Goals, resources & tactics in a "New Middle East": it's still about WATER and OIL, folks

Iraqi intuition: As Joe Biden and Chris Matthews talked about on Hardball the other night, apparently President Bush did not expect Iraqi Shiites to support Hezbollah. This is the shrewd leadership of the War on Terror, folks. Sy Hersh was talking about how Cheney's office spoofed the intelligence on Lebanon and Israel. Again, the rosy shock-and-awe type scenarios failed tactically and stategically, as they always do. Strategic bombing never really works.

Apparently, The Pentagon's Air Force types were convinced Israel's planned tactical air campaign (long planned) would work. According to Hersh and others, the Marines and the Army are very skeptical about attacking Iran, since they would get sent in to invade Iran when the Air Force plan fails. It turns out that the intuitions of the Pentagon skeptics were right, not surprisingly. Any kind of military action on Iran would make our whole Middle East situation completely fall apart – and yes, the Iranians have a lot of fancy missiles they've bought with all the oil money. Iran's mountainous terrain makes South Lebanon look like a golf course.

This image comes from former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Pat Lang's blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, which has had some of the best commentary on the tactics between the IDF and Hezbollah.

Various commentaries: "How I found myself with the Islamic fascists" by Jonathan Cook. This essay would make Bill O'Reilly's head explode. "Israel, Defeated: Round one: Lebanon, 1 – Israel, 0" by Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com.

Huzzah for Shias: Check out the book review of The Shia Revival.

Hezbollah's suicide bombers in past campaigns were mostly not Shiite: this is fascinating because it indicates that 'religion' per se is not the motivating factor for suicide attacks. What is? Foreign military occupation. Evidence: Professor Robert Pape found this, posted in the Guardian: What we still don't understand about Hizbollah, August 6:

This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism and that the West must engage politically to halt the relentless slaughter: Israel has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat Hizbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won't work either. The problem is not that the Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they misunderstand the nature of the enemy.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable with, say, a religious cult such as the Taliban than to the multi-dimensional American civil rights movement of the 1960s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.

Evidence of the broad nature of Hizbollah's resistance to Israeli occupation can be seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hizbollah conducted a broad campaign of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from 1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks, which included the infamous bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, involved 41 suicide terrorists. Researching my book, which covered all 462 suicide bombings around the globe, I had colleagues scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and biographies of the Hizbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon. What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hizbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.

Previous analyses of suicide terrorism have not had the benefit of a complete survey of all suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. The lack of complete data, together with the fact that many such attacks, including all those against Americans, have been committed by Muslims, has led many in the US to assume that Islamic fundamentalism must be the underlying main cause. This, in turn, has fuelled a belief that anti-American terrorism can be stopped only by wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, which helped create public support of the invasion of Iraq. But study of the phenomenon of suicide terrorism shows that the presumed connection to Islamic fundamentalism is misleading.

There is not the close connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism that many people think. Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign occupation.

Understanding that suicide terrorism is not a product of Islamic fundamentalism has important implications for how the US and its allies should conduct the war on terrorism. Spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a panacea as long as foreign troops remain on the Arabian peninsula. The obvious solution might well be simply to abandon the region altogether. Isolationism, however, is not possible; America needs a new strategy that pursues its vital interest in oil but does not stimulate the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists. The same is true of Israel now.....

The backdrop is energy resources, and water too. From The Wilderness teased a pay story:

AS THE WORLD REELS FROM ISRAELI ATTACKS ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS DURING THE PAST THREE WEEKS, CULMINATING IN THIS WEEKEND'S ATROCITIES AT QANA, WE HEAR LITTLE ABOUT THE PIPELINE POLITICS AND WATER ISSUES BEHIND THE SCENES. BUT ISRAEL'S DESPERATE MILITARY MADNESS CANNOT BE FULLY UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT GRASPING THE FRANTIC RESOURCE WARS THAT FORM THE BACKDROP OF THE CURRENT MIDDLE EAST CARNAGE.

True enough. Encircling the Shiite's area of oilfields is important to guys like Dick Cheney. The situation in Iraq is fueled by the conflict over Iraq's oil revenue, of course. That crazy relief map is from here. It shows the Rumaila and other key oilfields around the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. Rumaila was one of the key reasons Saddam invaded Kuwait. He claimed they were slant-drilling under the border, which was probably true since the Kuwaitis are dickheads.

Here is a map of the Sunni-Shiite distribution. In my opinion it actually doesn't show the Shiites of eastern Saudi Arabia correctly, but oh well... Shiites are darker.

And here is the famous Iraq oil map (PDF) from Cheney's energy task force:

There is this kind of strategy to encircle the general area... The Christian Science Monitor had this badass map showing where American troops are, relative to the pipelines: (more on this here)

I don't know what the hell this is, some kind of "heat map", but it looks cool from a cool-looking site:

The Israelis are holding the Golan Heights because of water, as they tell you, and the West Bank wall is laid out to cut off many wells from Palestinian access. The largest settlement in the West Bank, Ariel, is situated on a ridge area in the north, directly above the main aquifer. One wonders why the Litani River is such a big deal anyway. More on Ariel.

source (more)

I recommend reading this page about Israel's water wars. It's very relevant. For your comparison here, the 'nose' of the West Bank that juts just outside of the red mountain aquifer is Kalkilya - the northern West Bank's westernmost Palestinian city. Ariel, the most horizontal blob, is centered on the red aquifer, as you can see with the power of imagination (since the American media is never going to fucking tell you this).

Source of this one - direct:

Iran noise: so we've gathered that this whole thing was an overture to a war in Iran (aka "World War III"). As one pretty pissed off international studies professor, Alon Ben-Meir put it:

The war of perception: Israel`s failure will undoubtedly embolden Iran to challenge it at a different time and circumstance, while Syria may decide that Israel is not such a formidable military after all and resort to more aggressive tactics to regain the Golan.

Hamas` resolve to resist Israel may harden, and Hezbollah which, by every objective military standard, suffered a strategic defeat, has already emerged as triumphant in the eyes of the Arab world for having withstood the Israeli onslaught with valor, may be emboldened to lie in wait for the next confrontation.

Having lost the war of perception Israel must be careful not to translate this into real strategic losses in dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict or with Iran.
.......
The real danger in the future comes from Iran, and it looms extremely large. If it is to respond effectively, Israel must develop strategies that deny Iran not just the opportunity to meddle in the Arab-Israeli conflict but make Tehran fear for its very existence, and so refrain from even contemplating any act of hostility against Israel.

An Israel that is, rightly or wrongly, perceived as weak, will simply invite more serious military challenges because Israel`s real enemies like Iran are relentless, and now they smell blood.

That's all for now. I really like maps!

Hezbollah tactics and weaponry: the analysis rolls in

Now that the dust is settling, we are hearing reports from the field about what exactly Hezbollah was doing down in South Lebanon. For more military analyses look at this excellent thread on Agonist.org Lessons Learned. Guys like William Lind have good stuff too.

For the moment, we are going to post a big chunk of Anthony Cordesman's summary of the whole damn thing. The press conference is here (PDF), the actual doc is here.

Center for Strategic and International Studies
1800 K Street, N.W. • Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20006
Phone: 1 (202) 775-3270 • Fax: 1 (202) 457-8746
Web: http://www.csis.org/burke/
Preliminary “Lessons” of the Israeli-Hezbollah War (PDF)
Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy acordesman@aol.com
Working Draft for Outside Comment, Revised: August 17, 2006
[Page 16]....
Lessons and Insights into Various Tactical,
Technological, and Other Military Aspects of the War
Once again, it is important to stress that many key details of the tactics, technology, and
other aspects of the fighting are not yet clear. There are, however, several additional
lessons that do seem to emerge from the conflict.
High Technology Asymmetric Warfare
There is virtually no controversy over whether the fighting with the Hezbollah shows just
how well a non-State actor can do when it achieves advanced arms, and has strong
outside support from state actors like Iran and Syria. Top-level Israeli intelligence
personnel and officers stated that most aspects of the Hezbollah build-up did not surprise
them in the six years following Israel’s withdrawal in Lebanon.

Mosad officials stated that they had tracked the deployment of some 13,000 Katyushas,
far more sophisticated Iranian medium and long-range artillery rockets and guided
missiles (Zelzal 3), better surface-to-air missiles like the SA-14, SA-16, and possibly SA-
8 and SA-18, the CS-801 anti-ship missile, and several more capable anti-tank weapons
like the AT-3 Sagger Two and Kornet. They also identified the armed UAV the
Hezbollah used as either the Iranian Mirsad-1 or Ababil-3 Swallow.

Israeli intelligence officials also stated that they knew some 100 Iranian advisors were
working with the Hezbollah, and that they knew Iran not only maintained high volumes
of deliveries, but also had created a Hezbollah command center for targeting and
controlling missile fire with advanced C2 assets and links to UAVs. They noted that they
had warnings of better sniper rifles, night vision devices, and communications as well as
of technical improvements to the IEDs, bombs, and booby traps that the Hezbollah had
used before the Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli officials and officers were not consistent about the scale or nature of the
technology transfer to the Hezbollah or of how many weapons they had. In broad terms,
however, they agreed on several points.
Hezbollah Rocket and Missile Forces
Israel faced a serious local threat from some 10,000-16,000 shorter-range regular and
extended range versions of the Kaytusha. These are small artillery rockets with individual
manportable launchers. The rockets have small warheads and ranges of 19-28 kilometers
(12-18 miles) that can only strike about 11-19 kilometers (7-12 miles) into Israel unless
launched right at the border. They can easily be fired in large numbers from virtually any
position or building, and the Hezbollah had a limited capacity for ripple fire that partly
made up for the fact that such weapons were so inaccurate that they hit at random, could
only be aimed at town-sized targets, and had very small warheads. They were, however,
more than adequate to force substantial evacuations, paralyze local economic activity,
and drive the Israelis that remained to shelters.
Israeli officers and officials made it clear that Israel’s real reason for going to war,
however, was the steady deployment of medium and longer range systems, and the
potential creation of a major Iranian and Syrian proxy missile force that could hit targets
throughout Israel.
This force included Syrian 220mm rockets and systems like the Fajr 3, with ranges of 45-
75 kilometers, capable of striking targets as far south as Haifa and Naharia. The IAF was
able to destroy most of the Iranian Fajr 3 launchers the first night of the war, but the IDF
did not know the Syrian rockets were present.
The Fajr 3, or Ra’ad, has a range of 45 kilometers, a 45-kilogram warhead, a 240-mm
diameter, a 5.2-meter length, and a weight of 408 kilograms.

A total of some 24-30 launchers and launch vehicles, carrying up to 14 rockets each, seem to have been present.
The IAF feels it destroyed virtually all launchers that fired after the first few days, but
Israeli officers did not provide an estimate of how many actually survived.
They also included the Syrian 302-mm artillery rockets and Fajr 5, with ranges of 75 and
higher kilometers. The IAF again feels that it was able to destroy most of the Iranian Fajr
5 launchers the first night of the war, but the IDF again did not know the Syrian 302-mm
rockets were present.
The Fajr 5 is launched from a mobile platform with up to four rockets per launcher, and
has a maximum range of 75 kilometers, a 45-kilogram warhead, a 333-mm diameter, a
6.48-meter length, and a weight of 915 kilograms.

A total of some 24-30 launchers and launch vehicles seem to have been present. Again, the IAF feels it destroyed virtually all
launchers that fired after the first few days, but Israeli officers did not provide an estimate
of how many actually survived.
The level of Hezbollah capabilities with the Zelzal 1, 2, and 3 and other possible systems
has been described earlier. These missiles have ranges of 115-220 kilometers. The Zelzal
2 is known to be in Hezbollah hands and illustrates the level of technology involved. It is
a derivative of the Russian FROG 7, and has a range in excess of 115 kilometers. It has a
610-mm diameter, a 8.46-meter length, and a weight of 3,545 kilograms.

It requires a large TEL vehicle with a large target signature.
Anti-Ship Missiles
The Hezbollah C-802 missile that damaged an Israeli Sa’ar 5, one of Israel’s latest and
most capable ships, struck the ship when it was not using active countermeasures. It may
or may not have had support from the coastal radar operated by Lebanese military fires
destroyed by IAF forces the following day.
According to Global Security, the Yingji YJ-2 (C-802) is powered by a turbojet with
paraffin-based fuel. It is subsonic (0.9 Mach), weighs 715 kilograms, has a range 120
kilometers, and a 165 kilogram (363 lb.). It has a small radar cross section and skims
about five to seven meters above the sea surface when it attacks the target. It has good
anti-jamming capability.
Anti-Armor Systems
The IDF faced both older anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) threats like the AT-3 Sagger,
AT-4 Spigot, and AT-5 Spandrel—each of which is a wire-guided system but which
become progressively more effective and easier to operate as the model number
increases.

The IDF also faced far more advanced weapons like the Russian AT-13 Metis-
M which only requires the operator to track the target, and the AT-14 Kornet-E, a third
generation system, that can be used to attack tanks fitted with explosive reactive armor,
and bunkers, buildings, and entrenched troops. Many of these systems bore serial
numbers that showed they came directly from Syria, but others may have come from Iran.

The AT-14 is a particularly good example of the kind of high technology weapon the US
may face in future asymmetric wars. It can be fitted to vehicles or used as a crew-portable
system.

It has thermal sights for night warfare and tracking heat signatures, and the
missile has semi-automatic command-to-line-of-sight laser beam-riding guidance. It flies
along the line of sight to engage the target head-on in a direct attack profile. It has a
nominal maximum range of 5 kilometers. It can be fitted with tandem shaped charge
HEAT warheads to defeat tanks fitted with reactive armor, or with high
explosive/incendiary warheads, for use against bunkers and fortifications. Maximum
penetration is claimed to be up to 1,200mm.
Other systems include a greatly improved version of the 105.2-mm rocket-propelled
grenade called the RPG-29 or Vampire. This is a much heavier system than most
previous designs. It is a two-man crew weapon with a 450-meter range, and with an
advanced 4.5-kilogram grenade that can be used to attack both armor and bunkers and
buildings. Some versions are equipped with night sights.

The IDF saw such weapons used with great tactical skill, and few technical errors,
reflecting the ease with which third generation ATGMs can be operated. They did serious
damage to buildings as well as armor. The Hezbollah also showed that it could use the
same “swarm” techniques to fire multiple rounds at the same target at the same time often
used in similar ambushes in Iraq. As of August 11th, however, a total of 60 armored
vehicles of all types (reports these were all tanks are wrong) had been hit. Most continued
to operate or were rapidly repaired in the field and restored to service. Only 5-6 of all
types represented a lasting vehicle kill.

Anti-Aircraft
The IDF estimates that the Hezbollah at least have the SA-7 and SA-14 manportable
surface-to-air missile system, probably have the SA-16, and may have the SA-18. The
SA-14 and SA-16 are much more advanced than the SA-7, but still possible to counter
with considerable success. The SA-18 Grouse (Igla 9K38) is more problematic.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, it is an improved variant of the SA-
14 that uses a similar thermal battery/gas bottle, and the same 2 kilogram high-explosive
warhead fitted with a contact and grazing fuse. The missile, however, is a totally new
design and has much greater operational range and speed. It has a maximum range of
5200 meters and a maximum altitude of 3500 meters, and uses an IR guidance system
with proportional convergence logic, and much better protection against electro-optical
jammers.

It is possible that it may have been given a few SA-8 Gecko (Russian 9K33 Osa) SAM
systems that are vehicle mounted, radar-guided systems with up to a 10-kilomter range,
and six missiles per vehicle.

The IDF is concerned that these systems would allow the Hezbollah to set up “ambushes”
of a few IAF aircraft without clear warning—a tactic where only a few SA-8s could
achieve a major propaganda victory. This concern, coupled to the risk of SA-16 and SA-
18 attacks, forced the IAF to actively use countermeasures to an unprecedented degree
during the fighting.

Low Signature; Asymmetric Stealth
One key aspect of the above list is that all of the systems that are not vehicle-mounted
are low signature weapons that very difficult to characterize and target and easy to bury
or conceal in civilian facilities. Stealth is normally thought of as high technology. It is
not. Conventional forces still have sensors geared largely to major military platforms and
operating in environments when any possible target becomes a real target. None of these
conditions applied to most Hezbollah weapons, and the problem was compounded by the
fact that a light weapon is often easier to move and place without detection in a built-up
area than a heavy one.
This signature issue applies to small rockets like the Qassam and Kaytusha that require
only a vestigial launcher that can be place in a house or covert area in seconds, and fired
with a timer. Israeli video showed numerous examples of Hezbollah rushing into a home,
setting up a system, and firing or leaving in a time in less than a minute.
It also applies to UAVs. Israel’s normal surveillance radars could not detect the Iranian
UAVs, and the IDF was forced to rush experiments to find one that could detect such a
small, low-flying platform. (This may be an artillery counterbattery radar but Israeli
sources would not confirm this.)

Technological Surprise
Israeli officers and experts did indicate that the IDF faced technological surprise and
uncertainty in some areas.
Syria evidently supplied nearly as many medium range artillery rockets—220 mm and
302 mm—as Iran, and a major portion of the Katyushas. The RPG-29 anti-tank weapon
and possible deployment of more advanced anti-tank guided weapons was not
anticipated. It was not possible to determine how advanced the surface-to-air missiles
going to Hezbollah forces were. It was not possible to determine the exact types and level
of capability for Iran’s long-range missile transfers because the three types of Zelzal are
so different in performance, and other Iranian systems (including ones with much better
guidance) are similar to what Israel calls the Zelzal 2 and 3.
The fact Israel faced some degree of technological surprise should not, however, be a
source of criticism unless there is evidence of negligence. If there is a lesson to be drawn
from such surprise, it is that it is almost unavoidable when deliveries are high and many
weapons are small and/or are delivered in trucks or containers and never seen used in
practice.
It is even more unavoidable when rapid transfer can occur in wartime, or new facilities
are created, such as the joint Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah intelligence (and advisory?) center
set up during the fighting in Damascus to give the Hezbollah technical and tactical
intelligence support. The lesson is rather that the war demonstrates a new level of
capability for non-state actors to use such weapons.
Cost
The US and Israel quote figures for the cost of these arms transfers that can reach the
billions, and talk about $100-$250 million in Iranian aid per year. The fact is that some
six years of build-up and arms transfers may have cost closer to $50-$100 million in all.
The bulk of the weapons involved were cheap, disposable or surplus, and transfers put no
strain of any kind on either Syria or Iran.
This is a critical point, not a quibble. Playing the spoiler role in arming non-state actors
even with relatively advanced weapons is cheap by comparison with other military
options. The US must be prepared for a sharp increase in such efforts as its enemies
realize just how cheap and easy this option can be.
Reevaluating the Level of Tactical and Technological Risk in the Forces of
Asymmetric and Non-State Actors
Experts like Sir Rupert Smith have already highlighted the risk posed to modern military
forces and states by opponents that fight below the threshold in which conventional
armies are most effective. Iraq has shown that even comparatively small transfers of
technology like motion sensors, crude shaped charges, and better triggering devices can
have a major impact in increasing the ability of insurgents and terrorists.

