Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Just got back from Hibbing, where my aunt's documentary, "Tangled up in Bob," screened twice to packed, appreciative crowds of locals and Dylan fanatics. (sign up on the site to find out when the DVD is coming, and for now, distribution is the big question. Listen to the MPR feature)
Like Hibbing's other claim to fame (aside from Kevin McHale), the world's largest iron ore open pit mine, the film is defined by empty space, the negativity of Bob Dylan's ties to this place. It chronicles the early years - starting in Duluth, ending in Dinkytown. The nut of it is the people that grew up with Robert Zimmerman, but then met Bob Dylan.
As one of his old university buddies said to me, he was a "pathological liar" whom they often didn't believe. They didn't buy it when he disappeared for a couple months and reappeared, claiming he'd cut a couple records in New York. He also variously claimed he'd been out west, an orphan and a carnival operator. This blank-slate kid from up north created a person like a jacket (the jackets came about when Rebel Without a Cause opened in Hibbing).
The man today is some kind of distant prince, under layers of grit and stories self-applied, and I guess that's what's so interesting about my aunt's film: it zaps away these layers to a tiny old core that was apparently doomed from the moment he went down Highway 61 to the U.
But then again, casting away the past and fashioning a fresh persona like some ad executive is the lasting boomer legacy – the rolling stones that can't handle the moss.
Dylan Days, a multi-day festival around his birthday, is a weird, ironic event in that particular flinty up-north way. It's basically a stubborn rejection of Dylan's rejection of Zimmerman, and of course a small town's bid for tourist dollars. Hibbing's downtown was strikingly busy and vital, though: several commercial streets of businesses that are usually doomed these days.
"Zimmy's" is the bar around which all social life revolves – it played host to a singer-songwriter contest with generally mediocre results. But the guy singing about the Wellstone assassination was funny, and certainly the favorites were three local dudes under the group "Kevin Garnett" who rapped Hurricane to perfectly selected samples from DJ Mosquito Beats. Their original entry was a well-done "I'm Bob Dylan, You're Bob Dylan, We're all Bob Dylan" rap. It deserved Internet video fame for sure. On the way out, Mary and I were treated to a badass freestyle on the Pat Tillman friendly-fire Army coverup conspiracy, which I really liked.
the childhood home
At the post-screening dinner with my family friends and the "stars" of the film, I sat next to Phil, the first subject, who hung out with him in the Dinkytown days. He was talented, but not some amazing person, Phil and another old scenester told me. They hung out, played at coffeeshops, after bar closing they tapped kegs in basements. Compared to today's local underground, culture goes in cycles, I thought. Who among the musician types I know will turn out to be the star? And how many more are just starry-eyed idolators?
After the screening I sat on a rock in the Hibbing Community College parking lot. Zimmerman's old English teacher came out. His contribution to the film was charismatic, and one experimental interview sparked my aunt's interest in doing the project. Just days after he and the 'star', professor of creative writing Natalie Goldberg, went around town in a moped, he suffered a terrible hip fracture and now requires a walker. Zimmerman sat in the front row of his class.
The cousin of Zimmerman's high school girlfriend (who was a blonde Lutheran vixen in leather) came over and said hi to him before he got in the car. A simple twist of fate – Dylan was Dylan, writing those anthems only two years after he got out of there. Like the chaotic butterfly conjuring a thunderstorm, if the teacher hadn't been there, if the girl hadn't been there, that guy wouldn't have become the Guy. The masters of war, the watchtower and its princes, it was all a crap shoot from a weird kid that played the piano. He couldn't have been Dylan without covering that place up – and in a very peculiar way, my aunt's idiosyncratic, shot-from-the-hip documentary exposes this invisible side – dragging the stubborn troubadour out of his myth.
Outside Zimmy's, the gruff Hibbing guy who claimed he got him stoned for the first time (and of course they say Dylan got the Beatles high for the first time, markedly damaging global civilization), told me, it was a terrible thing he gave up for stardom. "We sit here, bowing to his star, while he can't even go out for a beer with his friends."
I am going up to Hibbing to see my aunt's Dylan documentary until Saturday afternoon and probably won't have time to post until Sunday.
A tantalizing nugget: my friend's dad stumbled across a massive embezzlement scheme in the Chicago branch of the Head Start education program. This is only now coming into public view and I will try to get something real on it later.
So the Administration wants to eat reporters who spill classified information. This lends itself to a new strategy: classify everything embarrassing and evil. Now that's your tax dollars at work!
Wednesday night I was hanging out with some folks soon parting ways with Minnesota, and it was a good time. In exchange for a nice old hat, various objects were offered for barter, including a Krazy Kat book. Krazy Kat was a weird old comic from the 1920s that has reached a kind of Major Art status, while really it's just pretty weird. I noticed that Itchy & Scratchy seems to be kind of based on it, including the cat's androgynous quality. Anyway.
Finally a Democrat in the House is getting busted for a scandal. Poor Jefferson was caught taking major cash in a pretty blunt kind of way and they're saying indictments next month, yet there is a big ruckus from Republicans after the FBI searched his Congressional office and took boxes of documents. Due to the bipartisan uproar, Bush has sealed the docs from the FBI, at least temporarily.
It's an interesting case. I feel that Republicans are a bit terrified that a potential future Democratic president could find evidence of all kinds of illegal stuff in their offices. For the whole history of this country, the executive hasn't been able to storm these places (or had the guts to). I tend to think that this is appropriate, that there ought to be a sphere of immunity of some sort to protect Congress from the executive. On the other hand, I would like to see Hastert, DeLay and all the other homies get nailed for all their Abramoff corruption. Just because you're in Congress doesn't mean you're above the law. Laura Rozen asks, is it panic?
But, what if (and certainly this has happened), member X has lots of evidence proving that Gonzales is a lawbreaker himself, that Rummy is a psychopath who permits war crimes, that Cheney helped channel Halliburton contracts and Porter Goss partied with hookers at the Watergate for a decade? In other words, what if I had Sen. Carl Levin's file cabinet? Well, that file cabinet would serve as a crucial check in the pretty corrupt system we've got now, and it seems clear that the founders intended to privilege stuff like that file cabinet. I also think that it should be impossible to charge Rep. Cynthia McKinney for slapping that Capitol police officer (in particular since it's been said that the Capitol police corps have been taken over by southern GOP good-ol-boy sheriff types).
We should note that the great Joseph McCarthy could not be sued for all the crazy slanderous and libelous garbage he puked onto the floor of the Senate during the 1950s, because, well, it was his constitutional right as a Senator to say plainly false and libelous things there. If the legislative branch gets under that kind of pressure, well, they will be 'chilled' in the legal speech sense, and it's curtains for that supposedly equal branch of the government. Never forget that people with their hands on executive power don't necessarily care about the truth, but they'll try to silence those who get in their way. McKinney has been a pretty vocal anti-imperialist (not to mention 9/11 skeptic), despite her silly style, and that whole thing reeks of an effort to kill the messenger. Movin' on.
Al Gore stares into the distance: From New York magazine, via the Brad Blog:
Does he, like many Democrats, think the election was stolen?
Gore pauses a long time and stares into the middle distance. "There may come a time when I speak on that,” Gore says, "but it’s not now; I need more time to frame it carefully if I do.” Gore sighs. "In our system, there’s no intermediate step between a definitive Supreme Court decision and violent revolution."
Later, I put the question of Gore’s views on the matter to David Boies, his lawyer in the Florida-recount battle. "He thought the court’s ruling was wrong and obviously political," Boies says. So he considers the election stolen? "I think he does—and he’s right."
Brad Blog was a leading place for tracking the election fraud in Ohio, and while I don't read regularly, it's well done.
Check out Wot is it Good 4 by Lukery, which has especially followed the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds - with its bizarre stories of drug money laundering, 9/11 links, FBI corruption, the whole bit. Sibel herself (official site), under many federal gag orders, has said that Lukery has been able to digest the known facts of the case better than anyone else. There's fresh stuff on a daily basis. For example, if you want to get waist-deep in some weird defense contractor shit, connected laterally with Manucher Ghorbanifar, Rep. Curt Weldon (of Able Danger fame), plus Edmonds' belief that Weldon has been kind of duped about some of the fake Iraq intelligence, well this story is what you need, and this one about some kind of corrupt link between neoconservatives, Turkey and military-industrial defense contractors, which Edmonds is also tied up in, another good one. Read this and trip out: Bing Bang Boom Shazam. The Edmonds case is way under the radar, extremely weird, but it seems to connect to the AIPAC scandal, Chalabi and the fake Iraq intelligence, some kind of secret 9/11 financing arrangements, drug money laundering, Turkish spies, and perhaps illegal money in the campaign coffers of people like Rep. Dennis Hastert. Or maybe not (Hastert is getting sucked into the Abramoff scandal, either way). I think at some point, Sibel Edmonds will finally break out into a major scandal and I'd like to say that we got a bit of the early word out here. SourceWatch on Sibel Edmonds too. (tiny side note: Lukery suggests this woman's skillful negotiation sites)
But who are Sibel Edmonds, Curt Weldon, Able Danger and what do these have to do with 9/11?? Fortunately in the expanding field of 9/11 conspiracy videos, a new one introduces these issues in an accessible way. Check out Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime. I thought it was better than Loose Change, in terms of consisting of actual information and loose ends. However it doesn't have as many fun video clips. It has a pretty good introduction to the Able Danger, the pre-9/11 military intelligence project that apparently pinpointed some of the hijackers, and then was abruptly shut down with its terabytes of records vaporized. But ironically the problem perhaps might have been that it was based on illegal data mining?
Chinese spy update: Pretty cool stuff on the next hurrah about Katrina Leung, a pro-Republican Chinese spy who is basically getting let off by the Justice Department. She admitted tipping off the Chinese to the identities of FBI agents investigating nuclear sales to China (which mighta been tied to Iran-contra - whew). Evidently, she fed disinformation to the FBI to go after the unfortunate scientist Wen Ho Lee.
OS X operating system design: Check out this Flash animation if you want to know how OS X is structured internally. This guy's book will kick ass if you are into kernel hacking.
Israel claims Iran gets nukes in "months": My Ass. Antiwar.com's Raimondo, in a column bitching about the Iran badge story, the peripheral Israeli connections to the fake Iraq intelligence, and new and shiny paranoia from Israel about Iran, notes that well, Israel is definitely going to jerk the U.S. down this path.
AIPAC notes: I thought this was a good writeup about the power of the Israel lobby from Stephen Zunes: FPIF Special Report: The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really? He points out an interesting example of a Congressman, who, when challenged about his heavily anti-Palestinian votes, basically says that the Jews made him do it for fear of losing fundraising, but even after he announces he won't run again, he still votes against Palestinians. The Jews are just - wait for it - a scapegoat for his actual anti-Arab bias. And of course there's the basic fact that Bush depends a lot more on the hardcore rightwing (and often apocalyptic) Christian Zionists that Jewish ones.
Misc notes: Watch Lazy Ramadi, a video from some troops with a video camera. You won't regret it.
Sidney Blumenthal notes Iraq is doomed. Of course, it has literally the most corrupt government ever created (although maybe DC actually wins that right now). Duly noted by the brave Patrick Cockburn:
Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold:
Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.
By Patrick Cockburn in Khanaqin, North-East Iraq (20 May)
The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.
Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: " They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later I went back to try to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin.
The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.
I liked this list from Juan Cole:
There are now four distinct wars going on in Iraq simultaneously
1) The Sunni Arab guerrilla war to expel US troops from the Sunni heartland
2) The militant Shiite guerrilla war to expel the British from the south
3) The Sunni-Shiite civil war
4) The Kurdish war against Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk province, and the Arab and Turkmen guerrilla struggle against the encroaching Peshmerga (the Kurdish militia).
The struggle of the Turkmen is starting to branch out into Turkey. Note how Turkey is now red on the lovely Reuters map, seems ominous:
Kurds say Turkish shells land in Iraq, Turkey denies: By Sherko Raouf
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, May 17 (Reuters) - The government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region accused Turkish forces of shelling an area inside northern Iraq on Wednesday.
A Turkish government official dismissed the accusation as "total fabrication."
Ankara traditionally launches a spring offensive against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in southeastern Turkey, an area which borders Iraq.
Earlier this month, villagers in Iraq's Kurdistan accused neighbouring Iran of hitting targets inside Iraq, a charge Tehran denied.
Khaled Salih, a senior official of the Kurdish regional government in Arbil, said by telephone that no one was hurt when three shells slammed into a mountainous area close to the town of Kani Masi a few km (miles) inside Iraq.
"A village ... has been bombarded from the Turkish side. There were no casualties, but there was material damage," Salih told Reuters. "This is the second time in a week villages have been bombarded in the north."
"We will report this to the government in Baghdad so that they can contact the Turkish government and ask for an explanation," he said.
Salih said there were no PKK fighters in the area where the shells landed. NATO member Turkey has stationed some 1,500 troops stationed inside northern Iraq since the late 1990s when it launched regular raids into the region to hunt PKK fighters.
In Turkey, a government official told Reuters: "This is not true ... All the measures are on our side of the border." Turkey has sent 40,000 troops to its own Kurdish areas to reinforce the 220,000 already there, the biggest build-up in years after an increase in PKK attacks.
The PKK, seeking a Kurdish homeland including southeastern Turkey, accuses Ankara and Tehran of mounting coordinated operations against the group and its Iranian wing, PJAK.
NSA Total My Phone Bill Awareness: Crusty CIA veteran Ray McGovern rails against NSA monitoring of Americans. Sy Hersh with a few bits and pieces on the NSA situation. Congressional Quarterly reports on mysterious data links between Homeland Security and the NSA. TPMM observes how DOJ sends out TONS of subpoenas for data daily, apparently outside of judicial oversight. National Security Letters. Someday, the Letter will come for you (or more likely, me). TPMM also looks at how there is a cottage industry of companies that handle all our phone records, passing them from the telcos to the government, allowing AT&T to claim that they aren't giving Big Brother the records directly. Check this: Fuck NeuStar, the "scapegoat" for hire.
Billmon hung out in Egypt for some conference. Egypt is autocratic, the Teflon pharaoh. I like that phrase.
As always, Prof. Cole is the go-to man for direct analysis of the situation and Arab media. He also follows up further on the fake Iran Jew Badge story. Firedoglake traces back the root of the fake Badge story. The National Post had to retract the story:
Last Friday, the National Post ran a story prominently on the front page alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that, if enacted, would require Jews and other religious minorities in Iran to wear badges that would identify them as such in public. It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.
Then, of course, the bastards require you to register to read the rest. Fuck! (this early, erroneous bit on the badge story struck me for its interesting historical content, but also classic pompous ignorati*-style writing)[ * "Ignorati" has been trademarked by Mordred]
We noted earlier a report about 200,000 AK-47s from Bosnia, that were purchased by the US for the Iraqi security forces, but now there are more reports that the AKs basically vanished and are now in the hands of insurgents because of - you guessed it - private defense contractors!! BBC reports on how the guns that ruined Yugoslavia are getting dumped straight into the Iraqi civil war.
Ah, the irony of how shitty neoconservatism worked out to be.
Murray Waas reports that Rove and Novak may have hatched a conspiracy to cover up the Valerie Plame leak (via TPMM):
On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men. . . .
Rove and Novak, investigators suspect, might have devised a cover story to protect Rove because the grand jury testimony of both men appears to support Rove's contentions about how he learned about Plame.
Chinese PCs feared to be bugged: There's always time for Sinophobia.
Blockquotes are plagarism?! Plagarism Today (what a name for a site) talks about how the practice of blockquoting from other sources is really the new plagarism. I think that's a bit retarded since if you're naming your source, it's not plagarism at all. However, there are sites that exclusively skim off content and pass it as their own for spamming purposes. There are actually Hongpong.com fragments on spam sites out there. We blockquote a lot here, but damn, no one can read the whole damn Internet themselves! It seems like a silly argument, but on the other hand, the game ought to be about original content. However, I like to put lots of sources in here, since, well, you gotta at least weigh their credibility apart from mine in order for my arguments to sink in. Anyway, slashdot reacts.
Long ass random post. However more than enough stuff to keep anyone busy for a while. True?
This is the second time,
we will not fall in line,
No you can’t stop this exodus
No you won’t stop this exodus.
--Anti-Flag, Emigre (For Blood and Empire, 2006)
Canada's National Post newspaper published a story last Friday, A colour code for Iran's 'infidels', by Amir Taheri, which described a law passed by the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) requiring religious minorities such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians to wear colored clothing to signify them in public:
That sector [not headed for recession] is the garment industry and the reason for hopefulness is a law passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) on Monday.
The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean).
The new law, drafted during the presidency of Muhammad Khatami in 2004, had been blocked within the Majlis. That blockage, however, has been removed under pressure from Khatami's successor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This, of course, echoes the Nazi policy of marking Jews and others, part of the psychological preparation to cleave them from German society, and subsequently exterminate them. The story resonates with the emerging storyline that "Ahmedinejad == Hitler!!", because as we all know, everyone from Daniel Ortega to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez is in fact the reincarnation of that weird fey Austrian guy.
(The National Post is the Fox News of Canadian papers: as Wikipedia notes, discredited corrupt media mogul Conrad Black started it to counteract "over-liberalizing" Canadian papers)
The problem with Taheri's story is that it's fucking fake, a fabrication. For example, this quote appears to have materialized from nowhere, as its speaker does not exist:
"Iranians have always worn trousers," says Mostafa Pourhardani, Minister of Islamic Orientation. "Even when the ancient Greeks wore woman-style dresses with skirts, the Persians had trousers. We are not going to force Iranian men to do away with trousers although they predate Islam."
The story was quickly propagated in the right-wing media. I first heard of it from my roommate, who said there was a headline on Drudge when he was at work on Friday, yet when he tried to find it around 6 PM, it was already gone. To my credit, I immediately suggested it sounded cartoonishly evil and too good to be true. And of course, it bounced through the right wing blogosphere quite thoroughly.
The story was in turn picked up by that bastion of accuracy, the Murdoch-owned New York Post. So in keeping with our mission to comment on "information operations," and with a touch of dark irony, I have developed badges that will be attached to news stories determined to be fabrications designed to manipulate the public's perceptions of foreign devils and others. Henceforth a blue PSY OPS starburst will be affixed to such things so no one's brains are contaminated by lies!
