The Iron Law

Jonathan Schwarz explains much of the madness leading to the fall of the republic:

...the Democrats operate according to the Iron Law of Institutions. The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.

I'll get to back momentarily to today's Democrats, but first it's useful to look at how the Iron Law plays out in other cases. At the country level, Saddam Hussein is an extreme example: during his thirty years in power, he made choices that led to the obliteration of Iraq—not because there was nothing else he could have done, but because choices that would have strengthened Iraq would have made him less individually powerful within Iraq. And this is a constant occurrence in the history of dictators. When Stalin purged many of the Red Army's most competent officers in the late thirties it made the Soviet Union itself far weaker—in particular, more vulnerable to a Nazi invasion—but what mattered to Stalin was eliminating internal rivals to his power. The same dynamic is displayed in less virulent form with Bush and Cheney: whenever they've had to choose between sharing power with others within a stronger America, and holding more power within a weaker America, they've chosen the latter...

Sometimes Even Paranoids Have Real Enemies

It should surprise no one that England’s Special Branch — the police intelligence unit — was watching George Orwell during most of his adult life. It is certainly what Orwell, a student of political paranoia, would have expected.

The file on Orwell, released earlier this week by Britain’s National Archives, is also a testament both to the British sense of convention and a tolerance for eccentricity. According to one sergeant, Orwell’s habit of dressing “in Bohemian fashion,” revealed that the writer was a Communist, a conclusion that will seem strange to anyone who has read “Animal Farm.” ...

Dissent Within the Ranks

I caught this story first from Intranets, and what follows are some thoughts to his post (and Sarah's) at Correntewire:

Having lived within the blast and fallout zone outside the Bangor sub base on Puget Sound, it doesn’t surprise me that nukes would be above us or around us without our knowing it. Routinely.

Look up the Nike missile program sometime…

For the D.o’D. to “lose track” of them at any level, and admit it immediately is a sign Something Really Weird is going on.

So if an officially non-nuclear nuke is used against, I dunno why I say this, maybe Iran, is it still nukular?

Does CNN report it as nuking Tehran if the D.o’D. won’t acknowledge it as a real nuke? And say if for example, someone decides to nuke us right back, is the strike back on us “unprovoked” if Dear Leader won’t acknowledge our strike in the first place?

If planes can be flown into buildings without the D.o’D. knowing about it, can fission cruise missiles be fired on Iran without them knowing about it either? Or for that matter, on America?

Larry Johnson sez:

...I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.

Larry seems to be on to something. This was a leak from within the belly of the Beast. Not everyone in the Company digs the Cheneyburton WWIII schtick.

Implausible Deniability

Dear Leader plays the "What, Me Worry?" facade again to avoid blame for his mistakes, and basically allows The New York Pravda to paint him as a chimpish village idiot once more.

Unfortunately, this depiction does not hold true. For one thing, he left a paper trail that suggests otherwise.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.

“We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished,” Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would “parallel this step with an even more robust measure” to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. “Your leadership is apparent,” the president wrote. “You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

On the same day, Mr. Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military...

It is consistently the hardest fact for any of Bu$hie's critics- or supporters- to accept. Chaos has been the plan in Iraq all along. You don't get accused of genocide if you create the conditions that allow a people to commit suicide.

It is far more rational to accuse Bu$hCo of blinding stupidity than chthonic evil.

However, there comes a point where a reasonable use of Occam's razor suggests the premises are invalid. Perhaps, indeed, Dear Leader is:

.. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. He emits more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know.

But in the end, is not evil pure idiocy?

What the Witch-Sight Reveals

Chris Floyd sees it. Not the world your television shows you, but a vision of the Otherworld:

...The annus horribilis of 2007 has turned out to be a year of triumph for the Bush Faction -- the hit men who delivered the coup de grâce to the long-moribund Republic. Bush was written off as a lame duck after the Democrat's November 2006 election "triumph" (in fact, the narrowest of victories eked out despite an orgy of cheating and fixing by the losers), and the subsequent salvo of Establishment consensus from the Iraq Study Group, advocating a de-escalation of the war in Iraq. Then came a series of scandals, investigations, high-profile resignations, even the criminal conviction of a top White House official. But despite all this -- and abysmal poll ratings as well -- over the past eight months Bush and his coupsters have seen every single element of their violent tyranny confirmed, countenanced and extended.



