schipper’s pathetic need for attention.
That Garth Nicolson received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and one from a North African head of state, which included specific site, date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no effect, clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever heard of him.
That in the months prior to September 11, self-described US intelligence operative Delmart Vreeland sought, from a Toronto jail cell, to get US and Canadian authorities to heed his warning of his accidental discovery of impending catastrophic attacks is worthless, since Vreeland was a dubious character, notwithstanding the fact that many of his claims have since been proven true.
That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism, sounds like yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.
That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.
The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.
That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.
Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about him in the official report.
That Porter Goss met with Ahmed the morning of September 11 in his capacity as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has no bearing whatsoever upon his recent selection by the White House to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
That Goss's congressional seat encompasses the 9/11 hijackers' Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid a conspiracy theorist would bring up.
It's true that George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of September 10 alone in the Oval Office, but what's wrong with old colleagues catching up? And it's true that George HW Bush and Shafig bin Laden, Osama's brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family.
That FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, was a lucky twist of fate.
Newsweek’s report that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy because of what happened the following morning.
That George Bush's telephone logs for September 11 do not exist should surprise no one, given the confusion of the day.
That Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey merely shows it is a small world, after all.
That Lt Col Steve Butler, Vice Chancellor for student affairs of the Defense Language Institute during Alghamdi's terms, was disciplined, removed from his post and threatened with court martial when he wrote "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain," is the least that should have happened for such disrespect shown his Commander in Chief.
That Mohammed Atta dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops, drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.
That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard, the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled – the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just bad luck. That Hilliard was not charged shows how specious the claims for conspiracy truly are.
That Hilliard’s plane had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.
Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so the windfall profit-taking was merely, as ever, coincidental.
That heightened security for the World Trade Centre was lifted immediately prior to the attacks illustrates that it always happens when you least expect it.
That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a 767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack, merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set their minds to it.
That none of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable even though they were located in the tail sections, and that until 9/11, no solid-state recorder in a catastrophic crash had been unrecoverable, shows how there's a first time for everything.
That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, a Koran, his driver's license and a "how to fly planes" video in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.
The mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, of an Israeli espionage ring surveiling DEA and defense installations and trailing the hijackers, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, does not deserve a response. That the stories also appeared in publications such as Ha'aretz and Forward is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Israeli media.
That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, was a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.
That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a rookie substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.
That a recording made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ describing what they had witnessed, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, is something no doubt that overzealous official wishes he could undo.
That the FBI knew precisely which Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should make every American feel safer knowing their federal agents are on the ball.
That a former flight school executive believes the hijackers were "double agents," and says about Atta and associates, "Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose," and was visited by the FBI just four hours after the attacks to intimidate him into silence, proves he's an unreliable witness, for the simple reason there is no conspiracy.
That Jeb Bush was on board an aircraft that removed flight school records to Washington in the middle of the night on Sept 12th demonstrates how seriously the governor takes the issue of national security.
To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.
Le Figaro’s report in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence, that the CIA met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001, proves again the perfidy of the French.
That the tape in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released by the State Department after having been found providentially by US forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face and a flatter nose, proves Osama, and Osama alone, masterminded 9/11.
That at the battle of Tora Bora, where bin Laden was surrounded on three sides, Special Forces received no order to advance and capture him and were forced to stand and watch as two Russian-made helicopters flew into the area where bin Laden was believed hiding, loaded up passengers and returned to Pakistan, demonstrates how confusing the modern battlefield can be.
That upon returning to Fort Bragg from Tora Bora, the same Special Operations troops who had been stood down from capturing bin Laden, suffered a unusual spree of murder/suicides, is nothing more than a series of senseless tragedies.
Reports that bin Laden is currently receiving periodic dialysis treatment in a Pakistani medical hospital are simply too incredible to be true.
That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.
That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.
That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act shows only that appearances can be deceiving.
That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick, and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine, underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.
That Republican guru Grover Norquist has been found to have aided financiers and supporters of Islamic terror to gain access to the Bush White House, and is a founder of the Islamic Institute, which the Treasury Department believes to be a source of funding for al Qaeda, suggests Norquist is at worst, naive, and at best, needs a wider circle of friends.
That the Department of Justice consistently chooses to see accused 9/11 plotters go free rather than permit the courtroom testimony of al Qaeda leaders in American custody looks bad, but only because we don't have all the facts.
That the White House balked at any inquiry into the events of 9/11, then starved it of funds and stonewalled it, was unfortunate, but since the commission didn't find for conspiracy it's all a non issue anyway.
That the 9/11 commission's executive director and "gatekeeper," Philip Zelikow, was so closely involved in the events under investigation that he testified before the the commission as part of the inquiry, shows only an apparent conflict of interest.
That commission chair Thomas Kean is, like George Bush, a Texas oil executive who had business dealings with reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mafouz, suggests Texas is smaller than they say it is.
That co-chair Lee Hamilton has a history as a Bush family "fixer," including clearing Bush Sr of the claims arising from the 1980 "October Surprise", is of no concern, since only conspiracists believe there was such a thing as an October Surprise.
That FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department, and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official infrastructure of money-laundering and narcotics trade behind the attacks, is of no account, since John Ashcroft has gagged her with the rare invocation of "State Secrets Privilege," and retroactively classified her public testimony. For the sake of national security, let us speak no more of her.
That, when commenting on Edmond's case, Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Ashcroft could go to prison for his part in a cover-up, suggests Ellsberg is giving comfort to the terrorists, and could, if he doesn't wise up, find himself declared an enemy combatant.
Go to the original for the links.
And be warned: Jeff Wells makes me seem complacent.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
A Space-Time Twister, Too?
It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.
His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.
When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.
These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.
Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.
The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation.
However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole.
Sure hope these kids don't make a Big Mistake.
On the other hand- according to John Titor it's about time.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.
His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.
When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.
These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.
But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.
Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.
The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation.
However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole.
Sure hope these kids don't make a Big Mistake.
On the other hand- according to John Titor it's about time.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Death Wish
...this process of turning away from our own future emerges out of a bizarre death wish known as "the Rapture" that is afflicting a substantial enough proportion of the American population to affect the electoral process.
These mad people, and there are millions of them, are led by lunatics who have extrapolated some sort of "code" out of the bible that tells them that the world will soon end and the self selected "elect" will be "raptured" into heaven while the rest of us are left behind by the cruel, selfish and mean-spirited god of their dreams.
In other words, Jesus Christ, the great master of compassion, will transform into the great champion of the selfish, and heap rewards on the few while leaving the many to perish.
Of course, this is silly fallacy. It was invented in the 19th century by a couple of semi-educated fanatics who mixed Bible verses with their own loopy fantasies and came up with something about as sensible as the idiotic Nazi "eternal ice" theories of the crackpot Hans Horbiger...
Yes, it is that bad. I know that many of you reading this would like to believe the lying rhetoric of those who claim that global warming is "unproven" and a "theory," and that others probably cherish the blind notion that "god will provide."
God already DID that: he provided us with our brains. It is up to us to use them. Failure to do so, in this case, is more than a sin, it is a crime against humanity...
What can we do about it? Well, if you believe any of the death wish lies discussed above, come to your senses and start using the gift God gave you instead of indulging in the arrogant sin of refusing to do so in favor of indulging greedy fantasies. In a word, wake up and turn away from Rapture Theology. Make up for your wasted time by becoming instead a proactive environmentalist, and give your new movement at least as much money as you threw at the old one.
I know that I won't convince one of you to actually walk away from whatever demon preacher has hypnotized you, but my guess is that the future will: when you are facing what we all must face, then you will come to your senses.
The one good thing is that concerted effort on the part of all the nations in the world can change things fast. But it cannot be done without the United States. If the United States does not recognize the problem, a vast catastrophe is inevitable...
Read the whole essay if you can.
The Death Wish is being used by individuals who fully realize what's going to happen, and intend on surviving- and controlling- the world as it settles into a pre-industrial post-fossil fuel state.
It's us to up to stop them: not by violence, but by the development and dissemination of the tools, psychological and technological, that enable the survival of progressive civilization instead of theocratic feudalism.
These mad people, and there are millions of them, are led by lunatics who have extrapolated some sort of "code" out of the bible that tells them that the world will soon end and the self selected "elect" will be "raptured" into heaven while the rest of us are left behind by the cruel, selfish and mean-spirited god of their dreams.
In other words, Jesus Christ, the great master of compassion, will transform into the great champion of the selfish, and heap rewards on the few while leaving the many to perish.
Of course, this is silly fallacy. It was invented in the 19th century by a couple of semi-educated fanatics who mixed Bible verses with their own loopy fantasies and came up with something about as sensible as the idiotic Nazi "eternal ice" theories of the crackpot Hans Horbiger...
Yes, it is that bad. I know that many of you reading this would like to believe the lying rhetoric of those who claim that global warming is "unproven" and a "theory," and that others probably cherish the blind notion that "god will provide."
God already DID that: he provided us with our brains. It is up to us to use them. Failure to do so, in this case, is more than a sin, it is a crime against humanity...
What can we do about it? Well, if you believe any of the death wish lies discussed above, come to your senses and start using the gift God gave you instead of indulging in the arrogant sin of refusing to do so in favor of indulging greedy fantasies. In a word, wake up and turn away from Rapture Theology. Make up for your wasted time by becoming instead a proactive environmentalist, and give your new movement at least as much money as you threw at the old one.
I know that I won't convince one of you to actually walk away from whatever demon preacher has hypnotized you, but my guess is that the future will: when you are facing what we all must face, then you will come to your senses.
The one good thing is that concerted effort on the part of all the nations in the world can change things fast. But it cannot be done without the United States. If the United States does not recognize the problem, a vast catastrophe is inevitable...
