Al Gore says perhaps he'll speak on FL vote fraud someday; Sibel Edmonds tidbits; new 9/11 conspiracy video; the Teflon pharaoh

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?

Peter snags another AP story: Sinnerville getting platted

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!

Introducing Hookergate @ Watergate: Porter Goss is a pimp; Cunningham scandal now includes Watergate prostitutes & poker

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?

Gartrell scores Associated Press story on old miners

Over the weekend, our man Peter got a story about retiring Wyoming mine workers picked up by the Associated Press & the Casper Star Tribune. Peter works at the Gillette News-Record these days. The last 14 days of Peter stories are here.

Aging in the coal mines
By PETER GARTRELL
The (Gillette) News-Record Monday, April 03, 2006

GILLETTE (AP) -- Meet Lee Yake. He has 25 years of experience working in Powder River Basin coal mines.

A couple of years ago, he decided he'd had enough of the long hours and that it was time to retire. At 59, he is his own boss after buying Industrial Alternators and Starters. If offered him a good change of pace, and provides him with a business he plans eventually to turn over to his son, Terry.

Standing in front of shelves filled with rebuilt starters and alternators for every size of vehicle from pickups to 300-ton haul trucks, Yake said many of his friends who began working in the mines during the 1970s are also considering retirement.

"There's a lot of people that started back when I did that aren't in the Social Security range," he said. "Most of the guys I've seen around, they've had enough."

When they leave, they will take with them a wealth of knowledge.

Meet Dave McElhiney. The 46-year-old former sheriff's deputy has been working as a mechanic for Powder River Coal's Caballo mine for the past four years. That's long enough to know that more than one of his co-workers is eying retirement.

"I got one that's retiring in March, one that's retiring at the end of the year and a bunch that are retiring in three to five years," he said.

He worries that when people like Yake begin to clock out for the last time, they will take with them critical knowledge. For example, not many new hires can modify older machinery and bring it up to code.

Also On NewWest.net, a blog-style site about the western US, notes Peter's contribution to ongoing discussions of the western coal industry:

Black Butte Coal Co. estimates the extra 1,400 acres would bring production up to 1.5 million to 3 million tons of coal over about 20 years. But, as Peter Gartrell from the Gillette News Record reports, the question remains: With many of the old-time coal miners nearing retirement, is there a new generation willing to take over?

Yea Peter, you go man!!! (file photo)

Back in the Motherland

Welcome Back to America, Buddy...

Eat Up.

I apologize for the delay in this posting. I've been in Mexico, on the worst vacation of my life (more on that later). As we've seen little action from our merry band of HongPosters, I am going to offer up some Saturday Grab Bag™ action for anyone out there who's just looking for something to pick at...

Dean Johnson: I'm a Flippin' Idiot, Give Me Another Chance: Why oh why, Deanster? Had to laugh at this news item, actually. It seems that MN-DFL Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson (or MNDFLSMLDJ for short) met with a group of Pastors in his constituency some time back to discuss the proposed ban on Gay Marriage (I assume this is the one being forwarded by the great Satan herself, Michelle Bachman) and told them that he had spoken to members of the state Supreme Court, who had assured him that the 1997 law that defined marriage as [blah, blah, blah] would be sufficient to hold off any advances on the homo-hitching front. Well, turns out that not only was Mr. Johnson apparently lying (no MNSC members recall ever discussing the issue with him) but he was being taped by one of the pastors in attendance. As you might have guessed, the Forces of Medievalism have already pounced on the issue as proof of the need for stricter anti-non-white-middle-class-suburban-protestants legislation and Johnson's essential unfitness in his role as Majority Leader. Well, they're right about one thing; Johnson is a hack politician extraordinaire, and hopefully this ugly episode will make room for someone too bright to lie to a bunch of spies for Jesus. [Story Here]

Navy Exchanges Fire With Sexy Pirates: Two American ships, the USS Cape St. George and the USS Gonzalez (A guided missile cruiser and guided missile destroyer, respectively) came upon a 30 foot fishing boat towing several smaller skiffs this morning while in a Dutch-led patrol off the coast of Somalia. When the American craft moved in to board the Somali boats, they were fired upon by small arms and possibly an RPG launcher. The Navy fired back, wounding five and killing one with no American casualties. I had to read the article a couple of times first in order to giggle, and then I had to find this picture (this is what I imagine the lead pirate to have looked like) before I could really consider where the pirates went wrong. I think I've got it now, though; Their first mistake was probably firing AK-47s from a 30-foot boat at 300+ feet of American military hardware, packed to the gills with a terrifying array of missiles, artillery and, apparently, more conventional heavy machine guns. Interestingly enough, Piracy is actually on the rise around the world, especially on the coasts of East Africa (where there were 35 attacks last year) and in the South China Sea, where large-scale piracy against major shipping craft and, in one case, a racing yacht have become commonplace in recent years. Personally, I think it is time to declare a Global War on Sexy Piracy, if only to hear all of Rummy's iterations on the theme as he fails to do anything about it- "Worldwide Struggle With Extremely Provocative Maritime Thievery", anyone? [Story]

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Mexico was a bust this Spring Break '06, for a variety of reasons. A trip to the Baja with Tha Fam went horribly wrong. Dreams of sandy beaches and great seaside food gave way to days of huddling indoors as the 50 degree winds whipped the windows of the darkened, unheated house we were staying in, forcing water under the doors and leaving all of our clothes smelling dank. The first problem was planning- the planner of the trip, who shall remain unnamed, didn't bother to find out that Baja California Del Norte is, as a rule, cold in March. Quite cold, really, rarely climbing out of the mid-60s during the day. Also, Baja California Del Norte sucks, a collection of corrugated shacks clinging to the side of a cliff along a steep, rocky, unprotected coastline, with no culture of any sort, a complete lack of any kind of shopping (other than, of course, I Fuck on the First Date t-shirts) and shitty restaurants whose defining feature is the zeal of their employees in their attempts to coerce you to eat at their establishment, including (no joke) jumping in front of the car in order to entice you to park (for free!) outside of the joint. Should you get in, you will be met by the likes of this gentleman above, fat southwestern types who come down in droves to sand race on the dunes in heavily-modified trucks and ludicrously overpowered sandrails. Apparently, driving around in circles on sand is a sport, not just something that ataxia-addled meatheads do in the absence of a real life. The less said about it the better, really. We left early, and it is 80-some degrees here in Tucson.

Hopefully Dan will be down here soon and we will keep you guys posted.

Introducing "The Long War"; Sadr damns Rumsfeld over civil war; French teacher surrenders; DC Dems sux0r; blogs of CIA dudes; Neo-cons favor Iraqi civil war

Juan Cole catches a bitter Muqtada al-Sadr: (UPI)

Young Shiite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr said Monday that Iraq is in a state of civil war. He responded to guerrilla provocations against Sadr City, with bombings and mortars having killed over 50 persons there Sunday, by ordering his Mahdi Militia not to engage in reprisals.

Like many Iraqi and Arab observers, Muqtada was shocked when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the US military would not intervene in an Iraqi civil war, leaving that to Iraqi forces.
' "May God damn you," Sadr said of Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere." '

The Machine Rages On: Raimondo: Another War for Israel: The amen corner howls for war with Iran, The Shame and the Sorrow. UK Independent: Iraq: The reckoning. (photo via KarbalaNews.net)

Welcome to the Long War: We are moving from the War on Terror®© to the Long War©, a hellish state of perpetual warfare forever, but it will be totally badass according to the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon planning document prepared every four years. It's called the Long War, and most of the stuff in this article is apocalyptically gloomy and depressing. And they are going to take your money to pay for it too.

On a note that I hope is totally unrelated, from the Antiwar blog, Why are Marines Training in US Neighborhoods? as reported in the Toledo Blade. Let me fetch my tinfoil.

Blunt Honesty Dept: The State Department informs us in "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" of Iraq's many human rights shortcomings: "The following human rights problems were reported:

• pervasive climate of violence
• misappropriation of official authority by sectarian, criminal, terrorist, and insurgent groups
• arbitrary deprivation of life
• disappearances
• torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
• impunity
• poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities
• arbitrary arrest and detention
• denial of fair public trial
• an immature judicial system lacking capacity
• limitations on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association due to terrorist and militia violence
• restrictions on religious freedom
• large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
• lack of transparency and widespread corruption at all levels of government
• constraints on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
• discrimination against women, ethnic, and religious minorities
• limited exercise of labor rights"

Other than that, it's peachy. There's a ton of stuff in there, worth glancing at. I like how 'Impunity' has its own bullet.

REALLY, IT'S GOOD: CounterPunch: Neocon Advocates Civil War in Iraq as "Strategic" Policy; Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims:

"The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one." .... The fact is that the neocons who control U.S. strategy have no interest in preventing a civil war but only in inciting one. Sectarian tensions were virtually unknown in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. And in fact the Iraqi Shia fought loyally as Iraqis against Iranian Shia in the disastrous Iran-Iraq war. So to avoid an Iraqi civil war, the most important step is to get all the U.S. troops home and thus to terminate U.S. provocations. For it is now crystal clear that the neocon strategy is one of civil war to divide and destroy Iraq; and such a strategy amounts to a crime against humanity.

Which will really be a funny notion when the oil ports in eastern (the suppressed Shiite part of) Saudi Arabia get bombed. A real thigh-slapper.

JPost: India is not Iran. But they are Asians with Nukes, which counts for -10,000 points these days.

Fourth Generation Warfare: I have been saying that this is probably the best model to understand America's current strategic and especially tactical situation. It's gaining more notice now. They even care about the concept in Grand Forks. This long essay by Michael Mazarr, a professor at the U.S. National War College, details a crucial problem with the body of 4GW theory so far: it explains the modes of conflict, but not the underlying causes and motivations.

Libertarian critique of war and socialism: Iraq and the Democratic Empire by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The US spends money, invades countries, sheds blood, and becomes ever more powerful at home and unpopular abroad. In the end, no matter how powerful its weapons or how determined its leaders, it loses. It loses because people resist empire. It loses for the same reasons that socialism and its central plans always fail. Large-scale attempts to force people into predetermined molds founder on the inability of the state to allocate resources rationally and to anticipate change, as well as the ubiquitous and pesky phenomenon called human volition. Mankind was not meant to live in cages.

Why did the US win wars in the past? Because it fought far poorer governments. Today it loses because it fights populations – people acting on their own, forming their own associations, using their brains to outwit bureaucrats, and cobbling together resources from underground markets. The market always outruns the planners for the same reason that guerilla armies usually win over regular armies. Decentralized and spontaneous associations of dedicated individuals are smarter and wiser and more committed than centralized and planned bureaucrats who follow their rule books.

.....Therefore, [Mises] said, war and socialism are both part of the same ideological apparatus. They both presume the primacy of power over property. In the same way, peace and free enterprise are cut from the same cloth. They are the result of a society with a regime that respects the privacy, property, associations, and wishes of the population. The liberal society trades with foreign countries rather than waging war on them. It respects the free movement of peoples. It does not intervene in the religious affairs of people but rather adopts a rule of perfect tolerance.

I'm sorry, this caught my eye and made me laugh:

Former Teacher Surrenders at French School: Armed Ex-Teacher Holds 23 Hostages, Mostly Students, at French School Before Surrendering:
Vilpail had taught at the Colbert de Torcy High School until two years ago, school officials said. He was armed with a gun that fires rubber bullets, police said, adding that the weapon was nevertheless dangerous. He surrendered after hours of negotiations, said Jean-Luc Prigent, a top aide in the local administration.

Even their crazies surrender!! All right, that's a little crass. But it speaks to a certain less-than-subtle difference in the American character. Our paranoid edge goes all the way to the bitter end -- see Falling Down, Fight Club, Glory, Bonnie & Clyde, Thelma & Louise. That key part of the American narrative where the suggestion of violent subversion is transformed into The Real. It is part of our national psychology. We are proud of it: any proper story tends to go this way. Otherwise it seems half-finished.

In this case, well, the French guy wanted to make a symbolic gesture without quite crossing over into the Real. It appears that he wanted to take a little swipe and then step back like a reasonable European. This is part of the reason that the various apocalyptic segments of the population voted for Bush in droves. It's who we are. No surrender.

Pissed off CIA dudes are cool: I still dig Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog, as well as Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis. Johnson is on point with tidbits about the Plame case, the 'victory' strategy, Libby's legal tactics, etc.

Misc file: Isaac Hayes quits 'South Park'. Hopefully Chef will have a funny death scene. Top 10 strangest Lego creations. Radiohead's 'Just' video brought to life via London graffiti (QT). This is really pretty sweet.

DC Democrats are Bastards & Chickenshits®™: Greenwald lays it out (via Kos - more here):

With very few exceptions, national Democrats in Washington see the blogosphere as composed of uninformed, ranting, dirty masses who need to be kept as far away as possible. While they are willing to take your money, many of the Beltway Democrats see the vibrant activism in the blogosphere as some sort of an embarrassment, while others see it as a threat to their feifdoms.

Here's a tip for DC: Your methods suck. Your fiefdoms are powerless. You guys have no guts (except Feingold). No one better deserves to put up with Howard Dean than you fuckwits that have absolutely no idea how to tread water, let alone win. Go cry with Joe Lieberman about how no one likes you anymore. Go straight to Hell, do not pass Go.

This was in the context of a NY Times review of "Crashing the Gate", a new book from Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com and Markos Zuniga of DailyKos. It details how the Netroots can revolutionize the power structure in America and DC, and how it makes the Confused DLC Douche-bag Consultant Class (or whatever you care to call them) a little hot under the collar. Order it here from Amazon and I would get a referral kickback. (no one ever does, but hey, its worth a shot)

For his part, Kos has some really good wisdom today on how blogs can generate fundraising seed money for candidates, as well as more on the book & tour.

Oops, I guess [legal] abortion is doomed: "They Mean It" by digby, worth checking.

Kirby Puckett

This is belated:

Kirby Puckett
1960-2006

Considering the bandwagon jumping that has accompanied the passing of Kirby Puckett, I must lay claim to my rightful place in the pantheon of those who would honor him. I was nine years old when Kirby led the Twins to victory in what is widely considered the best World Series ever played. As anyone who lived within a 250-mile radius of Minneapolis that season knows, Kirby was... in a word... Jesus. Not on a scale seen more than a handful of times in major league sports, Kirby Puckett was a figure of such sterling reputation and staggering popularity that, as many hack journalists have been quick to point out, he probably could not exist in the modern, post-A-Rod contract, Pacers brawl, Barry Bonds era. To anyone growing up in the region, his status was a given, a sort of agreed-upon point of faith: Kirby Puckett is inherently and intrinsically good. His lovability factor was high- 5'8" tall, 210 pounds, he was a tiny boulder of a man capable of moving quickly and rather gracelessly, stubby twig legs and barrel body chugging along. His personal problems have tarnished his public image, but does little to diminish his power as an icon for several generations, whose psychic connection to him was formed during his years of hard work and spectacular play. Every article I've read since his passing has focused on the home run in Game 6, but it's the catch that made that home run possible that dominated my memory. It was always Kirby's defense that delighted the most, as he looked at his most Kirby when his entirely unconventional body was fully in motion- his vertical leap was basketball big and his timing was usually dead nuts on, allowing him to grab balls a foot and a half past the outfield fence in a motion that, for him, was quite graceful, practiced and nonchalant. His work ethic always impressed but, I think, the attachment I (we) had with him had more to do with the fact that he made it look like fun. Bye, Kirby.

Technorati Tags: Sports

Peter Gartrell puts himself in the line of fire

On the Steps...

...Of the Wyoming State Capitol, where the illustrious vice president of the United States will speak with fanfare on the morrow morn. Peace Brother. Damn the torpedos.
--Peter

pgartrellNOSPAMPLEASE@gillettenewsrecord.net
Energy/County Reporter
Gillette News-Record
P.O. Box 3006
Gillette, WY 82717
Tele: (307) 682-9306 x211
FAX: (307) 686-9306

It is obvious that he is wearing his safety orange for the event, but from his high perch here he could be mistaken for a bird.

We are hoping for the best for Peter. O Very Unique JudeoChristian God of North and South Carolina, Keep his head down and the Kevlar tight.

*Amen*

Ever Noticed How Rebuttal Has The Word 'Butt' In It?

Intellectually Upstaged but not Down For the Count
Vanilla Gorilla's emergence in our steamy little web-jungle is welcome, not least of all because he is a very serious and astute student of global policy and politicking. While I look forward to more posts from him, I also hope that he can lay a little of his less serious side on these pages, too, because he happens to also have a much quicker wit and droller delivery than almost anyone I know.

I, on the other hand, am a complete ass. Loud, vain and with permanent earplugs, I have little to offer in the way of serious exegesis on the state of the world. However, I spend a lot of time on the internet, have a rather remarkable capacity for useless fact retention and a lot of free time on my hands. Therefore, I am going to take a different tack and dole out large helpings of some of the topics du jour on the American media scene. So, without further ado,

Cartoons, Gay Cowboys and... Human/Deity Hybrids!

Cartoons: By all we know of the deadly rioting in the Muslim world surrounding a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb in place of a turban. This cartoon, though first published literally months ago, has recently been used by a number of self-interested parties in the Mohammed-loving regions of the world (read: places we bomb) to whip the citizenry into a frenzy and cause fatal riots and the destruction of much life, limb, property, etc., etc. Many high- and low-minded ideals, from freedom of speech to the maintenance of the status quo, have been furthered in attack and defense of these cartoons, with most Westerners siding with their publishing on the grounds of the cartoonist's right to free expression.

Though I am sure the cartoonist cares more for the stopping capabilities of different kevlar vests at the moments than his own ability to freely communicate his racist beliefs, freedom of the press is a sacred cow of the West for good reason, and standing firm in the face of these riots is the necessary measure. The management of the French papers have, as is the habit in their country, capitulated and fired the editors who decided to run the cartoon, but the Danish government, the leaders of the country that first ran the piece, have stuck to their guns. Hurrah for them, but in the ensuing debate the stench of fetid hypocrisy is the overbearing odor in the room.

Before we go any further, let's take a look at the offending image. [I have officially 'gone French' regarding posting this image on my site. I promise to explain fully. --Dan]

My first thought upon seeing the actual image was "European political cartoonists suck at their job." See, the political cartoon is not the venerable art form that it is in America. There are fewer of them in the pages of their papers, and they are remarkable predominantly for their toothlessness in comparison with their American counterparts. While this piece is uninspiring as an art object, it certainly doesn't disappoint in the provocation department. Problem is, and this is not the cartoonist's fault, but it merely offered up an opportunity for both sides to engage in the very behavior that created the stereotypes that make up this piece in the first place.

In order to protest their stereotyping as violent religious extremists, Muslims across the world ripped up their cities, setting consulates and embassies alight while clashing amongst themselves in clashes that eventually claimed lives in several countries. In turn, the Western countries were given an opportunity to point out this very fact in a sort of "well, ain't cha?" manner that only served to further enrage the enraged, as evidenced by the fact that the riots are still ongoing. Americans and Europeans smugly declared how sacrosanct the freedom of speech and expression was to their way of life, and how the cartoon spat was simply unavoidable given the inevitable outcome of the societal rights?

Is this sounding reasonable so far to you? We have a free press, they can publish what they want, right?

Only if it offensive to some, it would seem. You see, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently protested a cartoon by Tom Toles in the Washington Post, claiming it was improperly making light of the plight of American soldiers who are injured in battle.

Clearly, the cartoon was criticizing Massa Rummy's use of language at a congressional hearing when he chose to describe the overburdened American occupational force in Iraq as 'battle-hardened' rather than "spread thin", as had been suggested to him. The Post is sticking by their man, and both the article and the cartoon can be seen here.

I'll let you decide, but not really, because the right answer is that it is almost impossible to hear over the dissonant noise between the response to the Mohammed cartoon and the Rummy cartoon. The same knee-jerk neocons who were first in line to support the rights of the Danish cartoonist whose piece was, in fact, rather needlessly inflammatory, with the American cartoonist who was criticizing the Secretary of Defense over wartime policy using his own words. While the Danish cartoon isn't really anything more than an stereotype rendered in watercolor, Tom Toles had a point.

Now, I would point out here that I am an avid reader of political cartoons. I think that they are one art form that is truly unique to America and that can, when properly rendered, walk the thin line between giving offense and commenting acerbically on the political process. Some of the best American cartoonists even have weekly columns to accompany their cartoons, an acknowledgment on the part of their publishers that they are opinion columnists with pens. Pat Oliphant (who was actually Hunter Thompson's first choice as the illustrator for his magazine articles, a job that eventually went to Ralph Steadman, of course) is a TV commentator, a cartoonist AND an opinion columnist, on top of being, as my girlfriend says, "the most adorable man in the world."

The best response to these cartoon rows has really been from cartoonists- I suggest Tom Tomorrow's cartoon in Salon this week.

Of course, on a certain base level, 'The West' is really 'In the Right' on this one- this is a bloody cartoon, fer chrissakes, and it would not have hurt anyone were people to ignore it. As for the religious issue, it is hard to believe something so mild as Jesus lobbing a bomb would spark off riots. In fact, Jesus has probably appeared in thousands of offensive cartoons, with nary a riot in protest, a record of restraint that is admirable considering the dingbats in this country. To demonstrate my point, I want to show you a Jesus parody that I am personally quite taken with:

Jesusaur!!!

Gay Cowboys- Just as a parting shot, I would like to plug Willie Nelson's new song, "Cowboys are often secretly fond of each other". He debuted it on a (confusing, I'm sure) Howard Stern show today. Willie said this song has been sitting in the closet, in the literal sense, since 1981, when he received it from the songwriter, one Mr. Ned Sublette. This would be unremarkable were Ned Sublette not a frequent contributor to BoingBoing and the brother of my boss, a Mr. Mark Sublette, owner of Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, AZ. Ned is now an expert on Afro-Caribbean music and a fine photographer. His photography can be seen at the Medicine Man site.

Turin 2006

Who's up for some motherfucking Olympic Games?

U.S.A... U.S.A... U.S.A...

Any takers?

Not me, and I would actually watch downhill skiing voluntarily if it were on the rest of the year. During the Olympics, though, with Bob Costas' reassuring voice punctuating the proceedings with international inanities, I just can't be bothered to slog through the coverage of sports like these:

I don't know if I am just jaded or if I no longer able to muster the proper pavlovian response asked of once every two years. The Olympics are supposed to be accompanied by a cold rush of patriotism and allow one to sweat out one's nationalistic demons by projecting one's hostility towards France upon their third-string skeleton rider (racer?) and wishing for his quick and effortless dispatch at the hands of a crack American squad (minus their best member- steroids). I can't get too worked up this year, though. For reasons ranging from Bode Miller's diplomatic ineptitude and general dickishness to the location (Turin? Whatever happened to the hustle and bustle of, say, Lillehamer? or Salt Lake City?) I just cannot muster the necessary amount of patriotic zeal. With the exception of wanting to see a couple of Minnesota girls hit the slalom course (Kristina Koznick and Lindsey Kildow) and Miller fall, I don't have much riding on this game emotionally. But does anyone? Outside of this little charade once every four years, does anyone, and I mean anyone, go to Skeleton events? Speed Skating? Luge? Where did these sports even come from, and who could possibly support themselves off the ticket sales? Who are these athletes and who taught them how to Luge? I don't remember that unit in gym class. Are there just teams of stern, grandfatherly Eastern Europeans who stake out key sledding hills and, upon seeing a bright young man in a cap and mittens deftly weave his way down the bumpy run and to the bottom, sidles up to him and tells him of his own days sledding, and how sledding led to luge and, if it hadn't been for his knee, but, well, you wouldn't want to hear about that...

As for figure skating, let's face it- it's the only aspect of the Winter Games anyone gives two shits about, and it's not even a sport. This is not to say that it is not an athletic endeavor requiring thousands of hours of diligent, painful study, but it is not a sport in the traditional manner. Sports derive from war games, and thus speed, strength, endurance and an ability to drive past or score on one's opponent are easily-comprehended goals. Whipping about on metal blades for the express purpose of spinning in the air and waving your arms around emotively is a more difficult-to-grasp skill on the bloody fields of Agincourt or Thermopylae. For some reason, it strikes a spider-vein in the female population of America and, despite the fact that your average American woman has never laced up a pair of skates and breathes heavily at the top of the stairs, several days of couch time are dedicated to watching starving children perform circus tricks on skates for the glory of their nation. Does the skater above look like she is capable of dealing a fatal blow? Even the curlers look more dangerous- at least they have sticks and rocks.

The worst part, of course, is the Maurie Povitch sob stories that accompany each athlete. Divorce, poverty, instability, scabies, arterial sclerosis and painful long-term surgical treatments haunt the pasts of these brave young Americans who, being between the ages of sixteen and thirty, have had a lot more time on their hands to grapple with their demons than I feel I might have time for if I were training six hours a day to compete in the zenith of human sport. Last night they appeared, young and vital-looking, and gave no hint of the physical and emotional ravishing they have endured. Somewhere in a US Olympic training facility, thousands of portraits stamped "B.Hallward" sit in protective sleeves. It is not the manipulation aspect that bothers me, particularly- I have grown weary and become acceptant of constant and intrusive media manipulation- it is the banality of the event that must be sensationalized through the hyberbolic tales of woe that gets to me. The endless seven minute sequences of sports you don't care about spliced in with Bob Costas' studio presence and those little athlete vignettes that always start and finish with the athlete, in their gear, looking brave and heroic in the face of such stiff competition and such long odds. Something along these lines:

Some Douchebag With Skis Had Sad Childhood, NBC Reports...

Tom Tancredo is scary; Booz Allen got its mitts in; Chomsky on conspiracies; IRC's Right Web helps track these cats

These days many of us (ok, me in particular) think about dark currents in the body politic which might rise up and topple whatever remains of this country's best traditions. And in the 21st century, xenophobia is hardly dead. While 'immigration reform' seems a benign label for a huge and messy set of issues, some quasi-mainstream politicians of the right-wing are cutting to the bone and forming coalitions among the far right, white supremacist and militia movements.

Tom Tancredo is one of these, evidently. The International Relations Center puts out material that I find often aligns with my concerns, and they do a good job of stressing how the left really needs to put together a focused policy before all these think-tank trolls eat us. IRC's Right Web, in particular, puts out useful policy papers and excellent profile pages of many in the constellation of neo-cons and shady establishment operators who otherwise can't easily be pinned down. It also lists their many corporate and think-tank ties.

This helps make more sense of the conflicts of interest, of, for example, James "World War IV" Woolsey, former CIA director, a leading war propagandist and neo-conservative of sorts who said about 345,000 times on network TV in 2002 that Mohammed Atta had been spotted with an Iraqi agent in Prague — thus unifying the perceived enemy images of the Baath government and the 9/11 conspirators. But Woolsey also is an executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, which despite the crunked name, is a huge and shady defense contractor that makes millions whenever the U.S. gets tied up forcing its will somewhere. More wars == more cash for this niche industry, and without Right Web it's hard to decipher. (Booz was contracted to get $62 million for helping designing the not-so-dead Total Information Awareness program, according to DoD. Booz defense revenues alone totaled $536,641,000 in 2004 - the #10 federal contractor! Yes, Virginia, war ==> cash. )

Without Right Web, no one would even know what David "Clean Break" Wurmser, of Office of Special Plans fame looks like (high in the pantheon of defense bureaucrats who helped start the war with manipulated WMD intel). Right Web's explanation of the Office of Special Plans is really pretty good:

In the days after September 11 terrorist attacks, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith started cooking intelligence to meet the needs of the radically new foreign and military policy that included regime change in Iraq as its top priority.

To bolster the Iraq war party, they needed intelligence that would persuade the U.S. public and policymakers that Saddam Hussein’s regime should be one of the first targets of the war on terrorism. Convinced that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the State Department would not provide them with type of alarmist threat assessments necessary to justify a preventive war, they created their own tightly controlled intelligence operation at the top levels of the Pentagon bureaucracy.

The day after the September 11 attacks Wolfowitz authorized the creation of an informal team focused on ferreting out damaging intelligence about Iraq. This loosely organized team soon became the Office of Special Plans (OSP) directed by Abram Shulsky, formerly of RAND and the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). The objective of this closet intelligence team, according to Rumsfeld, was to “search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists.” OSP’s mission was to create intelligence that the Pentagon and vice president could use to press their case for an Iraq invasion with the president and Congress.

The OSP played a key role in providing Rumseld, Cheney, and the president himself with the intelligence frequently cited to justify the March 2003 invasion. By late 2003 the OSP was closed down, having accomplished its mission of providing the strategic intelligence cited by the administration in the build-up to the invasion. OSP’s staff and operations were folded back into the normal operations of the NESA and into its Office of Northern Gulf Affairs.

Like some sleazy Georgetown party, in the circles of power, Frank Carlucci, Ahmed Chalabi, John Bolton, Gary Bauer, Natan Sharansky are all lurking. All of these sorts of cats are better understood with Right Web.

I should add something classic that Noam Chomsky said about all these goofy committees and seemingly conspiratorial little foundations and groups. I think it's an excellent point. Chomsky:

"It's the same with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, all these other things the people are racing around searching for conspiracy theories about—they're 'nothing' organizations. Of course they're there, obviously rich people get together and talk to each other, and play golf with one another, and plan together—that's not a big surprise. But these conspiracy theories people are putting their energies into have virtually nothing to do with the way the institutions actually function."
(Understanding Power, 348)

(This has infuriated many conspiracy theorists) The point is not tracking this or that secret committee, it's recognizing that many have a shared world-view we should oppose. I would add that they are trying to monopolize and privatize the defense and intelligence decision-making processes while getting rich.

But let's get back to xenophobic (and highly organized) reactionaries, who paint Mexican infiltration as the Clash of Civilizations. Essentially they project flaws outward. Now that the ever-malleable symbol of 'The Jew' is not available as a rhetorical target, the General Other has gotten top billing from the latest demogogues.

Tom Tancredo: Leader of the Anti-Immigrant Populist Revolt
By Tom Barry | December 30, 2005
IRC Right Web

Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has represented Colorado's Sixth District since 1999, has in the last six years succeeded in rallying an anti-immigrant populist revolt that brings together the nativists, religious right, cultural supremacists, militia movement, and anti-immigration policy institutes with a new anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party.
[.....]
Describing himself as a “devotee” of Samuel Huntington and the thesis of his Clash of Civilizations treatise, Tancredo like many on the right—from social conservatives to neoconservatives—base their restrictionism less on economic reasons than on cultural and racial ones. “I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying us.”
[.....]
“The threat to the United States comes from two things: the act of immigration combined with the cult of multiculturalism,” argues Tancredo. “We will never be able to win in the clash of civilizations if we don't know who we are. If Western civilization succumbs to the siren song of multiculturalism, I believe we are finished.”

Like many other Republicans in the West, Tancredo takes a hard line toward China , and is a strong supporter of Taiwan. Linking China and immigration, Tancredo told a crowd of immigration restrictionists that the Chinese government is “trying to export people” as a “way of extending their hegemony.”

Concerning Iran, Tancredo advocates U.S. support for the Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK), the armed wing of the National Council of Resistance. Although identified as a terrorist organization by the State Department, Tancredo says “we should be aiding them, instead of restricting their activities. We can use the MEK, they are in fact warriors. Where we need to use that kind of force, we can use them.”

Funny, I always believed that multiculturalism and the act of immigration were two fundamentally American gestures that once helped us become the strongest and richest country in the world. How naïve.

White cultural purity and Iranian zealots (more MEK here and here). Is this really conservatism?

The Cosby Theory and a Meta-Conspiracy Theory — including the Platonic Forms and Iranian intelligence — because nothing's true, and here, everything's permitted

Call the Cave of Shadows the Cave already! As we find ourselves hip-deep in propaganda, it's hard to know where to turn. Such strange web conspiracy theories as the Chappelle Theory briefly amuse us, but these are just the zeitgeist products of an insane time. The Cosby Theory, a follow-on satire of Chappelle Theory, explains the terrible conspiracy of the Cosby Sweaters. (the guys who dreamed up the Chappelle Theory were advised by their lawyers to let everyone know it's totally fake).

Some guy mocked me in the comments, implying I believed that the Chappelle Theory was real. I said that "The site looks good, it tells an exciting tale. In other words it's another well-marketed conspiracy theory thing," and I picked out a quote of Oprah ranting about her infinite power like a Bond villain. I thought it was a well-crafted example of that sort of site, but at no point did I claim it was real, although it prompted me to reflect that Chappelle might have been threatened somewhere along the way, and some of the 'Dark Crusaders' may have negatively reacted to Chappelle. (It was indeed well-marketed. They are now selling Dark Crusaders t-shirts.)

These days, there is a pretty thick distance between what we're presented with, and the Objective Truth that I still suspect exists somewhere. This site has been unafraid to link to raving lunatics, angry Iraqis, neoconservative screeds and gibbering Freemason spotters. I'm not looking over their shoulder, so how can I trust them any differently than, say, Scott McClellan or the Associated Press?

As we learned from such works as The Illuminatus! Trilogy, a conspiracy theory can offer a direct conjecture about a certain set of facts or circumstances, but it can also show an alternate style of linking events and people together.

A goofy conspiracy theory centered on pop culture is a kind of prism that reflects the basic weirdness of our times. When it's executed with style, I'll mention it because its logical form — apart from its literal content — can help induce a bit of a mindfuck, a unit of guerilla ontology to the everyday grind, imploding assumptions.

For example, when I mentioned to my family this crazy Chappelle Theory, they immediately leapt to Oprah's defense. How would Oprah ever threaten anyone?! She's a paragon of sassy afternoon virtue!!"

Aha!" said I, tanked on a bit of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. "Why do you leap to praise her automatically? She's just some billionaire! This silly theory reveals that you have all sorts of biased, programmed instincts to defend the wealthy & powerful, etc etc..."

The point is that we live in an Disinformation Age, and a wobbly conspiracy theory can help show you why Conventional Wisdom is just as shaky. As I have detailed here, we invaded Iraq partly because Iranian intelligence agents fed lurid stories about nuclear weapons through Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress into the Pentagon and the Vice President's office. That's part of the history of our times, and it's pretty damned conspiratorial. It sets the bar for intrigue, I think it's fair to say.

The sources of supposedly 'clean & authoritative information' in our information economy utterly failed to figure this out in time, and they still haven't come clean about it.

I long ago decided that only by monitoring the widest possible spectrum of rhetoric and information can a rough sense or useful 'heuristic' of any given political theater be reached. So I can't be afraid to reflect on what anyone from Charles Krauthammer to Wayne Madsen to DEBKAfile to Hezbollah's Al Manar is talking about. You can't achieve more intellectual accuracy by boycotting Mother Jones.

When yet another slickly executed Conspiracy Theory tale comes along, as they always do, I'll often toss it up here because it shows that the Dominant Narrative and Tacit Assumptions are often just as ridiculous. The battle for perceptions runs deep these days; the war is between your ears and behind your eyes.

The issue of Information Warfare is going to be a hot one next year, but we ought to take it all with a sense of good humor and a strong drug regimen to keep our minds limber, as the Dude put it.

To some extent, all political rhetoric rests on gestures toward phantasmic workings, a secret esoteric logic — either hidden actors, or Principles such as Freedom arranged by that mysterious Other 'Calling from beyond the Stars' for Dear Leader. As Ariel Sharon put it recently, "You see things from here [as PM] that you don't see from there [an outsider]." This is the 'appeal to authority' argument, and the Authorities cash out the fallacy as far as they can.

Plato spelled out this basic political principle for us in the Allegory of the Caves, when he said that only the select can reach the World of True Forms, while the rest would just watch projections. He meant that a good leader better be able to dream up some fine-sounding esoteric Forms to tell the tribe at the campfire. An objectively false 'conspiracy' can still illustrate how these grand Authoritative and Legitimate Sources are just a couple notches up from the tribal shaman.

Botox is the new charmed skull on a stick, the Brookings Institution is nothing but the 21st century's beard-stroking witch doctor.

Of course, as an atheist I must consider all spiritual appeals as possibly having this basic political purpose at their core, even if part of the intention is self-deception, rather than purely manipulating the audience.

Again we must return to the words of Hasan i Sabah, the leader of the Assassins. "Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted." Surely, Karl Rove is his truest disciple, and I'll set the ideological filters for my site's content accordingly.

A strange Wyoming double murder...

Peter Gartrell at his newspaper in Wyoming asked me to post this story around the internet, because they aren't publishing on Christmas. it's not a very political story, but it's a sordid tale of murder and mayhem:

Christopher Robert Hicks and Jacob Paul Martinez, both 19 and of Gillette, Wyo., stand accused of murdering 16-year-old Bryce Chavers on the orders of Kent Alan Proffit, who Chavers was supposed to testify against in a third-degree sexual assault trial. Proffit allegedly asked the men to kill Chavers in return for helping them get out of trouble with a drug dealer. Saturday deputies charged all three men with killing 19-year-old Jeremy Forquer, who they were worried would "snitch" on them about unknown activities. They also charged 15-year-old Michael Frank Seiser with accessory after the fact and with Chavers' murder. Hicks, Martinez and Proffit could all face the death penalty.

NSA & UFOs; Mexican army captures marijuana; UK builds road pan-opticon; British tab says Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera

Happy turkey days to all. I have been hiding out as a sudden cold has hit me - but its already getting better. Video games and Orange Juice can cure most anything, especially deep in November.

Strange days though. I find myself less concerned than usual about tracking the war. Plus Israel would appear to be shifting to the left, as Sharon looks to ditch the Crazy Right of Likud. That's really good, I think. But let's put aside those nasty situations and consider what Fark tells us about the world.