The war which we were told the Democrats and ISG consensus would end or wind down has of course been escalated to its greatest level yet -- more troops, more airstrikes, more mercenaries, more Iraqi captives swelling the mammoth prison camps of the occupying power, more instability destroying the very fabric of Iraqi society. The patently illegal surveillance programs of the authoritarian regime have now been codified into law by the Democratic Congress, which has also let stand the evisceration of habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, and a raft of other liberty-stripping laws, rules, regulations and executive orders. Bush's self-proclaimed arbitrary power to seize American citizens (and others) without charge and hold them indefinitely -- even kill them -- has likewise been unchallenged by the legislators. Bush has brazenly defied Congressional subpoenas -- and even arbitrarily stripped the Justice Department of the power to enforce them -- to no other reaction than a stern promise from Democratic leaders to "look further into this matter." His spokesmen -- and his "signing statements" -- now openly proclaim his utter disdain for representative government, and assert at every turn his sovereign right to "interpret" -- or ignore -- legislation as he wishes. He retains the right to "interpret" just which interrogation techniques are classified as torture and which are not, while his concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay and his secret CIA prisons -- where those "strenuous" techniques are practiced -- remain open. His increasingly brazen drive to war with Iran has already been endorsed unanimously by the Senate and overwhelmingly by the House, both of which have embraced the specious casus belli concocted by the Bush Regime. And to come full circle, Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin are now praising the "military success" of the Iraq escalation -- despite the evident failure of its stated goals by every single measure, including troop deaths, civilian deaths, security, infrastructure, political cohesion and regional stability. This emerging "bipartisan consensus" on the military situation in Iraq (or rather, this utter fantasy concealing a rapidly deteriorating reality) makes it certain that the September "progress report" will be greeted as a justification for continuing the "surge" in one form or another.



It is, by any measure, a remarkable achievement, one of the greatest political feats ever. Despite Bush's standing as one of the most despised presidents in American history, despite a Congress in control of the opposition party, despite a solid majority opposed to his policies and his war, despite an Administration riddled with scandal and crime, despite the glaring rot in the nation's infrastructure and the callous abandonment of one of the nation's major cities to natural disaster and crony greed -- despite all of this, and much more that would have brought down or mortally wounded any government in a democratic country, the Bush Administration is now in a far stronger position than it was a year ago.

How can this be? The answer is simple: the United States is no longer a democratic country, or even a degraded semblance of one...



Again, look at the facts, the reality: Bush wants Congressional approval of his illegal surveillance; he gets it. Bush wants to launch spy satellites against the American people; he does it. Bush wants concentration camps and secret prisons with torture; he's got them. Bush wants to escalate a ruinous, murderous, unpopular war; he does it. He wants to declare people "enemy combatants" and imprison them indefinitely; he does it. Bush's spokesmen openly claim that the laws passed by the people's representatives are "just advisory" and "the president can still do whatever he wants to do," and there is no outcry, no action, no defense of the Republic against this overthrow of the Constitution.

Who could look at this reality and declare that the United States is still a republic, in any genuine form? Who could see this and deny that the nation is now an authoritarian state under an "elected" dictator?

Those who insist on seeing the current situation as "politics as usual" (even if an extreme version of it) will point to peripheral elements that still retain some of the flavor of the old order: such as the Justice Department scandal, with its forced resignations and Congressional probes, or the occasional criminal trial of Bush Regime minions like Scooter Libby. Some will say such things are proof that we don't really live under tyranny, that deep down, the "system works."