Read the whole essay if you can.
The Death Wish is being used by individuals who fully realize what's going to happen, and intend on surviving- and controlling- the world as it settles into a pre-industrial post-fossil fuel state.
It's us to up to stop them: not by violence, but by the development and dissemination of the tools, psychological and technological, that enable the survival of progressive civilization instead of theocratic feudalism.
Condiliar "Let's Git Dis War On" Rice
So get this:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested Sunday that European governments are irresponsible if they sell sophisticated weaponry to China that might one day be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific."
But it's OK for us to sell them the tools to make more nukes.
(Via Eschaton & Atrios ) Dafna Linzer at the Washington Post spotted them in yet another bald-faced lie last night:
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction...
The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction...
Two years ago, U.S. officials told allies that North Korea was trying to assemble an enrichment facility that would turn uranium hexafluoride into bomb-grade material.
But China and South Korea, in particular, have been skeptical of those assertions and are becoming increasingly wary of pressuring North Korea.
Get that? South Korea is increasing aligning with China- and North Korea- about this.
It's interesting to note that the normally carefully choreographed Rice press conference had a protester last night.
What did the protester say? US troops out of Iraq? No nuke sales to China by the US?
Of course not!
"The event, meant to highlight the freewheeling nature of computer communication in an open democracy, got off to a bad start when American security guards tackled a peace activist as he shouted to get Rice’s attention.
“Miss Rice, the North Korean people are dying and they are crying for your help,” yelled the activist, German physician and former aid worker Norbert Vollertsen. He held up a poster that read “Freedom for North Korea: 50 Years Overdue,” until a State Department employee ripped the poster in half."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested Sunday that European governments are irresponsible if they sell sophisticated weaponry to China that might one day be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific."
But it's OK for us to sell them the tools to make more nukes.
(Via Eschaton & Atrios ) Dafna Linzer at the Washington Post spotted them in yet another bald-faced lie last night:
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction...
The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction...
Two years ago, U.S. officials told allies that North Korea was trying to assemble an enrichment facility that would turn uranium hexafluoride into bomb-grade material.
But China and South Korea, in particular, have been skeptical of those assertions and are becoming increasingly wary of pressuring North Korea.
Get that? South Korea is increasing aligning with China- and North Korea- about this.
It's interesting to note that the normally carefully choreographed Rice press conference had a protester last night.
What did the protester say? US troops out of Iraq? No nuke sales to China by the US?
Of course not!
"The event, meant to highlight the freewheeling nature of computer communication in an open democracy, got off to a bad start when American security guards tackled a peace activist as he shouted to get Rice’s attention.
“Miss Rice, the North Korean people are dying and they are crying for your help,” yelled the activist, German physician and former aid worker Norbert Vollertsen. He held up a poster that read “Freedom for North Korea: 50 Years Overdue,” until a State Department employee ripped the poster in half."
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Playing the Great Game Without Asking the Big Boys First
If the situation in Iraq seems a little conflicted, part of it according to Greg Palast is that the NeoTheoCon chickenhawks driving the wagon have been a little slow on the uptake about exactly where the wagon's owners are heading.
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won...
Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.
Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved." ...
New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.
Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government...
Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.
Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."
The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."
Other than worshiping the Almighty Dollar.
Thanks to Juan Cole for the link.
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".
"Big Oil" appears to have won...
Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.
Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved." ...
New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.
Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government...
Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.
Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."
The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."
Other than worshiping the Almighty Dollar.
Thanks to Juan Cole for the link.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Committed
The Climate Change Commitment
Science, Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1766-1769 , 18 March 2005
T. M. L. Wigley
Even if atmospheric composition were fixed today, global-mean temperature and sea level rise would continue due to oceanic thermal inertia. These constant-composition (CC) commitments and their uncertainties are quantified. Constant-emissions (CE) commitments are also considered. The CC warming commitment could exceed 1°C. The CE warming commitment is 2° to 6°C by the year 2400. For sea level rise, the CC commitment is 10 centimeters per century (extreme range approximately 1 to 30 centimeters per century) and the CE commitment is 25 centimeters per century (7 to 50 centimeters per century). Avoiding these changes requires, eventually, a reduction in emissions to substantially below present levels. For sea level rise, a substantial long-term commitment may be impossible to avoid.
How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?
Science, Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1769-1772 , 18 March 2005
Gerald A. Meehl,* Warren M. Washington, William D. Collins, Julie M. Arblaster, Aixue Hu, Lawrence E. Buja, Warren G. Strand, Haiyan Teng
Two global coupled climate models show that even if the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had been stabilized in the year 2000, we are already committed to further global warming of about another half degree and an additional 320% sea level rise caused by thermal expansion by the end of the 21st century. Projected weakening of the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean does not lead to a net cooling in Europe. At any given point in time, even if concentrations are stabilized, there is a commitment to future climate changes that will be greater than those we have already observed.
Also, you might like to see what the gang at Kos has to say about it.
Of course, you need a Ph.D. in climatology, meterology, or marine science to really understand it- but you need to understand this: the world is changing, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
But we can develop technology to minimize the damage.
And just as we release greenhouse gases, technology could be used to fix them.
Science, Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1766-1769 , 18 March 2005
T. M. L. Wigley
Even if atmospheric composition were fixed today, global-mean temperature and sea level rise would continue due to oceanic thermal inertia. These constant-composition (CC) commitments and their uncertainties are quantified. Constant-emissions (CE) commitments are also considered. The CC warming commitment could exceed 1°C. The CE warming commitment is 2° to 6°C by the year 2400. For sea level rise, the CC commitment is 10 centimeters per century (extreme range approximately 1 to 30 centimeters per century) and the CE commitment is 25 centimeters per century (7 to 50 centimeters per century). Avoiding these changes requires, eventually, a reduction in emissions to substantially below present levels. For sea level rise, a substantial long-term commitment may be impossible to avoid.
How Much More Global Warming and Sea Level Rise?
Science, Vol 307, Issue 5716, 1769-1772 , 18 March 2005
Gerald A. Meehl,* Warren M. Washington, William D. Collins, Julie M. Arblaster, Aixue Hu, Lawrence E. Buja, Warren G. Strand, Haiyan Teng
Two global coupled climate models show that even if the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had been stabilized in the year 2000, we are already committed to further global warming of about another half degree and an additional 320% sea level rise caused by thermal expansion by the end of the 21st century. Projected weakening of the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean does not lead to a net cooling in Europe. At any given point in time, even if concentrations are stabilized, there is a commitment to future climate changes that will be greater than those we have already observed.
Also, you might like to see what the gang at Kos has to say about it.
Of course, you need a Ph.D. in climatology, meterology, or marine science to really understand it- but you need to understand this: the world is changing, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
But we can develop technology to minimize the damage.
And just as we release greenhouse gases, technology could be used to fix them.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
A Death Star for Darth Rumsfeld
"President Bush on Friday nominated Dr. Michael D. Griffin, a physicist and engineer who is a strong advocate of human space flight, to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as it tries to revive the shuttle program and return humans to the moon.
Dr. Griffin, who is head of the space department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., has held numerous posts in the aerospace industry and was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment organization sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also served as the deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and worked on missile defense systems from 1986 to 1991...
In April 2004, Dr. Griffin took his current post as head of the space department at the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he had worked in the early 1980's. In 1986, he joined the Pentagon's "Star Wars" program, which was aimed at developing a missile defense shield.
Dr. Griffin worked at NASA from 1991 to 1994 before moving on to posts in private industry, going to Orbital Science Corporation in Dulles, Va. He also worked for Computer Science Corporation in El Segundo, Calif.
As a top official at In-Q-Tel, he helped invest about $45 million a year in federal money in projects including software and other technology designed to sort massive quantities of data like intercepted e-mail messages and satellite images."
Computer Sciences Corporation? Hmmm... that sounds familiar.
Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC) today announced that the company has completed its acquisition of DynCorp...
And where else... ah, I know: "The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center awards its new Onsite Technical Support Services Contract to Computer Sciences Corporation with EG&G as its Major Teaming Partner...
EG&G, headquartered in the Washington, DC area, is a leading provider of technical and support services to the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The company, which is wholly owned by the Carlyle Group, employs 4,200 people worldwide."
I suppose if you're going to have Total Information Awareness, it pays to have the guys who run the computer systems run the satellites, too.
And it must be nice to have somebody like DynCorp around to do the dirty work.
Dr. Griffin, who is head of the space department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., has held numerous posts in the aerospace industry and was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment organization sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also served as the deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and worked on missile defense systems from 1986 to 1991...
In April 2004, Dr. Griffin took his current post as head of the space department at the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he had worked in the early 1980's. In 1986, he joined the Pentagon's "Star Wars" program, which was aimed at developing a missile defense shield.
Dr. Griffin worked at NASA from 1991 to 1994 before moving on to posts in private industry, going to Orbital Science Corporation in Dulles, Va. He also worked for Computer Science Corporation in El Segundo, Calif.
As a top official at In-Q-Tel, he helped invest about $45 million a year in federal money in projects including software and other technology designed to sort massive quantities of data like intercepted e-mail messages and satellite images."
Computer Sciences Corporation? Hmmm... that sounds familiar.
Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE: CSC) today announced that the company has completed its acquisition of DynCorp...
And where else... ah, I know: "The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center awards its new Onsite Technical Support Services Contract to Computer Sciences Corporation with EG&G as its Major Teaming Partner...
EG&G, headquartered in the Washington, DC area, is a leading provider of technical and support services to the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce and to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The company, which is wholly owned by the Carlyle Group, employs 4,200 people worldwide."