William Shatner wants to sell a kidney stone on eBay (bottom of page). Same page: Scotty's ashes will not get shot into space on schedule. Now scheduled for January. It seems like they went thru the transporter a few times too many...

Wireless mosquito defense network. Yes. Food Agency Tries To Quell Fears About Glow-In-The-Dark Meats. Police Search for Gary Glitter in Vietnam.

Fox News reviews the upcoming Clooney Middle East flick Syriana very positively. Also calls it a good companion piece to Three Kings, one of my favorite movies. And it's based on a book by former CIA dude Robert Baer. Hmmm... ok I'm interested. Also the guy who did Traffic is involved.

The basic story is that an oil company has set up shop in the Gulf, just as a merger is going through. The local royal Arab family is in the middle of a succession as the Emir (king) is about to step aside for one of his two sons: an idiot, and a sensitive, forward thinker. Guess who gets the job?
Clooney plays a CIA agent who’s a little over the hill and washed up. But he’s onto the fact that the government and the oil companies are trying to stay in control through the manipulation of who becomes king.

Most profitable East Bank poetry ever: Bob Dylan poems written at the University of Minnesota in 1959-60 fetch $78,000. And today it's the Loring Pasta Bar...

NSA and UFOs: The National Security Agency gave out some information about UFOs -- not much information. Surprisingly, the secretive intelligence agency pointed out that since so much of their reports about 'unidentified' phenomena came from spying on foreign communications systems, they couldn't share most of it! Really, that's pretty funny. A 'Top secret UMBRA' file is declassified here (PDF). (more sweet NSA documents from FAS - check out Secrecy News and the CRS reports)

Is the earth in a space-time vortex? NASA's on the job.

All this Raw Milk must be stopped. Russian scientist trains remote control turtles to spy? Cell phone explodes. Robber holds up bar with ham sandwich.

News from the Co-Prosperity Sphere: Japan to have a 'military' again for first time since WWII. Survey shows money can help buy happiness.

Stephen Hawking is tough as hell. Before a lecture, when he was taken off a respirator, he nearly died, but they resuscitated him. Hawking went on to give the lecture via Internet teleconferencing.

What did he think of "The Simpsons" TV show, which has had Hawking as an animated guest star? "It's the best thing on American TV." What did he think of the program to send American astronauts back to the moon? "Stupid," he answered. "Sending politicians would be much cheaper, because you don't have to bring them back."

Also an elderly Georgia man on oxygen managed to foil some robbers.

Mexican border squads (drug militia?) handle their marijuana with aplomb. El Paso Times:

Pot-laden truck creates armed standoff
A marijuana-laden dump truck got stuck in the Rio Grande on Thursday evening in Hudspeth County, leading to a standoff between U.S. law enforcement and what appeared to be the Mexican military, sheriff officials said.
.....Doyal said the truck driver returned with the armed men, including men who arrived in official-looking vehicles with overhead lights and what appeared to be Mexican soldiers in uniform and with military-style rifles.

In related news, the same part of the brain that gets "the munchies" is altered by a new drug suppressing appetite.

Nothing quite like that British All-Seeing Eye. Now they are going to TRACK ALL VEHICLES IN BRITAIN. Oh what will they think of next? Plus it all got snuck through Parliament, of course...

Gatso 2: rollout of UK's '24x7 vehicle movement database' begins
A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times. The system, which will use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), and will be overseen from a control centre in Hendon, London, is a sort of 'Gatso 2' network, extending. enhancing and linking existing CCTV, ANPR and speedcam systems and databases.

Which possibly explains why the sorcerer's apprentices in ACPO's tech section don't seem to have needed any kind of Parliamentary approval to begin the deployment of what promises to be one the most pervasive surveillance systems on earth.

The control centre is intended to go live in April of next year, and is intended to be processing 50 million number plates a day by year end. ACPO national ANPR co-ordinator John Dean told the Sunday Times that fixed ANPR cameras already exist "at strategic points" on every motorway in the UK, and that the intention was to have "good nationwide coverage within the next 12 months." According to ACPO roads policing head Meredydd Hughes, ANPR systems are planned every 400 yards along motorways, and a trial on the M42 near Birmingham will first be used to enforce variable speed limits, then to 'tackle more serious crime.'

However, in Britain a 1689 law helped get a man out of a parking ticket. This memorable quote:

A spokeswoman for the National Parking Adjudication Service said no previous challenge to parking fines using the Bill of Rights had been successful.

Good luck with your cameras!! They still love drinking. BBC reported that

Looking back only 700 years, London had over 1,300 alehouses - one for every 50 people living in the city.

Meanwhile in Australia they are still messing around with the gnomes. Worst tech products of 2005.

Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet:
The ITU's vision goes further, highlighting refrigerators that independently communicate with grocery stores, washing machines that communicate with clothing, implanted tags with medical equipment and vehicles with stationary or moving objects.

Industrial products would also become increasingly "smart", gaining autonomy and the intelligence thanks to miniaturised but more powerful computing capacity.

"Even particles and 'dust' might be tagged and networked", the ITU said. "

Robot moose foils poachers in Canada (CNN video). Speaking of particles, the nice "Mountains of Creation."

NBC chief says that they pay too much attention to blogs over there, but pushing video over the Internet has improved ratings. What?

Superspreaders of disease are primarily responsible for mass epidemics, new study says. "A lot of people don't infect anyone".

Too much CO2? Stash it underground, says a guy from BP. Weird. An Austrian city is building giant mirrors to get light over a huge hill between November and February. Sweet!!

Bomb the Television. In some ways Bush is a bit of an Anarchist. I mean some radicals have fantasies like this, but really floating this kind of thing in the halls of power, like some crazed giant child -- I find it too easy to believe. Paper Says Bush Talked of Bombing Arab TV Network:

President Bush expressed interest in bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television network al-Jazeera during a White House conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004, a British newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Daily Mirror report was attributed to two anonymous sources describing a classified document they said contained a transcript of the two leaders' talk. One source is quoted as saying Bush's alleged remark concerning the network's headquarters in Qatar was "humorous, not serious," while the other said, "Bush was deadly serious."

I have always thought there was something shadowy and vicious about the conflict between al-Jazeera and Bush. The part in Control Room where American planes kill Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayub is killed in Baghdad was a terrible moment in the history of journalism -- and stories such as this make it seem more likely that the Pentagon really does believe this is a workable PR strategy. Juan Cole reflects on Al Jazeera & the conflict on all this.

Either way, this seems to be serious, given the Official Secrets Act gag orders on the whole thing, reports Guardian. The White House scoffed contemptuously.

Cheney: Drudge: X Marks the spot.

The More Well Known Pong: The history of Beer pong at Dartmouth.

The Mongolian Armed Forces are serving the cause of freedom.This WSJ bit about Mongolia made me sort of happy. I don't know why, but the idea that Bush managed to stir up the spectre of the Mongol Hordes seems so ... appropriate.

But Mongolia, which contributed about 130 soldiers, has maintained its number through five troop rotations, managing to avoid the sort of explosive local debate that has echoed through other foreign capitals. If that number sounds small, consider this: As a proportion of population, the infantry company and engineering platoon Mongolia sent from a population of 2.5 million people makes it the third-largest U.S. partner per capita.
"The Mongolian Armed Forces are serving the cause of freedom," Mr. Bush said, "and U.S. forces are proud to serve beside such fearless warriors."
....In preparing for Mongolia, the president needed to figure out how to tactfully refuse a gift horse. ...Rumsfeld got a horse -- a black-maned steed he named "Montana" -- when he visited this visually stunning nation of desert steppes in October. Such gift horses aren't actually taken home; instead, they are kept around but not ridden, in anticipation of the next visit.
But White House aides say Mr. Bush was worried about the obligations of ownership. Would taxpayers be on the hook for upkeep? Was there any way to guarantee the horse's well-being down the road? The question occupied not one but several meetings at the National Security Council in the days leading up to Mr. Bush's trip...

Kyrgyzstan on verge of anarchy: official.

Gang feuds for control of local bazaars have flared up in the south, while an angry crowd managed to seize and briefly hold the main government building in the north, a severe blow to the reputation of newly elected President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Volkswagen rocked by claims of sex junkets. What more can I say? Oh well, it's Brazil?

MOSCOW (Reuters) - An eagle-eyed investigator's wife ended a Russian manhunt by spotting a murder suspect's name in the credits of a television show, a newspaper said Tuesday.

SONY DRM copy protection defeated by tape. I will always believe that Securing Freedom by protecting Fair Use rights are essential to maintaining a vital and healthy culture. Therefore, whenever corporate copy protection systems are defeated be ingenious human beings, I think it makes a real positive -- and immediate -- improvement. A piece of tape defeats Sony's new DRM system - the rootkit one:

The user can simply apply a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 - which contains the self-loading DRM software, unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD "rip" programs continue to work as usual.

Texas sues Sony.

Misc file: What happens when you get possessed by Bill Cosby? Jeff Goldblum is watching you... Cebu mayor: I will go to sex den if I want to. Chinese develop the liquid condom. In the ever-expanding world of the cosmetic surgery industry, new breast implant gel technology promises to be less likely to kill you. Getting a tech job in the XXX internet business.

Interweb securitay: The Bavarian police issue a strangely precise advisory about a Sober.worm virus - before it seemed to appear on the Internet. Always time for intrigue in Bavaria... Oddly enough the worm also comes with (fake) messages that claim to be from the FBI and CIA, implicating illegal activity. Oh my.

Consider the Top 20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities -- and note that there really isn't much wrong with the Mac. Paris Hilton used as virus bait (wha?)

Honduran Teen Escapes Prison for 5th Time. He said he was going to break out and kill all the journalists. Somewhere, the future Karl Rove-Che hybrid of Central America is hiding...

Ants eat eyeball; Jon Lyons still the Pimp of Anime; Sony Rootkits mess up thousands of PCs

One hundred greatest internet moments, including Pokey the Penguin, James Guckert, the Bert-Osama photo, Hamster Dance, DeCSS.... the hits go on. (and how better to start than an illegal link to DeCSS?)

Ant eats away woman's eye in hospital:

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in eastern India lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said on Tuesday.

The patient recovering from a post-surgery infection shrieked for help as the ants attacked her on Sunday night, but nurses told her it was normal to feel pain from the infection.

On Monday, the patient's family saw a gaping hole with swarming ants in it when they lifted the bandage on her left eye.

Authorities of the Sambhunath Hospital in Kolkata said they were probing the incident.

"It's not uncommon for ants to attack diabetic patients. We have set up a committee to investigate the unfortunate incident," hospital superintendent A. Adhikary said.

Scampering rats and stray cats and dogs sharing bed space with patients are not uncommon sights at India's overcrowded state-run hospitals that are used by millions of poor and middle-class people.

Jon Lyons with a certain camp Anime style: Jon is still chugging away at the whole "amazingly proficient practitioner of the Japanese cartoon style the kids call anime" thing. He entered a comic in a Japanese contest, and thoughtfully put an English version on the Internet for us (open the links in a separate window). Sort of an afternoon daydreaming imagination, Calvin & Hobbes meets Voltron Retro style sort of thing.

He's been refining it, since well, pretty much any of us knew him. So it's really good now. Good luck, Jon, and you've got a good shot at winning yet another contest. Nice. He is wrapping up a final leg at U-W Madison in the Art and Japanese programs. (duhhhh!)

Post college: Points in Case has some entertaining stuff. The Cost of Living in Athens, Georgia, inside the minds of college guys and girls. Well it's over for me, what a bummer...

Sony CD Root Kit causes 500,000 infected computer networks: BoingBoing tells us that vast numbers of computers have been infested with the rootkit program that automatically installs from audio CDs on PCs, which creates lots of dangerous security vulnerabilities. First the details (via earlier post):

The consequences of the flaw are severe. It allows any web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That's about as serious as a security flaw can get.

The root of the problem is a serious design flaw in Sony's web-based uninstaller. When you first fill out Sony's form to request a copy of the uninstaller, the request form downloads and installs a program - an ActiveX control created by the DRM vendor, First4Internet - called CodeSupport. CodeSupport remains on your system after you leave Sony's site, and it is marked as safe for scripting, so any web page can ask CodeSupport to do things. One thing CodeSupport can be told to do is download and install code from an Internet site. Unfortunately, CodeSupport doesn't verify that the downloaded code actually came from Sony or First4Internet. This means any web page can make CodeSupport download and install code from any URL without asking the user's permission.

And its effects:

More than half a million networks, including military and government sites, were likely infected by copy restriction software distributed by Sony on a handful of its CDs, according to a statistical analysis of domain servers conducted by a well-respected security researcher and confirmed by independent experts on Tuesday...

Kaminsky asked over 3 million DNS servers across the net whether or not they knew the addresses associated with the Sony rootkit -- connected.sonymusic.com, updates.xcp-aurora.com, and license.suncom2.com. He uses a "non-recursive DNS query" which allows him to just peek into the cache of that server, and find out if anyone else has asked that particular machine for those addresses recently.

If the DNS server said yes, it had a cached copy of the address, which means that at least one of its client computers had used it to look up Sony's DRM site. If the DNS server said no, then Kaminsky knew for sure that no Sony-compromised machines existed behind it.

The results have surprised Kaminsky himself: 568,200 DNS servers knew about the Sony addresses. With no other reason for people to visit them, that points to one or more computers behind those DNS servers that are Sony-compromised. That's one in six DNS servers, across a statistical sampling of one third of the 9 million DNS servers Kaminsky estimates are on the net.

More details here. COPY PROTECTION CAUSES VIRUSES. Fucking A.

Further Geek News: The story of a rebellion in the Linux community and Linus Torvalds demonstrating he is still King of the Geeks (via digg).

China: All this stuff about China, well I ran into an interesting history of Tiananmen Square. Not that interesting. But Chinese history has that sense of theater... The declassified history of Tiananmen Square. Thanks, National Security Archives

Apparently a Chinese scheme to sell tracts of land on the moon was shut down by those heartless anti-Capitalists, who pulled their license on grounds of "profiteering and lunacy."

There is this book (and a forthcoming video game) about nonviolent conflict called "A force more powerful." One part is about how many protests have happened at Tiananmen over many years. Interesting argument about what the student protesters failed to accomplish. However it also has a somewhat patronizing tone ("we are privileged to decide how these things ought to go, why did you kids put up the Goddess statue?"):

But the defeat of the student movement cannot fully be explained by the violence used to send it underground or into exile, for many other nonviolent movements in the twentieth century deflected repression and endured to fight another day. Erratic and divided leadership, that believed more in the power of the moment than seeing the right moment to apply power, was at least as great a problem. This overconfidence diverted student leaders from the necessary work of organization and strategy. Had they seen the value of recruiting support from other parts of society - workers in transport and communication, civil servants, and, most important, the police and the military - they might have consolidated their gains and opted to develop a broader challenge not confined to Tiananmen, a convenient venue for repression.

Failing to appreciate or plan for the possibility of repression was an error in itself, but it also freed the students to indulge in whatever provocative action seemed enticing. Inflammatory gestures such as erecting, opposite Mao's Mausoleum, a "Goddess of Democracy," a replica of America's Statue of Liberty, doubtless antagonized the regime while not changing any facts on the ground. In short, while the students were familiar with the most obvious forms of nonviolent action - occupying public spaces, hunger strikes and playing to the international media - their decisions in using these sanctions did not reflect "any significant degree of strategic thinking..."10

The failure of strategy at the moment of crisis kept echoing throughout its aftermath. The government's use of repression taught the wrong lesson to many about how rights and democracy should be pursued. In 1999 one former protestor called himself "a victim of June 4," since he was fired and prevented from getting another job; he had decided that "the only path for China was. . .cautious, progressive liberalization." Even the flammable Wu'er Kaixi, who fled China and later had to pump gas and wait on tables in California, succumbed to lower expectations. Explaining why he hoped that Beijing would not be forced to acknowledge its Tiananmen savagery, he said that doing so might only set back gradual reforms. And he wanted to return home. "I think if everything goes okay, I'll be able to go home in five years. If something happens, if there are demonstrations and another crackdown, it will take longer."11

Some kind of DeLay situation; dipping Uzbekistan; Machiavelli in the 21st century; Hey Arianna, we're #1 for "Bolton fake intelligence"

Yeah, I can't bring myself to write any more about the whole arrest incident. So I won't.

Start with Machiavelli for the Twenty-First Century from New Left Review. I liked this.

It is true that Bush sounds like LBJ in 1967 with staying the course. Tom DeLay got indicted, what fun. They are screaming partisanship but the Democratic Texas prosecutor has hit a lot of Democrats in the past.

In Ohio they are trying to un-gerrymander the legislative districts. Good luck folks.

Robert George, a self described "Catholic, West Indian black Republican" asks himself "Why Am I (Still) A Republican?" Indeed. There is a good deal of gloating on the left-blogosphere these days, as conservatives seem to split in all directions and run for cover. Stygius and Laura Rozen note that such luminaries as Andy Sullivan, Dan Drezner and Robert "the ghoul" Novak are running for cover.

I might have the sniffles. I wonder if it is H5N1 KILLER FLU. Which is spreading rapidly.

Arianna is saying what I said a while ago, that John Bolton is quite likely connected to the Valerie Plame CIA case. (antiwar.com was on it a while ago as Raimondo quickly puts on the comments). For more old bits, consider "They Knew" the intel was spoofed in In These Times, Aug 2004. Oh by the way, HongPong.com has the top Google ranking for "bolton fake intelligence," for the excellent post: "More stories of the fake intelligence and John 'the Moustache' Bolton". Hey, not bad!

The US is really leaving Uzbekistan. I really enjoyed this lengthy New Left Review profile about the history and situation of Chechnya. It very astutely points out that no legitimate Chechen leader has ever agreed with the Russians to be part of Russia or the USSR. Also the article adds that the FSB and Putin were widely suspected of orchestrating the 1999 apartment bombings subsequently blamed on Chechen rebels - terror99.ru is a sweet Russian site elaborating on some "conspiracy theories" about why a beam of shining light like Putin would ever dare do such a thing as bomb some buildings to freak out the Russian public.

Check out Arms Control Wonk. It's just cool. They have good info about North Korea among other things.

Oddly, Arlen Specter accused the Pentagon of blocking an investigation in the pre-9/11 "Able Danger" Pentagon intelligence project that people are now saying somehow identified Mohammed Atta, and other weird stuff. NY Times on it as well as CNN. I will spare you the billions of weird theories that could spring from this. Sorry - use your imagination.

The NY Times Company is cutting out 500 jobs.

An American diplomat characterized the depth of Shiite fundamentalist organizations taking solid control of southern Iraq as "our dirty little secret." If you are looking for a more realistic summary of Islamic militant movements and "the far enemy" check out this review of The Far Enemy on the Agonist. Some are arguing that Iran is not a global threat. Try "Give Iranian Nukes a Chance" by Slavoj Zizek (Aug. 2005), a lot of stuff about how the state projects its threat perceptions onto foreigners, justifying ongoing 'security measures' that are in fact the real threats to Democracy & Freedom. I think the truth lies in between, but it certainly is true that MAD logic may get the Iranians peace in the end - or a large glass parking lot. I hope for peace, and I am not a paranoid racist who thinks that Iranian civilization is totally suicidal and irrational.

Slavoj Zizek also wrote this bit about how the WMDs were MacGuffins in the narrative. Old but funny.

The Afghan heroin kingpins / warlords did quite well in the elections. Juan Cole noted that the British agents captured in Basra were apparently active in trying to intercept arms coming into Iraq from Iran. Basra is wack these days (FT adds to this, and Raimondo remarks that we're on the war road to Damascus and Tehran via Basra). Cole adds:

Among the more powerful Iranian arms merchants is Manucher Ghorbanifar, this one with friends in high places in Washington, who is trying to pull the United States into a war against Iran. War is good for arms merchants.

There is also some info about how much be-Baathification has really happened.

Check out this new film, Occupation Dreamland, about how some US troops handle their situation in Fallujah. There are sweet trailers. It looks amazing. Also check out this story about Turkey and its social conflicts.

Some commentary about Katrina's economic effects. The "Fog of Katrina" is being used to obscure unrelated economic information, they say. MorganStanley economist talking about how and when the global economy will get rebalanced. Richard Cohen at the WaPo says choose, dammit, Guns or Butter.

As always, between Israel and Palestine there is plenty of violence and even more spin. The Israelis got mighty angry when Hamas fired a bunch of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, which Hamas justified by claiming that Israel blew up a vehicle at a militant rally, killing lots of people. It seems reasonable to me that the vehicle blew up on its own, but it is certainly possible that Israel did it. So Israel attacked Gaza and arrested a bunch of people in the West Bank. The 'militants' supposedly captured in the West Bank were to some extent part of the militant organizations' "political wings" and some of the more moderate elements, including those that favor reconciliation and intend to run in the upcoming Palestinian elections. I found the following on some kind of rightwing Israeli site, unitedjerusalem.org, where the text was loaded into some kind of interactive bias-judging webpage. Weird. But here is the "political" vs "militant wing" bit, which seems to be on Haaretz's print page here but not here or here. Thanks google.

In the largest arrest sweep since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the IDF apprehended 207 leaders of Hamas´ political wing, along with a number of Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank early yesterday. Most of those arrested are not on the list of wanted men from the two organizations´ military wings, but rather their accomplices or activists in the political and civilian wings.

Palestinian sources said that among those arrested were several local leaders considered key figures in the upcoming third round of municipal elections to take place Thursday in 105 local authorities in the West Bank and in the fourth round of elections scheduled to take place in December, which include the major cities.

Among key activists arrested yesterday were several expected to run on Hamas´ ticket for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on January 25. Prominent among the detainees is Sheikh Hassan Yusuf, along with his two sons. Yusuf, who was released from prison six months ago, and Muhammad Ghazal, a senior Hamas leader in the Nablus area, is considered a leader of the moderate camp espousing Hamas´ involvement in the political process.

But such a move was probably deemed necessary by Sharon for his own sordid domestic political reasons: On the other side, Sharon narrowly won his battle with Netanyahu over the Likud premiership and primaries, managing to retain the later Likud primary date and blunting Netanyahu's ever-intrigiuing conspiracy to take over the state. In a humorous twist, Sharon couldn't give his speech to the Likud Central Committee because his microphone went dead. This sparked a huge controversy between both sides, with the Netties claiming that Sharon did it himself to posture as a victim. Akiva Eldar always has interesting things to say about "Sharon's Cheerleading Squad", that is, the Israeli Left that now finds themselves in a strange political alliance.

I would like to believe that it was Sharon's idea, but Netanyahu actually approved it, to suit their weird personalities.... Anyway, also Likud members accused each other of ballot manipulation and voting fraud (as has happened in the past).

Israel would like a seat on the UN Security Council. The director of the Shin Bet security service says he expects more attacks from the West Bank now, which seems true as far as it goes tactically, but then again I think we can expect the settlers to Amp their Land Grab up now as well. The settlers are on a mission to persuade Likud Central Committee members of how freakin great they are.

I just found informationwar.org, a UK peace project. Nice name. Did you know that Winston Churchill once praised dropping poison gas on the Kurds? Funny story.

Report from a Russ Feingold fundraiser

There are quite a few things to post later. But for now I can add to my list of interesting political figures I've met. My dad got invited to a Russ Feingold fundraiser this afternoon, and I thought it would be worth checking out. Indeed it was. The great anti-Patriot Act senator talked about why the heck he was raising money so soon after his re-election. Apparently the plan is to keep local political committees running, supporting other progressive and Democratic candidates. As this unusual guy somehow has lasted so long in the Senate, he's really becoming a Wisconsin institution, so why not try to leverage his long-term popularity by keeping the effort going?

Other than that, well, he talked about how irresponsible President Bush is for proposing funding Katrina recovery efforts with deficit spending and cutting services. He talked about Judge Roberts - and in particular, the connection between the Patriot Act, the Chief Justice, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (wikipedia). He said that the primary reason he voted against the Patriot Act was because of this shady secret court, whose members are in fact selected by the Chief Justice. So the Roberts thing is even more important. But he felt that Roberts was clearly not their first choice, so relatively not so bad. The next one, he feared, would take the rest of the year to sort out.

That's my dad at right - with the blue shirt and tallness, can you see the resemblance?! ... I wasn't taking any notes, so I can't really get into lots of details. But he also talked about how the Katrina situation has helped illustrate to Americans that the Iraq war has really damaged our preparedness. But he was disappointed that now that Katrina is at the top of the agenda, the vast amount of unrest about the war that members of Congress have been exposed to on their summer break has sort of gotten pushed aside. In particular, he felt, the Republicans have succeeded in making it "taboo" to challenge Bush's leadership on the war and to even suggest that it is time to discuss getting out. He was the first to offer an actual target date for a pullout - the end of 2006. But the other Democrats are too tepid to even support him, or openly start discussing the matter of deadlines because Republicans have made it appear that you can't do this while "supporting the troops."

He also added that we invaded Iraq for "fake reasons," which I particularly liked (see the last two years of this site).

So Russ is out there, changing the dynamics of the situation. Even in quite conservative northern counties, he said, people are feeling very queasy about the war. Russ said that he told a group up there, it wasn't a "radical county," and an older woman piped up and said, "We're getting there!!" On the heels of all this, he said, surely we're tired of hearing that every election is the most important of our lifetimes. But the last one was. And this next one will be. For it is nearly time to start getting things turned around. After more than a decade without control of Congress, the next one will be a "watershed" that will finally flip things around, he said.

When he departed the stage, heading for another fundraiser in Prescott, the Pierce County Democratic Chair suggested that once we have Congress, we can start talking about Impeachment. *Massive Applause*. That was exciting.

Ok a couple more pictures. This is What is Happening in Western Wisconsin politics. Hell Yeah.

(all photos by Me except for the one with me in it. that was my dad)

"Bureaucracy has committed murder;" The Big Spinstorm; a little more on Israeli spies shadowing hijackers before 9/11

BROUSSARD [of Jefferson Parish]: We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. … Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.

As featured at ThinkProgress.

Yeah, I don't know if I can put the big picture of the storm together. Nonetheless here are some stories.

Someone told Cheney to go fuck himself on live television. Tomgram: Iraq in America: At the Front of Nowhere at All: The Perfect Storm and the Feral City By Tom Engelhardt really puts it into perspective, and all the nasty parallels and feedback effects from the Iraq war making things worse, the sudden and shocking evidence that the Public Sector in this country has been stripped to the bone, etc. A lot of blame is getting spun around, Brit Hume even claimed that Bush "pleaded" that the mayor of New Orleans would evacuate.

Also this White House photo of Bush in a video teleconference before it hit just illustrates how they shouldn't have dropped the damn ball. Check out the official note from FEMA's Brown (PDF), five damn hours after it hit, putting DHS and FEMA into action in the "near catastrophic event". Via TPM.

The Red Tape and bizarre bureaucratic moves included having firefighters hand out fliers apparently. The pathology of our government:

...as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Image before life. Also Barbara Bush said that "This is working out very well for them" in their tortured refugee status because they were "underprivileged anyway." There are some horrible reports about totally staged relief events - entire sites that appeared to hand out supplies, then collapsed as soon as Bush and the less observant American media moved off. The Germans of ZDF were more observant. But wait, maybe that was not accurate at all. Here are some translations of the media in question.

It would appear that Blackwater USA - the same private military firm/mercenary org that's done such a fine job in Mesopotamia - has sent at least 150 people into the New Orleans area. They are patrolling with M-16s. Yeah. A blogger on the ground appears to have broken this story.

The practice of putting political apparatchiks into FEMA makes more sense if we consider what might have happened if it had hit a swing state in an election year, such as the 2004 hit on Florida, where FEMA rolled in and basically showered people with cash well outside the damage zone, resulting in a nice bounce of several points for Bush. Was Michael Brown basically perpetrating fraud in Florida 2004 (PDF)? Salon: The Politics of Hurricane Relief. ThinkProgress Katrina Timeline attempts to counter the spin. Billmon is doing a damn good job these days, as always.

True Blue Conspiracy Theorist Wayne Madsen said that someone, probably the government, was jamming radio transmissions around New Orleans. What the hell? I don't get it. Well, now there is an update that is is coming from some kind of pirate radio station in the Caribbean. Ok, whatever. Here is how you can defeat radio jamming signals. Apparently. Also, he has a grand conspiracy already going into place about depopulating the poor black population of the city. I liked the bit about "secret hereditary societies." So take this with many grains of salt:

September 9, 2005 -- Dallas meeting plans reconstruction of New Orleans without poor African Americans. According to well-informed New Orleans sources, New Orleans' wealthiest families, including those who are direct descendants of the French who settled New Orleans (not the Acadians [Cajuns] who were poor refugees from British tyranny in Nova Scotia) are meeting in Dallas today with Bush administration officials, New Orleans city officials, wealthy Texas oilmen, and bankers to plan for the reconstruction of New Orleans. These wealthy New Orleans residents live in the gated community of Audobon Place, a section of the city near the Garden District replete with personal helipads that still has running water and sewage and was only slightly affected by hurricane Katrina. It is now reportedly being patrolled by private Israeli security forces. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a piece with more details on this story.

Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA): "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

The Dallas meeting focused on rebuilding and re-zoning New Orleans without the "criminal element," a code word for the city's poor African American community.

These New Orleans residents have been scattered across the United States and are now under the control of FEMA. There is an understanding by the wealthy New Orleans elite that the poor will never be able to return. The Journal reported that the person who chaired the Dallas meeting was Jimmy Riess, one of the wealthy New Orleans elite who also served as Mayor Ray Nagin's Chairman of the Regional Transit Authority, which is in charge of the city's buses, trolleys, and trains. New Orleans sources report that public transportation was purposely not used to evacuate the poor New Orleans residents as a means to depopulate the poorer and more flood-prone sections of the city. [hongpong: wtf?!! let me get my tinfoil hat right away!] In fact, after the properties in New Orleans poorer communities are razed many of the deed records of the poor and middle class contained in government offices and title companies of Orleans Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish may end up being casualties of the flood. As one New Orleans source put it, "people will not have proof they ever owned anything." As for renters and residents of public housing, they will be prevented from returning to their native city, according to New Orleans sources. Louisiana's Republican House member Richard Baker, a strong Bush ally, may have tipped his hand about the future plans for New Orleans when he told a group of lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Guess Who Is Planning the Rebuilding of New Orleans?

The French-American elite of New Orleans are among the city's "rich and famous." They run the Mardi Gras "crews" (Krews) or clubs, secret hereditary societies that sponsor the annual pre-Lenten festival. Many also run large oil companies and are long time supporters of the Bush family and their associated oil and gas cartels.

Meanwhile, the wars: There was the conference about terrorism and security called America's Purpose, which you can see video about, and some stuff on CSPAN. Washington dude Steve Clemons was involved. In terms of the war, Juan Cole offered an excellent dissection of how Christopher Hitchens is still trying to defend it.

The "sovereign" Iraqi government wants to get those private mercenary / privatized military / security firms under control somehow, including a central registry. Also this news from the Telegraph.

For more than two years such contractors have roamed with impunity. But now the interior ministry has imposed rules requiring all their firms to be registered and weapons to be carried only by guards holding an official licence.

If any of the companies is considered to be a threat or if it angers a government official its official permit could be revoked and the business ordered to depart.

About 25,000 security contractors, many of them British, American and South African ex-servicemen, lured to Iraq by wages of up to £750 a day, are estimated to be in the country providing protection for official buildings, supply convoys or visiting businessmen.

They are highly unpopular with locals. Convoys of contractors have become a common sight on a journey through Baghdad since the March 2003 US-led invasion.

Adorned in sunglasses and bullet-proof vests, they travel in white four-wheel-drive vehicles with gun barrels protruding from the windows. Many refuse to obey road signs and consider traffic jams a security risk so barge through the lines of vehicles which are often forced to pull over rapidly on to pavements.

Their lack of official status has long been a concern and those operating on US department of defence contracts are free from risk of legal penalty under the Iraqi judicial system if they killed anyone in a firefight.

But under the new rules confirmed yesterday all such firms will be brought under the authority of the Baghdad government. All companies will have to provide details of their number of employees, jobs undertaken and office addresses.

Most significantly their employees will no longer be allowed to possess a weapon without approval. Many of the firms have considerable firepower. As well as AK-47s and assault rifles some have heavy machineguns and anti-tank rocket launchers. One company, Blackwater, even has its own fleet of helicopters which criss-cross Baghdad with machine guns poking out from the side.

The surging private military industry is a fascinating subject for me. If you want a really entertaining video shot from the Blackwater guys' helicopters, check out MilitaryVideos.net. The latest video, from August, is Blackwater in Najaf 2 (BitTorrent wmv - legal). Sounds exciting. Index of some of these companies, Global Guerrillas on PMFs, the Guardian on it. Soldiers of Good Fortune by Barry Yeoman in Mother Jones is a really excellent primer. And of course Wikipedia on it.

OS X + Windows Video Tech Tip: For some horrible reason, Windows Media Player for Mac OS X is a very stubborn piece of crap that hates to play lots of WMV files. However, if you retitle the file's type from .wmv to .asf , then lots of them will work. Incredibly stupid, but it works on most of the videos from MilitaryVideos.net.

Juan Cole offers us the following tidbit about how Rummy thinks that we can do a Top Notch job in New Orleans, Iraq AND the Global War on Terror.

The US Pentagon is sending hundreds of members of the Louisiana National Guard home from Iraq. Some of them have lost homes in New Orleans. Internet gossip had earlier suggested substantial discontent in the ranks over being stuck in Iraq while Louisiana faced its biggest crisis in modern history.

The Iraqi Interior ministry said 9 Iraqis were killed, among them a high-ranking official in the ministry of the interior. Another 20, at least, were injured.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield maintains that the US government can both take care of New Orleans and pursue the "global war on terror."

Uh, Donald, let's look at this situation. First, much of New Orleans is under water. You stole money that should have been spent on its levees for the Iraq War, and you stole state national guards from Louisiana to fight in Iraq. (The state national guards hadn't signed up to fight foreign wars and were surprised when you kidnapped them, sometimes for a whole year at a time.) So you haven't actually done a good job with the effects of Katrina in New Orleans. In fact, the job has been so bad that some wags are saying they can't believe you personally were not in charge of the recovery effort.

Then let's consider the war against al-Qaeda. You may have noticed that Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a videotape late last week. It was bundled with the farewell suicide tape of Muhammad Siddique Khan, the mastermind of the 7/7 bombers in London. It now appears that your inability to capture al-Zawahiri has allowed him to intrigue with Pakistani jihadi groups to recruit British subjects to bomb their own country. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are at large and free men, which is your failure.

Then there is the war in Iraq. I don't need to tell you that that isn't going very well. In fact, what in hell are you doing in the godforsaken Turkmen city of Tal Afar? Is it really a big threat to the United States? Is it likely to be friendly to us if you drop 500 pound bombs on its residential districts?

You left out the fourth war Bush is fighting, on the US poor. The average wage of the average American work fell last quarter, amidst rising corporate profits. Bush cut billions in taxes on the rich, and then gave $300 checks to some poor people, who didn't seem to realize that by taking it they were giving up all sorts of government services and maybe even their social security payments.

So, Donald, maybe it is true that you can save New Orleans, occupy Iraq and fight a global war on terror all at the same time. But you, at least, cannot actually do these things successfully. Which is why you should have resigned a long time ago.

Projects in Iraq are running out of cash. This would include water and power projects. Also, the US is obsessed with gaining control of the town of Tal Afar near Syria, and has been bombing the bridges over the Euphrates River in an effort to prevent militants from circulating. Of course, some people might suggest that such an action is pretty much the Direct Method for "dividing a country", but how could I suggest such a thing? Also the city of Qaim, on the edge of Syria, has been a site of dramatic violence and such... As usual it is all being blamed on Goldstein. I mean Zarqawi. A complex report about the struggle in Iraq over its economic organization. Of course, the US has been crushing the wishes of the more socialist-oriented Iraqis, who realize their country has a good chance of getting ahead with export-led industrial development and a heavily subsidized public sector backed up with oil wealth. Oh well. That is Not Suitable to our Fantasy Vision, dammit!

Israel is wrapping up the Gaza occupation, and the little slice of land between Gaza and Egypt will finally return to Arab hands. This is called the Philadelphi Corridor or Philadelphi Route, which this Fikret Ertan dude reflects on. The matter of border customs stations, overseen by an international team, has not been fully resolved yet. It seems that Bush is intervening with the Europeans, asking them not to pressure Sharon so that he's more likely to win against Netanyahu. However, as writer Gideon Samet points out, they are being lazy and unhelpful, making the wrong moves with the "Israeli hurricane" as well. Israel is sealing the Rafah crossing in Gaza to prep it. The notoriously goofy Rabbi Ovaida Yosef said that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for Bush's support for leaving Gaza.

"It was God's retribution. God does not shortchange anyone," Yosef said during his weekly sermon on Tuesday. His comments were broadcast on Channel 10 TV on Wednesday.

Yosef also said recent natural disasters were the result of a lack of Torah study and that Katrina's victims suffered "because they have no God," singling out black people......Yosef singled out black victims, saying "they don't study Torah." He used the word "Kushim," which in the Bible refers to an ancient African people but in vernacular Hebrew is considered derogatory.