But all of this is indeed "politics as usual" -- the kind of politics that occurs under every system of rule. Even the Caesars were subject to such pressures, forced to remove (and sometimes execute) officials who had become too controversial due to scandal, crime, corruption or factional opposition, or even unpopularity with "the rabble." Sometimes the Caesars themselves were removed for such causes -- but the tyrannical system went on. Likewise, the kings and queens of England in their autocratic heyday were forced to give up ministers -- even court favorites -- due to similar pressures. And so too the Russian czars, the Chinese emperors, the Persian monarchs, the Muslim Caliphs, the Egyptian pharaohs, etc. Even Hitler was sometimes thwarted or hampered in his polices by factional strife or public displeasure. "Politics" does not disappear in undemocratic regimes. It is a function of human relations, and carries on regardless of the political system imposed on a society...

It goes on. Chris is severely pissed, and very right. And I certainly won't offer any other evaluation of what he suggests, other than to say one with the witch-sight needs to look carefully, and realize the Gods are not kind to those that reveal such visions to those who will not see.



Nearly as dangerous are those that would keep such sights for themselves.

A Turkey for the Troops

Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars nails the Preznit's surprise visit today for what it was:

The first video is in from Bush’s surprise visit to a remote and heavily guarded air base in Iraq’s western Anbar Province and it truly speaks volumes. It’s clear that this was nothing more than a chance for the president to use the troops as props (note the big thumbs up! from Gen. Petraeus) to spin his failing surge as U.S. troop levels surge as well. MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer brought in Republican strategist Joe Watkins and former Senior Advisor to John Kerry, James Boyce, to talk about the presidential visit.

Boyce is on the money, calling this what it was — a staged photo op. Watkins tries to spin this as a positive move by the president, and that he wants to get in touch with the troops to find out what’s going on on the ground, but Boyce fires back, reminding him that if Bush really wanted to get things done in Iraq he’d stay for more than six hours, he’d visit more than three times in four years and he wouldn’t have ignored the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations.

The White House says the decision to have the president fly into Anbar was to show the successes of the surge in that region and touting this as “a symbolic expression of impatience with political paralysis in the nation’s capital.” The truth of the matter is that the president is nowhere near an Iraqi city, he’s tucked away in a remote area and safe — surrounded by soldiers. I guess this is the best spin they could put on this seeing as how after four years of U.S. occupation, it still isn’t safe enough for him to fly into Baghdad.

Atrios sez since the DINOcrats have gone into "I luv a Leader in uniform" mode we all own the war now.

So if we all own the war now, is there any chance we can send it back for a refund?

Mythplaced Tru$t

Hint: like September the 10th thinking, the money didn't go for bridge repair...

Profit Motive, Public Opinion, and the War on Terra

Avedon points to womzilla's post on why HHHillary and the DINOcrats have thrown in the towel against Cheneyburton's drive to Get Their Iran On and the '08 $election before it's even started. It's because they refuse to lay the psychological foundation that might halt another Operation Northwoods in its tracks:

...ask two groups of people a series of questions; the target group, during the test, is lead to think directly about their own death, while the control group is not. In test after test, the people in the target group were less compassionate, more authoritarian, more morbid, more xenophobic, and more insular than those in the control group. And this effect appears to function at a level almost completely removed from "conscious" awareness.

As I quoted Judis above, the applicability of this to the 2004 election is obvious:

"In their experiments, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski make a good case that mortality reminders from September 11 enhanced Bush's popularity through November 2004. But, on the basis of their research, it is possible to draw even broader conclusions about U.S. politics after September 11. Mortality reminders not only enhanced the appeal of Bush's political style but also deepened and broadened the appeal of the conservative social positions that Republicans had been running on."

The article moves on to discuss ways in which this effect is diminishing with time and with experience--the unmitigated disasters of the Iraq War, the failure of the government to protect or restore New Orleans, and the general incompetence of the current maladministration have undermined the appeal of Bush and Co. However, the popularity of Giuliani on a national level indicates (to me, at least) that the reminder-of-death... (implies) deeper conservativism process is still functioning on deep levels.