I suppose if you're going to have Total Information Awareness, it pays to have the guys who run the computer systems run the satellites, too.
And it must be nice to have somebody like DynCorp around to do the dirty work.
Breakfast with Black Spot
I wonder if Black Spot chats with Dear Leader about this some mornings:
China, Japan, and the United States are the three most productive economies on Earth, but China is the fastest growing (at an average rate of 9.5% per annum for over two decades), whereas both the U.S. and Japan are saddled with huge and mounting debts and, in the case of Japan, stagnant growth rates. China is today the world's sixth largest economy (the U.S. and Japan being first and second) and our third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico. According to CIA statisticians in their Factbook 2003, China is actually already the second-largest economy on Earth measured on a purchasing power parity basis -- that is, in terms of what China actually produces rather than prices and exchange rates. The CIA calculates the United States' gross domestic product (GDP) -- the total value of all goods and services produced within a country -- for 2003 as $10.4 trillion and China's $5.7 trillion.
China's trade volume for 2004 was $1.2 trillion, third in the world after the U.S. and Germany, and well ahead of Japan's $1.07 trillion...
The truly significant trade development of 2004 was the EU's emergence as China's biggest economic partner, suggesting the possibility of a Sino-European cooperative bloc confronting a less vital Japanese-American one...
...The CIA's National Intelligence Council forecasts that China's GDP will equal Britain's in 2005, Germany's in 2009, Japan's in 2017, and the U.S.'s in 2042. But Shahid Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank's China Department and a former finance minister of Pakistan, predicts that by 2025 China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity and will have become the world's largest economy followed by the United States at $20 trillion and India at about $13 trillion -- and Burki's analysis is based on a conservative prediction of a 6% Chinese growth rate sustained over the next two decades...
...The Bush administration is unwisely threatening China by urging Japan to rearm and by promising Taiwan that, should China use force to prevent a Taiwanese declaration of independence, the U.S. will go to war on its behalf. It is hard to imagine more shortsighted, irresponsible policies, but in light of the Bush administration's Alice-in-Wonderland war in Iraq, the acute anti-Americanism it has generated globally, and the politicization of America's intelligence services, it seems possible that the U.S. and Japan might actually precipitate a war with China over Taiwan..."
No, too many big words for Dear Leader.
Black Spot is nothing if not Respectful for the Leader of the Free World.
Thanks to Truthout for the link.
China, Japan, and the United States are the three most productive economies on Earth, but China is the fastest growing (at an average rate of 9.5% per annum for over two decades), whereas both the U.S. and Japan are saddled with huge and mounting debts and, in the case of Japan, stagnant growth rates. China is today the world's sixth largest economy (the U.S. and Japan being first and second) and our third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico. According to CIA statisticians in their Factbook 2003, China is actually already the second-largest economy on Earth measured on a purchasing power parity basis -- that is, in terms of what China actually produces rather than prices and exchange rates. The CIA calculates the United States' gross domestic product (GDP) -- the total value of all goods and services produced within a country -- for 2003 as $10.4 trillion and China's $5.7 trillion.
China's trade volume for 2004 was $1.2 trillion, third in the world after the U.S. and Germany, and well ahead of Japan's $1.07 trillion...
The truly significant trade development of 2004 was the EU's emergence as China's biggest economic partner, suggesting the possibility of a Sino-European cooperative bloc confronting a less vital Japanese-American one...
...The CIA's National Intelligence Council forecasts that China's GDP will equal Britain's in 2005, Germany's in 2009, Japan's in 2017, and the U.S.'s in 2042. But Shahid Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank's China Department and a former finance minister of Pakistan, predicts that by 2025 China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity and will have become the world's largest economy followed by the United States at $20 trillion and India at about $13 trillion -- and Burki's analysis is based on a conservative prediction of a 6% Chinese growth rate sustained over the next two decades...
...The Bush administration is unwisely threatening China by urging Japan to rearm and by promising Taiwan that, should China use force to prevent a Taiwanese declaration of independence, the U.S. will go to war on its behalf. It is hard to imagine more shortsighted, irresponsible policies, but in light of the Bush administration's Alice-in-Wonderland war in Iraq, the acute anti-Americanism it has generated globally, and the politicization of America's intelligence services, it seems possible that the U.S. and Japan might actually precipitate a war with China over Taiwan..."
No, too many big words for Dear Leader.
Black Spot is nothing if not Respectful for the Leader of the Free World.
Thanks to Truthout for the link.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Mind Control and the U.S. Military (Pt 2): Framing the Debate
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production...
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism...
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers. ...
On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.
In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends.
What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes. ..
Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said...
The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States.
The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed.
Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.
''We're the 'good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director. ...
Now if you've been paying attention, you may notice that the New York Times is being Directed by a member of the Carlyle Group these days.
Perhaps this makes your head spin- why is a member of the Carlyle Group allowing it to get out that the Bu$h administration is fabricating news?
Before the vertigo takes you completely, let's remember another fact: the largest private donors and a lot of the major corporate donors to the 2004 Kerry campaign were also Carlyle Group members.
Could it be perhaps that we are witnessing a titanic struggle at the corporate level being played with our national interest? Could it be that different factions of the world's largest investment group are at odds for the minds and souls and wallets of the world? Are there good guys as well as evil ones in this struggle?
Is the Bu$hCo source of power- the Carlyle Group- fragmenting at the edges, with hundreds of little robber baron wannabe-Emperors playing their own bids for hegemony?
Or is it something simpler?
Ever seen a bullfight?
We report, you decide.
With thanks to Corrente and The Center for Media and Democracy and John Stauber.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism...
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers. ...
On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.
In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends.
What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes. ..
Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said...
The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States.
The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed.
Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.
''We're the 'good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director. ...
Now if you've been paying attention, you may notice that the New York Times is being Directed by a member of the Carlyle Group these days.
Perhaps this makes your head spin- why is a member of the Carlyle Group allowing it to get out that the Bu$h administration is fabricating news?
Before the vertigo takes you completely, let's remember another fact: the largest private donors and a lot of the major corporate donors to the 2004 Kerry campaign were also Carlyle Group members.
Could it be perhaps that we are witnessing a titanic struggle at the corporate level being played with our national interest? Could it be that different factions of the world's largest investment group are at odds for the minds and souls and wallets of the world? Are there good guys as well as evil ones in this struggle?
Is the Bu$hCo source of power- the Carlyle Group- fragmenting at the edges, with hundreds of little robber baron wannabe-Emperors playing their own bids for hegemony?
Or is it something simpler?
Ever seen a bullfight?
We report, you decide.
With thanks to Corrente and The Center for Media and Democracy and John Stauber.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Feeding the Fires
On the surface, it's the biggest deal in the history of the Export-Import Bank of the United States - US$5 billion to finance the building of Chinese nuclear power plants by US firms in the energy-starved economic giant. But there's much more to it than big business: closer scrutiny and interviews with experts reveal a weak, inconsistent and ultimately dangerous US policy with regard to China and its past (some say present) weapons proliferation, as well as China's own efforts to acquire nuclear reactors and other Western high technology that could be passed on to less-than-responsible states.
In effect, in the interests of big business, the US is turning a blind eye to past proliferation by Chinese entities with which it deals...
the US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank), an independent federal agency that finances exports by US firms, approved a preliminary commitment for $5 billion in loans and loan guarantees to the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) to finance the building of nuclear power plants by US firms.
The Ex-Im loans and guarantees are part of aggressive efforts by US officials and diplomats, including former energy secretary Spencer Abraham and current Vice President Dick Cheney, to lobby the Chinese government to sign a deal with Monroeville, Pennsylvania-based power giant Westinghouse Electric Co. Westinghouse had previously lobbied hard to obtain clearance for the sale from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission last September.
You know Westinghouse: now a branch of the Carlyle Group. The Company that used to be headed by the nominee for the Secretary of the Army, Francis Bridge...
An engineer with 28 years of industrial experience that focused on the defense industry, Dr. Harvey was Chief Operating Officer of the Industries and Technology Group of Westinghouse Electric Company. He also held the positions of President of Westinghouse's Electronics Systems Group, which was later acquired by Northrop Grumman, as well as the President of their Government and Environmental Services Company. Dr. Harvey is affiliated with The Carlyle Group, serving on the boards of three Carlyle controlled corporations. He was also a White House Fellow in the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1970s.
Isn't that special?
The government has just approved a sale of military technology to China- by a Carlyle-affiliated company that used to be headed by the Secretary of the Army.
You can't have the Blank Check if you don't have the Endless War.
In effect, in the interests of big business, the US is turning a blind eye to past proliferation by Chinese entities with which it deals...
the US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank), an independent federal agency that finances exports by US firms, approved a preliminary commitment for $5 billion in loans and loan guarantees to the China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) to finance the building of nuclear power plants by US firms.
The Ex-Im loans and guarantees are part of aggressive efforts by US officials and diplomats, including former energy secretary Spencer Abraham and current Vice President Dick Cheney, to lobby the Chinese government to sign a deal with Monroeville, Pennsylvania-based power giant Westinghouse Electric Co. Westinghouse had previously lobbied hard to obtain clearance for the sale from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission last September.
You know Westinghouse: now a branch of the Carlyle Group. The Company that used to be headed by the nominee for the Secretary of the Army, Francis Bridge...
An engineer with 28 years of industrial experience that focused on the defense industry, Dr. Harvey was Chief Operating Officer of the Industries and Technology Group of Westinghouse Electric Company. He also held the positions of President of Westinghouse's Electronics Systems Group, which was later acquired by Northrop Grumman, as well as the President of their Government and Environmental Services Company. Dr. Harvey is affiliated with The Carlyle Group, serving on the boards of three Carlyle controlled corporations. He was also a White House Fellow in the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1970s.