The Hezbollah have raised this to a whole new level, operating with effective sanctuary
in a state and with major outside suppliers—which Al Qa’ida has largely lacked. It is also
only the tip of the iceberg. It does not seem to have used the advanced SAMs listed
above, but the very threat forces IAF fighters and helicopters to constantly use
countermeasures. The use of ATGMs and RPG-29 not only inhibits the use of armor, but
sharply reduces the ability to enter buildings and requires dispersal and shelter.

The simple risk of long-range rocket attacks requires constant air and sensor coverage in
detail over the entire Hezbollah launch front to be sure of hitting launchers immediately.
The IDF’s task also could grow sharply if Iran/Syria sent the Hezbollah longer-range
rockets or missiles with precision guidance—allowing one missile to do serious damage
to a power plant, desalination plant, refinery/fuel storage facility with little or no warning.

The lesson here is not simply Hezbollah tactics to date. It is the need to survey all of the
weapons systems and technology that insurgents and terrorists could use in future strikes
and wars with the thesis that technology constraints are sharply weakening, and the US
and its allies face proliferation of a very different kind. It is to explore potential areas of
vulnerability in US forces and tactics non-state or asymmetric attackers can exploit,
carefully examine the holdings of state sponsors of such movements, and reexamine web
sites, training manuals, etc, to track the sharing or exploration of such technology.
Like Israel, the US and its other allies face long wars against enemies that have already
shown they are highly adaptive, and will constantly seek out weaknesses and the ability
to exploit the limits to conventional warfighting capabilities. The US must anticipate and
preempt when it can, and share countermeasure tactics and technologies with its allies.
Informal Networks and Asymmetric "Netcentric Warfare"
Like insurgent and terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan—and in Arab states like
Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other states threatened by such groups—the Hezbollah
showed the ability of non-state actors to fight their own form of netcentric warfare. The
Hezbollah acted as a "distributed network" of small cells and units acting with
considerable independence, and capable of rapidly adapting to local conditions using
media reports on the, verbal communication, etc.

Rather than have to react faster than the IDF's decision cycle, they could largely ignore it,
waiting out Israeli attacks, staying in positions, reinfiltrating or reemerging from cover,
and choosing the time to attack or ambush. Forward fighters could be left behind or
sacrificed, and "self-attrition" became a tactic substituting for speed of maneuver and the
ability to anticipated IDF movements.

Skilled cadres and leadership cadres could be hidden, sheltered, or dispersed. Rear areas
became partial sanctuaries in spite of the IDF. Aside from Nasrallah, who survived, no
given element of the leadership cadre was critical.

A strategy of attrition and slow response substituted for speed and efficiency in command
and control. The lack of a formal and hierarchical supply system meant that disperse
weapons and supplies—the equivalent of "feed forward logistics"—accumulated over six
years ensured the ability to keep operating in spite of IDF attacks on supply facilities and
resupply.

The ability to fight on local religious, ideological, and sectarian grounds the IDF could
not match provided extensive cover and the equivalent of both depth and protection. As
noted earlier, civilians became a defensive weapon, the ability to exploit civilian
casualties and collateral damage became a weapon in political warfare, and the ability to
exploit virtually any built up area and familiar terrain as fortresses or ambush sites at
least partially compensated for IDF armor, air mobility, superior firepower, and sensors.
The value and capability of such asymmetric "netcentric" warfare, and comparatively
slow moving wars of attrition, should not be exaggerated. The IDF could win any clash,
and might have won decisively with different ground tactics. It also should not be
ignored. The kind of Western netcentric warfare that is so effective against conventional
forces has met a major challenge and one it must recognize.

Well that sounds like some badass shit. More later, but for now, dig the asymmetrical networkality of the low apogee swarm missile strategy. It delivers the goods!

Conspiracy buzz from Planet Northwoods: The Terror poll bounce, False flags, liquid bombers & UK Labor coups, nuking Hawaii, the Alex Jones "synthetic government terror alert" & other stuff no good person should contemplate

The next point is worthy of special note, and of imitation by others; I don't want to pass lightly over it. When the duke [Cesare Borgia, aka Duke Valentino - pic via Wikipedia] took over Romagna, he found it had been controlled by impotent masters, who instead of ruling their subjects had plundered them, and had given them more reason for strife than unity, so that the whole province was full of robbers, feuds, and lawlessness of every description.

To establish peace and reduce the land to obedience, he decided good government was needed; and he named Messer Remirro de Orco, a cruel and vigorous man, to whom he gave absolute powers. In short order this man pacified and unified the whole district, winning thereby great renown. But then the duke decided such excessive authority was no longer necessary, and feared it might become odious; so he set up a civil court in the middle of the province, with an excellent judge and a representative from each city.

And because he knew that the recent harshness had generated some hatred, in order to clear the minds of the people and gain them over to his cause completely, he determined to make plain that whatever cruelty had come not from him [the Duke], but from the brutal character of the minister.

Taking the proper occasion, therefore, he had him placed on the public square of Cesena one morning, in two pieces, with a piece of wood beside him and a bloody knife. The ferocity of this scene left the people at once stunned and satisfied.

--Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (written 1513). Part VII: About New States Acquired with Other People's Arms and By Good Luck

Operation Northwoods - this is a completely real primary source document - the PDF

So I caught the end of 'V for Vendetta' back home this weekend, and I remembered that despite typically wooden Wachowski brothers dialogue, it had a lot of useful things to teach us. My favorite character was the police detective, because he was the one who drove the story forward, he's the one who the decision rests on, at the end... But the movie explained pretty damn clearly the concept of 'synthetic terror', or 'false flag' terrorist attacks, as well as making clear why a government would want to generate fear among its own people.

Things seem weird right now. Tensions are real high. The White House just ordered up the killing of a good thousand Lebanese, and it makes you feel like they'd kill us too. (Besides through pollution and debt) A lot of sacred cows have croaked lately and they're afraid of losing power. How is this system going to show its cracks? Strange times where Spike Lee implies that the levees in New Orleans were sabotaged. What is going on here (and what's Lee's film gonna say)?

Then I ran across this the next day:

Where Politics and Terror collide: I am a skeptic of all these kinds of intriguing internet conspiracy theories, but I do believe in offering what is floating around for your consideration, because here Nothing is True, and Everything is Permissible. Operation Northwoods was one hell of a plan, but it's a little unrealistic to believe that every damn terror scare is really staged by the High Chancellor. However, when something of a real, actual threat occurs, the politicians are going to grand-stand and fear monger. That's what Hannity and Gingrich do. If you are in mortal fear, you are going to support authority to save you. That's a handy political tactic called 'terror management theory', and it's expressed as a 'terror alert poll bounce'.

But there were those stories about British SAS operatives caught with all kinds of explosives in Iraq, though.

The Lebanon war, which Sy Hersh made clear was planned and coordinated by Cheney and the gang months ago, really scares the everyday American, I think. Hezbollah sucks, they say, but what's gonna happen with this creepy blitzkreig + quagmire ideology still banging around the White House? Those Arab kids caught reselling cell phones had their terrorism charges dropped, another timed and trumped-up case. The Liquid Bomb scare, with all the accompanying visual packaging on cable news, sort of seems to be bouncing off people. The Daily Show makes fun of the Fear Music and Fear Fonts. Everyone seems skeptical now. Some are scared, but I just keep hearing about why it seems like bullshit.

Conspiracists unleashed: There's a sense in the air that Republican dominance is going to fall apart in November, but they are going to go deep into the endless bag of dirty tricks to battle the Democrats one final time. The time is right to suspect an October Surprise, and in the latest mode of conspiracy theories, terror attacks staged by the government are a key way to paralyze the sheep-like public, send them flocking towards anything that looks strong. Alex Jones is of course the internet's premiere conspiracy guy, and he is issuing a full government synthetic terror alert for the rest of election season, which you can check out on YouTube:

Alex Jones' Warning: A CALL TO ACTION!
Alex Jones predicted the 9/11 attacks stating "Osama Bin Laden would be blamed for flying planes into buildings including the WTC". He made this warning during the months of July and August of 2001... He is now stating for the fist time since 9/11, that all indicators suggest a massive terror attack is imminent, facilitated by corrupt rogue elements in western governments, possibly before October.

Indeed, he did claim the government was going to stage attacks in July 2001 - watch the clip there, it's weird.

There's a sense that something against Iran will happen soon: "The Pentagon's "Second 911": "Another [9/11] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity to retaliate against some known targets"": by Michel Chossudovsky of the CRG:

In the month following last year's 7/7 London bombings, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States". Implied in the contingency plan is the certainty that Iran would be behind a Second 9/11.

This "contingency plan" uses the pretext of a "Second 9/11", which has not yet happened, to prepare for a major military operation against Iran, while pressure was also exerted on Tehran in relation to its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. What is diabolical in this decision of the US vice president is that the justification presented by Cheney to wage war on Iran rests on Iran's involvement in a hypothetical terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred: ......

Are we to understand that US, British and Israeli military planners are waiting in limbo for a Second 9/11, to extend the war beyond the borders of Lebanon, to launch a military operation directed against Syria and Iran?

Cheney's proposed "contingency plan" did not focus on preventing a Second 9/11. The Cheney plan is predicated on the presumption that Iran would be behind a Second 9/11 and that punitive bombings could immediately be activated, prior to the conduct of an investigation, much in the same way as the attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001, allegedly in retribution for the alleged support of the Taliban government to the 9/11 terrorists. It is worth noting that one does not plan a war in three weeks: the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan had been planned well in advance of 9/11. As Michael Keefer points out in an incisive review article:

"At a deeper level, it implies that '9/11-type terrorist attacks' are recognized in Cheney’s office and the Pentagon as appropriate means of legitimizing wars of aggression against any country selected for that treatment by the regime and its corporate propaganda-amplification system. . . ." (Keefer, February 2006 )

On the way less paranoid side, it also might be helpful to call a terror alert when the Democrats and your own incompetence are getting too much buzz in the media. This is now an old pattern familiar to progressives now, as someone said to me yesterday. I was really impressed by this segment on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's Countdown. It's 10 minutes recounting 10 separate "Anti-Bush news shattered by well-timed terror alert" media moments since 2002, featuring the Blackwater Contractors in Fallujah, Colleen Rowley and the Democratic National Convention. Really impressed with the Nexus of Politics and Terror (transcript):

Britons widely suspect "Liquid Airplane Bomb" terrorist threat was fabricated by Blair government: for some reason they have a keener nose for 1984 over there, probably since the government watches them on CCTV constantly. "Blair Government Concocts Terror Threat - Scares British People Into Silence:"

Yawn! Even if I wasn't actually tired, that would still be my response to the latest "terror alert" from the UK government office of Machiavellian nonsense. I mean, seriously, at what point do people start to smell a rat? Is the mass mind of the British public destined to be forever child-like and easily scared, or does the threat of the boogeyman eventually wear off? I mean, how many times can you arrest a group of patsies and claim that they were planning to attack the British public before people begin to wonder if you are just making it up?

Pieces like this are getting propagated on services like Shoutwire, a social hyperlinking service. Another skeptic: The UK Terror plot: What's Really Going On? by Craig Murray, at the Center for Research on Globalization:

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted.

Alex Jones' PrisonPlanet asserts that British Intelligence was not going to intervene! British Intel Wanted To Bust Liquid Bomb Terrorists After Attack: MI5 Had Agent Inside Bomb Squad

Plot 'almost allowed to come to fruition' - putting 3,000 lives at risk - intelligence agencies wanted to arrest suspects after alleged date of mass attack: Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 15 2006

According to news reports the British government and MI5 wanted to wait at least a week before busting the liquid terror cell that their agents had fully infiltrated, including planting a mole within the bomb squad. From the acknowledged timeline and admission that the real attack was scheduled for August 16th - little else can be deduced but the shocking fact that MI5 wanted the bombings to go forward - arresting the perpetrators only after the attack.

It has been revealed that the alleged terrorist cell who planned to blow up ten planes using liquid explosives had been completely infiltrated for weeks before the announcement of the foiled plot by British intelligence. From the evidence at hand allied with past history - it can be reasonably claimed that an MI5 mole within the group orchestrated the entire operation.

This is compared to an MI5 agent who infiltrated an IRA bomb cell, and was apparently allowed to carry out bombings in 1998. If we are looking at "network warfare" then the 'good guys' who are supposed to catch them have to be enmeshed with the 'bad guys'. Very weird indeed. See also a little more on their "red alert."

9/11 conspiracy theories keep gaining adherents: Even SNL's Horatio Sanz knows about Loose Change! There is a reason that people are talking about the weirdness of 9/11. Aside from the curious fact that 30% of Americans apparently don't know what year 9/11 happened, around half the public believes that the government covered up major elements of 9/11. Since I doubt those groups overlap, that leaves 20% of the American public who know the year AND believe everything the government has told them! Check out the top 40 list of reasons to doubt the official story. Recently, spooky stuff around the Pentagon and the 9/11 Commission have gotten as far as the Washington Post:

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Anomalies in NORAD's reactions to the hijacked planes have finally been revealed. Stuff like 9/11 podcasts offer continuing pieces of 'the case' from 911blogger.com. A former CIA analyst says that: Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11 by Bill Christison

"After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false."

Even Lou Dobbs got pissed off about this!

For some evangelicals, Mideast war stirs hope:

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER, Miami Herald. August
The Rapture Index -- a popular evangelical Christian Web posting that calculates a global rise in natural disasters, war and inflation -- bills itself as "a Dow Jones industrial average of end-time activity.''

An index below 85 signifies a week of ''slow prophetic activity.'' Anything above 145 signals the apocalypse is near.

The Rapture Index this week: 158. The spike reflects many U.S. evangelicals' view that growing conflict in the Middle East signals the start of a global struggle leading to Christ's return.

''We believe 100 percent what the Scripture has to say about this,'' said Jack Heintz, a South Florida businessman and president of the Christian group Peace for Israel, who recruited 23 evangelical Christians to join a July telephone fundraising event for Israel. "There's going to be a total battle, the battle of Armageddon, and I believe that's very close to happening.''

False Christs are only at 2 right now. Gog and Persia are at 5 though.

Nuke Hawaii conspiracy: Other websites, such as Total411.info, are trying to warn people about a Synthetic Terror Alert for Hawaii:

A nuclear attack is the only way to successfully conquer Iran -- and a false-flag nuclear attack is the only way the neocon war cabal can justify a nuclear attack on Iran. Such false-flag attacks are regularly bootlegged through military drills and wargames so the warmakers can confuse good people inside the military and divert resources as needed.

Last August this site was instrumental in shutting down the Sudden Response '05 drill. Sudden Response was a mock nuclear drill based in Charleston, South Carolina. The general in charge of the operation had been fired just weeks before and various military flacks were caught in equivocations about the nature of the drill. This site and others pegged the drill as having a high danger of "going live," like drills conducted on 9/11 and in London on 7/7/2005.

These guys claim that one General Fridovich will be the guy to execute a nuclear blast in Hawaii... Since it's now the 17th, I guess it's gonna happen today. General Fridovich,

....head of Special Operations Command, Pacific (SOCPAC), also based at Camp Smith. Fridovich's background raises red flags for students of false flag terror. Fridovich was Commander of Special Operations Task Force-Philippines in 2002 when an undercover British-American agent in the Philippines, Michael Meiring, blew himself up constructing a terrorist bomb.

As USPACOM Deputy Director for Operations Gen. Fridovich, continued to "coordinate" with the Philippine military in 2003, hundreds of soldiers, led by scores of Philippine officers, rebelled, asserting that two so-called "terror bombings' were in fact false-flag inside jobs orchestrated inside the armed forces. Unsurprisingly, Fridovich -- a graduate of the British Forces' Royal College of Defence Studies -- has continued to rise in the ranks of the Bush/Rumsfeld military through all of this.

Hawaiians, Americans, and humans seeking to thwart false flag terror attacks should ask each other, the media, and public servants the following questions.....

Interesting point about the Philippines. Anyway... Somehow I doubt anything's going to happen, but attempting to intervene against False Flags sounds like an interesting hobby....

Wayne Madsen, a guy I refer to as a weird conspiracy theorist type, or whatever to be taken with many grains of salt, offers us a pretty complete conspiracy tying together Rupert Murdoch wiretapping Prince Charles, a Blair Cabinet shattered by the political pressure of the Lebanon disaster. It's pretty cool-sounding, but is Madsen's story real-world or exercise?

Murdoch uncovered Prince Charles-Gordon Brown plot to oust Blair. Phony terror plan cooked up to derail political coup plans.

Aug. 11, 2006 -- UPDATED. According to knowledgeable sources in the UK and other countries, the Tony Blair government, under siege by a Labor Party revolt, cleverly cooked up a new "terror" scare to avert the public's eyes away from Blair's increasing political woes. British law enforcement; neo-con and intelligence operatives in the United States, Israel, and Britain; and Rupert Murdoch's global media empire cooked up the terrorist plot, liberally borrowing from the failed 1995 "Oplan Bojinka" plot by Pakistan- and Philippines-based terrorist Ramzi Ahmad Yousef to crash 11 trans-Pacific airliners bound from Asia to the United States. In the latest plot, it is reported that liquid bombs were to be detonated on 10 trans-Atlantic planes outbound from Britain to the United States.

The London terror plan was "known" last Sunday by British and American authorities, according to the Indian press. American Airlines flight 109 from London Heathrow to Boston boarded a family of five, however, after the plane left Heathrow authorities determined that the father appeared on a British suspect list drawn up after the 7/7 London transit attacks. At first, the pilot was instructed to fly all the way to Boston where U.S. authorities could claim credit for apprehending the suspect. However, the pilot, fearing for the safety of his passengers and crew, refused and quickly returned to Heathrow without informing the passengers. Once on the ground, it was discovered that the male had in his carry-on baggage the type of combination liquid explosive and electronic device now being hyped by the British and American media.

British sources report that the reason for the delay in informing the airlines and traveling public about the liquid bomb on the American flight was to maximize the beneficial political impact for Blair and George W. Bush, both plummeting in the polls from the situations in Iraq and Lebanon.

Earlier this week, two employees of Murdoch's London tabloid, News of the World, were charged with hacking into the voice and text cell phone messages of three members of the staff of Clarence House, the residence of Princes Charles, William, and Harry. One of those charged with the wiretapping was Clive Goodman, the Royals editor of the News of the World. The same paper earlier tried to politically damage two anti-Iraq war British politicians -- Scottish Socialist Tommy Sheridan and Respect Party MP George Galloway. The paper charges that Sheridan was unfaithful to his wife by going to swinger's clubs. He won a quarter million dollar lawsuit against the paper. Galloway was confronted by Mazher Mahmood, an individual who uses the moniker "Fake Sheik," who posed as a wealthy Arab businessman and tried unsuccessfully to get Galloway to accept cash and make anti-Semitic remarks. In fact, Mahmood was and continues to be a reporter for News of the World, his continued employment approved by Murdoch. Goodman has merely been suspended by Murdoch but he has not been fired.

However, what prompted Murdoch and Blair to hype a new global "terror" threat was what Murdoch learned from eavesdropping on the phone calls of Prince Charles' staff at the future king's office, home, and limousine. The eavesdropping revealed that Charles was working with Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who is to the left of Blair, to conduct the same type of political maneuver that John Major used to oust Margaret Thatcher from office. London's left-wing Mayor, Ken Livingston, was also in on the Charles-Brown plan and it was expected that in return for his support, Livingston would get a senior position in a Brown cabinet -- a development that sent shock waves through the neo-con circles in London, Washington, and Jerusalem, including British Home Secretary John Reid and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The Charles-Brown plan was briefed by Blair to Bush during the former's recent visit to Washington. However, because the phony terror plot was known to both leaders -- they decided to be away on vacation when the terror plot was "uncovered." Bush is vacationing at his Crawford, Texas "ranch," while Blair is on vacation in Barbados, staying at Sir Cliff Richard's luxurious villa.