And that brings us to Hillary Clinton's recent statement that, if there is a major terrorist incident in the US between now and November 2008, it will redound to the benefit of the Republicans. I think she's right. On a rational level, the failure of the Republicans to protect us from terrorism should hurt them. On a deep level, though, fear and death will always work to the benefit of the conservative movement. Because of that, I can't say that Hillary was wrong to make the comments she did.

However, Solomon et al.'s work indicates that this effect can be ameliorated:

"One such [reduction in effect] occurred when the experimenter repeatedly told the subjects to make a "careful" response to the questions rather than a "gut-level" or "natural" or "first" response. In those cases where the experimenter urged care and deliberation, the psychologists concluded, subjects acted on a "rational" basis that reduced the influence of unconscious anxieties."

It's important, now, to start preparing for disaster on a political level. It's vitally important for all Democrats--for all people who don't want to see a continuation of the current administration come into office in 2009--to lay the groundwork now so people will have a rational response to terror: that the current government is a failure and needs to be repudiated. And Hillary did the opposite of that. She conceded that fight implicitly before it even occurred.

This is why we need better Democrats: because the ones we have don't even understand the ground the battle is being fought on.

I think they do. HHHillary is no stranger to psychology. She's very well educated, and she's very saavy about which strings to pull to get what she wants. And even if she's not, the entire DINOcrat political machine is filled with psychology- and sociology-trained M.A.'s, M.S.'s, and Ph.D.'s.

No it's a very different motivation that keeps the DINOcrats from trying to evoke a rational response.

It's all the money the military-industrial complex has to offer.

After another Operation Northwoods, things will get bad very quickly, but only as bad as the market will allow.

Martial law quickly shuts down everthing except Fox News and its clones. That includes sites like this.

Immediately there are billions for new private security, armed for bear, and indoctrinated to shoot the godless. On sight. Although protestors will doubtless mostly be carted off to the new work camps, also run for a tidy profit by all that private security.

Cheneyburton only has the support of 20% of ’Merika. But they are the 20% with the most and biggest guns, and the 20% most likely to use them.

Think your DINOcratic representatives are going to help? Think again. Think your local police, maybe your neighbors, are going to help? Think again.

This all boils down to whether they think they can maintain their precious economy and profits in a police state. If they really think they can, we are really in trouble. I think this is the only factor that’s kept them from martial law so far: when the market and economy tanked after 9/11, the Company was really surprised and hurt in the only place they really care about.

Their wallet.

The Oligarchs forget a lot.

Possibly because denial, as Sam Clemens noted, isn't just a river in Egypt.

Africans became slaves because runaway "indentured" white could blend in so well with one aspect of the countryside, and native Americans could too with a different one.

But the Power that's rising now really sees no point of differentiation. The Power that's rising now seeks and is not far from being able to identify every single one of us all of the time. The Power that's rising now uses racism as a tool to estrange peoples, divide them, and swallow them whole into its belly.

What's left unsaid is that those rowdy brutal Tennesseans lived lives nasty and short, and that the Man Who Would Not Drink flattered the most intelligent among them like Crockett with words like Republic and Freedom as a way to control them.

Just like 9/11 was a call to the best and highest concepts of liberty in the minds of the young and impressionable, words that evoked a struggle against an evil oppressor, and sent the youngest and strongest and most idealistic among us to die violently, lose their will to fight for real Freedom, or become transformed into indoctrinated killers for the corporate masters.

The oligarchs have a sweet system, but forget themselves, which is why oligarchs always fall prey to other predators in the relentless march of time.

What troubles me is what comes next, and whether real freedom will ever be found on this crowded lonely world of light and darkness by a species one step away from both its own private wilderness or its own special collar and chain.

[crossposted in response to What the Republicans Forgot]

Ron Paul, Closet John Bircher, and Incentives to Success

Or so it would seem.

The whole thread is worth cruising through.

Jeff Wells doesn't like him much, either. And as free-wheeling as that post is, it's worth sifting through, too.

I particularly like the ""...oversold attribute of the Cheney-Bush years."

Quoting the Rolling Pravda's "Great Iraq Swindle":

It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government.... It's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too....

What happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success?