Our last Israel tidbit comes from Amira Hass, on "Gun Envy." Life for a tiny child in the Gaza slums:

In another year or two, he will learn to distinguish between an armed Jew and an armed Palestinian. Instead of fear, maybe he will be filled with pride and excitement. In another three years, he will know how to distinguish between armed men from Hamas and armed men from the Palestinian Authority/Fatah, and will already decide which is his favorite team. Thus, without his parent's wanting it, without realizing it, without his similarly excited friends realizing it - he will be infected with the common malady whose scientific name is "gun envy."

The minor variety of this illness is sympathy (for one organization or another) and emulation (with toy guns). The serious variety is to join an organization. The most common symptom of this illness is reflected in the billboards and posters that constantly crowd one's field of vision: men armed with rifles and mortars, in every pose imaginable, and with each organization competing over whose is bigger. Another symptom is expressed in the public military ceremonies that elicit ecstatic reactions from the crowd.

She astutely points out that the Palestinians are in fact developing mirror images of the main force all around them, the IDF.

Was Israel Keeping Tabs on some of the 9/11 hijackers?

What an interesting question!! What do you say,

senior FOX News reporter Carl Cameron, in December 2001?

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States. 

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. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States. 

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity." 

The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy.....

And so on and so forth. An incredibly weird thing to hear from Fox News. But within weeks this story vanished down the memory hole, and only because someone managed to tape the four Fox reports and put them up on the Internet can we watch all 1 2 3 4 of them right now!

The new twist, as Justin Raimondo brought to attention, is that some corporate lawyer did a massive study (PDF) picking apart all the various weird detentions of Israelis, and he discovered a very serious overlap between where the 9/11 hijackers lived, and where the Israelis were apparently spying from. The maps are hilarious! So it would be quite a dramatic story if it all turned out to be true. Personally, I am not betting my lunch money on it, but I thought it certainly interesting enough to post on the site.

As always, Josh Marshall is holding it down on TalkingPointsMemo.com. There has been plenty of good stuff about the Katrina spinstorms there lately.

I am no fan of Allan Bloom style neoconservative browbeating of the "Liberal Academia", but this review in NYTimes about the effect of his classic "Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Stolen My Maple Syrup" was sort of interesting. I think the interesting point was that Bloom would be appalled how the rightwing is attempting to ideologically straitjacket academia in the same sorts of ways that Bloom thought the Big Scary Left did back in the day.

Misc bits: freewayblogger.com chronicles signs posted on overpasses and stuff against Bush and the War. This is very old news, but the British graffiti artist Banksy bombed the wall constructed by the Israeli government inside the Palestinian Territories. I can't believe he did something so detailed in the high-security area. Badass.

That's all for today, folks.

You can't get to Gretna

Via Billmon. the direct link.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.



We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Journalism from Square One: Peter Gartrell, holding it down in Wyoming

I promised Peter a while ago that I would post about his adventures (hence the "from abroad" topic) in Gillette, Wyoming. Peter was driving back to Oregon (i might have mixed up the details here) where he was working on an organic farm, decompressing after his illustrious Macalester career.

As he drove through Gillette, he picked up a newspaper in a gas station and thought, wouldn't it be a good idea to see about getting a job here? So he pestered them for a while in his usual polite yet indefatigable fashion, and the Gillette News-Record hooked him up with the cub reporter slot. Fortunately, rather than the cats-in-trees beat, he is now covering the energy industry (mostly natural gas), which is a very big deal out in those parts. He has spent a hella long time figuring out all these weird drilling techniques and stuff, going to visit drilling sites and hanging out with the roughnecks.

I think it is a very cool venture for him to go with, because what better place to get a grip on things than the most sparsely populated state in the country? I don't really have a lot more useful to say about it, but here are links to most of Peter's stories. i think the paper publishes like 5 or 6 days a week, so he's pretty darn busy.

My favorites were his recent major feature about new gas drilling technology & ventures, and the story of the gas technicians who rescued fifteen people from a trailer park that got wasted by a sudden tornado. So here is the set of Peter's stories so far, via the newspaper site's search function. Keep holding it down, P, that's Cheney country out there, and we need to keep an eye on 'em:

Pumped up Sep. 4, 2005
With rigs peppering the Rocky Mountain region, Gillette-based Cyclone Drilling s business has more than doubled since 2000. Rigs operate around the clock and they still have a hard time keeping pace with demand. We were running 10 (drilling rigs) in ...
Local gas prices climb to 2.90 Sep. 6, 2005
As gas prices rise across the country, drivers in Gillette are responding, as the average increased to 2.90, more than 1 higher than a month ago on Aug. 4. Felix Vondracek, on his way back to York, Neb., after visiting his son in Billings, Mont., s...
Latest Avenues of Art display includes 27 pieces Aug. 12, 2005
Standing next to his most recent piece of public art, Karl Saliter, his daugter and four Gillette Street Department employees smiled for a publicity photo as hail began to fall. The semi-circle of smiling faces cradled Saliter s work of granite, stee...
Gillette feels pinch of nationwide shortage of cement Aug. 28, 2005
When Basic Energy s cement supply was cut by 40 percent in July, Rod Geil called suppliers in Utah, Colorado, Texas, Iowa and Alberta, Canada, in search of more. Each time he was told the same thing: We don t have any. The drilling company is still i...
Scavenger hunt for new teachers Aug. 24, 2005
Campbell County s 58 new teachers spent Tuesday searching for cowboy hats, rhinos, toys and firefighters during a scavenger hunt that was part of new employee orientation. New teachers were paired with experienced teachers who are helping the new emp...
President declares Wright a disaster area Aug. 23, 2005
President Bush signed a disaster declaration Monday, making federal relief funds available for Wright residents affected by the Aug. 12 tornado that struck the town. The declaration came 10 days after the tornado destroyed or severely damaged 92 home...
Jacobs Ranch wins mine rescue contest Aug. 21, 2005
The blood-covered and headless body of a mine worker had fallen more than 30 feet off an overburden drill, and his co-workers were stranded. In Saturday s simulated accident, one worker was lying only feet from the smashed skull with a badly broken l...
Kids donate money from stand to Wright tornado victims Aug. 17, 2005
Logan Wasson and Ashlyn Pearson were selling juice and baked goods at their old-fashioned lemonade stand on Tuesday. But the money they make isn t for them. The Gillette fifth-graders will donate their profits to help the victims of the Wright tornad...
Rescuers pull 15 from the wreckage Aug. 14, 2005
Scott Lindsey, Bob Shock and Luke Reddy leapt from their rig and headed toward the voice of a woman screaming hysterically. She was standing near a mobile home that had been flipped over, a home so mangled that all the things that were on the floor w...
Latest Avenues of Art display includes 27 pieces Aug. 13, 2005
Standing next to his most recent piece of public art, Karl Saliter, his daugter and four Gillette Street Department employees smiled for a publicity photo as hail began to fall. The semi-circle of smiling faces cradled Saliter s work of granite, stee...
Head-on kills 3 Gillette men Aug. 30, 2005
Three people were killed and one is hospitalized after a two vehicle accident west of Wright on Monday afternoon. Anthony Vance, 21, of Gillette, and two passengers died instantly when their pickup truck, traveling northbound on Highway 387, drifted ...

"While some fight the insurgency in the city"

This is an unreal news story from ArmyTimes.com. The money quote: "While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations."

Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer

NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy.

Dozens of military trucks and up-armored Humvees left the staging area just after 11 a.m. Friday, while hundreds more troops arrived at the same staging area in the city via Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.

“We’re here to do whatever they need us to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon, of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 1345th Transportation Company. “We packed to stay as long as it takes.”

While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.

Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and police helicopters filled the city sky Friday morning. Most had armed soldiers manning the doors. According to Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeremy Grishamn, a spokesman for the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the vessel kept its helicopters at sea Thursday night after several military helicopters reported being shot at from the ground.

Numerous soldiers also told Army Times that they have been shot at by armed civilians in New Orleans. Spokesmen for the Joint Task Force Headquarters at the Superdome were unaware of any servicemen being wounded in the streets, although one soldier is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a struggle with a civilian in the dome Wednesday night.

“I never thought that at a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans,” said Spc. Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. “And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace.”

Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.

“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

The Man of Our Times

Interestingly, the caption on this New York Times photo has changed. On the web, it now says:

"A man, holding a toy gun rides a bike inside the local Wall Mart store in the lower Garden District in New Orleans while the store is looted." But the photo as it ran in the printed version of the Times (on Wednesday) said nothing about a "toy gun." Nor, do I think, is it actually a toy gun, since of course it lacks the orange cap on the end.

Basically I've got nothing clever to say, I'm really just shellshocked about the whole thing.

Charities:

The American Red Cross - www.RedCross.org

AmeriCares - www.americares.org

America's Second Harvest - www.secondharvest.org

ASPCA - www.aspca.org

Catholic Charities USA - www.catholiccharitiesusa.org

Direct Relief International - www.directrelief.org

Feed The Children - www.feedthechildren.org

Habitat for Humanity - www.habitat.org

Humane Society of the United States - www.hsus.org

Noah's Wish - www.noahswish.org

North Shore Animal League America - www.nsalamerica.org

The Salvation Army - www.salvationarmyusa.org

United Jewish Communities - www.ujc.org

United Methodist Committee on Relief - www.methodistrelief.org

United Way - national.unitedway.org

The director of FEMA has really done quite a bad job, which CNN is surprisingly critical about. The DailyKos notes that his real qualification was being a Bush campaign apparatchik's college roommate...

Prior to joining FEMA he practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.

So the White House spinstorm hoping to duck responsibility for the disaster has gotten well underway, as Josh Marshall explains:

I too saw the Chertoff press conference Jon Cohn notes over at TPMCafe, or at least the part of it in which Chertoff trotted out what I guess is going to be the 'double-up justification' for the slow federal response to Katrina.

As Jon wrote: "Chertoff says this was a unique, unpredictable one-two punch -- of a hurricane *and* a flood from a breached levee -- that nobody anticipated."

I actually thought I heard him parse it into three events. But I was writing as I listened; and press reports bear out Jon's recollection.

But in any case, same difference: this is truly a parse for the ages.

The one snippet of the transcript I was able to find online has Chertoff saying: "We were prepared for one catastrophe. The second catastrophe, frankly, added a level of challenge that no one has seen before.”

Clearly, clearly, the hurricane and the flood were part of the same natural disaster. This isn't like a tornado being followed up by an earthquake. The flooding is part of the hurricane. It's almost surreal to even have to argue this point it's so obvious. But there it is.

Clearly, the White House is pulling out every stop to argue for the impossibility of predicting what happened. But remember, everyone seems to agree that a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane would have created a storm surge that overtopped the levees. I want to go back and check all the details on this. But my understanding is that Katrina -- which was coming into Louisiana as a Cat 5 -- ratchetted down in final hours and actually hit NOLA as a Cat 3. This is part of what created that brief period in which it seemed that the city emerged more or less intact. The immediate storm surge didn't overtop the levees. But then levees failed and/or some were overtopped.

Whatever the details on that point, whether levees failed or were overtopped, the feds and everyone else had every reason to believe over the weekend that the city was going to be flooded. This scenario was not only predictable, but actively predicted as a likely scenario.

The Times had a fairly critical article about FEMA's Michael Brown, and heck, this whole bit about Brown would be damn funny if it wasn't so sad:

Yesterday the Houston Chronicle reported that Halliburton has been hired by the Navy to repair its damaged facilities in Mississippi and perform initial damage assessments of facilities in New Orleans.

The work was assigned, reported the Chronicle, "under a 'construction capabilities' contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process." But it raises a question it is not at all too early to ask. The egg is pretty much cooked on the relief operation. But in the coming days and weeks we will move into a recovery phase in which, no doubt, tens of billions of dollars will be spent cleaning up and rebuilding not just New Orleans but big sections of the Gulf Coast.

Does anyone believe that the Bush administration can handle that money and that task without widespread waste, fraud and cronyism?

That's not just a question for partisan Democrats. I would think that there are a lot of Republicans up for reelection next year who are probably giving that question some serious thought. They may not want to attack the president. They may even want their own seat on the gravy train. But they know the record as well as anyone. And they may not want to be carrying the president's water a year from now when the news stories are filling the papers.

The news out today about FEMA Director Michael Brown tells the ugly tale. So let's just review what we now know -- with key new details first from a diarist at DailyKos and now confirmed in more depth in this morning's Boston Herald.

Michael Brown is a lawyer and GOP party activist. Before he came to FEMA in 2001, he had a full-time job overseeing horse-shows as the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. He started with them in 1991. But he was eventually fired because of what the Herald describes as "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures." (The Kos diary has some more details.)

But the stars were shining on Brown because President Bush had just been elected. And he appointed his chief political fixer Joe Allbaugh to replace James Lee Witt as head of FEMA.

That was a good break for the recently-canned Brown, because, as we learn from the Herald, he and Allbaugh were college roommates. He hired Brown as his General Counsel at FEMA in February. And then, by the end of the year, he promoted him to Deputy Director.

Then, little more than a year later, Allbaugh left FEMA to set up New Bridge Strategies, a consultancy to cash in on the Iraqi contracts bonanza. On Allbaugh's departure from FEMA, Brown became Director, in charge of federal domestic emergency management in the United States.

So, just to recap, Brown had no experience whatsoever in emergency management. He was fired from his last job for incompetence. He was hired because he was the new director's college roommate. And after the director -- who himself got the job because he was a political fixer for the president -- left, he became top dog. And President Bush said yesterday that he thinks Brown is "doing a helluva job".

Tens of billions of federal dollars are going to be spent on reconstruction, though the first allotment is only $10.5 billion. Does anybody think Bush administration has the competence or honesty to manage that money? Does anybody think it won't be handled with the efficiency, expertise and integrity of the Iraqi reconstruction?

As for me, well I am out in Damned Hudson, trying to get my life to move along again. I feel like a bit of a refugee myself. I can't really promise any particular frequency of posts, because it is a lot more important for me to get Real Life in order....

Oh yeah, by the way, wouldn't it have been nice if they'd dropped another $50 million on levees and tossed out, say, the pointless Alaska Bridge to Nowhere ($2,000,000,000)??!?!?!

Hurricane

Damn. That's something horrible.

I am visualizing helicopter flyovers of the wasted remains of the French Quarter. It's quite a horrible thought....

Walk into the jaws of Hell: a terrible day for London

It reminds me of when I went to London, only a few days after the Madrid bombings. At the time, the whole system was on a terror alert, as they feared a reprisal. However, I walked right past heavily armed police onto the Tube, and it wasn't as if they were patting everyone down. "Al-Qaeda shadow looms over London." This was very similar to the Madrid attacks:

"Like the attacks on the Spanish capital, the targets in London were key transportation nodes: underground stations which intersect with main railway stations, feeding through hundreds of thousands of passengers an hour during peak time," says Dr Eyal.

"And, like in Madrid, the purpose was to kill as many people as possible, by striking at different targets at more or less the same time."

The London stock market plunged after the attacks but the FTSE 100 index came mostly back up. US stock markets aren't hosed. And oil is at a record high but for some reason eased off after this. I wonder if the Plunge Protection Team is rolling out? (London's Evening Standard on the PPT)

The Guardian has a news blog running with updates (General summary). The photo here came from flickr.com. There is a large collection of pictures tagged "London Bomb Blasts" that has a lot of original pictures. (BBC also has pictures and a map of the bombed lines)

Wikipedia now has a picture collection as well as large set of emerging information. Wikinews covers "Four bombs rock London" with many news links, including the surprising news that Netanyahu of all people had some kind of advance warning from the Brits.

The Israelis were tipped off minutes before the explosions?! WTF?

Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 7:14 AM ET

JERUSALEM - British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.

Reporter Chris Allbritton put a translation on his site back-to-iraq.com, of a statement posted on an al-Qaeda linked website, www.qal3ati.com. The site seems to be gone for now, but this was the post:

Announcement on London's Operation 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe

In the name of God the most merciful...

Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders' Zionist British government.

As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.

And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.

We have warned the brutish governments and British nation many times.

And here we are, we have done what we have promised. We have done a military operation after heavy work and planning, which the mujahideen have done, and it has taken a long time to ensure the success of this operation.

And we still warn the government of Denmark and Italy, all the crusader governments, that they will have the same punishment if they do not pull their forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So beware.

Thursday 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of al Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe.

BTW Allbritton is releasing podcasts of his journalism over in Iraq. Nice.

Speaking of Afghanistan, an interesting BBC tale about American troops battling near the Pakistan border. As their Afghan ally put it, are mostly Arabs, Waziris from Pakistan and Chechens. Also, the Iranians are going to train Iraqi troops. What could go wrong?! "Will the US be asked to leave key military bases?" in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan & Uzbekistan?

In the evening of the aftermath, Financial Times analysts have published a harsh rebuke to the United States and its Global War on Terror:

Bush has to review strategy, say US experts
By Guy Dinmore and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: July 7 2005 18:16 | Last updated: July 7 2005 18:16

A constant theme of the Bush administration is that America and the world are safer because of the US invasion of Iraq and its anti-terror strategy.

That argument prevailed during the US presidential election campaign last year, despite even official US evidence to the contrary, but may have been finally buried by Thursday’s bombings in London.

Experts in Washington said following the blasts that it was time for the Bush administration to re-evaluate its strategy. Confronted by opinion polls showing his falling popularity and waning support for the war in Iraq, Mr Bush stuck to his guns in a speech to the military last week that characteristically showed no hint of change.

“There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home,” said Mr Bush in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Last September, at the peak of his re-election campaign, Mr Bush told the Republican national convention: “We are staying on the offensive striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. Our strategy is succeeding. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.”

John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former deputy secretary of defence, said: “Clearly [the world] is not safer. I think this highlights the complexity of the problem.

“We must defend a vast infrastructure constantly while extremists get to pick the time and place with very limited tools. Obviously we must try to intercept the terrorists. But we must also address the broader socio-political context. We can’t solve this with a relatively limited dimensional model of counterforce. Being mighty is one thing. Being effective is another. This is a much more complex problem.”

Classified studies by the CIA and State Department leaked to the media last month concluded that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as the prime training ground for foreign terrorists who could travel across the world spreading destruction. The Bush administration has struggled even to work out whether the world is a safer place or not.

A year ago, the State Department had to withdraw a report by the Terrorist Threat Integration Centre that claimed terror attacks in 2003 had declined sharply. The revised report more than doubled the numbers of attacks and deaths.

We have to keep on going, doing whatever the hell we are doing...

Elvis Presley, Nazis, (dis)information freedom and whatnot

Vanity, disinformation and rumors get picked up and passed around and our BS filters get sidestepped by the sourcing of the information. Take this Elvis Presley = Nazi idea that circulated lately. Another example of the perils of the information age:

Almost 28 years after his death, fans of the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, can now see their icon in a radically different light; that as a Nazi.

The legend is seen wearing a Nazi cap and giving a Nazi salute in some pictures taken from a grainy half-hour home cine film.

The pictures, believed to be from the sixties, were taken during a boat trip with friends and have surfaced at the same time as Presley's ex-wife Priscilla released his home movies.

"I was given it ages ago, I think when I used to own a bar. But I had never watched it. It wasn't until I found it in the loft that I decided to. When I did I was shocked," Mark Vernon, who owns the tape, was quoted as saying.

The story still appears on News.com.au, an Australian site, FemaleFirst.co.uk, ContactMusic.com. Originally the British tabloid Sun propagated the story but of course the Sun's Elvis page has expired. The counter-story comes from Elvis-express.com, which is filing a complaint with the UK's Press Complaints Commission.

The other horror would be blogebrity.com, an agglomeration of big shots or something like that. So when I first visit I get the bloviating post:

While the majority of the emails we've received have been something along the lines of:

I love it....this is so much fun; I'm glad somebody finally did this, etc.

There have been a few of these:

You suck. Your list sucks and you suck and people should ONLY talk about blogs in the way I WANT THEM TO. Shame on you. Oh....and you didn't put me on your list. You suck and I hate you.

Just a clue to the haters--your whining is more transparent than a glob of used Neutrogena. But please, do keep it up....your sour grapes are like a glass of Opus One to us.

Speaking of which, I do think it's time for an eye-opener.

So right off the bat they are indulging their own egos in the mailbox. This one's destined to be a classic. On the other hand this site declared that blogging has finally passed a critical peak, from which it will roll downhill:

Blogging Jumps Shark, Becomes Trucker Hat
Following the recent whirlwind of blog hype including Nick Denton's love affair with the New York Times, his pie to the face at the Radar Magazine party, the launch of Blogebrity, Jason Calacanis' three million micro-blogs, a sudden explosion of branded character blogs and "all marketers should blog" blog conferences, it's now official. Rick Bruner and I, today, declare blogging to have gone the way of the trucker hat. In celebration of this sacred event, May 20, 2005, you can pick up your memorial, Nick Denton Trucker Hat over at Cafe Press.

That is too bad. HongPong.dyndns.org ran on a hacked-together Mac Linux server in the fall of 2000, when "blog" had not yet become soggy label to spill from the mouths of those grinning chicks on CNN... Before Hugh Hewitt and Scott Johnson appropriated something thought up by far more clever people.

So it is sorely tempting to pull the plug on HongPong.com now that the living situation is changing. Either that or some sort of drastic redesign, something overwrought and bombastic, like a John Williams score.

Elvis might be a Nazi but Jim Morrison is alive, according to rodeoswest.com. Why the hell not? I guess it reinforces my point that there is very little truth to latch onto. "FlashNews" tells us something:

Filmmaker Claims Jim Morrison Is Alive In Oregon
NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) – Here’s news that will light the fire of Jim Morrison fans: A filmmaker claims The Doors’ frontman is alive and raising horses on a ranch in southern Oregon. Rodeo photographer Gerald Pitts insists Morrison didn’t die in July of 1971 and he has current photographs and film footage of the rocker to prove it.

Pitts, who met Morrison in 1998, says the rocker staged his death because of a French conspiracy to kill him, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix with narcotics because they were all Vietnam war protestors. These days, Morrison isn’t the drug user he once was, although Pitts says when he goes over to Jim’s house he’ll “maybe have an occasional beer.”

Now Pitts claims that Morrison is announcing he’s alive, in part, to promote his recent agreement to star in a rodeo shoot-out movie based on events that actually happened to Pitts.

Yet another reason to leave this country, as Arun would put it.

In other random news an online tool called Tor provides anonymity in Internet use, and was originally developed by the Navy. It is becoming popular among government and other such types... Mysterious. But the EFF supports it, so it must be good. Sort of similar to this sourceforge project called ANts, Freenet, (Freenet-china.org looks interesting) and MUTE are all anonymizing systems--that is, they shield a user's IP number and data using layers of encryption. A major problem, for say, your software pirate or Chinese dissident, is making sure the IP can't be traced to you as you engage in things. Centralized servers are another weak point, and other technologies such as our beloved BitTorrent are getting "distributed tracker" features put into their clients. Tor sounds promising, then:

The Naval Research Lab began developing the system in 1996 but handed the code over to Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, two Boston-based programmers, in 2002. The system was designed as part of a program called onion routing, in which data is passed randomly through a distributed network of servers three times, with layers of security protecting the data, like an onion.
Dingledine and Mathewson rewrote the code to make it easier to use and developed a client program so that users could send data from their desktops.
"It's been really obscure until now and hard to use," said Chris Palmer, EFF's technology manager. "(Before) it was just a research prototype for geeks. But now the onion routing idea is finally ready for prime time."
Dingledine and Mathewson made the code open source so that users could examine it to find bugs and to make certain that the system did only what it was supposed to do and nothing more.
The two programmers wanted to guard against a problem that arose in 2003 when users of another open-source anonymizer system -- called JAP, for Java Anonymous Proxy -- discovered that its German developers had placed a backdoor in the system to record traffic to one server. The developers... said they were forced to install a "crime detection function" by court order.
Law enforcement authorities have long had an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with anonymizer services. On the one hand, such services allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to hide their own identity while conducting investigations and gathering intelligence. But they also make it harder for authorities to track the activities and correspondence of criminals and terrorists.
Anonymizer services can help protect whistleblowers and political activists from exposure. They can help users circumvent surfing restrictions placed on students and workers by school administrators and employers. And they can prevent websites from tracking users and knowing where they're located. The downside is that anonymizer services can aid with corporate espionage.
....Tor builds an incremental encrypted connection that involves three separate keys through three servers on the network. The connection is built one server at a time so that each server knows only the identity of the server that preceded it and the server that follows it. None of the servers knows the entire path the data took.

So I guess my ultimate point is that technology is offering solutions for freedom, as well as coercion. Disinformation, however, is something that only our brains seem capable of swatting away, and it's an uphill battle.

Misc:

Look at this sweet

Robot Hand. More Koran desecration rumors. "60 Minutes Wednesday" gets cancelled, y'all can't keep telling us about insane prisons....

Television newsmagazines in general have been suffering in the ratings. There was some speculation that one of ABC's newsmagazines might be canceled, but both "20/20" and "Primetime Live" were included on the schedule announced Tuesday.

"The mood in the country right now tends to favor escape," Heyward said. "There's a lot of grim news out there. In prime time, when people are looking to be entertained as well as informed, a drama or a reality show is tough competition. The thing about reality shows is they offer the same appeal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, but it's all a game. There's a happy ending."

Tech: Microsoft used Apple G5's to demo their Xbox games at the recent E3 conference. That's right, Apples run the Xbox software somehow... Check out ImageSavant.com: this is what the Apple spinning ball should look like.

The Think Tanks' 'Leninist' strategy against Social Security

This is too damn funny. I don't think it's a hoax, but hey it might be. Inside your many Washington think tanks, they use rather blunt language to describe how the public's heads should be warped. A great plan from the year I was born popped up, and damn it's funny. Apparently written for the Cato Journal, it was posted on zfacts.com, a site I haven't seen before, with various info and insinuations. So make what you will of this source, but I think it's awesome:

ACHIEVING A “LENINIST” STRATEGY
Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis
Introduction
Marx believed that capitalism was doomed by its inherent contradictions, and that it would inevitably collapse—to he replaced by the next stage on the ladder leading to the socialist Utopia. Lenin also believed that capitalism was doomed by its inherent contradictions, and would inevitably collapse. But just to be on the safe side, he sought to mobilize the working class, in alliance with other key elements in political society, both to hasten the collapse and to ensure that the result conformed with his interpretation of the proletarian state. Unlike many other socialists at the time, Lenin recognized that fundamental change is contingent both upon a movement’s ability to create a focused political coalition and upon its success in isolating and weakening its opponents.

As we contemplate basic reform of the Social Security system, we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy. Many critics of the present system believe, as Marx and Lenin did of capitalism, that the system’s days are numbered because of its contradictory objectives of attempting to provide both welfare and insurance.

All that really needs to be done, they contend, is to point out these inherent flaws to the taxpayers and to show them that Social Security would be vastly improved if it were restructured into a predominantly private system. Convinced by the undeniable facts and logic, individuals supposedly would then rise up and demand that their representatives make the appropriate reforms.

While this may indeed happen, the public’s reaction last year against politicians who simply noted the deep problems of the system, and the absence of even a recognition of the underlying problems during this spring’s Social Security “reform,” suggest that it will be a long time before citizen indignation will cause radical change to take place. Therefore, if we are to achieve basic changes in the system, we must first prepare the political ground so that the fiasco of the last 18 months is not repeated.

First, we must recognize that there is a firm coalition behind the present Social Security system, and that this coalition has been very effective in winning political concessions for many years. Before Social Security can be reformed, we must begin to divide this coalition and cast doubt on the picture of reality it presents to the general public.

Second, we must recognize that we need more than a manifesto—even one as cogent and persuasive as that provided by Peter Ferrara. What we must do is construct a coalition around the Ferrara plan, a coalition that will gain directly from its implementation. That coalition should consist of not only those who will reap benefits from the IRA-based private system Ferrara has proposed but also the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public.

As we construct and consolidate this coalition, we must press for modest changes in the laws and regulations designed to make private pension options more attractive, and we must expose the fundamental flaws and contradictions in the existing system. In so doing, we will strengthen the coalition for privatizing Social Security and we will weaken the coalition for retaining or expanding the current system. By approaching the problem in this way, we may be ready for the next crisis in Social Security—ready with a strong coalition for change, a weakened coalition supporting the current system, and a general public familiar with the private-sector option.
[........much intrigue.....]
Detaching Supporters of Social Security
The final element of the strategy must be to propose moving to a private Social Security system in such a way as to detach, or at least neutralize, segments of the coalition that supports the existing system. A necessary step toward this objective is to honor all outstanding claims on the current system. Without such a commitment, we can never overcome the political opposition to reform, because the retired (or nearly retired) population will continue to strongly oppose any package that threatens to significantly reduce their benefits. Retaining the obligation to fund existing liabilities, however, will necessarily place constraints on the mechanisms that can be used to move the country towards a private system.
[.....]
Detaching workers who have made substantial tax payments into Social Security may not prove to be too difficult. A number of proposals have been put forward in which the worker’s accumulated “contributions,” plus interest, would be given to him in form of an interest-bearing bond, payable at retirement.” This bond would have a market value and could be sold, with the proceeds to be invested in a tax-deductible IRA. Using an appropriate version of this proposal should make it possible to gain some support even fi’om those who have a substantial stake in the current system.
Conclusion
The last two years have demonstrated beyond a doubt that Social Security can be reformed only by treating the issue primarily as a political problem. There is little point in arguing over the nuances of theoretical plans ifthe political dynamics are not altered; no amount of logic will overcome an unfavorable coalition of interest groups. It is also clear that the strategy we adopt must be flexible. It would be self-defeating to lay down a rigid blueprint and blindly adhere to it. Indeed, we must be prepared to refine segments of the plan, such as the opting-out mechanism or the design of the “super IRA,” to meet the changing political circumstances. Finally, we must he prepared for a long campaign. The next Social Security crisis may be further away than many people believe. Or perhaps it will occur before the reform coalition is strong enough to achieve a political breakthrough. In either case, it could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible. But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform.

Now that's a memory hole

In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.

Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, P. 373

Well now college is slipping away, but at least empirical reality is too. David Sirota depresses me. then i go to bed.

President Bush has said that "in a society that is a free society, there will be transparency." That means that in America, we have a government where the public gets to see as much information as possible about its government.

But as the record shows, Bush is anything but pro-transparency. A careful look shows the Bush White House has systematically tried to stop publishing government information that it finds embarrassing or disagrees with - the opposite of "transparent." See the record for yourself:

- Knight-Ridder reports today that the Bush administration announced yesterday that it has "decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered."

- When unemployment was peaking in Bush's first term, the White House tried to stop publishing the Labor Department's regular report on mass layoffs.

- In 2003, when the nation's governors came to Washington to complain about inadequate federal funding for the states, the Bush administration decided to stop publishing the budget report that states use to see what money they are, or aren't, getting.

- In 2003, the National Council for Research on Women found that information about discrimination against women has gone missing from government Web sites, including 25 reports from the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.

- In 2002, Democrats uncovered evidence that the Bush administration was removing health information from government websites. Specifically, the administration deleted data showing that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer. That scientific data was seen by the White House as a direct affront to the pro-life movement.

"Thompson's ashes to be shot from cannon"

CNN: 'He loved explosions'

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 Posted: 5:28 PM EDT (2128 GMT)

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Hunter S. Thompson's ashes will be blasted from a cannon mounted inside a 53-foot-high (16.15 meter-high) sculpture of the journalist's "gonzo fist" emblem, his wife said Tuesday.

The cannon shot, planned sometime in August on the grounds of his Aspen-area home, will fulfill the writer's long-cherished wish.

"It's expensive, but worth every penny," Anita Thompson said. "I'd like to have several explosions. He loved explosions."

Thompson, 67, shot himself in the head on February 20 after a long and flamboyant career that produced such new journalism classics as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and cast his image as a hard-charging, drug-crazed daredevil.

The cannon shot will be part of a larger public celebration of Thompson's life. Some details remain to be worked out, including the exact date, what kind of cannon will be used and the specifics of the gonzo fist, his wife said.

She said the gonzo fist will be mounted on a 100-foot pillar, making the monument 153 feet (46.63 meters) high. It will resemble Thompson's personal symbol, a fist on an upthrust forearm, sometimes with "Gonzo" emblazoned across it.

Anita Thompson has said the monument will be a permanent fixture on the writer's 100-acre property.

Thx to Judge Deason for telling me...

The great Schiavo blog

This is very important:

Terry Schiavo: The Blog: http://durrrrr.blogspot.com :

Friday, March 25, 2005
nnnnguh
AHHHHHHH WAAAAAAAA
posted by terri at 5:24 PM 149 comments

nnnnngnhgngnh
*blink*
posted by terri at 3:40 PM 42 comments

Also it seems that her parents are selling off their recently composed mailing list to conservative groups. But talk about your hyperactive core to target... those people got some buttons to push. (DailyKos / Billmon on it)

It is good to have Billmon back at the Whiskey Bar. I particularly like the future news snippets (as introduced by a dribble of news items parading the formation of an Iraqi government):

Iraqi politicians in the besieged Basra pocket vowed to break a deadlock that has blocked the formation of a new government, saying an agreement will be finalized before President-for-Life Bush's formal deification ceremony next week. Talks were slowed after three key negotiators – two Shia and one Kurd – died of old age last month . . .

Voice of Christian America
Iraq Cabinet Deal Said Close, Even as Evacuation Begins
January 12, 2009

Iraqi negotiators continued to haggle over the shape of their government in exile – nearly three decades after Iraq was overrun and annexed by the New Islamic Caliphate. Talks are reportedly deadlocked over genetic banker Ahmed Chalabi IV’s demand for control of the regime’s modest Treasury, reportedly valued at $150 trillion (3,500 Chinese renminbi) . . .

New New York Times
Iraq Talks Continue at Arkansas Oceanside Resort
March 28, 2045

Ok I gotta go to class now. There is much to say but little time to do it. Dang...

Tom Delay + Bacardi = One tasty indictment

As DeLay's Woes Mount, so Does Money: (NYT)

A legal defense fund established by Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, has dramatically expanded its fund-raising effort in recent months, taking in more than $250,000 since the indictment last fall of two his closest political operatives in Texas, according to Mr. DeLay's latest financial disclosure statements.

The list of recent donors includes dozens of Mr. DeLay's House Republican colleagues, including two lawmakers who were placed on the House ethics committee this year, and several of the nation's largest corporations and their executives.

Among the corporate donors to the defense fund is Bacardi U.S.A., the Florida-based rum maker, which has also been indicted in the Texas investigation, and Reliant Energy, another major contributor to a Texas political action committee formed by Mr. DeLay that is the focus of the criminal inquiry. Groups seeking an overhaul of Congressional ethics rules have long complained that companies might seek the favor of powerful lawmakers by contributing to their legal defense funds.

While the disclosure forms show that the defense fund has raised nearly $1 million since its establishment in 2000 and that Mr. DeLay is continuing to pick up generous donations from House Republicans and corporate executives, the documents also suggest that the majority leader's fund-raising efforts could soon be outpaced by ballooning legal bills.

The disclosure statements show that Mr. DeLay, whose title as majority leader makes him the second most powerful Republican in the House and whose fund-raising tactics led the House ethics committee to admonish him last year, paid $370,000 in legal fees last year - $260,000 of it in the final three months of the year.

The fees were divided among lawyers in Washington and Mr. DeLay's home state of Texas, where he is facing scrutiny by a grand jury in Austin over his role in the creation and management of Texans for a Republican Majority, the political action committee that he helped establish in 2001. The committee has been accused of funneling illegal corporate donations to state Republican candidates in the 2002 elections.

That is the best thing about their gerrymandering scheme in Texas: a tasty idea that took down the leader by his own hubris. Another example of successful long term thinking, like so many others we see and hear about.

A suicide in Fat City *

"How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but 'regrettably necessary' holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me at the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils? I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 - and as far as I can tell, we've gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same."

I have been away for too long. Today was one of the better days of my life. We passed back to the Legislature the profiles for the next edition of the book. I've been hesitant to say anything about the whole adventure until after the Powers that Be approve what we wrote.

Now the deliberative body is deliberating about something far more important than the law: how they want themselves to spin, craft identity, in their profiles, whatever you want to call the process of how politicians present themselves. Working on the book looked sort of like journalism, it was really more the process of shaping the truth as they wanted it to appear.

Hunter probably would have thought it an amusing venture.

HST and the whole gonzo thing inspired me not to take vast quantities of drugs, but simply to refuse to accept the standard interpretation, to take some ground and stick with it. He was never afraid of fucking with people that shouldn't be fucked with, he was the friend and the connection between strange and crazy groups of people, he was a man who looked sideways at the spectacle and always took note of the degenerates and swine who run the spotlights.

This whole development has pitched me right back to some basic questions about myself and my motives... He was born in 1937, he saw a strange and fucked up century, he laughed at it. He stuck it out in spite of all the pomposity and evil our decadent empire could throw at him. He made it far.

NickP (DJiDontEvenGoHere to some) and I have decided to do a two-hour Hunter S Thompson tribute on my radio show this Friday at 2 to 4 PM. It can be heard online via the WMCN website or thru this nice little file here.

Seeing as how I have virtually abandoned the site with little explanation, I don't know who will actually read this, but hey, it's only Tuesday morning now.

First thing to do tomorrow is get some Wild Turkey.

(photo via gonzo.org)

* Fat City, by the way, was his proposed new name for Aspen, Colorado, when he ran for mayor on the Freak Party ticket in 1970.

When hugs become propaganda

I've been way too busy lately, and I feel like I'm barely getting anywhere. Once again I'll warn everyone that I have no time to make regular updates, despite all the hulabaloo in the world i just can't sit around blogging for hours yet. So if it's quiet around here, be patient. Believe me, I am collecting a lot of information these days...