How do we know that this is a fabrication? Wikipedia already has a major page for the event: 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy with many details and links. A blog called Lenin's Tomb summarized the situation and Taheri's spot in the neo-con media heirarchy quite effectively:
Amir Taheri, of course, is a dubious figure. He is a sublunary of the Benador Associates, a right-wing PR firm that supplies conservative speakers for all sorts of occasions. He specialises in producing bilge about Iran, interpreting Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush as an attempt to provoke a clash of civilizations so that the Hidden Imam will return, while asserting not only that Iran wants a nuclear bomb, but that it wants one to - well, hasten a clash of civilizations so that the Hidden Imam will return. He has claimed that attacks on London and New York were inspired by a desire by some Muslims to exert total dictatorial control over what you eat for breakfast (which is cartoonish nonsense), referred to Tariq Ramadan as a Muslim Brotherhood militant (which is flatly false), smeared antiwar protesters as defenders of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and asserted that Israel must claim victory over Palestine. As an "Iranian-born analyst" (they never forget to mention this), he is the neoconservative's favourite 'native informant' about Islam, the Middle East and how well various imperialist adventures are going. Commentary Magazine loves him, the Wall Street Journal loves him, the Telegraph loves him, the National Review loves him - to put it mildly, his brand of 'insight' is very popular with that baroque sodality of reactionary imperialists. Noteworthy that, after the story has already been rebutted, Amir Tehari has gone and retold the story to the New York Post with the headline 'Iran OKs "Nazi" Social Fabric'.
But what is more interesting than Tehari's corroborative role is that this utterly false and utterly implausible story was first published by the National Post and then taken up by newspapers and television stations across America and the West, and even a supposedly leftish site called Truthdig. The report cited no solid sources, merely adducing unnamed "human rights groups" were were "raising alarms" and unnamed "Iranian expatriates" who "confirmed reports". Well, I say 'unnamed' - one Iranian expatriate is named, some geezer called 'Ali Behroozian'. Quite how he was able to 'confirm' this claim, what qualified him in other words, is a mystery. Googling yields nothing about him, so either he's a private citizen, in which case the question about his qualifications to confirm anything for the National Post is repeated, or the name is all made up, in which case other questions come to mind. Possibly, these human rights groups and expatriates are of the same character as the Iraqi exiles who obligingly told Bush what he wanted to hear - or what he wanted others to hear - so that he could invade Iraq. Or one could equally suspect the hand of such PR groups as Hill & Knowlton, who famously manufactured a story about Iraqi soldiers ripping babies from incubators and leaving them to die on the floor. But what is clear, abundantly clear, is that any news reporter worth his or her salt would have spotted that this set of claims had fuck all to it. Hardly any sources, obtuse style, vagueness of details, nothing but colourful, arresting and emotionally involving claims and expostulations that divert one from analysis. As Alexandra Kitty explains in her useful book on lies becoming news, those are the absolutely standard tell-tale signs of a hoax. CBS boasts that it did not publish the story because "there were too many red flags" and not enough concrete information. Yet Fox News, MSNBC the New York Post, the New York Sun, the Washington Times, the American Jewish Congress, the Jerusalem Post and any number of wingnut sites and of course our progressive friend Truthdig all repeated these outrageous, obvious lies as if they were fact. Most, including our progressive friend Truthdig, followed the National Post's lead by illustrating their coverage with artefacts or photos from Nazi Germany.
I'll also note Juan Cole's thorough debunking of the matter: Another Fraud on Iran: No Legislation on Dress of Religious Minorities:
The National Post was founded by Conrad Black and has been owned by CanWest since 2003,* is not a repository of expertise about Iran. It is typical of black psychological operations campaigns that they begin with a plant in an out of the way* newspaper that is then picked up by the mainstream press. Once the Jerusalem Post picks it up, then reporters can source it there, even though the Post has done no original reporting and has just depended on the National Post article, which is extremely vague in its own sourcing (to "human rights groups").
The actual legislation passed by the Iranian parliament regulates women's fashion, and urges the establishment of a national fashion house that would make Islamically appropriate clothing. There is a vogue for "Islamic chic" among many middle class Iranian women that involves, for instance, wearing expensive boots that cover the legs and so, it is argued, are permitted under Iranian law. The scruffy, puritanical Ahmadinejad and his backers among the hardliners in parliament are waging a new and probably doomed struggle against the young Iranian fashionistas. (The Khomeinists give the phrase "fashion police" a whole new meaning).
There is nothing in this legislation that prescribes a dress code or badges for Iranian religious minorities, and Maurice Motamed was present during its drafting and says nothing like that was even discussed.
The whole thing is a steaming crock.
In fact, Iranian Jewish expatriates themselves have come out against a bombing campaign by the US or Israel against Iran. There are still tens of thousands of Jews in Iran, and expatriate Iranian Jews most often identify as Iranians and express Iranian patriotism. I was in Los Angeles when tens of thousands of Iranians immigrated, fleeing the Khomeini regime. I still remember Jewish Iranian families who suffered a year or two in what they thought of as the sterile social atmosphere of LA, and who shrugged and moved right back to Iran, where they said they felt more comfortable.
This affair is similar to the attribution to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map." No such idiom exists in Persian, and Ahmadinejad actually just quoted an old speech of Khomeini in which he said "The occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Of course Ahamdinejad does wish Israel would disappear, but he is not commander of the armed forces and could not attack it even if he wanted to, which he denies.
The Palestinian advocacy website Electronic Intifada notes that an editor of a CanWest paper said "We do not run in our newspaper Op Ed pieces that express criticism of Israel".
Here is background from SourceWatch on Benador Associates - basically a PR firm for neo-con hawks. And a Kos writer adds:
Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neoconservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months. Also found among her client list are other major war-boosters, including former New York Times executive editor and now New York Daily News columnist, A. M. Rosenthal; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer; the Council on Foreign Relations' resident imperialist Max Boot; and Victor Davis Hanson, a blood-and-guts classicist and one of Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite dinner guests.
In other words, practically the whole gang! There's plenty of commentary around this flap, such as this columnist in the Toronto Star, Canadian Cynic, Taylor Marsh, Unqualified Offerings, and plenty more if you care to search.
Besides all that, um, check out Thomas Lippman and Juan Cole's basic explanation of why Iran is not really a military threat to Israel.
Get ready for more of these. They are definitely coming, but it would appear that lots of people are already wary of the Persian version of Aluminum Tubes©®.
Technorati Tags: PSYOPS
Quality times at The Artists' Quarter last night. B3 Organ Night, AKA AQuesday, is pretty much the cornerstone of St. Paul culture, Mickey's Diner being the other cornerstone.
At the end of this session, fairly good news all around for transit in the Twin Cities, and the relatively astronomical gas prices definitely seem to be pushing these projects past the Legislature's tipping point. Every day I see lots of people commuting downtown on the buses belonging to the various suburban transit authorities like Maple Grove. The Strib reported that basically ridership is WAY up right now, to the point where some suburban routes are almost breaking even. Delightful! (I don't feel like talking about the stadiums. As always, circuses win over bread. Shocking.)
I got a happy notice yesterday from the Northstar guys:
Dear Daniel,
This weekend, the Minnesota Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bonding bill that includes $60 million for Northstar Commuter Rail. This was the final state commitment needed for construction of the state's first commuter rail line. The Governor is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days, which will allow the state to seek federal matching funds for construction of the Northstar project.
The Northstar Corridor Development Authority (NCDA) will complete its application to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for a 50 percent federal funding match. The FTA recently provided encouragement for the project to proceed with final design and hopes to lock in its funding by this fall.
Northstar's success at the State Capitol is in large part due to the help of thousands of supporters like you. Thanks for your support! We're on track for Northstar to begin carrying passengers in 2009!
Duane Grandy
NCDA
Chair
For more local advocacy on this check Transit for Livable Communities. The Red Rock Corridor also managed to get some preliminary planning funding from the Legislature. Red Rock would run from downtown St. Paul to Hastings:
Unfortunately, the Central Corridor, the planned rail or rapid bus connection between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul, did not score any cash at all for preliminary funding.
There are currently public meetings on the Central Corridor, so things will take a while to shake out, I guess. More on that stuff here and here in the PioPress and Strib here. People seem mostly positive., Literally right now, as I was about to post this, I got the following email from Transit for Livable Communities:
Dear Dan,
The final public hearing on the Central Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is tonight. TLC encourages transit advocates to testify at this hearing and get your voice heard.
TLC endorses light rail transit as the best alternative on the corridor, and we urge you to support this position strongly in your comments. However, we agree there are many additional issues that must be addressed by the counties and cities over the next two years. We suggest that you identify them in your comments as well.
For more information, please see the resources below that explain TLC's support for LRT and present other key issues that need to be addressed for the corridor's success. (The links will take you to our website.)
TLC's Position Statement on Central Corridor
TLC's Tips on How to Testify
TLC's Talking Points For LRT on Central Corridor
Other Resources (Maps, FAQ's, and more)
Background on the Central Corridor DEIS Process
The Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority is required to complete a Central Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). The statement provides a description of current transportation conditions in the corridor and describes three transit options for the corridor:
1: Improvements to the current bus system
2: Bus Rapid Transit - BRT has buses running on a separate, dedicated right of way or on city streets but separated from other traffic. BRT could run on University Avenue but would be mixed with traffic at the University of Minnesota and in the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
3: Light Rail Transit - LRT features electric trains running on tracks, located either on city streets or separate from streets and traffic. The trains can be relatively short, with two or three cars. LRT could run on University Avenue.
The DEIS document is available on the Central Corridor website www.centralcorridor.org and at local libraries in print form. The DEIS answers five key questions:
1. What do Central Corridor stakeholders say they need from a transit system?
How does each option enhance mobility and accessibility for area residents and visitors?
2. What is the effect on economic development?
3. What is the impact on nearby communities and the environment?
4. What is the cost to build each option?
How can the public get involved?
It is important for this planning effort to reflect the community's views about this issue. The final public hearing for the Central Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Statement is tonight:
Wednesday, May 24, 6:30 PM, Central High School, 275 North Lexington Parkway, St. Paul. An open house for questions and answers will precede the hearing from 3:30 to 6:30 PM.
How to Comment on the DEIS:
You can submit your comments during the 45-day comment period, which ends on June 5, 2006[......]
What happens next?:
After this comment period, and in consideration of comments received, the Central Corridor Coordinating Committee will make a recommendation on a preferred alternative to the Metropolitan Council in June. The Metropolitan Council will select the locally preferred alternative. The Preliminary Engineering phase, once federal approvals are received, can then begin on the selected alternative--this process is expected to take 2 years.
Maybe I will go to that but probably not. I suppose I would see folks I know. Well, the gears are definitely turning and all that shit in the Mideast is helping push it along. I guess there is a small local advantage to total national catastrophe?
My aunt Mary Feidt has worked on documentaries for a long time. Long ago she used to work at the WCCO investigative unit, and since then has been involved with a number of major projects including HBO's America Undercover and PBS Frontline. After quite a few years of painstaking work, the first documentary she's fully produced and directed, "Tangled up in Bob: Searching for Bob Dylan: A Minnesota Story" is going to be aired to Dylan's hardest core of fans at Dylan Days in Hibbing tomorrow, though it was formally released a while ago. It's also going to be screened Friday and I'll probably go up with my dad and Uncle Dan to check that out. Here's the press release.
It was a long slog of a production. They got in a bad car accident at University & Snelling after shooting around Dinkytown (everyone knows that Dylan lived where the Loring Pasta Bar is today. This is below the Witch's Tower that I tend to associate with being all along the Watchtower, but that's just me). I have heard about the production process on a number of Macs, using Final Cut Pro and about 5 portable hard drives.
One of the tough things was that, unlike that p0nk Scorcese, they could not license any of the music for the production, which is a big deal for legal matters and distribution. This meant that a lot of weird and unknown gems that they uncovered from visiting eccentric Canadian guys couldn't go in. However, there was still a bit of Fair Use law to skirt, such as when Dylan's old High School English teacher sings along to a song – that was apparently enough of a critical modification to get by.
The following was featured in StarTribune's ItemWorld on Jan 19 but has since vanished off their site:
Bob Dylan, M.I.A.
I.W. felt right at home in Taos, N.M., last week when author Natalie Goldberg ("Writing Down the Bones") and Minneapolis-bred filmmaker Mary Feidt premiered their mini-documentary on Bob Dylan's Minnesota roots. "Tangled Up in Bob" (www.tangledupinbob.com) follows Goldberg's search for the former Bobby Zimmerman to Minneapolis, where she interviewed buddies Erik Storlie (meditating on icy Lake Calhoun) and John Palmer (serving cheese at the Wedge Co-op). Then off to Hibbing, where she wormed her way into Dylan's childhood home and fell in love with Bobby's high-school English teacher BJ Rolfzen, who called Dylan "the Shakespeare of our time." Musicians Spider John Koerner and Tony Glover also make cameos, but Dylan, per usual, remains elusive. As Glover recalled a 1959 encounter in Dinkytown, Bobby boasted he'd been out West, but "we suspected he'd gone to visit his folks in Hibbing."Tangled" will air May 24 at Hibbing's Dylan Days. -LINDA MACK
On a side note, MPR has a music wiki with a Dylan entry?!?!
The movie has been noted here, and its premiere at the trippy Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM is noted here. And by trippy, I mean that Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence and the gang probably took a lot of peyote there, and Lawrence painted the bathroom. My family stayed there once and this room was sweet. Odd coincidence. Anyway.
The film is also being screened at a Zen Center in Mary's current home of Santa Fe on May 31. It's been linked to at this Dylan site. In 2004, MPR's Cathy Wurzer did an interview with my aunt.
Oh yah, the bonus thing. I might be related to Bob, actually, via my mom's family. My mom's grandfather was a Zimmerman (or Zimmermann) from Duluth. Bob's family were Zimmermans from Duluth. How man Zimmermans could Duluth have had in those days? (I guess that would make me a bit Jewish too. Shalom!)
Major story in the Duluth News Tribune:
Dylan, revisited: HIBBING: A new documentary on Bob Dylan's early influences ends up as an ode to the Midwest.
BY LEE BLOOMQUIST - NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
HIBBING - Like many Bob Dylan fans, filmmaker Mary Feidt and her friend Natalie Goldberg, a creative writer, came to Hibbing to learn more about the songwriter's formative years.
They came away with much more.
"We kind of marched around and did things that people would do as a fan," said Feidt, a filmmaker from Santa Fe, N.M. "We went to B.J.'s (Dylan's high school English teacher B.J. Rolfzen) house, and B.J. started talking. After about 10 minutes, I said, 'We have a story.'
"What we found out is that this is an interesting town and an interesting part of the world. This (film) is as much about Hibbing as it is about Bob Dylan. It's about how the place where you grew up affects who you are." "Tangled up in Bob," a 68-minute documentary tracing Dylan's upbringing in Hibbing, gets its first public screening at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Hibbing Community College theater. The screening kicks off Dylan Days -- a music, writing and arts celebration.
This year, the event includes a "Blood on the Tracks" concert, a singer/songwriter competition, literary readings and a bus tour. Dylan was born in Duluth as Robert Zimmerman and raised in Hibbing. His 65th birthday is Wednesday.
"We've been getting a lot of attention every year," said Aaron Brown, Dylan Days spokesman. "We get a lot of Dylan pilgrims who have followed Dylan's career, and we've gotten international attention." Feidt's original film, more than three years in the making, will be the center of attention on the opening day of the four-day event.
Feidt and Goldberg first came to Hibbing in December 2003 to begin filming. Goldberg is a native of Long Island, N.Y., who now lives in Santa Fe. "When we went up there, the idea was believing that Dylan was a genius and the voice of our generation," Feidt said. "We said, 'Let's see if this place has anything to do with what you've become.' We did find out a lot about him. I believe he took a lot of things from Hibbing that were a part of his life."
In the film, Goldberg acts as a guide. She talks to Hibbing residents who knew Dylan, visits local sites linked to Dylan and has a coffee conversation with Rolfzen at his home. "It's just a wonderful film, and ultimately it's not about Bob," said Goldberg, the author of 10 books that have been translated into 14 languages. "It's about all of us. It's really more about Hibbing, place and the Midwest. It's a sweetheart poem to Hibbing."
During filming, Goldberg said she fell in love with Hibbing and its people. "To tell you the truth, I expected them to be more rough," Goldberg said. "What I found were people that are open, warm, intelligent and accepting of us. I just came back from France, and I tell you what -- I'd rather be in Hibbing."
Dylan gained a lot from Hibbing, she said. "If you read 'Chronicles,' he talks about the weather all the time," said Goldberg. "And even now, on his first radio show on XM Radio, his first show was about the weather. I also think he was influenced in that he continued making new songs and not just playing the old ones," Goldberg said. "And that's a Minnesota value."
The film has received a private showing in Santa Fe. After its debut in Hibbing, Feidt hopes to show it at film festivals and release it to the public.
In addition to footage shot in Hibbing, the crew traveled to Shreveport, La., to interview radio personalities who worked at KWKA, an AM station that Dylan listened to as a youth, and from which he ordered rhythm and blues records. Another portion of the film is shot in Dinkytown, a coffeehouse neighborhood in Minneapolis that Dylan frequented. Dylan's fascination with polka music and with his Jewish heritage on the Iron Range also are explored in the film. Iron Range people and local scenes are shown.
"I wanted to go home to Minnesota and tell a story," said Feidt, whose mother grew up on the Iron Range. "It's kind of a valentine to Minnesota."
The film isn't a Dylan biography, she said. Instead, it's designed to leave viewers pondering how their childhood affected their adult life. "There's a story of a Dylan childhood everywhere," Feidt said. "In the last scene, she (Goldberg) goes home to her hometown. It's all sort of about what she learned about Dylan and herself. What we learned is you can go looking for Bob Dylan in Hibbing, but you won't find him -- you may find somebody else."
As for me, well this week is pretty much make-or-break in the career department. Quite a few links have piled up that might be interesting:
An Oreo filling-powered rocket and silly Japanese inventions from XFM.net. Cracked.com presents Five Steps to a Horrible Comedy (as well as the less funny acing job interviews). It is kind of funny that Cracked itself is still alive. A.Norman sends along a nice cartoon. Check out the ten highest-radiation cell phones. My Sanyo falls right in the midrange, at about 1.13 watts/kilogram. I swear this shit is going to give me cancer. I have a wireless router next to the head of my bed and I wonder how my brain cells like all those damn packets.
The MacBook has motion sensors that can be used to make light saber sounds. Optical illusions have something to do with your brain only handling one part of an image at once. Both of these via XFM.
A student speaker at New School had the guts to go up against John McCain and generated a small media frenzy about it.