Good grief, haven't you figured it out? The Night of the Living Dead has been the greatest success the Company's ever had.

Night of the Living Dead

Think you know Iraq? Can you speak Arabic? Juan Cole can, and has this to say about the Surge- and what is surging in Iraq:

...I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting in a supposedly safe all-Shiite area. The government has all but collapsed, with even the formerly cooperative sections of the Sunni Arab political class withdrawing in a snit (much less more Sunni Arabs being brought in from the cold). The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too.

The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006. Independent counts by news organizations do not agree with Pentagon estimates about drops in civilian deaths over-all. Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5. True, violence in Baghdad has been wrestled back down to the levels of summer, 2006 (hint: it wasn't paradise), but violence levels are up in the rest of the country. If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.

I saw on CNN this smarmy Bush administration official come and and say that US troop deaths had fallen because of the surge, which is why we should support it. Just read the following chart bottom to top and compare 2006 month by month to 2007. US troop deaths haven't fallen. They are way up. Besides, they would be zero if the US were not occupying Iraq militarily, so if we should support a policy that leads to fewer troop deaths, that is the better policy...

...how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?

Kevin Drum is kind enough to plot his chart for him:



Let me answer your question, Dr. Cole. Yes, Orwellian by way of Phillip K. Dick.

Just Like September 10th Thinking

One of the big concerns of people who think Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton either Let It Happen or Made It Happen on September 11, 2001 concerns the movement of billions of dollars of money on September 10th, insulating many Company associated people from harm.

Well, it's happening again.

A comment in Juan Cole's post yesterday concerning the Cheneyburton maneuvering to Get Their Iran On in September:

Someone knows something big is going to happen by September 21, 2007. It could be anything that is related to either serious financial decline, China dropping the U.S. Dollar or a big military action. This warning is for real and it is based on the fact that some entity had taken huge 4.7 Billion Dollars CALLS on SPX 700 options, expiring on September 21, that is over 40% decline from today’s price value. The entity or individual offering these sales can only make money if the market drops 40%-50% within the next four weeks. If the market does not drop, the entity or individual involved stands to lose over $1 billion just for engaging in these contracts!

Clearly, someone knows something big is going to happen BEFORE the options expire on Sept. 21.

[These]... huge option trades... also preceded the Insider Job on 9/11.
Although the SEC knows who had taken those options contracts against Airlines and the market among others, it refuses to release the name of the entity.

Maybe if there's a glare of spotlights on this kind of thing before an atrocity goes down, we can stop it from happening again.

But It could be simply a rumor.

It could be simply a dodge to raise cash for another purpose. Mundane hedge fund privateering. Run of the mill run-on-the-bank robbery.

That’s the damned thing about emergent conspiracies. It doesn’t have to be Carlyle that does the options. It might make more sense in fact if it wasn’t or if it was only a front.

I still remember Rumsfeld announcing on September 10th the D.o’D. couldn’t account for $2 trillion. And after 9/11, floating the idea of “terorism futures” as an investment vehicle. Is this related? Does it make sense? Is it correct?

Sometimes, to paraphrase digby, trying to make sense out of what we’re seeing and hearing is like trying to read druid runes. Certainly trying to figure out what the next move is going to be is like trying set up and solve a differential equation from data written in invisible ink.

Stovepipe

Chris Floyd points out that The New York Pravda has Judith Miller's partner in fellation, Micheal Gordon, stovepiping Dear Leader's drive to Get His Iran On.

He also points to Barnett Rubin's report that he...

...received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

'They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this — they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty." '

So, there it is. The only question if the size of the bang when this gets kicked off, and whether where another Operation Northwoods is planned to get the ball rolling.

Once the ball starts rolling, it'll be interesting to see if the main$tream abandons their wits for another Warga$m.

Anyone remember this?



Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... uh, won't get fooled again.

Disappointment in DC

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday reported ''significant'' cooperation from Iran with its nuclear probe and noted that Tehran had slowed uranium enrichment -- assessments that could hamper U.S. hopes for new U.N. sanctions.