Isn't that special?
The government has just approved a sale of military technology to China- by a Carlyle-affiliated company that used to be headed by the Secretary of the Army.
You can't have the Blank Check if you don't have the Endless War.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Bubblicious
Assuming the Nasdaq stays in the historical "Mania Channel" of past bubbles -- an admittedly big "If" -- the pattern suggests that a potential move downwards (late 2005/early 2006) of as much as 25 - 33% is quite possible.
And that's not even the bad news (we'll get to that later). The good news is that from those lows, the Nasdaq could potentially double, rising up to nearly 3,000 late in 2007; The bad news (you knew it was coming) is that from those dizzying heights, the down side is horrific: The chart suggests we may visit, if not surpass, the post-bubble lows.
That is, according to the historical composite of previous bubbles.
Not quite the Bu$h Boom the Wrepublicans have in mind... but I guess the issue is which Wrepublicans you ask.
I can think of a few that would perfectly happy with this result.
And that's not even the bad news (we'll get to that later). The good news is that from those lows, the Nasdaq could potentially double, rising up to nearly 3,000 late in 2007; The bad news (you knew it was coming) is that from those dizzying heights, the down side is horrific: The chart suggests we may visit, if not surpass, the post-bubble lows.
That is, according to the historical composite of previous bubbles.
Not quite the Bu$h Boom the Wrepublicans have in mind... but I guess the issue is which Wrepublicans you ask.
I can think of a few that would perfectly happy with this result.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Electing the Brightest Smile
If you listen to the presidential debates, you can’t figure out what they’re saying, and that’s on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn’t make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, “no political support.” Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people’s values. But there’s “no political support.”
Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there’s “no political support.” It doesn’t matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn’t count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You’re supposed to vote for the image they’re projecting. That’s not surprising really. Just ask yourself, “Who runs the elections?”
The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it’s intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they’re assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.
Read the whole thing.
And again thank Truthout for the link.
Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there’s “no political support.” It doesn’t matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn’t count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You’re supposed to vote for the image they’re projecting. That’s not surprising really. Just ask yourself, “Who runs the elections?”
The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it’s intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they’re assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.
Read the whole thing.
And again thank Truthout for the link.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Department of Homeland Cover Ups
Who investigates Al-Qaeda finanical ties? That, you might imagine, would be the real way to unearth the sleeper cells we're all supposed to be so worried about.
Shortly after 9/11 it was Operation Greenquest, "the high-profile federal task force set up to target the financiers of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups." The aggressive, Customs-led task force was folded into Homeland Security, sending both the FBI and its minders at the Department of Justice into a tizzy. They "demanded that the White House instead give the FBI total control over Greenquest."
Who was stridently asking for control of Operation Greenquest?
Greenquest was created by former U.S. Customs chief Robert Bonner just after the September 11 terror attacks, Greenquest agents have conducted some of the Bush administration’s best-publicized and most controversial terrorist-finance cases—including a series of raids against the offices of Islamic charities in the Washington area last year...
FBI officials have derided Greenquest agents as a bunch of “cowboys” whose actions have undermined more important, long-range FBI investigations into terrorist financing. Greenquest sources in turn accuse the FBI of jealousy...
The FBI-Justice move, pushed by DOJ Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, has enraged Homeland Security officials, however. They accuse the bureau of sabotaging Greenquest investigations—by failing to turn over critical information to their agents—and trying to obscure a decadelong record of lethargy in which FBI offices failed to aggressively pursue terror-finance cases.
“They [the FBI] won’t share anything with us,” said a Homeland Security official. “Then they go to the White House and they accuse us of not sharing … If they can’t take it over, they want to kill it.”
One prime example of the tension is the investigation into Ptech, the Boston-area computer software firm that had millions of dollars in sensitive government contracts with the Air Force, the Energy Department and, ironically enough, the FBI. In what turned into a minor embarrassment for the bureau, the firm’s main investors included Yasin Al-Qadi, a wealthy Saudi businessman whom the Bush administration had formally designated a terrorist financier under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Al-Qadi has vigorously denied any connection to terrorism.
The Ptech case turned into an ugly dispute last year when company whistleblowers told Greenquest agents about their own suspicions about the firm’s owners. Sources close to the case say those same whistleblowers had first approached FBI agents, but the bureau apparently did little or nothing in response. With backing from the National Security Council, Greenquest agents then mounted a full-scale investigation that culminated in a raid on the company’s office last December. After getting wind of the Greenquest probe, the FBI stepped in and unsuccessfully tried to take control of the case.
It's nice to know Michael Chertoff no longer has to work so hard to keep a lid on all the unpleasantness.
It's hard to find much on Al-Qadi that's recent on the web. A lot of the original links seemed to have been purged. Time passes; servers do get cleaned out.
Still, if you play with Google, you can find this:
Ptech's customers included sensitive government and intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the Air Force. "But until last fall," the GLOBE reported on Jan. 22, 2003, "few seemed aware an early financial backer of Ptech was Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman named as a suspected terrorist financier by the Bush Administration in October 2001." ...
The tale begins almost right after the 9/11 attack, when, in October of 2001, handful of ex-Ptech employees alerted the FBI to evidence indicating that the firm had Saudi terror connections ...
Almost a year later the Boston FBI had still done nothing about it. They had, in fact, shut down their cursory investigation and taken no action ...
Thus Ptech was still operating at the highest levels of American society in the Spring of 2002, when the firm showed up hustling business at the door of Wall Street's JP Morgan Chase. The question is "why?" ...
Indira Singh, who later became a whistleblower, was an unwitting eyewitness to the "train wreck."
"I invited Ptech to come down and give a presentation and a customized demo to JP Morgan Chase," states Singh, who was a consultant to the bank on "risk architecture," an arcane software specialty which calculates enterprise risk. In one of the story's many ironic twists, Singh was at the time designing a system to help JP Morgan Chase detect terrorist money laundering.
When Ptech showed up, Singh quickly realized that she was witnessing her worst fears about compromised security come true ...
Moreover, she learned, Yasin Al-Qadi had been fingered by the Bush Administration in October 2001, over six months before. So how was it that Ptech was still making presentations to top American companies six months later? ...
When Singh flew to Washington D.C. to meet some of the ex-Ptech employees to verify their allegations, she received another shock. "I met with five extraordinarily scared people. These people were scared for their lives, and for their families. Some were about to leave the country. They told me, 'Indira, you don't know who you're dealing with.'
Sadly, when she told us what happened next, it came as no surprise: When Singh alerted authorities, and her employer, what she encountered was the inexplicable wrath of a top Wall Street Bank, as well as an official wall of silence at the FBI ...
After talking to the Boston FBI, Singh said she had been ''shocked'' and ''frustrated'' to learn that the FBI had not alerted any of the government agencies using Ptech software that there were questions about the company's ties to suspected terrorist fund-raisers ...
When we first heard whistleblower Indira Singh tell her story it sounded so incredible that we would have found it unbelievable, except that we had already encountered stories like it in Venice, of witnesses bullied and intimidated by authorities into silence.
For example, the FBI was all over tenants at the Sandpiper Apartments across the street from the Venice Airport, to keep them from talking about Mohamed Atta's two-month long 'shack-up' with an American girlfriend named Amanda Keller.
In addition to warning Keller not to talk, a warning she took so seriously she left town and disappeared from view, FBI agents bullied and intimidated apartment residents who remembered the pair, and even the apartment manager of the complex, Charles Grapentine, an ex-marine, who told us grimly, "They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut. Nobody likes to hear that: that they didn't see something they know they saw."
Atta and Amanda's next door neighbor, a 50-year old housewife named Stephanie Frederickson, confirmed the apartment manager's remarks.
"The question they asked was always the same," she told us. "You aren't saying anything to anybody, are you?"
Now, it seems that FBI agents in Boston were engaged in equally-dubious behavior. Mistakes, malfeasance, and even missed opportunities to avert the Sept 11 attack... There's been a regular drumbeat of depressing news about the FBI.
Singh told us that disgruntled Boston FBI agents told her privately that their hands were tied on Ptech, because, they said, "Saudis have been given a free pass for 9/11."
"And that," says Singh, "is when I began to get really scared."''
Shortly after 9/11 it was Operation Greenquest, "the high-profile federal task force set up to target the financiers of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups." The aggressive, Customs-led task force was folded into Homeland Security, sending both the FBI and its minders at the Department of Justice into a tizzy. They "demanded that the White House instead give the FBI total control over Greenquest."
Who was stridently asking for control of Operation Greenquest?
Greenquest was created by former U.S. Customs chief Robert Bonner just after the September 11 terror attacks, Greenquest agents have conducted some of the Bush administration’s best-publicized and most controversial terrorist-finance cases—including a series of raids against the offices of Islamic charities in the Washington area last year...
FBI officials have derided Greenquest agents as a bunch of “cowboys” whose actions have undermined more important, long-range FBI investigations into terrorist financing. Greenquest sources in turn accuse the FBI of jealousy...
The FBI-Justice move, pushed by DOJ Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, has enraged Homeland Security officials, however. They accuse the bureau of sabotaging Greenquest investigations—by failing to turn over critical information to their agents—and trying to obscure a decadelong record of lethargy in which FBI offices failed to aggressively pursue terror-finance cases.
“They [the FBI] won’t share anything with us,” said a Homeland Security official. “Then they go to the White House and they accuse us of not sharing … If they can’t take it over, they want to kill it.”