Valerie Plame bits: Newsweek on Cheney's handwritten notes about gittin' Wilson and a Fitz filing. Wayne Madsen seems to admit that he got bamboozled on the matter of Karl Rove's impending/collapsing indictment last week. Tough break. I consider Madsen to be a most unusual source, with a lot of question marks. The stories about the Ohio vote fraud were weirder and more conspiratorial than any other I ever found, as have been the NSA stories. Wild enough to interest me, but I'm just not sure if I can support this guy or not. However, I'll still hold out a little faith that he'll finally get the bombshell he's looking for. (Side bonus: a good old summary of Ledeen's ties to the whole Niger-uranium forgery case. Not fresh though)
Tiny slice of conspiracy thinking: fake a middle solution: The "illuminati strategy", or so they say, is to control both sides of a debate, in order to create the desired political outcome. Thus "left" and "right" are convenient solutions. In some ways that is useful, but in reality, sorry guys, there are a lot of different interest groups in the world that aren't just the illuminati. But then again, it's a pretty good way to look at Hannity & Colmes. I didn't like Pair.com and their fucked-up thinking, but if you want more on the illuminati Third Way illusion, this is it. I meant to post this with Pop Conspiratoria and forgot it. Also here is OpusDeiAlert.com complaining that Opus Dei is really a bunch of evil Jewish guys and Ratzinger is an "Anti-Pope", whatever that means. I promise this is the end of this particularly silly (and somewhat offensive) shit, but Opus Dei is still spooky.
Pixeldusted sent along what he called Stat Porn - area-adjusted statistical maps from Worldmapper.
That guy named Bill from Brooklyn sent a story in the NY Times about a bizarre trick that physicists are doing with light.
There is talk of a certain wobbly quality in the American economy and Pravda has a bit on the looming petrodollar problem. Libertarian Republican Rep. Ron Paul on the declining dollar.
NSA Total Big BrotherGate: Read Billmon on the Leviathan and it's all-consuming total power complex. You won't regret it. William Arkin's WaPo Early warning Blog has some damn good stuff on the NSA spying programs. This Salon interview with an NSA insider is worth reading:
The fact that the federal government has my phone records scares the living daylights out of me. They won't learn much from them other than I like ordering pizza on Friday night and I don't call my mother as often as I should. But it should scare the living daylights out of everybody, even if you're willing to permit the government certain leeways to conduct the war on terrorism.
We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion.
Iraq disintegration notes: Power and Interest News Report is pretty dry, solid geopolitical analysis, and they are smart to look at how ''Iraq's Impending Fracture to Produce Political Earthquake in Turkey''. Inside Higher Ed has a feature on the Middle east wars in US Campuses, noting on the plus side:
Macalester College, for example, is receiving a grant to promote work on a dig in Israel and planning “peace summits” on the Middle East, to bring together various thinkers at the college’s Minnesota campus.
AfterDowningStreet.org has a pretty harsh collection of uncensored Iraq images of the dead, dying and wounded. Also their website runs Drupal, which we are (slowly) moving to, so it's helpful to look at for that alone. Middle East Newsline reports insurgents getting bolder in attacks - just going straight for US bases. Sunnis complain of US "atrocity" killing of civilians. Juan Cole says, yep, it's pretty much impossible to save Iraq. A former diplomat says many inside the government want to speak out on the war, but are afraid to. Analysts in the military say that the war has forced the US to be "reactive" to insurgents and abandon the all-important initiative. Palestinian refugees from Iraq accepted into Syria. Saddam tried to help out the Palestinians a bit with housing & aid, and now they're feeling the backlash as Iraq shears itself apart. A pretty fucked up story about 200,000 AK-47s from Bosnia vanishing due to some corrupt defense contractors or something. Oddly, from a UK tabloid, but whatever. Most of these links came from Juan Cole.
Antiwar.com has switched their blog engine to WordPress. Antiwar really does a good job, and Raimondo's latest bit on American Gangsterism is no exception, as well as "Is America becoming a police state?" and the Next World War.
Iran shady business: This is an encouraging chart:
It comes via Steve Soto at TheLeftCoaster, who writes on The Economy and Iran that retired Colonel Sam Gardiner has offered an outline of the opening moves of an Iran war. Gardiner thinks its a terrible idea, and recently said on CNN that a covert war is already underway. His latest:
I. Period of Building Pressure: This could be 60 days or even six months in which the US and European leaders continue to talk to their publics on the failure of the Iranians to comply with "the wishes of the international community." There will be talk and work on sanctions but those, will be for the purpose of building US and international support; they will not be done with any hope of changing Iranian behavior. We should see the US surface a smoking gun during this phase. (Note: this has already happened with the recent “revelation” about Iran’s uranium possession in excess of what was anticipated) Some military deployments might take place. Most visible would be three aircraft carriers in the vicinity.
II. Initial Strike: This would last 36 to 48 hours. It would only be moderately visible to the global publics. Most of the attacks would take place at night. To prevent retaliation, most targets would be other than nuclear facilities.
III. Pause: The strikes would stop. Iran would be warned that if it were to retaliate the strikes would resume. The pause would probably not be long, maybe 72 hours. Either Iran would conduct an operation against US or Israeli targets, or there would be an event that is blamed on Iran. (Note: Gardiner says that it is very likely, especially in the wake of last week’s announcement from Iran that any strike by Bush against Iran would be considered as an attack from Israel also, that Iran will hit Israel in response to any attack from America)
IV. Regime Change Targeting: The attacks from this point would shift to targets that could cause the regime to fall. It would include direct attacks on the leadership of Iran.
Gardiner adds that the pressure is being increased:
In the phase of building pressure, I see two indicators. I called one of them the "smoking gun." By that I mean the Administration will reveal that Iran is farther along in its nuclear program than we originally thought. This will most likely be some evidence that AQ Kahn, the Pakistani, sold more to Iran than we knew.
Late Friday we read a leak from a diplomat with the International Atomic Energy Agency that new enriched uranium evidence has been found. This could be the emergence of the smoking gun.
The second indicator in the pressure-building phase was the position of aircraft carriers. The Reagan is in the Gulf Region. The Enterprise left Norfolk for the ME (Middle East) on May 2. The Lincoln did a port call in Singapore on April 30, apparently moving in the direction of the ME.
In October 2004, I had the bizarre experience of having lunch with that leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen, who is continually obsessed with Iran, and I wrote the following in "Lunch Beyond Good and Evil: Around a Table with Michael Ledeen":
His scheme to free Iran was to supply the opposition with the tools to destabilize the regime, “but not a single bullet.” I have a hard time believing he could resist arming the Iranian opposition. In fact, many say that the Pentagon, administered by Ledeen’s allies, has courted a weird, cultish anti-regime Iranian guerilla group based in eastern Iraq called the Mujahideen al-Khalq. If Bush wins, it’s quite unlikely that the neo-cons will be able to resist using forces like these to harass Tehran, but we have no idea what sort of reaction this would provoke from the highly mobilized, nationalist Iranians.
This appears to be exactly what is going on now, by some reports, as I noted earlier. On my birthday, Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna published a pretty disturbing report about how the situation is getting geared up:
US military, intelligence officials raise concern about possible preparations for Iran strike
Concern is building among the military and the intelligence community that the US may be preparing for a military strike on Iran, as military assets in key positions are approaching readiness, RAW STORY has learned.... Retired Air Force Colonel and former faculty member at the National War College Sam Gardiner has heard some military suggestions of a possible air campaign in the near future, and although he has no intimate knowledge of such plans, he says recent aircraft carrier activity and current operations on the ground in Iran have raised red flags.....
Advance teams under way; Congress ‘bypassed’
As previously reported by Raw Story, a terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) is being used on the ground in Iran by the Pentegon, bypassing US intelligence channels. The report was subsequently covered by the Asia Times (Article). Military and intelligence sources now say no Presidential finding exists on MEK ops. Without a presidential finding, the operation circumvents the oversight of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
Congressional aides for the relevant oversight committees would not confirm or deny allegations that no Presidential finding had been done. One Democratic aide, however, wishing to remain anonymous for this article, did say that any use of the MEK would be illegal. In addition, sources say that a March attack that killed 22 Iranian officials in the province of Sistan va Baluchistan was carried out by the MEK.
According to a report by Iran Focus filed Mar. 23, the twenty-two people killed in the ambush included high ranking officials, including the governor of Zahedan. "Hours after the attack took place, Ahmadi-Moqaddam announced there was evidence the assailants had held meetings with British intelligence officers," the Iranian news service reported. "Radical Shiite cleric Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi also claimed the people behind the attack were the same as those behind a spate of bombings in Iran’s south-western province of Khuzestan earlier this year and in 2005," it added.
Military and intelligence sources say that MEK assets were responsible for this attack, but did not know if the US military was involved or if US military assets were part of the ambush. One former high ranking US intelligence official described the use of MEK as more of a "Cambone" operation than a "Department of Defense operation." Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence Stephen Cambone, a stalwart neo-conservative, is considered by many to be Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s right-hand man.
During a White House briefing in early May, outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan denied that the administration was using MEK, among several other terrorist organizations named, for ground activity in Iran....
Here is a lot of background on the shady, shady Mr Cambone. More on this at WotIsItGood4. You need to read Iran Freedom and Regime Change Politics by Tom Barry at the International Relations Center's Right Web site for more on how AIPAC and other nasty foreign policy lobbies are ginning up the Iran war:
While AIPAC is the most powerful group advocating a tougher U.S. policy toward Iran, numerous other pressure groups calling for regime change in Iran have emerged over the past several years. One of the earliest, the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI), formed in late 2002, ceased functioning in mid-2005. Operating out of the office of Morris Amitay, the former director of AIPAC, CDI worked closely with AIPAC to encourage Congress to pass resolutions condemning Iran. The CDI principals continue their efforts to promote regime change in Iran through other organizations, including the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Committee on the Present Danger, and the American Enterprise Institute.
Raymond Tanter, one of the original members of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, founded the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) in January 2005. Tanter, who was a senior staff member of the National Security Council during the Reagan administration, is also associated with several other right-wing policy organizations, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Institute, and the Committee on the Present Danger. Since its founding the Iran Policy Committee has sponsored conferences and policy briefings on the Hill, and has also published four policy papers—a common theme being that the U.S. government should declassify the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) as an international terrorist organization and recognize it as being the “indisputably largest and most organized Iranian opposition group.”
Tangent: Using soccer to kick Iran.
One cool facet of life in Minneapolis that I've checked out since moving here last October are the underground venues sprinkled around the city, in basements, apartments and the backs of shops. I hesitate to write very much about this, because the police play a bit of cat-and-mouse with these venues. Some have names, some don't. Some have MySpace pages, some don't. Just after my first visit to one venue, (either just minutes or the day after I left), the police busted them up and reportedly said that they couldn't have any more shows. Ironically, it's located about four doors down from the police station, and it only took them about two or three years to notice all the loud anarcho-punk music playing just off their alley.
According to rumor, some young teenager emailed their friend that they were going to get wasted there, which in turn was intercepted by their evil mother, who consequently called the cops, who trumped up the situation and claimed everything was out of control. For the record I have not seen anything illegal happening at any of these places, and it seems that the folks running them are responsible and law-abiding. Really.
Last night I was at a show featuring Harlequin, Faggot and some other noisy rock in an apartment at an undisclosed location somewhere in the middle of South Minneapolis, a show which would have been done at the first place, had Evil Mom not ruined everything. This venue had no discernible name, therefore it should remain anonymous. The show went late, well after midnight. I threw in a few bucks for the bands and everyone had a really good time. The shows are often free, people don't hassle you. Sometimes the groups there are kind of cliquish but the people-watching is usually pretty good. There were triple mohawks three feet in diameter and punkish kids wearing 3-D glasses. I'd never seen moshing in an apartment before. These locales are a great place for bands just starting out to get a gig and figure out how to make it work. Basically, it's your authentic twin cities youth culture at its most granular level.
The Alamo House is one that does have its own MySpace site. It is worth noting that a lot of shows are organized using MySpace.
Also the Playhouse Studios are more of a slack hip-hop-oriented venue/recording studio that keep a MySpace site as well (formerly known as the Wookiefoot Mansion). The Kremlin is another venue that is apparently doomed to evaporate at the end of May, as the landlord didn't want to let them keep the lease. Their last show will be on May 28, I'll let you try to Google that for details. Here's a video on YouTube from the Kremlin.
(We have added the category "Kulturny" to the site, which is the Russian term for culture. In the new version of Hongpong.com, Kulturny is going to be one of the main top-level categories)
It's a really nice day right now, which makes it even more shameful to post such random Internet conspiracy material as this. However, I am giving myself a pass since the Da Vinci Code came out today, with heavy melodrama, poor pacing and flat characters. The George Washington Illuminati letters are really pretty good by today's standard. So stick with us, because the traces of Atlantis are here by the Mississippi, and there's a global power grab going on to enslave the masses and beam McDonald's ads into our brains.
First of all, I should put the impressive Internet Sacred Text Archive, which has unadulterated source texts from across the spectrum, from Theosophy and Jainism to I Ching, Forteanism, and Freemasonry, as well as two versions of the probably fake Necronomicon (which is where that grinning box thing comes from). So at the least, these are primary sources you can check out about all manner of esoteric human beliefs.
Here's some official Masonic material about their favorite contributions to American "National Treasures". Some of the many cornerstones of federal buildings laid by Masons, including the Washington Monument. They really like their funny hats. Washington's Masonic National Memorial is bigtime. There is even a Washington Trowel revered as a Masonic symbol, used often in special ceremonies, including the cornerstones of the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress.
Strom Thurmond re-enacts the Capitol Masonic cornerstone ceremony 200 years later. (via the dubious pair.com)
But is the other shit you find around the Internet really even worth looking at? Well no, not generally. This should straighten everything out: from NoGW.com's "The Illuminati & the New World Order".
Now that's what I call political science. Here's some other stuff: TheWatcherFiles.com is mostly about aliens and stargates but also has The Satanic bloodlines including the Merovingian Bloodline. "Project Earth: Satan is on the Prowl" and Reptilian Watch! Fortunately there's a guide to stopping the beams, aliens and military attacks in your head:
If you are a real nuisance you may find yourself being attacked by their electromagnetic weapons, abducted out of your sleep, or chip implanted with their tracking chips that also serve as 2-way transistors where they can harass you by speaking thoughts to your mind or just communicating with you in a sort of telepathic way. I don't' know how else to describe it. Most people don't recognize that one and so think they are hearing from "God" or just thinking the thoughts they are having are from themselves, or think it's just a demonic attack instead of coming directly from military technology. Other people can recognize voices and think they are schizophrenic. Sometimes some people just are, but for most people it's usually just the military and the black technology they're using to invade and torment you with.
We are in the middle of a war and it is a battle for your mind and for your soul. And for most, it's daily.
Crystalinks.com, run by a self-described new-agey "nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn" seemed less militantly angry and more merely reflective about arcane history such as the Priory of Sion, Grail legends, various mystery schools and Kabala.
The Daily Grail and its Red Pill wiki is pretty much what it sounds like.
When I was searching for the exact George Washington-Illuminati letters, I first found them here on watch.pair.com and I looked around that site a bit. As it turned out, whoever runs that site is a raving anti-semite and I was so disturbed by some of the content that I wrestled with even linking to it. The author approvingly quotes the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and Henry Ford's "The International Jew", which is just plain horrible. (the site hosting Ford's evil tract has its own conspiracy stuff as well)
But seeing as how we have already featured links to, say, Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station, we'll let it go today. There is a pretty weird giant conspiracy going on in pair.com-land. Masons are big, naturally, apparently as a way for Zionists to control America and prepare for the Antichrist to rule Israel and then the world. They claim the Antichrist may be a Solomon-like figure probably from the Merovingian dynasty. King Solomon was bad because he integrated the "Babylonian mystery religion" into Judaism, in their view, and the Masonic reverence for Solomon is part of this problem.
Pair.com's really quite strange "Death of the Phoenix" feature was highly anti-semitic, yet also included the following "facts": A Judeo-Masonic conspiracy controls most everything; Atlantis placed colonies from Louisiana to the headwaters of the Mississippi; a fake or authentic Ark of the Covenant was brought to the New World and "Arcadia" in Nova Scotia by the Knights Templar; Hurricanes George and Katrina were generated by the Priory of Sion - which was proven by the 'P' and 'S' paths the hurricanes traced; the Priory of Sion is a front for the B'nai B'rith, which of course is a front for the Elders of Zion; strange riots in Detroit and Los Angeles are prophesied; this summer, fake biblical relics will be found to undermine traditional Christianity and support the Merovingians; Evil Jews ("Crypto-Jew" is a common term) created Opus Dei; Christianity's Calvin was really a Jew named Cohen provoking splits among the gentiles; since Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia are all Opus Dei sympathizers or members, plus with the Jews Stevens and Ginsberg, so the U.S. Supreme Court is going to be converted into a Jewish Sanhedrin court that will try to destroy Christianity, institute martial law and implement "Noahide laws" to subjugate the gentiles.
That's pretty appalling stuff. I'm sorry if you think it's offensive, but I did too. Here's the table of contents, which is one of the more peculiar things I've seen:
DEATH OF THE PHOENIX: FINAL ACT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ACT I. Sleepy Hollow Revisited - The Templar symbolism of Hurricane Katrina - Judeo-Freemasonry / Zionist agents orchestrate downfall of the U.S. - Why the United States must be sacrificed
ACT II. The Ark & The Grail - Jewish discovery and settlement of the New World - Ark of the Covenant in the “New Jerusalem” - The Judeo-Masonic history of Louisiana - The “Sionist” conspiracy to repossess the Holy Land
ACT III. The Dawn of Aquarius - New “Radical” Reformation planned for the West Coast - Prophecies of Kim Clement & Chuck Pierce for Los Angeles / San Francisco - Zionist plan to take out the Muslim community in Detroit
ACT IV. Death of the Phoenix - Prophecies of imminent New Madrid earthquake with epicenter in St. Louis - Destruction of U.S. agriculture belt and manufacturing infrastructures - Destruction of Christianity to begin with the Bible Belt
ACT V. Exodus / Aliya - Jewish exodus from the U.S. before it self-destructs - Secular media to preach Kabbalist gospel to the Jews - Reestablishment of Sanhedrin in Israel to administer Noahide Laws - Plans to establish subsidiary Sanhedrin in the U.S.
ACT VI. The New Reformation - Opus Dei Supreme Court and 2nd Vatican Inquisition - Dominionist theocracy to precipitate 2nd U.S. Civil War - Sanhedrin to rescue civilization from Christian terrorists - Noahide Laws to exterminate Christians
ACT VII. Atlantis Rising - Merovingian bloodline to avenge Atlantean gods via weathermancing - Pre-flood civilization expected to rise on ruins of the U.S.