The Mac Weekly website which is my charge looks purty sorry right now, as I haven't put together a complete replacement for the front page. Nonetheless it has been a rather momentous week in the world, so I gotta finally say something. I just cracked open my window to this incongruous heat wave sweeping us all week. It's nice to have fresh air in the house but also disconcerting because in the last century in Minnesota Februaries YOU COULD NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS!!! (is there a plural for February?)

We watched the rebroadcast of the State of the Union late Wednesday, and I flipped away to check if the Daily Show had started just as the famous Hug O Compassion magnetized the whole audience. Aw shucks, it looked like Bush got a tear in his eye. Then he quickly started speaking again, which indicated to me that the whole thing wasn't spontaneous. (or else CNN shortened the moment in the replay edition, I don't know)

These days I always look askance the participants in Iraqi Symbolic Events Recognizing the Innate Righteousness Of Freedom (®©✌), because they often turn out to be tied to the neocons. (the Firdaus Square flag-waving statue topplers and the INC would be the other major example, famously cited in Control Room) Well, some other people started looking around and they found that this woman appeared in, for example, a State Department pseudo-news report — PR releases, really — supporting the drive to war. So check out the Metafilter post and DailyKos diary on this.

It also turns out the State Department was totally complicit in the oil smuggling games that happened under Saddam, thusly undermining the line that Norm Coleman, William Safire and Ahmed Chalabi (truly my favorite people) keep flogging, that the UN was somehow culpable for all the shady dealings, and it never could have happened without Kofi messing around, and etc etc. Now we find that the U.S. condoned this stuff all along, for fairly straightforward reasons, or so they say:

(CNN) -- Documents obtained by CNN reveal the United States knew about, and even condoned, embargo-breaking oil sales by Saddam Hussein's regime, and did so to shore up alliances with Iraq's neighbors. The oil trade with countries such as Turkey and Jordan appears to have been an open secret inside the U.S. government and the United Nations for years.

The unclassified State Department documents sent to congressional committees with oversight of U.S. foreign policy divulge that the United States deemed such sales to be in the "national interest," even though they generated billions of dollars in unmonitored revenue for Saddam's regime.

The trade also generated a needed source of oil and commerce for Iraq's major trading partners, Turkey and Jordan. "It was in the national security interest, because we depended on the stability in Turkey and the stability in Jordan in order to encircle Saddam Hussein," Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, told CNN when asked about the memo documents.

"We had a great amount of cooperation with the Jordanians on the intelligence side, and with the Turks as well, so we were getting value out of the relationship," said Walker, who served in both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
[......]
The justifications came at a time when the United States was a staunch backer of U.N. sanctions on Iraq imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"Despite United Nations Security Council Resolutions," a 1998 memo signed by President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, said, "Jordan continues to import oil from Iraq." But Jordan had a "lack of economically viable alternatives" to Iraqi oil, Talbott's memo said. [....] "Timely, reliable assistance from the United States fosters the political stability and economic well-being critical to Jordan's continuing role as a regional leader for peace," Talbott said. Identical language was used four years later in a 2002 memo by Richard Armitage, undersecretary of state under President George W. Bush.

"Jordan has made clear its choice for peace and normalization with Israel," Armitage said, calling Jordan "an important U.S. friend" and citing its 2001 free trade treaty with the United States. "U.S. assistance provides the Jordanian government needed flexibility to pursue policies that are of critical importance to U.S. national security and to foreign policy objectives in the Middle East," Armitage said.

Economic and military ties to Turkey were cited by Talbott and Armitage in justifying waivers of U.S. penalties to Iraq's northern neighbor. Indeed, their memos advocated hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the U.S. allies.
[......]
"With Jordan and Turkey the circumstances were unique," Ereli said. "We approached them in a way that preserved key alliances and didn't help the regime of Saddam Hussein."

[Current State Dept spokesman Adam Ereli] added that Saddam's smuggling to Syria, which the United States tried to curtail, raised far more concerns because of the possibility of "dual use" goods reaching Iraq.
[....]
Estimates of how much revenue Iraq earned from these tolerated side sales of its oil to Jordan and Turkey, as well as to Syria and Egypt, range from $5.7 billion to $13.6 billion. This illicit revenue far exceeds the estimates of what Saddam pocketed through illegal surcharges on his U.N.-approved oil exports and illegal kickbacks on subsequent Iraqi purchases of food, medicine, and supplies -- $1.7 billion to $4.4 billion -- during the maligned seven-year U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.
[....]
John Ruggie, a former senior adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said U.S. diplomats focused on assuring U.N.-approved shipments to Iraq were free of military components, and the United States felt Jordan and Turkey needed to be compensated for the adverse impact of the sanctions.

Ruggie said, "The secretary of state of the United States said each and every year that those illegal sales were in the national security interest of the United States. So it wasn't just that the U.S. was looking the other way."

Oh yeah, it looks like Dean is going to take over the DNC, then. Well, Establishment, this is what you get for being so stodgy and letting the Republicans take over town. Neener neener... I have very mixed feelings about all of this, but considering where we are now at (the nadir), why the hell not? The New Republic, a periodical I'm often suspicious of, has an interesting look at how, in one writer's view, Dean split the Democratic Party during the primaries, seduced the state party heads and secured the the DNC chairmanship. Very worth reading.

Ordinary folks and county officials in Fargo-Moorhead area, who happen to be on some MeetUp lists, find themselves blacklisted from a Bush appearance. Nice.

I was wondering what the hell Dean's "Democracy for America" organization was really intended for, and right after the race they came right out of the gate, a still-beating structure of true believers. Hey, why not? It should turn out to be entertaining.

Meanwhile the prime minister of Georgia died mysteriously of carbon monoxide. Talk about your classic Caucasus intrigues. Georgia is a place I'm concerned about, because of its position in the oil/ethnic unrest situation around the Caucasus. I got an email from the Stratfor mailing list, with George Friedman on what this might be about:

The former Soviet republic, a key land bridge between the Caspian and Black seas, is an important pawn in the rapidly accelerating Great Game still being waged by Russia and the United States. A Georgia where Russian influence holds sway allows Moscow to project power into the Middle East, whereas a pro-U.S. regime means Tbilisi can cut Russia off from any potential allies to the south. Iran and Turkey also seek to influence opinion in Georgia's power circles.

What, if anything, this political backdrop has to do with the death of Zhvania remains to be seen. Security forces found the prime minister's body in the home of Raul Yusupov, the deputy governor of the Kvemo-Kartli region. Yusupov also died; both men apparently having suffocated on fumes from a small heater that was in use, though foul play has not been ruled out.

In this case, disguising a murder as an accident -- by sabotaging a space heater so that it would emit carbon monoxide, for instance -- would not have been difficult, and sources in Georgia say many actors, from hard-line nationalists to organized crime groups, might have had reason to want Zhvania dead.

The deaths appear to have unsettled Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, a passionate nationalist who has consistently defied and annoyed Moscow since taking office. Saakashvili, who temporarily assumed the prime ministership for himself, relied heavily upon the advice of the more sober-minded and tactical Zhvania. According to a source in the Georgian Interior Ministry, Saakashvili has requested personal protection from the United States in the wake of Zhvania's death -- highlighting concerns that the prime minister's demise could have been more than accidental.

Even if Zhvania's death proves to be nothing more sinister, the consequences could be great. The last powerful Georgian leader to die was Zviad Gamsakhurdia, in 1993. His death left the state in political limbo until Eduard Shevardnadze took power -- and in the process of solidifying control, waged two wars against separatist provinces.

With separatist movements (backed by Russia) still lingering in the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and given the number of other players -- both domestic and foreign -- who take an interest in Georgia, any perception of instability in Tbilisi could be enough to prompt any one of them to make a move.

So hey, that's some interesting stuff.... Back to the mess o' things to do.

A Really Quite Ironic Twist

A Summary: Straight from the Rambling Periphery to the Talkative Core
On Wednesday I quit Computer Zone Consulting and suspended my job at the library because I got a paid internship with an organization putting together a huge directory of the politicians in the state of Minnesota. This has chomped up all my time, and I won't have nearly the time to write on the site for probably about a month. Therefore some of those in Hongistan could perhaps offer a few tidbits to help keep us goin? And is it possible that Dan is working for.... a Republican??!!? More below...

An offer of 'Big Propz':
First of all, megadittoes to Nick for his quite clear and not at all spin-laden look at the social security mess. It does sound like a Ponzi scheme designed to help financial industry insiders shift giant mountains of government cash around to generate the appearance of prosperity, another great step forward in the Faith-Based Economy of the 21st Century.

In the field of major news, things have abruptly changed for me this week. Unexpectedly, last Friday Peter Gartrell got me a job with Politics in Minnesota, an organization which publishes a directory of all the legislators and key officers in the state. My job, which I've chosen to accept, is to go around and interview about a third of the state legislature, so that I can write their updated profiles for this term. It is a very challenging project, and the deadline is rolling around obscenely quickly.

On Wednesday I talked with a bunch of Republican representatives, and I was surprised to find that they were strong supporters of renewable energy, new state rail transit solutions and other kinds of policies that I think are quite important. It's a very new sort of thing for me, to say the least. I have had improbable talks with quite a few Republicans in my day, but I've never had to deal with multiple (R) representatives in a mere afternoon. Here, I'm trying my best to be professional about the whole undertaking, but it helps that I've been sort of indifferent to most of state politics for quite a while. Not reading the Star Tribune daily for a while really tamped it down...

Not a Likely Situation for Dan:
Well, the really ironic twist is that the publisher of this political Directory is one Sarah Janecek, a Republican lobbyist who's widely known and heard from in state media. She has only been around a little bit this week due to a business trip, but she is definitely one of the most interesting and informed people around these parts that I've ever dealt with. She's been telling some folks that Peter and I are her "Macalester liberal interns," which greatly amused some Senate Republicans. However, keep in mind that the whole operation has bi-partisan leadership, as associate publishers Blois Olson and David Erickson are DFLers.

So we've sort of been slotted into this little ideological gap where things look quite different than before. Essentially my role is first to prod the legislators into talking about themselves, their accomplishments in the last term, their policy interests and what they want to look at in this next term. As you might imagine, it is not insanely hard to get them to talk about themselves. Then I've got to write up or adjust the "analysis" section of their profile from last year, and send it in to get edited. I was a little nervous to get started on this, but my schedule has gone mad.

I've got to write stuff that reflects what the legislators want to see in the book, their basic story and situation as they see it, and has some kind of interesting zing to it. This does not require me to have an opinion about whether or not I support their positions. Just roughly 2,500 characters of text that would help illustrate to the interested everyday Joe just who their elected officials really are.

It does require me to get up ridiculously early in the morning. Real early. Ouch. It also eats up most of my time. As luck would have it, Arthur Cheng showed up in town during my first day running around the State Capitol. A shrewd operator in the field of economics is just who I need to help me sort it out at the beginning. So now I'm off to the races.....

Oh by the way, the Supreme Court o' the U.S. itself finally scratched the Hudson casino. Thank God.

Because of all this new internship stuff, I just can't spend much time working on posts here. It's too bad, I was hoping to put out some interesting information and weird links that I've linked to in the HongWiki, but haven't had the time nor inclination to further organize. Go to "Recent Changes" in there, and look at the various date entries like "8 January 2005." I guarantee you will find something interesting, though not necessarily truthful.

A Call to Rambling on the Internet:
So again I want to thank Nick for putting some excellent stuff together, but now I want to ask some other folks if they are interested in writing some guest posts for Shits and Giggles. Namely folks like A. Henry "Big Sky" Tweeten, Dan "what's all this now" Schwartz, Kellen "I live in Kirk 911, isn't that disconcerting in a postmodern apocalypse kind of way" Anfinson and the Gerberuses.

Of course there are a lot of other people who might be reading (or not), but those are just the cats that spring to mind right now. I am hoping we can get a few things going. I'm not even hoping for longer pieces of writing. Just a few paragraphs on the DNC race or what you've been hearing about lately would be extremely welcome.

In a final tidbit, something went a little weird with the date setting on the HongPong.com server over the last week or so. It kept setting back to 1901, although I don't quite know why, and haven't had the time to figure it out. I rebooted the server after a quite good 111 days of uptime, with a load average of 1.84 / 1.28 / 1.17. What does load average mean? Something to do with idle cycles in the user and system space. (the numbers tell how busy the computer was while serving Hongpong.com to the CIA, Pakistani spammers and whatever strange digital alter-egos of sketchy global characters happened to trip into here). Anyhow, with a reboot the date seems to be sticking to correctness.

To introduce some uncertainty, it's time for electoral spoilage!

What does this election prove? What does it suggest we are destined for? What does it signify about the people of this nation?

I don't think the answers are positive ones. I have some lingering questions about the legitimacy of this one, although we are meant to believe that the results were clear and obvious. Yet I must ask, is it possible that they could have made 11,000 votes for Kerry in New Mexico disappear? A hundred thousand in Ohio?

Adding to the uncertainty, journalist Greg Palast, whose book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy summed up all the electoral fraud in Florida last time, now hypothesizes that Kerry actually won, if the exit polls are to be believed:

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later combined with—and therefore contaminated by—the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. [To read about the skewing of exit polls to conform to official results, click here .] Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]

Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.
[.....]
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.

The Impact Of Challenges

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws—almost never used—allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky "provisional" ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio.
[.....]
New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

This rests rather heavily on the idea that the exit polls will be accurate within just a few points. However, it would help explain why the chattering heads on Fox News couldn't stop their disdain for exit polls. Exit polls are in fact the only real way we have to detect electoral fraud, and I'm alarmed at the idea that they would no longer be used. We find widespread discrepancies between the exit polls and election results in Ohio and Florida, and this ought to be explained, yet probably won't be.

Dan Schwartz wrote the following email that rounds up the various rumors and incongruities.

The Democrats have already conceded the presidential election, magnanimously declaring that victory is impossible and that we should therefore spare the nation the excruciating pain of a full vote count. The major media agrees. Pre-election voter disenfranchisement, though widely reported and thoroughly documented (see http://vote2004.eriposte.com/ for this), has completely dropped out of the spotlight; the possibility of an imperfect election seems to be headed the same way.

There is a growing pile of evidence, though, that clearly points to the possibility of outright fraud on election day. The AP and AFP (Agence France-Presse) are both carrying stories now that detail instances where 'software glitches' resulted in Bush winning more votes in a county than are possible- more than the total number of registered voters. These stories come from Ohio and Florida, obviously the 2 most crucial and contentious states in the entire election.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/05/politics1149EST0515.DTL

http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=18297&Section=Local

This graph shows wild discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote tallies, suggesting the possibility of fraud. The servile mass media relies on these same polls to make their coverage bearable on election night, so you'd better believe they work hard to make sure they're reliable.

Check it out: http://img103.exs.cx/img103/4526/exit_poll.gif

Other counties have made projections based on voter registrations, then found that the election result was massively different. Take Baker County, FL as an example:

Registered Voters
REP: 24.3% DEM: 69.3%

Actual Votes
REP: 7,738 DEM: 2,180

Change from Expected Results REP: 220.4% DEM: -68.4%
(data from http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000893.htm)

Here's a story from Warren County, Ohio: "Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns."

The Miami Herald has reported an instance where officials in Broward County were forced to change a previously announced result on a gambling referendum after discovering a 'computer glitch' that caused the vote tabulation system to begin counting BACKWARDS after hitting a ceiling (chosen by the software programmer) of 32,000 votes. the machine did this for every vote it counted for every race. officials there have apparantly known about the 'bug' for 2 years now but never had it fixed. "Florida's election chief, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, downplayed the significance of a miscount she blamed on 'inadvertent human error' in the Broward elections office. Hood stressed that double-checking procedures had caught what she described as an isolated error. Hood maintained that the incident shows the system worked. 'It's not a problem. . . . They made the correction.'"

Even if you don't think this is conclusive proof of fraud, it is certainly enough to justify demanding a recount. Remember, Kerry's concession is not legally binding in any way. It was a political decision, taken to save face and preserve everyone's perceptions that the system is not corrupt. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CALL YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE, CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW, AND FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU HAVE EVER MET.

dan [Schwartz]

So then, do I conclude that the Republicans stole their second presidential election in four years? That's a tall order to fill, and I don't really believe it that much. However, I will say that our election system does not work perfectly, and provides plenty of opportunities for electoral fraud all around.

I even talked with someone (though I forget who, Your Honor) who planned to vote in both a swing state and Minnesota. I also heard about some foreigner getting into the polls here. This stuff happens, and we cannot ignore that. The question is whether the people on top are gaming the system as much as the random folks I've run across.

Campaign 2004 might be over, thank God, but it was not clean nor honest.

The great Lego church of Christ

AUGH, no one's around here, it's boring as hell. Sucks!!!!

Nonetheless, everyone needs to see the almighty Lego-based Abston Church of Christ. (via metafilter)

WITNESS the LEGO Faithful. PAAARAISE JESUSAH!

Cleanup Sunday

I saw Eyedea & Abilities with Dan Schned and Jitla last night. That was an excellent show, and it let out just as the T-Wolves beat the Lakers. We went storming around the packed downtown bars, and it was really one hell of a time.

Today, inside during this endless rain, I am bringing together the elements of the new server "tarfin", poking around, adding mod_perl to Apache2 (a slightly tricky proposition) and helping move some furniture around for people, and cleaning the room a little bit.

Oddly enough in the last 3 days two people have each given me CRT monitors—three, if you include the one that Eric let me use with the Compaq—and now I am in a world of Cathode Ray riches.

Then again, we should take a reality check here and look at a recent piece in the Times:

Studies show that gregarious, well-connected people actually lost friends, and experienced symptoms of loneliness and depression, after joining discussion groups and other activities. People who communicated with disembodied strangers online found the experience empty and emotionally frustrating but were nonetheless seduced by the novelty of the new medium. As Prof. Robert Kraut, a Carnegie Mellon researcher, told me recently, such people allowed low-quality relationships developed in virtual reality to replace higher-quality relationships in the real world.
........
Marcus is a child of the Net, where everyone has a pseudonym, telling a story makes it true, and adolescents create older, cooler, more socially powerful selves any time they wish. The ability to slip easily into a new, false self is tailor-made for emotionally fragile adolescents, who can consider a bout of acne or a few excess pounds an unbearable tragedy.

But teenagers who spend much of their lives hunched over computer screens miss the socializing, the real-world experience that would allow them to leave adolescence behind and grow into adulthood. These vital experiences, like much else, are simply not available in a virtual form.

Wisconsin's senator Russ Feingold has put together an advertising campaign on the blogs. My dad recently sent me a Feingold 2004 bumper sticker, which has a certain geographic symmetry across the car bumper from my Wellstone! sticker.

For those of you deeply saddened by the lack of news tidbits, well, I have been keeping looser tabs on the news than usual, but I have been saving a lot of news bookmarks, and you can expect that things will be parsed again more closely this coming week.

Who'll stop the rain?

Unexpectedly I went to the Timberwolves playoff game on Friday. It was fun as hell. They were winning in much of the first half, but it is hard as hell to get rebounds with Shaq around the basket.

I've been lying low this week, trying not to get too psyched out about the news of new photographs, war around the holy Shiite shrines, the wretched border cases in Rafah and along the Syrian border. What does it mean if Chalabi's intelligence was mainly a front for Iranian schemers?

Was the Pentagon that foolish? The answer seems to be that some agencies, such as the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, knew that the guy who talked about mobile bio-weapons labs was a liar, but somehow that sanity check got blocked by someone else in the Pentagon. The State Department and CIA certainly were never big into the Chalabi fantasy.

Chalabi's people were the ones who provided the lurid wallpaper of fear that surrounded us in the leadup to war. The hawks bought the silly garbage because they needed it to justify the unreal, hellish nightmare that has unfolded. They needed the false intelligence to fabricate fear in the public mind.

---

I have been taking a lot of walks, exercising, and I went to see Troy next door. That inspired me to play Civilization III like mad, a retreat that I felt I deserved for a few days while these storms blow over. Also I have started doing some part time website work this past week, but that is not really quite enough labor to keep me going this summer.

Finally, David's artwork for our wall came in. It is about damn time and maybe I will put up a couple photos of the drawings, which are made of chalk, ink, colored pens and pencils, all around some good stuff.

I will try to put together some of the new information, but my God it is hard to figure out which way things are spinning right now. One of the key questions is how fanatics like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson view this stuff. I found an interesting story in the Village Voice about 'theocratic' advice in Washington....

Also I haven't forgotten to explain the story of the lawn chair from hell, as an example of weird patterns, rather than a conspiracy. More later, ever later...... The story continues, whether I like it or not. I will have to go back into trying to deal with it, before it deals with me.

Syria in the crosshairs

It's getting Syrious...

There were reports today that some force attacked some installations in Syria, although what exactly happened isn't clear. The BBC has a number of comments published from people who witnessed what happened, but whether this signals greater instability in the last Baathist republic or merely another incident is very unknown. Al Jazeera claims that "foreign special forces" implied to be the Americans did this operation and fled into the city. I really don't know what to make of that:

It is widely known coalition special forces based out of Iraq are in operation inside the Syrian side of the Iraqi boarder to stem the flow of foreign fighters. This incident is the first which has targeted the capital Damascus.

Maybe...

(my following speculation was posted to the Kos this afternoon, now slightly updated and better linked)

Just to run down the menu, since the invasion of Iraq, Israel has bombed an abandoned/dormant Palestinian training camp about 30 miles outside Damascus, towards Lebanon. This location was roughly at the center of the Syrian 'regional presence' if you include the places they occupy in Lebanon. Also at one point in the past year the US army chased a set of retrofitted gas trucks into Syria from Iraq, killing about 20 people and seizing four Syrian border guards, who were later released. (I'm going from memory here, so I might be mistaken) That whole incident turned out to be based on bad intel, but it got the US military raising havoc in the territory, which was, I think we all have to admit, a prime objective of neoconservative strategy.

The thing about Syria that everyone forgets is that their government is fundamentally opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda type political forces, and they've been in conflict for decades. Syria also provided a great deal of al Qaeda intelligence to the CIA after 9/11 as Seymour Hersh reported. But that didn't save them from losing the oil that Saddam was surrepiticiously pumping to them after the war.

Syria is probably one of the most badly calcified and repressive states in the world, but at the same time it is against Al Qaeda. And after all, until four years ago Israel was occupying south Lebanon, as well as the annexed Golan Heights. All this military activity forced Syria to remain a state mobilized for war, vesting more power in the dictatorship and less in civil society.

I don't really think this is the popular revolution at the gates like everyone's speculating... However how the hell can we even decode what's happening in a secretive place like Damascus when Hezbollah and Hamas are chillin there?

Yes, the Israelis would like to see it destabilized. I don't really think that Mossad did it, but maybe they helped some crazy Arabs get bombs and such. They are that impulsive these days, but there are plenty of other parties.

On the other hand, the only other big news from Syria lately is that some Kurds fought with the government in the wild eastern section of the country after a soccer game. It would not be surprising at all if the Kurdish militants are taking advantage of their greater freedom and Iraqi basing to go after the Syrian Baathists. After all, the remote sections of Syria are as much part of their heritage as Damascus'. (and for that matter, the free-for-all in Iraq provides a great deal of terrorist-haven space to attack the Saudis and Jordanians from, as well, which is a prime reason that Iran is generally interested in peacefully stabilizing Iraq)

There's the whole issue of Syria letting foreign (read Arab) fighters come across the border to fight the United States since before the war. I would be interested in someone explaining to me why it was morally wrong for them to leave the border open. There are a lot of cross-border Sunni tribal connections, and I would suspect that much of the resistance in al-Anbar province is supported by Arabs with Syrian family ties, perhaps especially Sunnis who got completely screwed when Bremer dissolved the Iraqi military.

Also it is worth noting that Pentagon Office of Special Plans schemer David Wurmser wrote a funny and wildly inaccurate report alongside the famous Clean Break document called "Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli balance of power strategy for the Levant" which makes all these weird claims about Syria evaporating in the desert. ('Western and Israeli balance of power' couldn't possibly mean Israeli-American hegemony, could it??! How silly!)

In the Clean Break, Perle, Feith, Wurmser declared that 'rolling back' Syria was a principal objective of Israeli policy that could be accomplished by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Is this chaos part of that scheme, or merely the waves of wreckage stemming from their incredibly poor and Sunni-hostile postwar management?

This is not a situation with a great deal of 'moral clarity,' let me put it that way.

Cursed weather jams 60 Minutes

The first serious thunderstorm of the season came over and WCCO switched to covering it during all these climactic moments in Bob Woodward's segment.

"And Cheney says to the Saudi Ambassador... Paul Douglas here--hailstorms and high winds in Sleepy Eye!!.... then the CIA director ran out of the room!"

Mike Wallace: "You don't say!"

It was disappointing. However most of the gritty details leaked out during the day and have been rounded up on the Internet.

We always knew the Saudis were venal Bush family supporters, but they actually promised to manipulate oil prices leading up to the election?! Damn!

Fun stuff will go down tomorrow, then.

Neo-cons blaming Iran, incited the mess??

For the moment, Juan Cole is suggesting that the Neocons pounced on al-Sadr when he announced his support for Hamas, and if the leader of the Shiite Marsh Arabs, who has suspended his role in the Governing Council, turns against the U.S., it could be a whole new ballgame. Neocon schemeries? Never!:

Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, legendary leader of the Iraqi Hizbullah, which organized the Shiite Marsh Arabs to fight Saddam, has suspended his membership in the Interim Governing Council (IGC) in order to protest American actions in attacking the Sadrist movement. Al-Muhammadawi met Friday with Muqtada al-Sadr, whom the Americans say they will arrest (according to AP). Were Muhammadawi and the Marsh Arabs to turn against the Americans, they would be formidable foes.

Although Neoconservative circles in the US continued to attempt to blame Iran for the Shiite insurgency, it is obvious that it is homegrown and that it was deliberately provoked by the Americans, perhaps by the Neocons themselves. With their typical arrogance, they vastly underestimated the support for Muqtada in the country, and underestimated the degree to which even Iraqis who do not like him would violently resist the US moving against him. The Neoconservatives, egged on by Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, want to widen the war to Iran so as to overthrow the government in Tehran, and apparently don't give a rat's ass about the American lives that would be lost attempting to occupy Iran, a country 3 times larger than Iraq.
....
American troops, which had faced heavy fighting and harassment in the Shiite slums of East Baghdad or Sadr City, gave up and withdrew from the civilian areas on Friday, according to wire service reports and the Arabic press. The US does retain control of the police stations in East Baghdad, but these are apparently isolated garrisons and the writ of US rule runs no farther than the fences around them.

later he suggests that the killing of Yassin and this turn in the situation are deeply connected, and I tend to agree:

This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. Since its main rationale was to provide more legitimacy to the US enterprise in Iraq, and since any legitimacy the US had is fading fast, and since a government appointed by Bremer will be hated by virtue of that very appointment, the Bush administration may as well just not bother.
.....
Part of what caused this incipient collapse of the US-appointed Iraqi government is that the US military decided to besiege the entire city of Fallujah to get at insurgents who killed 4 US Blackwater mercenaries last week, even though reports indicated that the guerrillas left the city after the killings. Those guerrillas, supported by civilian demonstrations and desecration of the mercenaries' bodies, announced that they were taking revenge for the Israeli murder of Hamas clerical leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Just as the Israelis and their American amen corner helped drag the US into the Iraq war, so they also have inflamed Iraqi sentiment against the US by spectacular uses of state terror against Palestinians. Both the Sunni and the Shiite uprisings in Iraq in the past week in a very real sense were set off by Sharon's whacking of Yassin, a paraplegic who could easily have been arrested. (Only once Muqtada al-Sadr announced his support for Hamas was he targeted by the Neocon-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority for arrest, convincing him that he had nothing to lose and had better launch an insurgency).

TioDan operations commence

In the nick of time TioDan, i.e. the kosher slingin' guerilla Dan Schwartz, has started a El Blog de Tio at Blogspot, http://tiodan.blogspot.com . It is nice to see more friends undertaking such projects. He is also most interested in those dang mercenaries!

What is the key to successful blogging? That is a good question that I don't think about too much... The standard policy seems to be 'winging it.'

Rapid Descent

On Iraq: this just rolled into my mailbox, a piece on TomPaine telling us that Chaos is the Reason All Along. Yop.

This report from Reason is pretty sharp. Also the Pandora Project is monitoring the disturbing health effects, including mutations, of depleted uranium. "Wildfire" has some further links, including a diary from an earlier trip.

Naomi Klein is apparently on the ground in Iraq now, reporting on the uprising situation.

The mentally dubious Joseph Farah explains that since al-Sadr is a Shiite with Iranian support, the US must be at war with Iran. Of course! (Never trust WorldNetDaily)

All I can tell you is we are now fighting a regional war. Our local opposition in Iraq is being trained, armed and directed with foreign support – by neighboring Iran.

The uprising yesterday was treated in many initial news accounts as a spontaneous uprising directed by Najaf cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

What the other news accounts left out was one significant, but well-established fact: Al-Sadr works for Iran. He is an Iranian agent. His authority comes from Iran.

idiot at the New York Post, what else is new?

Make no mistake: Just because we view restraint as a virtue does not mean our enemies share that view. The refusal to use our power in the face of defiance only makes defiance more attractive.

When U.S. forces arrive in a troubled country, they create an initial window of fear. It's essential to act decisively while the local population is still disoriented. Each day of delay makes our power seem more hollow. You have to do the dirty work at the start. The price for postponing it comes due with compound interest.
.......
We broke a basic rule: Never show fear. No matter how we may rationalize our inaction, that is what we did.

Instead of demonstrating our strength and resolve, we have encouraged more attacks and further brutality - while global journalists revel in Mogadishu-lite.

Of course, we're not going to flee Iraq as President Bill Clinton ran from Somalia. But our hesitation to respond to atrocities against Americans has renewed our enemies' hope that, if only they kill enough of us, as graphically as possible, they still can triumph over a "godless" superpower.

To possess the strength to do what is necessary, but to refuse to do it, is appeasement. Since Baghdad fell, our occupation has sought to appease our enemies - while slighting our Kurdish allies. Our attempts to find a compromise with a single man - the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - have empowered him immensely, while encouraging intransigence in others.

Weakness, not strength, emboldens opponents - and creates added terrorist recruits.

We came to Iraq faced with the problems Saddam created. Increasingly, we face problems we ourselves created or compounded.

If the administration lacks the guts to do what must be done, free Iraq will face a dismal future. As vicious as they are, our enemies have the courage of their convictions.

Do we?

What the hell does that mean, anyway? Evil Blonde Woman of Wrath says

I suppose it would be considered lacking in nuance to nuke the Sunni Triangle.

But so goes the unanimous vote around my household - and I'm betting millions of others - in the aftermath of what forevermore will be remembered simply as "Fallujah."

Wouldn't it be lovely were justice so available and so simple? If we were but creatures like those zoo animals we witnessed gleefully jumping up and down after stomping, dragging, dismembering and hanging the charred remains of American civilians whose only crime was to try to help them.

Another blogger is attacked by rightwingers from LittleGreenFootballs.

It appears that more mercenaries from Blackwater Security Consulting have saved the day and protected the CPA's office in Najf from being overrun like the rest of the city, after a Blackwater helicopter dropped them ammo and took away a wounded Marine. Interesting... And they say we can't tell civilians and militants apart. (links via Agonist)

Juan Cole suggests that the whole storm is really due to a fractured White House. I would tend to agree, after seeing Biden complaining about the situation to Jim Lehrer:

As I read him Biden is passing on what he has heard, that the reason for this gridlock is an internal power struggle within the Bush administration, which has paralyzed decision-making.

If so, it may be that certain forces within the administration took advantage of the lack of a clear reporting line to launch the assault on Muqtada al-Sadr, hoping to effect a fait accompli and forestalling any later State Department attempt to treat with him. If this interpretation is correct, the retreating Department of Defense may sow a lot of land mines for hapless State before June 30.

Biden and Lugar also made it clear that they are not being consulted by the White House on Iraq, and, indeed, it has been a year since they could even get an appointment to see Bush about it. Imagine how locked out the American public is!

The late breaking news is that 12 Marines have been killed in Ramadi. Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility for some attacks, though not from the last few days.

Hans Blix says that the war is worse than Saddam. Oh, what a naughty inspector.

The BBC reports on the nature of this spectacular and decidedly well-armed Mehdi Army. Evening Standard characterizes rising anarchy.

Wow, a lot to follow. Attacks coming all over now: can the U.S. keep it together this week? My imagination struggles with what's going on....

Blame the complex

There's been a lot of things on the news today. Why did the CPA suddenly choose to shut down Sadr's newspaper? Perhaps it had something to do with this AP report that Sadr was declaring allegiance with Hamas and Hezbollah last Friday. Did this provide an opportunity for the Middle Eastern altruists in the Pentagon to, say, merge the threats between Israel and the U.S.? That's wild speculation!! Can't be true!

Prof. Juan Cole continues to describe things with the most clarity. He actually sounds almost as paranoid as I do sometimes:

The civilians in the Department of Defense only know how to blow things up. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith staffed the CPA with Neoconservatives, most of whom had no administrative experience, no Arabic, and no respect for Muslim culture (or knowledge about it). They actively excluded State Department Iraq hands like Tom Warrick. (Only recently have a few experienced State Department Arabists been allowed in to try to begin mopping up the mess.) The Neocons in the CPA have all sorts of ulterior motives and social experiments they want to impose on the Iraqi people, including Polish-style economic shock therapy, some sort of sweetheart deal for Israel, and maybe even breaking the country up into three parts.

He informed me of people called "Palestinian-Salvadorans," quite a shock. Polls:

An opinion poll taken in late February showed that 10 % of Iraq's Shiites say attacks on US troops are "acceptable." But 30% of Sunni Arabs say such attacks are acceptable, and fully 70% of Anbar province approves of attacking Americans. (Anbar is where Ramadi, Fallujah, Hadithah and Habbaniyah are, with a population of 1.25 million or 5% of Iraq--those who approve of attacks are 875,000).

But simple statistics don't tell the story. If there are 25 million Iraqis and Shiites comprise 65%, that is about 16 million persons. Ten percent of them is 1.6 million, which is a lot of people who hate Americans enough to approve of attacks on them. If Sunni Arabs comprise about 16% of the population, there are 4 million of them. If 30% approve of attacks, that is 1.2 million. That is, the poll actually shows that in absolute numbers, there are more Shiites who approve of attacks on Americans than there are Sunni Arabs. The numbers bring into question the official line that there are no problems in the South, only in the Sunni Arab heartland.

Sadr's volatile movement has seized control of the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali, one of Shiism's holiest sites. (All we need now is a(nother) Temple Mount incident)

Will the US attack the Kurds? What? This latent Kurdish nationalism seems to be emerging. It is, as they say, troublesome.

As well as an interesting report about crime and disorder thriving in Baghdad, Al Jazeera has some late breaking news, in their own unique style, from Falluja. (this city has somewhere called the "Golan District?!" Hell) Also there is a lack of food.

"We also visited the Golan district where clashes took place earlier today between fighters from Falluja and US forces," Ali said. "We saw signs of fierce confrontation. US forces have bombed the district. We saw several destroyed houses.

"Golan inhabitants say US forces used cluster bombs and missiles against them," he said. "Citizens of the city are completely enraged - but not afraid - waiting for the coming events," the correspondent said.  
.....
The leaflets outlaw demonstrations and the possession of firearms and impose a 7pm to 6am daily curfew. Residents are advised that in the event of a raid by US forces, all family members should gather in a single room in the house. "This indicates that door-to-door operations will be launched by US forces," the correspondent said.

Aljazeera has also received a statement issued by a group in al-Anbar province calling itself the Jihad Brigades, urging followers of the Shia leader al-Sadr to continue resisting.
"Even Falluja's main hospital is inaccessible because it is located out of the city across the Euphrates river, and the bridge is closed. Today I saw an ambulance driver negotiating with US soldiers to let him cross the bridge. They let him through after a long and tiresome argument."

"Shops are closed and life in the town is paralysed. I am standing among dozens of angry Falluja people. They say they are not afraid of the US forces, they are ready to fight. The crowd was chanting 'There is no God but Allah'."

The President teaches us all something about how causality works in the war on terror. It's not about culture, or politics, or building a society, or even having a plan. Reality flows from deadlines. (thanks to Josh Marshall for posting transcripts: only they can reveal the disturbing logic)

THE PREZ: No, the intention is to make sure the deadline remains the same. I believe we can transfer authority by June 30th. We're working toward that day. We're, obviously, constantly in touch with Jerry Bremer on the transfer of sovereignty. The United Nations is over there now. The United Nations representative is there now to work on the -- on a -- on to whom we transfer sovereignty. I mean, in other words, it's one thing to decide to transfer. We're now in the process of deciding what the entity will look like to whom we will transfer sovereignty. But, no, the date remains firm.

Along with an old link to Rice's naïve neocon assistant Steven Hadley's proclaimed post-war plan, today Marshall also gives us some excerpts of the uber-insider Nelson Report:

Gloom...has been building over Iraq. Increasingly, the Wise Heads are forecasting disaster. Wise Heads say they see no realistic plan, hear no serious concept to get ahead of the situation. Money, training, jobs...all lagging, all reinforce downward spiral highlighted by sickening violence. There seems to be no real "if", just when, and how badly it will hurt U.S. interests. Define "disaster"? Consensus prediction: if Bush insists on June 30/July 1 turnover, a rapid descent into civil war. May happen anyway, if the young al-Sadr faction really breaks off from its parents. CSIS Anthony Cordesman's latest blast at Administration ineptitude says in public what Senior Observers say in private...the situation may still be salvaged, but then you have to factor in Sharon's increasing desperation, and the regional impact.