One prime example of the tension is the investigation into Ptech, the Boston-area computer software firm that had millions of dollars in sensitive government contracts with the Air Force, the Energy Department and, ironically enough, the FBI. In what turned into a minor embarrassment for the bureau, the firm’s main investors included Yasin Al-Qadi, a wealthy Saudi businessman whom the Bush administration had formally designated a terrorist financier under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Al-Qadi has vigorously denied any connection to terrorism.
The Ptech case turned into an ugly dispute last year when company whistleblowers told Greenquest agents about their own suspicions about the firm’s owners. Sources close to the case say those same whistleblowers had first approached FBI agents, but the bureau apparently did little or nothing in response. With backing from the National Security Council, Greenquest agents then mounted a full-scale investigation that culminated in a raid on the company’s office last December. After getting wind of the Greenquest probe, the FBI stepped in and unsuccessfully tried to take control of the case.
It's nice to know Michael Chertoff no longer has to work so hard to keep a lid on all the unpleasantness.
It's hard to find much on Al-Qadi that's recent on the web. A lot of the original links seemed to have been purged. Time passes; servers do get cleaned out.
Still, if you play with Google, you can find this:
Ptech's customers included sensitive government and intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the Air Force. "But until last fall," the GLOBE reported on Jan. 22, 2003, "few seemed aware an early financial backer of Ptech was Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman named as a suspected terrorist financier by the Bush Administration in October 2001." ...
The tale begins almost right after the 9/11 attack, when, in October of 2001, handful of ex-Ptech employees alerted the FBI to evidence indicating that the firm had Saudi terror connections ...
Almost a year later the Boston FBI had still done nothing about it. They had, in fact, shut down their cursory investigation and taken no action ...
Thus Ptech was still operating at the highest levels of American society in the Spring of 2002, when the firm showed up hustling business at the door of Wall Street's JP Morgan Chase. The question is "why?" ...
Indira Singh, who later became a whistleblower, was an unwitting eyewitness to the "train wreck."
"I invited Ptech to come down and give a presentation and a customized demo to JP Morgan Chase," states Singh, who was a consultant to the bank on "risk architecture," an arcane software specialty which calculates enterprise risk. In one of the story's many ironic twists, Singh was at the time designing a system to help JP Morgan Chase detect terrorist money laundering.
When Ptech showed up, Singh quickly realized that she was witnessing her worst fears about compromised security come true ...
Moreover, she learned, Yasin Al-Qadi had been fingered by the Bush Administration in October 2001, over six months before. So how was it that Ptech was still making presentations to top American companies six months later? ...
When Singh flew to Washington D.C. to meet some of the ex-Ptech employees to verify their allegations, she received another shock. "I met with five extraordinarily scared people. These people were scared for their lives, and for their families. Some were about to leave the country. They told me, 'Indira, you don't know who you're dealing with.'
Sadly, when she told us what happened next, it came as no surprise: When Singh alerted authorities, and her employer, what she encountered was the inexplicable wrath of a top Wall Street Bank, as well as an official wall of silence at the FBI ...
After talking to the Boston FBI, Singh said she had been ''shocked'' and ''frustrated'' to learn that the FBI had not alerted any of the government agencies using Ptech software that there were questions about the company's ties to suspected terrorist fund-raisers ...
When we first heard whistleblower Indira Singh tell her story it sounded so incredible that we would have found it unbelievable, except that we had already encountered stories like it in Venice, of witnesses bullied and intimidated by authorities into silence.
For example, the FBI was all over tenants at the Sandpiper Apartments across the street from the Venice Airport, to keep them from talking about Mohamed Atta's two-month long 'shack-up' with an American girlfriend named Amanda Keller.
In addition to warning Keller not to talk, a warning she took so seriously she left town and disappeared from view, FBI agents bullied and intimidated apartment residents who remembered the pair, and even the apartment manager of the complex, Charles Grapentine, an ex-marine, who told us grimly, "They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut. Nobody likes to hear that: that they didn't see something they know they saw."
Atta and Amanda's next door neighbor, a 50-year old housewife named Stephanie Frederickson, confirmed the apartment manager's remarks.
"The question they asked was always the same," she told us. "You aren't saying anything to anybody, are you?"
Now, it seems that FBI agents in Boston were engaged in equally-dubious behavior. Mistakes, malfeasance, and even missed opportunities to avert the Sept 11 attack... There's been a regular drumbeat of depressing news about the FBI.
Singh told us that disgruntled Boston FBI agents told her privately that their hands were tied on Ptech, because, they said, "Saudis have been given a free pass for 9/11."
"And that," says Singh, "is when I began to get really scared."''
Friday, March 11, 2005
Pravda
At the helm at the New York Times .
William E. Kennard was elected to the Board of Directors of The New York Times Company in 2001.
Mr. Kennard joined The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, in May 2001 as a managing director in the global telecommunications and media group. Before joining The Carlyle Group, Mr. Kennard served as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from November 1997 to January 2001.
Like you couldn't tell.
William E. Kennard was elected to the Board of Directors of The New York Times Company in 2001.
Mr. Kennard joined The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, in May 2001 as a managing director in the global telecommunications and media group. Before joining The Carlyle Group, Mr. Kennard served as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from November 1997 to January 2001.
Like you couldn't tell.
Mind Control and the U.S. Military (Part 1): We're Gonna Pump You Up
American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Oh, really? What I learned was more along the lines of this:
MDMA (3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a synthetic, psychoactive drug chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline...
Research in animals indicates that MDMA is neurotoxic; whether or not this is also true in humans is currently an area of intense investigation. MDMA can also be dangerous to health and, on rare occasions, lethal.
MDMA exerts its primary effects in the brain on neurons that use the chemical serotonin to communicate with other neurons. The serotonin system plays an important role in regulating mood, aggression, sexual activity, sleep, and sensitivity to pain...
Cognitive Effects
Chronic users of MDMA perform more poorly than nonusers on certain types of cognitive or memory tasks. Some of these effects may be due to the use of other drugs in combination with MDMA, among other factors.
Physical Effects
In high doses, MDMA can interfere with the body's ability to regulate temperature. This can lead to a sharp increase in body temperature (hyperthermia), resulting in liver, kidney, and cardiovascular system failure.
Because MDMA can interfere with its own metabolism (breakdown within the body), potentially harmful levels can be reached by repeated drug use within short intervals.
Users of MDMA face many of the same risks as users of other stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamines. These include increases in heart rate and blood pressure, a special risk for people with circulatory problems or heart disease, and other symptoms such as muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, faintness, and chills or sweating.
Psychological Effects
These can include confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, and severe anxiety. These problems can occur during and sometimes days or weeks after taking MDMA.
Neurotoxicity
Research in animals links MDMA exposure to long-term damage to neurons that are involved in mood, thinking, and judgment. A study in nonhuman primates showed that exposure to MDMA for only 4 days caused damage to serotonin nerve terminals that was evident 6 to 7 years later. While similar neurotoxicity has not been definitively shown in humans, the wealth of animal research indicating MDMA's damaging properties suggests that MDMA is not a safe drug for human consumption.
About the last thing I'd use to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Strangely enough, once the Iraq war got going, this got "officially retracted".
Ecstasy has a lot of interesting effects- and believe it, the larger scientific community has in no way retracted what we think about this drug. In fact, you can find a lot of free data- from the NIH, not the DoD, here.
I like this one:
"Ecstasy" (MDMA) and related drugs are amphetamine derivatives that also have some of the pharmacological properties of mescaline. They have become popular with participants in "raves," because they enhance energy, endurance, sociability and sexual arousal...
But these drugs also have serious toxic effects, both acute and chronic, that resemble those previously seen with other amphetamines and are caused by an excess of the same sympathomimetic actions for which the drugs are valued by the users. Neurotoxicity to the serotonergic system in the brain can also cause permanent physical and psychiatric problems. A detailed review of the literature has revealed over 87 "ecstasy"-related fatalities, caused by hyperpyrexia, rhabdomyolysis, intravascular coagulopathy, hepatic necrosis, cardiac arrhythmias, cerebrovascular accidents, and drug-related accidents or suicide. The toxic or even fatal dose range overlaps the range of recreational dosage. The available evidence does not yet permit an accurate assessment of the size of the problem presented by the use of these drugs.
-Harold Kalant, CMAJ. 2001 October 2; 165(7): 917–928.
A Canadian journal, mind you.
On the other hand, if I wanted to keep my troops wired, fired, bonded, and fighting crazy...
The use of psychotropic drugs in soldiers is not new.
In fact, these guys had great success with these in their war- until, of course, reality caught up with them.
The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Oh, really? What I learned was more along the lines of this:
MDMA (3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a synthetic, psychoactive drug chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline...
Research in animals indicates that MDMA is neurotoxic; whether or not this is also true in humans is currently an area of intense investigation. MDMA can also be dangerous to health and, on rare occasions, lethal.
MDMA exerts its primary effects in the brain on neurons that use the chemical serotonin to communicate with other neurons. The serotonin system plays an important role in regulating mood, aggression, sexual activity, sleep, and sensitivity to pain...
Cognitive Effects
Chronic users of MDMA perform more poorly than nonusers on certain types of cognitive or memory tasks. Some of these effects may be due to the use of other drugs in combination with MDMA, among other factors.
Physical Effects
In high doses, MDMA can interfere with the body's ability to regulate temperature. This can lead to a sharp increase in body temperature (hyperthermia), resulting in liver, kidney, and cardiovascular system failure.
Because MDMA can interfere with its own metabolism (breakdown within the body), potentially harmful levels can be reached by repeated drug use within short intervals.
Users of MDMA face many of the same risks as users of other stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamines. These include increases in heart rate and blood pressure, a special risk for people with circulatory problems or heart disease, and other symptoms such as muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, faintness, and chills or sweating.