ACT VIII. A Better Country - The United States of America may fall before the Tribulation begins. - Persecution of U.S. Christians. How to prepare for martyrdom
Ok then. There were links offsite to various other things, and my favorite was Michael Ledeen's "What Machiavelli (A Secret Jew?) Learned From Moses." This was of course turned to make an anti-semitic argument, but it is still classic Ledeen:
After receiving the Commandments and crushing the heretics of the golden calf, he continued on to the borders of the Promised Land. There, at G-d's instructions, Moses organized an espionage mission headed by Joshua and Caleb, in preparation for the invasion and occupation of the country. After 40 days the spies returned. The good news was that the land was beautiful and bountiful; the bad news was that the inhabitants were big and strong, impressively armed and well fortified. All the spies, save Joshua and Caleb, argued it was suicidal to attack, and the vast majority of the people agreed. Fearing they were about to be destroyed in battle, they turned against Moses. "And they said one to another: 'Let us appoint a captain, and let us return into Egypt.'" Recently freed from Egyptian slavery, the Israelites nonetheless demanded a return to bondage rather than fight for freedom.
....
The revolt against Moses in the name of slavery is one of the most powerful of the "infinite examples" to which Machiavelli refers in order to show the difficulties in leading to freedom a people that has become accustomed to living in slavery, a fundamental Jewish theme that is as important to us today as it was in the Italian Renaissance. As Machiavelli puts it, "It is as difficult to make a people free that is resolved to live in servitude, as it is to subject a people to servitude that is determined to be free."
How, then, do we achieve the mentality of free men and women, and not of slaves?
.....
Listen to his political philosophy, and you will hear the Jewish music.
.....
These are not ideas that abound in the Christian liturgy. The notion that G-d wants us, above all, to devote our lives to the creation of the good society is, however, a very Jewish idea. Medieval and early modern Christianity relegated the accomplishment of justice to the hereafter. In this life, the important thing was fulfilling the sacraments. Insofar as politics was a religious concern, it was dominated by the notion that man should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," and give G-d his due in other activities.
Machiavelli will have none of this, insisting that achieving glory for one's country is the single act most pleasing to G-d.
So: Was Machiavelli Jewish? Well, maybe not entirely, but certainly quite Jewish, maybe even very Jewish. If his great contemporary, Christopher Columbus, was most likely a secret Jew, if many crew members of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria were baptized on the gangplank, if, a century later, a majority of the founders of the Jesuit order were recent, probably opportunistic converts from Judaism, the notion that Machiavelli might have embraced much of Judaism is not so far-fetched.
Infowars.com had a feature about the occult activities of Thomas Jefferson. Check AmericanMafia.com for stories on the mafia.
This was a very silly post, loaded with bad and apocryphal material. Hopefully I haven't alienated any readers - I just wanted to throw in some weird shit to mark the weird popular-conspiracy riff that culture is into right now. Time for my tinfoil hat.
We live in a Freemason country, but good George didn't trust those damn Illuminati
In honor of the Da Vinci Code opening today, there were about seven documentaries about the Illuminati, Da Vinci, the Templars and the Holy Grail running on PBS, the History Channel, Discovery &tc. last night. So I was treated to several concurrent exposes of the eye on the dollar bill, DC's inverse pentagram, mysterious relics and apocryphal bloodlines. By the end I had severe paranoia fatigue. But one 'fact' offered by the various weird authors and such caught my attention: the apparent seriousness with which the Illuminati was treated during the revolution, as well as how the PBS documentary seemed to indicate that America's basic political structure, including its religious tolerance, were heavily influenced by Freemasonry. Perhaps, even, in the 13 colonies, Masonic lodges were one of the only broad civic denominators, which seems bizarre today, but seems to have been true to a great extent. In a weird sense, Freemason ideals projected out of the organization to form the basis for our government, an odd connection I'd pretty much never thought about.
This has to be one of the strangest things I have run across in a long time (click to enlarge): located here at the Library of Congress site:
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor.
[Note 7: Of Fredericktown (now Frederick), Md.]
Mount Vernon, September 25, 1798.
Sir: Many apologies are due to you, for my not acknowledging the receipt of your obliging favour of the 22d. Ulto, and for not thanking you, at an earlier period, for the Book [8] you had the goodness to send me.
[Note 8: Proofs of a Conspiracy &c, by John Robison.]
I have heard much of the nefarious, and dangerous plan, and doctrines of the Illuminati, but never saw the Book until you were pleased to send it to me.[9] The same causes which have prevented my acknowledging the receipt of your letter have prevented my reading the Book, hitherto; namely, the multiplicity of matters which pressed upon me before, and the debilitated state in which I was left after, a severe fever had been removed. And which allows me to add little more now, than thanks for your kind wishes and favourable sentiments, except to correct an error you have run into, of my Presiding over the English lodges in this Country. The fact is, I preside over none, nor have I been in one more than once or twice, within the last thirty years. I believe notwithstanding, that none of the Lodges in this Country are contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati. With respect I am &c.
[Note 9: In a letter from Snyder (Aug. 22, 1798, which is in the Washington Papers), it is stated that this book "gives a full Account of a Society of Free-Masons, that distinguishes itself by the Name of 'Illuminati,' whose Plan is to overturn all Government and all Religion, even natural."]
This painting is at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial: "George Washington Laying the Cornerstone of the National Capitol." Note his gear:
The following was a Mason knickknack card based on the same Masonic apron Washington was said to wear at the Capitol cornerstone-laying, and apparently this is the apron's design, according to an official Masonic site: (I'll fix these links later, sorry)
This excerpt of a different painting was here:
I guess, then, that today's George is in good company.
Naturally when you go spelunking for such material as this, it takes about two links to get waist-deep in weird ass esoteric shit, strange anti-semitic tracts and New World Order dancing aliens. That's the internet for you. I'll post the good, the bad and the ugly later. But for now, isn't a Washington letter about the Illuminati sweet? And why not a second one?
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor.
Mount Vernon, October 24, 1798.
Revd Sir: I have your favor of the 17th. instant before me; and my only motive to trouble you with the receipt of this letter, is to explain, and correct a mistake which I perceive the hurry in which I am obliged, often, to write letters, have led you into.
It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.
The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a seperation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.
My occupations are such, that but little leisure is allowed me to read News Papers, or Books of any kind; the reading of letters, and preparing answers, absorb much of my time. With respect, etc.
Now that's a funny spin on American history for your weekend.
The Pentagon released some new video footage of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on September 11, which provoked reaction from the usual quarters of the Internet. Oddly, it seems like the "Pentagon missile theory" is actually being promoted in the major media. But in a sublime twist that some expect in the near future, this theory would be promoted as the "keystone" of all 9/11 conspiracies, and then suddenly debunked with a future release of crystal-clear footage of the real damn plane hitting that five-sided building. This, in turn, would discredit all the other arguments that something fishy was going on 9/11.
And then of course, the government confiscated security tapes from a gas station next to the Pentagon, which in all likelihood captured the crash really well. Where is that fucking tape?
I feel dubious about Loose Change, the 9/11 conspiracy video (watch here) that is wildly popular on the Internet, but hey, they're going to get a chunk of the British Parliament to watch it in June.
To be perfectly clear, I am skeptical about everything around 9/11, all the explanations, official and otherwise. I like to post them on my website because they seem controversial and intriguing, but I don't stand for one school of thought or the other. It is a hell of a lot easier to offer questions, then blockquote various theories, rather than determine who was actually on the Grassy Knoll. Make your own damn judgments – and always be skeptical of the authority structure of information. I like to offer our casual readers a broad selection of the latest and greatest theories around the Internet, but I won't claim that any of them are true.
Alex Jones is basically the dean of 9/11 conspiracies, so why not offer their take on it:
Release Of Pentagon Images Direct Assault On 9/11 Truth Movement Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | May 16 2006
The release of new video images of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon is both a direct assault against a 9/11 truth movement that has flourished in recent months and an attempt to reinforce the attendant propaganda of 9/11 in light of Bush's 29% approval rating.
Before the release of the new frames news networks immediately went on the attack, saying that the images finally put to rest "conspiracy theories" and questions about the official story. In addition, Fox News commentators related with pensive looks and pursed lips that this footage answers the furore over secret NSA wiretaps and surveillance by 'reminding Americans why it was being done'.
Fox anchors also attacked Charlie Sheen's 'ridiculous assertions' after the actor went public with his 9/11 doubts in late March. News networks hyped the video as some kind of hot tip yet when it was played the anchors looked disappointed because it barely shows anything we haven't already seen, a grainy shot spoiled by sun glare of a blurry object and then a fireball....
Alex Jones and this website have always approached the Pentagon subject with caution because we were wary that it was a potential honey pot that would be used to distract and later discredit the 9/11 truth movement. We asked why mainstream hit pieces always seemed to obsess over the Pentagon issue while ignoring other far weightier facets of the 9/11 inside job evidence. The tactic has always been to create a straw man argument that can be set up and knocked down at a convenient time.
This is also a political boon for President Bush. The timing is precise and has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Moussaoui trial has ended. Bush's approval ratings are at 29% and his administration is being battered from pillar to post over the NSA spying scandal. What better time to replay the horror of 9/11 and attempt to reinforce fealty to the government's lauded efforts to keep us all safe from terrorists by taking our rights away?
The release of these images comes at a time when the 9/11 truth movement is at its most prominent. This is a targeted assault intended to quash questions about 9/11 and discredit the movement. TV news anchors are already uniform in their talking points in using the video images to attack 9/11 skeptics.
What remains clear is the fact that news networks are steadfast to ask questions about the real issues surrounding 9/11, such as the implosion of Building 7, the NORAD stand down and the fact that all the evidence points towards the hijackers being US government agents.
Such other 9/11 [truth/conspiracy] sites as WhatReallyHappened.com suggest that the missile angle is a form of "poisoning the well," a misdirection, which a reader's letter compared to strange testimony in the JFK assassination:
During the Jim Garrison trial of Clay Shaw in the JFK assassination, a witness showed up who linked Lee Oswald and Shaw. Despite warnings from his staff, Garrison used this witness. But once he was on the stand, the witness claimed that he fingerprinted his own daughter every night to prevent substitutions by "them". During the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the committee made a point of calling a witness who claimed that the open umbrella by the motorcade route in Dallas was actually a poison dart gun that had fired a dart at JFK to paralyze him, in order to make him an easier target. The actual umbrella was then displayed amidst jokes and laughter and great rolling of eyes, and shown to be merely an umbrella.....
In all three cases the witnesses were plants by the government whose job it was to taint any real questions of what the government was up to with silliness that the media could use to make fun of the whole issue and those who dared question the official story. The media focused on the "fingerprint man" to ridicule Jim Garrison. (Years later Richard Secord admitted under oath that Clay Shaw had been a CIA contract agent after all.) The story about the umbrella at Dealey Plaza was focused on by the media to show how silly the entire issue of questioning the Warren Report was (but fell flat on its face when the HSCA concluded that there had been more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza that day)
....The game is an old one, to plant bogus and easily disproved claims in any inquiry into what the government is doing, in order to ridicule those asking questions. In the old days it worked, because the media was under government control and could be counted on to withhold exposure of the fraud until it could most damage those who asked questions. These days, in the age of the Internet, such planted hoaxes do not survive because the questions the media should ask but refuse to do so ARE asked and answered.
So in other words, if a conspiracy sounds too good to be true, that's because it's a meta-double-super-conspiracy designed to cover up the primary conspiracy. Got that?!
I will throw in some more bits and pieces around the internet. Why not go with Wayne Madsen yet again? He's a weird source, but it's all quite tantalizing. Too tantalizing??
May 17, 2006 -- Add Cuba and Venezuela to the list of countries that knew of and informed the Bush administration about a "major terrorist attack" prior to 911. In addition to Russia, Jordan, France, Germany, and other nations, Venezuelan and Cuban intelligence picked up chatter about a "major terrorist attack" on the United States prior to 911. Cuban intelligence, which has an extensive network in Florida -- a home base of the hijackers and their handlers -- initially picked up reports about the attack and passed the information to both the United States and Venezuela. However, the Bush administration failed to react to this and other foreign warnings. Venezuelan intelligence, likely from its own sources in Florida and elsewhere, confirmed that something major would occur in the United States. The failure of the Bush administration to heed these warnings coupled with subsequent intelligence picked up by the Cuban and Venezuelan security services have led them to conclude that 9-11 was carried out as a result of an "inside job" within the Bush administration. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced plans to hold an international 9-11 commission of inquiry in Caracas that will bring together a host of international government, security, and political leaders. Already, preliminary meetings in Caracas for the conference have attracted the attention of the FBI. Recently, an FBI agent asked for the guest list of a hotel on Margarita island to check on names of guests, including Americans, associated with the preliminary planning meetings for the conference.
May 16, 2006 -- Interesting confluence of activities surround Sky Way's aircraft confiscated in Mexico with 5.5 tons of cocaine and pre-911 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation of Israeli art students involved in suspicious activities in Dallas-Fort Worth area and Venice, Florida in close proximity to some of the 911 hijackers. That DEA investigation was shut down on orders from Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
This is a further clue that those who planned and carried out the 911 attacks were heavily involved with drug smuggling. These reportedly include elements of Russian-Israeli-Ukrainian (RUIM) organized crime, Latin American narco-dealers, U.S. operatives of the radical right-wing Israeli Kach Party, Saudi billionaire businessmen and Pakistani intermediaries, and political officials close to the GOP in Texas and Florida. For example, links have been established between Red Sea Management in Costa Rica, a company linked to the Sky Way cocaine plane, and the Israeli embassy in San Jose.
May 9, 2006 -- World leaders suspect the Bush administration of involvement in the 911 attacks. The first skeptics to question what role the Bush administration played in the 9-11 terrorist attacks were a few Cabinet ministers in the governments of America's NATO allies. They included German Science and Technology Minister Andreas Von Bulow and British Environment Minister Michael Meacher. They were joined by Belgian European Parliament Member Paul Lannoye.
However, in recent months the former Cabinet ministers have been joined in their skepticism about the "official" version of the 911 events by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. In March, Chavez said Venezuela will open an official investigation into the 9-11 attacks. Now, Chavez has been joined by Ahmedinejad, who in a recent letter to President George W. Bush, asked, "Why have the various aspects of the [9-11] attacks been kept secret?" Ahmedinejad indicated that the attacks could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the U.S. "security services."
The fact that the Venezuelan and Iranian leaders suspect Bush administration complicity in 9-11 is interesting. These leaders have at their disposal two highly-capable intelligence agencies. A major priority of the intelligence services of Venezuela and Iran (DISIP and VEVAK, respectively) is counter-intelligence against the United States. However, that is not likely where Venezuela and Iran may have gleaned information about who was behind the 9-11 attacks. Venezuela and Iran are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a major priority of their intelligence services is collecting information on oil deals, including the Bush administration negotiations with the Taliban in Tashkent and Berlin prior to 9-11 that quickly went sour and likely provided the impetus for the Muslim insurgents to attack New York and Washington on 9-11. VEVAK, a sworn enemy of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, had successfully penetrated the Taliban's and Pakistan's security services and would have been well aware of the attack plans and any U.S. foreknowledge of them, including knowing about money movements from Pakistan to the hijackers in Florida. DISIP was well aware of the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia, trans-shipped on a Saudi diplomatic Boeing 737 through Venezuela, by Saudi Royal family members who then used the proceeds to support Al Qaeda's attack on America.
As more and more governments are wrested from the control of the global neo-cons -- Italy, Britain, Mexico, and others -- additional intelligence may be obtained from various espionage agencies that will prove that the Bush administration was not an idle bystander in the events that led up to 9-11.
The Sky Way aircraft thing was first mentioned by Madsen on May 10. Evidently, he's tying this to the fun story that has been around the Internet since shortly after 9/11 about the Israeli spy rings that were allegedly shadowing the 9/11 hijackers in Florida, New Jersey, and elsewhere. This is of course Plenty Controversial to even talk about - the ADL believes it's inherently anti-semitic to even discuss (PDF). ("Urban Moving Systems" of New Jersey has also been named as a Mossad or espionage front tied to 9/11) But best of all, Carl Cameron at FOX News did a really amazing four part series on the Israeli spy ring (watch here 1 2 3 4). Worth putting Cameron's words again:
There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism.
Last fall I posted the following interesting map of Israeli spies that were apparently shadowing the 9/11 hijackers in Florida, mainly based on a compilation of public arrest records. Read the really quite strange report on this (PDF) and Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo on it. Make your own judgments on it. Personally I think it's entirely possible that in 2001 the Bush administration outsourced the monitoring of domestic Arab fundamentalists to Israeli espionage teams, but let's see the evidence, then. Also, hypothetically, it would have endangered the Republican/Likud alliance that masqueraded as the American/Israeli alliance to have the American public discover that Israel didn't do everything to stop 9/11.
Well, that's enough 9/11 conspiracies for one day. I think I'm going to smoke some crack now and visualize controlled demolitions.
What's fun about ^^all this shit^^ is that most people think it is either complete bullshit or else so dangerously controversial that they could never ever touch it. As for me, well, I'm always looking for the truth, because you never know where the hell you'll find it. FOX News?
More entertaining than this rehash are the BBC reports that "Pentagon plans cyber-insect army" and "US 'plans stealth shark spies'". That's freakin' awesome.
I hate it when butterflies get into government espionage conspiracies. Fuck it.
Dutch Snacksters
There was/is a show on the Discovery Channel called "Animal Face-Off", wherein the fighting ability of wild animals was/is determined in a "scientific" analysis ending in a virtual fight between computer animated beasties. It's a stupid but entertaining conceit, whose execution leaves room for significant improvement and whose battles are less spectacular than the ads would have (did) led (leave) one (me) to believe. One thing the show did succeed at doing, however, was instilling in me an appreciation for the relative arm strength of apes and gorillas. Useless, unprovable facts like a Gorila's bench press (800 pounds, natch) in my mind, imagine my delight when I found out that an Animal Face-Off had been allowed to happen of its own animalistic accord in a venue where many everyday people with little access to live bloodshed had an opportunity to contemplate death more vividly then ever before. That schoolchildren also got to share in this sober lesson on mortality was a plus, too, but the tilt turned out to be, perhaps, less of the epic battle I imagined and more of a merciless slaughtering of a hopelessly overwhelmed primate.
Courtesy of the Associated Press (this article also has pictures- beware):
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned. It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death.