WaPo says it "Marks a New Front in War." Also "Spread of Bin Laden Ideology Cited." Al Qaeda == "The Base," don't we get it yet?

I liked the NY Times story about the life of the mercenary. Google News searches for mercenaries are fruitful right now.

Here's a fun article about how religious people are turning away from the Enlightenment from the Secular Humanists.

Guardian writer grumbles about America's emerging cultural war. Is it really that polarized? I don't know if I buy it.

More paranoid things about the energy markets. I'm certainly not buying all of this one.

A few bits about Israel: Increasing anti-Semitism really concerns me, as it will likely cause the social fabric in a lot of already marginal places to fray, as well as scare the hell out of many people. Haaretz investigates something well worth reflecting on. Sharon says his hands are clean of bribes, yet no matter how much he washes, the spots, damn spots, won't come out, he says. " Less than a man of his word, Sharon's Passover Legends." Not surprisingly the Palestinian peace movement is having trouble getting traction right now. Why aren't settlers protesting more?

Christian Science Monitor says that Iraqis and Palestinians see their sufferings as a form of globalization (via Prof. Cole):

The focus on Jews and Israel reflects a wider belief among Arab Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite alike, that the US and Israeli occupations are twin Golems of a globalization that they can not resist or control, one that is causing the disintegration of the very fabric of their cultures and economies even as it offers prosperity and freedom to a fortunate few.

It may be hard for Americans to understand the occupation of Iraq in the context of globalization. But Iraq today is clearly the epicenter of that trend. Here, military force was used to seize control of the world's most important commodity - oil. And corporations allied with the occupying power literally scrounge the country for profits, privatizing everything from health care to prisons, while Iraqi engineers, contractors, doctors, and educators are shunted aside.

Like economic globalization in so many other countries of the developing world, this model in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. My visits to hospitals, schools, think tanks, political party headquarters, art galleries, and refugee camps reveal conditions clearly as bad, and often worse, than on the eve of the US invasion.
....
Iraq is sliding toward chaos; a state that many Iraqis increasingly believe is exactly where the US wants them to be. A prominent Iraqi psychiatrist who has worked with the CPA and the US military explained to me that "there is no way the United States can be this incompetent. The chaos here has to be at least partly deliberate." The main question on most people's minds is not if his assertion is true, but why?

For example, many here see last week's carnage of Americans in Fallujah as suspicious. To send foreign contractors into Fallujah in late-model SUVs with armed escorts - down a traffic-clogged street on which they'd be literal sitting ducks - can be interpreted as a deliberate US instigation of violence to be used as a pretext for "punishment" by the US military.

I like last December's special Washington Monthly report on the glorious synchronicity between powerful Republican families in the U.S. and those who are somehow plucked to serve in Iraq.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Wandering around I found a piece by Manuel Valenzuela on a rather far-left site, featuring things by the "Worker's World" and others... (they are reprinting the as-yet-unconfirmed Zelikow-Israel thing, again via Cole) More than a little bloated with cliches but interesting nonetheless: "The War of Error:"

It is in the MIC’s interest to prolong this most ambiguous and marketable war for as long as possible. When the citizenry has been successfully turned to submissive sheep, ignorant as to its role as a massive pawn, primordial emotions dictating logic and common sense, the MIC is assured of ever-increasing power, control and wealth.  From cradle to the grave, we are but slaves to the military-industrial complex, nothing more than puppets whose strings are attached to the massive claws of the omnipotent masters tearing us to shreds as they amuse themselves with the games of disquieting existence and rapacious divisiveness  they thrust upon our oblivious selves. 

Greed-mongers, fear-mongers, warmongers and profiteers, the Bush administration, the Corporate Leviathan and the MIC together are annihilating our future.  When greed intermingles with the almighty dollar, profit is placed above people, we become statistics in cost-benefit analysis, we are shamelessly exploited and we all become open wounds waiting to become collateral damage.

The storm at hand

I have been sitting around all day reading an excellent tome about Afghanistan for my Geography class, but as I made a quick trip over to Minneapolis I heard a disturbing report that five American soldiers had been killed in a confrontation with Shiite protesters in Baghdad. There have been a lot of reports of increasing protests after the U.S. shut down militant Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper, Hawza. Now his segment of Shiites have apparently tried to take over all the police stations in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, named for his father.

The U.S. lost seven soldiers and around 20 were wounded. There were also massive protests in the Shiite spiritual center of Najaf, where some of the international forces lost some soldiers and apparently killed around 20 protesters.

I was under the general impression that Sadr's horrid wrathfulness had been co-opted into the more mellow Sistani movement as the date of a national Shiite leadership draws nearer, while Sunnis were more likely to commit violence. Seems I overestimated how stable the Shiites really were. (is that really a surprise?)

Some well-rounded commentary, as always, can be found with Professor Cole.

Perhaps a third of Iraqi Shiites are sympathetic to the radical, Khomeini-like ideology of Sadrism, and some analysts with long experience in Iraq put it at 50%. Earlier Muqtada Al-Sadr, the movement leader, had called on his forces to avoid violence against Coalition forces. As of Sunday, he has decided that the Coalition means permanently to exclude his group from power, and has decided to launch an uprising. This uprising involves taking over police stations in Kufa, Najaf, Baghdad and possibly elsehwere. The Sadrist militia now controls Kufa, according to the New York Times, and probably controls much of Sadr City or the slums of East Baghdad, as well,
.......
...the violent clashes in Najaf, Baghdad, Amara and Nasiriyah may signal the beginning of a second phase, in which the US faces a two-front war, against both Sunni radicals in the center-north and Shiite militias in the South. The clashes come at a pivotal moment, since on Friday April 9, the Shiite festival of Araba'in will take place, coinciding this year with the anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.
.....
The outbreak of Shiite/Coalition violence is a dramatic challenge to US military control of Iraq. The US is cycling out its forces in the country, bringing in a lot of reserve and national guards units, but will go from 130,000 to only 110,000 troops. It is too small a number to really provide security in Iraq, but the country has not fallen into chaos in part because the main attacks have come in the Sunni heartland and because the Coalition has depended on Shiite militias to police many southern cities. If the Shiites actively turn against the US, the whole military and security situation could become untenable.

This Friday will hold some interesting events, then.

UPI reports that "Protestor deaths leave Iraq in chaos."

A demonstration in the southern city of Najaf turned deadly as Salvadoran soldiers -- under Spanish command -- exchanged fire with supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the city of Najaf. Reports from the scene indicate that at least 19 protesters and 4 coalition troops were killed.

The violent clash has left much of the Shiite sections of Iraq in near chaos. This represents the most serious clashes between coalition forces and the Shiite population....

After the estimated 5,000 demonstrators traded gunfire with the troops in Najaf, crowds turned out in Baghdad, Kerbala, and Sadr's home village of Kufa to "declare war on the American occupation," said one supporter.

The vast Shiite slum of Sadr City -- named for Moqtada's cleric father who was killed by the Baath regime in 1999 -- went into near chaos Sunday afternoon after the news of the fighting in Najaf.

After a demonstration by hundred of people protesting Yacoubi's arrest demonstrated in a Baghdad square -- where sporadic gunfire was heard but casualties witnessed by UPI -- the members of Sadr's banned militia, the Mehdi Army, were seen arming themselves and preparing for combat outside Sadr's offices in Sadr City.

Trucks and minibuses with license tags from all over the predominantly Shiite south of Iraq were seen streaming in to Sadr City and unloading waves of young men in the black t-shirts of the Mehdi Army, which has previously never openly displayed weapons banned by the occupation forces.

In front of Sadr's headquarters, they were seen arming themselves with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers and organizing in military formations before deploying throughout the neighborhood in cars and pickup trucks.

The men were also seen forming roadblocks to prevent entry into the neighborhood, which has upwards of 3 million people living in one of the most densely populated urban settings east of the Gaza Strip.

As night fell, U.S. military vehicles, tanks and troops could be seen setting up roadblocks around the neighborhood themselves and reports of widespread fighting in the area have been reported by sources in the neighborhood.

One resident told UPI by phone that Sadr's militia had seized all five of Sadr City's police stations are were declaring their own form of martial law. There are also reports that U.S. infantry backed by helicopters and tanks have entered the neighborhood to reclaim the police facilities from the militia.

New York Times reports "Violent Disturbances Rack Iraq From Baghdad to Southern Cities."

Iraq was racked today by its most violent civil disturbances since the occupation started, with a coordinated Shiite uprising spreading across the country, from the slums of Baghdad to several cities in the south. An American soldier and a Salvadoran soldier were killed in the unrest, news agencies reported.

By day's end, witnesses said Shiite militiamen controlled the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad, with armed men loyal to a radical cleric occupying the town's police stations and checkpoints.
......
At nightfall today, the Sadr City neighborhood shook with explosions and tank and machine gun fire. Black smoke choked the sky. The streets were lined with armed militiamen, dressed in all black. American tanks surrounded the area. Attack helicopters thundered overhead.

"The occupation is over!" people on the streets yelled. "We are now controlled by Sadr. The Americans should stay out."

Witnesses said Mr. Sadr's militiamen had tried to take over three police stations in Sadr City, a poor, mostly Shiite neighborhood of northern Baghdad named after Mr. Sadr's father.

Franco Pagetti, an Italian photographer, said he was caught in the crossfire and witnessed several American tanks firing into the ground.

"The tanks were shooting into the pavement, not at the height of the people," Mr. Pagetti said. "It looked like they were trying to clear the streets." Mr. Pagetti also said he had watched a group of militiamen launch three rocket propelled grenades at American Humvees but the militiamen had missed each time. "The situation is getting worse," Mr. Pagetti said. "I saw injured people getting put in cars. The people said they had been wounded by American helicopters."

As the fighting raged, Mr. Sadr called on his followers to "terrorize" the enemy as demonstrations were no longer any use. Last week, his weekly newspaper, Hawza, was shut down by American authorities after it had been accused of inciting violence. The closure began a week of protests that grew bigger and more unruly at each turn.

"There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises peoples," Mr. Sadr said in a statement distributed by his office in Kufa today.

"I ask you not to resort to demonstrations because they have become a losing card and we should seek other ways," he told his followers. "Terrorize your enemy, as we cannot remain silent over its violations."

A report in the UK's Scotsman says

British troops today clashed with demonstrators in the Iraqi town of al-Amara during on a day of violent protests across the country. The Ministry of Defence said that the soldiers returned fire after coming under attack from a “criminal element” in the crowd armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

No British troops were injured in the incident although a MoD spokeswoman said that there were a number of Iraqi casualties. It was not immediately known if any of the Iraqis were killed.

Josh Marshall has some keen observations:

The news from Iraq today of scattered clashes between US/Coalition forces and armed crowds and Shia paramilitaries is the worst news to come out of Iraq for months.
......
The reality is that the US doesn't have anywhere enough soldiers in the country to control the place if there's this sort of widespread violence on an on-going basis. That could quickly lead to a vicious cycle which will put a virtual end to reconstruction and prevent the coming into being of any entity for us to hand the place off to. In Jefferson's ugly phrase, we may end up holding the wolf by the ears.

More weapons for mercenaries!

Bad Omens in Morocco.

In the euphemistic headline department, WaPo says "Pakistan Struggles to Put Army on Moderate Course."

Isn't it interesting that many of the people in the CPA's press office have ties to the Republican Party? It's almost as if... they are there for partisan sugarcoating. What? Never!

So now I must return to my Afghanistan book, which is going to take all evening to finish. As I read, in my imagination I'll see that today's situation, meanwhile, is sliding ever closer to the precipice.

This evening calls for a lot of Radiohead. Two and two always makes five.

April war news Blitz

I am supposed to write a proposal for my final paper in International Security class tonight. But given what's been happening the last few weeks, what can I address that isn't tearing apart like wet toilet paper? Where can I stand when the sands are shifting so? Is it possible to research and write on security in this snake pit? I'm hoping you guys might have suggestions!

This deserves to go first: a report from Haaretz that America plans to make 'implied' recognition of the illegal Israeli settlements. Holy land, gotta gotta get it!

U.S. assures Israel no retreat to 1967 line
The U.S. will assure Israel that it will not have to withdraw to the Green Line in a future permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

The promise appears in a letter of guarantees drafted by the American administration in exchange for Sharon's disengagement plan.

The U.S. rejected Israel's request to recognize the future annexation of the large settlement blocs in Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Etzion. Instead of referring explicitly to the settlements, the Americans propose a vaguely worded letter, which Israel would be able to present as implied recognition of the settlement blocs.

Below is my round-up on the Iraq and the Fallujah-mercenary issue, Pakistan, military-industrial corruption, the Uzbekistan aftermath, Clarkestorm 2004 and further Israel-Palestine tidbits. (crossposted on DKOS diary)

My special thanks go to those following the best of mainstream and alternative media every day at WarInContext. The Agonist is a news blitz all day long--they are making a full-time go at it. New frontiers of journalism or just obsessed people?

Fallujadishu?

Our hands were numb, recording all this, so swiftly did General Kimmitt take us through the little uptick [in violence].
 
A marine vehicle blown off the road near Fallujah, a marine killed, a second attack with small-arms fire on the same troops, an attack on an Iraqi paramilitary recruiting station on the 14th July Road, a soldier killed near Ramadi, two Britons hurt in Basra violence, a suicide bombing against the home of the Hillah police chief, an Iraqi shot at a checkpoint, US soldiers wounded in Mosul ... All this was just 17 hours before Fallujah civilians dragged the cremated remains of a Westerner through the streets of their city.
.....
But there was an interesting twist - horribly ironic in the face of yesterday's butchery - in General Kimmitt's narrative. Why, I asked him, did he refer sometimes to "terrorists" and at other times to "insurgents"? Surely if you could leap from being a terrorist to being an insurgent, then with the next little hop, skip and jump, you become a "freedom-fighter". Mr Senor gave the general one of his fearful looks. He needn't have bothered. General Kimmitt is a much smoother operator than his civilian counterpart. There were, the general explained, the Fallujah version who were insurgents, and then the al-Qa'ida version who attack mosques, hotels, religious festivals and who were terrorists.
 
So, it seems, there are now in Iraq good terrorists and bad terrorists, there are common-or-garden insurgents and supremely awful terrorists, the kind against which President George Bush took us to war in Iraq when there weren't any terrorists actually here, though there are now. And therein lies the problem. From inside the Green Zone on the banks of the Tigris, you can believe anything. How far can the occupying powers take war-spin before the world stops believing anything they say?

That's Robert Fisk reporting "Things are getting much worse in Iraq" today, a brutally honest British reporter who has given a totally different slant to the war, but then again he said it would be a quagmire from the very beginning. Juan Cole is an expert who just plain gets it:

What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate "freedom." They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the "helpless" and the "humiliated," and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies.

This degree of hatred for the new order among ordinary people is very bad news. It helps explain why so few of the Sunni Arab guerrillas have been caught, since the locals hide and help them. It also seems a little unlikely that further US military action can do anything practical to put down this insurgency; most actions it could take would simply inflame the public against them all the more.

I was disturbed by the 'frenzy of violence' in Iraq, as the Star Tribune headline put it, although perhaps I see the frenzy occurring over a longer timeframe. The images they printed had a distinct Mogadishu overtone, it's hard to deny.
It's raising a lot of questions about American dependence on armed ex-Mil mercenaries. Mother Jones has the background you need and Alternet also has more about Blackwater.
Britain's secret army in Iraq: thousands of armed security men who answer to nobody.
Even Tacitus is upset about US dependence on mercenaries!!! Hooray!
Billmon points out racism past and present in this country, citing this horror as an example. But damn, Billmon, did you have to cite DULUTH MINNESOTA as an example of American mob violence? (its a very apt example, so it makes sad either way, given my Up North heritage)
The company which lost the security personnel is called Blackwater. Many people in the town they're based in are furious with Bush. FortunatelyBLACKWATER IS HIRING!! YES! (and look at that graphic!) I want a glitzy feature STARRING Lead Sniper Steve Babylon and Susan McFarlin. Can you see the dramatic movie potential here? Jerry Bruckheimer would be the man to shoot this one.
Special Forces are quitting the regular armed service to become mercenaries. Hey Rummy, thanks for underpaying the Special Forces so your private friends could grow stronger!
(today's Alternet log on the Fallujah incident)

Military Industrial Corruption: What? Never!

Air Force allowed Boeing to rewrite terms of tanker contract, documents show. What would the Frankfurt School tell us about this?

Campaign 2004

DLC advises soundbites for Kerry. Hurrrah!

Political book reviews

NY Times book Review looks at a book exploring Bush's weird father-son relationship, and guess what, he turns out to be crazy! Father, Son, Freud and Oedipus. Must read!!! Also a piece on Chalmers Johnson and his new book, the Sorrows of Empire. Am I a disquieted American?

Clarkestorm 2004

I like the fact that WaPo's editorialists are finally pouncing over the way Bush is evading Clarke. They are the ones who really bear a lot of responsibility for the whole damn mess. Bush's Secret Storm by By E. J. Dionne (Mar 29). David Sanger in NYT ruminates on how nasty it is for them to flip-flop on Condi's testimony (Mar 31).
Clarke outsourced terror intel collection to someone else when he was in the White House? How interesting!

As recounted by Clarke in his book, and confirmed by documents provided to NEWSWEEK, Emerson and his former associate Rita Katz regularly provided the White House with a stream of information about possible Al Qaeda activity inside the United States that appears to have been largely unknown to the FBI prior to the September 11 terror attacks.

In confidential memos and briefings that were sometimes conducted on a near weekly basis, Emerson and Katz furnished Clarke and his staff with the names of Islamic radical Web sites, the identities of possible terrorist front groups and the phone numbers and addresses of possible terror suspects—data they were unable to get from elsewhere in the government.

More War On Terror

Terrorists Don't Need States by Fareed Zakaria from Newsweek, the April 5 issue.
The Guardian: What exactly does al-Qaeda want?

Uzbekistan: the Tashkent mystery

The Uzbekistan bombings led me to some new Internet sources, but their credibility is unknown. I know that Uzbekistan is a horrible, repressive sort of Soviet holdover state, but killing people won't exactly cure that. Since they attacked the police, rather than civilians, people are seeing this as directed against the state apparatus, but to what end? Some sources:
"Uzbek unrest shows Islamist rise" from Christian Science Monitor today. Too alarmist?

Experts say the bloodshed could signal the resurgence of the regional Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has revitalized itself in the lawless Pakistan-Afghan border area, under the leadership of Tohir Yuldashev. Or it could point to a violent offshoot of the local, moderate Hizb-ut-Tahrir, fed up with years of brutal crackdowns by Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Islamic believers of all types.

This Yuldashev character is being called the new "Al Qaeda leader" of the moment. Is he really internationally evil??
The Argus did a good job following news as it developed. A textbook example of blogging as a new form of reporting breaking news.
Ferghana.Ru is an extremely interesting news site on Central Asia. Check this letter against the Uzbek government.
Older updates on the fighting. (March 30). Many reports turned out not to be true. (March 29)
Rubber Hose. Who is this guy?

What's happening with Pakistan?

They claim Al Qaeda on the run?
Pakistan to play a pivotal role from Today's Asia Times Online. This is probably the best article to read about it today. There is more about Yuldashev here: apparently he is a big star on videos circulating in Pakistan, in which he speaks out against US policies, citing Chechnya and Palestine as examples.

Israel-Palestine:

Palestinian children: Middle East: 'A child who lives in hell will die for a chance of paradise'
Christians Must Challenge American Messianic Nationalism: A Call to the Churches. Must check out what good Christians do!
The DLC weighs in on Anti-Semitism.
Palestine is now part of an arc of Muslim resistance: Across the Middle East, western-backed occupations are fuelling terror.

Well, that's about the most comprehensive war mosaic I can put together today.

So what the hell do I do about my final paper?

Pre-meditated bombardment and Zelikow on Israel: WTF?

I will have some information about the Falluja incident in the next post. In the meantime, a couple stories about pre-destination in foreign policy.

Yes, the no-fly zones captured Georgie's imagination right away. Thanks, CNN:

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Frustrated that Iraqi gunners were shooting at American planes, within weeks of coming into office, President Bush approved war plans for a massive retaliatory attack on Iraq if a U.S. pilot had been shot down.

CNN has learned that the secret plan Operation Desert Badger called for escalating air strikes within four to eight hours of a shootdown. Pentagon sources say a long list of targets across the country would be hit, crippling Iraqi air defenses and command and control. The plan went far beyond the Clinton administration's 1998 Operation Desert Fox, which hit 100 targets in four days.

President Bush revealed Desert Badger's existence in January, responding to criticism he planned to invade Iraq from the beginning.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers, and fly-betweens and looks.

And so we were fashioning policy along those lines.

This next bit of news just about broke my jaw, but I DO NOT have verification of it elsewhere, so please take it with a grain of salt. (It has been linked to from the Christian Science Monitor and mirrored at CommonDreams and InfoClearingHouse, so it might have some degree of credibility.)

This says that the guy chairing the 9/11 commission, Zelikow, said that Israel's security was a prime motive in the decision to invade Iraq. Come again!?!?War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser::

Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.

WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) - IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
.....
Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.

The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.

The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the ”war on terrorism” it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.

Okaaay then. Maybe so.

Season of the Unexplained

I just placed an order for a nice little program called ecto that helps me work on the website far more efficiently than through a browser. It is only $18, and as I rarely buy software unless it's really top notch, this was a considered purchase.

Interesting things, then:
1. The Richard Clarke terrorism fiasco. I am overjoyed that everyone is watching this now, and the Administration is finally getting exposed as the Office From Hell that we sensed it always was. I want to pick up his fine book. Condi Rice has been brutally forced to testify publicly, and Bush and Cheney will appear sparkin' an L--I mean, jointly--before the committee. These are Good Things.

Finally, Sen. Tom Daschle is showing a little guts. Today he really spoke out against their political assassinations:

Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible.

This is wrong-and it's not the first time it's happened.
.....
There are some things that simply ought not be done - even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger.
...
This is not "politics as usual." In nearly all of these cases, it's not Democrats who are being attacked.

Senator McCain and Secretary O'Neill are prominent Republicans, and Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay, Joe Wilson, and Eric Shinseki all worked for Republican Administrations.

The common denominator is that these government officials said things the White House didn't want said.

The response from those around the President was retribution and character assassination -- a 21st Century twist to the strategy of "shooting the messenger."

If it takes intimidation to keep inconvenient facts from the American people, the people around the President don't hesitate. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, found that out. He was told he'd be fired if he told the truth about the cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan.

This is no way to run a government.

The White House and its supporters should not be using the power of government to try to conceal facts from the American people or to reshape history in an effort to portray themselves in the best light.
......
Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay ... when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end?

When will we say enough is enough?

The September 11 families - and our entire country - deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it.

Thank you, sir!!!! I am still alarmed that the (office of the) Presidency's standing is rapidly crumbling, because it will produce weird and unpredictable results in the War on Terror. Hence....

2. The emerging situation in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was a massive bombing at a central market in Tashkent where my Geography professor used to go every day. The Argus is a fine site that's been closely following the Uzbekistan story as it's unfolded. There's a little speculation the whole thing was a "wag the dog" type incident invented by their President, but who knows? By all accounts, he is a wicked, tottering Soviet holdover who has been abusing Muslims left and right. Why wouldn't he generate an excuse to repress further?
3.Wal-Mart offers Nazi propaganda films, but refuses to stock a film critical of the government's role in Iraq. Thanks, Wal-Mart, you sure know how to be morally authoritative! (via the hilarious Jesus General and Atrios) See also Republican Jesus!
4. Obviously things are still going badly for Israel and Palestine. Ariel Sharon may finally have to bow out, and we'll probably be reintroduced to that paragon of integrity, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I suggest the following opinion pieces from Haaretz. They capture the mood that many Israeli s feel:

Haste is not waste: The suspicion that Sharon's actions are linked to the indictment hanging over his head is giving the country nightmares about the free-for-all at the top and the way decisions are made around here. Were the considerations behind the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, with the bloody revenge that is bound to come, cold and disinterested? Or was Sharon trying to hint to the attorney general how absolutely essential his leadership is at this time?

A civilized country cannot be run by a leader living under the dark cloud of criminal allegations like bribery and breach of trust. But in the nightmare existence we live, it is happening. Stalling is no longer an option. If an indictment is brought against him, Sharon will be forced to resign, in keeping with the Deri precedent.

Also the excellent "conspiracy theory" piece:

Why is the country striding along on a march of folly which has seen few precedents in human history? Why is it being swept from one idiotic decision to another? Why does it repeatedly act in explicit contradiction to the interests of its inhabitants? In these past three years in particular, there is no mine that Israel has failed to step on, no opportunity it hasn't missed, no path it hasn't embarked on in the certain knowledge that it will be harmful.
.....
The attempt to explain rationally and conventionally the dynamics at work here has long since failed. So much so, in fact, that the only explanation the political and military analysts on television could come up with this week was: "They're doing XXX and hoping something good will come of it."
....
Maybe there's a mole. Yes, a mole. A kind of planted spy - a destructive worm virus, a Trojan horse.

Let's put it this way: We have here a march of folly that is so systematic, so consecutive and so determined that there's no way it's happening by itself. Because if it were accidental, wouldn't there have to be the occasional random success as well? So maybe it's really not accidental. Maybe there's someone who's running the show - craftily, brilliantly.

At every stage, our friend will ask himself: How else can I be harmful? What haven't I done yet? What extra dimension can I inject into the conflict? What new layer can be added to it? We succeeded in elevating the conflict from a territorial dispute into a war of chaos involving decentralized communities and organizations. Well done, yes, but now it's time to elevate it to the religious plane, the apocalyptic level, so that the damage will extend not only into the next generation, but for untold generations down the line.

Our friend looks around and asks himself: What single action can I take in order to place Israel at the cutting edge in the war of civilizations against the whole of Islam? How can I upgrade the existential threats: from mere bombs and shooting by local ragamuffin groups to the gunsights of Al-Qaida? And how can I, by the same twist of the blade, cause the most effective publicity damage? His eye catches sight of the most adored religious leader, who is also old, sick and crippled. And the rest is the un-end of history: today the war of Gog and Magog; tomorrow the Apocalypse.
....
And again he looks around: what else, what else ... A mischievous glint in his eye: the Temple Mount?
....
Who's the mole? And furthermore: why is he doing it? In whose service is he operating? A messianic organization? Spectra? Smersh? The cult of the devil? The angels of hell? One might think he's working in the service of the Palestinians, were it not for the suspicion that an equally malicious mole is operating at their highest levels, too, and is constantly undermining their best interests.

So, who is he? And, above all, what's his motive? What's he after? It's not clear. It might all really be just an unfounded theory, a ridiculous thesis with no foundation of any kind. But tell me, in the light of what's going on, does anyone have a better explanation?

Reporting Near the Gates of Hell

There are some days when you wish that they would just put out the real damn story for a change. But now, let's go to the Laci Petersen case. You can always tell when the narrative is dissolving, because somehow Scott Petersen's symbolic crucifixion becomes the hottest thing in American cable news. *CLICK*

While the Bush administration visibly flakes into a dozen pieces on TV under fire from the Clarke Battleship, we have a whole menu of items from the post-9/11 bloodsphere. From the furthest 'Bled al-Siba' (Lands of Insolence), we learn that the wicked Governor of Herat in western Afghanistan has regained control of his city, after someone killed the Aviation Minister and everyone ran a little amuck. Roughly 50 to 100 factional warlord fighters were killed fighting each other over this historic (formerly besieged) gateway to Persia. See it fall again next Thursday on live satellite!!

The problem with Afghanistan is that it's more an aggregate of ethnically jarred city-states than a coherently governed nation. The U.S. plan pretty much hyper-Balkanized it by installing worthless factional warlords with no oversight in every major city, kind of a government glued together like toothpicks. Wildly xenophobic, tribal toothpicks.

Meanwhile the hi-value baddies got away and Pakistan's military took quite a toll (roundup) in the mountain campaign. Strong counterattacks from guerillas, and it seems Muslim leaders there are quite angry, reports the Asia Times:

Flames of war loom large The present offensive in South Waziristan is not merely a hunt for a few fugitive guerrilla fighters (including Osama bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahri). It is a fight to control their bases in the whole eastern tribal belt that borders Afghanistan. Any ceasefire, therefore, assuming even that it holds, will be temporary at best, and a prelude to the next battle.

On Sunday, 70 of the country's most popular religious clerics, in a religious ruling issued from the federal capital Islamabad, called the Wana operation (Wana is the headquarters of South Waziristan agency) an "unjustified war" by the Pakistan army on their Muslim brothers. The clerics said that since the war had been unleashed on the mujahideen in support of the US cause in the region, anyone who died resisting the Pakistani forces would be a martyr, and any Pakistani soldiers killed would die "Motul Haram" - in other words, they would go to hell. The ruling also prohibits funeral prayers for soldiers killed in the conflict.

The ruling is a major setback for the Pakistani ruling class, and even information minister Sheikh Rasheed, who is famous for his outspoken nature, has refused to comment.

What began, therefore, as an operation to force al-Qaeda and the Afghan resistance from their base in Shawal - a no man's land .... is rapidly escalating into a major crisis for the whole country.

Meanwhile in Iraq, it is interesting that despite all the professed technocratic skill of the new administration, somehow they cannot supply the military and police equipment necessary to police and defend Iraq from hostile forces and secure the Syrian border. Among the missing items include "Life Saving Body Armor" of talking points fame, guns, radios, etc.

I find it incomprehensible that in today's titanic military-industrial complex, with its many satellites and airplanes and assorted schemers, it cannot fill in a few thousand police stations and medium-level military divisions with some kind of expediency. If this were the Roman days, you would just shoot a few pokey arms traffickers and things would move along.

14 British soldiers in Basra, Iraq were injured when 'petrol bombs,' as they call them, were launched during a protest over jobs, although some protesters supported the late Sheik Yassin or Saddam Hussein, as well. The Guardian says, "One soldier was seen with his head and shoulders covered in flames." The British forces, having a modicum of rigour about their techniques, claim to have fired only baton rounds but not live ammo or tear gas.

Among the wake of the Madrid bombings, the 9/11 commission's tidbits, the Afghans riding every which-way, and an expanding inquiry into Ariel Sharon's shady finances, Israel somehow saw the time was right to wipe out HAMAS' Sheik Yassin. Why not round out this curious March with a good heap of civil disorder moving into an April of profound anarchy in the Holy Land?

The latest spot reports from a constantly updating page at the Israeli paper Haaretz, which unlike other Israeli media tends not to become totally anesthetized when Israel launches major operations. It is 11 AM there now, but today will surely hold more news.

Five Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed and dozens injured, Palestinian sources said, in riots that broke out in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...

Also Monday, Palestinians fired a series of mortar shells and rockets at Gaza Strip settlements and the Negev. Four Qassam rockets fell in the Negev Monday evening. Palestinians also fired several home-made rockets at an IDF checkpoint in Gaza, two mortar shells at a settlement in the Gush Katif settlement bloc, and an anti-tank rocket at an IDF outpost near Rafah in the south of the Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Two apartments in the Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim were damaged due to rocket attacks earlier in the day.

IDF tanks moved into northern Gaza late Monday, Israeli security officials said. Palestinian security officials said the tanks were moving toward the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

In the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza, IDF soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, during clashes with hundreds of angry protesters. The demonstrators flocked to a roadblock west of the refugee camp, near [Jewish settlement] Neveh Dekalim, and threw stones at the soldiers guarding it. Witnesses said the soldiers fired live ammunition at the crowd, which consisted mostly of schoolchildren.

In the West Bank refugee camp of Balata in Nablus, hospital officials said soldiers shot dead a Palestinian journalist. They said Mohammed Abu Khalimi, a 22-year-old reporter for Al Najah University radio, had just broadcast a report about the army entering the camp when he was shot. They said he was standing near a group of stone-throwing youths.

Some 15,000 people, including more than 40 armed men, gathered in the center of Nablus. About 15 armed men, wearing masks and Hamas headbands, fired shots into the air.

"Dozens of people came to us this morning volunteering to be suicide bombers," said one masked militant. "We will send them in the right time."

A Palestinian man was shot and wounded in the West Bank city of Bethlehem after throwing firebombs at IDF troops, Army Radio reported.

In Jenin, another militant stronghold in the West Bank, more than 10,000 people demonstrated. Several dozen armed men from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades joined the crowd.

"Dozens of people came to us this morning volunteering to be suicide bombers," said one masked militant. "We will send them in the right time."

Ten Palestinians were injured in the West Bank city of Hebron in clashes with IDF troops. Soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. Twelve demonstrators were injured in Bethlehem during clashes with IDF forces near the Tomb of Rachel near the city.

Calls for revenge emanated from mosque loudspeakers. One Hamas activist said that a new phase in the Israeli-Palestinian fighting had begun.

Shopkeepers called a one-day strike throughout the West Bank, closing virtually all stores. Palestinian schools were closed.

Jerusalem Post analyst simply says "Assassination will increase anarchy."

The settlers have an ethical code. Yay. Thanks, guys.

Hezbollah attacked Israeli positions from Lebanon.

Now Hamas could align with Al-Qaida.

Israel is barring journalists with Israeli citizenship from the Gaza Strip.

I am on a few odd Israeli e-mail lists, but one of the most interesting is surely GAMLA, a settler newswire featuring the insights of DEBKAfile. There's a certain direct style in today's analysis:

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has fired the Israel-Palestinian war up to a new plane. The targeted assassination of Hamas founder, leader and moving spirit, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Monday, March 22, was the prime minister's thunderous reply to the critics who argue that his disengagement strategy would hand the Gaza Strip over to Hamas control. It signals his determination to purge Gaza of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists ahead its evacuation. Yassin's death is but the precursor to liquidating the violent movement he founded in 1987 to "cleanse" Middle East of Jewish sovereignty and replace it with an Islamic republic.

This cleanout of Hamas strength will take time. Until it is done, Israel cannot pull out of the Gaza Strip or even begin the process of disengagement.

Nothing else is quite as wretched today as David Brooks: "Understanding what the phrase 'one nation under God' might mean -- that's the important thing. That's not proselytizing; it's citizenship."

You wanted a Global War on Terror, Mr President.

You got one.

Final flight check

I've been wrapping up all kinds of things before break. This is shaping up to be a fantastic trip. Here are some scattered results of today:

After class today I helped Dan Schned work on the material he is putting together for the Hiawatha Line program, where he interns this semester. He has very exciting giant orthographic aerial photo composites of the Minneapolis-Bloomington route and all sorts of info on the planned corridor developments. I really like to see all these new development plans up close. If it works, then Minneapolis will start to grow up again, not further out.

Unfortunately, they were on schedule to open most of the light rail line in April, but the transit strike prevents drivers from training and the cars from being tested sufficiently. This really makes it hard for the LRT people to keep anything going.

With some time to waste this afternoon, I drove into Minneapolis to look at the rail line, along with a potential extension into the U of M. Both these places would benefit greatly from improved access. I went up to see the VA Hospital stop, as well. I'm not sure if people will enjoy riding in the big tunnel under the airport, though.

This evening, David has been over here adjusting his great artwork for the living room. Now he's adding colored chalk on some of the characters. I will post a photo of this when it's finally completed.

Arun is truly an iconic mack daddy of our times. That is all I can say.

I haven't done much reading about what the hell to do in London. Brits have advised me to ask at the pub.

Also I may try to go somewhere else for a day like Paris or Amsterdam. Wouldn't that be nice?

Sadly I won't have a digital camera to document things. I'll get a PhotoCD made, though.

I am probably going to stay up really late again tonight to adjust myself towards London time--I mean GMT.

Hurrah!! Server goes down & gets put together as Neo-Con castle crumbles!!

Everything got pretty risky there for a little while, and many bits of the system were fouled up, including important Perl files. I decided to install OS X fresh on the machine, and in turn rebuild all the site's MySQL hookups, Perl modules and everything. Fortunately it somehow only took about 90 minutes to do all this. Is it flawless? I'm not sure, but it should work.

On Friday I am flying off to England. How sweet.

There has been a ton of news lately about the spoofed Iraq intelligence I love so dearly. Finally, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski (Ret) has written her definitive expose on what she witnessed in the Pentagon and around the Office of Special Plans. Everything here reinforced what I have been saying all along. I am really happy that the Kwiatkowski is living up to the exacting standards of personal integrity that all armed services people should strive for, and not enough have in this time of lies.

I have heard about her story for quite some time, and she has been referred to in a few stories I've linked to. A key passage from "The Lie Factory" which Senator Kennedy recently repeated on the Senate floor:

"It wasn't intelligence-it was propaganda," Kwiatkowski says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials-including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February-that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

She is the real deal. We're lucky.

Richard Perle fired?!

The word is that Richard Perle got tossed on his butt from the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, supposedly for calling for the firing of the Pentagon's in-house spy agency's chief. The agency, the DIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, is somewhat more towards the "rational" side of intelligence gathering. That is, they were not the ones principally responsible for silly WMD intelligence. Yet Perle blames them for messing it up.

Too much for Rummy, finally at long last.

Pat Buchanan predicted on the McLaughlin group on Sunday morning that he would not be the last kicked out before the election. Ahh Pat.