Iran said the report proved it was the target of unfair U.S. attacks. But Washington and its allies said it did not change the need for more U.N. Security Council penalties.

IAEA Deputy Director-General Olli Heinonen highlighted the importance of Tehran's cooperation, noting that its past stonewalling had triggered Security Council sanctions in the first place. But he cautioned that Iran still needed to prove it would abide by its commitments.

The report said a recently agreed Iran-IAEA cooperation plan was a ''significant step forward'' but the U.S. played down suggestions of progress...

France was even more direct. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani declared that without an enrichment freeze, Paris will ''pursue ... looking into a third sanctions resolution.''

The Company loves it when they install a reliable puppet. Especially in France. But alas, this time around it may not be sufficient for them to git thar war on:

...Drawn up by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, much of the confidential report obtained by The Associated Press focused on the already publicized Iran-IAEA cooperation plan, restating progress in some areas and time frames for Iran to respond to additional questions.

In that plan, Iran agreed to answer most questions from agency experts by November.

If that and all other deadlines are met and Iran provides all the information sought, the agency should be able to close the file on its more than four-year investigation of Tehran's nuclear activities by year's end, a senior U.N. official said...

Repeating the findings of the Iran-IAEA cooperation plan, the report -- to be considered by the 35-nation IAEA board at a meeting starting Sept. 10 -- said the agency felt that information provided by Iran on past small-scale plutonium experiments had ''resolved'' agency concerns about the issue.

Woops. No nukular program for Dear Leader to bomb. No pretense on the ground that has even more oil for Cheneyburton to hoard for the Company coffers. But when did facts ever stop him?

B is for Bomb

Watch it.

Reorganization for Better Service

Lambert picked up a good one following right on the heels of Abu Gonzo's resignation. From the Christian Science Pravda:

... The $42 million cutting-edge [ADVISE] system, designed to process trillions of pieces of data, has been halted and could be canceled pending data-privacy reviews, according to a newly released report to Congress by the DHS’s own internal watchdog.

Data mining to help fight the war on terror has become an accepted, even mandated, method to provide timely security information. The DHS operates at least a dozen such programs; intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense employ many others.

But ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment) was special. An electronic omnivore conceived in 2003, it was designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources, government documents and researchers say...

Unknown to the privacy office, the ADVISE pilot programs had been operational and using personal data for about 18 months before the privacy office made that report to Congress, the OIG found.

You might want to read Lambert's whole post.

This was doubtless halted until it could be handed over, in entirety, At&T/ Verizon contracts and all, to be administered by the Pentagon/ DIA, and completely classifed and black budgeted.

After all, NSA Director and Vice Admiral Mike McConnell has a couple of telcom ties he'd rather judiciously exploit in his own little version of the game, too.

“Ya don’t think they’re really spending a million dollars on a hammer, do ya?”

Well, yes I do, it’s just a question on who’s the nail.

The Legacy of Abu Gonzo: the Keys to the Kingdom

Greg Palast at Buzzflash:

"What I've experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream."

Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the U.S. from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.

Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn't expect:

"They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just going to roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn't, that I'd go away quietly but I just couldn't do that. You know U.S. Attorneys and the Justice Department have a history of not taking into consideration partisan politics. That should not be a factor. And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal and unethical."


When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it's not just small talk. And the illegality wasn't small. It's called "obstruction of justice" and it's a felony crime.

Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted him to bring what the prosecutor called "bogus voter fraud" cases. In effect, U.S. Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss to charge citizens with crimes they didn't commit. Saddam did that. Stalin did that. But Iglesias would NOT do that -- even at the behest of the Attorney General. Today, Captain Iglesias, reached by phone, told me, "I'm not going to file any bogus prosecutions."

But it wasn't just Gonzales whose acts were "unethical, wrong and illegal."

It was Gonzales' boss.

Iglesias says, "The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter fraud laws."


In other words, it went to the top. The Decider had decided to punish a prosecutor who wouldn't prosecute innocents.

All day long I've heard Democrats dance with glee that they now have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales. They nailed the puppet. But what about the puppeteer?