After Blair met with Bush in Washington, he flew to California where on July 30 he attended Murdoch's News Corporation private corporate executive conference at the posh Inn at Spanish Bay golf resort in Pebble Beach. Blair met with Murdoch, Israeli former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and various Fox, Star, and Sky News executives. The final touches were agreed to by Blair and Murdoch on how the fake terror plot would play out in Murdoch's media empire.

Blair told Bush that a Brown government would move to withdraw British troops from Iraq, break the "special relationship" with the Bush White House, and move closer to the European Union and the United Nations.

The Israeli attack on Lebanon created a rift within Blair's Cabinet with some former Blair loyalists signaling their support for the political coup against Blair. As a result, a suspect passenger was permitted to board an American aircraft at Heathrow with a liquid bomb to lay the groundwork for the media and travel hysteria five days later.

The wiretapping of Charles' messages also indicated that he has weighed in with various European royal families to discourage them from inviting Bush on state visits to their nations. This, reportedly upset the Bush and Blair regimes, who were working together to improve Bush's image in Europe. The White House's displeasure with the monarchies in Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Norway are a direct result of the Murdoch eavesdropping on Charles' staff.

Not surprisingly, after Galloway tore into a Sky News reporter on a recent televised interview, The Sun, a Murdoch paper, is now reporting that one of the 24 British aircraft liquid bomber suspects now under arrest, Waheed Zaman, met with Galloway "many times." The paper quotes the sister of the suspect. A Galloway spokesman denies that Galloway knows the suspect. What is suspect is the Murdoch media empire that makes up news and commits illegal acts to provide cover for the false flag operations being conducted by Britain, the U.S., and Israel.

Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has helped provide the cover story for the alleged liquid bombers. Working with British and U.S. intelligence, the ISI says it broke up the plot after arresting terrorist suspects in Lahore and Karachi. However, the ISI claims that the men were affiliated with the Kashmiri terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba, a group that is run and funded by the ISI itself.

The disclosure of the Charles-Brown plot has already created a backlash from the neo-cons. The Murdoch media is already floating the rumor that Home Secretary Reid is now Blair's chosen successor, while there will be an effort to scandalize Charles in an effort to convince the British public that it would be best to skip over him and have Prince William assume the throne upon Queen Elizabeth's death or abdication.

British commentators are noting that it is Reid, a noted neo-con, who is chairing national security "Cobra" meetings in Blair's absence. Blair bypassed Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and many political observers believe that Prescott was passed over because of evidence that he was involved in supporting the Charles-Brown coup. Prescott chaired Cobra meetings in the wake of the July 7, 2005 (7/7) London transit bombings.

Meanwhile, Republican governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney used the occasion to boost their sagging popularity by placing their states' National Guardsmen at major airports in their states.

Aug. 14, 2006 -- There is an increasing body of evidence on both sides of the Atlantic that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has engaged in a pattern of news manufacturing and illegal activities to hype the "liquid bomb" aviation threat and influence political developments. ....... The police investigation of that incident has now, according to Time Europe, has now graduated from the London Metropolitan Police to the department's anti-terrorism unit, the same unit that is investigating the liquid bomb hoax perpetrated on global air travelers by Murdoch and a vacationing Blair and Bush. The anti-terrorism probe is now focused on British cell phone companies Vodaphone and O2 and is expanding to investigate whether the News Corporation eavesdropping project was also directed against the reported major plotters against Blair: Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, Environment Secretary David Miliband, and Home Affairs Committee Chairman John Denham, all to the left of Blair and all critical of Blair's close relationship with Bush and Blair's acquiescence to Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

In reaction to the plot against Blair, Home Secretary John Reid, who has now supplanted Brown as the neo-con's heir apparent to Blair and who is a firm supporter of the Bush administration, and members of the British security services took over the "investigation" of the liquid bombing "plot," working closely with their counterparts in the Bush administration. Reid, not Deputy Prime Minister Prescott, took over as chair of the Cabinet Office Briefing Room-A (Cobra) meetings during Blair's absence in Barbados.

We can't forget Michael Ruppert's site FromTheWilderness.com on this one: OPERATION “SLOW BURN?” U.K. Terror Conveniently Forces Demand Destruction:

Cusp of Liquid Fuel Crisis: Social Engineering? Politics as Usual
by Michael Kane, Staff Writer. Research Contribution, by Jenna Orkin

August 15th 2006, 2:40 PM[PST] – For those interested in critically thinking the lastest terror plot, the very best place to do your homework on 9-11 is to thoroughly read Mike Ruppert’s CROSSING THE RUBICON:THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AT THE END OF THE AGE OF OIL. When 9-11 is adequately researched, it is clear that all world events must now be viewed through the lens of Peak Oil. So from here on, we must ask ourselves what Peak Oil has to do with anything that happens geopolitically. Now ask yourself this question: Over 500 flights were cancelled last week. How much fuel was saved? With the Alaska pipeline down and the U.S. losing 8% of its oil, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela cutting back production dramatically, the world is beginning to feel the pain of Peak Oil. Moreover, the airlines are making it almost impossible to fly, unless passengers want to fly next-to naked. This is only happening in the U.S. and UK—the two nations that consume the most airline fuel. The terror hoax serves many purposes: Distract attention from the Middle East war, perpetuate the myth of a war on terror, make the Bush Administration look virile, reinforce the criminal violations of civil liberties in the U.S., but very, very importantly, destroy the demand for airline fuel consumption.

Alright no big damn conclusion, just a batch of the internet's latest and greatest explanations for what Operation Northwoods calls the "logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective." I'm impressed you made it this far without having a stroke. Information warfare gives me a headache.

Nine centuries of Lebanon fighting with style: From Hashshashin to Hezbollah

The test of the Zionist left. By Yossi Beilin (Haaretz)
There are those who expect the Zionist left to join in the revelry of war, in the pathetic slogans such as "We will win" and in the fiery comments such as "Nasrallah will remember who Amir Peretz is."

There are those who expect us to join the non-Zionist left, which is calling for a unilateral cease-fire, accuses Israel of war crimes, demands that Hamas and Hezbollah be given what they want, and opposes all use of force. Both sides say this is the test of the Zionist left - and they are right.

We have a deep belief in the right of the Jewish people to a democratic and secure state, which has a stable Jewish majority: the state of the Jewish people and all of its citizens. We are convinced our national interest is in completing the moves toward peace with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon, and that there is no alternative to an agreement.

I am not gonna feel like writing tomorrow, so it's either now or the weekend. Here are a lot of bits from the past couple weeks in the Lebanon-Israel conflict. The window after the first two weeks was Israel's chance to capture the initiative against Hezbollah and attempt to achieve their hazily articulated goals in this vicious little war. It's a big war, but the space is very small.

Escalations for the weekend: Haaretz: Security cabinet okays decision to expand ground operation in Lebanon:

.......PM wavered on expansion decision
Olmert was hesitant prior to the meeting on whether to approve the proposed expansion of the IDF ground operation in south Lebanon.

Olmert was concerned that the plan presented by the defense establishment would result in hundreds of casualties, and therefore, wanted to subject it to a careful cost-benefit analysis. In Tuesday's fighting in Lebanon five soldiers were killed and 23 others wounded, two of them seriously. According to a government source, Olmert had also asked the army to present him with several different options for a ground operation.

A decision to send troops deeper into Lebanon is fraught with considerable risk. In doing so, Israel could set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts. Also, a wider ground offensive might do little to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israel, while sharply increasing the number of casualties among Israeli troops.

While most of the cabinet was expected earlier to back whatever Olmert decides, sources in the Prime Minister's Office said that three to four ministers were likely to oppose a large-scale ground operation regardless of Olmert's position. The IDF's proposal was for a two-week ground operation that would involve conquering the entire area south of the Litani River, and even a few areas north of it, in order to reduce Hezbollah's short-range rocket launching capabilities.

IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said Tuesday that such an operation was necessary "in order to end this war differently." People who participated in discussions of the plan with him said they had never heard him speak as forcefully in favor of anything as he did in favor of the proposed ground operation. Peretz fully supports the army's plan, which he considers essential for Israel to achieve its diplomatic goals.

Nine paratroopers killed in attack on home in Dibel; 15 soldiers killed Wednesday in south Lebanon

By Amos Harel and Eli Ashkenazi, Haaretz Correspondents, and Agencies Last update - 01:59 10/08/2006
Fifteen Israel Defense Forces troops were killed on Wednesday, the IDF announced late Wednesday night, as fierce fighting with Hezbollah guerillas raged in the southern Lebanon villages of Ayta al-Shaab and Debel.

The 15 IDF soldiers were killed in a series of firefights across the front. In the most serious incident, nine reserve paratroopers were killed and 11 wounded by antitank missiles fired on a house in the village of Debel, in the central sector. Four reservists from an armored brigade were killed in a tank explosion, apparently caused by antitank missiles, in the town of Ayta al-Shaab. An infantryman was killed late Wednesday when he was hit by a mortar in Marjayoun.

DEBKAFile: Israeli official spokesman say deep ground push into Lebanon approved Wednesday to reduce rocket attacks is put on hold for 48 hours to give more time for diplomacy August 10, 2006, 9:26 AM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile adds: On the ground, the first troop and tank elements of the advance began moving Wednesday overnight and are continuing Thursday, Aug. 10.

The decision Wednesday, Aug. 9, by 9 votes, none against and 3 abstentions, includes areas up to the Nabatea plateau and Arnoun beyond the Litani River. The objectof the extension is to reach and eliminate Hizballah's rocket-launch centers. It deepens Israel's thrust to some 45 km from the border and calls for a further large influx of army reserves.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add the extended operation does not promise the total stoppage of all rocket fire against Israel, but could potentially bring about a sizeable reduction from up to 200 a day to some 30 or 50.
Also: The stakes of the Lebanon War have shot up with the expansion of the Israeli offensive up to the Litani and Nasrallah’s rejection of diplomacy in favor of battle

Israel's military of old was specialized in quick, mechanized warfare. As they settled into the occupied territories, despite all the heavy weapons, the IDF reoriented itself to battling Palestinians, typically armed with rifles, handguns or machine guns. The Palestinians have some rocket-propelled grenades, as well, but they lack advanced infantry weapons. So the IDF has phased away from preparing for war with real infantries, and instead play supercop on the hapless residents of the West Bank.

They really thought that Hezbollah was only as "thick" as HAMAS, I guess. The Israelis went storming in without realizing that Hezbollah had lots of anti-tank missiles - on rocky terrain that doesn't give a lot of space for tanks. The IDF doctrine failed in the face of a new kind of conflict.

Right now we are watching a turning point in the nature of warfare. Everything from pack mules to to hacking to encrypted satellite feeds fits into fourth-generation warfare (pdf). Sub-state actors will basically be able to fight a top-notch modern army.

ANALYSIS: IDF still not in control of strip along Lebanon's border By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz Correspondent 08:57 10/08/2006
The large number and the location of the casualties that the Israel Defense Forces sustained Wednesday indicate that the army does not yet control the narrow strip along the border, although this stage of the ground operation was supposed to have been completed already.

The two battles also reveal a great deal about Hezbollah's method of fighting. They took place in two relatively small communities, Ayta al-Shab and Debel, close to the international border, on territory that until May 2000 was in Israel's Security Zone.

The ground operation, dubbed "Change of Direction 8," was intended to conquer this border strip. First it was to be a two- to three-kilometer strip. Then it was expanded to five to six kilometers, including numerous Lebanese villages and towns. The mission was to blow up all Hezbollah's outposts in this strip and drive its forces out.

What happened in Bint Jbail recurred in Ayta al-Shab. Although it seemed that the town had been conquered, it transpired again and again that there were still Hezbollah men in it. Once again, clashes and battles took place, and again, the IDF suffered dead and wounded. Although the army had conquered the town, Hezbollah men were hiding in underground bunkers well camouflaged from the outside. The bunkers had been stocked with large quantities of food, enough to last for weeks, and ammunition, including antitank missiles and, in several cases, short-range rockets.

The bunkers are connected to electricity and, according to one report, are air conditioned. When the fighting dies down, Hezbollah fighters emerge from the bunkers and set up ambushes for IDF soldiers and armored vehicles. That is why soldiers are hit repeatedly in the same places.

On several occasions, there have been difficulties evacuating wounded soldiers under fire. At times, Hezbollah fighters have fired rockets at Israel from areas close to the border that the IDF had supposedly conquered already. The means available to flush the guerrillas out of their underground shelters are not always employed.

Senior officers have suggested, inter alia, that the army bombard these towns heavily and even destroy them. But in any case, a decision has been made not to reenter them at this stage. The IDF could forge ahead, as it has done in the last two days in the Marjayoun area. But even after such an incursion, Hezbollah fighters who remain in the bunkers could continue launching rockets. In other words, they could fire toward Israel from behind the lines of IDF forces that have progressed deep into Lebanon. It is clear that the Hezbollah men who stayed behind are equipped with two-way radios and receive information from scouts hiding near the border. This explains the difficulties in managing the fighting in south Lebanon, which the IDF has not encountered before.

Even if Hezbollah "loses", the writing is on the wall. In the 21st century "the State" itself is weakening. Sub-national organizations like Hezbollah, with economic, military, political, social, educational, medical (and often spiritual) branches are displacing the State.

One should remember that the Middle East's artificial European-drawn boundaries have left many overlapping ethnic groups. The Pashtuns now at the core of the Taliban straddle Afghanistan/Pakistan. The Kurds are organized a bit like Hezbollah, and the ruthless pursuit of the Kurds' interests has rewarded them well since the US toppled Saddam. But they too are divided between parties that ruthlessly fight each other.

In Syria, only a few dozen miles east of Israel's bombing campaign lie many major Arab Sunni tribes like the Dulaimis, who especially live in cities along the river into Iraq, where their cousins' tribes live, sparring with Kurds and Shiites.

In this kind of region, everyday people are going to direct their primary loyalties towards sub-national groups that they believe represent their interests. By the early 1990s, Hezbollah, which the Iranians helped create by binding together different Lebanese Shiites, was seen as something of a successful model – social, political, military: robustly structured to resist political pressure, infiltration and military assaults from the Israelis and others.

Before Saddam fell, The Iranians used the Lebanese sub-state model inside Iraq, to lay the framework for the Shiite rise to power. Very quickly, SCIRI, Muqtada Sadr's people, and the Dawa Party all had organized cadres of armed guys, but more importantly, social services and methods for trying to restore any sense of law and order shattered with the US invasion. If the guys on the block with guns keep the thieves away, then they are pretty much your state, even if they don't report to Baghdad.

The news in Israel right now is that 15 reservists got killed in Lebanon, with heavy fighting around Bint Jbail, a site the IDF captured and subsequently evacuated. As the maps made clear, Bint Jbail is not more than a few kilometers from the border, yet the Israeli forces, despite all the bombing and everything, have not been able to hold that area, once they reached it and tried to occupy.

Reports in the Israeli media indicate that Hezbollah is able to keep attacking in areas the Israelis have already 'captured.' I think it's pretty likely that Hezbollah has drilled tunnels hundreds, if not thousands of meters long, attached to deeply hidden bunkers with all the necessary weapons and supplies. It is an amazing intelligence failure that the Israelis didn't anticipate this, and still, within a very small space the IDF has not been able to block out Hezbollah. The tempo of rocket attacks has not been curtailed in any serious way, and Israeli military analysts don't really think it can be shut down without a wide invasion. Hezbollah is winning the tactical situation by playing very hard-core defense with lots of anti-tank missiles. So far, it's mostly been a successful military strategy.

This is in keeping with the local style: in the good old days of the Seljuk Empire (c. 1100), the Hashshashin, or Assassins, would hang out somewhere between Damascus and Antioch - the home of the Holy Hand Grenade. The map's white spot shows a patch of mountainous land where the Assassins held sway. Mountainous redoubts are easier to defend, and such clever methods have migrated about 200 miles south, where nearly a millennia later, some pretty insane shit is going down.

Well then, thats enough rambling background. Here's some damn links.

The rockets keep coming: Hizbollah rockets kill 15 in northern Israel. Hapless reservists. An ugly scene. IDF Raids near Tyre.

Emotional reaction in Israel propels poor policy:

`Peace' is a term not used in the public space in Israel anymore...No one expects any dialogue on a real practical level. The military always offers a shortsighted immediate way out. The wish to identify with the power of the gun and the uniform is still alive in Israeli tribal DNA. Revenge is a word not used in the open; it is there in the undercurrent of the emotions expressed by the public, our bombardment of Gaza had the same motive behind it.

UK Guardian: Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets: Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence

You need to give money to AntiWar.com. Their work is important and kinda spooky. Rumors that apocalyptic Christian writers are visiting the White House. Stratfor has free podcasts. Updates on the Tikkun Olam blog (תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place).

Iranian dimensions:

Haaretz: Nasrallah's dilemma By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff

As the war progresses, the depth of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah activity is increasingly being revealed. Hezbollah has established a Tehran-sponsored forward outpost here, under the noses of the Israelis. When the war ends, Iranian soul-searching will include the question as to whether the activity here was not premature: whether the strategic card of the rocket battery was not revealed too early, for the sake of a negligible goal like the release of the four prisoners, instead of saving it for the day of judgment, for the eruption surrounding its nuclear program.

The Iranians are involved up to their necks in Hezbollah activity: Their advisers participated in the firing of the missiles at Israeli ships and in the firing of Strela (SA-7) antiaircraft missiles at Israeli planes and helicopters. During Israel Defense Forces operations in the south, sophisticated listening rooms were discovered, via which the Iranians eavesdropped on Israeli communications and telephone networks, both civilian and military.

Guardian: Bloody night in Beirut as Israel intensifies aerial bombardment: IDF warns UN troops will be attacked if they repair bridges (aug 8)

Information warfare sector: Olmert meets with spokespeople to sharpen PR message. PrisonPlanet says: Another Israeli Myth Exposed: There Were No Hezbollah Rockets In Qana but Israeli media alleges Qana killing was staged, dubbing this pattern Hezbollywood. With a certain sense of weird horror, Haaretz features "Where there's smoke, there's liars": "1. The Muslim Lie Mode, or The Dead as Visual Aid (When Arabs report what Israel has done) 2. The Israeli Lie Mode, or The Dead as Enemy Weapon (When Israelis report what Israel has done). 3. The American Lie Mode, or The Dead as Nonexistent." Anyway, Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD.

The US-Israeli link: this looks at Condi and an IDF spokesperson as two flipsides: Between two friends by Tom Segev:

During the past 39 years since the Six-Day War, the United States did not force Israel to pull out of the West Bank, but more than once acted to block Israeli military actions. Over time, we have grown accustomed to the Americans saving us, not only from the Arabs, but from ourselves too. Not in this war. It is still unclear whether this war was coordinated with the United States; only the release of government records of the past three weeks will shed light on this. Whatever the case may be, the impression is that the Americans are linking the events in Lebanon to their failing adventure in Iraq.