Once all the facts about the specific species of monkey and bear come out, however, the story gets a bit less intriguing. The Barbary Macaque (the monkey) is described by Wikipedia as "yellowish-brown to grey with lighter undersides, growing to a maximum of 75 centimetres (30 inches) in length and 13 kilograms in weight. Its face is a dark pink and its tail is vestigial." As if to add insult to injury for lovers of animal fighting (beasticuffs), the Sloth Bear, at six foot even on its hind legs and three hundred pounds, is a hell of an uncool and unfair sparring partner for the mini-monkeys those buzzkills in Hamsterdam put in the cage. Ten times as heavy- and yet, still a total pantywaist of a bear. A full-size male Kodiak, for instance, weighs 300-1500lbs. For that matter, an adult gorilla can weigh up to 360lbs. Now, Gorillas share 92-98% of their genetic material with human beings, and can probably be taught to tag team. Bears can do tricks and can probably be made to wear ridiculous costumes resembling those worn by professional wrestlers. I'm not suggesting anything, I'm just sayin'.
Barbary Macaque and Sloth Bear (click for larger)
Personally, though, I find the idea of pitting animals against each other in a completely engineered and unreal environment, just for our pleasure, quite off-putting. Having never seen an R-rated movie or watched the news, I was unaware of the cruelty and insensitivity of both monkeys and monkey media until I accidentally read this article. Now, my entire outlook on life has changed. Animal Face-Off isn't just another hypothetical undomesticated animal melee, it was life. I remember much the same feeling on September the 11th, when I looked at the TV screen and thought to myself my god, it looks exactly like the movie Independence Day, starring Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum... wow, haven't heard from him in a while...
Also, given the racial tension and social climate in Holland right now, it was probably not a fantastic idea to have monkeys and bears living together as one. Incidentally, the murdered monkey was related to Vincent Van Gogh.
"A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation. We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation."
ABC News put out a press release, saying that an anonymous government source had informed them that the government was watching their phone calls specifically, apparently in part to find out who has been leaking about the government watching everyone's phone calls. It's Nixon in the information age (BTW check out this story about Kissinger tapping reporters and NSC staffers).
These days the Fourth Amendment is about as valued by our government as the hemp it was written on. It really pisses me off that my calls are being logged in some giant database - as USA Today revealed on my birthday, naturally. Well everyone is supposed to call Congress tomorrow, and despite my cell phone bill I think I'll do it. It's a measure of how far this nation has slid towards totalitarianism that such a wildly paranoid program like this almost totally passes in the media and people's heads don't explode out of sheer anger. Last night on the Daily Show (QT and WMP), Jon Stewart nailed it with a montage of FOX anchors defending the total canvassing of phone records, with "Wow, the entire network of anchors has been hired to be the press secretary..."
(CrooksAndLiars.com is our site of the day for their many handy video clips and good sources)
Fortunately 51% of Americans oppose the NSA database - commentary from Atrios here. Poor National Security Advisor Big Glasses Hadley just can't seem to tell Wolf Blitzer a single damned useful result of the NSA Total PhoneCall Awareness Trolling (QT). Even Joe Scarborough thinks its kind of chilling, since if Nixon had done this, they would have caught Deep Throat before Watergate broke.
Murray Waas, the intrepid National Journal reporter who has been covering the Valerie Plame / Libby case in obscene detail, is himself getting positive coverage from US News. He started by working for Jack Anderson as a teenager. Not bad at all. And his blog.
NY Times bombthrower Frank Rich has a new book, the Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth. Sounds good to me. More Rich lately (also on RawStory and featured in E&P):
"His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate C.I.A. intelligence on Iraq before the war. Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent....read on"
Meanwhile Al Gore went on SNL, claiming to have invented an anti-hurricane machine, and I missed it. And the trailer for his new movie about the environment.
Action Alert from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: Wednesday, May 17, National Call-in to Congress on NSA Warrantless Surveillance:
Last December, we learned that, according to some Members of Congress, the President may have violated laws by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans' phone calls.
On Thursday, 5/11, USA Today published a major cover story revealing a National Security Agency (NSA) database of millions of innocent Americans' domestic phone call records, indicating who, when and where we are calling.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
This database has nothing to do with catching suspected terrorists: It is documenting all our associations in the largest database in history-with a goal of including "every call ever made" within the nation's borders. This program is truly *beyond "Big Brother"!*
*Take Action Now*
It's time for the American people to tell Congress in a clear, loud voice that *we've had enough!*
Join the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and thousands of other Americans by calling Congress on Wednesday, May 17 to demand they investigate this government intrusion immediately. ADC, the BORDC, the ACLU, People For the American Way, and other organizations (see below) have declared the week of May 15 "National Call-in to Congress Week" and are asking their constituents to call their members of Congress on a specific day. Let's keep those phones ringing in the Congressional halls all week long!
*The Message*
Please phone each of your Senators, and your Representative. *Urge them NOT to consider draft legislation that would give the executive branch new surveillance powers that are immune to oversight by the courts and Congress. Call for a full, public investigation of the NSA surveillance program. *
*Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121* (24 hours) and ask the operator to connect you. Or this ADC page to find your legislators' phone numbers.
*Additional sample talking points:*
Here are a few suggestions. Choose one or two:
* The President has broken the law. He must stop warrantless eavesdropping and collecting records on all our phone calls and come clean with the American people about any further secret powers he claims as Commander-in-Chief.
* The administration's claim that it must break the law to protect us from al-Qaeda are just plain false: any communications specifically targeting an al-Qaeda member outside the U.S. doesn't even need a warrant, and FISA judges are ready and waiting to issue warrants to wiretap any suspected al-Qaeda in the U.S.-- even if those calls include U.S. citizens or residents.
* Overburdening the FBI with thousands of false leads makes us less safe because it leaves them less time and fewer resources to find the real terrorists.
* How can Congress even consider passing legislation to make these illegal programs legal, when it can't even find out what they entail? It must investigate. This is no time for new legislation!
* What's needed is an immediate, full and unrestricted public investigation into the NSA spying program, including a probe into the massive database collecting Americans' phone calls.
* The idea that the database of all our calls is permissible as long as it doesn't contain names and addresses is ludicrous. By linking the database of phone calls with all the other government data mining operations, the government can literally follow our every move, every contact, and every transaction. It's "Big Brother" run amok!
* Congress needs to pass whistleblower protections for government employees and safeguards for journalists who provide information to the American public about illegal government acts.
* The Fourth Amendment is clear. Electronic surveillance of this sort requires a warrant. A warrant allows a judge to serve as a check against executive abuse of power. That check keeps our government honest - preventing one branch of government from mischief and errors.
*Organizations supporting the call-in day (partial list)* include the Alliance for Justice, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, First Amendment Foundation, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Liberty Coalition, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Coalition Against Repressive Legislation, National Lawyers Guild, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, People For the American Way, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and United For Peace and Justice.
More information is available on the BORDC webpage.
Because guess what? Without any probable cause, the government doesn't have any fucking right to your phone logs. Some would say that defending the Constitution is worth fighting for. Or at least calling for.
Learn Something, Pass It On...
I make sure to use the New York Times to stay abreast of all cultural trends and "fads" in America. Their coverage of our faddish fopperies always gives me a hearty chuckle. So, of course, I was delighted today when I opened the paper and read a review of two books recently written about the oh-so-new and exciting world of professional eating.
Kobayashi Receiving His Fifth Straight Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Championship
Both books are funny, in different ways. Both struggle to take the measure of two Asian competitors who have eaten their rivals under the table. The amazingly slim Takeru Kobayashi, competitive eating's one bona fide superstar, makes headlines each year by showing up at the Nathan's Famous hot-dog competition in Coney Island and humiliating the American competition. In July 2004 he ate 53½ hot dogs (with buns) in 12 minutes. Second place was 38.
In third place was Sonya Thomas, a petite Korean immigrant and former Burger King manager once introduced onstage as "a cross between Anna Kournikova , Billie Jean King and a jackal wild on the Serengeti." Ms. Thomas currently holds the competitive-eating records for toasted ravioli (four pounds in 12 minutes), oysters (46 dozen in 10 minutes), eggs (65 hard-boiled eggs in 6 minutes 40 seconds) and turducken, which is a turkey stuffed with a duck that has been stuffed with a chicken. Ms. Thomas consumed nearly eight pounds of turducken in 12 minutes. She often claims to be hungry after competitions.
Oh, New York Times, this is just so ZANY, so epically... wait, turducken?
Wikipedia defines a "Turducken" thusly:
A turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned bread crumb mixture, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. Some recipes call for the turkey to be stuffed with a chicken which is then stuffed with a duckling. It is also called a chuckey.
A Beautifully Prepared Turduckeneast
Wow. I actually learned something from a New York Times trend watch article. Not only that, but the piece of information acquired just keeps giving and giving as I try to picture a Turducken in my mind. Beware of believing too much of what you read about Turducken, though, kids- the Wikipedia entries veracity is under dispute, presumably by people whose existence is so wretched, the day so unmanageably hellish, that an evening spent fact-checking turducken on an internet encyclopedia brings sweet release.
By the way, if you are interested in purchasing a Turducken, they can be purchased online from the two major vendors, Paul Prudhomme and the Cajun Grocer: If you want to make your own, you can find the instructions here courtesy of Lynn and John Salmon of New York.
It was a very long run, some seasons better than others, but West Wing aired its final episode last night and it was fairly boring. The high point was probably when they are packing all the books in the Oval Office and the only book you see is a Michel Foucault volume, which brought much cheer to Macalester viewers. I pretty much ignored the show until I was deep into my Political Science courses, and when we needed some little ray of sunshine to show that politics was not the worst possible disaster all the time, Alison's ever-expanding DVD collection fit that need.
There was a pretty funny opinion bit in the Washington Post about how British Blairite/New Labour staffers were infatuated with the show because it showed them a much happier vision for government. When Whitehall Meets 'The West Wing':
The show portrayed the U.S. government operating much as Blair's young followers wished Whitehall could work. Instead of ideas having to fight their way up through the bureaucracy, they could be thrashed out by two bright young things and taken straight to the boss. During the fourth season of the show, Bartlet staffers Josh and Toby took inspiration from a chat with a stranger in an Indiana bar to devise a quick plan making college tuition tax-deductible. Fast-forward a few episodes, and it became the centerpiece of the president's second-term tax plan -- just like that.
The old joke goes that the British government has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. As the Blairites chafed against that system, "The West Wing" offered them a tantalizing vision of how life could be.
This longing was heightened by the similarities between Bartlet and Blair. They are both self-defined moral men with the ability to inspire devotional loyalty. They both think in world-changing terms and are married to dynamic, feisty, professional women. One of Blair's confidants even told the Daily Telegraph in 2003 that the psychology of the two leaders was strikingly similar. And both had as sidekicks hardened bruisers who had struggled with the demon drink (although Blair's partner was communications guru Alastair Campbell, not his chief of staff).
......
Of course, Blair would have stood with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and joined the invasion of Iraq with or without "The West Wing." But the show can only have bolstered his team's eagerness to understand the U.S. position and its appreciation of America's potential for good. Its perceived influence led conservative British commentator Peter Oborne to denounce Blair and his team's deployment of the "techniques, and empty morality, of 'West Wing' to rewrite the Iraq conflict."
......
James Forsyth, an assistant editor of Foreign Policy magazine, is one more Brit who wishes he could be Josh Lyman.
How to Pick a Satisfying Career: Know Yourself
Hongpong.com Drupal development: Some new advancements: I have organized the menus a bit and set up a basic forum. It is colossally easy to register an account on the new system, which allows you to put up files and such, as well as personal blogs and polls. Anonymous comments are also turned on.
Check out the new RSS headline aggregator thingy set up - viewed here as a big list of mixed things, or here broken into the component sections (or "wires")or a set of the sources we're putting together. NOTE: Right now the auto headline updater doesn't work - in other words it won't check sites on its own yet. Therefore I think anyone can hit drupal.hongpong.com/cron.php to force updating the feeds. (we're gonna do some SEO somehow, too)
Meanwhile some randomness: Bill Salisbury on polarization in MN nominating processes. He is an intrepid reporter who's been around the Capitol for a long time.
Help Palestinians but dodge giving Hamas government money? Sounds dubious.
Aspyr is releasing Civilization IV for Macintosh tentatively in June. I just saw it on PC again, and it is excellent.
Porter Goss: shitty leader goes back to Capitol Hill. Never should have brought his greasy face outta the House.
You gotta see the Truth live. The word is law, bitch! Wayne Madsen promotes Al Gore comeback in 2008 in the Salt Lake Tribune.
If you care at all about South America you need to check out Greg Grandin's "Rumsfeld's Latin American Wild West Show" on TomDispatch.com. Basically the U.S. is militarizing its relations with the whole region, as one country after another slips out of Washington's orbit. Only a small part of a CRUCIAL read about how direct American imperialism/Full Spectrum Dominance has been field-tested south of here:
Latin America, in fact, has become more dangerous of late, plagued by a rise in homicides, kidnappings, drug use, and gang violence. Yet it is not the increase in illicit activity that is causing the Pentagon to beat its alarm but rather a change in the way terrorism experts and government officials think about international security. After 9/11, much was made of Al Qaeda's virus-like ability to adapt and spread through loosely linked affinity cells even after its host government in Afghanistan had been destroyed. Defense analysts now contend that, with potential patron nations few and far between and funding sources cut off by effective policing, a new mutation has occurred. To raise money, terrorists are reportedly making common cause with gun runners, people smugglers, brand-name and intellectual-property bootleggers, drug dealers, blood-diamond merchants, and even old-fashioned high-seas pirates.
In other words, the real enemy facing the U.S. in its War on Terror is not violent extremism, but that old scourge of American peacekeepers since the days of the frontier: lawlessness. "Lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism," said former Attorney John Ashcroft a few years ago, explaining why Congress's global counterterrorism funding bill was allocating money to support the Colombian military's fight against leftist rebels.
Counter-insurgency theorists have long argued for what they describe as "total war at the grass-roots," by which they mean a strategy not just to defeat insurgents by military force but to establish control over the social, economic, and cultural terrain in which they operate. "Drying up the sea," they call it, riffing on Mao's famous dictum, or sometimes, "draining the swamp." What this expanded definition of the terrorist threat does is take the concept of total war out of, say, the mountains of Afghanistan, and project it onto a world scale: Victory, says the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, "requires the creation of a global environment inhospitable to terrorism."
Defining the War on Terror in such expansive terms offers a number of advantages for American security strategists. Since the United States has the world's largest military, the militarization of police work justifies the "persistent surveillance" of, well, everything and everybody, as well as the maintenance of "a long-term, low-visibility presence in many areas of the world where U.S. forces do not traditionally operate." It justifies taking "preventive measures" in order to "quell disorder before it leads to the collapse of political and social structures" and shaping "the choices of countries at strategic crossroads" which, the Quadrennial Defense Review believes, include Russia, China, India, the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia -- just about every nation on the face of the earth save Britain and, maybe, France.
[Read the next one carefully then check your phone records: -Dan]
Since the "new threats of the 21st century recognize no borders," the Pentagon can, in the name of efficiency and flexibility, breach bureaucratic divisions separating police, military, and intelligence agencies, while at the same time demanding that they be subordinated to U.S. command. Hawks now like to sell the War on Terror as "the Long War," but a better term would be ‘the Wide War," with an enemies list infinitely expandable to include everything from DVD bootleggers to peasants protesting the Bechtel Corporation. Southcom Commander Craddock regularly preaches against "anti-globalization and anti-free trade demagogues," while Harvard security-studies scholar and leading ideologue of the "protean enemy" thesis, Jessica Stern, charges, without a shred of credible evidence, that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is brokering an alliance between "Colombian rebels and militant Islamist groups."
.....In Latin America more generally, it is increasingly the Pentagon, not the State Department, which sets the course for hemispheric diplomacy. With a staff of 1,400 and a budget of $800 million, Southcom already has more money and resources devoted to Latin America than do the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture combined. And its power is growing.
For decades following the passage of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, it was the responsibility of the civilian diplomats over at Foggy Bottom to allocate funds and training to foreign armies and police forces. But the Pentagon has steadily usurped this authority, first to fight the War on Drugs, then the War on Terror. Out of its own budget, it now pays for about two-thirds of the security training the U.S. gives to Latin America. In January 2006, Congress legalized this transfer of authority from State to Defense through a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, which for the first time officially gave the Pentagon the freedom to spend millions from its own budget on aid to foreign militaries without even the formality of civilian oversight. After 9/11, total American military aid to the region jumped from roughly $400 million to more than $700 million. It has been steadily rising ever since, coming in today just shy of $1 billion.
Much of this aid consists of training Latin American soldiers -- more than 15,000 every year. Washington hopes that, even while losing its grip over the region's civilian leadership, its influence will grow as each of these cadets, shaped by ideas and personal loyalties developed during his instruction period, moves up his nation's chain of command. [And that in turn, could be the backdoor for American-directed coups and direct political pressure --Dan]
Training consists of lethal combat techniques in the field backed by counterinsurgency and counter-terror theory and doctrine in the classroom. This doctrine, conforming as it does to the Pentagon's broad definition of the international security threat, is aimed at undermining the work civilian activists have done since the end of Cold War to dismantle national and international intelligence agencies in the region.
BagNewsNotes on Pitching the Zarqawi bloopers.
The Ny Times says today:
Two related National Security Agency surveillance programs begun after the Sept. 11 attacks have provoked legal controversy because the agency does not seek court warrants for their operation.
In the domestic eavesdropping program, the N.S.A. listens in on phone calls and reads e-mail messages to and from Americans and others in the United States who the agency believes may be linked to Al Qaeda. Only international communications — those into and out of the country — are monitored, according to administration officials. Until late 2001, the N.S.A. focused on only the foreign end of such conversations; if it decided someone in the United States was of intelligence interest, it had to get a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Now such warrants are sought only for communications between two people who are both in the United States.
In the telephone record data-mining program, the N.S.A. has obtained from at least three phone companies the records of all calls — domestic and international — showing the phone numbers on both ends of each conversation, and its date, time, duration and other details. The records do not include the contents of any call or e-mail message and do not include personal data like credit card numbers and home addresses, officials say.
Security agency employees perform computer analysis in an effort to identify possible associates of terror suspects.
Meanwhile a nice birthday present from the AP - May 11: Justice Department Abruptly Ends Domestic Spying Probe
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.
"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey.
Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.
"Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."
Meanwhile it is interesting that the Carlyle Group has some control over how those security clearances are handed out via the U.S. Investigative Services, USIS, entity. $13 million in a recent contract.