The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors asked of Richard Nixon, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

Or, to update it for Dubya, "What did the President know and how many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?"

During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his Attorney General and other officials. Then, Congress refused to swallow the Nixon bait. The only resignation that counted was the one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal: Nixon's. The President's.

But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not be the end of it. Because this isn't about finagling with the power of prosecutors, it's about the 2008 election.

"This voter fraud thing is the bogey man," says Iglesias.

In New Mexico, the 2004 announcement of Iglesias' pending prosecution of voters (which he ultimately refused to do) put the chill on the turnout of Hispanic citizens already harassed by officialdom. The bogus "vote fraud" hysteria helped sell New Mexico's legislature on the Republican plan to require citizenship IDs to vote -- all to stop "fraudulent" voters that simply don't exist.

The voter witch-hunt worked. "Wrong" or "insufficient" ID was used to knock out the civil rights of over a quarter million voters in 2004. In New Mexico, that was enough to swing the state George Bush by a mere 5,900 votes.

So what is most frightening is not the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, the Pinocchio of prosecutorial misconduct, but the resignation of Karl Rove. Because New Mexico 2004 was just the testing ground for the roll-out of the "ID" attack planned for 2008.

And Rove who three decades ago cut his political fangs as chief of the Nixon Youth, is ready to roll. To say Rove left his White House job under a cloud is nonsense. He just went into free-agent status, an electoral hitman ready to jump on the next GOP nominee's black-ops squad. The fact that Rove's venomous assistant, Tim Griffin, was set up to work for the campaign of Fred Thompson is a sign that the Lord Voldemort of vote suppression is preparing to practice his Dark Arts in '08.

It was Rove who convinced Bush to fire upright prosecutors and replace them with Rove-bots ready to strike out at fraudulent (i.e., Democratic) voters.

Iglesias, however, remains the optimist. "I'm hopeful that I'll get back to the American dream. And get out of the American nightmare."

Dreams. Nightmares. I have a better idea for America: Wake up.

"It's a Two-Party System!"

Watch it.

Multi Dimensional Solutions As a Treatment for Life-Threatening Disease

It looks like one particular ugly wart on the Constitution has been removed.



That doesn't even begin to talk about his removal of Federal Attorneys who wouldn't co-operative in electoral theft.

What hammered him, in the end, was the lying to Congress, and the realization of his Company peers that if they let him get away with it this man had no intention of conceeding power to anyone else. Ever.



There are quite a few people in this administration like this, and from Dick Cheney on down they are going to require the same treatment.

Once again, what Shystee said.



I'll let you read it, I couldn't say it any better.

It's going to take a lot to turn things around, but every thing you do to help, does help.

But I will also emphasize a comment:

This is not just a pincer movement but a fight on many fronts at the same time... There are many, many “sleeper” bureaucrats who have been installed in power in the seven years of the Bush Administration. The Federal judiciary has been Republican-controlled since at least the last term of Reagan. Changing the elected representatives will begin to stop and reverse this thirty year trend but we have to keep our eyes on those bureaucrats who will be working for George W long after George W is gone.

I would also suggest we the citizens start doing more and more things for ourselves. My particular hobby horse is energy policy and practice. I have one room essentially off-grid through small solar LED lights and a solar/dynamo radio that also charges AA batteries. It cost me less than $200. If a substantial minority of people followed my example, the energy discussion on the street and in the hearing rooms would have to change. David Stephenson of http://www.stephensonstrategies.com has been outlining a civilian-based homefront security infrastructure leveraging available telecom technology into an effective early warning and emergency response system. If we the citizens begin organizing ourselves to help ourselves because our own government can’t be trusted to save us from the next 9/11 or Katrina, we begin to take power back for ourselves and build a practical politics that cuts the ground out from under the established power strucutre.

Solar is civil defense. You can see some of my solar devices on youtube. Search for “gmoke.”

Solar is civil defense, and to Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton, likely among many revolutionary acts.

Every little bit helps.

They Want Your Soul

Check it out.



And speaking of which.