Aside from that I should explain why I often miss posting Wednesdays on the site. The problem is that I have creative writing from 7 to 10, and of course last week I had to cover the Kerry rally and write the story, which took hours.

Midterms are right in my face here. It's going to be a hella lot of work. I covered the caucus story this week. it was altogether messy but interesting, as Kucinich overwhelmingly won our precinct, and we found out Edwards was dropping out while filling out ballots.

I am going to visit NickP in London in a week!! This is so damn cool, I've never been across the big ocean. Really. (Cheng has just gone the other way to Tokyo. He may make contact one of these days)

Thats about all I have the energy left about right now. Night.

Very tall and loud young man spotted on C-SPAN

Andy sent me an instant message at about 12:45 this morning saying that I appeared on the policy wonk's lifepartner C-SPAN during the Vote 2004 segment on Kerry's visit to Macalester.

Fortunately C-SPAN has put up a RealPlayer video stream of Kerry's event. It is quite blurry at 128K, but the sound is much more clear than I got with my voice recorder. Kerry and I can be heard really well, actually. I appear at about 1 hour 8 minutes into the clip.

I sneak a question to Kerry at rally!

While reporting for the Mac Weekly, I located myself in the audience near the "stage entrance" of the campaign rally. Senator Kerry moved down the line, shaking hands and signing things. With a huge crush of people and cameras all around, I asked Kerry if the investigation into intelligence distortions on Iraq should be a criminal matter. We reported his answer in the Mac Weekly story. (not yet online).

Kerry responded: "I have no evidence yet that it should be, but I think that we need a much more rapid and thorough investigation than the administration is currently pursuing. I think that this idea of doing it by 2005 is a complete election gimmick. It ought to be done in a matter of months, and that will determine what ought to be done."

The campaign story was a very tough one for us to write, and the session well into the early morning left me tired for days afterward. It is damn hard to write the Weekly and look sane the next day, as the editors know all too well.

The newspaper is in sweet sweet color on the cover. I'm really happy I snagged a candidate's quote, but I wish that more of what other people said at the rally could have been put in. Unfortunately, the paper a huge crush for space this week.

On the beat: Kerry visit

I am now covering the Kerry event on Macalester's campus Wednesday, which, alongside the Edwards rally on Sunday has surprisingly thrown me right into the middle of the national campaign for the first time since my November pilgrimage to Iowa (though the stories of Kellen, Andy and Adam at the Iowa Caucus made it far more colorful--and insightful).

With Dean's sudden deflation, my wandering political spirit stumbled onward yet again. I'm genuinely happy that the Democrats haven't torn themselves to pieces, and evidently Edwards doesn't plan to attack Kerry, or so he told us on Saturday. That in itself is a big step for the Dems.

The gang around here is flocking to Edwards, but I've hemmed and hawed about where I stand altogether. I think his image works great, I think he's making an impressive run that a lot of people said would never even get this far. That's a lot to his credit. There were plenty of Dean backers sporting their colors at the rally, so naturally, I am supposed to gravitiate there. But is Edwards' glossy inexperience ultimately a liability? (Additionally there's an incestuous sort of lawyer love going around among this crew, whether or not they admit it :-)

In the end Kerry seems to be steamrolling all the way down, and what's coming Wednesday will reflect that. Yet the Iowa and Wisconsin campaigns revealed Edwards poll spikes at the very end. Would Minnesota finally be the site where Edwards beats the man on top?

In sum, I am still ambivalent, and heck, since we are conducting entrance polls to the caucuses for Empirical Research Methods, I probably wouldn't even have time to caucus even if I wanted to. At this point, I may be more interested in watching the pretty pieces assemble into one glorious mural than really come down on it either way.

Rumors swirling: Texas Republican governor may be gay & hooking up with Secretary of State?!

It has been nice enough to watch the Goobernator sweltering in California over the gay marriage issue, but now another bombshell seems to be coming down as people are speculating that the current governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has been caught having an affair with his Secretary of State, who is about as openly gay as you can be in Texas. There is a Buzzflash rumor analysis and a post detailling "trashy unsubstantiated gossip." There is also plenty of information--well, scratch that, let's call it dirty innuendoes--at the aptly named Magnifisyncopathological.

So here's to hoping that those bigshot Texas lovers hop the first plane to San Francisco and consummate their perfectly timed relationship as soon as possible. For Bush's Republican party, love springs eternal...

Sunday news dump

Right now I am working on a paper about international security, an exploration of various theories such as neo-realism and critical theory critiques of international relations. Here I'm dumping some stories I found which are tied to the issues:

Ariel Sharon's new proposal to "unilaterally" withdraw from much of Gaza with a good chomp of the West Bank in exchange gets a lot of news. The Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly features Jonathan Cook, saying its another Dead End:

A [PLO] statement issued on Friday ... rejected the "unilateral disengagement" plan. "The plan is a recipe for a takeover of most of the territories of the West Bank," the statement read.

Such fears are not an over-reaction. On the heels of Sharon's announcement, the prime minister's office revealed that the plan involved transferring the Gaza evacuees to the West Bank to "consolidate" settlement blocs such as Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Ariel near Nablus, and Gush Etzion south of Bethlehem. Israeli media soon became rife with rumour that Sharon would suggest to the White House that the price of evacuation would be the annexation of several large settlement blocs in the West Bank.

One source in the prime minister's office was quoted in Ma'ariv as saying, "We are putting out feelers, to see what the Americans will agree to."

The damaging effects of Israel withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally -- without a final peace deal establishing a sovereign Palestinian state -- are not hard to predict. Even if the army does pull back, it will simply be withdrawing to a new line around Gaza. The Strip would be effectively besieged, with no Palestinian control over entry or exit... It would be a settler-less occupation, but a continuing occupation nonetheless. That is hardly likely to dampen the flames of anger sweeping through Gaza's refugee camps.

Counter-intuitively, here perhaps lies some of the appeal of a Gaza evacuation for Sharon. The plan is soaking up headlines that should be reminding readers of the corruption scandal ensnaring Sharon. It ... turns the hostile gaze of the world away from the apartheid wall under construction in the West Bank. But watching from the sidelines as Palestinian political factions, along with the population of Gaza, descend into civil war may be the biggest prize of all.

The first signs of where Gaza is heading may have appeared last Thursday when a half-hour gun battle raged outside the headquarters of Razi Jabali, supreme commander of the police in Gaza. Amid rumours of treachery, betrayal and assassination attempts by the Preventive Security Organisation, one policeman was killed and 11 others wounded. Hatem Abdul-Qader, a senior Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, warned, "A withdrawal based on bad intentions and without coordination with the PA will transform Gaza into a living hell."

Gaza is a unique humanitarian case: it is the most densely populated territory on earth. Palestinians living between the Wall and the Green Line have a bureaucratic hell which is crushing their livelihoods. Was it really a failure to predict the wall's impact? Is Sharon's proposal going to generate a HAMAS state in Gaza??

South Lebanon became the Hezbollah state, and a similar situation is liable to develop in the Gaza Strip. The point is that Israel is in the process of creating two Palestinian states, one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank. In Gaza, it is conducting its major military campaign against one organization, Hamas; it is proposing to withdraw from that organization's territory, evacuate settlements and demarcate a perfect boundary line with an enemy state. At the end of the process, Gaza is liable to become an entity cut off from the main Palestinian system, the autonomous province of an organization and not a separate section of the Palestinian state.

The signs that this is happening are already discernible on the ground. Hamas is presenting Israel's declaration of withdrawal from Gaza as its military and political victory, and not that of the Palestinian Authority or of the organizations associated with Fatah. Islamic Jihad has been shunted aside by Hamas, which is unwilling, for the time being, to incorporate it into one organizational framework... At the moment, Hamas does not consider a hudna (cease-fire) to be a Palestinian interest - meaning a Hamas interest - and its representatives are explaining that the organization is in a state of momentum that must not be broken off by a cease-fire.

The formulations being used by Hamas leaders to describe their "victory" are amazingly like the ones we heard from the heads of Hezbollah after the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon. But that is as far as the resemblance extends. Because even if there is a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, its 1.25 million inhabitants will continue to be under Israeli responsibility. In contrast to South Lebanon, Gaza will have no economic hinterland... The result is liable to be another huge Palestinian diaspora, like the one in Lebanon, but without its civilian infrastructure.

There is no dispute that Israel needs to withdraw from Gaza, and fast; but it also has to find a new landlord for Gaza, just as fast. That can only be the Palestinian Authority, which in the meantime is not enthusiastic about the idea of the unilateral withdrawal. "Gaza and Jericho first" was a good proposal for another period, when an economic infrastructure still existed in the Gaza Strip and Hamas was a limited organization, fighting for its status. For the PA to be able to accept control of Gaza now, it will have to wage a tremendous struggle with Hamas. However, Israel's continued war against Hamas, and the showcase manner in which it is being waged, with the large number of Palestinian casualties it is exacting, is only enhancing the organization's status and will make it even more difficult for the PA to rehabilitate its status in the Gaza Strip.

Here's a collection of Israeli quotes about what a great--or terrible--idea the settlements were. In particular Ariel Sharon said in 1995 against the Rabin government:

You, the people of Yesha [Judea, Samaria, Gaza], are leading ... You are responsible for your lives and you must prepare. The government is handing over the settlers to the armed Palestinian gangs ... They have already betrayed Jews to others in the past ... To be a betrayer and an `informer' is part of the spiritual way of life of the left ... This pathological government is collaborating twice: once with a terrorist organization, a second time against Jews ... What haven't we done - we explained, we voted no-confidence numberless times. Nothing helped, they are determined. So the time has come to stop talking, the time has come to act.

Then there is the Militarization of US Foreign Policy, featured in the think tank journal Foreign Policy in Focus.

Reversing a trend that predicated the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has increased its military budget to more than $400 billion and its intelligence budget to more than $40 billion. Current projections point to a defense budget of more than $500 billion before the end of the decade, with another $50 billion for the intelligence community. Led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense has moved aggressively to eclipse the State Department as the major locus of U.S. foreign policy, arrogating management of the intelligence community, and abandoning bipartisan policies of arms control and disarmament crafted over the past four decades. Funding cuts have prompted the Department of State to close consulates around the world and assign personnel of the well-funded CIA to diplomatic and consular posts. Though current defense costs represent nearly 20% of Washington?s expenses, less than 1% of the federal budget is devoted to the needs of the State Department.
...
The militarization of the intelligence community has been particularly profound. Nearly 90 % of the $40 billion budget for intelligence activity is allocated to and monitored by the Pentagon, and more than 90 % of all intelligence personnel report to the Pentagon. The Pentagon controls the tasking, collection, and analysis of all satellite photography. Moreover, such key intelligence bodies as the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency), and the National Reconnaissance Office are designated as ?combat support? agencies. This is exactly what President Harry S. Truman was trying to avoid in 1947 when he created the Central Intelligence Agency separate from the Pentagon, and made the CIA director of central intelligence as well.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has gone further than any other defense secretary to control intelligence collection and analysis. He created the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence without vetting this move with the Senate intelligence committee. In preparing the case against Iraq, he created the Office of Special Plans, which collected specious intelligence and misused intelligence community collection to justify the war and to create a congressional consensus in favor of war. Rumsfeld?s moves received rubber stamp approval from the Senate Armed Forces Committee, undermining the oversight roles of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
......
The doctrinal policies of the Bush administration have helped to make the international arena a more dangerous place. In his commencement address at West Point in June 2002, President Bush endorsed preemptive attacks, and several months later, the White House issued its National Security Strategy, which discarded the policy of détente and containment and endorsed preemptive or preventive military actions against states with which the U.S. is at peace. Ominously, the strategy report warned that the U.S. would ?make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.? The Pentagon?s Defense Planning Guidance and the Quadrennial Defense Review projected an indefinite future of continuous and worldwide war, endorsed the policy of regime change, and championed preemptive attack as the means for securing peace through international acceptance of U.S. hegemony. The Nuclear Posture Review of 2002 lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and the 2003 defense bill eliminated restrictions on researching low-yield nuclear weapons...

More about the internal contradictions of the 45-minute WMD claim inside the British government. This piece, written by a former analyst, ticks off the places and reasons why the intel glitch shouldn't have happened, and who was probably complicit in misleading the public.
This very alarming piece details warnings of "Balkanization" of Iraq as groups start to fight each other with elections approaching (Financial Times UK). The creepy thing is that the Balkanization warning itself comes from a secret American Coalition document.

A confidential report prepared by the US-led administration in Iraq says that the attacks by insurgents in the country have escalated sharply, prompting fears of what it terms Iraq's "Balkanisation". The findings emerged after a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the top US general in Iraq, John Abizaid, on Thursday.

"January has the highest rate of violence since September 2003," the report said. "The violence continues despite the expansion of the Iraqi security services and increased arrests by coalition forces in December and January."

The report makes clear how dependent Iraq's stability is on investment in the country's economy. "A fear of some is the 'Balkanisation' of Iraq if security, economic and infrastructure situations do not improve," it says.

It attributed much of the civilian violence to rising ethnic tensions between Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, noting that several bodies were found in the south "with hands bound and bullet wounds to the head".

Of course, there was the big news that the police station in the very violent city of Fallujah was overrun by mysterious folks, who released the prisoners there, including a group of recently captured Iranians. Many police were killed.
Maureen Dowd continues to call Ahmed Chalabi a liar.
Soldiers who met their deaths in Iraq at the age of 18. I won't forget.

Very busy week

It's finally Friday and I am very tired from a long week of classes and running around. I also finished a website for one company and have to do a skeleton for another soon. It has also been nice to sit back and watch the media roaring after Bush like a bunch of crazed sharks. On the other hand a lot of Gazans died this week and late night CNN kept getting interrupted with breaking news of massive bombings. How many times will this happen before the U.S. shields Iraqi people who have to line up outside the gates of security facilities? (much like the bombing of Iraqis lined up outside Baghdad's Assassin's Gate at the Green Zone edge)

Prof. Juan Cole is trying to start a service to translate great American works to Arabic.

Was Robert Novak personally asked not to name Valerie Plame in his accursed news column?

Clinton's advisor Sidney Blumenthal is pointing out (from the UK) that Kerry can tangle with Bush over issues of war and patriotism.

The Vietnam war gave Nixon the platform for his resurrection. Once he became president, the game of smearing the Democrats was reinvented as he set Vietnam veterans and hard hat, blue-collar workers against war protesters.

In the spring of 1971, a worrisome new political figure emerged to oppose Nixon's Vietnam policy. On April 22, John Kerry, wearing combat fatigues, his silver star, bronze star and three purple hearts, testified before the Senate foreign relations committee.

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" Kerry asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? This administration has done us the ultimate dishonour. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country."

According to Nixon's secret White House tapes, a number of fretful meetings were held about how to discredit Kerry. Nixon, the ultimate opportunist, wanted to characterise Kerry as one, too. "Well, he is sort of a phoney, isn't he?" Nixon was recorded as saying. "A racket, sure." "He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Charles Colson, his hatchet man, noted. At which Nixon said: "Well, anyway, keep the faith." Colson then sent Nixon a memo: "Destroy the young demagogue ..."

The day after Kerry's testimony, Nixon held another meeting. His chief of staff, HR Haldeman, said: "He did a superb job on it at foreign relations committee yesterday. A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he talks exactly like a Kennedy."

Next we'll learn that Kerry gave Bill Safire a wedgie back in his Nixon days.

Afghanistan remains "appalling" for women, still. The story points out Herat, which was the subject of a story in the book I'm reading for Central Asia class, The Great Game. A Victory in the War on Terror.

Though girls and women in Kabul, and some other cities, are free to go to school and have jobs, this is not the case in most parts of the country. In the western province of Herat, the warlord Ismail Khan imposes Taliban-like decrees. Many women have no access to education and are banned from working in foreign NGOs or UN offices, and there are hardly any women in government offices. Women cannot take a taxi or walk unless accompanied by a close male relative. If seen with men who are not close relatives, women can be arrested by the "special police" and forced to undergo a hospital examination to see if they have recently had sexual intercourse. Because of this continued oppression, every month a large number of girls commit suicide - many more than under the Taliban.

Women's rights fare no better in northern and southern Afghanistan, which are under the control of the Northern Alliance. One international NGO worker told Amnesty International: "During the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh she would have been flogged; now she's raped."

Even in Kabul, where thousands of foreign troops are present, Afghan women do not feel safe, and many continue to wear the burka for protection. In some areas where girls' education does exist, parents are afraid to allow their daughters to take advantage of it following the burning down of several girls' schools. Girls have been abducted on the way to school and sexual assaults on children of both sexes are now commonplace, according to Human Rights Watch.

Will Ariel Sharon help Bush win re-election?

The United States among the ruins of Arab nationalism. The Asia Times carries work from a lot of good reporters.

Fallout from Israel's land chompin wall. The Palestinians are set to get a hearing from the International Court of Justice. It's a pretty horrible project with decidedly evil topology of annexation and cutting point A off from point B, be it agricultural, water resources or access from village to cities with schools and hospitals. Here's much more on that from a feature in the New York Review of Books, featuring a nasty jab at Condi Rice's ignorance.

So hurray! The honeymoon is over! The press is all up about the National Guard shadiness. For updates on emerging stories and how all the documents fit together, consider checking CalPundit and Washington reporter Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

Of course the irrepressible paleo beast Pat Buchanan chimes in that Bush has shattered the trust of the American people for wars based on what? What, dammit?! This story is on Antiwar.com, no less! Other websites of information worth checking include War in Context.

What is the ultimate Bush vision for the Middle East, anyway?

Saturday roundup

The Macalester Central Asia Symposium wrapped up on Friday. It was pretty good--I saw the keynote speaker after all this theater hubbub.

The world is in some sort of upheaval right now, so here are some stories around different issues. First, here is a mugshot of someone called "Fat Tony," strongly reminiscent of the Simpsons' mafioso. Very important.

There is news that the Muslims who are managing the construction of a mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount site are not taking adequate steps to protect the history of the site. This concerns me since the site is one of the most critical intersections of spiritual beliefs in the world, the traditional site of the Jewish temple and Mohammed's ascension to Heaven.

Archaeologist: Waqf endangering remains of Second Temple: Mazar said the images showed large stones endowed with architectural elements unique to the Second Temple period. "[They show] beautiful grapevines," she said.

"There is no doubt that these are motifs from the Second Temple period. It is the different elements of the decoration that show this, combined with the style of the artistic work."An Israeli archaeologist has charged that Muslim authorities are excavating a disputed holy site in Jerusalem in a way that endangers the remains of the Second Temple.

An Israeli photographer took photographs that were released yesterday that show stone blocks with a unique design linked to the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 C.E. Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar charged that the presence of the blocks in the middle of a Muslim construction project shows that the Waqf, the Islamic Trust, is ignoring the site's importance in Jewish history.

"There is no archaeological supervision [of the work] and no plan or survey to see what the real condition of the Temple Mount is", she said. "The Temple Mount is neglected, and it's just a matter of time before it collapses," she warned.

I have heard this same dark problem from different people. It is very disturbing to imagine what would happen if there was a "temple incident," since it could possibly cause everyone to flip out and end religious tolerance as we know it.

Ariel Sharon is now proposing to rip out the Gaza Strip settlements as part of a unilateral separation, which would also theoretically involve closing some settlements in parts of the West Bank, while solidifying others. It would be positive to see Gaza without the oppressive troubles of the settlements, but Sharon has been angling to grab the West Bank all along. I have a feeling that he is merely putting this out there to divert attention from a rapidly growing bribery scandal. It seems clear that his hands are dirty in that, and this wouldn't be the first time he's made such a ruckus to save his own skin. Aluf Benn in Haaretz is covering this closely:

It is doubtful that he has changed his strategic outlook. He is apprehensive about a withdrawal to the Green Line, which enjoys strong international support, but in his opinion is dangerous for Israel. This is why he has until now shunned any significant negotiations. Now, with the pressure turned up, he is proposing a deal: "moving" isolated settlements and strengthening Israel's hold on other regions.

Sharon is prepared to pay with the evacuation of Gaza for American consent to Israel's continued control over a large part of the West Bank. That is why he instructed his national security advisor, Giora Eiland, to chart security lines that Israel could hold for years, "until there is a partner."

Sharon has been kicking around these ideas for a long time, each time under a different name. Once it was the plan for massive settlement of the West Bank (1977), another time it was "annexation as per the Allon Plan" (1988), then the "enclaves map" (1994), the long-term interim agreement (1999), the temporary Palestinian state (2001), the "fence route" (2003), and now the "disengagement with American backing" (2004). The common denominator of all of these plans is Israeli control over the "security regions" of the Jordan Rift and Western Samaria, and closing the Palestinians into enclaves in the hilly areas.

After Camp David, Sharon added settlement in the Western Negev to the map, to create an obstacle to a territorial exchange. The settlements in Gaza were intended to break up Palestinian territorial contiguity, but it seems that in Sharon's view, that role is now over.

Sharon is trying to follow in the footsteps of Menachem Begin, who conceded Sinai so that Israel could stay in the West Bank; Ehud Barak, who left Lebanon in order to perpetuate Israel's control of the Golan; and Shimon Peres, who championed "Gaza First" and a deferral of a solution in the West Bank and Jerusalem. All of them enjoyed success in the short term, but left diplomatic time bombs for their successors.

A similar problem is inherent in the Sharon plan, which leaves a vacuum on the Palestinian side and a lot of open questions. Will a "Hamastan" arise in Gaza on the ruins of the Palestinian Authority?... Will George Bush buy the Sharon proposals? Will he agree to expansion of the settlements that are not evacuated? Will he demand that Israel give up the "eastern fence"?

It's probably a good idea to look at this NY Times Mag feature about the rise of the Shiites, and what it means for Iraq's future.

Iran has entered a profound political crisis as the theocratic "Guardian" guys have banned many moderate people from running for Parliament. It's a dramatic situation, and now the Iranians are asking Iraq's leading cleric, Sistani, for help in regaining their democratic rights! Talk about crossed wires.

A little bit about the elections: In Iowa there is an electronic market where people can bet on who they think the nominee will be. Dean's chart is pretty sad-looking. It appears the market-driven system didn't give us too much advance warning of his implosion!

Weapons of Mass Destruction: still an Error 404. This post on Billmon rounds up much of the situation. But wait, a Guardian report adds details about the Office of Special Plans:

On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president....

Never before had any senior White House official physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked disapproving, questioned the reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to contradict them."

....senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."

Now an Israeli MK tells us that Israel knew that Iraq had no WMD before the war. This is very important news!!!!

A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.

"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defence committee which is investigating the quality of Israeli intelligence on Iraq, told the Associated Press yesterday. "Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," he said.

On Sunday, the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, told Y-Net, an Israeli newswire, that the Israeli intelligence services reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. "In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too," he said.

Breaking news on Dick Cheney's chief of staff

Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and a serious neo-con, has been named as the target of agents investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Crucial. I did hypothesize a while ago that he might have been one of them, because he seems foul, corrupt and powerful. Hooray that I guessed right. But were they channeling the spoofed intel??

Sweet sweet dirt

There is a very exciting article from Mother Jones detailing the many exciting intrigues concerning the neo-conservatives, the Pentagon and the rest of the mess.

How fitting that the investigation into the intelligence failure cracked open today. As Jon Stewart put it tonight, "Conspiracy theorists, start your websites!!!" Ahh, Jon...

The Lie Factory:Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews-some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity-exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting-and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard for regime change in Iraq.

Here is something that the lead journalist in this article, Robert Dreyfuss, wrote last summer about the aforementioned intelligence.
I found this story via a posting the website of mideast professor Juan Cole:

The Bush Administration will probably attempt to dump all the blame for the WMD fiasco on the CIA. As many are saying, this move is highly ironic. Every evidence is that Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon made an end run around the CIA and the DIA, cherry-picked intelligence, and funneled it to Cheney, who then manipulated Bush with it. (W. admits to not reading the newspapers, so he is at the mercy of his close advisers for information, for all the world like an illiterate medieval king with crafty ministers!)

To make George Tenet take the fall for all this, when his analysts were relatively careful in their assessments, and to let Feith and Cheney off the hook, would be the height of injustice. Ironically, Feith leaked some of the most damaging evidence against him to the The Weekly Standard...

...As I pointed out on January 28 :)

Yes, we are gearing up for another full season of good things at HongPong.com. Later I'll have to look at how this all correlates.

Josh Marshall points out that Bush is in a February slump and goes on to score a double play with lots of information about Bush's mysterious AWOL time.

And then there is the idiot David Brooks, praising the Illuminati's wisdom and blaming the CIA:

When it comes to understanding the world's thugs and menaces, I'd trust the first 40 names in James Carville's P.D.A. faster than I'd trust a conference-load of game theorists or risk-assessment officers. I'd trust politicians, who, whatever their faults, have finely tuned antennae for the flow of events. I'd trust Mafia bosses, studio heads and anybody who has read a Dostoyevsky novel during the past five years.

Most of all, I'd trust individuals over organizations. Individuals can use intuition, experience and a feel for the landscape of reality. When you read an individual's essay, you know you're reading one person's best guess, not a falsely authoritative scientific finding.

That last bit oddly corresponds to all sorts of things in my poli sci classes..

Even more CIA guys piling onto the Bush Administration.

The primaries are so much fun!! Dean has all but washed out now, sadly. Oh well. Joe Trippi has been slurped up by MSNBC, and I'm lookin forward to seeing him and Buchanan get crazy. More tomorrow!

Cheney likes leaked intel reports, hooray!

One of the central underpinnings of Iraq's invasion was the supposed link between Saddam and al-Qaeda. This link was never conclusively proven to the American public, but insinuations from the war agitators came steadily. Finally, the Weekly Standard published a secret memorandum from Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, a compilation of raw intelligence reports--not evaluated, that is to say approved by experts--which supposedly proved the link. The very release of this information was quite possibly illegal, and its contents disavowed by the Pentagon. Yet Cheney finds it a fabulous article. (Keep in mind the Weekly Standard is a neo-con organ run by Bill Kristol). Seem convoluted? Tease apart the loops and we can see a problem. Reported by Eric Bohlert in Salon.com:

Cheney's favorite leak: Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that a magazine article, based on leaked and unevaluated intelligence, definitively proved links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden has triggered a new round in the Bush administration's conflict with the intelligence community. 

"It's disgusting," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA chief of counter-terrorism. "It's bullshit," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who served in the agency's Near East division....

The conservative Weekly Standard published its article on the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, "Case Closed," by Stephen Hayes, in its Nov. 24, 2003, issue. The piece, released on Nov. 14, was instantly promoted as providing proof for the Bush administration's assertion that Saddam was long involved with Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes trumpeted the article on Fox News. "These are hard facts, and I'd like to see [skeptics] refute any one of them," he said. 

But the Department of Defense did just that. On Nov. 15, the next day, the Pentagon issued an extraordinary statement calling the story "inaccurate" and explaining it was based on raw intelligence ... that had not been evaluated.

The assertion that Saddam and al-Qaida were in league was a major justification for the Iraq war. Indeed, a majority of Americans came to believe the alliance was real as a result of the administration's persistent suggestion that Saddam was behind 9/11, and it was the reason they gave for supporting the war. 

However, no proof was ever offered, and the administration's continuing effort to press the point led the press corps to question President Bush about it. "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," Bush said on Nov. 18, 2003. But he added, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks. Yet on Jan. 9, Cheney, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, spontaneously lauded the discredited Weekly Standard article and described it as "the best source of information." ....

The Weekly Standard article was drawn from a "top secret U.S. government memorandum" that the magazine depicted as proving bin Laden and Saddam had an "operational relationship" that dated back nearly a decade. The memo was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who also oversaw the unique Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. This small office of handpicked operatives was created under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to act as a counter to the CIA and other intelligence agencies that were seen as insufficiently loyal in providing material to help make the administration's case about Saddam's imminent threat. Since its inception, the OSP has worked outside established intelligence channels, rarely sharing its intelligence information for peer review, and has been a direct source of information, often faulty, for the White House. 

Following Feith's testimony about alleged ties between Saddam and external terrorist groups before Congress last July 10, he was pressed in a follow-up letter from Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to provide the evidence that backed up his assertions. In response, Feith's office cited 50 instances of raw intelligence that suggested ties between Iraqi dictator and the al-Qaida leader. Meanwhile, Feith's report also found its way to the Weekly Standard. 

The article, which gave credence to Feith's report and suggested it had conclusively confirmed the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, never informed its readers that the report was simply a laundry list of uncorroborated data. 

Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cannistraro explains that hundreds, if not thousands, of raw reports from first-, second- and third-hand sources flood into the CIA offices around the word every day. But these are of little or no use until they can be analyzed...Cannistraro is stunned that Feith's office, out to prove linkage between Saddam and bin Laden, relied on raw intelligence summaries and not evaluated intelligence. "It's just amazing, because it's the antithesis of the intelligence process," he said. 

Shocks and aftershocks

I am making some progress on this new website idea but it has been slow going with finals. Fortunately that ends Wednesday. Unfortunately I have a TERM PAPER about THE WAR that has been rather disrupted. And it's also due Wednesday.

Here is a screenshot chunk of what I've put together for HongPong.com so far. This information will be strung together and turned into nice chunks of HTML information. I just found out how to import the WHOLE old HongPong.com right into it, but it will be tricky. These notes haven't been filled in for the most part, but pieces are getting added as I come across them. Think of it as sort of a topical filing cabinet with links and groups. Or something... It hasn't totally come together, that's for sure. And hurray, the Neo-cons will all be bright red!

As for the big news yesterday, that about does it for Jihadist Saddam. At the very least, we've got a great super-villain going now. Finally, a bitter and uncertain chapter in this story has closed, and the Baath Party is really finished, as a concentric ring system which made every bit of Iraqi society work backwards, a network of fear and domination which made the nation a house propped up to implode.
For me, the key question is still what happened to those Iraqi buildings, the libraries and the huge government ministries which ran the largest bureaucracy in the middle east. It feels like the loss of all these records was a disaster which not only obliterated so much history, but also rendered almost impossible the process of reconciling the society. (We've focused on bureaucracy, as a system, in contemporary political theory class, which sparks my interest in the day-to-day administration of occupied Iraq).
Unilateral reporter Robert Fisk, April 15, Library books, letters and priceless documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad:

So yesterday was the burning of books. First came the looters, then the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sacking of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives – a priceless treasure of Ottoman historical documents, including the old royal archives of Iraq – were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment were set ablaze.

Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad. And the Americans did nothing.... I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history.

But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed?
When I caught sight of the Koranic library burning – there were flames 100 feet high bursting from the windows – I raced to the offices of the occupying power, the US Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. An officer shouted to a colleague that "this guy says some biblical [sic] library is on fire". I gave the map location, the precise name – in Arabic and English – I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene – and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air.

It's a moment in time we sort of chalked off from our understanding of the situation, and this extends down to the daily pattern of life in the country now.

But what is the next move for Saddam? Even in a cell the man still has a power, in no small part the ability, and the will, to tell all about how the Reagan administration helped him with all those well-demonized episodes of genocide and mayhem. There is that. But there is also Osama bin Laden about, and he's no bit player right now. As they cheered everywhere from FOX News to the foxholes to the streets of Iraq, I posted this comment about everyone's favorite evildoer. Yes, Saddam's capture helps things come together, perhaps. But who else benefits?

A Democratic Spectacle in Des Moines

[link]
I went to a huge Democratic event in Iowa and witnessed the Democratic race up close, and the Dean phenomenon from the inside. There's a lot more I could add about this experience, but it was amazing. This was a contributed feature for the Mac Weekly.

Last weekend, Iowa Democrats hosted the kickoff of their 2004 presidential campaign, the Jefferson Jackson Dinner at Vets’ Auditorium in Des Moines. Six candidates, a collection of Iowa pols and Hillary Clinton took the stage at an event which raised money for the Iowa party while energizing Democrats to unseat George Bush and fight for Congress.
I attended this event as a wavering Dean supporter. Here, a few shades from Minnesota, I wanted to explore how Iowa Dems felt about the candidates and whether or not the other candidates were, as Kerry claimed he was, the “Real Deal.” Was Dean “unelectable?” Was his campaign composed of “West Wing” liberals and ignorant Internet kids? Or was it a collection of typical liberal causes uniting around someone more forthright than the Washington “centrists?” Did anyone’s partisan enthusiasm translate to support of the whole party?
What I found in Iowa supported few caricatures. Instead, I discovered that Dean is hardly the messianic anger case seen on CNN, and at least here his supporters don’t come from insulated, surreal clusters like the Nader or Perot people, nor the city liberals held in such low regard these days.
He’s attracted throngs of fiercely committed people, but their values weren’t exclusive to him. Out here, groups of people are always looking for someone who seems likely to give them a seat at the table and won’t play games. That sentiment has always existed in this continental nation of 260 million individuals, most of whom choose not to vote and support no party. Dean’s support reflects this, but hardly swallows it up. Democrats participate in Iowa’s process not with zealous faith in an individual, but after pondering things in the dark winter, always keeping in mind the ultimate goal: ousting Bush.
There are about 60 days left until the Iowa caucus. Iowa supposedly measures the 94 percent white “nice folks” vote and the farm vote via the community caucus process in January 19. Dean, ostensibly the front-runner, has seized political attention, unpredictably blurting awkward statements and entrancing a weird array of groups. Dick Gephardt polls a point ahead of Dean here. His steadfast support for labor and farms from Missouri makes him a friendly, trusted leader. Kerry’s support, including that of many many Mac Dems, is well-earned from years of excellent legislation and shining light on Iran-Contra. Edwards—always the mill worker’s son—honestly represents the liberal south. His strong support here surprised me. Even the maligned “bottom-feeders” provide an enlivening texture to the field. The wildly idealistic, butterfly-like speeches from the small, kinetic man, Dennis Kucinich, gesticulating and asking us to believe in the creation of a Department of Peace, reminded Dems of our own best people. For that fleeting moment, two percent support didn’t matter because he sincerely believed in bringing us something about our dreams. Carol Moseley Braun breaks barriers and it’s clear that she won’t stop when the campaign ends.
At Vets’ Auditorium, the ground throbbed with thousands of Democrats, chanting and waving signs, as entrepreneurs hawked pins and bumper stickers. Dean, pol in action, came through a column of supporters. I leaned over and he grabbed my hand. Mobs of partisans hollered in the lobby. Gep’s people collided with Dean’s at the door. Steelworkers for Gephardt and Cyclones for Dean screamed “Go Dick go! We want Dean! Gep! Dean! Win! Win!” The raucous, inscrutable essence of democracy could almost be glimpsed in this maelstrom. Moseley Braun walked by.
The dark auditorium covered with posters filled in with supporters, bringing signs, shirts, chants and noisemakers. For 40 minutes, spotlights punched through the darkness, prompting the crowd to make a ruckus. The lights switched between groups, prompting each one to outdo the other. “Real Deal” Kerry’s and Dean’s people each made an impressive, well-organized showing, as did the smaller Gep and Edwards contingents.
The evening’s speakers, including Iowa governor Tom Vilsack and Senator Harkin, were well-received, but the audience electrified when Hillary Clinton started running the show. After addressing the situation of America’s soldiers, she passionately called out for unity among Democrats. The candidates mainly delivered from their stump speeches, while adding concerns relevant to Iowans. Gephardt suggested an international minimum wage and Edwards talked of getting rid of mass feedlots. Kerry along with his people, said everyone knew Bush was giving us a “RAW DEAL!” The candidates avoided negativity and alienated few. For his passionate and idealistic speech, Kucinich received a standing ovation.
Peter Gartrell ’05 and Andrew Riely ’05 volunteered to usher on the floor, and they enjoyed the up-close experience. Riely said that he “dated Dean and married Kerry,” while Peter likes his home senator, Edwards, with whom he got to talk for a minute on an escalator.
Before the big event, our small group of Dean supporters arrived at a downtown high school, whose gymnasium was filled with 2,000 Dean boosters waving signs and sporting pins. The crowd was older than I expected: many seniors, gays and lesbians with rainbow pins, burly union dudes, red-shirted Grinnell students, middle-aged moms and the young Alex Doonesbury segment. Dean’s state campaign coordinators proclaimed they’d never seen anything like “the organization and commitment to a movement growing across this state and the country.” They reiterated one of Dean’s key talking points, that this was “making history,” a truism attractive to any political group.
Dean’s campaign plays off sentiments that exist as so many loose ends out here: taking care of the elderly, Wellstone-Harkin style grassroots support, unions scared as hell of Bush, family farmers. I found Democratic veterans outraged with Bush’s vet policies, gays and lesbians who point to serious progress, law enforcement types waiting for a Democrat who wasn’t ensconced with anti-gun organizations and those excited by online meet-ups. Among this whole set might be those who believe the DLC-type groups have gone too far right, but they still fervently love Bill and Hillary. Dean’s wallet issue, health care, attracts medical professionals and seniors alike.
Recently, Dean has received endorsements from key unions, though Gephardt draws much on labor as well. The Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) all endorsed Dean, and other unions will be influenced by this. SEIU, mostly made of healthcare workers, is The United States’ fastest-growing union and one of the most democratically run. The grassroots structure of these unions might threaten Washington-dominated organizations which make up the AFL-CIO.
Was Dean a demagogue, as my conservative friends complain, when he opened his speech talking about his own Internet fundraising and closed by pointing at the crowd and shouting over and over, “You have the power”? Yes, and it seemed arrogant to lord fundraising over the others when so much more important issues needed to be addressed. Yet we live in this time of unparalleled theatrics, aircraft carriers and awes and shocks. It always was part circus.
The dinner brought a sense that there might be differences, but Dems don’t give a damn, because at this point the prize—the White House and Congress—have to be roundly sought like no time in the party’s history. Iowans are too nice to support an “angry Dean” and too smart to give up on the Democrats, no matter who gets the nomination.
In Iowa, all the candidates met a friendly audience, because they all spoke to the better side of America, and they each went for one of Bush’s exposed quarters. Such a spectacle as this veered into heights of drama so that for those moments, these folks under hardship and war could let each other know they still had friends in Washington, and they were part of a project bigger than themselves.
My admiration for the Dean campaign became a confidence in a stable new coalition, but Dean’s theatrics fit poorly at key moments. My perceptions of Edwards and Kerry as trustworthy and experienced leaders was boosted by Peter’s and Andrew’s thoughtful support. The basic trust of our southern neighbors gave me hope in these bleak days that America isn’t totally in disarray. Their support of each other led me to believe that the majority of the country—which never voted for Bush, or anyone—might still be reached in the wilderness.