Psychological Effects
These can include confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, and severe anxiety. These problems can occur during and sometimes days or weeks after taking MDMA.
Neurotoxicity
Research in animals links MDMA exposure to long-term damage to neurons that are involved in mood, thinking, and judgment. A study in nonhuman primates showed that exposure to MDMA for only 4 days caused damage to serotonin nerve terminals that was evident 6 to 7 years later. While similar neurotoxicity has not been definitively shown in humans, the wealth of animal research indicating MDMA's damaging properties suggests that MDMA is not a safe drug for human consumption.
About the last thing I'd use to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Strangely enough, once the Iraq war got going, this got "officially retracted".
Ecstasy has a lot of interesting effects- and believe it, the larger scientific community has in no way retracted what we think about this drug. In fact, you can find a lot of free data- from the NIH, not the DoD, here.
I like this one:
"Ecstasy" (MDMA) and related drugs are amphetamine derivatives that also have some of the pharmacological properties of mescaline. They have become popular with participants in "raves," because they enhance energy, endurance, sociability and sexual arousal...
But these drugs also have serious toxic effects, both acute and chronic, that resemble those previously seen with other amphetamines and are caused by an excess of the same sympathomimetic actions for which the drugs are valued by the users. Neurotoxicity to the serotonergic system in the brain can also cause permanent physical and psychiatric problems. A detailed review of the literature has revealed over 87 "ecstasy"-related fatalities, caused by hyperpyrexia, rhabdomyolysis, intravascular coagulopathy, hepatic necrosis, cardiac arrhythmias, cerebrovascular accidents, and drug-related accidents or suicide. The toxic or even fatal dose range overlaps the range of recreational dosage. The available evidence does not yet permit an accurate assessment of the size of the problem presented by the use of these drugs.
-Harold Kalant, CMAJ. 2001 October 2; 165(7): 917–928.
A Canadian journal, mind you.
On the other hand, if I wanted to keep my troops wired, fired, bonded, and fighting crazy...
The use of psychotropic drugs in soldiers is not new.
In fact, these guys had great success with these in their war- until, of course, reality caught up with them.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Evolution and Entropy
Think of it this way: which requires more food- a cold blooded 300 lbs crocodile that eats every week, or a warm blooded 300 lbs tiger that eats every day?
Both are highly evolved; but from our perspective, the more advanced tiger beats the croc every time. This is because the tiger has specialized in a set of tools that enable it to use more of its environment's energy. Here, the energy is in the form of the living material that constitute its prey.
All energy in our biosphere derives from the sun.
At some point, a billion years ago on a world where the core is constantly torn between the gravitational influence of a large moon and its solar primary, water oscillates wildly between gas, liquid, and solid phase. The churning, electrostatically charged atmosphere and the turbulent heated mantle interact at the surface, releasing energy that provided an environment where organic molecules could stabily replicate themselves. The molecules that formed complexes that did it the best used the energy in the environment to release heat.
Only a few of the infinite combinations did this well, so they predominated. The ones that survived best in this world were those that were able to propagate an advantage for themselves, and so the long road to evolution began. This evolutionary process is driven by entropy, because the more evolved organisms have an advantage over their resource competitors that enable them to better utilize their environment and propagate themselves through space and time.
The ones that are less efficient soon cease to exist- or find a niche that no longer competes with the organisms with the selective advantage.
From the acquisition of mitochondria to utilize oxygen in eukaryotes, to the aquisition of chloroplasts in plants, to the development of multicellularity, or a backbone, or the ability to use air as an oxygen source, each mutation that survives confers an advantage to the organism.
There are poor mutations that confer disadvantage that are quickly weeded ot.
There are mutations that are neither helpful nor a problem: and the genetic mechanism is again selected that retains these diverse elements in the population against the day an ice age begins, or insolation increases or decreases, or some unforseen novel event makes a neutral mutation bouncing around the gene pool a sudden advantage.
And again, what constitutes an advantage in the Jungle of Life? A trait that enables an organism to better utilize the energy present in the environment for survival and propagation. Living systems must use an energy source to run their bodies that releases free energy, creates heat, and increases entropy. This is called the Gibbs Free Energy relation: dG = dH - T(dS).
Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds directly from their simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure in its predictions, it only demands a "spreading out" of energy in all processes.
In short: evolution, like life itself, requires an increase in entropy and is always accompanied by an increase in entropy.
It's just that the laws of thermodynamics that make most macroscopic events possible are such a given in our perception of the universe that we don't have to write them down.
This has to do with most of the silly things Creationists say.
Take, for example, their confusion about phenomena like the Sun. A creationist will point at the Sun and say there's surely an example that the Will of God violates all our scientific mumbo-jumbo. I say it's more a case of the misunderstanding of the ignorant being unable to decipher what the mumbo-jumbo means.
The laws of thermodynamics- or gravity- or evolution- are manifestations of the special cases of the natural laws that a Newton or a Darwin could percieve in our 4 dimensional universe.
A particle physicist would tell you that there are more dimensions than 4 that make up our universe. Exactly how many is something for people that understand the math to argue about. A big problem is that we're limited to the scale of the universe we can intuitively grasp, and by what the neuronal wetware in even the brightest of our skulls can process.
Presumably if intelligence keeps getting selected for, we'll keep getting smarter- or at least the ones of us that survive to reproduce will.
But something like the Sun or any thermonuclear reaction is a great example of a macroscopic event that's heavily dependent of those quantum dimensional interactions.
Energy isn't created- but the particle interactions on a scale we're incapable of intuitively understanding make the energy release inevitable.
[ posted as a comment to a post of DarkSyd's ]
Both are highly evolved; but from our perspective, the more advanced tiger beats the croc every time. This is because the tiger has specialized in a set of tools that enable it to use more of its environment's energy. Here, the energy is in the form of the living material that constitute its prey.
All energy in our biosphere derives from the sun.
At some point, a billion years ago on a world where the core is constantly torn between the gravitational influence of a large moon and its solar primary, water oscillates wildly between gas, liquid, and solid phase. The churning, electrostatically charged atmosphere and the turbulent heated mantle interact at the surface, releasing energy that provided an environment where organic molecules could stabily replicate themselves. The molecules that formed complexes that did it the best used the energy in the environment to release heat.
Only a few of the infinite combinations did this well, so they predominated. The ones that survived best in this world were those that were able to propagate an advantage for themselves, and so the long road to evolution began. This evolutionary process is driven by entropy, because the more evolved organisms have an advantage over their resource competitors that enable them to better utilize their environment and propagate themselves through space and time.
The ones that are less efficient soon cease to exist- or find a niche that no longer competes with the organisms with the selective advantage.
From the acquisition of mitochondria to utilize oxygen in eukaryotes, to the aquisition of chloroplasts in plants, to the development of multicellularity, or a backbone, or the ability to use air as an oxygen source, each mutation that survives confers an advantage to the organism.
There are poor mutations that confer disadvantage that are quickly weeded ot.
There are mutations that are neither helpful nor a problem: and the genetic mechanism is again selected that retains these diverse elements in the population against the day an ice age begins, or insolation increases or decreases, or some unforseen novel event makes a neutral mutation bouncing around the gene pool a sudden advantage.
And again, what constitutes an advantage in the Jungle of Life? A trait that enables an organism to better utilize the energy present in the environment for survival and propagation. Living systems must use an energy source to run their bodies that releases free energy, creates heat, and increases entropy. This is called the Gibbs Free Energy relation: dG = dH - T(dS).
Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds directly from their simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure in its predictions, it only demands a "spreading out" of energy in all processes.
In short: evolution, like life itself, requires an increase in entropy and is always accompanied by an increase in entropy.
It's just that the laws of thermodynamics that make most macroscopic events possible are such a given in our perception of the universe that we don't have to write them down.
This has to do with most of the silly things Creationists say.
Take, for example, their confusion about phenomena like the Sun. A creationist will point at the Sun and say there's surely an example that the Will of God violates all our scientific mumbo-jumbo. I say it's more a case of the misunderstanding of the ignorant being unable to decipher what the mumbo-jumbo means.
The laws of thermodynamics- or gravity- or evolution- are manifestations of the special cases of the natural laws that a Newton or a Darwin could percieve in our 4 dimensional universe.
A particle physicist would tell you that there are more dimensions than 4 that make up our universe. Exactly how many is something for people that understand the math to argue about. A big problem is that we're limited to the scale of the universe we can intuitively grasp, and by what the neuronal wetware in even the brightest of our skulls can process.
Presumably if intelligence keeps getting selected for, we'll keep getting smarter- or at least the ones of us that survive to reproduce will.
But something like the Sun or any thermonuclear reaction is a great example of a macroscopic event that's heavily dependent of those quantum dimensional interactions.
Energy isn't created- but the particle interactions on a scale we're incapable of intuitively understanding make the energy release inevitable.
[ posted as a comment to a post of DarkSyd's ]
It's Against the Law to do Business with Iran.
It's Treason, even.
Unless, of course, you're Halliburton.
U.S. companies aren't supposed to do business here.
Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars, which an Iranian government spokesman said "served the interests" of Iran.
"I am baffled that any American company would want to have employees operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I would think they'd be ashamed."
Halliburton says the operation — videotaped by NBC News — is entirely legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in Iran under strict conditions.
Other U.S. oil services companies, like Weatherford and Baker Hughes, also are in Iran. And foreign subsidiaries of NBC's parent company, General Electric, have sold equipment to Iran, though the company says it will make no more sales...
For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign subsidiary operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas. Yet, when an NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to company officials in Dubai. But they said only Halliburton headquarters in Houston could talk about operations in Iran.
Once again, some of us animals are more equal than others.
Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.
Unless, of course, you're Halliburton.