Israel's elites, in all fields, are made up of people who spent a number of years in the United States and returned with not only professional skills but also an appreciation for the value of the individual and basic freedoms. For the most part, this was a useful process, even though it did contribute to a fading of social compassion. This process of Americanization has led Israel in recent years to covet a role in what Bush has described as a war on the "axis of evil."

As such, Israel has adopted the moral values of Hezbollah: Whatever they are doing to the residents of northern Israel, we can also do to the citizens of Lebanon, and even more. Many Israelis tended to look at the Qana incident primarily as a media disaster and not as something that imposed on them any ethical responsibility. After all, the restrictions of humanitarian warfare are not applicable to the "axis of evil." Just like in Iraq, the lessons of Vietnam have been forgotten. It is hard to avoid the impression that the routine brutality of oppression in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is also reflected in the unbearable ease with which Israel has forced out of their homes hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and bombed civilians.

Tense situation with Israel's own Arab population (20%): Border Police search Israeli Arab homes without warrants.

Loss of Momentum by Amir Oren (Haaretz):

The IDF's greatest loss was momentum. The first week of the campaign went reasonably well, borne on the wave of the stunning success of the attack of Hezbollah's long-range rockets. Between the middle of the second week and the middle of the third week the IDF lost a week, not least because of its reaction to the eight Golani Brigade soldiers who were killed in Bint Jbail. That lost week, as the rain of Katyusha rockets continued to fall from on high, undermined the army's self-confidence and thrust it into a posture of public self-defense. It shifted into recovery mode only because of the time it was granted by Washington. Fear of a large number of casualties was the major factor in the government's hesitations, for almost a week, about whether to send more divisions into the fray, entailing a call-up of reserve units.

The General Staff admitted the IDF did not work fast enough. They did not grasp the fact that the context had changed and that this was not just one day of battle or a routine-security incident, but a war, which has its own laws. Commanders who were used to operations in the territories did not internalize the need for speed, persistence and continuity.....

The sweeping criticism did an injustice to Division 91 and to the "hunt" concept in the air force. A colonel in the division said this week that for months the division's senior command "drove officers crazy with alerts to prevent abductions, turned over every stone and laid down new stones in order to turn them over, too." The abduction, the colonel noted, was comparable to a special operation by an IDF commando unit, which, in the absence of precise intelligence, is difficult to thwart even after all the preparations across the sector.

Various people yelling at each other: ADL: Hugo Chavez comparison of IDF and Hitler is Outrageous. Yesha (settler) Rabbinical Council objects to ridicule of Chief IDF Rabbi.

Hawks crow: Win that war! (Haaretz). Peace Index: July 2006 / Support for the war and the IDF holds up.

A final batch: I got nothing left after these Haaretz bits: ANALYSIS: There appears to be a command problem in the north. From war, an opportunity. Snatch a possible victory. Down but not out. Little Satan has big teeth. ANALYSIS: Deployment of Lebanese army may be good for both sides.

Well, that's all for a while. Enjoy.

Crossposted: "intimate dispatch from Beirut"

From one blog, Green Beans and Drool, by a grad student named Jennifer who recently stayed in Beirut (via Juan Cole):

Monday, July 17, 2006: intimate dispatch from Beirut:

Evelyne forwarded an email from her brother, Lucien, who is a humanitarian activist and pastor at an Evangelical church in Beirut..... [photos of the pastor]

This is my translation (from French) of his email:

The sky is blue
The sky is red
The sky is black
It's raining fire
It's raining ashes
It's raining blood
A woman howls in sadness
A little girl is frozen in terror
A child is fixed in horror

Thank you for thinking about us! The country is screaming through the spew of bombs. Officials from all borders cry for vengeance. There is a god with a black beard who claims to speak for God. A commotion as the sorcerer's apprentices cook up all their magic potions. Meanwhile crowds of thousands give way and fold to the suffering of perpetual exile, of destruction without end.

Finally, among these thousands of displaced people, some familiar faces emerged. Thirty people who escaped from the furnace. A ring on the phone informed me - it was my friend Kazem. He told me about his village. Members of his family escaped the disaster and made their way toward Beirut. They were here finally after a long journey, and the visage of the group was hagard. They had hoped to find a place in a hotel somewhere, as they had the means, but they searched in vain.

A second call from the Hajjeh family shook my cell phone. The call was a swoon of sadness, a sinister scream. The 25-year-old husband of Eva, a daughter of the Hajjeh family, had been missing since the morning and was found dead. He had been with an emergency group who was trying to distribute food to displaced families. He was torn apart in the bombing of a nine-floor building in Tyre, a city already martyred a hundred times over -

Sorry. I'm weeping.*

Lucien

* "Sorry je pleure," it reads in the original French.

Tomorrow is National Call-in to Congress on NSA Warrantless Surveillance Day!! Phone up your homies in Damascus!

ABC News is not happy:

"A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation. We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation."

ABC News put out a press release, saying that an anonymous government source had informed them that the government was watching their phone calls specifically, apparently in part to find out who has been leaking about the government watching everyone's phone calls. It's Nixon in the information age (BTW check out this story about Kissinger tapping reporters and NSC staffers).

These days the Fourth Amendment is about as valued by our government as the hemp it was written on. It really pisses me off that my calls are being logged in some giant database - as USA Today revealed on my birthday, naturally. Well everyone is supposed to call Congress tomorrow, and despite my cell phone bill I think I'll do it. It's a measure of how far this nation has slid towards totalitarianism that such a wildly paranoid program like this almost totally passes in the media and people's heads don't explode out of sheer anger. Last night on the Daily Show (QT and WMP), Jon Stewart nailed it with a montage of FOX anchors defending the total canvassing of phone records, with "Wow, the entire network of anchors has been hired to be the press secretary..."

(CrooksAndLiars.com is our site of the day for their many handy video clips and good sources)

Fortunately 51% of Americans oppose the NSA database - commentary from Atrios here. Poor National Security Advisor Big Glasses Hadley just can't seem to tell Wolf Blitzer a single damned useful result of the NSA Total PhoneCall Awareness Trolling (QT). Even Joe Scarborough thinks its kind of chilling, since if Nixon had done this, they would have caught Deep Throat before Watergate broke.

Murray Waas, the intrepid National Journal reporter who has been covering the Valerie Plame / Libby case in obscene detail, is himself getting positive coverage from US News. He started by working for Jack Anderson as a teenager. Not bad at all. And his blog.

NY Times bombthrower Frank Rich has a new book, the Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth. Sounds good to me. More Rich lately (also on RawStory and featured in E&P):

"His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate C.I.A. intelligence on Iraq before the war. Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent....read on"

Meanwhile Al Gore went on SNL, claiming to have invented an anti-hurricane machine, and I missed it. And the trailer for his new movie about the environment.

Action Alert from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: Wednesday, May 17, National Call-in to Congress on NSA Warrantless Surveillance:

Last December, we learned that, according to some Members of Congress, the President may have violated laws by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans' phone calls.

On Thursday, 5/11, USA Today published a major cover story revealing a National Security Agency (NSA) database of millions of innocent Americans' domestic phone call records, indicating who, when and where we are calling.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

This database has nothing to do with catching suspected terrorists: It is documenting all our associations in the largest database in history-with a goal of including "every call ever made" within the nation's borders. This program is truly *beyond "Big Brother"!*

*Take Action Now*
It's time for the American people to tell Congress in a clear, loud voice that *we've had enough!*

Join the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and thousands of other Americans by calling Congress on Wednesday, May 17 to demand they investigate this government intrusion immediately. ADC, the BORDC, the ACLU, People For the American Way, and other organizations (see below) have declared the week of May 15 "National Call-in to Congress Week" and are asking their constituents to call their members of Congress on a specific day. Let's keep those phones ringing in the Congressional halls all week long!

*The Message*
Please phone each of your Senators, and your Representative. *Urge them NOT to consider draft legislation that would give the executive branch new surveillance powers that are immune to oversight by the courts and Congress. Call for a full, public investigation of the NSA surveillance program. *

*Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121* (24 hours) and ask the operator to connect you. Or this ADC page to find your legislators' phone numbers.

*Additional sample talking points:*
Here are a few suggestions. Choose one or two:

* The President has broken the law. He must stop warrantless eavesdropping and collecting records on all our phone calls and come clean with the American people about any further secret powers he claims as Commander-in-Chief.

* The administration's claim that it must break the law to protect us from al-Qaeda are just plain false: any communications specifically targeting an al-Qaeda member outside the U.S. doesn't even need a warrant, and FISA judges are ready and waiting to issue warrants to wiretap any suspected al-Qaeda in the U.S.-- even if those calls include U.S. citizens or residents.

* Overburdening the FBI with thousands of false leads makes us less safe because it leaves them less time and fewer resources to find the real terrorists.

* How can Congress even consider passing legislation to make these illegal programs legal, when it can't even find out what they entail? It must investigate. This is no time for new legislation!

* What's needed is an immediate, full and unrestricted public investigation into the NSA spying program, including a probe into the massive database collecting Americans' phone calls.

* The idea that the database of all our calls is permissible as long as it doesn't contain names and addresses is ludicrous. By linking the database of phone calls with all the other government data mining operations, the government can literally follow our every move, every contact, and every transaction. It's "Big Brother" run amok!

* Congress needs to pass whistleblower protections for government employees and safeguards for journalists who provide information to the American public about illegal government acts.

* The Fourth Amendment is clear. Electronic surveillance of this sort requires a warrant. A warrant allows a judge to serve as a check against executive abuse of power. That check keeps our government honest - preventing one branch of government from mischief and errors.

*Organizations supporting the call-in day (partial list)* include the Alliance for Justice, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, First Amendment Foundation, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Liberty Coalition, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Coalition Against Repressive Legislation, National Lawyers Guild, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, People For the American Way, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and United For Peace and Justice.

More information is available on the BORDC webpage.

Because guess what? Without any probable cause, the government doesn't have any fucking right to your phone logs. Some would say that defending the Constitution is worth fighting for. Or at least calling for.

Is this real world or an exercise? 9/11 media madness: "Loose Change" brainwashed my friends; then "United 93" whipped everyone else into a murderous frenzy

First I will add my own original contribution to this rehash of the most goddamned annoying day in the history of the world. When I was at the Kos appearance here in Minneapolis a couple days ago, Coleen Rowley (of FBI whistleblower fame) showed up to make the liberal scene, and since Zacharias Moussaoui was all over the news, I had to ask her something, because she was at that damn Minneapolis field office when they caught the bastard in August 2001. Could 9/11 have been prevented, I asked her, given that you guys had Moussaoui? I'm imperfectly paraphrasing here, but she shot back, Yes. The reports about terrorists at flight schools got stopped up in the FBI, but those reports got to George Tenet, the chief of Central Intelligence. And all they really had to do was put bolts on the cockpit doors. It's too bad I don't have a recording so I can't quote it perfectly.

But damn, to have been in that situation, to have been an FBI agent who sensed the bigger pilot conspiracy, and to get shut down in August 2001. What a shitty thing. (Michael Ruppert blames an FBI guy named Frasca for orchestrating the Minneapolis FBI "suppression" - more here and here - just trying to cover my basic illuminati-isms). Anyway:

Somehow, quite a few of my friends have become 9/11 conspiracy buffs, as a particular film has persuaded them something just ain't right with everyone's favorite glimpse into the Abyss. Nowadays "Vigilant Guardian" and "controlled demolition" are code words we chuckle at. Well, that's a bit much, but they are among those who have had their perceptions altered by a surprisingly popular film currently passed around the Internet and on DVD. It's called Loose Change: 2nd Edition (here's the official blog), which was made by some young guys for less than $10,000. You can watch the whole thing in high-quality video through Google Video here.

Still not explained: "Is this real world or an exercise?" (source)

I haven't mentioned Loose Change to people much at all (OK, I did a couple times, and via Google Video I got the Video iPod version). Rather, they keep telling me about this exciting video that fucked with their heads. And then they usually show it to their parents, who get terribly annoyed at such silly nonsense. It is getting some play in the mainstream media, as USA Today recently ran a pretty negative article about the "conspiracy film."

USA Today, APRIL 28, 2006: Conspiracy Film Rewrites Sept. 11
Called Loose Change, it is being downloaded from the Internet and shown in small screenings here and overseas. It is not alone in the genre, and it is not unusual in American history either to offer simplistic explanations or demonize opponents. Presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lyndon Johnson were accused by their contemporaries of massive government conspiracies.

The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives. "This is our generation's Vietnam, our generation's Kennedy assassination," says Korey Rowe, 23, the film's producer.

Professors and researchers of film and politics say the Internet is making it far easier to spread such theories because the traditional media are losing their hold on the news. The immense coverage of controversies and accusations surrounding the war on terror has created fertile ground for people who assign their own interpretations to photos, footage, eyewitnesses, investigations and newspaper accounts of what happened, they say. [w00000p w000p I know they must be talking about me! -dan]

"The information revolution now gives us access to too much information," says Jonathan Taplin, who teaches at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. "Our problems are that we're just overwhelmed, so in some sense we just basically don't even know where to turn."

True enough, in a sense. The hypersaturation of information has caused a breakdown in the way that we structure the authority to process that information. In other words, there's so much damn noise that you don't know how to trust. Compounding this problem is the obvious fact that no one trusts the White House at all any more, and no one with any wits should trust the mainstream media, after all their well-documented fuckups. And after Colbert's performance, we can tell they're all pretty much scared shitless.

So then, what fills the gap? Stuff like this, for better or worse. Loose Change packs an effective punch for such a small production. But they really don't want you to take what they say as gospel – and the axis of the film is really just the creepy contrast between the Official Narrative supported or enforced today (i.e. the sanctimonious retrospective "Flight 93" flick type stuff), versus the on-site media and first responder reactions that day, and they just don't fit together at all. The Loose Change website's evidence section cites pretty much every bit of the film back to some report or another, and they deserve to be quoted:

The information in Loose Change 2nd Edition is widely available to the public.
We have done nothing extraordinary in terms of research. We also do not take credit for these people's hard work.
Also, take nothing we say at face value.
We highly encourage you to research this information yourselves and come to your own conclusions.

That's what's so interesting. Aside from those nagging hypothetical questions they pose, almost every bit of the movie is based on either direct, original interviews (a flight school guy and a WTC staffer, both interesting), media clips from the day itself, mainstream media press reports, and government documents. In the site's evidence section you can find links to all of these things.

On the other hand, there are press reports that I would basically dismiss. A glaring one is the Guardian report that Osama bin Laden was hospitalized in Dubai on September 10 and met with a local CIA station chief. That story was itself based on one in the French media that was based on anonymous French intelligence sources. Make your own judgments on that, but Loose Change fails to explain the source of that particular story.

It opens with a brilliant Hunter Thompson interview about the supine, "flag sucking" media. Loose Change deploys all the video and audio clips that just don't fit with the official explanations – the suppressed odds and ends of the immediate 9/11 situation, all the weird immediate eyewitness reports. My favorite is when CNN's Jamie McIntyre, live at the Pentagon, says he just doesn't see any damn evidence the plane crashed "anywhere near the Pentagon." All the clips of doomed firefighters talking about secondary WTC explosions was also interesting.

My favorite parts of the movie: the introduction featuring the Operation Northwoods case, which proves that in 1962, the military openly drafted plans to execute fake Communist Cuban terrorist attacks, intended to justify military action against Cuba. This sets a high bar for devious thinking. Then, there is the Pentagon segment, wherein the weird anomaly of how that hole in the Pentagon was not shaped like a plane at all is offered with an excellent animation. The key is that there aren't any holes matching the impact point of multiple-ton jet engines. Looking at the "controlled demolition" WTC theory, the video shows, in brackets, exploding points on the building that – with a bit of imagination – could appear to be charges blowing apart the structure.

Personally, I really can't swallow the full body of 9/11 conspiracies that are out there. I don't believe in the "controlled demolition", but I just can't refute the fact that the God damned hole in the Pentagon is not shaped right at all. And if there were Pentagon defense drills called "Vigilant Guardian," "Northern Vigilance" and others, these placed America's air defenses in all the wrong places, by evil design or really unlucky accident. But, above all, why were the War Games not documented in the 9/11 Commission's final report? The audio clip where the air traffic controller says "Is this real world or exercise?" is deployed for in a disconcerting and brutal effect. (Check the Alex Jones PrisonPlanet archives for War Games details galore, not to mention a quite exhaustive set of 9/11 conspiracy stories from everywhere)

The music is fucking awesome, especially during the Pentagon-hole part and the popping rhythms of the "controlled demolition" segment, perhaps the most surreal sequence. I think they should release a soundtrack.

So we can make one firm conclusion: It's crazy crazy crazy to think there is anything anomalous about 9/11. Or else, it is crazy crazy crazy to believe in one film's version of the events because it features the wrong conspiracy. There are people on the pro-conspiracy side that think that Avery's film is crude, misleading, and full of the red herrings like the explosive 'pods' on the WTC planes, all diversions planted by the government to divide and confuse the 9/11 Truth Movement, deemed Trojan Horses.

911research.com, a pro-conspiracy site, featured the following flyer which summarized their favorite parts and drawbacks to Loose Change:

Strong evidence – irrefutable inside job
+ “WTC7 fell straight down, into a convenient little pile, in 6 seconds.”
+ “The Twin Towers came down in nearly free fall speed.”
+ “The [WTC] remains [were shipped] off to recycling yards overseas before investigators could even examine them.”
+ “And is it merely coincidence that the Pentagon was hit in the only section that was recently being reinforced to withstand that very same kind of attack?”
+ “So four different black boxes, made from the most resiliant materials known to man, were destroyed.”
+ “And for some reason, the last three minutes of the [Ft 93] tape was unaccounted for. The FBI had no explanation for the discrepancy.”
+ “Newsweek reports that a number of top Pentagon brass cancel their flight plans for the next morning.”
+ “On September 11th, 2001, NORAD is in the middle of a number of [up to 5] military exercises . . . leaving 14 fighter jets to protect the entire US.”
+ “It was a psychological attack on the American People, and it was pulled off with military precision.”

Pseudo evidence – traps to distract and discredit the 9/11 truth movement: pods, missiles, drones . . .
+ “It would seem that an entire plane disappeared upon impact.” [Answer – Many many documented plane crash sites leave virtually no debris.]
+ “So what could blow a 16 foot hole in the outer ring of the Pentagon . . . A cruise missile.” [Answer – Wrong. A Boeing 757 could.]
+ “Why is the damage to the Pentagon completely inconsistent with a Boeing 757?” [Answer - It’s not, the first floor hole is over 90’ wide.]
+ “So if Flight 93 didn’t go down in Shanksville, then where? You ready for this? Cleveland.” [Answer – Flt 93 was most likely shot down.]
+ “Flight 93 passengers were taken to an empty NASA research center.” [This is pure speculation mixed with information from a real flight which landed, Delta 1989.]
+ “If different planes were used, what happened to the original ones?” [Answer- There is no evidence that anything but the real planes were used in any the attacks.]
+ “None of those calls [from the flights] could have possibly taken place.” [Answer – there is no clear evidence for the calls being fake or impossible.]
+ “So what happened in the North Tower? Ask Willie Rodriguez. . . . explosions coming from the basement . . .” [Answer – even though were some explosions in the basement and lobby, we know the towers collapsed from the top down.]