So that's what I've been up to lately, as far as the political goodies are concerned. More in a while, but for now, at least some positive news in a crazy world. Maybe Christmas will be hopeful. Hurrah!

The Ramadan phase

I'm trying to get ahold of this sudden turn of events in the war, this monster that keeps crashing one way and another. The daylight savings time change has extended the everlasting winter night, which easily turns into brooding sort of time which gave us Bob Dylan, for example. I'm watching the elections though, and it would be so much more enjoyable if things weren't going wrong all over. At least I've got some more time to hide at college until things blow over, unlike these poor bastards who have to work for a pittance at department stores and other shitty service jobs. Then there's the whole strike over at the U, and the ongoing madness elsewhere in the world...

As an ardent atheist, religiously motivated violence bothers me, beause it clearly stems from factors besides the religion. The violence can reveal intractible spiritual illnesses, and the choices that Bush makes are somehow never capable of containing the sickness. The whole Boykin "smash their idols" thing, who could possibly say anything more foolish while handling the Pentagon's counter-terror agency?

More waves of ghastly violence sweep Iraq on the first day of Ramadan. The hated Baghdad curfew was finally eased for after-dark ceremonies. The day after trying to kill Wolfowitz with a barrage of rockets (and a helicopter shot down), someone bombed four police stations and the Red Cross headquarters, killing at least 30 and wounding around 200 Iraqis, including plenty of police. That's about as horrible as anything I could possibly imagine...

Salam Pax said Oct. 19 that

Iraqi Police kick major ass. Much respect. Wherever you go now and open up that subject you will see a lot of sympathy with those brave men and women and a total incomprehension to what this so called resistance is doing. They are killing Iraqis now. They say Jihad against the Infidel Occupier and they go kill those Iraqi police men. The Baghdad Hotel, the Turkish embassy and many more.

It is not the Infidel the attackers are killing but Iraqis and this just might be good because the general sentiment now is "what the fuck do the Jihadis think they are doing?". I wrote or said some time ago that most Iraqis are just sitting on the fence, well the last couple of attacks are tipping the balance against the Jihadis because they are killing all those Iraqis, they are putting bombs in streets and in front of schools, threatening to bomb banks where Iraqis are standing in line waiting to get their new Iraqi Dinars.

So as we say here [biha saleh ? something good will come out of it] maybe the people who are dying in those attacks are helping us understand that what those saboteurs are doing is just pure evil, telling people they are Muslim Jihadis doesn?t cut it anymore because they are killing civilians indiscriminately.

Besides the 25 attacks on American forces a day, what about the growing violence between religious sects?

"We've seen many similar cases in this area," says Saddam hospital doctor Muhammad Dahham. [but] "It has never reached the level of murder before this morning." Dr Dahham is referring to the simmering inter-sect tensions in the teeming slums of western Baghdad, which in the last week appear to have taken a bloody new turn....

The two bodies in the freezer belong to Sheikh Ahmed Khudeir and his brother Walid Khudeir, who were killed walking back home in the Washash neighbourhood early on Sunday morning after dawn prayers. The dead teenager - Taisir Falih - used to act as eyes for the 40-year-old sheikh, who was blind. Brother Walid was also disabled....

The deaths have shocked the poverty-stricken Washash slum, but the manner of their killing has added to their anguish. Fifteen Kalashnikov rounds for the sheikh, 13 for his brother and nine for the young boy, according to people in Washash who had gone with the bodies to Saddam hospital. "The gunmen killed them first and then emptied the magazines into the dead bodies," said one resident....

As far as the mosque faithful are concerned, there is only one explanation for what happened on Sunday morning. Ahmed Khudeir was a Sunni sheikh at a Sunni mosque and he was killed by members of the local Shia militia, they believe. The militia they have in mind - the Badr brigades - belongs to a leading Shia political party which has a seat on the US-appointed Governing Council.

Newsweek is now reporting that Mr. Douglas Feith, Neo-con Pentagon baller, has been kicked out of Iraq reconstruction meetings. The CPA, on the whole, does not measure up too well today. (DKos)

...contractors in Iraq complain that the CPA?s staff consists largely of political appointees who don?t understand the process. "CPA is run by a bunch of political hacks and incompetents who have no idea what they?re doing," said a project manager for a firm working on a major USAID contract. "Every time we turn around there's a new order coming from CPA, 'Do it this way?no, do it that way instead.' It?s just unbelievable." Privately, some CPA officials admit the staff is less than the best the United States has to offer. Right now, "we're not talking A-team, even B-team. We?re talking C-team," says one official with the CPA. The Bush administration denies that any major changes are afoot, but all these problems have prompted a new reckoning back in Washington: Douglas Feith, Rumsfeld?s policy chief and a key official involved in postwar planning, is no longer sitting in on reconstruction meetings, NEWSWEEK has learned, and the White House has wrested oversight from the Pentagon.

Prof. Juan Cole speculates on Ramadan and possible bombers:

US officials actually came out and said that progress in Iraq cannot be measured by a few bombs going off! Uh, without security nothing else follows, friends. Not financial investments, not NGO aid, not more troops sent by allies. The Red Cross is needed for Iraq's reconstruction, but it is likely more or less to get out of Iraq now. The UN has already largely been chased out....

That the driver was foreign indicated to some observers that the attack was pulled off by al-Qaeda-linked foreign Mujahidin. It is also often alleged that Ramadan is seen by Muslim radicals as a particularly auspicious time to attack. Of course, I do not have any idea who planned the car bombings on Monday, but I don't think this reasoning resolves the problem. The regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen is Arab nationalist; so is that of Syria. There are lots of Arab nationalists in both countries. Arab nationalism is not dead as a sentiment, and for those devoted to it, going to Iraq to fight now makes as much sense as defending Abdel Nasser during the Suez Crisis of 1956. That is, the Western press equates foreign fighters with Sunni radicalism, but Arab nationalism is international, too.

As for Ramadan, I'd be interested in knowing if Sunni radicals have actually ever struck then. In Arabian society Ramadan was a truce month... It is not as if there is any mandate that one must or ought to fight in Ramadan; quite the opposite, the default would be to avoid fighting in that month and spend it on spiritual meditation. On the other hand, a secular Arab nationalist like Sadat was perfectly happy to fight the 1973 war during Ramadan.

I suspect that Sunni Arab nationalists are actually the most logical suspects, as they have been all along. The Coalition forces don't have a single proven al-Qaeda operative in custody in Iraq, but have lots of ex-Baathists.

On the topic of Wolfowitz, he points out that Wolfie's visits always have overtones of political domination, as he deems it necessary to visit touchy cities like Tikrit and Najf, rather than stick to real military business.

Wolfowitz's trip was an unadulterated disaster. His announcement that he was sleeping in Tikrit was clearly a dig at Saddam and the Baathists; but then a Blackhawk was downed there while he was at the US base in Tikrit (one US soldier was wounded). And then his hotel was struck in Baghdad, with a US colonel killed and 17 other persons wounded, several of them military. Wolfowitz was visibly shaken, his voice quavering, immediately after the attack. US personnel were forced out of the hotel, perhaps permanently. The colonel was probably the highest ranking officer killed in Iraq so far.

....The last time Wolfowitz went to Iraq, he inadvertently provoked huge demonstrations in Najaf and Baghdad by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who feared that the extra security measures in Najaf preparatory to Wolfowitz's arrival indicated that al-Sadr was going to be arrested. Wolfowitz got out of Najaf just ahead of the demonstrations.....

The problem with Wolfowitz's trips to Iraq is that they are clearly political, requiring visits to touchy places such as Najaf and Tikrit, to make political points about US dominance of the country. But the Deputy Secretary of Defense should only be visiting Iraq for military reasons, and his visits should be conducted secretly so he can see military commanders and troops. If Wolfowitz goes on campaigning to be mayor of Tikrit, he is liable to get himself killed.

The Red Cross may pull out much of its foreign staff, like the UN did.

Before they attacked the Red Cross, the story was the awful treatment of wounded Americans, whose numbers the Pentagon avoids talking about. There are now about 2,000 injured American troops. Apparently Cher anonymously called in to a show on CSPAN today and the host figured out it was her. Cher went to Walter Reed hospital and was terribly upset that Bush tries to hide the wounded. Fortunately someone has already made the Cher CSPAN T-shirt. That's what I call news cycle culture.

Today in Iraq, a site which links every violent incident reported in the media, is staggeringly awful to look at.

Will this new month of violence taper off in a few days? Could the toll on local people weaken their support for resistance activities?

Can the U.S. handle things this month, or will chaos rule Iraq's long November nights?

Midterms strike; an exclusive interview with Middle East expert

Right now I've just sat down to write this major midterm paper for International Politics class, but I thought I ought to update the site quickly before I dive in. Fall break is coming right up, fortunately, and we are going to see Atmosphere at First Ave. this Friday, which should be excellent.

A significant event: Atmosphere makes a music video! You can see it here on Quicktime or via links on their site.

The big deal for me this week has been my Mac Weekly interview with Middle East expert, Columbia history professor and occasional Palestinian diplomat Rashid Khalidi, who presented his paper "The Past and Future of Democracy in the Middle East" at this year's Macalester Roundtable. I thought that he was an excellent and informed speaker, and it rather made my day when he spoke at length about the significance of that neo-con document, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," and how for him, it described a "template" for American-Israeli hegemony over the Middle East. This is decidedly a minority viewpoint today but I strongly believe it. When the history of the neo-con parlor game which produced the Iraq war is written, Khalidi's angle will be profoundly valuable. He also told me that Ahmed Chalabi is trying to purge Sunnis in Iraq and provoke a civil war. Also he told me that the Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky provides much of the philosophical basis of neoconservatism. Want more?

Please look at my interview with Khalidi and the Roundtable story, which due to space had to be too short to provide details on his talk.

Also look at this collection of Iraqi children's drawings, which I found profoundly moving. (link Schwartz :)

Additionally there is Josh Marshall's review of "America Unbound," with an extensive critique of the neoconservative foreign policy experience, online now.

Soo now it's back to work. Damn midterms.

Bolivia rebellion?

New poll!! To hell with California!
There has been a lot of unrest in Bolivia directed towards their president, because he has taken pro-US policies in trade and drug control, as well as attempted to build a natural gas pipeline. So now the capital is under siege as protesters (a great part of whom are indigenous farmers and coca growers) swarm around. About 50 have been killed in violence. It's interesting how South American politics works: where it's so poor, the coca growers have a real slice of the economic activity (as they have for centuries) and they just don't accept U.S. dominance over their culture. On the other hand, maybe they are just immoral narcotraficantes. Latest Reuters:

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Bolivia's army fought to stop columns of protesters from streaming into the food-starved capital on Wednesday as a popular uprising against the president spread.

Catholic Church officials reported that two miners were killed and six other protesters injured 50 miles (110 km) outside of La Paz. Protests also raged in the eastern city of Cochabamba, where marchers threw rocks at police and Molotov cocktails at a government palace.

Analysts predict President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, whose coalition is crumbling, will have to make concessions to protesters to prevent more violence from toppling his administration. The monthlong revolt against his U.S.-backed policies have left at least 53 people dead.

The government in South America's poorest nation, where six out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day, is under attack for a host of grievances ranging from its U.S.-led eradication of coca to a plan to export natural gas to the United States.

A more radical interpretation via ZNet says that

Once again, this time ironically, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has summed up the situation succinctly: a tiny minority is trying to divide the country. Sánchez de Lozada?whose approval rating stands at 8%--and his inner circle have dug in their heels, raised their voices in contempt, and adopted bellicose postures. The US Embassy, the media, and the upper layers of the military and police are the only remaining supports of the regime. The opposition sectors insist on the resignation of Sánchez de Lozada and his draconian ministers, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín and Yerko Kukoc, as well as a change in the law regulating petroleum multinationals.

It remains to be seen whether the opposition movements, led by the highland Aymara, will succeed in overthrowing Sánchez de Lozada, implementing a Constituent Assembly, and forging a new Bolivia, or whether rightwing authoritarianism a la Uribe will be imposed with the aid of the US Embassy. The situation is unfolding with such rapidity that predictions are of marginal utility, but one thing is certain: the Aymara working class and peasantry of the western highlands; the coca growers of the eastern lowlands; the Quechua-speaking Indian peasantry of the southern highlands and valleys; the working class of La Paz and Cochabamba; in other words, the people who produce Bolivia?s wealth are demanding an end to 511 years of looting, exploitation, and political domination. They insist on becoming the beneficiaries of their labor, on taking the political decisions that affect their lives and exercising sovereignty over natural resources.

Here is another ZNet article.

California Dems terminated

I had my fingers crossed that this wouldn't come to pass. But now its happened: the GOP precipitated a novel majority/plurality election and managed to vaporize the value of serious political discourse in America's most important state. Their candidate, a totally inexperienced, steroid-addled, wealthy movie star, provided that certain STRONG MAN FIX IT vibe, while surrounding himself with all the usual Republican operatives. Davis seems to have been a seriously terrible politician, so good riddance. Bustamante ran a wounded, half-assed campaign. Gee, thanks. (Maybe he's waiting for Arnold to alienate the Latinos with social service cuts)

Everyone should be highly disappointed that there wasn't any sort of real debate whatsoever. I think several proper debates for statewide office should be federal law, if otherwise we are going to have more of this garbage. Also plurality and majority votes shouldn't be on the same ballot, because it prevents the goverment from properly defending itself to the public while challengers maneuver to lead the field. In all, a squelching of discourse and a flood of static. Damn.

Why the hell do Democrats get such cold feet when it comes to supporting each other? Davis refused to campaign --hard-- for Bustamante, because he's a selfish, annoying man. Just like when Clinton didn't really campaign with Gore. The Rebubs are very good at slicing up these kinds of relationships by making it appear that the Dems have something to lose by appearing together. This is so messed up because the incumbent Dem's strength is the institution they hold. Until the D's learn to stand up and fight together then the R's will just divide conquer and make donkeys look scared. D's been fooled twice. Let this be the last time.

Fortunately the Rebubs can finally no longer play the sexual integrity card against the Ds. Which of course works more in their favor because Democrats don't philander as much as Rebubs.

The Cali economy: who knows what the hell these Rebub institution trolls will dream up... somehow I suspect it will shaft Hispanic and minorities on social services, while refusing to fix the property tax.

The big problem with Davis was that he was so damn chicken. The power companies literally walked out with the whole state treasury and he doesn't even seem pissed off. Why didn't he demand investigations, blame them for the budget and all that? Why why why?

As for the infinite-repeat recall problem: I don't think anyone wants to see a permanent recall loop, which could easily happen with such a polarized and crisis-ridden state. I really hate Schwizzy but it clearly would be unfair to force a recall before, say, this summer.

If Arnold is as partisan as he looks to be (lets set aside the generic outsider rhetoric and look purely at his advisers) then he will not be able to cut a deal with the Ds. He is so inexperienced he probably won't know how to hold carrots and sticks properly. California may be stupid, but they're not stupid. If he's an incompetent Repub. bastard who doesn't get it done, the stage will be set for a summer recall.

Dear god, then there's the very good chance that the Terrorists will attack California and we will see the superhero standing dramatically in some wreckage... Talk about the unity of fantasy and reality.

The whole campaign vibe was that Arnold could save the day like his movies. But we should remember how T3 ends: Arnold obediently, rationally, marches the world straight to the Apocalypse and never tries to stop it. That's California 2003.

Everyone's national disaster

I've been quite busy this week, and if you're like me then now, finally, it might be safe for us to breathe again. Through all those Clinton years we were treated to one smear incident after another, Travelgate, Watergate, Monicagate... all these inconsequential scandals with one special prosecutor after another.

And now this Administration, with its 'crown jewels' of 'credibility and integrity' or whatever they call it, now finally has that unmistakeable tarnish of a real political disease upon it. The schism between the government agencies (the CIA never really bought this bullshit all along) has exploded all over the cable news, months after it should have...

Actually that's one interesting aspect. Novak wrote his column back in mid-July, and Bush only publically said anything about this national security crisis a few days ago. One guy points out that's 75 days of sitting on his ass. True.

What to make of this? What damage? Who's spinning?

FOX News has been hilarious the last few days. First, they didn't want to talk about it. They avoided noting the Justice investigation for quite a while. Brit Hume disparaged the whole thing, anchors noted that 'nothing ever comes of these things, why bother?' Silliest of all, one rightie after another has said Wilson was some partisan peacenik yahoo, who existed to hassle the Bush administration. This doesn't quite fit with Wilson's work around the first Gulf war, where he was the US unofficial ambassador to Iraq, and the last American to meet with him prior to the war. He received much praise from Poppa Bush for his work. He also has given money to Republican candidates recently. No one's partisan, really.

I also like the line of reasoning which claims that because 'all he did was sip tea' in Niger rather than, I don't know, break into offices and kidnap officials, he could never have done a thorough job investigating the uranium story. (this is what Brit Hume and resident AEI Neo-con bitch Reuel Marc Gerecht talked about, because they didn't want to talk about the leak itself) But these fools don't know how the uranium business works. The mine is run by a large European conglomerate licensed under the IAEA. It's on the level. Really.

Novak himself is putting out all kinds of nonsense, but it's like he's compelled to share national security secrets with the public. for one thing, he said that she was known as an agent to insiders and "well known" in Washington, so it's not a big deal that he ran her name. What the hell is he talking about? So just now he decided to tell the name of her CIA front company. Good, that will help destroy their cover overseas. On CNN he said:

"Joe Wilson, the -- everybody knows he has given campaign contributions in 2000 to both Ford -- I mean to both Gore and to Bush. He gave twice as much to Gore, $2,000, $1,000 over the limit. The government -- the campaign had to give him back $1,000. That very day, according to his records, his wife, the CIA employee gave $1,000 to Gore, and she listed herself as an employee of Bruster, Jennings and Associates (ph).

There is there no such firm, I'm convinced. CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're a deep cover. They're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. So it adds to the little mystery."

The Washington Post now reports

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front... The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

Thanks, Novak! You're a great journalist! These clips come via DailyKos.

There is one piece of fallout from the crime we can't deny: whoever was ever associated with agent Plame overseas is in danger. What remains in question is what, exactly, Plame did. Calpundit piles up the public facts so far. It seems to be emerging that Plame ran networks of foreign informers who passed on information about biological, chemical, and nuclear material. Let me say that again: Plame's job was to collect intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, to monitor and prevent them from being used against the United States. Now anyone who can be tied to her can be compromised.

That's something that is really a disaster for everyone. That's the central point. Politics don't enter into calculating this.

Yet it is political. The leaker went after Wilson to intimidate anyone else who might attack the Bush folks falsification of war intelligence.

Let me offer a prediction about who was probably behind the leak: the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. There have been insiders saying that the bad guy works in the Executive Office Building, where Cheney's people are. If I'm right about this, I definitely win a cookie.

On a related topic, you need to see this report which says that FOX News watchers were the most likely to believe in misinformation about the war, namely that WMD have already been found, and Saddam was acively engaged with Al-Qaeda. Fair and Balanced!

In following these developments, naturally the Internet is the best source. Lately my reliable wisdom has come from the Daily Kos, Eschaton and The Agonist. If you keep an eye on these then you'll probably catch most of what's going on. Also much respect is due to Washington reporter Josh Marshall, who writes the Talking Points Memo, and kept the story alive since July. Marshall also has recently interviewed Wilson and Wesley Clark.

Actually, Clark told Marshall something important about neoconservatives:

TPM: I noticed that Doug Feith, who's obviously the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, had a statement a while back saying that the connection between terrorist organizations and state sponsors was, I think he said, the principal strategic thought behind the administration's policy.

CLARK: It's the principal strategic mistake behind the administration's policy. If you look at all the states that were named as the principal adversaries, they're on the periphery of international terrorism today. Syria -- OK, supporting Hezbollah and Hamas -- yeah, they're terrorist organizations. They're focused on Israel. They're getting support from Iran. It's wrong. Shouldn't be there. But they're there. What about Saudi Arabia? There's a source of the funding, the source of the ideology, the source of the recruits. What about Pakistan? With thousands of madrassas churning out ideologically-driven foot soldiers for the war on terror. Neither of those are at the front of the military operations. ...

The ability to conduct foreign policy draws not only on the president himself but on the leadership of the administration. If you were to start here and work backwards, you'd say this administration was doctrinaire. You'd say that it didn't have a real vision in foreign policy. It was reactive. Hobbled by its right-wing constituency from using the full tools that are available -- the full kit-bag of tools that's available to help Americans be in there and protect their interests in the world.

Clinton administration: broad minded, visionary, lots of engagement. Did a lot of work. Had difficulty with two houses in congress that [it] didn't control. And in an odd replay of the Carter administration, found itself chained to the Iraqi policy -- promoted by the Project for a New American Century -- much the same way that in the Carter administration some of the same people formed the Committee on the Present Danger which cut out from the Carter administration the ability to move forward on SALT II.

TPM: This being the same neo-conservatives that people hear about in the press today?

CLARK: Right, some of the same people. And then, you know, if you go back to the Bush administration, they were there when the Berlin Wall fell.

This whole statement that the neo-cons actually used the PNAC to undercut the administration's options is a kind of inverted view of issue advocacy (and it's fun to tie them to Carter). Marshall strongly agrees with the idea, and it got a bunch of nasty feedback from neocons. Very interesting. I am happy Clark is on the right page with neo-con deviousness, because that would be so fun to see him go off about in the democratic debates.

I suggest everyone sit back and watch the fireworks. This mess has just begun to unfold.

WTO talks collapse; Korean farmer commits suicide as protest

The big news today is that the developing world finally scored a point in the World Trade Organizaion talks in Cancun, as they formed a 22-nation bloc (including Brazil, China and India) which demanded the wealthier nations address the imbalances in agricultural subsidies. When the us and EU wouldn't give any ground the talks imploded, to the cheers of the many and varied protesters outside. Farmers all around the world, but particularly in the developing world, have been hit hard with plunging, unpredictable food prices and escalating debt. A South Korean farmer stabbed himself at the front lines of the protest and later died in surgery. This is what the farmer said earlier:

Soon after the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement was settled, we, Korean fellow farmers, and myself realized that our destinies are out of our hands already. Further, so powerlessly of ourselves, we could not do anything but just looking the waves destroy our lovely rural communities that had settle-downed over the hundred years. To make myself brave, I have tried to search the real reasons for and major forces of those waves. Reaching to my conclusion now here in Geneva, at the front gate of the WTO, I am crying out my words to you that have been boiled so long time in my body.

It is true that Korean agricultural reform programs increased the productivity of individual farms. However it is also fact that increased productivity simply added another volume to over-supplied market in which imported goods occupied the lowest price portion. Since then, we never be paid over our production costs. Sometime, price drop recorded four-timers of normal trend in a sudden. How would it be your emotional reaction if your salary drops suddenly to a half without knowing clearly the reason.

One part, those farmers who gave up earlier his farming went to urban slum. The others who had tried to escape from the vicious cycle had to meet bankruptcy with accumulated debts mostly. Of course, some fortunate peoples could come further but not all of them may go longer, I suspect. For me I couldn?t do anything but just looking around this vacant house of old and eroded.

What I could do was to check sometimes his house with hoping him back. Once I run to a house where a farmer abandoned his life by drinking a toxic chemical because of his uncontrollable debts. I also could do nothing but hearing the howling of his wife. If you were me, how would you feel?

If you walk into Korean rural villages, we may firstly see many ruined structures ? mostly livestock shelters and green (mostly glass) houses, which swallowed such big amounts of money. If you get into some houses, you can easily meet old-aged-peoples who suffer from illness in most cases. Rural amenities can be felt, at a glance, only in riding on your car in the road. In fact, good road systems of being paved widely pulls large apartments (a thousand people live in it, usually), buildings and factories in Korea. Those lands paved now mostly were the paddies that constructed for the generations of thousand years and provided the daily lives foods and materials in the past. Now in the contemporary society, the environmental functions of paddies, ecologically and hydrologically are even more crucial. Who shall keep our rural vitality, community traditions, amenities and environment?

Here is a totally unrelated site about Sept. 11 conspiracies, from a generally anti-conspiratorial point of view.

Another year of slurping up collegiate wisdom

The first week at Macalester has been going off pretty well. I am in a couple very good politics classes, a computer hardware class and urban geography. It should be challenging this year but enlightening. One of my politics classes focuses on the field known as 'critical theory' as put forth by the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, etc. Kind of psycho-social neo-Marxism, it could be described as. That's interesting... Besides that everything is excellent here at the house on Grand, despite the occasional weird incidents like the raving drunk who came up to us on the porch at 3 AM last night.

The word of the weekend I say goes to Maureen Dowd who sugggested that

Does Mr. Bush ever wonder if the neocons duped him and hijacked his foreign policy? Some Middle East experts think some of the neocons painted a rosy picture for the president of Arab states blossoming with democracy when they really knew this could not be accomplished so easily; they may have cynically suspected that it was far more likely that the Middle East would fall into chaos and end up back in its pre-Ottoman Empire state, Balkanized into a tapestry of rival fiefs -- based on tribal and ethnic identities, with no central government -- so busy fighting each other that they would be no threat to us, or Israel.

The administration is worried now about Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the face of roiling radicalism.

Some veterans of Bush 41 think that the neocons packaged their "inverted Trotskyism," as the writer John Judis dubbed their rabid desire to export their "idealistic concept of internationalism," so that it appealed to Bush 43's born-again sense of divine mission and to the desire of Mr. Bush, Rummy and Mr. Cheney to achieve immortality by transforming the Middle East and the military.

Also check out a disturbing report in the Observer UK about how Iraqis randomly killed by the US are barely noted officially.

What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable. What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently beyond any accountability.

Everyone should look at this really amazing interview with Jason Burke, someone who has examined Islamic militancy closely. (Link via Altercation) For those of you who believe that al-Qaeda is a self-contained, concrete organization rather than a loose network of militants, consider:

There?s an understanding among the Western public that Al-Qaeda is a coherent, organized terrorist network with a hierarchy, a command and control structure, a degree of commission and execution of terrorist acts by a few individuals.

That simply isn?t the case. The biggest myth is that all the various incidents that we are seeing are linked to some kind of central organization. One of the reasons the myth is so prevalent is that it?s a very comforting one.

Because if you clearly get rid of that central organization, if you get rid off, particularly bin Laden?and a few score, a few hundred people around him?then the problem would apparently be solved. Unfortunately, that idea is indeed a myth and bears very little resemblance to what?s happening on the ground.

There was a pretty wild story in the Washington Post on Sunday about al-Qaeda setting up a front in Iraq (which of course it didn't have before) to cause havoc etc. The article also has a lot of speculations about Al-Qaeda leaders hiding in Iran after the Afghanistan war, and plotting the recent Riyadh bombings. This article in turn sparked a lot of disagreement in part because it was written by somewhat discredited WaPo reporter Sue Schmidt, who might be more ready to jump on Iran with unproven allegations drawn from the Iranian exiles who hate their government. That site, Talking Points Memo, points to a good blog kept by a middle east studies professor who also debunks aspects of the story.

Talking Points Memo is written by Josh Micah Marshall, who writes on Salon, the Washington Monthly and a Washington newsletter The Hill. I really like his writings on various topics around Washington, such as this new piece detailing how the Bush administration hates experts who they see as controlled by a 'namby-pamby' liberal ideology, and hence disregards real facts:

By disregarding the advice of experts, by shunting aside the cadres of career professionals with on-the-ground experience in these various countries, the administration's hawks cut themselves off from the practical know-how which would have given them some chance of implementing their plans successfully. In a real sense, they cut themselves off from reality. When they went into Iraq they were essentially flying blind, having disengaged from almost everyone who had real-world experience in how effective occupation, reconstruction and nation-building was done. And much the same can be said of the administration's take on economic policy, environmental policy, and in almost every sort of policy question involving science. Muzzling the experts helped the White House muscle its revisionist plans through.

In August 2002, Marshall wrote a fascinating piece in Salon about how a schism exists in the Rumsfeld Pentagon between the brass and the top civilians (i.e. the Neocons):

The Bush administration's most right-leaning political appointees are concentrated at the Pentagon. And nowhere is that tilt more evident than in its Middle East policies. The Bush appointees have not just ignored recommendations from military advisors and civil servants but have often ousted or sidelined those who have had the temerity to offer any policy advice. Over the last 18 months, there has been an exodus of career civil servants leaving the Pentagon policy shop for stints on Capitol Hill or with other Defense Department-affiliated institutions, according to a half-dozen such departees who spoke to Salon -- far more than is normally the case when administrations change from one party to the other. Many of those slots have been filled by ideologues and think-tank denizens who can be relied on to serve up the right kind of advice to their superiors.

When most people think of neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, they think of men like Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary, and Richard Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board. But the second tier of civilian appointees at the Pentagon is stacked with Wolfowitz and Perle proteges who are in many ways even more conservative in their views than their mentors and -- as the Rhode incident shows -- a good deal more hotheaded...

In the minds of these second-tier appointees, taking out Saddam Hussein is only part of a larger puzzle. Their grand vision of the Middle East goes something like this: Stage 1: Iraq becomes democratic. Stage 2: Reformers take over in Iran. That would leave the three powerhouses of the Middle East -- Turkey, Iraq and Iran -- democratic and pro-Western. Suddenly the Saudis wouldn't be just one more corrupt, authoritarian Arab regime slouching toward bin Ladenism. They'd be surrounded by democratic states that would undermine Saudi rule both militarily and ideologically.

As a plan to pursue in the real world, most of the career military and the civilian employees at the Pentagon -- indeed most establishment foreign policy experts -- see this vision as little short of insane. But to Bush's hawkish Pentagon appointees the real prize isn't Baghdad, it's Riyadh. And the Saudis know it.

He also wrote a great article in the January Washington Monthly about how terrible Dick Cheney is at making decisions.

As far as the resignation of the Palestinian Prime Minister is concerned, that was unfortunate but really it was the poor man's only card to play. What, precisely, was he supposed to do? Buy off a few armed gangs and make them sit tight as Israel failed to relax the occupation (as well as cease constructing settlements as the Road Map demanded)? It should be remembered that he only could have moved against that 'terrorist infrastructure' in the cities where he controlled Palestinian security forces (he only controlled a few of these groups anyway). It was a pointless venture because Israel and the U.S. never gave him any slack. Israel didn't even stop trying to kill Hamas members. Well, that's one way to do a cease-fire. Finally, Ariel Sharon is safe from peace, as one Israeli put it. Israel, by the way, did bomb Lebanon a little bit this week, but that's how it goes these days. And a panel found that the Israeli police treated Israeli Arabs as 'the enemy' in a riot just after the beginning of this Intifada.

Naturally Bush didn't address the dramatic Palestinian peace plan failure, or the economy, in his barrage of platitudes this evening. His polls are falling and this whole conflagration is such a marvelous. $87 billion, money well spent. Mr Marshall says this evening:

We went into Iraq to eliminate Saddam's stock of weapons of mass destruction, to depose a reckless strongman at the heart of a vital region, and to overawe unfriendly regimes on the country's borders. Agree or not, those were the prime stated reasons. Now we've got a deteriorating security situation and a palpably botched plan for reconstruction. And our effort to recover from our ill-conceived and poorly-executed policy is now the 'central front' in the war on terror, which is among other things extremely convenient.

The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.

We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that.

Big troubles for Bush: polls dropping, economy falling, Taliban winning, deficits and bombs exploding

There has been plenty of bad news for the Bush administration in this most difficult of August vacations. First of all, a new poll has shown that a majority of Americans would prefer 'someone else' to Bush. Now, polls can fluctuate in a range and all that (it's just a touch over 50%) but still, it shows a very large bloc of people aren't happy with things.

To put this in some perspective, you should check out the site Professor Pollkatz, which has a few interesting graphs and charts. In particular check out this graph, which shows an unquestionable slope downwards. Bush's approval ratings look like a sawtooth: his ratings jump up astronomically when the country has shifted into immediate war/reaction mode (spikes at 9/11 and this March), but as things settle the air comes out like a leaky balloon. Granted, the percentages are falling off extremely high numbers that no one expected to last. I just think its interesting that the polls pull down with such little variance. Also compare his approval rating with other recent wartime presidents, and you can see they have a rolling, up and down kind of pattern. Will this pattern bend around at a safe 55%? Why the hell would it?

And the economy. Let's have just a bit from the Scripps Howard News service:

Labor Day 2003 finds unemployment hovering near a nine-year high and people thankful to have work nevertheless feeling anxious because of the jobless recovery. Some 9.1 million Americans are officially unemployed, even though joblessness ticked down 0.2 percentage points from June's 6.4 percent high because 470,000 people quit looking for work last month. Meantime, 74.5 million adults are outside the labor force, 4 million more than when the nine-month recession started in March 2001.

"For too many working families, the current recovery is indistinguishable from the recession," said economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank.

High-paying manufacturing jobs have plunged by more than 2.7 million since August 2000, and the National Association of Manufacturers forecasts that U.S. factories will add back just 200,000 to 250,000 of those jobs even if the economy grows at 4 percent or better through 2004. Association president Jerry Jasinowski blames a "toxic brew" of fair and unfair foreign competition and high health care, litigation and energy costs at home for "the slowest manufacturing recovery on record since the Federal Reserve began tracking industrial production back in 1919."

On the elder Bush's watch, it took 15 months for job growth to resume, but today job growth hasn't jump-started 22 months into recovery - the worst job-creation record since the Labor Department started tracking such statistics in 1939.

Happy day! The federal deficit wanders into new and exciting territory as it will reach around, oh, $480 billion or so. That's $480,000,000,000. I like it when they can just write their contributors dividend tax 'rebates' to get tossed in that phat $200 million election coffer. That's what I call prosperity.

The federal deficit will hit a record $480 billion next year, more than twice the level forecast just five months ago, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said in a statement that "this unprecedented binge-borrowing imposes a heavy burden on Americans by increasing the cost of borrowing for businesses, home buyers and students."

If the tax cuts are extended, the CBO said, deficits would grow by an additional $1.6 trillion over the next decade, by an additional $400 billion if a drug benefit is enacted, and by another $400 billion if Congress takes steps to keep the alternative minimum income tax -- a baseline amount of tax that must be paid, even if the filer's tax calculated under standard rules falls below that level -- from affecting more middle-class families.

The nonpartisan agency said the annual budget shortfalls will total nearly $1.4 trillion over the next decade, compared with a $5.6 trillion surplus the CBO forecast in 2001. Bush didn't address the deficit directly. But in St. Paul, Minn., where he raised $1.2 million for his re-election campaign, Bush spotlighted his tax cuts, the centerpiece of his economic policy.

"Here's what I believe and here's what I know: that when Americans have more take-home pay to spend, to save or invest, the whole economy grows, and people are more likely to find a job," Bush said.

Then on the foreign policy front, the spread of freedom and the spirit of liberation are strong in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has liberated itself from the label of 'destroyed' and gone wreaking havoc in the provinces, which are controlled by an anarchic system of U.S.-backed warlords, in what resembles a combination of Reagan's Honduras, Khengis Khan and Lebanon. What is the secret of the Taliban's guerrilla persistence, when all had dismissed them? Human Resources! Basically they set up a bunch of religious schools in remote areas around Pakistan and Afghanistan, (with Saudi money) and these schools teach a rather remote and extreme version of Islam, generating a number of militantly motivated young kids who go off and cause trouble. There's quite a lot of trouble to get into with right now, as Israel and the United States occupy every other Muslim territory from Jerusalem to Pakistan.

Then of course there's the Palestinian cease-fire that collapsed when Israel, in its wisdom, decided to kill the guy in Hamas that Mr. Abbas talks with, dealing a handy blow to his efforts.

Then there's the UN bombing, which has wigged out all the NGO's trying to clean up in Iraq. The Red Cross is reducing its operations, which is very depressing for Iraqis, because the Red Cross is the group which acts as a go-between with Iraqi POWs, detainees, their families, and the Americans.

So the Neo-con scheme is working out pretty smoothly, as prescribed. And we're Taking the Fight to Them! Oh yeah!

2001 Nobel Laureate (Econ): "This is the worst government the US has ever had"

This is a bit of older news, but I still think it's worth looking at. 2001 Nobel Prize winner, econ professor George Akerlof, has become somewhat politicized by the outrages he sees in the Bush administration. He spoke out against Bush's terribly constructed tax cuts and the general depravity of the president's policies:

The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting...

Future generations and even people in ten years are going to face massive public deficits and huge government debt. Then we have a choice. We can be like a very poor country with problems of threatening bankruptcy. Or we're going to have to cut back seriously on Medicare and Social Security. So the money that is going overwhelmingly to the wealthy is going to be paid by cutting services for the elderly...