U.S. companies aren't supposed to do business here.
Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars, which an Iranian government spokesman said "served the interests" of Iran.
"I am baffled that any American company would want to have employees operating in Iran," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "I would think they'd be ashamed."
Halliburton says the operation — videotaped by NBC News — is entirely legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in Iran under strict conditions.
Other U.S. oil services companies, like Weatherford and Baker Hughes, also are in Iran. And foreign subsidiaries of NBC's parent company, General Electric, have sold equipment to Iran, though the company says it will make no more sales...
For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign subsidiary operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas. Yet, when an NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to company officials in Dubai. But they said only Halliburton headquarters in Houston could talk about operations in Iran.
Once again, some of us animals are more equal than others.
Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
What the NeoTheoCons Don't Want You to Know
Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are restricted to those that can be inferred from confirmable data—the results obtained through observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists. Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based on empirical evidence are not a part of science.
The National Academy of Science is so concerned about fundamentalists destroying the educational base of this country they've put a whole textbook, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science online.
It's totally free, very easy to read, and very enjoyable.
If the natural world, facts, and the reason why rational thought works is at all appealing to you.
Read it. Point it out to a friend. It's got nice graphics that can, of course, be exploded for close examination by clicking on the image.
And if you didn't know this stuff, you might walk away from it feeling a little more rational.
And if you do know this stuff, you will appreciate the reason in the world even more.
The National Academy of Science is so concerned about fundamentalists destroying the educational base of this country they've put a whole textbook, Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science online.
It's totally free, very easy to read, and very enjoyable.
If the natural world, facts, and the reason why rational thought works is at all appealing to you.
Read it. Point it out to a friend. It's got nice graphics that can, of course, be exploded for close examination by clicking on the image.
And if you didn't know this stuff, you might walk away from it feeling a little more rational.
And if you do know this stuff, you will appreciate the reason in the world even more.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
The PNAC-AEI Delegate at the UN
President George W. Bush just tapped a man known for hating the United Nations to serve as U.S. ambassador to the UN...
He began excoriating evil in the Reagan administration when, despite a lack of experience in developing countries, he held a series of posts in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) before winding up as one of Attorney General Edwin Meese's top aides.
In that capacity, he resisted all efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department role in the Iran-Contra affair, as well as efforts by Sen. John Kerry to investigate drug and gun-running by the Nicaraguan contras in the mid-1980s.
His effectiveness gained him a promotion under President H.W. Bush to the position of assistant secretary of state for international organizations, a post he held until 1993 when he joined first the right-wing Manhattan Institute and then the neoconservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute (AEI)...
In the summer of 2001, he shocked foreign delegations and non-governmental organizations at the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons when he announced that Washington would oppose any attempt to regulate the trade in firearms or non-military rifles or any other effort that would "abrogat (e) the constitutional right to bear arms."
He played a similar role several months later when, amid the public shock that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare, Bolton single-handedly sabotaged a UN meeting to forge an international verification protocol designed to put teeth into a treaty on bioweapons...
Bolton was also engaged in a lengthy argument with U.S. intelligence agencies over his public charge that Cuba had an offensive biological warfare program. His assertion became an embarrassment after anonymous intelligence officials and retired senior military officers—including the former head of the U.S. Southern Command—told the media that no such evidence existed and charged that Bolton was politicizing intelligence.
In July 2003, Bolton was poised to testify to Congress that Syria's alleged programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction had developed to such an extent that they threatened regional stability, an assertion that reportedly provoked a ''revolt'' by U.S. intelligence analysts, who insisted that the evidence did not warrant such a conclusion...
What a career.
And an on-the-record liar to the Senate about the presence of WMD in Syria.
Fortunately, at the time there were still enough honest people in the CIA to stop this disinformation train before it got out of the station.
There still are; unfortunately their careers- if not their lives- are now at risk if they don't play the game: praise democracy while killing it..
He began excoriating evil in the Reagan administration when, despite a lack of experience in developing countries, he held a series of posts in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) before winding up as one of Attorney General Edwin Meese's top aides.
In that capacity, he resisted all efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department role in the Iran-Contra affair, as well as efforts by Sen. John Kerry to investigate drug and gun-running by the Nicaraguan contras in the mid-1980s.
His effectiveness gained him a promotion under President H.W. Bush to the position of assistant secretary of state for international organizations, a post he held until 1993 when he joined first the right-wing Manhattan Institute and then the neoconservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute (AEI)...
In the summer of 2001, he shocked foreign delegations and non-governmental organizations at the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons when he announced that Washington would oppose any attempt to regulate the trade in firearms or non-military rifles or any other effort that would "abrogat (e) the constitutional right to bear arms."
He played a similar role several months later when, amid the public shock that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax scare, Bolton single-handedly sabotaged a UN meeting to forge an international verification protocol designed to put teeth into a treaty on bioweapons...
Bolton was also engaged in a lengthy argument with U.S. intelligence agencies over his public charge that Cuba had an offensive biological warfare program. His assertion became an embarrassment after anonymous intelligence officials and retired senior military officers—including the former head of the U.S. Southern Command—told the media that no such evidence existed and charged that Bolton was politicizing intelligence.
In July 2003, Bolton was poised to testify to Congress that Syria's alleged programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction had developed to such an extent that they threatened regional stability, an assertion that reportedly provoked a ''revolt'' by U.S. intelligence analysts, who insisted that the evidence did not warrant such a conclusion...
What a career.
And an on-the-record liar to the Senate about the presence of WMD in Syria.
Fortunately, at the time there were still enough honest people in the CIA to stop this disinformation train before it got out of the station.
There still are; unfortunately their careers- if not their lives- are now at risk if they don't play the game: praise democracy while killing it..
More Faces Behind the Curtain.
Meet Morton Blackwell.
Blackwell, as it turns out, is one of the founding members of the ugly side of the American Conservative movement. He was there at the creation with jokers like Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley, and Phyllis Schlafly. His "non-partisan" Leadership Institute has trained thousands of conservative footsoldiers, including Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed...
This guy Blackwell is a long time GOP operative. Started as a Young Republican and since the 70's has run an outfit called the Leadership Institute... who gave him the $8,230,655 budget they spent in 2000 grooming young people to train tens of thousands of students to be GOP activists?
And...
Blackwell was executive director of the College Republican National Committee from 1965 to 1970, back when it became a school for Nixonian dirty tricks that turned out Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Terry Dolan, and Roger Stone...
In 1979, Blackwell founded the Leadership Institute, which has been devoted for 25 years to turning out right-wing activists and journalists. Karl Rove is its best-known graduate.
So Rove trained in two groups run by this guy? And Blackwell's another member of the Council on National Policy whose stated aim is to reshape America in their image.
What do these guy want to do?
Founded in 1981, its first president was Tim LaHaye famed millenialist preacher and writer of the Left Behind series of popular books about the "end-times" and the Second Coming of Christ...
...affiliated with the John Birch Society...
...subsidizing efforts to prove blacks are genetically inferior to whites.
...replace American law with "biblical law.
into trashing the U.S. Constitution and replacing it with the harsh legal code of the Old Testament. They advocate the death penalty for adulterers, blasphemers, incorrigible teenagers, gay people, "witches" and those who worship "false gods."
Trainers of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. Major fund raisers for the Wrepublicans. Using cyberspace and the blogsphere in their attack on free speech . It's who we're fighting. The real traitors to the American Dream of personal freedon, the pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, and justice for all.
The American Taliban.
Blackwell, as it turns out, is one of the founding members of the ugly side of the American Conservative movement. He was there at the creation with jokers like Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley, and Phyllis Schlafly. His "non-partisan" Leadership Institute has trained thousands of conservative footsoldiers, including Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed...
This guy Blackwell is a long time GOP operative. Started as a Young Republican and since the 70's has run an outfit called the Leadership Institute... who gave him the $8,230,655 budget they spent in 2000 grooming young people to train tens of thousands of students to be GOP activists?
And...
Blackwell was executive director of the College Republican National Committee from 1965 to 1970, back when it became a school for Nixonian dirty tricks that turned out Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Terry Dolan, and Roger Stone...
In 1979, Blackwell founded the Leadership Institute, which has been devoted for 25 years to turning out right-wing activists and journalists. Karl Rove is its best-known graduate.
So Rove trained in two groups run by this guy? And Blackwell's another member of the Council on National Policy whose stated aim is to reshape America in their image.
What do these guy want to do?
Founded in 1981, its first president was Tim LaHaye famed millenialist preacher and writer of the Left Behind series of popular books about the "end-times" and the Second Coming of Christ...
...affiliated with the John Birch Society...
...subsidizing efforts to prove blacks are genetically inferior to whites.
...replace American law with "biblical law.
into trashing the U.S. Constitution and replacing it with the harsh legal code of the Old Testament. They advocate the death penalty for adulterers, blasphemers, incorrigible teenagers, gay people, "witches" and those who worship "false gods."
Trainers of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. Major fund raisers for the Wrepublicans. Using cyberspace and the blogsphere in their attack on free speech . It's who we're fighting. The real traitors to the American Dream of personal freedon, the pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, and justice for all.
The American Taliban.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Hydrogen on the cheap.
Pharyngula points to this:
The hydrogenosome is a special organelle found in eukaryotic microbes as well as some fungi that like to live in poor oxygen environments.
In order to generate energy for the cell, it oxidizes pyruvate and releases hydrogen and produces ATP. Sound familiar? In fact, hydrogenosomes have an uncanny likeness to mitochondria--not only do both organelles produce ATP, but morphologically they are similar--they are both surrounded by a double membrane and they both compartmentalize their different metabolic functions.