Man, to hell with it. I'm gonna go have fun now.
....But I've been hanging out with people all over the place, and right now I need to run to the RiverCentre for the graduation ceremony. We'll get some goodies up later this weekend, but not now. Deal!
For my birthday I decided to give myself the gift of a brand-spankin new website system that blows everything else away.
I am throwing a party later today, after 9:30 PM or so, at 1764 Portland Ave. APT 4, St. Paul. Everyone who manages to read this is very much invited. It would be nice if people could throw in some beer but that's not required at all! My cellie is 651 338 7661 if anyone needs info.
There are a number of good Content Management Systems out there. A CMS is basically the back-end of any dynamic website - from a newspaper to a band to a blog to whatever. I like to tinker with these different systems, but HongPong.com itself has been hosted on MovableType 2.661, the last free version ApartSix released, quite a few years ago. Sadly, the spammers know MT's weaknesses all too well, and since I switched to Powweb hosting, I've gotten a torrent of comment spam that I just don't care about enough to erase.
Anyhow, the final decision is Drupal, a really great system that runs The Onion, for example. Most any site where you see "node" in the URL is a Drupal site.
See Drupal.hongpong.com for the test site, and register if you want. That part should work already. We get all kinds of bells and whistles with this, including photo galleries, easy file uploading, events and other cool dynamic shit. Also there is already a massive RSS syndicator thing in operation that will give you fresh headlines from around the internet constantly.
It will be put onto the front page when I am done working on it. In the meantime there's a new banner and a sweet upcoming features menu I just whipped together.
It's gonna be frickin' sweet. What more can I say?
For real, I am digging around very seriously for a job today. It's my birthday tomorrow, but I really need to make sure that the coming year has the kind of stability and confidence that the last year just really hasn't had at all. And by that, I mean full time work that will get me away from wasting my time with such really productive hobbies as this site. But hey that ain't yet, so lets waste some time:
Without BAGNewsNotes, where would we get such photos? Since politics is all images these days, its nice such a site specifically checks out the visual side: Psychology Watch: The Obvious Boy For Next Secretary Of Defense:
Nuclear gas release in Prairie Island containment vessel: A story from that new Twin Cities Daily Planet site, which sort of left ambiguous the nature of a recent nuclear leak down in Red Wing:
Prairie Island accident raises questions: A nuclear industry watchdog group Tuesday called the May 5 accident at the Prairie Island nuclear plant in which 100 workers were contaminated with radioactive iodine the most serious release of radiation there in 20 years and raised questions about the federal reporting process.
My understanding from the article is that the gas never got outside the containment vessel... The wording is a bit hazy, but the Daily Planet just started up, so they've got a couple kinks to get out. I admire the clever structure of the new Twin Cities news aggregating / indie features site, though, and I wish 'em the best.
Macalester alumni mag faces Scrotum-gate: I had declined to speak of this on the Internet but then they covered it in the Mac Weekly. Basically one of the Bad Comedy boys got his balls into a group photo that was submitted to Mac's fawning glossy alumni magazine. This was a brilliant maneuver in every sense, and a good (wait for it) extension of Bad Comedy's nudity-tinged oeuvre. I'd heard some rumors of this conspiracy in advance and I'm glad it went off well.
Obnoxious 'faux liberal' Washington Post columnist complains about angry bloggers: complaining about the 'anger' factor is just another way to deflect from the substance. In this case, it was Cohen's whining about how Colbert shouldn't have dared ruffle those mega-eagle feathers, which set off some pissed off emails. Digby: "In case Cohen hasn't noticed nobody on the fucking planet likes squishy faux liberal courtiers." And Salon's Daou Report on that and on the DailyKos.
Random as hell: (but seemed interesting enough): Old Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar "vows allegiance to bin Laden". Actually I thought this was old news, but it's interesting he's still kicking around since the old days when Reagan helped him fight the commies and pretty much everyone else. Tariq Ali on Iran. Muqtada al-Sadr wants to model the Mahdi Army on Hezbollah, which is a logical progression from boisterous militia to political party with lotsa guns and social services. AlJazeera.com (not affiliated with the TV network): Handicapped U.S. intel. on Iran challenges new CIA man.
This interview with the frontman of Godsmack about why the hell they sold songs into military recruiting commercials is pretty funny, if sad. (via Firedoglake)
"America's Geopolitical Nightmare and Eurasian Strategic Energy Arrangements" by F. William Engdahl from the idiosyncratic Centre for Research on Globalization, which always has interesting things. "The Next World War" from Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo.
Suddenly all these guys, Joe Biden among them, are saying "let's just break Iraq in three" and feeling clever about themselves. I think that's a bit insane, but hardly surprising. George Packer, a skilled journalist, says in the New Yorker:
The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem.
Nobody likes Joe Lieberman, not even his supporters. Bizarre.
Jews Jeer Mehlman: JTA: Republican chairman booed at AJCommittee event:
The room burst into applause, however, when AJCommittee board member Edith Everett asked Mehlman to “take a message” to President Bush to stop linking Israel and Iran. “It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran,” Everett said.
Something about Hitchens and Juan Cole: Noted rightwing drunkard Christopher Hitchens broke into a private email server where one of my favorite academics on the internet, Juan Cole, was explaining that the term "wipe Israel off the map" is an idiom that doesn't actually exist in Farsi, therefore every time you hear it, it's actually a distortion of meaning that serves war propaganda. Basically Hitchens published all these chunks of Cole's reasoning out of context in Slate, and this was a dick thing to do, since no one likes Hitchens, so he does this kind of B.S. hit piece. Anyway here is a bit about it. More here. As always, Cole's site is absolutely key.
Kos calls my boss a "wingnut": Teh sweet. Duly noted on the dailykos:
Last week I opened up in Minneapolis, where I got a ridiculously good reception. I started with a book signing at Arise Books, which is a small indy bookstore run by volunteers. I hadn't ever heard of anything like that before. The place was packed, and in the crowd was Fighting Dem Tim Walz in MN-01, who got a chance to update me on his race (which really is looking good). Also present was CW Wisconsin, who drove three hours for the event and left some great beer behind for me.
I did some radio, including wingnut radio on a show following Hannity. It was the first wingnut radio I'd done, since quite frankly, I'd rather not waste my time talking to people who won't buy my book anyway. But I had a blast batting around callers like a cat toying with a mouse. Seriously, what a bunch of morons.
Counter-AIPAC academics strike back: The Mearsheimer/Walt paper about the Israel Lobby and AIPAC has generated a predictable round of finger-pointing and scurrilous charges of anti-semitism, because they dared to directly dissect with blunt academic Neo-Realist style the way that A) Israel's right-wing policies are fully supported by the United States B) for totally irrational reasons that undermine our real national interests and C) no one is ever ever ever supposed to talk about this. Obviously it is a controversial topic to ramble on about, but not now. Anyway Mearsheimer and Walt wrote a big letter reacting to the reactions. These guys will have to sacrifice a lot in order to take on such a dicey topic, and we owe it to them to look at the matter carefully. But not now, damnit. Also there is an academic Freedom of Speech petition Juan Cole started against the charges of anti-semitism directed towards M&W.
Bits on CIA chief candidate Hayden: For some bizarre reason, Dennis Hastert is lashing out at John Negroponte for trying to do a "power play" by getting his deputy Hayden into running the CIA. I would recommend Steve Clemons' Washington Note stories on this matter, and the counter-intuitive "Misreading Michael Hayden's Role in the Intelligence Bureaucracy Wars: Negroponte Wants Hayden to Battle with -- Not Help -- Rumsfeld" (also noted here). The TPM muckies managed to link Hayden to Wilkes' corrupt MZM contractor. Check out Rozen following the case as well as Marshall. Tuesday, WaPo reports FBI probing Foggo's CIA contracts. The Sun reports Pentagon Is Winner Over CIA. Today, NY Times says Clash Foreseen Between C.I.A. and Pentagon.
Wayne Madsen - a peculiar journalist who used to be in the NSA, (read caveats about him in Wikipedia), well he doesn't like Michael Hayden one bit, and he has a lot of weird goods on the guy and the NSA generally. Check this this this this this and this for quite a trip down the rabbit hole. Madsen was the guy who stirred up that story that John Bolton was improperly reading NSA intercepts of Bill Richardson. Never got disproven.
Big Ol love letter from Ahmadinejad: It is a very interesting thing to read, and it seems to be targeted more at a Middle Eastern audience than the White House as such. NY Times on it here and Le Monde has the full letter here. By the way Steve Clemons also talks about this funny letter gambit. I would include more, but this is interesting by itself:
Mr President,
September Eleven was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. Our government immediately declared its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.
All governments have a duty to protect the lives, property and good standing of their citizens. Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren't those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?
All governments have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens. For some years now, the people of your country and neighbours of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind. After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people – who had been immensely traumatised by the attacks – some Western media only intensified the climates of fear and insecurity – some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?
American citizen lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place. They felt insecure in the streets, in their place of work and at home. Who would be happy with this situation? Why was the media, instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind, giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?
Some believe that the hype paved the way – and was the justification – for an attack on Afghanistan. Again I need to refer to the role of media. In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles. The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs. This was repeated incessantly – for the public to, finally, believe – and the ground set for an attack on Iraq.
Will the truth not be lost in a contrive and deceptive climate? Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values? Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?
[snip]........What has been said, are some of the grievances of the people around the world, in our region and in your country. But my main contention – which I am hoping you will agree to some of it – is : Those in power have specific time in office, and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures.
The people will scrutinize our presidencies.
Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? Did we intend to establish justice, or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful – thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs'? Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them? Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them? Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats? Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it? Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors? Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns. Intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people's rights? And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office – to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets – or not?
Well fine, then, Ahmadinejad better damn well figure a way out of this one now, if he is going to talk all altruistic and shit...
Very bad video games: Islamists using US video games in youth appeal (May 4)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the United States, officials said on Thursday.
Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.
....Devlin spoke before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, at which contractors from San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, gave lawmakers a presentation that focused on Iraq as an engine for Islamic militant propaganda from Indonesia to Turkey and Chechnya.
....One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular "Battlefield 2" from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as "mods," to video games.
"Battlefield 2" ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders.
"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," a narrator's voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults.
Then came a recording of President George W. Bush's September 16, 2001, statement: "This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." It was edited to repeat the word "crusade," which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity.
I think we all want to know which mods they are running. Are Islamic militants closing the American game-modding gap? Here in America, video games serve Freedom: "America's Army", literally a first-person shooter designed to indoctrinate the youth into joining the military. Better to spend that defense cash on manipulating teen pop culture and upping polygon counts, rather than body armor, I suppose. SAIC is shady, too, but I will let that go for now.
Anonymous CIA guy on "Dusty" Foggo, in an email to ex-CIA dude Larry Johnson:
"Guys who hate him pretty much do so because they wish they had the moxie to get as much poontang as they think he is getting."
It is pretty satisfying when five days after I introduced our dear readers to the Hookergate/Watergate scandal and posted a Porter Goss pimp image I whipped up, Goss abruptly resigned as CIA director and his #3, Foggo, goes under criminal investigation for shady Duke-related contracts. The timing is just too damn good, and by all indications this mess is sprawling out into a sizable summer scandal. Therefore we are issuing an updated image of Mr. Goss.
More and more of this story has come out in the press & various websites last week. Obviously, there are a lot of rumors and speculation, which have only grown since Goss abruptly resigned last Friday afternoon. Here is a darn good summary of the main rumors about why Goss resigned, from Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal: Why did Goss Go?
We're gonna riff through the material available right now, but first, it's going to take a special chart to get the general outline of this scandal out there. Time to illuminate the cast of characters: "Dusty" Foggo, Duke, Brent Wilkes, and the rest of the gang. Enjoy!
Hope that helps. I think this is a basically accurate outline of the scandal's major components, though of course it could turn out wrong.
Goss as the Neo-Con Stalinist: Keep in mind that Porter Goss tried to purge rebellious Democrats from the CIA, as he (and his deputies) saw them. As the LA Times put it, Goss Leaves a Weakened CIA, Agency Officials Say:
Four former deputy directors of operations once tried to offer Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials who are aware of the communications. The perception that Goss was conducting a partisan witch hunt grew, too, as staffers asked about the party affiliation of officers who sent in cables or analyses on Iraq that contradicted the Defense Department's more optimistic scenarios.
"Unfortunately, Goss is going to be seen as the guy who oversaw the agency victimized by politics," said Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the European division. "His tenure saw the greatest loss of operational experience" in the operations division since congressional hearings on CIA domestic spying plunged the agency into crisis, he said.
The media's main Goss storyline has nothing to do with Hookergate: he allegedly just quit because National Intelligence Director John Negroponte had taken too much of his power away, and it pissed Goss off. Certainly, as Time reported, the CIA is getting gutted, with many analysts moving into Negroponte's new ODNI entity created by the recent "intelligence reforms". However, this process could go all wrong, as the CIA could be shredded and the ODNI becoming some sort of weird & monstrous new bureaucracy. This is a separate issue, but important to the whole country. The CIA's Existential Crisis on POGOblog (from the Project on Gov't Oversight) has a really good explanation of how the intelligence bureaucracy is being restructured.
It's too damn weird to see the CIA director quit right as stories about a pretty massive sex scandal are looming. Every reporter in town is all over it. Here is Josh Marshall's basic backstory explanation of how Goss, Foggo, Wilkes and Cunningham fit together, from a TPM post last Friday afternoon:
The hookers in Hookergate are, of course, the sizzle. But there's a bigger story. It stems directly from the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal, which many had figured was over. But it's not. You may have noticed that while Duke Cunningham is already in jail and Mitchell Wade has already pled guilty to multiple charges, Brent Wilkes has never been touched. Wilkes is the ur-briber at the heart of the Cunningham scandal, you can see pretty clearly by reading the other indictments and plea agreements. Wade was Wilkes' protege. Now, on the surface one might surmise that the prosecutors are just taking their time, putting together their best case. I hear different.
Wilkes has deep ties into the CIA. The focal point of those ties is to Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the man Porter Goss appointed to the #3 position at CIA when he took over the Agency last year. Remember, Wilkes' scam was getting corrupt contracts deep in the 'black' world of intelligence and defense appropriations, where there's little or no oversight. Foggo was in the contracting and procurement field at the CIA. So you can see how he and Wilkes, who have been friends since high school, had plenty to talk about.
The CIA wasn't the only place Wilkes and his protege Wade plied their corrupt trade. There were also in the mix contracting on the Bush Pentagon's extra-constitutional spying operations. And I am told that senior appointees at the DOD knew about their corruption but overlooked it.
Now, since the Cunningham scandal got under, and particularly of late, there's been a big tug of war between federal law enforcement and the CIA over whether to really go after Wilkes. Probably a little more specificity is in order there, folks at CIA in the orbit of Foggo and presumably Goss.
Now, how does Goss know Foggo? That's how we get into the other part of this story -- those 'hospitality suites', that moveable feast of food, poker and love, Brent Wilkes ran in Washington for maybe fifteen years. We hear that's how Goss got to be friends with Foggo, whom he later promoted to executive director of the CIA, the number 3 post at the Agency.
Now, last week, Goss denied he had attended any of Wilkes' parties, in answer to a question from TPMmuckraker. Foggo admitted attending the parties but claimed he'd never seen the hookers.
Now, corrupt contractors saucing up Agency officials and members of Congress to get contracts and free money. Hospitality suites where the saucing takes place. Hookers in the mix. It's going on for more than a decade, various members of the key committees in the mix. Goss, former member of one of those committees, appoints one of the key players in all this mess as the number three guy at CIA? The feds leaning hard on the limo company owner who probably knows all the details and already has a long rap sheet and can't afford another conviction?
Walter Shapiro in Salon summarized the case:
Porter Goss' spooky demise: For those practiced in connecting the dots, little artistic training is needed to speculatively link Goss' here's-your-hat-what's-your-hurry departure with the bribery scandal surrounding jailed former GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. NBC News reported Thursday night that the CIA is investigating whether a top agency official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, improperly steered a $2.4 million contract to his close college friend Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor implicated in the Cunningham case. Wilkes reportedly supplied prostitutes to Cunningham at poker parties that Foggo also attended, though the CIA official denies seeing the female entertainment.
There is no obvious connection between Goss and Cunningham, aside from their having served together in the House for 13 years. But the real mystery is how Foggo became the CIA's executive director, the official in charge of day-to-day operations at the entire agency: He was a midlevel field officer with a procurement background when Goss appointed him in 2004. A CIA spokeswoman, who did not want her name used, said Thursday that the two men met when Foggo testified before the House Intelligence Committee, which Goss chaired from 1997 until 2004, when Bush made him the CIA director. No date was provided for Foggo's testimony before Goss' committee.
Of course, the Foggo-Wilkes connection may have nothing to do with the sudden change in Goss' career arc. Daalder posed the speculative question, "Was there an intelligence blunder that we don't know about -- and that we may never know about?"
The shady intelligence contracts and their security consequences: Laura Rozen in January wrote “Duke” of Deception: The overlooked security implications of the Cunningham scandal for the American Prospect magazine.
Viewed as a corruption case, the Cunningham matter has an arc that suggests the possibility of more high-profile indictments to come. But looked at from a counterintelligence angle, it is even more disturbing. The case is still more worrying if it is turned around, and focused not only on the congressman for sale, but on the defense contractors and foreign-linked financiers who cultivated Cunningham -- and potentially other lawmakers -- precisely because of their position on the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees.
Cunningham has admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes from two men who sought and received not only U.S. government contracts, but particular types of contracts. They were awarded defense and intelligence contracts, including counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs so sensitive their precise details are confined to those with security clearances. As Cunningham himself bragged in a February 8, 2001, letter to defense contractor executives after he was appointed to the Intelligence Committee, “I feel fortunate to represent the nation’s top technological talent in the ‘black’ world,” the San Diego Union Tribune first reported.
Lots more gory details in there, and another story back in December too. Cunningham set up a lot of contracts that infest the whole system: the Pentagon's "newest and fastest-growing intelligence agency", the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) agency had major contracts with MZM set up by Cunningham. WaPo reported in March, 'Pentagon Agency's Contracts Reviewed':
...[Cunningham] prosecutors said that in fiscal 2003 legislation, Cunningham set aside, or earmarked, $6.3 million for work to be done "to benefit" CIFA shortly after the agency was created. The contract went to MZM Inc., a company run by Mitchell J. Wade, who recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe Cunningham.... CIFA, whose exact size and budget remain secret, was established in September 2002 to coordinate policy and oversee the counterintelligence activities of units within the military services and Pentagon agencies. In the past three years, it has grown to become an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and widening authority focused primarily on protecting defense facilities and personnel from terrorist attacks. The agency was criticized after it was revealed in December that a database it managed held information on Americans who were peacefully protesting the war in Iraq at defense facilities and recruiting offices.