I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of what kind?

Akerlof: I don't know yet. But I think it's time to protest - as much as possible.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You've mentioned the term civil disobedience a minute ago. That term was made popular by the author Henry D. Thoreau, who actually advised people not to pay taxes as a means of resistance. You wouldn't call for that, would you?

Akerlof: No. I think the one thing we should do is pay our taxes. Otherwise, it'll only make matters worse.

Franken vs. FoxNews: who's fair and balanced now?

NEW POLL!
A quick lunchtime update: Fox News has just sued Al Franken for titling his next book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," because Fox believes it controls the concept of 'fair and balanced.' What I really like is how their lawyers phrased the case(NyTimes)

"Franken is neither a journalist nor a television news personality," according to the complaint. "He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His views lack any serious depth or insight."... "Franken is neither a journalist nor a television news personality," according to the complaint. "He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His views lack any serious depth or insight." Lawyers for Fox who filed the complaint also take issue with Mr. Franken's book cover because it "mimics the look and style" of two books written by Bill O'Reilly, a prominent Fox News personality. Mr. O'Reilly is also pictured on the cover, just beneath the word "Lies."

Court papers refer to Mr. Franken, who is a former "Saturday Night Live" writer and performer, as a "parasite" who hopes to use Fox's reputation to confuse the public and boost sales of his book.

Franken is also accused of verbally attacking Mr. O'Reilly and other Fox personalities on at least two occasions, and of being "either intoxicated or deranged" as he flew into a rage at a press correspondents' dinner in April 2003. Mr. Franken has not filed a response in court to the suit.

I did see bits and pieces from said dinner... Judging by the choice edits made by MSNBC that day, O'reilly is a screaming bastard and Franken a rambling idiot. I forsee the possibility that this lawsuit may unequivocally prove Fox News is not fair and balanced. That would be precious. This is great, as it will help promote his book, which I do intend to buy. He better stop at Ruminator on the book tour!

Hudson lands giant GM facility

Well among all the economic ups and downs there is finally some good news for Hudson, Wisconsin. General Motors has decided to build a 400,000 sq. ft. auto parts distribution facility in the business park near Highway 35. This is the biggest building yet in the business park, and it will bring in about 140 jobs. It signifies that Hudson is a good place to look at for companies coming to the Twin Cities but seeking, of course, incentives and lower taxes. Yum! (St. Croix County is Wisconsin's fastest growing and more than half the residents commute.)

Bloggers, bloggers everywhere

One nice thing going on today is the profusion of internet weblogs in places like Baghdad and Tehran. During the war Salam Pax got to be pretty well-known as 'the Baghdad Blogger.' I'd suggest looking at his look at the return of the Hashemite prince or the story of depressing Baghdad madness:

Actually we have been having pretty bad days. If you would have talked to me a week ago and I would have told you that I am very optimistic; maybe not optimistic but at least had hope. Now I can only think of two things. One of them was something my mother said while watching the news. She was watching something about the latest attacks on the "coalition forces" and their retaliation. She said that she has always wondered how people in Beirut and Jerusalem could have led any sort of lives, when their cities were practically military zones, she said she now knows how it feels to live in a city were the sight of a tank and military checkpoints asking you to get out your car and look thru your bag becomes "normal". When you turn on the TV and just hope that you don?t see more pictures of people shooting at each other.

The other thing was something a foreign acquaintance has said after spending some time in the city on a really hot day. He went in threw his hat on the floor and said loudly: "I want to inform my Iraqi friends that their country is doomed". I have no idea what that was about but the sentence just stuck to my mind.

Salam has started a photo-log too. Other Iraqi bloggers include 'G in Baghdad,' who describes an encounter with a captured Syrian teenager in an American-run hospital, or the dual reality of the Iraqi mind:

Here in Iraq every citizen was provided -since the early days of the regime- with a whole set of lies that gradually became the foundation on which you would build your perceptions of the world outside. Consequently you end up with two channels, a "channel reality" that is off the air most of the times and "channel rhetoric" a mixture of self-denial, conspiracy theory [apologia] and propaganda.

Of course we shouldn?t blame Saddam and his lies based tyrannical regime only, this phenomenon has its roots deep in our cultural/religious history. Nowadays the main question every Iraqi is trying to answer, since the removal of our beloved leader is: (how should I feel towards the Americans?) and (is the American "liberation / occupation" a good or bad thing?). Don?t expect an answer from me here, until we have our first Gallup poll in Iraq all what you will get is mere speculations-observations gibberish...

I think one of the main issues we have to face, is how to stop using the rhetoric channel, how could we stop this cog mire of stupid conspiracy theories going on and on and on how to liberate our selves from the secret police mechanisms nesting in our brains, this liberation will not be achieved by American tanks, nor by a self-denial flagellation process.

G also has a photolog going now. There's an Iraqi female blogger named Zainab writing now too.

Iran has experienced an upsurge in blogging as well, as View from Iran and Blue Bird Escape look at Iran from inside. Persian Blogger Chronicles is grad student Alireza Doostar's attempt to chart this new form of information as it emerges from Iran.

While on the topic of blogs, notorious uber-blonde right-winger Ann Coulter supposedly has a weblog now, but it hasn't really started. She must be building up steam and bleaching those locks...

There are a whole lot of other blogs out there to check out. Here's a few:

• BuzzMachine carries a nice mixture of news and looks at lots of different bloggers and viewpoints.
• Talking Points Memo is written by Josh Marshall, who has written marvellous pieces on neoconservatives for the Washington Monthly
• AndrewSullivan.com, a very widely known blogger, known for sporting a very conservative homosexual lifestyle.
• Warblogs.cc combines a lot of different feeds from Agonist.org, dailykos.com and others.
• Why not? The official Howard Dean for President weblog.
• I just found Israel's Israpundit.
• The hard core of Israel's internet crew could be found at Haganah b'Internet, perched on the right wing. Also has an amazing collection of links to Arab terrorist websites.
• Instapundit is pretty well-known random punditry.
• Tacitus provides your basic rightist, support-the-war viewpoint.
• unmedia gives a lot of various agreeable stuff.
• The guy who writesThis Modern World, that amazing pop-art political comic, also keeps a weblog. He's an articulate and funny guy.
• I just found Shi'a Pundit, with a tolerant view of religious conflict.
• Also just found USS Clueless, looking at US strategy and other such things...
• CounterSpin is pretty well known.
• If you're looking for quick and nasty things to say about Bush look at MediaChannel.org's news dissector.
• Diplomatica.org rambles on about international politics.

If those don't provide hours of entertainment I don't know what would. Apparently anyone who blogs is just enjoying secondhand reality, anyhow.

Kofi favors armed peacekeepers for holy land

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated in an interview with Haaretz that he would prefer to see an armed international force placed as a buffer between Israelis and Palestinians.

"The monitoring mechanism that will be put in place next week is a beginning and it may be enough if the parties are able to break the cycle of violence. In the interim period, I would like to see an armed peacekeeping force act as a buffer between the Israelis and Palestinians," Annan said in an interview with Haaretz...

Essentially, Annan supports the approach that was adopted by Yitzhak Rabin, and later rejected by Ariel Sharon, namely, "to fight terror as if there are no negotiations and to conduct negotiations as if there is no terror." He deems it a "mistake" not to talk as long as violence continues. He is "encouraged" by Sharon's recent statements about his commitment to the peace process and says, "I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I expect that he will deliver and that he will engage in the peace process."

The UN secretary general, who can take credit for establishing the Quartet, also does not agree with Sharon's determination to isolate Yasser Arafat. He believes the Palestinian Authority chairman still has wide influence and that it would be better "to encourage him to work for the peace process and to work to support Mr. Abbas. They need to work together for the effort to succeed." Annan asks, "Do you influence him by not talking to him? Or do you have to talk to everyone in order to have a positive influence? The developments that led to the appointment of a prime minister who is compatible with Prime Minister Sharon and President [George] Bush came out of dealing with Chairman Arafat and getting him to take positive steps. So I think he has not been entirely negative."

Annan believes that calm will not come to the Middle East without a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It is a crisis that inflames the masses in other countries. It is a crisis that inhibits some of the other leaders in the region from being more forthcoming in trying to achieve peace. It is a crisis that is exploited by the extremists and therefore it is absolutely essential that we resolve this conflict."

Chalabi: Wise on Saddam or NeoConPawn? US battles Shadowy Enemies and meddles with Tehran?

Ahmed Chalabi, the chairman of the Iraqi National Congress, is claiming that Saddam is hiding out, paying bounties for killing American soldiers, and with him are the answers about weapons.

Chalabi, 58, the leader of the Pentagon-backed Iraqi National Congress, insisted that U.S. authorities would find the former Iraqi government's hidden weapons once they locate Hussein. Chalabi maintained that Hussein is still alive and directing attacks against U.S. soldiers...

The role of Chalabi and other former Iraqi exiles in helping to build the U.S. case for war has been scrutinized recently in Washington, particularly since U.S. inspectors have not provided substantial evidence of Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons....

Chalabi is a longtime favorite of Pentagon hawks, and he traveled on a U.S. military transport plane with the U.S.-trained 700-member Iraqi Free Forces to southern Iraq during the war. But he has criticized the U.S. military for not anticipating the extent of chaos after the fall of Hussein's government. He said he had repeatedly pleaded with U.S. officials to train a force of Iraqi military police to "go in with the American force" and halt the "looting" and the "acts of disorder."

Chalabi said that the capture of Hussein and his younger son, Qusay, could still hold the key to discovering Iraq's banned weapons: "The weapons and Saddam are one and the same thing."

So who is this marvellous Chalabi? He is derided as a "hapless strutting tool of US imperialism", as Edward Said put it. An old friend of Wolfowitz and generally someone who has taken their paychecks from the CIA. Consider this article "Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy" from last November:

If T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") had been a 21st-century neoconservative operative instead of a British imperial spy, he'd be Ahmed Chalabi's best friend. Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops -- and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic hegemony. Just as Lawrence's escapades in World War I-era Arabia helped Britain remake the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, the U.S. sponsors of Chalabi's INC hope to do their own nation building....

In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael Rubin. Also included are key staffers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey.

The Washington partisans who want to install Chalabi in Arab Iraq are also those associated with the staunchest backers of Israel, particularly those aligned with the hard-right faction of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Chalabi's cheerleaders include the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). "Chalabi is the one that we know the best," says Shoshana Bryen, director of special projects for JINSA, where Chalabi has been a frequent guest at board meetings, symposia and other events since 1997. "He could be Iraq's national leader," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director of WINEP, whose board of advisers includes pro-Israeli luminaries such as Perle, Wolfowitz and Martin Peretz of The New Republic.

There is absolutely no food for thought whatsoever in that article. None.

There is a frightening level of general violence in many central Iraqi cities, as skilled guerillas probe coalition defenses. In Fallujah, there have been frequent attacks.

The hostility to U.S. forces appears to be most intense in a region west and north of Baghdad dominated by Sunni Muslims who were at the core of the Baath Party and Hussein's government. Cities such as Baqubah, Samarra, Habaniyah, Khaldiya, Fallujah and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, have been particularly dangerous for U.S. troops.

"These are military-type attacks," said Capt. John Ives, of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade in Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad. "It could get worse before it gets better. It's a matter that some people want us dead. We're just going to have to take them out." The division was recently dispatched from Baghdad to reinforce the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in west central Iraq.

In Fallujah, there are also signs of increasing organization and tactical efficiency of resisters, U.S. officers said. Some groups have begun to give themselves names -- things as simple as "The Fighters," according to graffiti on the walls in the town. Gunmen are using spotters placed along the roads or in mosques to signal the arrival of U.S. troops, Capt. Ives said. Once, someone cut electricity to a neighborhood as U.S. forces were approaching....

In Fallujah early today, a convoy of seven U.S. Humvees was attacked as the vehicles moved down Old Cinema Street, a main commercial thoroughfare. The vehicles were ambushed by rifle fire from four sides. The Americans fired at buildings on both sides of the street, chipping concrete off the facades. No one on either side was injured.

There have been attacks on U.S. forces every night in Fallujah since Wednesday, when Iraqis fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a group of soldiers positioned at a ruined police station, killing one. The assailants escaped. Fallujah has been embittered since U.S. forces killed 17 Iraqis during two separate protests in April. U.S. authorities said the soldiers fired in self-defense.

"We've got to be on our toes all the time. Eyes open, scanning the buildings. It's not tanks and infantry we're fighting anymore. It's something more hidden," said Staff Sgt. Fred Frisbie, a military policeman.

So here's the question: is this going to get better or worse? Easier or more dangerous? Will a pattern emerge in these guerilla attacks, or would the Bush administration prefer for now that you believe this is random flak from an unstable nation? The Times also reports on this tale of terror, "G.I.'s in Iraqi City Are Stalked by Faceless Enemies at Night":

Since the American command quadrupled its military presence here last week, not a day has gone by without troops weathering an ambush, a rocket-propelled grenade attack, an assault with automatic weapons or a mine blast.

American forces seem to be battling a small but determined foe who has a primitive but effective command-and-control system that uses red, blue and white flares to signal the advance of American troops. The risk does not come from random potshots. The American forces are facing organized resistance that comes alive at night...

Specialist William Fernandez experienced the enemy tactics firsthand while on patrol on Sunday night. Fernandez, a computer engineer in civilian life, was operating the radio.

When he saw a red flare he sensed his patrol was about to be attacked. Suddenly, a grenade exploded directly behind the column of six Humvees, a move he believed was intended to encourage the Americans to drive forward into the kill zone.

Automatic-weapons fire erupted from several rooftops. The Americans fired at the muzzle flashes and left the scene after several minutes. Most of the Humvees had bullet holes, but the soldiers somehow escaped injury.

"It is a miniwar," Specialist Fernandez said.

Much ado about Iran

Yet another NYT story, "On the Road to Falluja" actually details the relations between the U.S. forces and the Mujahideen Kalq, a militant (terrorist?) organization mostly funded by Iranian exiles, based in Iraq. The group is committed to overthrowing the Iranian government. Note the casual attitude to looting.

I hit the road with the troops the next day. The Spartan Brigade was like a band of nomads. They took the furniture, light fixtures, anything to make their stay in Falluja more bearable. Some soldiers even took the toilets and sinks from a bombed-out palace. They figured that the palace was a total loss and that the items could be put to better use in their new quarters, which seemed to me an eminently sensible calculation.

But what were the new quarters? As the brigade arrived, it turned out that it would be setting up camp in a compound built by the Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iranian resistance group that the Clinton administration put on its terrorist list but that asserts it does not support terror attacks against the United States and wants to make common cause against the Iranian government...

The resistance movement assumed that it could stay on the sidelines during the American-led attack on Iraq and had sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell indicating that it had no intention of opposing the American invasion. The United States bombed their bases anyway.

After the war, the United States concluded an agreement with the group, which resulted in the handing over of its tanks, artillery and other weapons. They are stored at a camp under American supervision. Thousands of the group's fighters and supporters live at a camp at Ashraf, north of Baghdad.

But at the sprawling compound here, where the Spartan Brigade was setting up Camp, the American military presence was their immediate concern. The compound was the resistance movement's rear logistics base and includes a 100-bed hospital for women, including female fighters, that had been stripped bare by looters after the war. It also has an underground bunker system that is outfitted with a filtration system, a precaution that they say is against an Iranian missile attack.

The movement says it spent $15 million building the complex, using funds donated by Iranian businesspeople within Iran and in exile. The compound was abandoned after the Americans bombed part of it during the war to topple Mr. Hussein, but now the Iranians want to move hundreds of its women here.

Can we say 'freedom fighters'? Can we call this crew those magic words: a P-R-O-X-Y F-O-R-C-E against Iran? A press release of the Iranian government news agency is quite annoyed with the Bush administration for threatening to interfere with Iranian politics. These are useful to look at because they indicate Iran's basic public claims. (link: Agonist)

"If the United States desires friendship with Iran, it would naturally be expected not to interfere in Iranian domestic affairs and show respect for the decisions of the Iranian people and their values," Kharrazi said in response to Powell's statement that the US is not an enemy of Iran.

He said that Washington should be familiarized with Iranian history which proves that the people become even more united whenever the country is exposed to foreign interference. Kharrazi noted that the US secretary of state was aware as gathered from his message that the Iranians will not accept foreign interference in the affairs of their country.

The Iranian foreign minister blasted Powell for calling on Iranians to stand up against their government officials and interact freely with the outside world. Powell's latest statement hints at a desire on the part of Washington to resume friendship with Iran, but ironically not a single day passes without a new conspiracy emerging to tarnish the image of the Islamic Republic before the international community.

Moreover, since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran the United States has spared no effort at blocking Iran's economic progress on various pretexts.

So is the United States after Iran? That's the question in the Senate right now. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is addressing this, and there seems to be great confusion and 'no debate' according to Condi, simultaneously. There hasn't been that much debate lately... (Link: Agonist)

Judging by several interviews of committee members from both parties, a consensus seems to have emerged that President Bush has yet to formulate a clear-cut policy toward Iran, which has been seen as a hostile power since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran....

"I don't think they have a policy," said Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), ranking member of the foreign-relations panel, last week. Biden was reacting to unconfirmed intelligence reports that suggested al Qaeda operatives in the Islamic republic had helped plan the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

"I think it's kind of loose talk to be talking about fomenting a revolution in Iran because I think it undercuts the very people in Iran that we should be giving support to ? that is the moderates, who are not necessarily pro-Western, pro-American, but they are democrats with a small d," Biden said...

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described Iran?s efforts [to stop developing nuclear tech] so far as insufficient, while one administration official questioned why a country with state-owned oil would need nuclear energy. "Why would they need to develop nuclear fuel for a reactor?" he asked.

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has said that the administration has no intention of debating the future of U.S. policy in Iran. "There really isn?t a debate on this issue," she told Reuters.

Thousands of students protested in Tehran yesterday, getting angry about their government. The demonstrators were dispersed by riot police. (Link: Agonist)

To round out a lot of good news, Bush is going to cause the biggest budget deficit in the history of the United States. A liberal complaint is all I have, a criticism, if you will, of the 'conservative' party and their proven fiscal agility. Do they really always have to run the tab up so much every time they get into the White House? This red ink is not just an abstraction, it's a burden of debt that my generation will have to manage. When will they start to tack it down? 2008?

Cali judge lets off medicinal marijuana grower

Ed Rosenthal, convicted of growing medicinal marijuana, was sentenced to a day in prison (already served) and fined $1000, the minimum federal sentence. Now Rosenthal wants to fight to eliminate federal marijuana laws.

This is Day 1 in the crusade to bring down the marijuana laws," Mr. Rosenthal said at a news conference held on a parking lot rented by his supporters. "The federal government makes no distinction between medical and recreational marijuana. They're right. All marijuana should be legal."

Though there was general consensus that the sentencing today did not amount to a legal breakthrough for advocates of medical marijuana, some predicted it would embolden the movement to challenge federal drug laws. Nine states, including California, allow the sick and dying to smoke or grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.

"I think 20 years from now, when historians look back at how the federal war on medical marijuana ended, this will be the hinge point," said Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group in Washington.

But Richard Meyer, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said the sentencing would have no effect on the agency's work. "We are not listening to them," Mr. Meyer said of the marijuana advocates. "We will continue to protect the public from the dangers of all illegal drugs."

So that's what the DEA says here. Protecting people from illegal drugs. Another AP story illustrates the real agenda of the drug czar.

Rosenthal, who dropped out of college in 1967, had a brief stint as a stockbroker before becoming interested in marijuana cultivation and helping launch High Times magazine. He's authored several books on marijuana, including "The Big Book of Buds" and "Ask Ed: Marijuana Law. Don't Get Busted."

Despite the lenient sentence, Rosenthal filed his notice of appeal Thursday. [He] will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider whether Breyer erred in excluding medical marijuana evidence from the trial.

The appeals court also will be asked whether a city or municipality may grant immunity to people growing and distributing medical marijuana. It's the same protection offered to undercover police officers buying drugs, Riordan said. The law says "any official who's enforcing state or federal law relating to drugs cannot be arrested," he said.

California's Proposition 215, which allows marijuana as medicine, was passed by voters in 1996. Eight other states also have declared medical marijuana legal, though federal authorities say any marijuana use is illegal.

Deputy U.S. drug czar Andrea Barthwell, in San Francisco on Thursday visiting a drug treatment center, called the notion of smoking pot for medicinal purposes "silly."

"We prefer to deliver the active ingredient in the pill form," she said, referring to the drug Marinol, which contains a synthetic form of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. "We do not want to encourage patients to smoke weed ... or smoke opium when we have much more effective ways of delivering that stuff."

Rosenthal was arrested Feb. 12, 2002, for marijuana cultivation and conspiracy. He had been growing starter plants in a warehouse in Oakland, in his capacity as an "officer of the city" under the city's medical marijuana ordinance. The plants were distributed to organizations and clubs that serve the seriously ill.

Serving the seriously ill... not an effective enough way of delivering that stuff. Experts think that the Bush administration will try hard to fight medicinal marijuana, but perhaps it indicates a "change in the political center of gravity."

"I'm highly doubtful whether the Bush administration will allow one federal district judge to stop its program," said Evan Lee, a professor of criminal law and federal courts at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. But Lee said Wednesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer "lends a great measure of legitimacy" to medical marijuana advocates' criticism of federal policies.

In light of Breyer's solid judicial reputation, Lee said, some public officials may conclude that "the political center of gravity isn't where (they) thought it was," a shift that might ultimately force a change in administration policy.

"It seems to me unlikely that the feds are going to give up very easily on this issue," said Jeffrey Miron, an economics professor at Boston University and research associate at the libertarian Independent Institute.

Miron, the Boston professor whose forthcoming book, "Drug War Crimes," endorses drug legalization, said the federal government is right in one respect: Medical marijuana legalization laws have the potential of crippling overall marijuana enforcement.

"These laws have an enormous impact because there are so many conditions for which you can use marijuana as medicine," he said. "The feds understand that (allowing medical marijuana) would open the floodgates" and will maintain their hard line on the issue, he said.

Wellstone and electropulse gun conspiracies, prep schools bloat and the omniscient Friedman

Today's Star Tribune features a story on the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Paul Wellstone. Most likely it was a random accident, but as Ted Rall said, we can't ignore the remote possibility of a harsh government killing its most powerful liberal opponent. Was Wellstone worth assassinating? I think so. i think my favorite theory is the electromagnetic pulse assassination:

Discounting weather, pilot error or mechanical problems in Wellstone's flight, Fetzer's articles have seized on the possibility of sabotage brought on by a futuristic electromagnetic pulse weapon that he said could have disabled the plane's computerized components. Evidence for this, he said in an interview, was the absence of any distress call from the pilots and the odd cell-phone experience reported by St. Louis County lobbyist John Ongaro.

Ongaro, who was near the airport when Wellstone's plane went down, has dismissed the significance of his experience, in which he said his cell phone made "strange" sounds and then disconnected. "It's not unusual for cell phones to cut out, especially in northern Minnesota," he said.

The Democrats are conflicted, believe it or not. Kerry and Dean are dickering with each other, as Dean has been the most outspoken, grassroots oriented Democrat to run. Is there a conflict between the D grassroots, (Wellstone's bread and butter), versus the Democratic national leadership? (link Nick)

The contest for the 2004 Democratic nomination cannot be understood apart from two factors. One is the intense opposition to Bush at the Democratic grass roots. The other is the widely held sense that the party's older strategies and internal arguments are inadequate to its current problems. Candidates can't win if they address only one of these concerns. But addressing both at the same time will require a political magic that Democrats haven't seen yet.

Private schools in Minnesota are undergoing a growth spurt, according to an article in today's Strib. Would Mounds Park do something similar? Well, you gotta keep up with Blake and Minnehaha, dontcha?

Nick was happy with Thomas Friedman in the times yesterday, talking a big game about the whole theory of everything and generally disreputing the usual targets. Friedman is funny, I like to think of him as this guy from St. Louis Park, travelling about on an exciting personal journey to illuminate the whole everything (particularly the Middle East) for confused American liberals. Yet he seems to sugarcoat the corruption inherent in the way America has managed so much. Does he pull it off?

Why didn't nations organize militarily against the U.S.? Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World," answers: "One prominent international relations school ? the realists ? argues that when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it. But because the world basically understands that America is a benign hegemon, the ganging up does not take the shape of warfare. Instead, it is an effort to Gulliverize America, an attempt to tie it down, using the rules of the World Trade Organization or U.N. ? and in so doing demanding a vote on how American power is used."
There is another reason for this nonmilitary response. America's emergence as the hyperpower is happening in the age of globalization, when economies have become so intertwined that China, Russia, France or any other rivals cannot hit the U.S. without wrecking their own economies.
The only people who use violence are rogues or nonstate actors with no stakes in the system, such as Osama bin Laden. Basically, he is in a civil war with the Saudi ruling family. But, he says to himself, "The Saudi rulers are insignificant. To destroy them you have to hit the hegemonic power that props them up ? America."
Hence, 9/11. This is where the story really gets interesting. Because suddenly, Puff the Magic Dragon ? a benign U.S. hegemon touching everyone economically and culturally ? turns into Godzilla, a wounded, angry, raging beast touching people militarily. Now, people become really frightened of us, a mood reinforced by the Bush team's unilateralism. With one swipe of our paw we smash the Taliban. Then we turn to Iraq. Then the rest of the world says, "Holy cow! Now we really want a vote over how your power is used." That is what the whole Iraq debate was about. People understood Iraq was a war of choice that would affect them, so they wanted to be part of the choosing. We said, sorry, you don't pay, you don't play.

Oh dear, the lack of weapons of mass destruction is blowing a mess all over the place. Paul Krugman is pounding away as usual today on the Bush crew and their addiction to 'spin.'

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters ? a group that includes a large segment of the news media ? obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we're in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent ? who supported Britain's participation in the war ? writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks."

Sounds like nothing but liberal excuses to me. Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken got in a huge argument over liberal media bias on CSPAN. However what was shown on TV was edited to provide its own perspective. (The fair and balanced Fox News story) I can't seem to find a transcript of the argument around, but here is a story about the whole book fair they were at, which seems to have been overtly political this year. (AP)

Bush whorin' for baccy, dangerous Canadians and the new iBling

The Washington Post is righteously angry over the Bush Administration's efforts to redraw an international treaty on tobacco, to make it easier for tobacco companies to push around small nations, and prey upon teenagers. (link from Nick) Real compassionate conservatism:

Although domestic sales of cigarettes are shrinking, Philip Morris International announced that it expects its earnings to grow 10 percent this year, continuing the trend of this decade. In many of its growing markets, such as Russia, Cambodia and Poland, there are fewer obstacles to practices such as distributing free cigarettes in clubs teenagers are known to frequent. For these countries, the treaty is the best defense against the lobbying of big tobacco companies. Like any international treaty, this one would lose clout if the United States failed to sign. But it would lose all its meaning if the Bush administration won this last concession.

A dangerous Canadian writes that "U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties," in the Ottowa Citizen. It's all in response to a report from the US State Dept. about terrorism trends and lazy unsecured Canucks. This has much to do with Canadian privacy rights, and even Canadian policy on marijuana.

The same report took issue with Canada's move to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketing offence rather than a criminal one. "This will not only harm Canadian society, but have consequences for the United States as well," the report said. Justice Minister Martin Cauchon reiterated yesterday that legislation to decriminalize marijuana will be tabled soon.

Don't the maple leaf people understand moral certainty?!(slashdot link) I wonder what the consequences of that legal reform would be for a border state like us. Hmmmmmmmm...

On a very positive digital note, Apple Computer's new iTunes Music Store sold more than a million songs in its first week. Apple released iTunes 4, which has sweet new features such as streaming your whole music library over networks. The mighty Steve Jobs happily declared, "In less than one week we?ve broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world. Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age?you can purchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods." The man has a touch of hubris, but he's right. Apple wins! I am pleased as punch to be an Apple shareholder today. Hells yeah!

Oakland police fire riot weapons on protesters

In Oakland CA today protesters blocked the road entry of a company with a contract to handle shipping in Umm-Qasr, Iraq. The protesters clashed with police (they claim metal bolts were tossed) and the police attacked the crowd with various riot-gear weapons such as wooden blocks and rubber bullets. There is a pretty shocking video on San Francisco Indymedia. The video was by a protester who gets wounded by the police about halfway through. And there's a monorail in the background.

The battle for Mesopotamia: surrender not likely

?The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." ?Dick Cheney the Experienced Liberator, 1996. (Quote from the excellent collection of war-related documents and evidence, cooperativeresearch.org. Thx to Schwartz)

The war plows on as Americans are forced away from every major Iraqi city. Lacking the popular favor to safely attack ancient Arab cities, they have been forced into waiting and firing blind missiles and bombs... You can say they are smart and that they minimize civilian casualties. ONLY PEACE minimizes civilian casualties.

So how can we perceive what is going on? Media chickens ride along with the American troops, unable to describe the random tactics of the Anglo-Saxon "coalition." They cannot directly expose the flip side, the lives of people who are actually getting the life bombed out of them by American planes. The media plays elusive games, obsessing over rumors of Saddam's duplication while ignoring what he has to say. With all these reporters driving around the desert in humvees, there have often been vast stretches of time where human interest stories flood out everything else. Because Iraq is not turning over like the neocon 'idealists' predicted. So what do you do to get the real story? One excellent site is The Agonist, with constant news updates from all sides. Want to know how smart YOU are? Take the Iraq quiz. Thx again to Schwartz!

Un-embedded and longtime war reporter Robert Fisk covers Baghdad, outside the walls of media censorship. From the scene of at least 20 dead innocent Arabs in Baghdad:

It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still smoldering car. Two missiles from a single American jet killed them all ? more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be ?liberated? by the nation which destroyed their lives.

Who dares, I ask myself, to call this ?collateral damage?? Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm that covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of red and yellow dust and rain yesterday morning. It?s a dirt poor neighborhood ? of mostly Shiite Muslims, the same people whom Messers Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against Saddam ? a place of oil-sodden car repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafes.

It is all too likely that we have stumbled badly in managing the political climate of the Middle East prior to engaging Saddam. Robert Fisk reported yesterday from outside Baghdad:

A senior Iraqi business executive wanted to explain how slender was the victory the Americans were claiming. "Throughout history, Iraq has been called Mesopotamia," he said. "This means 'the land between the two rivers'. So unless you are between the two rivers, this means you are not in Iraq. General Franks should know this." Alas for the businessman, the US Marines were, as we spoke, crossing the Euphrates under fire at Nasiriyah yesterday as hundreds of women and children fled their homes between the bridges. But still, by yesterday evening, only 50 or so American tanks had made it to the eastern shore, into "Mesopotamia". It didn't spoil the man's enthusiasm.

"Can you imagine the effect on the Arabs if Iraq gets out of this war intact?" he asked. "It took just five days for all the Arabs to be defeated by Israel in the 1967 war. And already we Iraqis have been fighting the all-powerful Americans for five days and still we have held on to all of our cities and will not surrender. And imagine what would happen if Iraq surrendered. What chance would the Syrian leadership have against the demands of Israel? What chance would the Palestinians have of negotiating a fair deal with the Israelis? The Americans don't care about giving the Palestinians a fair deal. So why should they want to give the Iraqis a fair deal?"

This was no member of the Baath Party speaking. This was a man with degrees from universities in Manchester and Birmingham. A colleague had an even more cogent point to make. "Our soldiers know they will not get a fair deal from the Americans," he said. "It's important that they know this. We may not like our regime. But we fight for our country. The Russians did not like Stalin but they fought under him against the German invaders. We have a long history of fighting the colonial powers, especially you British. You claim you are coming to 'liberate' us. But you don't understand. What is happening now is we are starting a war of liberation against the Americans and the British."

Fisk also had an excellent interview with Democracy Now on March 25th. How experienced do TV reporters sound, really? How much do they bother considering a history that is longer than 12 years?

....As the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music- and they were greeted with bullets. I think you see what has happened is that -- and as he pointed out -- the American administration and the US press lectured everybody about how the country would break apart where Shiites hated Sunnis and Sunnis hated Turkmen and Turkmen hated Kurds, and so on. And yet, most of the soldiers fighting in southern Iraq are actually Shiite. They?re not Sunnis, they?re not Tikritis, they?re not from Saddam?s home city. Saddam did not get knocked off his perch straight away, and I think that, to a considerable degree, the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush- I?m talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people?people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform- nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country- they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy that Mr. Bush has put on offer-as reality.

And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn?t matter whether that?s carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba?ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I?m sure, but they don?t want to live under American occupation...

...Very soon, the Americans are going to need the United Nations as desperately as they wanted to get rid of them. Because if this turns into the tragedy that it is turning into at the moment, if the Americans end up, by besieging Baghdad day after day after day, they?ll be looking for a way out, and the only way out is going to be the United Nations at which point, believe me, the French and the Russians are going to make sure that George Bush passes through some element of humiliation to do that. But that?s some way away. Remember what I said early on to you. The Americans can do it- they have the firepower. They may need more than 250,000 troops, but if they?re willing to sacrifice lives of their own men, as well as lives of the Iraqis, they can take Baghdad; they can come in.

But, you know, I look down from my balcony here next to the Tigris River- does that mean we?re going to have an American tank on every intersection in Baghdad? What are they there for- to occupy? To repress? To run an occupation force against the wishes of Iraqis? Or are they liberators? It?s very interesting how the reporting has swung from one side to another. Are these liberating forces or occupying forces? Every time I hear a journalist say ?liberation?, I know he means ?occupation?. We come back to the same point again which Mr. (Richard) Perle will not acknowledge; because this war does not have a UN sanction behind it?I mean not in the sense of sanctions but that it doesn?t have permission behind it, it is a war without international legitimacy, and the longer it goes on, the more it hurts Bush and the less it hurts Saddam. And we?re now into one week, and there isn?t even a single American soldier who has even approached the city of Baghdad yet. And the strange thing, looking at it from here in Baghdad, is the ad hoc way in which this war appears to be carried out.

In a critical development, an Iraqi Shi'ite leader declared that the United States must leave the country immediately after Hussein is toppled, or they will soon face armed resistance. The leader of the Iraqi Shiite Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, declared that "The world does not approve of any colonialism or occupation, and we will take peaceful measures in this respect at the beginning but we will use force later." So much for those multi-year Halliburton contracts that have already been signed.

You need to read this: Thank God for the Death of the United Nations by Richard Perle:

...For Lady Williams (and many others), the thumb on the scale of judgment about this war is the idea that only the UN security council can legitimise the use of force. It matters not if troops are used only to enforce the UN's own demands. A willing coalition of liberal democracies isn't good enough. If any institution or coalition other than the UN security council uses force, even as a last resort, "anarchy", rather than international law, would prevail, destroying any hope for world order.

This is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral and even existential politico-military decisions, to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France. When challenged with the argument that if a policy is right with the approbation of the security council, how can it be wrong just because communist China or Russia or France or a gaggle of minor dictatorships withhold their assent, she fell back on the primacy of "order" versus "anarchy"....

This new century now challenges the hopes for a new world order in new ways. We will not defeat or even contain fanatical terror unless we can carry the war to the territories from which it is launched. This will sometimes require that we use force against states that harbour terrorists, as we did in destroying the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The most dangerous of these states are those that also possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is one, but there are others. Whatever hope there is that they can be persuaded to withdraw support or sanctuary from terrorists rests on the certainty and effectiveness with which they are confronted. The chronic failure of the security council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognise that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.

Yes, if you believe that 3 of 5 permanent members of the Security Council will never agree to your aggression and advocacy of military hegemony, then the UN has little value. But is Perle after Israel's regional hegemony, or America's? Is there a difference these days?

Scholars of Japan's Allied occupation oppose Iraq war

As we go forward to a glorious and overwhelming victory in the valley of civilization, some weakling pacifists ('professors') are objecting to the so-called 'Japanese model' of post-war occupation and rebuilding. Perhaps their strongest argument is that our government has not actually trained people in Iraqi society and culture, to help build a new civil order:

U.S. policy planning for postwar Japan began three years before the defeat. Thousands of Americans studied Japan's history and language and, in the last year of the war, underwent intensive training in civil administration. The occupation succeeded due in part to the detailed knowledge these administrative experts acquired about Japan's social and political institutions and culture. There is no evidence that the United States is now preparing a similar group of dedicated experts or developing comparable post-invasion policies consonant with Iraq's history, political system, and culture.

Cross your fingers. Everything will work out.

House Republicans get their freedom fried

The mysterious and vocal rift between the United States and France continues to deepen as House Republicans acted to change menu wording in their 3 cafeterias. Starting immediately, House office buildings will quit serving 'French' fries and 'French' toast.

"This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Like that one diner, they are now serving 'freedom fries' and 'freedom toast.' Yes, the most prudent thing to do is continue slapping the French with more white gloves, until they surrender the right to dissent. A Gaul countermove? Perhaps they should demand we return the statue of liberty. Thanx to Schwartz for the link.

Afghan prisoners beaten to death at US military base

Two prisoners of the US military were beaten to death at an interrogation prison in Afghanistan, according to a March 7 article in the UK's Guardian. The autopsies verified that both died of blunt force injuries and have been classified as 'homicides.' But we are in the land of the free, which means that the government hasn't really covered it up. But has this story been covered in the United States?

It is believed that the recently captured Al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is also being held at this base. I wonder how the CIA is interrogating him.