Some [9/11 truth movement/conspiracy theorist/planted disinformation cut-out/guy in his basement] Michael Green, offered the following analysis of Loose Change, though I think it is based on the First Edition, not second. "Loose Change" An analysis:

If a film-maker or live lecturer has the good fortune of having the attention of someone like this, or good solid middle-Americans, for an hour-long DVD, or for a 2-3 hour live presentation, he had better use clear hard facts for persuasion, and not iffy, vaguely or ambiguously supported possibilities. The intelligence agencies that do the crimes try to control the counter-community's response by infiltrating moles that infect it with large falsehoods and impossible-to-prove technical questions (micro-analysis). The large falsehoods are designed to prove the community wrong and nuts if the need arises. The microanalysis into pointless or unanswerable questions, or into just plain dumb ones, is to divert its energies from using the clear hard facts to tell the story simply and clearly.

The DVD "Loose Change" by rising media artist Dylan Avery has been touted by some members of the 911-truth community as the best presentation yet, as the "best evidence" (a reference to David Lifton’s book, "Best Evidence" on the JFK assassination). This review will show that the DVD is anything but that; if it is not naive, foolish, uninformed and ignorant, then it is the work of a calculating mole or at best a naïf who has been used by such.

...........Mr. Avery then says to “forget the debris. The 767’s that hit the WTC left a very distinct outline of a commercial airliner. Therefore we should expect something similar at the Pentagon.” The film then flashes to the famous photo of the smoky Pentagon that shows the entry hole before the outer wall collapsed. Avery remarks, “The only damage to the outer wall of the Pentagon is a single hole approximately 16’ in diameter.” COMMENT: First, Avery advances a bad argument because whether or not the Pentagon should show the outline of an airliner in the same way depends on whether it is constructed of the same material as the WTC, and if not, upon the structural differences. Since the outer wall of the Pentagon reportedly was 18” of steel reinforced concrete and reportedly had many of its windows replaced with bomb-resistant 2,500-pound windows in the renovation process that was not yet completed, there is no reason to expect the same pattern.[5] Indeed Mr. Avery’s short attention span shows when he asks the relevant question at 21:35 “And is it merely a coincidence that the Pentagon was hit in the only section that was renovated to withstand that kind of attack?” Second, the area of damage caused by the wings to the Pentagon does in fact fit its outlines well. The photo that Avery mistakenly says shows just a small hole in fact shows massive damage to the façade where the right wing hit; the left side is totally obscured by black smoke. Other photos of the left area show a very close correlation to the angled wingspan of a 767. See “Revelations 911,” [site link busted -Dan].

So that's an attack from the more paranoid side. I'm sure you can find an equally forceful one from the Offical Reality side of the media world.

Here are some more sources for 9/11 conspiracy/truth material. Take it as you will: Question911.com links, WhatReallyHappened.com and another video: Painful Deceptions. Project Censored's unanswered questions of 9/11, the staggeringly complex CooperativeResearch.org's Complete 9/11 Timeline including military exercises. This Serendipity.li essay hits all the cornerstones of this type of story. I could go on and on... but oh well. You can use Google your own damn self.

This is where I am supposed to make some grand conclusion. I dunno....

It is so irritating that this whole era revolves around your supposed emotional reaction to a big-ass terrorist attack that turned out to justify invading half the Middle East and bombing the rest. Our society relentlessly frames and reframes that point in history, with either an angle to Prove the Face of the Enemy (and take your kids to see United 93 so they turn into bloodthirsty cretins!!) or else to prove this government is even more diabolical than when Reagan's boys ran drugs for arms for hostages for Iran. In the process of rationalizing its messy history, the 9/11 Commission invented its own damn timeline that seemed shaped to take the pressure off of NORAD for their weirdly sluggish response to the whole thing, and only poor Mark Dayton had the brass to object to this spinning. At the minimum, "they" were disingenuous after the fact, as bureaucracies usually are, in order to shift the blame around. Of that much, I think we can be certain.

Let's round this out, since of course the back of the dollar bill and that creepy fucking pyramid has been at the root of this the whole time. Why not? The 9/11 folding bill conspiracy? From Armageddon Online: 911 and Currency Conspiracy. Pretty funny.

Either way, enjoy United 93. Your fucking popcorn flavoring will kill you before THE ENEMY does: ABC News: Fatal Disease From Flavoring Raises Flags. Good times. 3 AM is a perfect time to post something like this.

Technorati Tags: 11, cia, conspiracy, loose change, propaganda, war

Reports of Kurdish rebellion between Marash and Shahrzur; Turkish mortars fall on Iraqi city of Zakho

There are reports of trouble among the restive natives of eastern Anatolia. It seems the Yanks have tried to set up a banana republic down in Mesopotamia. in turn, the quiescent tribal locals of the north, who begrudge their Asian neighbors after many centuries of strife and imposed political submission to the Turk and the Arab, finally see a moment to cut their own path through the highlands.

The Kurds have broken loose of Baghdad's control, and more recently, have taken up arms in great numbers against their Ottoman masters in Constantinople. There's a sense they may yet capture the Kirkuk oil fields from Baghdad, and from there, face their destiny against the Turkish army to liberate their brethren.

Or something like that. (source: check out these maps of the Ottoman empire - thx Texas U!) In reality, any damn fool before the war would have said that Saddam's fall would lead to the Kurds seeking total independence and rebelling against Turkey, as they did in 1920, 1925, 1930, 1937, the 1980s, 1990s.... Apparently, this has escalated into ethnic conflict in Iraq, as the small Turkmen minority – about a quarter of Kirkuk – suffer the ethnic and religious tensions under Kurdish dominion in contemporary Iraq (not to mention getting the shit bombed out of them in Tal Afar). The Turks, meanwhile, will probably "step in" at some point to save their Turkic brethren from Kurdish "consolidation".

Of course, the Kurds have one of the most peculiar distributions of any ethnic group in the world:

This presents the possibility of Turkish military intervention into Iraq – and certainly, they have a presence there. Der Speigel reports:

April 25: Kurdish Intifada? Clashes in Southeastern Turkey on the Rise

Violence is on the rise in southeastern Turkey as the Kurdistan Worker's Party increases its guerilla activity. The government in Ankara is worried about a Kurdish intifada.

It's slowly becoming a regular feature of the news coming out of Turkey these days: clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish militants in the eastern part of the country. On Tuesday, three Kurdish militants and one Turkish soldier were killed in a skirmish in the Sirnak province near the Iraqi border. Fifteen soldiers, four police officers and more than 40 Kurdish militants have been killed in south-eastern Turkey in recent months. And eight bombings in the past three months have left two dead and 47 injured -- bombings claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons.
In short, violence is on the rise in Turkey -- and the country's military is concerned that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), together with the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, is trying to begin a Palestinian-style intifada.

Indeed, the Aksam newspaper reported last Friday that a further 10,000 Turkish soldiers have been sent to the border region, bringing the total number of troops in the area up to about 50,000. "As long as the PKK exists, our operations will continue in ever-increasing intensity," General Yasar Buyukanit, the head of Turkey's land forces, told CNN-Turk television in an interview aired on Sunday.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy since 1984, frequently launches its anti-government operations from its bases on the Iraqi side of the border. Since the group took up arms in 1984, some 37,000 people have lost their lives in the fighting -- with clashes generally accelerating in the spring time when the mountain passes on the Turkey-Iraq border become more accessible.

Indeed, to help prevent attacks from being launched across the border, some 2,000 Turkish soldiers are routinely stationed in northern Iraq. Turkey has repeatedly called on the United States to crack down on the PKK bases in northern Iraq, but US commanders have been reticent to divert troops from the struggle against Iraqi insurgents.

Now Turkey seems tempted to take matters into its own hands. The chief commander of Turkey's armed forces, General Hilmi Ozkok, has stressed that Turkey has the right to carry out cross-border operations under international law: "If the conditions arise, like every sovereign country, we will use those rights," Ozkok said on Sunday, according to the AP. Still, such a move would be politically sensitive and diplomats argue that it is unlikely Turkey will put its relations to Washington and to the European Union at risk by staging a large offensive in Iraq. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has likewise recently said that neighboring countries should not meddle in Iraq's affairs -- a statement thought to refer to Turkey.

With the armed clashes between the PKK and the Turkish military heating up, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also stepping up internal repression of groups suspected of supporting the PKK. Last Tuesday, Turkish security forces raided the offices of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. Some 50 party members, including five provincial leaders and nine local leaders, were detained, according to the AP. Prime Minister Erdogan had previously urged members of the Democratic Society Party to denounce PKK violence. The leaders of the party have refused to accept the definition of the PKK as a terrorist group, a definition endorsed by Turkey, Washington and the EU.

Other Reporting: The ever-upbeat NY Times says: U.S. Will Help Turks Stop Kurdish Inroads From Iraq. AP: Turkey Deploys More Troops to Contain Kurdish Guerrillas. Juan Cole says:

Turkish military action against the Kurdish Workers' Party along the border with Iraq has heated up, with Turkish mortars falling on the Iraqi city of Zakho, according to this report. That's what we needed, more mortars falling on an Iraqi city from yet another quarter.

This problem is pretty damn obvious, I guess. It's yet another reason why the war in Iraq promised to go regional from day one. Oh wait. Three whole fucking years ago, tomorrow, we had this:

And two years ago, the list of the fallen was "only" this big. Charted today:

The regional war expands, we haven't even gotten to Iran yet, much less the eventually doomed oil terminals of Saudi Arabia...

International Relations Blitz: The Maoist Naxalite threat to India, US planning spring offensive & post-Musharraf Pakistan; New SOCOM Special Ops war plan; Iran Defence Forum

Foreign Policy magazine has a blog, with an interesting bit about the Maoist threat...to India, part of their Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2005:

Consistently outwitting and overwhelming Indian police forces, Indian Maoists, also known as Naxalites, have taken control of large chunks of territory in several eastern and southern Indian states, such as Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

They add:

Many Indian analysts have long been distressed by the central government's indifference to the problem, leaving it to the ill-armed and corrupt state police forces. But New Delhi, now led by Manmohan Singh's government can no longer ignore the insurgency that is growing in strength. Combined with Kashmir and sporadic sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims, the internal security problem is really serious.

This is interesting because it shows how less-than-unitary such a huge place as India can be – and it shows that a more complex model than traditional International Relations unitary state "Realism" is necessary to look at these things. It also reminds me of a certain stubborn Tamil nationalist who would remind us all where things really stood between Indian ethnicities... Photo from the Wikipedia entry on Naxalites.

The IMF is supposed to fix major trade imbalances now.

AIPAC case: Condi Rice denies that she leaked the same variety of classified information to AIPAC lobbyists as Larry Franklin. They are trying to get people to believe that "everyone does it", trading secret government deliberations among the right-wing foreign lobbies in DC. I wish I was a powerful rightwing foreign lobby, then everyone would kiss my ass!!

Not international but fun! Joementum evaporating: more and more people are pissed at Joe Lieberman for fucking over the Democrats constantly. His indicators are falling among independents, as well. It is entirely possible that Lamont will steal the Democratic primary nomination from him, which is basically unheard of. Hit up the Lamont Blog for more on the insurgency against this p0nk.

William Arkin at the Washington Post blog Early Warning is coming up with a lot of goods on upcoming Iran madness, but he thinks its kinda funny how he has personally been pegged as a conspirator for Global Zionism, the left, right, neocons, who knows what. He's got some cool stuff about how some damn defense contractor is going to be paid to cough up terror warnings because the government is pathologically retarded:

The database is produced by IntelCenter, one of a cottage industry that has sprung up since the early 1990's to feed at the counter-terrorism trough. According to the group's website, the IntelCenter's "primary client base is comprised of military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US and other allied countries around the world."

Space Command wants to obtain 20 licenses to the IntelCenter's U.S. Government Terrorism Threat Intelligence Package ($1650.00 per license according to the IntelCenter website).

This database, according to Space Command, includes "weekly and or real time email notifications of all significant terrorist, rebel group and other related activity, including bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, significant dates, threats and organizational changes within groups." IntelCenter will also provide warnings relating to "developments concerning intelligence agencies around the world including operational issues, organizational developments, new initiatives, espionage trials, new technologies and other related issues." And finally, IntelCenter will receive "real-time dissemination of raw statements, fatwas, announcements, and other messages directly from terrorist, rebel, extremist, and other organizations themselves."

The immediate question is: isn't this what all of these new "long war" commands and reorganized and beefed-up intelligence agencies with all of their new databases and data mining and authorities supposed to do? Okay, by government standards, $32,000 annually is petty cash. But there must be dozens of additional agencies and commands buying the IntelCenter product and hundreds if not thousands of licenses paid for with your and my tax dollars.

Everyone senses that we have a contractor crisis in our national security community, too many contractors acting like wild west prospectors in Iraq and the Middle East, contractors doing what we used to think of as "mission essential" jobs in headquarters and agencies.

Right on dude, right on.

Special Operations command, SOCOM, is apparently the new heart of the "war on terror" and there are all kinds of plans getting put together to shift intelligence and shadowy combat type stuff into SOCOM - and also, a decisive shift to allow military operations without an ambassador's approval. Are they also coordinating Psychological Operations such as Zarqawi "letters?" (More on that in a bit, we do have a couple goodies...)

WaPo: New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones
Pentagon to Rely on Special Operations By Ann Scott Tyson Sunday, April 23, 2006; Page A01

Details of the plans are secret, but in general they envision a significantly expanded role for the military -- and, in particular, a growing force of elite Special Operations troops -- in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, the plans reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon's involvement in domains traditionally handled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.

For example, SOCOM has dispatched small teams of Army Green Berets and other Special Operations troops to U.S. embassies in about 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America, where they do operational planning and intelligence gathering to enhance the ability to conduct military operations where the United States is not at war. [orwellian phrase of the day]

And in a subtle but important shift contained in a classified order last year, the Pentagon gained the leeway to inform -- rather than gain the approval of -- the U.S. ambassador before conducting military operations in a foreign country, according to several administration officials. "We do not need ambassador-level approval," said one defense official familiar with the order.

This plan details "what terrorists or bad guys we would hit if the gloves came off. The gloves are not off," said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject..... Special Operations Command, led by Gen. Doug Brown, has been building up its headquarters and writing the plans since 2003, when Rumsfeld first designated it as the lead command for the war on terrorism. Its budget has grown 60 percent since 2003 to $8 billion in fiscal 2007. President Bush empowered the 53,000-strong command with coordinating the entire military's efforts in counterterrorism in 2004.

"SOCOM is, in fact, in charge of the global war on terror," Brown said in testimony before the House last month. In this role, SOCOM directs and coordinates actions by the military's regional combatant commands. SOCOM, if directed, can also command its own counterterrorist operations -- such as when a threat spans regional boundaries or the mission is highly sensitive -- but it has not done so yet...

Stratfor: US is planning post-Musharraf Pakistan: Arkin has some goods on a planned spring offensive against Taliban-style guys in Pakistan, but alarmingly, The Pakistan Daily Times reports:

April 21, 2006: US now viewing Pakistan without Musharraf: Stratfor | By Khalid Hasan
There are indications that the Bush administration is now imagining a Pakistan without Gen Pervez Musharraf, according to Stratfor, an American news and analysis service.

In two commentaries in the wake of Richard Boucher’s April 5 statement in Islamabad about America wishing to see the ascendancy of civilian rule in Pakistan, Stratfor says this shift in Washington’s thinking will create further domestic problems for the Pakistani leader, since his political opponents view the US statements as a signal to intensify their efforts to oust him. The analysis also noted US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley’s comment that the Bush administration will work with Musharraf to ensure that Pakistan’s 2007 elections are “ free and fair,” as well as Condoleezza Rice’s congressional testimony earlier this month.

“These statements from the highest echelons of the Bush administration illustrate that the United States is no longer fixated on supporting Musharraf,” says Stratfor. “This is probably because Musharraf’s usefulness to the United States is fast becoming negligible. The principal reason the Bush administration supported the Musharraf regime was due to Pakistan’s critical role in the US-jihadist war. It would appear Washington believes it does not need Musharraf at the helm for the United States to continue to prosecute its struggle against militant Islamism, and no longer believes the Pakistani state would collapse without Musharraf. Moreover, the Bush administration likely feels Musharraf is no longer able to keep domestic affairs in order, and sees pinning Washington’s entire Pakistan policy on one individual as a liability. Thus, Washington has decided to put some distance between itself and the Pakistani president.”

The analysis cautioned that this does not mean that Washington would like to see Musharraf ousted. Instead, it reflects a decision to initiate a contingency plan to avoid being caught off guard in light of political instability in Pakistan in the months ahead. Not supporting Musharraf the way it has before will allow Washington to ascertain potential alternative political players capable of stepping in and filling the void in the event Musharraf is no longer able to maintain his position.

On the other hand, if they bomb Iran, well Pakistan will probably get all fucked up, and we better rationalize that chaos now, hadn't we?

Want to see what Iranians are saying about the whole situation? Check out the Iran Defence Forum. With such speculation as will the usa use ground forces in war against iran? Check out, if you will, the thread about "the true iran and its people," a collection of snapshots of what looks like a frickin sweet civilization with lots of beautiful women.

Note that they wear funny hats in their legislature. The "hat problem" has been the secret root of a great many conflicts.

Alright, I think we can all pretty much agree that Tehran is the Central Asian version of Manhattan + Paris. That's all for now.......

Meanwhile, in the real war on Terror/Drugs

Afghan poppy growers want protection from Cdn forces
Richard Foot, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, April 18, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A large group of Afghan poppy farmers has handed Canadian soldiers an unusual offer, pledging not to grow the illicit flowers next year if they're allowed to harvest their poppy crop this year with no interference from Afghan officials intent on smashing the country's opium trade.
More than 15 village elders, representing hundreds of local farmers, recently made the plea to soldiers at Canada's remote firebase near the town of Gombad, in the rugged countryside north of Kandahar.
"They're afraid of the government plowing up their fields," said Maj. Kirk Gallinger, who commands a company of Edmonton-based troops trying to fight the Taliban and bring security to the district around Gombad.
"They came and asked us to support them, and to pass on a request to the (Afghan) government not to eradicate their crops this year. In return, they'll pledge not to grow any poppies next year."

OPIATES FOR THE MASSES == VICTORY!!!

Hersh: The Next War is on, apparently. Damn. Better Yet: the Zarqawi media campaign IS a Pentagon PSY OPS operation!!!! Really!!!

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt: "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

I have billed this website to be about spinstorms, Information Operations and latent contradictions. Here are two crucial elements of the current political environment that have to be fully confronted.

One: There are clandestine U.S. military operations in Iran today - which Congress really has no clue about, and are not at all in our country's interests. This is insane.

Two: The military has a specific psychological warfare campaign to manipulate the perception of the "Abu Musab al Zarqawi" figure in Iraq - and the American audience is an official target of this psychological warfare, the Washington Post rather explosively confirms today. This indicates that PSY OPS planning and operations are integrated into the basic structure of how the U.S. media is fed information by the Pentagon. Your brain is currently contaminated with the results of military psychological operations. This is also insane.

Sy Hersh has been telling us for a while that the situation between the United States and Iran is getting hot very quickly. A new report: The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb? is decidedly alarming. There are plenty of horrible things in here, but why not mention the beginning:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Surely we'll get back to this. But it seemed an appropriate thing to throw in right before I go to bed and start a new week, pondering how these ethnic minorities will be manipulated -- who will be the next Hmong-like ethnic group, used and abused as a tool of American war policy, then left to twist in the wind? Azeris? Baluchis? Turkmen? Kurds?