The only big difference between the two is that hydrogenosomes use the anaerobic (fermentative) pathway while mitochondria use the aerobic pathway (Krebs cycle).
Some of us like to splice and dice genomes.
When asked whether there was any chance of putting a hydrogenosome in a blue-green algae (or maybe better a eukaryote algae?) and coupling photosynthesis to hydrogen generation- creating a commercially viable fuel source-producing recombinant, Syaffolee suggests a better alternative would be the cultivation of a naturally occuring green algae, Scenedesmus.
The significance of all this is that we don't need to burn fossil fuels to generate hydrogen fuels for automobiles or industry.
We could cultivate specific strains of algae that use photosynthesis to generate hydrogen on their own. Or engineer improvements in these microorganisms to get it on an industrial production line.
It means cheap energy to fuel industrial growth about as expensive as sunlight once the process is worked out.
That's why Bu$hCo wants to suppress science.
The hydrogenosome is a special organelle found in eukaryotic microbes as well as some fungi that like to live in poor oxygen environments.
In order to generate energy for the cell, it oxidizes pyruvate and releases hydrogen and produces ATP. Sound familiar? In fact, hydrogenosomes have an uncanny likeness to mitochondria--not only do both organelles produce ATP, but morphologically they are similar--they are both surrounded by a double membrane and they both compartmentalize their different metabolic functions.
The only big difference between the two is that hydrogenosomes use the anaerobic (fermentative) pathway while mitochondria use the aerobic pathway (Krebs cycle).
Some of us like to splice and dice genomes.
When asked whether there was any chance of putting a hydrogenosome in a blue-green algae (or maybe better a eukaryote algae?) and coupling photosynthesis to hydrogen generation- creating a commercially viable fuel source-producing recombinant, Syaffolee suggests a better alternative would be the cultivation of a naturally occuring green algae, Scenedesmus.
The significance of all this is that we don't need to burn fossil fuels to generate hydrogen fuels for automobiles or industry.
We could cultivate specific strains of algae that use photosynthesis to generate hydrogen on their own. Or engineer improvements in these microorganisms to get it on an industrial production line.
It means cheap energy to fuel industrial growth about as expensive as sunlight once the process is worked out.
That's why Bu$hCo wants to suppress science.
Overwhelmed
the Associated Press quoted Goss as saying, "The jobs that I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal... I'm a little amazed at the workload." Goss also reportedly said there was such "ambiguity" in the intel-reform bill that he didn't know what his official relationship was supposed to be with John Negroponte, the newly named director of National Intelligence....
I'm sure Black Spot will help him out with that.
I'm sure Black Spot will help him out with that.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Greenspan is a NeoTheoCon Hack
Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt. On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid...
Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit. In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.
To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth." Really? America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes higher than the one we face today. According to the administration's own estimates, Mr. Bush's second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of G.D.P. since the Truman administration. And don't forget that President Clinton's 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom. Why, exactly, are tax increases out of the question?
Aside from the fact that all the robber barons are making wheelbarrows full money, and their loving sycophants think they are getting ahead (Ponzi scheme, anyone?), we know why.
Rove knows that to force the reactionary order, Bush must borrow. He must place a millstone around the necks of the next generation of government, and then make it so that to make those payments, the Republicans must be in charge.
If the Democrats take the presidency by accident, the Republican Congress will merely stop doing the behind the scenes financial juggling - of budget borrowing, shuffling of money between accounts, raising the debt ceiling, passing huge unfunded mandates - that keep the economy alive.
There will, in such a case, be a massive recession, and the Republicans will take power again. The government will become a massive protection racket, with the public held hostage...
Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit. In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.
To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false. And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth." Really? America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes higher than the one we face today. According to the administration's own estimates, Mr. Bush's second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of G.D.P. since the Truman administration. And don't forget that President Clinton's 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom. Why, exactly, are tax increases out of the question?
Aside from the fact that all the robber barons are making wheelbarrows full money, and their loving sycophants think they are getting ahead (Ponzi scheme, anyone?), we know why.
Rove knows that to force the reactionary order, Bush must borrow. He must place a millstone around the necks of the next generation of government, and then make it so that to make those payments, the Republicans must be in charge.
If the Democrats take the presidency by accident, the Republican Congress will merely stop doing the behind the scenes financial juggling - of budget borrowing, shuffling of money between accounts, raising the debt ceiling, passing huge unfunded mandates - that keep the economy alive.
There will, in such a case, be a massive recession, and the Republicans will take power again. The government will become a massive protection racket, with the public held hostage...
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Would You Buy a Used Currency from this ManDate?
Bonddad at Kos notes our Asian bondholders are getting a little uneasy about Bu$hCo's long term economic strategery .
Perhaps that's why Bu$hCo has decided to push for Wolfie to head up the IMF.
Asian regimes who don't tow the line know they would face repercussions with Wolfie in charge.
Which might be a workable- if unethical and evil- approach for the little guys.
But China could care less.
China currently is lending the US the money to buy Chinese production.
For example, as the "boom" of President George W Bush takes off, puzzled American commentators are asking where are all the extra jobs that the apparently positive indicators should be creating. In fact, they are being created abroad - mostly in China.
China recycles trade surplus into US Treasury bonds
American companies may have forgotten what Henry Ford propounded when he first built his Model T: If you do not pay high enough wages to your workers, they can't afford to buy your product. One simple basis for that Bush boom is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the US back into dollars, and especially into US Treasury bonds. Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.
One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.
If the Chinese don't care, and are sympathetic, and have an increasingly strong economy, do we really think the Little Tigers would rather deal with us?
While our currency value is tanking?
Again, is our current government totally clueless or the most corrupt in American history? Or both?
So Bu$hCo's pushing either Wolfie or the woman who ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground.
Which would you like to run your henhouse- a Wolf or a Hyena?
Perhaps that's why Bu$hCo has decided to push for Wolfie to head up the IMF.
Asian regimes who don't tow the line know they would face repercussions with Wolfie in charge.
Which might be a workable- if unethical and evil- approach for the little guys.
But China could care less.
China currently is lending the US the money to buy Chinese production.
For example, as the "boom" of President George W Bush takes off, puzzled American commentators are asking where are all the extra jobs that the apparently positive indicators should be creating. In fact, they are being created abroad - mostly in China.
China recycles trade surplus into US Treasury bonds
American companies may have forgotten what Henry Ford propounded when he first built his Model T: If you do not pay high enough wages to your workers, they can't afford to buy your product. One simple basis for that Bush boom is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the US back into dollars, and especially into US Treasury bonds. Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.
One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.
If the Chinese don't care, and are sympathetic, and have an increasingly strong economy, do we really think the Little Tigers would rather deal with us?
While our currency value is tanking?
Again, is our current government totally clueless or the most corrupt in American history? Or both?
So Bu$hCo's pushing either Wolfie or the woman who ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground.
Which would you like to run your henhouse- a Wolf or a Hyena?
Either the Most Corrupt or Most Clueless Administration in American History
You choose.
Bill Maher on Gannon. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's hilarious. And all true.
Also, Tom Tomorrow has a good take on it.
Bill Maher on Gannon. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's hilarious. And all true.
Also, Tom Tomorrow has a good take on it.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
A Thousand Princes in the Sand
How can the Government of Saudi Arabia be both supporting terrorism and the careers of the Bu$h family?
I think there's some confusion among those equating a Government to the Rule of Law.
In some societies, Government means Who Has the Strongest Arms.
Oligarchy is a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. In Saudi Arabia, the few are the royal princes who are descendents of the founder of the modern Saudi Kingdom, King Abd Al-Aziz bin Sa'ud who, upon his death in 1953, left behind 44 sons (and an uncounted number of daughters) by 17 wives.
The Saudi royal oligarchy is a unique and unprecedented form of oligarchy, whose members are connected through a bloodline to Saudi Arabia's polygamous founder. The ruling princes have treated the country's wealth of oil as their personal domain and some have made themselves famous, or notorious, for their extravagant life style and uncontrolled squandering of national assets...
Th seven brothers still hold the majority of political power. However, six of the brothers are in their 70s and King Fahd himself is 82. It stands to reason that in the not too distant future, a new generation of princes, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, will compete for the top positions of power, and the competition could be destabilizing and, perhaps, even brutal...
...fewer than six dozen princes, accountable only to themselves, control the lives and well-being of 22 million Saudis.
What happens when so many Princes have a line on controlling a quarter of the world's oil?
There's Chaos.
And Corruption.
And Hubris.
And Intrigue .
And Disaster for those caught up in the game.
I think there's some confusion among those equating a Government to the Rule of Law.
In some societies, Government means Who Has the Strongest Arms.
Oligarchy is a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. In Saudi Arabia, the few are the royal princes who are descendents of the founder of the modern Saudi Kingdom, King Abd Al-Aziz bin Sa'ud who, upon his death in 1953, left behind 44 sons (and an uncounted number of daughters) by 17 wives.
The Saudi royal oligarchy is a unique and unprecedented form of oligarchy, whose members are connected through a bloodline to Saudi Arabia's polygamous founder. The ruling princes have treated the country's wealth of oil as their personal domain and some have made themselves famous, or notorious, for their extravagant life style and uncontrolled squandering of national assets...
Th seven brothers still hold the majority of political power. However, six of the brothers are in their 70s and King Fahd himself is 82. It stands to reason that in the not too distant future, a new generation of princes, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, will compete for the top positions of power, and the competition could be destabilizing and, perhaps, even brutal...
...fewer than six dozen princes, accountable only to themselves, control the lives and well-being of 22 million Saudis.
What happens when so many Princes have a line on controlling a quarter of the world's oil?
There's Chaos.
And Corruption.
And Hubris.
And Intrigue .
And Disaster for those caught up in the game.
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