So this is one of those Pentagon agencies that spies on America. Hi, guys.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has pushed along the Cunningham story from the beginning. This story about Wilkes from last December, Contractor 'knew how to grease the wheels', has the goods about his payoffs to DeLay, how ACDS got government contracts, and it had the earliest hints about Wilkes running a "hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in Washington – first in the Watergate Hotel and then in the Westin Grand near Capitol Hill." (Photo from the Muckers, who reported the Watergate has been subpoenaed)
House Intel Committee Chair "Not Surprised" Duke Slept with Hookers.
The American Progress Action Fund Progress Report (a liberal organization obviously) had a really good summary of the whole case on May 4 (also posted on Alternet). Go check that out for lots more material on Wilkes, the poker parties, Foggo's involvment there, Goss, the Limo service and the "Defense Appropriations Committee 'Cabal'." It ends with:
Wilkes was reportedly set to receive a contract to "create and run a secret plane network" for the CIA before his links to Cunningham were made public. The roots of this scandal may be as much in profiteering as they are in "this club's conviction that the law is an impediment to the national security cause, that the way to run things is through these informal networks."
Who was Nine Fingers? There is some CIA agent in the poker party mix nicknamed "Nine Fingers", whose role may become clearer, as Newsweek identified him as Brant Bassett, an agent in Operations Directorate. TPMMuckrakers on the case:
"Another player was a CIA agent known as 'Nine Fingers,' so named because he lost one of his digits while on assignment," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported over a week ago in what appeared to be an almost throwaway bit of color.
The Mafia-esque moniker has attracted attention and jokes -- but little new information, until now: Newsweek magazine is the first to identify Nine Fingers as Brant Bassett, whom they also say is "a former Goss aide." He may be a more central character in our story than the SDUT made him out to be.
Bassett is reported to have been a case officer with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, where Foggo worked. Their paths crossed a number of times over the years and they became friendly, I'm told, which isn't a stretch, given that two publications now put Bassett in poker games with Foggo and Wilkes.
An enduring mystery to this fiasco is why Porter Goss promoted "Dusty" Foggo to the very top of the CIA. Now, informed sources are speculating that Bassett may be the link that explains that mystery, at least in part. Bassett, a counsel and staff director for the Human Intelligence panel of Goss' House Intelligence Committee, had ample opportunity to introduce Goss and his close aide Patrick Murray to Foggo. Did he?
Justin Rood and the Talking Points Memo Muckrakers have been all over Hookergate from the beginning - and isn't it nice that the Internet lets this things get legs so fast now? Hit their Hookergate archives for more, including investigations about the corrupt Shirlington Limousine service that moved the prostitutes around, while under a privileged Homeland Security contract. The NY Times reports that Homeland Security doesn't even do background checks on its contractors.
Maverick / weird DC reporter Wayne Madsen has been covering this and his site had some goodies on it early (he is very anti-Hayden too, so check that out). He said May 6:
Although the White House spun Goss' departure as expected following some sort of "transition," it was clear that what WMR has been reporting for some time -- that Goss and his closest advisers, all GOP political operatives and hacks -- had been implicated in the contractor scandals surrounding Goss' Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and ADCS head Brent Wilkes. The scandal involved poker parties at the Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand that reportedly featured prostitutes of both sexes, limousines, and situations in which CIA officials could be subject to potential blackmail. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte became so concerned about the CIA scandal, he told Goss that it was time for him to go. it is now expected that other members of the Goss team -- including Foggo, chief of staff Patrick Murray, Michael Kostiw (who left the CIA under a cloud in the early 1980s after being arrested for shoplifting a package of bacon from a McLean, Virginia supermarket), Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, and others who Goss brought with him from Capitol Hill -- will be shown the door.
What does Larry Johnson's anonymous CIA friend say happened? Larry is one of the "pissed off CIA dudes" on the Hongpong.com sidebar now. He posted a very interesting email from one of his buddies who used to be in there:
If you want to know, the way these things worked were that once or twice a week, Dusty would host a poker game either at his house in Vienna or Brent’s place at the Watergate, later the Westin. These things went on from the mid 1990’s until Dusty went to Frankfurt in the early 2000’s. Basically, Dusty used these games to take his mind off of his feud with Buzzy Krongaard, which was a minor thing to Buzzy, but weighed pretty heavily on Dusty’s mind. When at Dusty’s place, they were pretty much all Agency guys, except for Brent. Dusty’s wife laid out the food and drink. When downtown, Brent would invite Duke and some other denizens from the Hill, but the majority were always Dusty’s Agency poker buddies. Brent would pop for the drinks and snacks downtown, and the ambiance was kind of like the poker game on The Sopranos. At either location, Dusty was the center of attraction and kind of the host. There was always a lot of bitching about Buzzy, even in front of the Hill guys. These were always all guy things, their weren’t any women there. Dusty is a big cigar aficionado, in fact, he used to have the license plate CIGRMAN on his car. The room was always filled with smoke.
Downtown, it wasn’t unusual for guys to crash in the bedrooms or on the couch before going home at dawn to catch a shower and go in to work. It would not surprise me if Brent used the same rooms at the Watergate and Westin for subsidized Congressional encounters with hookers, but I don’t know this to be the case. If Brent did, I doubt that he would’ve said anything to Dusty about it, because, for all of his judgmental shortcomings, Dusty has enough of a political antenna to realize that he shouldn’t be playing poker in the same room where Duke was availing himself of free hookers. As you probably know, Dusty is the type of guy who people either love or hate. In my experience, women who hate him do so because he is an unabashed chauvinist of the old school. Guys who hate him pretty much do so because they wish they had the moxie to get as much poontang as they think he is getting. So there you have it, at least my take.
Who else to check out? Reporter Laura Rozen has been on the Cunningham case for a long time. The new Washington Babylon blog at Harpers by Ken Silverstein broke some of the limo stuff.
What else? Duke is gay? Uhm, well, there was this one story (noted here): "Duke’s House of cards" Washington Blade By CHRIS CRAIN Dec. 02, 2005. Would be funny, wouldn't it?
What you won’t read about in these mainstream press accounts is the other double life led by the closet case, Duke, the anti-gay conservative. Cunningham, who is married with grown children, has admitted to romantic, loving relationships with men, both during his Vietnam military service and as a civilian. That was the remarkable story that this publication reported two years ago, when Elizabeth Birch, the former Human Rights Campaign leader, inadvertently outed Cunningham at a gay rights forum.
Birch never mentioned Cunningham’s name, but she talked about a rabidly anti-gay congressman who asked to meet privately with her in the midst of a controversy over his use in a speech on the floor of the House the term “homos” to describe gays who have served in the military. Alone with Birch and an HRC staffer, the unnamed congressman shared that he had loved men during his life. In telling the story, Birch offered up a few too many details about the closeted congressman.
CIA Director replacement Hayden is sketchy: This has already gotten overly long, so I will let the Hayden stuff go for now. In the meantime, just ponder, do these fuckers ever actually get around to protecting America?!
I was at the 5th Congressional District DFL nominating convention at St. Louis Park Jr. High today, where. after 3 ballots, State Rep. Keith Ellison was selected as the DFL nominee in the heavily Democratic district. I went under the Politics in Minnesota banner with a press pass, even though I was also there because I have done a smidgen of work for one Susan SegaI, who was running for Hennepin County Commissioner. However, the current commissioner, Gail Dorfman, was also running for the Congressional nomination that Ellison bagged. Dorfman did make it to the final round, though, in second.
What this means is that SegaI had to drop out, as she had promised Dorfman (who now wishes to keep her seat in November - although this hasn't been confirmed by me), abruptly ending my two-week campaign gofer stint. Kind of unfortunate but now I feel motivated to dig up another gig with the DFL and I'll probably get some help.
At the event I met Sabo, Kelley, Laurey, Ellison and got to see quite a spectacle. Never been to one of those before. On my way back from a final meeting with SegaI in Kenwood, I happened across some kind of StonerFest with my camera. The dudes at bottom are throwing flaming torches. Funny movie to post later. Right now, it's saturday night! -->outta here ---->
.
The Flaming Lips - The Gash: (The Soft Bulletin - 1999)
Is that gash in your leg
Really why you have stopped?
‘Cause I’ve noticed all the others
Though they’re gashed, they’re still going
‘Cause I feel like the real reason
That you’re quitting, that you’re admitting
That you’ve lost all the will to battle on
Will the fight for our sanity
Be the fight of our lives?
Now that we’ve lost all the reasons
That we thought that we had
Still the battle that we’re in
Rages on till the end
With explosions, wounds are open
Sights and smells, eyes and noses
But the thought that went unspoken
Was understanding that you’re broken
Still the last volunteer battles on
Battles on
Battles on
First I will add my own original contribution to this rehash of the most goddamned annoying day in the history of the world. When I was at the Kos appearance here in Minneapolis a couple days ago, Coleen Rowley (of FBI whistleblower fame) showed up to make the liberal scene, and since Zacharias Moussaoui was all over the news, I had to ask her something, because she was at that damn Minneapolis field office when they caught the bastard in August 2001. Could 9/11 have been prevented, I asked her, given that you guys had Moussaoui? I'm imperfectly paraphrasing here, but she shot back, Yes. The reports about terrorists at flight schools got stopped up in the FBI, but those reports got to George Tenet, the chief of Central Intelligence. And all they really had to do was put bolts on the cockpit doors. It's too bad I don't have a recording so I can't quote it perfectly.
But damn, to have been in that situation, to have been an FBI agent who sensed the bigger pilot conspiracy, and to get shut down in August 2001. What a shitty thing. (Michael Ruppert blames an FBI guy named Frasca for orchestrating the Minneapolis FBI "suppression" - more here and here - just trying to cover my basic illuminati-isms). Anyway:
Somehow, quite a few of my friends have become 9/11 conspiracy buffs, as a particular film has persuaded them something just ain't right with everyone's favorite glimpse into the Abyss. Nowadays "Vigilant Guardian" and "controlled demolition" are code words we chuckle at. Well, that's a bit much, but they are among those who have had their perceptions altered by a surprisingly popular film currently passed around the Internet and on DVD. It's called Loose Change: 2nd Edition (here's the official blog), which was made by some young guys for less than $10,000. You can watch the whole thing in high-quality video through Google Video here.
Still not explained: "Is this real world or an exercise?" (source)
I haven't mentioned Loose Change to people much at all (OK, I did a couple times, and via Google Video I got the Video iPod version). Rather, they keep telling me about this exciting video that fucked with their heads. And then they usually show it to their parents, who get terribly annoyed at such silly nonsense. It is getting some play in the mainstream media, as USA Today recently ran a pretty negative article about the "conspiracy film."
USA Today, APRIL 28, 2006: Conspiracy Film Rewrites Sept. 11
Called Loose Change, it is being downloaded from the Internet and shown in small screenings here and overseas. It is not alone in the genre, and it is not unusual in American history either to offer simplistic explanations or demonize opponents. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson were accused by their contemporaries of massive government conspiracies.
The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives. "This is our generation's Vietnam, our generation's Kennedy assassination," says Korey Rowe, 23, the film's producer.
Professors and researchers of film and politics say the Internet is making it far easier to spread such theories because the traditional media are losing their hold on the news. The immense coverage of controversies and accusations surrounding the war on terror has created fertile ground for people who assign their own interpretations to photos, footage, eyewitnesses, investigations and newspaper accounts of what happened, they say. [w00000p w000p I know they must be talking about me! -dan]
"The information revolution now gives us access to too much information," says Jonathan Taplin, who teaches at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. "Our problems are that we're just overwhelmed, so in some sense we just basically don't even know where to turn."
True enough, in a sense. The hypersaturation of information has caused a breakdown in the way that we structure the authority to process that information. In other words, there's so much damn noise that you don't know how to trust. Compounding this problem is the obvious fact that no one trusts the White House at all any more, and no one with any wits should trust the mainstream media, after all their well-documented fuckups. And after Colbert's performance, we can tell they're all pretty much scared shitless.
So then, what fills the gap? Stuff like this, for better or worse. Loose Change packs an effective punch for such a small production. But they really don't want you to take what they say as gospel – and the axis of the film is really just the creepy contrast between the Official Narrative supported or enforced today (i.e. the sanctimonious retrospective "Flight 93" flick type stuff), versus the on-site media and first responder reactions that day, and they just don't fit together at all. The Loose Change website's evidence section cites pretty much every bit of the film back to some report or another, and they deserve to be quoted:
The information in Loose Change 2nd Edition is widely available to the public.
We have done nothing extraordinary in terms of research. We also do not take credit for these people's hard work.
Also, take nothing we say at face value.
We highly encourage you to research this information yourselves and come to your own conclusions.
That's what's so interesting. Aside from those nagging hypothetical questions they pose, almost every bit of the movie is based on either direct, original interviews (a flight school guy and a WTC staffer, both interesting), media clips from the day itself, mainstream media press reports, and government documents. In the site's evidence section you can find links to all of these things.
On the other hand, there are press reports that I would basically dismiss. A glaring one is the Guardian report that Osama bin Laden was hospitalized in Dubai on September 10 and met with a local CIA station chief. That story was itself based on one in the French media that was based on anonymous French intelligence sources. Make your own judgments on that, but Loose Change fails to explain the source of that particular story.
It opens with a brilliant Hunter Thompson interview about the supine, "flag sucking" media. Loose Change deploys all the video and audio clips that just don't fit with the official explanations – the suppressed odds and ends of the immediate 9/11 situation, all the weird immediate eyewitness reports. My favorite is when CNN's Jamie McIntyre, live at the Pentagon, says he just doesn't see any damn evidence the plane crashed "anywhere near the Pentagon." All the clips of doomed firefighters talking about secondary WTC explosions was also interesting.
My favorite parts of the movie: the introduction featuring the Operation Northwoods case, which proves that in 1962, the military openly drafted plans to execute fake Communist Cuban terrorist attacks, intended to justify military action against Cuba. This sets a high bar for devious thinking. Then, there is the Pentagon segment, wherein the weird anomaly of how that hole in the Pentagon was not shaped like a plane at all is offered with an excellent animation. The key is that there aren't any holes matching the impact point of multiple-ton jet engines. Looking at the "controlled demolition" WTC theory, the video shows, in brackets, exploding points on the building that – with a bit of imagination – could appear to be charges blowing apart the structure.
Personally, I really can't swallow the full body of 9/11 conspiracies that are out there. I don't believe in the "controlled demolition", but I just can't refute the fact that the God damned hole in the Pentagon is not shaped right at all. And if there were Pentagon defense drills called "Vigilant Guardian," "Northern Vigilance" and others, these placed America's air defenses in all the wrong places, by evil design or really unlucky accident. But, above all, why were the War Games not documented in the 9/11 Commission's final report? The audio clip where the air traffic controller says "Is this real world or exercise?" is deployed for in a disconcerting and brutal effect. (Check the Alex Jones PrisonPlanet archives for War Games details galore, not to mention a quite exhaustive set of 9/11 conspiracy stories from everywhere)
The music is fucking awesome, especially during the Pentagon-hole part and the popping rhythms of the "controlled demolition" segment, perhaps the most surreal sequence. I think they should release a soundtrack.
So we can make one firm conclusion: It's crazy crazy crazy to think there is anything anomalous about 9/11. Or else, it is crazy crazy crazy to believe in one film's version of the events because it features the wrong conspiracy. There are people on the pro-conspiracy side that think that Avery's film is crude, misleading, and full of the red herrings like the explosive 'pods' on the WTC planes, all diversions planted by the government to divide and confuse the 9/11 Truth Movement, deemed Trojan Horses.
911research.com, a pro-conspiracy site, featured the following flyer which summarized their favorite parts and drawbacks to Loose Change:
Strong evidence – irrefutable inside job
+ “WTC7 fell straight down, into a convenient little pile, in 6 seconds.”
+ “The Twin Towers came down in nearly free fall speed.”
+ “The [WTC] remains [were shipped] off to recycling yards overseas before investigators could even examine them.”
+ “And is it merely coincidence that the Pentagon was hit in the only section that was recently being reinforced to withstand that very same kind of attack?”
+ “So four different black boxes, made from the most resiliant materials known to man, were destroyed.”
+ “And for some reason, the last three minutes of the [Ft 93] tape was unaccounted for. The FBI had no explanation for the discrepancy.”
+ “Newsweek reports that a number of top Pentagon brass cancel their flight plans for the next morning.”
+ “On September 11th, 2001, NORAD is in the middle of a number of [up to 5] military exercises . . . leaving 14 fighter jets to protect the entire US.”
+ “It was a psychological attack on the American People, and it was pulled off with military precision.”
Pseudo evidence – traps to distract and discredit the 9/11 truth movement: pods, missiles, drones . . .
+ “It would seem that an entire plane disappeared upon impact.” [Answer – Many many documented plane crash sites leave virtually no debris.]
+ “So what could blow a 16 foot hole in the outer ring of the Pentagon . . . A cruise missile.” [Answer – Wrong. A Boeing 757 could.]
+ “Why is the damage to the Pentagon completely inconsistent with a Boeing 757?” [Answer - It’s not, the first floor hole is over 90’ wide.]
+ “So if Flight 93 didn’t go down in Shanksville, then where? You ready for this? Cleveland.” [Answer – Flt 93 was most likely shot down.]
+ “Flight 93 passengers were taken to an empty NASA research center.” [This is pure speculation mixed with information from a real flight which landed, Delta 1989.]
+ “If different planes were used, what happened to the original ones?” [Answer- There is no evidence that anything but the real planes were used in any the attacks.]
+ “None of those calls [from the flights] could have possibly taken place.” [Answer – there is no clear evidence for the calls being fake or impossible.]
+ “So what happened in the North Tower? Ask Willie Rodriguez. . . . explosions coming from the basement . . .” [Answer – even though were some explosions in the basement and lobby, we know the towers collapsed from the top down.]
Some [9/11 truth movement/conspiracy theorist/planted disinformation cut-out/guy in his basement] Michael Green, offered the following analysis of Loose Change, though I think it is based on the First Edition, not second. "Loose Change" An analysis:
If a film-maker or live lecturer has the good fortune of having the attention of someone like this, or good solid middle-Americans, for an hour-long DVD, or for a 2-3 hour live presentation, he had better use clear hard facts for persuasion, and not iffy, vaguely or ambiguously supported possibilities. The intelligence agencies that do the crimes try to control the counter-community's response by infiltrating moles that infect it with large falsehoods and impossible-to-prove technical questions (micro-analysis). The large falsehoods are designed to prove the community wrong and nuts if the need arises. The microanalysis into pointless or unanswerable questions, or into just plain dumb ones, is to divert its energies from using the clear hard facts to tell the story simply and clearly.