What could possibly go wrong?!!!? Note Khuzestan, down there next to Iraq. Apparently, since it has many (Shia) Arabs, it is considered a prime area for ethnic fragmentation that will somehow serve American interests.... (And Baluchistan is another key angle for stirring up trouble). Get your popcorn ready, the new Great Game with Nuclear Chips will really be an entertaining one.

By the way, isn't it interesting to live in a country that launches preemptive covert operations into various places without informing Congress or the public it is supposed to serve? What is the appropriate response from Iran? What of this American public, swiftly led into yet another strange and ugly Eurasian trap? What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Now a turn to the even more surreal. Today, The Washington Post confirms that "Abu Musab al Zarqawi", the vaunted evil terrorist, has officially been used as an instrument of psychological warfare by the Pentagon. Last September I posted "Zarqawi == Emmanuel Goldstein". I said:

The image of Senior Demon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an essential element of the Bush Administration's strategy to manage perceptions of their disastrous war - diverting blame and creating an attractive 'negative image'. Zarqawi is one of the principle Hollow Lies of the war.

.....Let me offer a theory: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may actually exist, but his "existence" in the media is an essential element of the Bush Administration's Public Relations strategy to manage perception of the war. He is a personification of malevolent intent: if he wasn't around, we are told to believe, things would sort themselves out, so our motive has to be to crush him instead of confronting the Pentagon's essentially racist, disastrous policies.

.....There's probably a real Zarqawi figure out there, but basically, these days I generally believe he is a media construction designed to provide a narrative that Joe Six Pack can understand. The exciting Zarqawi Chase (with, say, captured laptops and narrow escapes) is the kind of story that the NASCAR dad needs to stave off cognitive dissonance.

Now the Washington Post sets this off:

Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi: Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; Page A01

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

[Sidebar: Two slides from a briefing prepared for Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describe a U.S. military propaganda campaign that was intended to highlight the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, in the Iraqi insurgency. By emphasizing his foreign origin, the "psychological operations" effort sought to play on a perceived Iraqi dislike of foreigners and so split the insurgency.]

The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort, but other sections of the briefings indicate that there were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.

Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare.

.....It is difficult to determine how much has been spent on the Zarqawi campaign, which began two years ago and is believed to be ongoing. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million, but that included extensive building of offices and residences for troops involved, as well as radio broadcasts and distribution of thousands of leaflets with Zarqawi's face on them, said the officer speaking on background.

The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work.

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

Damn, skippy. I have rarely seen better evidence that we will have to defend our brains from military psychological operations directly. The public mood is a battlespace (which of course is exploited for Republican partisan political gains).

I can't wait to see if this gets the proper bounce in the media this week - and better yet, hopefully Republicans will explain why military propaganda is good because it makes us feel good.

Strange times. Stay sharp. We could run out of space real fast.

Technorati Tags: baluchistan, cia, covert, iran, PSYOPS, propaganda, spin, war, zarqawi

Fear the Bear! Russians provide Saddam war intelligence, or is it more DC neo-con perception management? (fear, PSY OPS & energy politics?)

I am going to be in Arizona until April 2. Until then I don't know if anyone is going to post or what, although I'll try to put up some photos and stuff. In the meantime, enjoy a retro-cold war disinformation conspiracy theory... Why not?

March 24: Pentagon report says Russia gave Iraq intelligence (Reuters)

Russia provided intelligence to Iraq's government on U.S. military movements in the opening days of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report released on Friday said.

The report said an April 2, 2003, document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein stated that Russian intelligence had reported information on American troops plans to the Iraqis through the Russian ambassador.

....Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Cucolo of U.S. Joint Forces Command told a briefing he viewed Russia's decision to give intelligence to Saddam's government as "driven by economic interests." The report noted Russian business interests in Iraqi oil.

Let us take a gander at those oil contracts, via the famous Cheney Energy Task Force Iraq document collection from Judicial Watch (PDF of this page):

And I am putting up this classic Cheney Energy Task Force map (PDF) because it says way more than a thousand words (remember, this is older than 9/11 - March 2001, to be exact). I have fast hosting now and I just love this damn map and its "exploration blocks" that need to get taken away from the damn Russians. With guns. Classic imperialism. Ok, that's old news.
Ok ok, we know about the map, but what does this have to do with these new claims about Russian intelligence in the war? The Russians played some role giving Iraq military goods, including, it has been said, tactical training for soldiers and night vision gear, right up until the low-grade bombing war (10+ years) upgraded to a full invasion in March 2003.

So now the line out of the Pentagon is that the Russians were actively supplying tactical combat intelligence of sorts to Saddam Hussein, and there's some rumor of Russian moles in Qatar or something. It would be interesting if it were true, but I wouldn't really be angry with the Russians because there is no law from God that they couldn't tell Saddam jack shit (and what they did tell, wasn't really helpful, if its true).

However, what we should consider is
A) is this a propaganda front designed to reactivate the classic American hatred of Russians?
B) is this designed to prepare the American public for the dozens of Russian scientists that would be killed if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran?
C) is this yet another example of some bastards in Washington using petty forgeries (see the Niger Uranium classics) to control perceptions, creating an atmosphere of fear and instability, and in turn offering the ruling party as the solution to the public's constructed fears? (thanks Anti-Flag - the new album fucking rules by the way)

Well, of course Wayne Madsen has a comprehensive claim that this is all a propaganda front from the usual DC bastards that brought us all the original fake Iraq intelligence in the first place. Basically, since the days of Team B scaring everyone about the Russians, they have made a 30-year career of scaring the shit out of people.

Even if this information about the Russians is true, this is exactly the kind of electoral engineering of perception that we have to expect before the election. They call it the October Surprise for a reason!!

Wayne Madsen Report, March 25 2006. Take it for what you will:

The Pentagon's role as a source of media disinformation. First it was the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, which morphed into the Office of Special Plans. Both served as conduits for neo-con propaganda spewed forth by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Hudson Institute, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among others prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Now the Pentagon has issued an "unclassified report" stating that in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia obtained war plans and planned U.S. troop movements from “inside the American Central Command.” The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) denied the charge, stating that "similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once."

The Pentagon cited as its source two captured Iraqi documents that describe Russian penetration of the US Central Command in Qatar. However, the Pentagon's story later changed. The revised story stated the Russian obtained the war plans from signals intelligence intercepts of pre-war U.S. military communications. In either case, the citing of "captured" Iraqi documents has been used in the past to falsely implicate various anti-war international politicians with being in league with Saddam's "Oil for Food" program. Many of these "captured" documents were forgeries emanating from notorious Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi. Bogus Niger government documents were forged by a neo-con cabal based in Rome, Washington, and Jerusalem to justify an attack on Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

The information contained in the two "secret" Iraqi documents could have been obtained from any number of open sources, including Jane's Defence Weekly. The "sic" appearing next to "special forces unit 'Papa'" in the purported Iraqi documents is a clue to a forgery. The standard NATO/DoD phonetic code for the letter "P" is "Papa." Why the authors would indicate a possible misspelling of Papa in the document is curious unless its because the real authors include some of our most noted neo-con draft dodgers who are unfamiliar with U.S. and NATO military nomenclatures. The two secret Iraqi documents are handwritten and contain no official government seal or stamps, another clear indication of a forgery. Update: The memo dated March 25, 2003 is also a likely forgery because of the use of the Western calendar and not the lunar Muslim Hijri calendar used in many Arab and other predominantly Muslim countries. The Muslim date would have been 16 Muharram 1424.

The neo-con stranglehold on the Pentagon continues to permit this cabal of provocateurs and dual loyalists to pump out false charges in an attempt to damage relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin as Russia continues to push for negotiations with Iran and lay the possible groundwork for Russian casualties at Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of war with Iran. Neo-cons would argue that such casualties were legitimate considering previous Russian support for Saddam against the United States.

In fact, the Pentagon neo-cons now have more power than ever considering the current presence of anti-Russian neo-con-influenced governments in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, an AEI alum and colleague of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen, is married to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum. All four are virulently anti-Putin, especially since Putin began cracking down on the Russian oligarchs who looted the USSR's treasury and resources and made themselves instant billionaires, at the expense of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

Over 70 percent of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs carry Israeli passports. Ukraine President Viktor Yuschenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, is an American citizen and held positions in the Reagan White House that were directed against "the evil empire." She was, and remains, close to the leading neo-con war hawks of the Reagan years, including Perle, Ledeen, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Ken Adelman. Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, in an anti-Putin U.S.-trained lawyer who ousted his predecessor in a U.S.-financed and supported coup backed by oil companies like Halliburton and Exxon Mobil. In addition to the offices of AEI, AIPAC, Hudson, WINEP, and Heritage, in addition to the Pentagon, the embassies of Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia in Washington have become virtual neo-con nesting places, working overtime to formulate all sorts of anti-Russian propaganda aimed at destabilizing Russia and toppling Putin. They are assisted in these efforts by the US Mission to the United Nations, which under arch neo-con John Bolton, has become a favorite off-site meeting place for Washington-based neo-cons right in the middle of Manhattan.

If it's all true, it's one hell of a problem. How do we, as sane Americans and non-Americans, deal with a Pentagon that is attempting to manipulate all these public perceptions? What is the appropriate response to this problem? Maybe this is all too wild. But I just loved how the whole thing was framed by the usual dickheads in DC thinktanks, in this article in the LA Times:

Russians Told Iraqi Regime of U.S. Troop Movements By Peter Spiegel and Greg Miller: March 25, 2006

....But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war.

"This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution. "It's actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It's hard to get more unfriendly than that."

Kevin Wood, a retired Army officer who served as the senior researcher and chief author of the study, said he was surprised when he learned of the Russian actions...... But Frederick Kagan, a Russia and defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the actions would not be out of keeping with other efforts by Moscow to advance Iraq's cause internationally.

"We knew the Russians were opposed to the sanctions; we knew they opposed the war," Kagan said. "I'm not terribly surprised." Analysts also said it would be important to learn whether upper levels of the Russian government were involved, adding that the signals were more likely to have come from diplomatic and intelligence agents in the region rather than from Moscow.

It also was unclear how much of the information was genuine intelligence and how much was educated guesswork.

Regardless, the revelations could undermine efforts to forge a united front against Iran's nuclear program.

"I think we have to assume that we can't trust the Russians to be impartial or even honest with us," Kagan said. "The Russians have ties with the Iranians that are also very worrying."

So Kagan is demanding that you personally should start to hate the Russians on his behalf at the end there. Shocking. Time will tell, if this just fades away, if it is proven to be true. We'll keep an eye on this one. By the way, here is a clip of O'Hanlon saying a crock of shit on CNN in 2003 about Saddam's weapons.

On random yet interesting notes: Global Guerrillas: STARTING AN OPEN SOURCE WAR. This was buzzwordy but interesting. Papers Show Split in Nixon-Iraq Policy

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nixon administration was split over whether to try to improve relations with Saddam Hussein's Soviet-allied Baathists in Iraq, State Department documents released Thursday show.

Who is Satan? No one trusts the atheists these days. It must be a carryover from the Cold war. I feel like a Russkie!

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.

Too much drama in the LBC; or I could have had my own Zapruder film

I'm going to toss in some brief bits, but first I have to tell about the recent dicey situation over here by Loring Park. Last week, as many students were milling around the Minneapolis Community / Technical College across the street, some people in a red compact rolled up off Hennepin. According to one anonymous local known as Papa Smurf who witnessed the event, suddenly a number of guys jumped out and started shooting at a group of people on the south end of the parking lot, as portrayed in a somewhat garish way here, from my living room window:

The targets took cover behind cars in the lot (there were more at the time), and the assassins sped off east down Spruce, towards Loring Park. If only I hadn't been working in St. Paul, I might have seen it from my window.

Papa Smurf said that one person was left limping around with an apparent gunshot to the leg, while most everyone else hid until the police showed up less than 5 minutes later. It was not featured on the news.

I told this to a friend, expecting some sort of 'oh wow.' Instead she was like, "Well they shot up the Tires Plus next to my house last night." You just can't impress some people.

Jane Cat, by the way, is fine now. The right ear healed up quite nicely.

On with the miscellaneous: DailySixer presents a sweet Reservoir Dogs poster and a Live Action Simpsons intro.

Alison and I got back to our East Metro roots at White Bear Lake's BearTown Lounge on Highway 61 for some really good cheeseburgers and $1 second beers in Happy Hour. The place is full of sculpted polar bears. This is exactly why East Metro beats the tar out of Edina and the West Metro.

Mordred sent over rrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnhhhh.blogspot.com, which is a Chewbacca spoof blog, inserting Chewy into such internet pop culture icons as the famous Gary Busey mugshot. Also has a myspace profile. Kind of a sublime exercise in whatever art form this is.

Chewy has a link to mchammer.blogspot.com, wherein MC Hammer has apparently learned how to upload low-quality photos from his Sidekick camera-phone. It seems this is authentic, it looks like him. And, I can't believe I am saying this, MC Hammer is audio blogging.

The Agonist has a really sweet new website now geared up. For organized international news it really rocks. The new NewsWire thing is sweet. Right now, top story is NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq, such as William Buckley, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Perle, Andrew Sullivan, George Will. Well fuck you guys. Thanks for joining the regularly scheduled disaster. I hope you hate yourselves.

Sketchy Narcotics conspiracies: NarcoNews.com is featuring, as always, lots of controversial stuff on the drug war. Today we find some of the corrupt Democrat flip side. As with most things of this nature, take it with your grains of salt. Catherine Austin Fitts is someone I would classify as from the same general sector of the infowars as Michael Ruppert (they're tight). So check out Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits: Part IV: The Clinton Years: Progressives for Private Prisons, HUD’s Corrupt Role in Centralizing Debt and Corporate Dirty Tricks.

Scooter your ass to jail:
Along the same lines as attempted homicides outside, the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust is pretty fucking great. Because nothing says freedom like outing a CIA agent, to intimidate the Washington bureaucracy into silence over the fake intelligence. Good times. And thanks for providing a list of evildoers such as Francis Fukuyama, Steve Forbes and Evil Emperor James Woolsey. And also apparently Dennis Ross. When the revolution comes, your crew will be first against the wall.

Quick batch of commentary & headlines: U.S. stuck with few options in Iraq. Preventing Iraq's disintegration. Outlook worsens in Afghanistan.

PENTAGON DISMISSES US TROOP POLL Thursday, March 02, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com

The Pentagon has dismissed a poll's finding that 72 per cent of United States troops in Iraq believe the US should pull out within a year or less. "It shouldn't surprise anybody that a deployed soldier would rather be at home than deployed, even when they believe what they are doing is important and vital work," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby International found that only 23 per cent believed US troops should stay in Iraq "as long as it takes," as US President George W. Bush has insisted.

As If There Were No Tomorrow: Sunnis Leaving Iraq by the adventuresome and indefatigable Iraqi journalist/blogger Khalid Jarrar. Juan Cole: Iraq's worst week -- and Bush's. Deep troubles as Iraq tries to form a new government. Al Ahram: The myth of civil war.

Subtle Irony Department: [via This Modern World and Under the Same Sun]: CommonDreams:

Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.

In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.

DKos: White House hunting down truth-tellers.
This is what happens when you pay too much of your credit card bill: Pay too much and you could raise the alarm:

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Nothing left to say.

It's Tester Time for Andy

My good friend Andy Tweeten is out in Great Falls, Montana, working for the Jon Tester for Senate campaign. He sent out an email today to let people know where he's at.

He also takes care of the TesterTime campaign blog. Right on. Tester is something of a prairie populist, and he's in a neck-and-neck race with some DLC-style city slicker lawyer type for the Democratic primary. Tester's opponent in November (hopefully) will be the wildly unpopular Conrad Burns. It's a fight worth watching, and I'm glad Andy's around to get a handle on things.

Something completely different: Andy also alerted me to a tidbit about how Facebook is used by the Man to peer into our lives. Interestingly, one of the groups behind Facebook, the Accel Group, has been tied to DARPA. Including a nasty threat to the president that led to Secret Service visits for some pissed-off student.

The story has a sad little note at the end:

This is a revised version of this piece. An earlier version incorrectly implied that U.S. intelligence agencies were involved in Facebook and may have been read as suggesting that Facebook played a role in disseminating information to authorities. CampusProgress.org regrets these errors.

Well, if you post stuff publicly, and intelligence agencies use Facebook to find it, it's not exactly facebook's fault. If it would be bad for the District Attorney to see your facebook page, then you shouldn't have it there. But I wonder if facebook uses heuristics / AI methods to dig for incriminating stuff that people have posted themselves. And what of the private messages?

MySpace, on the other hand, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, who will ultimately own all their poor souls. Kind of a pity.

Tester will have to come riding in at the last second to save the day. Go Jon!!

A small lesson in threat construction, terror and the psychology of political authority: Iraq, Russia, some phantom WMDs, and an idiot general

RED SCARE, PART 4,394,480: ThinkProgress.org featured a video with a Fox News talking head, who informed us that Russian Spetznaz Teams smuggled Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction into Syria and the Bekaa Valley.

MCINERNEY: Well, I believe that — that [Saddam Hussein] had [WMD] and then the Russians convinced him, because they sent a team in, a Spetsnaz [Russian Special Forces] team in, and they moved those weapons into three locations in Syria and one into Bekaa Valley. And they did it very thoroughly. They were very professional. They were Spetsnaz with GRU. They knew exactly where all the material was, because they were preventing the inspectors from finding it. And then they had a brilliant what they call mass deroka – deception - campaign. When the Iraqi survey group didn’t find anything, then they spread throughout the capitals of Europe and the U.N: “See, there were no WMD.”

O’REILLY: So you believe that the Russians themselves moved the WMD’s?
MCINERNEY: Absolutely, absolutely.

Now this is bullshit, but it reflects how the new order of symbolic logic is being constructed this year. The general's threatening language must focus on Russia, because Russia is starting to make moves with HAMAS and Iran, plus people like McInerney surely see a need to finally kill Russia and steal their energy.

More realpolitik below the fold, but first let's look at the psychological effect of the information, rather than its truth value.

The everyday man on the street thinks "Iran equals The Nuclear" and therefore accepts what is happening. With Iraq, all it took was a small batch of defectors working for Ahmed Chalabi, a demonic press, and the ruling establishment to scare the shit out of this whole country. When you are held in fear, you unthinkingly fork over political power — more precisely, control over a kind of emotion that is pre-political power. The key to this power is found more in the id than the ego.

Generating psychological projection of fear onto Other groups is a crucial form of war propaganda — or psychological warfare performed on the domestic population, in some cases. The mental image of the WMDs becomes a source to project anger and anxiety towards. "We can't let them hit us" becomes a kind of mental crutch, colored goggles laid over the general sense of anxiety. It's not your fault, it comes from the outside, the government reassures us.

But don't think about Abu Ghraib, or any evidence the leadership is incompetent. Thoughts against the leadership endanger the information war! You are not smart or privileged enough to evaluate our performance. You cannot talk about military policy because only the Dark Priesthood (McInerney and his like) can truthfully tell YOU what is going on. This is the only safe way to feel authority and information.