The DVD "Loose Change" by rising media artist Dylan Avery has been touted by some members of the 911-truth community as the best presentation yet, as the "best evidence" (a reference to David Lifton’s book, "Best Evidence" on the JFK assassination). This review will show that the DVD is anything but that; if it is not naive, foolish, uninformed and ignorant, then it is the work of a calculating mole or at best a naïf who has been used by such.
...........Mr. Avery then says to “forget the debris. The 767’s that hit the WTC left a very distinct outline of a commercial airliner. Therefore we should expect something similar at the Pentagon.” The film then flashes to the famous photo of the smoky Pentagon that shows the entry hole before the outer wall collapsed. Avery remarks, “The only damage to the outer wall of the Pentagon is a single hole approximately 16’ in diameter.” COMMENT: First, Avery advances a bad argument because whether or not the Pentagon should show the outline of an airliner in the same way depends on whether it is constructed of the same material as the WTC, and if not, upon the structural differences. Since the outer wall of the Pentagon reportedly was 18” of steel reinforced concrete and reportedly had many of its windows replaced with bomb-resistant 2,500-pound windows in the renovation process that was not yet completed, there is no reason to expect the same pattern.[5] Indeed Mr. Avery’s short attention span shows when he asks the relevant question at 21:35 “And is it merely a coincidence that the Pentagon was hit in the only section that was renovated to withstand that kind of attack?” Second, the area of damage caused by the wings to the Pentagon does in fact fit its outlines well. The photo that Avery mistakenly says shows just a small hole in fact shows massive damage to the façade where the right wing hit; the left side is totally obscured by black smoke. Other photos of the left area show a very close correlation to the angled wingspan of a 767. See “Revelations 911,” [site link busted -Dan].
So that's an attack from the more paranoid side. I'm sure you can find an equally forceful one from the Offical Reality side of the media world.
Here are some more sources for 9/11 conspiracy/truth material. Take it as you will: Question911.com links, WhatReallyHappened.com and another video: Painful Deceptions. Project Censored's unanswered questions of 9/11, the staggeringly complex CooperativeResearch.org's Complete 9/11 Timeline including military exercises. This Serendipity.li essay hits all the cornerstones of this type of story. I could go on and on... but oh well. You can use Google your own damn self.
This is where I am supposed to make some grand conclusion. I dunno....
It is so irritating that this whole era revolves around your supposed emotional reaction to a big-ass terrorist attack that turned out to justify invading half the Middle East and bombing the rest. Our society relentlessly frames and reframes that point in history, with either an angle to Prove the Face of the Enemy (and take your kids to see United 93 so they turn into bloodthirsty cretins!!) or else to prove this government is even more diabolical than when Reagan's boys ran drugs for arms for hostages for Iran. In the process of rationalizing its messy history, the 9/11 Commission invented its own damn timeline that seemed shaped to take the pressure off of NORAD for their weirdly sluggish response to the whole thing, and only poor Mark Dayton had the brass to object to this spinning. At the minimum, "they" were disingenuous after the fact, as bureaucracies usually are, in order to shift the blame around. Of that much, I think we can be certain.
Let's round this out, since of course the back of the dollar bill and that creepy fucking pyramid has been at the root of this the whole time. Why not? The 9/11 folding bill conspiracy? From Armageddon Online: 911 and Currency Conspiracy. Pretty funny.
Either way, enjoy United 93. Your fucking popcorn flavoring will kill you before THE ENEMY does: ABC News: Fatal Disease From Flavoring Raises Flags. Good times. 3 AM is a perfect time to post something like this.
Technorati Tags: 11, cia, conspiracy, loose change, propaganda, war
It is always good to hear that Peter has gotten another story onto the AP wire out west. He called me on his way out of the second meeting, wherein things seemed to be leaning towards allowing the platting of a subdivision named Sinnerville, since there was this governor out there named Sinner... But the goods that got picked up by the wire:
Subdivision name raises some county eyebrows
By PETER GARTRELL, News-Record Writer
May 1, 2006
Religion and government don't often mix but there appears to be a holy controversy brewing over a subdivision name that could boil over in the chambers of the Campbell County Commission.
Commissioners on Tuesday will consider the final plat of a 42-acre subdivision north of Rozet called Sinnerville.
That's right. Sinnerville.
The subdivision, which is being brought before county commissioners by Jason Sinner, generated some controversy during a November Planning Commission meeting, which is usually a mundane affair.
“I expect there would be some discussion on that. However, the county really does not regulate the naming of subdivisions unless there's a conflict with another subdivision,” Chairwoman Marilyn Mackey said.
Sinner couldn't be reached for comment Monday morning but Barb Doyle, of Doyle Land Surveying, who has worked with Sinner on the subdivision, said he would attend Tuesday's commission meeting and fight any attempt to change the name.
At the November meeting, Sinner told planners that he is proud of his name and his family, which has among its ranks a former North Dakota governor, George A. Sinner, a Democrat who served from 1985-1992.
Peter is all over the place, churning out one thing after another: Lodging tax to get review from county, Wright. That must have been a sweet meeting. Wygen II plant on track to finish early, Few apply for 14 positions on various county boards, Court sides with county, says mine must pay $1.7M, Former mayor, senator eyes commission seat and best of all, Rural ballfield will become an open space.
Picked up in Grand Forks: Campbell Co. to consider final plat for 'Sinnerville'
Associated Press
GILLETTE, Wyo. - Pleasant, it may be. But just imagine the signs: "Welcome to Sinnerville."
Thank God P is holding it down out there for all us sinners!
...at the moment, because I am doing some data entry work for a campaign for Hennepin County Commissioner. Susan Segal is an attorney in the Hennepin County attorney's office, who is running for Gail Dorfman's seat in Hennepin. Dorfman, in turn, is now running for Congress in retiring Martin Sabo's current seat.
So it is kind of a DFL daisy-chain effect. Only if Dorfman wins the nomination, against such heavyweights as State Rep. Keith Ellison, can Segal's campaign go forward. However, as I enter delegates into our fancy Drupal-based content and contact management system, I see that she's got quite a bit of delegate support already locked in, provided Dorfman makes it to the next round. Interesting stuff.
I really promise to dish up some goodies on Hookergate and other stuff later, famous blogger last words.... But sweetly enough, old GOP hand Ed Rollins suggested that around 15 (mostly?) Republican congressmen could get snared into Hookergate and indicted. And that would make it truly a great summer.
"One of my balls bigger than the Epcot Center"
-Puniceus Hominis, "Quam Sublime"
Stephen Colbert was the celebrity roaster of frequent-and-deservedly-so roastee, our President, fearless leader, last night at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. In a night that saw Chuckles take to the stage with an impersonator of himself in an aww-shucksy routine that had the Press Corps obediently busting a gut, Colbert delivered an address that is, at moments, almost unbearable to watch. This is not to say that there was anything wrong with the material, but it was so shockingly direct (and shockingly directed, as Colbert turned to Bush over and over again, his faux-fawning met with an icy glare for the duration of the speech) and met with so little response amongst the sea of tables full of press folk, who struggle with the President and his administrations stinginess with details every day.
Here's the clip. [video of second half here too -Dan] When you're done with it, go up and read that FoxNews article again, or maybe this: "Being Rude to the President and His Wife is No Joke", [Political Psychology Blog by way of Powerline], which scientifically proves that Colbert bombed, Bush is super sweet and anything you say about him that's bad imperils him, this sweet land that we call home, and everyone we hold dear as a society. Tucker Carlson gave this rather weak address about Colbert "bombing" at the dinner, and Michelle Malkin (who, truth be told, can't even be covered by any sort of "Twinky" joke because the cream filling in a twinkie isn't wearing a white robe and hood) had this to say. The leftist leanings of ourselves and whatever readers we may have aside, this was a sharp piece of entertainment and, knowing that there is maybe still a smidgen of truth to the whole "liberal media" line, it is hard to imagine that many in the crowd, in different circumstances, would have found this hilarious. However, they sat on their hands here, with some too-cool-for-D.C. sniggering the only reward for Colbert's bravery.
Left: Bush's Reaction to Colbert's Clowning; Right: Colbert Turned Repeatedly to Bush During the Speech
Colbert's proximity to the President and his ability to strictly maintain his blithe, untroubled right-winger character with no egging on by the crowd and a stone-faced head of state three steps away was the highlight. He revelled in his ability to make the President uncomfortable, and crossed a number of names off his possible guest list, including John McCain, of whom he said:
John McCain is here. John McCain, John McCain, what a maverick! Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you it wasn't a salad fork. This guy could have used a spoon! There's no predicting him. By the way, Senator McCain, it's so wonderful to see you coming back into the Republican fold. I have a summer house in South Carolina; look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones University. So glad you've seen the light, sir.
Jon Stewart gave McCain a fairly thorough working-over on The Daily Show recently, which you can see here. Colbert, safe behind his persona, felt free to go further than Stewart would have dared, and Stewart seemed to recognize that last night when he mentioned the incident at the beginning of The Daily Show here and when he transitioned to Colbert at the end here.
Look, make your own opinion, but this speech tested the nation's tolerance for satire by turning to hand-tohand combat tactics in the cultural war. It's fun to bomb at political figures in D.C. from 42nd St in New York, but it takes some cock-and-balls to do it to the face of the most powerful man in the world, idiot or no.
For those of you still interested, here's the transcript of the speech.
I am going over to see Markos Moulitsas Zúniga at Arise Books at noon. Hell yah. Then probably go drinking. That's as good as it gets in the Blogosphere. MNSpeak notes:
Internationally known blogger and new age political pundit Markos "Daily Kos" Zuniga will be in town today for his "Crashing the Gate" book tour. Markos will be autographing books starting at noon at the Arise! Bookstore. Then he will be doing an interview on All Things Considered at 2:30 until 3:00 pm, and finally the Lambert and Janecek Show from 5:00 until 5:30 pm. Following that, he will be swinging by Drinking Liberally at the 331 Club in the evening for the after party.
Minneapolis, MN
Tuesday, May 2nd, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Reception at 331 Club
Hosted by Drinking Liberally - Minneapolis Chapter
331 Northeast 13th Avenue
Minneapolis, MN
Also tomorrow:
St. Paul, MN
Wednesday, May 3rd, 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
Breakfast at Louisiana Cafe
613 Selby Ave
St. Paul, MN
Robert Smigel had this awesome cartoon on a March 1998 SNL called "Conspiracy Theory Rock" which was really quite amazing (QuickTime link), as noted in this Times story. It only aired once, and has subsequently been deleted from reruns – instead they run the second Backstreet Boys performance. Basically it conveys, in typical Smigel style, the conflicts of interest and shady military money flows of the major corporate media – and the NBC peacock does embarrassing stuff. More on it here.
Who was Zoroaster? A Persian prophet around 1700 BC who gave us the concepts of cosmological good versus evil, the afterlife and the Judgment Day. The Persian king found this to be a handy way to generate a more coherent and submissive population, so Zoroastrianism became the state religion of Persia. Even though there are fire temples around Asia today, it is still very obscure. The fire temples all have continuously burning fires that are the representations, though not considered supernatural, of Ahura Mazda, the Light. The fires have been burning for centuries. (images from Wikipedia)
Zoroaster's influence went east, where it infused the foundations of Buddhism, and west, where it got into post-Babylonian Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Zoroastrianism is an interesting and under-appreciated pillar of monotheism, and in a sense today you could say we are dealing with a kind of Zoroastrian manichaeism run amok. At least that was the point of this DailyKos entry about the Prisoners of Zarathustra. Also, Zoroastrianism has really freakin' cool Babylon-style art.
War Profiteering ain't that profitable? Slate: War profiteering—harder than it looks. By Daniel Gross. A lot of interesting points about the structure of how KBR works. Also check out this thing from PBS Frontline, it was quite detailed and long, but a fascinating interview about how in the military-industrial complex, contractors beget subcontractors up to six levels deep. Even more interesting, those psychopathic guys from CACI and Titan Corporation who were working as private quasi-CIA interrogators at Abu Ghraib had no government oversight officers inside Iraq at all. In other words, there is some kind of mercenary hydra beast with absolutely no checks on it. And it's stealing your money: Frontline: Outsourcing military services is in vogue. Why? An interview with Steven Schooner. Just a few things to kick around.... Try PrivateForces.com for more on the privatized / mercenary military companies.
This is a belated note from the Springfest/Kofi/CheebaDANZA weekend. Springfest kicked ass, the weather held out, the organizers put on an excellent event. I couldn't say any more without risking a federal indictment. And the next day, my roommate offered me a ticket to go see Kofi Annan. I was pretty scrubby, which was exactly how it ought to be.
I still have some backdoor access around Macalester, so when I got rejected (ticket in hand) from the Kofi speech, after marveling at the bitching donors who believed their millions could get them into the Fieldhouse, I managed to sneak into the lunch, and get a seat way up near the front. This, in turn, has caused me to appear in Macalester Propaganda:
As the least well-dressed lunch guest, with the filthy jeans I grabbed running out the door at 8:20 that morning, all was right. The venerable and well-dressed Alex Flores (looking up at far right in the photo above) took three good photos.
As he went down these stairs, surrounded by shrewd members of the State Department security detail, I went to Kagin's side elevator, down to the ground floor. A Mac guard ushered me out of the building with some other folks, but I lingered near the entrance. In no time, Kofi popped around the corner, I asked if I could shake his hand, and I wished him luck.
Along with Springfest and a variety of shadow activities, I pretty much hit the Macalester triple bank shot that weekend... Finally mastered the damn place, about two years too late.
As for the University antiwar protest, well damn, it was really rainy. But still entertaining. I would say that I liked it when the protesters hit the military recruiters' office with metaphorical red paint. (photo from MN Daily story)
However, as recent news stories about police investigations of protests at the 2004 New York Republican convention reveal, the cops look at any potential illegal protest conduct as a probable cause to search you and wiretap you and whatever else. Therefore if a dangerous internet anarchist terrorist like me were to say "that was pretty sweet when they painted the recruiters' office," this would apparently justify total surveillance for the rest of my life.
In any case, I thought it was ironic that they arrested several protesters while the adjacent police horses pooped all over the sidewalk. Red paint and manure was everywhere. But we ought to call it "terrorist latex" and "freedom cakes".
Ducking probable cause and pneumonia - photo by Jenny @ the U
Oddly enough, I was watching American Pimp earlier tonight, and those guys are small fry compared with corrupt DC defense contractors. When I said earlier that MZM, the corrupt contractor that hooked up Duke Cunningham with a house and lotsa goodies, had its fingers in many separate scandal pies, well, I didn't think that included a 15-year prostitution ring with a Homeland Security-approved limo service and late night, cigar chomping prostitute "bacchanalias" at the Watergate with CIA Director Porter Goss. Evidently, reality has come along to make me look tame. Here's the latest:
Stories have been breaking all over the media for the last few days about how the MZM guys hooked up Cunningham with hookers and they partied at the Watergate for old time's sake. The Wall Street Journal broke it out on Thursday, the San Diego Union Tribune got a story out Sunday, as did the NY Times. Ken Silverstein in Harper's put this out on Thursday: Red Lights on Capitol Hill?
The two defense contractors who allegedly bribed Cunningham, said the Journal, were Brent Wilkes, the founder of ADCS Inc., and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc.; both firms profited greatly from their connections with Cunningham. The Journal also suggested that other lawmakers might be implicated. I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post. I've also been able to learn the name of the limousine service that was used to ferry the guests and other attendees to the parties: Shirlington Limousine and Transportation of Arlington, Virginia. Wilkes, I've learned, even hired Shirlington as his personal limousine service....
As to the festivities themselves, I hear that party nights began early with poker games (see Clarification, below) and degenerated into what the source described as a "frat party" scene—real bacchanals. Apparently photographs were taken, and investigators are anxiously procuring copies. My heart beats faster in fevered anticipation.
Perhaps this will ensnare Goss and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, Goss' #3 at the CIA, TPMmuckraker suggests. Laura Rozen adds:
I'm told these poker parties may have indirectly helped put Dusty Foggo on Porter Goss's radar through the person of Goss's deputy Patrick Murray. . . Writes one source, "...Wilkes and Foggo played cards together in washington in the late 1990s and early 2000s. . . It is apparently through this connection that Foggo came to the attention of Goss when Goss' first choice for executive director, Michael Kostiw, was nixed..."
On the record, the CIA denies the charges against Goss, but they wouldn't say about Foggo. Also check out the muckers' Hookergate: Everybody wants a piece of the action. Editor&Publisher comments on the emerging media frenzy, and the San Diego Union Tribune writer said on MSNBC:
SCARBOROUGH: You have obviously and your papers been all over this Cunningham scandal from the very beginning — What are your sources telling you about this latest information that the Wall Street Journal reported on today about possible trading of prostitutes for votes?
CALBREATH: We and a number of other papers have been on this for about six months or so. We have all been looking for the break in this and the Wall Street Journal found it, which is the confirmation that the feds were actually looking at this. For the past six months there we have been hearing a lot of rumors that not only Congressman Cunningham but as many as a half dozen other congressmen may have been involved in this. And we’ve also been hearing about the limousine service that Brent Wilkes used to bring prostitutes to the Watergate hotel and the Grand Westin in Washington.
And well, why not add this from the very same reporter (via "Contractors' Hooker Ring Lasted 15 Years"):
Several of Wilkes' former employees and business associates say he used the hospitality suites over the past 15 years to curry favor with lawmakers as well as officials with the CIA, where both Wilkes and Wade sought contracts.
Wilkes hosted parties for lawmakers and periodic poker games that included CIA officials as well as members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees. Cunningham, who sat on both committees, was a frequent guest, according to some of the participants in the poker games.
There was also some CIA agent nicknamed Nine Fingers who liked to play, apparently. At least some dimension of these poker parties were reported in an Atlanta paper as far back as 1994! Wonkette awards a prize to the great Mitchell Wade, who is now the Ron Jeremy of lobbyists...
Mitchell Wade, for telling investigators that you provided a congressman with hookers, limos, and rooms at the Watergate, you are an American Hero. We salute you, corrupt contractor, and hope there are plenty more where you came from.
Was the firing of Mary McCarthy just a last-ditch red herring to blame "Democrats" for the general CIA mess these days?