Here in Minnesota, the Republicans are also testing the new "Midwest Heroes" ads from the RNC's 527 ad machine. These ads say: you must believe that distrusting the leadership equals making a dead soldier's mother cry. You must psychologically project motherhood into trusting the authority of the war-makers. (it's quite the cynical inversion of Cindy Sheehan, I have to say) These "mother == trust in war" and "father == the Bush aura of fear" concepts will surely play quite well, all year long, upon millions of fearful and angry American minds. As Progress for America Voter Fund admits:

Some politicians.... policies thwart the ability of American families to support the War on Terror, keep more of what they earn, provide a safe environment for educating their children,... [primal father?]

TV pundits like McInerney perform the intellectual carpet-bombing of absolute gibberish, week after week, so that the average drooling Fox viewer, rendered into a narcotized state from all the whooshing colors and racist theme music, is left with a hazy, angry impression that the fuckers are trying to bring us down. (This is assisted by frequently replaying 9/11 clips on a split screen: video masochism => longing for authority)

The Freudian Trip:
It is quite possible that the average viewer's sense of ego is deactivated or degraded. Their primitive id emotions can be pushed up and down. They experience a kind of 'primal father' longing for order and authority; a need to experience order, sadism, if you will. (Freud thought of Moses as an excellent, benevolent Primal Father figure)

There are shadows in the dark. Only the light can drive this back, das volken are the true people of this country. We are clean, they are dirty... And around and around it goes.

Watch "On the streets of America 3" for the ultimate effect of these things.... Russia's actual role below the fold - this is what they're actually scared of....

Russia is going to do its own thing, and the hawks marketed to morons on Fox will perform Threat Construction to create an aura of fear and instability. Thus, we are soothed on our steady march towards doom. (Thanatos, the sublimated death wish instinct, might really be at the heart of the war, in producing an attraction to achieving a state of calm: the afterlife? Millennialism?)

Ok, ok.... That was a little nuts. But I'm trying to describe the general state of emotional manipulation these days. We need to stick to cold realism to understand more of what's really happening, beyond the tormented imagination of a Fox viewer.

So, more realistically, George Friedman lays it out in a Stratfor email: "The Middle East and Russia's New Game":

And this brings us to Moscow's invitation to Hamas. There are a number of reasons to make the invitation -- the single most important of which was that the United States did not want it to be done. ...... between the lines, the Russians wanted to deliver two messages to Washington.

The first was that Moscow no longer regards itself as a junior partner to the United States in foreign policy -- and, in fact, doesn't regard itself as a partner at all. Second, they wanted to make it clear that, just as Washington is making trouble for Russia in its own periphery, the Russians are equally capable of making trouble in areas that are of fundamental interest to the United States. Moscow's message is this: Do not assume that the failure of Russia to exercise its foreign policy options means that the Russians have no foreign policy options. Nothing Russia is getting from the United States in economic relations compensates for the geopolitical harm the United States is doing to Russia. In other words, this is about 2005, not 1995. A lot happened in the last decade, most of it not good for the Russians. The rules are changing.

There is another, more directly strategic reason for the move. Russia has, and has always had, strategic interests in the Middle East. Given the decay of Russia's strategic position in the formerly Soviet region, these interests -- which today include ties to Syria and a potential partnership with Iran on nuclear enrichment -- have become more important rather than less. The U.S. penetration of Central Asia, the Baltics and Ukraine cannot simply be countered in these areas; it is only by challenging the United States in the Middle East that Moscow can divert American attention from areas of great interest to the Russians. It is not just a matter of bandwidth -- meaning that the more trouble the United States has in the Middle East, the less time it has for the former Soviet Union. It is also the case that if Russia is to contain the American presence along its southern frontier, having influence and a presence to the rear of this region -- in the Middle East -- gives it leverage over some of the former Soviet republics.

......Russia's willingness to speak to Hamas creates a new dynamic in the Muslim world. Syria and Iran are seeking "great power" support against the United States. ....By inviting Hamas and possibly opening a channel between Hamas and the Israelis, Russia is positioning itself to become a mediator in other disputes, and to walk away with relationships that the United States has been unable to manage.

Given the robustness of Russia's arms industry, which is much more vital and advanced than is generally understood, the Russians could return to their role as arms provider to the region and patron of governments that are hostile to the United States. The situation from 1955 to 1990 was a much more natural geopolitical dynamic than the current situation, in which Russia is really not present in the region. Russia is a natural player in the Middle East.

Remember also that Hamas is very close to Saudi Arabia, with which Russia has an intensely competitive relationship in the energy markets. And then there is Chechnya. The Russians have long charged that "Wahhabi" influence was behind the Chechen insurgency as well as insurgencies in Central Asia. In the Russian mind, "Wahhabi" is practically a code word for "Islamist militants," including al Qaeda. The Russians also feel that, while the Americans have forced the Saudis to provide intelligence on al Qaeda, they have not elicited similar aid on the issue of the Chechens. In other words, Moscow perceives the United States not only as having neglected to help Russia on Chechnya, but as actually hindering it.

So what's the lesson? 2006 will have a certain Retro-Cold War tint to it. There may be a kind of vintage comeback for "Daisy" style political ads. Iran fits in as a kind of annex to the Evil Empire. And your id is subject to psychological warfare.

Just another Wednesday afternoon in the Information Age...

A Trojan Horse comes to OS X - not really a big deal; Bonus: How viruses work (roughly)

It appears that a trojan horse called usually called "latestpics.tgz" made it into the Mac OS X world, but it doesn't work like a typical Windows virus or Worm - though it attempts to spread itself through iChat.

It is called Oompa-Loompa or "OSX/Oomp-A" for now, as deemed by one Andrew in the Ambrosia Software forums. This forum thread has literally all the gory details of how it works. It has also been classified as OSX/Leap-A. It originally appeared on MacRumors.com as supposed "pictures of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5", and here is their look at it. The slashdot crowd says it's more FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) really. And i tend to agree. Notes from the Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator. In the WaPo Brian Krebs reports on it. Those links should tell you everything. But if you want to hear my ramble on a bit more, follow along....

[this became a bit longer than I intended, but I hope it explains how viruses work generally - and why OS X works all right to prevent this shit. It is relevant to your life. And then you can get into the Matrix.]

I am by no means a professional expert, but I have to deal with this shit, and there are good reasons that Unix and Mac OS X are preferred to Windows by lots of security professionals.

The amount of damage that computer viruses do consists of one thing in particular: propagation: The technical method of reproduction and how it transmits. Duh ok. If it can copy itself without any humans 'clicking OK' on a dialog box, viruses can spread far and wide. If they exploit holes in the memory structure to avoid the safeguards, that's really the key method -- and is NOT the problem for Apple today.

The famous Nimda/Code Red worms, which infected millions of Windows computers running IIS webservers, worked because there were "magic request" that an infected computer could make towards the target IIS webserver -- this let the worm overflow the usual safeguards and insert the self-propagating code. [More details here]

Read on for some more about it.

It also hit email systems by tricking the user or Microsoft Internet Explorer to executing a binary file: Cert advisory:

any mail software running on an x86 platform that uses Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1 or earlier (except IE 5.01 SP2) to render the HTML mail automatically runs the enclosed attachment and, as result, infects the machine with the worm. Thus, in vulnerable configurations, the worm payload will automatically be triggered by simply opening (or previewing) this mail message. As an executable binary, the payload can also be triggered by simply running the attachment.

A normal HTTP request - the bit of text that your browser sends a webserver in order to receive a webpage looks like so:
GET /farms/side_125x125/advertise_125x125.jpg
is a browser request for a JPEG. With me so far?

But the webserver viruses like Code Red used special GET commands that sneak through a flaw in the way that the Webserver handles that very command. The virus writers wrote a program that sent a huge GET command -- and the content of the command itself spills out of the memory location in the webserver RAM. Then the end of the command are actually instructions (machine code) that let the virus take over the computer. This repeats a million zillion times, and you get an epidemic.

The trick is that Microsoft forgot to make sure that the little memory container for the "GET" string didn't spill out of control - called a "buffer overflow" that isn't detected and stopped. That is the vulnerability enabling the method of propagation. When new buffer overflow methods are discovered, a flurry of viruses are written in the Windows world, yet somehow Mac OS X has been essentially immune from this. Why? One sec. First, the method Example from this HP Labs report on Code Red:

The Code Red payload..... is a HTTP GET request for filetype.ida. The .ida extension is mapped by IIS to cause the indexing service (IDA module) to run on that filetype. The vulnerability that the virus exploits is a buffer overflow. The “NNN” is padding to increase the size of the request in order to overflow the buffer, and the Unicode characters are machine code to coerce IIS into running the binary payload.

GET /default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801
%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090
%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00%u531
b%u53ff%u0078%u0000%u00=a

[binary payload] Figure 2: Code Red HTTP Request. It is a buffer overflow attack on the indexing service (default.ida)

And then these infected computers attack everyone else. I saw about a million of these hit hongpong.com when things were really bad. Here is a Dutch graphic from Funktionsprinzipien von Sabotagesoftware. Whatever that means. Just use your damn imagination.

But somehow this kind of shit never really fucks with Linux or OS X. Why?
Well for one thing, in Linux people make custom programs - especially the Apache web server engine. When you compile Apache, your individual program is unique in how it's put together. This is like genetic diversity in a way. Plus the overflow bugs seemed to be taken care of better, and just don't appear in Linux as much as Windows.

But what about Desktops? Yah. OS X does not yet have any real viruses. A lot of the core of the system is protected, and before any programs can alter it, it asks you for your password. It is perfectly possible to write a program that will erase all your files and email itself to everyone, but OS X will still ask you for your password before the OS will erase itself.

This is assuming that the underlying instructions can't be tricked or misdirected, and in some ways, they can. For example, apparently a lot of legit OS X programs that DO need the admin password, expose the password through a part of the system that is visible to all the other programs, via the "ps" or "top" activity monitoring programs for example. [this is how it works]

Hypothetical exploit: Thus a little virus that was somehow already running could wait and listen for the password via 'ps', then it would have the root pass, and it could finally break all the way into your system. But that would be STILL rely on your password to get there -- and it is a pretty thin reed to rest a working virus on.

Ok... this is taking too long to not really explain anything. Finally, a big difference between Windows and OS X is that if you are a Windows administrator, programs can do a lot of shit without asking for your password. On OS X, it also asks you if it is OK to run programs you've never run.

Today's OS X Trojan: This Trojan does not sneak through a buffer overflow, like dangerous Windows viruses. If you agree to let this "latestpics.tgz" program - whose icon looks like a Jpeg - run, AND you type in your root password, THEN it will overwrite some applications - making them unlaunchable - and it will insert itself in some places on your computer. And try to propagate through iChat.

I mean, what the hell is the Operating system supposed to offer to protect itself, besides asking for your password?

If it could make itself run as soon as it appeared in OS X Mail, and send itself to everyone else, and infect iChat, without asking for your password, then it would be a threat. This requires people to "push it along" and even the average Mac user probably won't type in their password -- but then again, Mac users aren't used to catching this kind of thing.

But of course, warning pop-ups appear when your download executable files. This is crucial. As long as Apple continues to fix discovered buffer overflows and designs its OS in a way that denies random code from executing and sneaking into shit (the Big If) we'll be ok. And laughing at all the infected PCs.

Just look at the record. It's not bad. 60,000 viruses for Windows, 40 for the original Macintosh (pre-OS X), 40 for Linux. It is totally structural. It is not just because "no one tries" to make them for Linux or OS X.

Dan's grumble about the State of the Union

Ok well it's the State of the Union today and people will probably deflect Bush's sweeping unpopularity by claiming yet again that the election is over so why bother complaining? This is of course a sly dodge that must be stopped cold.

Once upon a time (summer 2004) I was back in Hudson with my crew and Bush came to town. We hung around downtown as the crowds massed up. The buses came through, and suddenly, below the "Hudson, WIS" archway by the river, there was the man himself with his sweaty blue sleeves rolled up. We could see him from one block away on the public main street. (pic via MPR)

Then it occurred to me. Bush is just one little man down there. All these terrible things that are happening could not possibly be because of him. He's just the point man on a vast and corrupt bureaucracy -- and yes, far more corrupt than Democrats ever were. They are very good at covering up their staggering incompetence -- in fact, it seems to be the only thing they are good at. Brownie's Heckuva Job is really the standard. Political campaign hacks out of their depth, suppressing uncomfortable truths. Like for example how NASA wouldn't let one of their scientists talk about global warming. That wasn't Bush's fault directly - it's a toxic bureaucracy.

It occurred to me on this summer day that the county dump trucks blocking the road (that the campaign didn't reimburse us for) were now County Dump Trucks in the War on Terror. With Bush here, theoretically the core of the war itself was actually in front of us. So the security bubble around him must be the hardest, most impenetrable sphere of security.

However, my sister and a couple friends found all this stuff objectionable on their home turf and they were upset they couldn't go see the speech. At the security line a couple blocks north of the riverfront rally, they jumped into the woods when the sheriff wasn't looking. They cut through the trees and one of them climbed up the trees to spot the law enforcement, so they could avoid them. They got to the riverfront beach a block north of the speech site. With Bush's ramblings spilling through the air, they crawled across the beach, as federal agents in boats failed to see them. They made it to the beach-house, **halfway** through the security perimeter. Finally, there they gave up and walked away and a cop chastised them and tossed them out.

If they'd hidden a rocket launcher or something in the beach-house, the stage would have been well within range. They got literally halfway through this, the strongest of all perimeters. It wasn't Bush's fault, it's that the Administration is staggeringly incompetent, even at physically protecting the leader, let alone the rest of us. And the media ought to cover it that way.

Liberal folks way too often make the mistake of assigning to Bush the Person all the many failures and murderous pathologies that are actually systemic - and systematically covered up for political expediency. The insanity of the military-industrial complex is not really led by Bush at all - it's beyond his control, or Congress' - but he does set the cues for it. So make sure to get the jabs in there for our disintegrating system of government. Addressing the stomping of the Constitution is way more important than assigning all these problems to Bush's insane yet ultimately meaningless personality traits. (and he is mentally damaged by booze or otherwise troubled by invisible demons I kind of believe)

Put the 'Administration' back in Bush.
-Dan

PS: Dick Cheney somehow has his own personal National Security Council. That is an example of how they are setting up alternative, hidden command & decision-making structures (that helped spoof the intelligence to get the war started, among other things). This is the Office of Special Plans presidency.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/talking_politics/documents/00422450.htm
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030512fa_fact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans

Gear it up: Canadian conspiracy in Haiti, Hamas claims 1967 borders for truce; Iran chills & ills; October Surprise revisited; Global Guerrillas decidedly at hand

This post is spilling all over the place. I want to get this stuff out there for this week, which will surely be an interesting one for me personally, and probably the rest of the world as well.

Misc bits: Alternet sets up The Echo Chamber to track what's cracking on the Left. Their website is set up really well. BillMonk will do all these mysterious things to split restaurant tabs for you and keep track of cash that people owe other people socially.

Because Spin can stop global warming: NY Times: Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him.

Vote for the 2006 Bloggies awards.

Time to Drink like there's no tomorrow: Dear Leader will have to explain himself on Tuesday then. Probably the usual batch of veiled threats towards Muslims and promises of eschatology-based improvements for the everyday nuclear family. China is building a Tokamak fusion reactor apparently. I wish we would have the guts to try stuff like that these days.

An important internet advisory not to shave your ass hair.

Improbable visit: A Canadian-based Iranian named Hossein Derakhshan, of Hoder.com, is on his way to go see what's happening in Israel, cutting through all these layers of intrigue. Good for him.

Hillary's war pandering is sickening. Raimondo is right. Sy Hersh is saying there are American covert ops going on in Iran. Via DefenseTech.org, a really hilarious discussion of nuclear targeting technology that would hypothetically be involved in an insane first strike.

A return to Global Guerrilla theory and fourth generation warfare. I am not going to elaborate some complete 21st Century Clauswitzian doctrine. But I will say that current American military doctrine is pathetically outdated, poorly led, and really doesn't even recognize its own roots in the guerilla tactics of the Revolutionary War (and KTCA's sweet portrayal in Liberty! lately have reminded me of this).

I think that Global Guerrillas is a site full of useful information, even though its love of buzzwordery gets a little annoying. There is a glaring need for a less stupid jargon around this whole field, and GG is good stab at the problem. Certainly the connection between the 'Open Source' model of software development, and the curious 'bazaar' of violent action in Iraq is really interesting. Consider "The Bazaar of violence in Iraq," "The Bazaar's Open Source Platform," "Target: The Fallujah TAZ [Temporary Autonomous Zone]," "A Shadow OPEC," "Guerrilla Entrepreneurs" (especially), "Weak, failed and collapsed states," "Iraq's security system meltdown" featuring swarming tactics, the "Loyalist Paramilitaries" option (which sucks), based on "Primary Loyalties," "Homemade Microwave weapons." Also useful: "SWARM: Fuel and Oil Disruption in Iraq." And the Open Source War.

One really interesting tie-in from T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia" about the value of "Partial vs. Complete System Disruption." The lesson: Throwing monkey wrenches into the system is a better way to weaken the enemy than outright destruction, because attempting to restore a damaged system (or complete an impossible goal, i.e. 'democratizing Iraq') really saps the energy of the occupier over the long term. Lawrence and the Arabs hassled the Turks to pin them down without forcing a retreat, because if the Turks retreated from Arabia they would go fight the British farther north. Far better to harass them, tie them up in the desert, and still get freedom of movement, as they are distracted by defending their rail lines. Sweet.

And by the way, thanks also for "AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY: SUPERPOWER BAITING". Correct, sir.

I am opposed to fanatical visions of militaristic conquering, installing 'rule sets' and expecting some kind of 'global sys-admin force' to come in and generate compliant countries. What the hell am I talking about? Thomas Barnett's vision of The Pentagon's New Map, which I read and it scared the shit out of me. William Lind, a paleoconservative expert of fourth-generation warfare, explains why this is a hellish idea.

Yet I fear that the USAID/IRI/NED are the sort of evolving foreign policy complex that wants to do just this crazy kind of shit. What? Where? Look at Haiti to see Barnett's vision in action, I would say.

Suspicious actions in Haiti: I don't really know what the hell is happening in Haiti, but it seems shady, and it seems that sketchy international organizations like the International Republican Institute, some bizarre shadow branch of the United Nations called the United Nations Office for Project Services, USAID and others are attempting to cement the rule of mean anglicized elites in Haiti right now.

According to Anthony Fenton, a Canadian independent journalist, on Democracy Now! there was a conspiracy between the U.S., Canadian officials and others to depose Aristide. And apparently an Associated Press writer was on the take with the National Endowment for Democracy, a sketchy as hell organization. Check out that interview for some serious insanity.

Also check out InTheNameofDemocracy.org which is a new group monitoring the global shadow groups like NED, IRI and USAID's various tentacles.

There is a broad outline here of these huge organizations having funds channeled into them from the CIA, State Department and nasty corporations. Basically, it looks like a spinning sawblade of Washington-consensus foreign policy, managing the little countries under a new Monroe Doctrine. Right-wing Cubans are involved. There was a really complex yet enlightening article in the NY Times Sunday about how the IRI is sort of a shadow government-forming thing that essentially helped get Aristide deposed.

To analyze how far the Iranian Bomb is along, check out these posts at ArmsControlWonk.com, very good. How Close is Iran? Part 2: The Missiles. Shorter: Don't Panic.

Lurking Koppel: Ted Koppel, of all people, pops up to make some salient points about the horrible dynamics of TV news in the NY Times:

Most particularly on cable news, a calculated subjectivity has, indeed, displaced the old-fashioned goal of conveying the news dispassionately. But that, too, has less to do with partisan politics than simple capitalism. Thus, one cable network experiments with the subjectivity of tender engagement: "I care and therefore you should care." Another opts for chest-thumping certitude: "I know and therefore you should care."

Even Fox News's product has less to do with ideology and more to do with changing business models. Fox has succeeded financially because it tapped into a deep, rich vein of unfulfilled yearning among conservative American television viewers, but it created programming to satisfy the market, not the other way around. CNN, meanwhile, finds itself largely outmaneuvered, unwilling to accept the label of liberal alternative, experimenting instead with a form of journalism that stresses empathy over detachment.

It's worth looking back to January 20, 1980 for a moment, when the election of Ronald Reagan somehow transformed itself into the release of the Iranian hostages. "You could see then that the fix was in, somehow," as someone older than me once put it. So was there an "October Surprise" arrangement that brought this about, a secret conspiracy between Reagan's political campaign, and the newly arrived radicals in Tehran? Well, Robert Perry says that the was a conspiracy, and he's been kicking around this one for a while. (And guess what, I bet Iran will do something exciting this October, too)

The Imperium's Quarter Century By Robert Parry. January 20, 2006

If there is a birth date for today’s American Imperium, it would be Jan. 20, 1981, exactly a quarter century ago, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President and Iran released 52 American hostages under circumstances that remain a mystery to this day.

The freedom of the hostages, ending a 444-day crisis, brought forth an outpouring of patriotism that bathed the new President in an aura of heroism as a leader so feared by America’s enemies that they scrambled to avoid angering him. It was viewed as a case study of how U.S. toughness could restore the proper international order.

That night, as fireworks lit the skies of Washington, the celebration was not only for a new President and for the freed hostages, but for a new era in which American power would no longer be mocked. That momentum continues today in George W. Bush’s “preemptive” wars and the imperial boasts about a “New American Century.”

......What’s now known about the Iranian hostage crisis suggests that the “coincidence” of the Reagan Inauguration and the Hostage Release was not a case of frightened Iranians cowering before a U.S. President who might just nuke Tehran.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that it was a prearranged deal between the Republicans and the Iranians. The Republicans got the hostages and the political bounce; Iran’s Islamic fundamentalists got a secret supply of weapons and various other payoffs.

Though the full history remains a state secret – in part because of an executive order signed by George W. Bush on his first day in office in 2001 – it appears Republicans did contact Iran’s mullahs during the 1980 campaign; agreements were reached; and a clandestine flow of U.S. weapons followed the hostage release.

Impending death of the Petrodollar: Nowadays Iran is planning to open an oil exchange market priced in euros, not dollars. This is a really big deal that makes up a major undercurrent driving all the current hostilities. This Iranian 'bourse' would be a huge blow to the stability of the U.S. dollar. It will prove really hilarious to the Russians and others to sit back and watch as America flails around trying to defend the almighty Petrodollar. This is the kind of stuff that gives Dick Cheney the cold sweats. Really a big deal, and there's a lot more to be said on it.

Iran continues its strange and menacing manipulation of Holocaust symbols with new claims that "Iran mission to UN: More study needed to prove Nazi Holocaust". Meanwhile the neo-cons and alumni of Iran-Contra today hail Ahmadinejad as a really great guy for them: The Demogogue Neocons Love to Hate By Jim Lobe:

“Let us state the obvious,” wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht, the resident Gulf specialist at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in the Weekly Standard's feature article Monday. “The new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a godsend.”

“Thank goodness for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” wrote Ilan Berman, the neoconservative author of a hawkish new book, Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States, in the National Review Online last week.

.......Ahmadinejad's declarations, which are seen by many experts here as related at least as much to his domestic political strategy as to his foreign policy worldview, have not only been manna from heaven for neoconservatives, who have long had Tehran in their gun sights.

.....That the administration, which promulgated and then implemented a doctrine of preventive war against presumed enemies allegedly bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, should come under attack from all these sources [AIPAC etc] for excessive passivity is ironic. But it is also testimony to the degree that it has been forced by its Iraq adventure to adopt what can only be described—to the disgust of the neoconservatives, in particular—as both a new humility and a new realism with regard to Tehran.

A nugget of wisdom from The Agonist about how Iran works in Central Asia. We need to get off the crackhead rhythm of the 24-hour news cycle and look at this in terms of centuries.

Iranians making a play for their own back-yard? At least, that's what I take away from this pretty good article in the Washington Post about Central Asia. The author of the piece, Nick Schmidle writes:

[T]he Iranians hope that big-money investments in the region, coupled with a successful nuclear fuel cycle, will elevate their status in the Muslim world.

One thing you have to keep in mind about the history of Iran in Central Asia is this: since the 6th century BC when Cyrus crossed the Oxus to subdue Queen Tomyris and the Massagetae the Persians have been fixated on influencing and stabilizing the lands to their immediate north. Only twice in Persia's three millenia of history have they been overrun from the West (Alexander and the Arabs). All the others came from the East and North (Mongols, Hepthalites, Turks, Uzbeks, Russians).

Kadima & The Alon Plan vs. HAMAS & 1967 Borders??: The Allon or 'Alon' Plan was the 1967 scheme to annex a big swath of the West Bank. The dimensions are roughly laid out in this map from IsraeliPalestinianProCon.org. Now, apparently HAMAS is advocating the full 1967 borders as a basis for a truce. We will see how horrible the U.S. media makes such an argument sound.

Ariel Sharon's basic strategy was to solidify the Allon Plan and make it palatable to the American public, or at least get Congress to swallow it.

Hamas hints at truce in return for '67 borders
By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

A long-term truce (hudna) with Israel is possible if Israel retreats to its pre-1967 borders and releases Palestinian prisoners, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told CNN on Monday.

"We can expect to establish our independent state on the area before '67 and we can give a long-term hudna," Zahar told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Zahar laid out a series of conditions that he said could lead to years of co-existence alongside Israel. He said that if Israel "is ready to give us the national demand to withdraw from the occupied area [in] '67; to release our detainees; to stop their aggression; to make geographic link between Gaza Strip and West Bank, at that time, with assurance from other sides, we are going to accept to establish our independent state at that time, and give us one or two, 10, 15 years time in order to see what is the real intention of Israel after that."

Asked about Hamas' call for Israel's destruction, Zahar would not say whether that remains the goal. "We are not speaking about the future, we are speaking now," he said. Zahar argued that Israel has no true intention of accepting a Palestinian state, despite international agreements including the Road Map for Middle East peace.

Until Israel says what its final borders will be, Hamas will not say whether it will ever recognize Israel, Zahar said. "If Israel is ready to tell the people what is the official border, after that we are going to answer this question." Asked whether Hamas would renounce terrorism, Zahar argued that the definition of terrorism is unfair.

Israel is "killing people and children and removing our agricultural system -- this is terrorism," he said. "When the Americans [are] attacking the Arabic and Islamic world whether in Afghanistan and Iraq and they are playing a dirty game in Lebanon, this is terrorism." He described Hamas as a "liberating movement."

.....Hamas will not oppose Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas if the latter decides to negotiate with Israel, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, Musa Abu-Marzouk, said Sunday.

Ok then, those are promising signs from a shadowy group (a pretty good history from MidEastWeb) that is suddenly blinking in the limelight. Not sure what the hell it means, but I don't know if they do either.

Lots of things are happening. Former CIA dude Pat Lang reacts to the election with typical CIA sarcasm. Hamas leader: 'Palestinian army' possible. Haaretz: Umm Mohammed talks politics By Amira Hass, "Hamas deputy says resistance to 'occupation' will continue". "Turning from Terror / A Green Dawn is on the rise." "Hamas' next step / In search of a united force".

The Observer | Focus | The Hamas revolution:

'East Jerusalem,' he intoned dryly from the podium, 'six seats.' And with each successful candidate he named, he listed their party. 'Change and Reform,' he read out first, the banner under which Hamas, an organisation better known for its dozens of suicide attacks against Israel, was standing. And again: 'Change and Reform'. And yet again. Four times out of six.

He turned to Hebron, a clean nine-seat sweep for Hamas. So he continued through Nablus, North Gaza, Tulkarm, Jenin and Gaza City. Even the largely Christian area of Bethlehem saw two of its four seats fall to Hamas. Among the Gaza winners was Um Nidal, also called Mariam Farah, a gun-toting woman known as the 'Mother of Martyrs' who ordered three of her sons to their deaths as suicide bombers.

As Hanna Nasser spoke, mentally the crowded room coloured in a map of Gaza and the West Bank, from the flat and crowded slums of Gaza's Khan Younis to the hilly cities of the West Bank, painting it in Hamas green. Only wild and dangerous Rafah at Gaza's southern tip voted unanimously for the old order.

With each result history was gyrating more wildly about the auditorium with its stone-faced electoral commission members sitting bleakly in a row. Everything had been transformed.

Observations from Gilbert Achear on JuanCole.com:

4. The irresistible rise of Ariel Sharon to the helm of the Israeli state resulted from his September 2000 provocation that ignited the "Second Intifada" -- an uprising that because of its militarization lacked the most positive features of the popular dynamics of the first Intifada. A PA that, by its very nature, could definitely not rely on mass self-organization and chose the only way of struggle it was familiar with, fostered this militarization. Sharon's rise was also a product of the dead-end reached by the Oslo process: the clash between the Zionist interpretation of the Oslo frame -- an updated version of the 1967 "Alon Plan" by which Israel would relinquish the populated areas of the 1967 occupied territories to an Arab administration, while keeping colonized and militarized strategic chunks -- and the PA's minimal requirements of recovering all, or nearly all the territories occupied in 1967, without which it knew it would lose its remaining clout with the Palestinian population. The electoral victory of war criminal Ariel Sharon in February 2001 -- an event as much "shocking" as the electoral victory of Hamas, at the very least -- inevitably reinforced the Islamic fundamentalist movement, his counterpart in terms of radicalization of stance against the backdrop of a still-born historic compromise. All of this was greatly propelled, of course, by the (very resistible, but unresisted) accession to power of George W. Bush, and the unleashing of his wildest imperial ambitions thanks to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

5. Ariel Sharon played skillfully on the dialectics between himself and his Palestinian true opposite number, Hamas. His calculation was simple: in order to be able to carry through unilaterally his own hard-line version of the Zionist interpretation of a "settlement" with the Palestinians, he needed two conditions: a) to minimize international pressure upon him -- or rather U.S. pressure, the only one that really matters to Israel; and b) to demonstrate that there is no Palestinian leadership with which Israel could "do business." For this, he needed to emphasize the weakness and unreliability of the PA by fanning the expansion of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, knowing that the latter was anathema to the Western states. Thus every time there was some kind of truce, negotiated by the PA with the Islamic organizations, Sharon's government would resort to an "extrajudicial execution" -- in plain language, an assassination -- in order to provoke these organizations into retaliation by the means they specialized in: suicide attacks, their "F-16s" as they say. This had the double advantage of stressing the PA inability to control the Palestinian population, and enhancing Sharon's own popularity in Israel. The truth of the matter is that the electoral victory of Hamas is the outcome that Sharon's strategy was very obviously seeking, as many astute observers did not fail to point out.

Haaretz has lots to mull over. I think "hostile rabble" is a tad racist, but that's what appears to be on their minds right now. Analysis: Wave of democracy pits Israel against 'Arab street':

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

The Palestinian Authority election marks the beginning of a new period in the region that could be termed "the era of the masses." Henceforth Israel will have to factor into its foreign policy something it has always ignored - Arab public opinion.

Israel has always based its regional policy on arrangements and terror-balances with the Arab dictators. They understood force and Israel could do business with them. Their authority was seen as a barrier protecting Israel from the rage of the hostile rabble in the "Arab street." That was the basis of the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, Yasser Arafat and his heirs and the game rules vis-a-vis Syria and Lebanon.

But those days are over. The democratization process that U.S. President George Bush has triggered and the open debate promoted by Arab satellite networks are causing the old frameworks to crumble. The mass demonstrations that led to the Syrians being driven from Lebanon, the elections in Iraq and those in the territories are merely the beginning. As far as Israel is concerned, the worst stage will come when the democratic wave washes over Jordan, its strategic ally; Egypt with its modern army and F-16 squadrons, and Syria and its Scud and chemical warhead stores.

The mess continues. Shadowy times ahead.

Osama bin Laden statement of January 19

The latest tape was released today. This would appear to cast pretty strong doubts on Michael Ledeen's recent claim that some wise and trustworthy Iranians claimed he was dead. Wouldn't be the first time that some Iranians manipulated a neocon for their own purposes (such as overthrowing Saddam). But oh well. Here is Bin Laden's complete statement, as offered by the Associated Press.

It is instructive that on CNN they don't talk about bin Laden's comments about the American military industrial complex and its 'merchants of war', the 'patient' strategy against the Soviet Union, the polls that show wide American skepticism about the war, but of course, only highlighting threats on the American homeland if the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are not cancelled.

Bin Laden is surprisingly forthright about his general strategies, and this one is no exception. He is certainly an expert in the paradigm of fourth-generation warfare; right now, the United States seeks tactical victories while defeating itself on the moral plane. Bin Laden is making moral arguments directly to the American public about how the subjugation of Muslims will ultimately prove self-defeating. And tellingly, as always, the media does not report or contextualize pretty much anything about this.

For all the big talk, it is amazing that no one really reads his full statements, which make much more clear the al Qaeda strategy. (Qaeda is Arabic for 'base,' by the way)

It should be noted that bin Laden uses a sort of antiquated dialect of Arabic, so surely there will be some dispute over the translation of key phrases. Nonetheless, bin Laden's many previous public pronouncements have proven to be rather direct and useful explanations of his general strategy.

Background:

• Pre-election statement, nov. 1 2004.
• BBC: claiming credit for WTC attacks on 7 October 2001
• 3 November 2001.
• Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans: Febuary 23, 1998.
• Here is an index of many Bin Laden statements from RobertFisk.com.
• More al Qaeda primary sources from the Federation of American Scientists.

No one should talk about Al Qaeda without understanding their concept of the near enemy (local apostate regimes of the mideast) and the far enemy (that props them up - the U.S.).

Associated Press: Update 1: Full Text of Bin Laden Tape - at Forbes.com:

The following is the full text of a new audiotape from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Parts of the tape were aired on Al-Jazeera television, which published the entire version on its Web site. The text was translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.

Bin Laden appears to be addressing the American people:

My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them. I did not intend to speak to you about this because this issue has already been decided. Only metal breaks metal, and our situation, thank God, is only getting better and better, while your situation is the opposite of that.

But I plan to speak about the repeated errors your President Bush has committed in comments on the results of your polls that show an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. But he (Bush) has opposed this wish and said that withdrawing troops sends the wrong message to opponents, that it is better to fight them (bin Laden's followers) on their land than their fighting us (Americans) on our land.

I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no let-up, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor, thank God, and Pentagon figures show the number of your dead and wounded is increasing not to mention the massive material losses, the destruction of the soldiers' morale there and the rise in cases of suicide among them. So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam Butcher (U.S. army) or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that (what is going on). The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them (the soldiers).

The news of our brother mujahideen (holy warriors) is different from what the Pentagon publishes. They (the news of mujahideen) and what the media report is the truth of what is happening on the ground. And what deepens the doubt over the White House's information is the fact that it targets the media reporting the truth from the ground. And it has appeared lately, supported by documents, that the butcher of freedom in the world (Bush) had decided to bomb the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera in Qatar after bombing its offices in Kabul and Baghdad.

On another issue, jihad (holy war) is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S Army and its agents (which is) to a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality, as it has reached the degree of raping women and taking them as hostages instead of their husbands.

As for torturing men, they have used burning chemical acids and drills on their joints. And when they give up on (interrogating) them, they sometimes use the drills on their heads until they die. Read, if you will, the reports of the horrors in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

And I say that, despite all the barbaric methods, they have not broken the fierceness of the resistance. The mujahideen, thank God, are increasing in number and strength - so much so that reports point to the ultimate failure and defeat of the unlucky quartet of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Declaring this defeat is just a matter of time, depending partly on how much the American people know of the size of this tragedy. The sensible people realize that Bush does not have a plan to make his alleged victory in Iraq come true.

And if you compare the small number of dead on the day that Bush announced the end of major operations in that fake, ridiculous show aboard the aircraft carrier with the tenfold number of dead and wounded who were killed in the smaller operations, you would know the truth of what I say. This is that Bush and his administration do not have the will or the ability to get out of Iraq for their own private, suspect reasons.

And so to return to the issue, I say that results of polls please those who are sensible, and Bush's opposition to them is a mistake. The reality shows that the war against America and its allies has not been limited to Iraq as he (Bush) claims. Iraq has become a point of attraction and restorer of (our) energies. At the same time, the mujahideen (holy warriors), with God's grace, have managed repeatedly to penetrate all security measures adopted by the unjust allied countries. The proof of that is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of the European nations who are in this aggressive coalition. The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through (with preparations), with God's permission.

Based on what has been said, this shows the errors of Bush's statement - the one that slipped from him - which is at the heart of polls calling for withdrawing the troops. It is better that we (Americans) don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours.

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars - which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war. [sounds like Eisenhower attacking the military industrial complex! -Dan]

If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."

Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like on Sept. 11, God permitting. Your minds will be troubled and your lives embittered. As for us, we have nothing to lose. A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain. You have occupied our lands, offended our honor and dignity and let out our blood and stolen our money and destroyed our houses and played with our security and we will give you the same treatment.

You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us is under the shadows of swords. Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

In that there is a lesson for you.

Afghans also defeated the British Empire twice in the 1800s. Surprised he forgot to throw that in.

Abramoff racket spreads ever wider; Ledeen says bin Laden is dead;

Plains dealing: Andy recommends Left in the West as a top spot for spotting the actions of Senator Conrad Burns in covering up his Abramoff connections, among other things. References to "US-Asia Network" are getting scrubbed off Burns' official website.

Newt Gingrich is posing as a champion of reform, as his 2008 campaign for President opens. However, as David Sirota notes at The Nation, Newt is quite responsible for helping start Abramoff's career, and the whole K Street Project complex that has worked out so well.

Some really wicked lasers: WickedLasers.com is pimp (via HipTechBlog). You can purchase a $559 laser from them that will burn holes in things. Even their most minor laser can mess with someone's eye. Nothing says "now it's really the 21st century" like your own directed energy weapon! Photo/video gallery of laser effects.

Michael Ledeen says Osama is dead: mainly to make his point that the old Middle Eastern patriarchy is wheezing its last right now. Ends "Faster. Please?" as always. Fortunately I'm sure he will make a lot more money dealing arms very soon. Raimondo: "War, Lies, and Videotape: They fabricated the case against Iraq – now they're moving on Iran." Ledeen will play a role in these maneuvers, to be sure. Robert Dreyfuss: "The Bush who cried wolf," pointing out that we can't really pressure Iran much, because of the Iraq disaster.

Chaostan: The theory: Dude named Richard Maybury says that a third of the world (North Africa, middle east, Asia, Europe up to Poland) should basically be characterized as Chaostan, a place of increasing violence and disintegrative political forces – Moscow-based fascists versus Islamic radicals in the north, and the West versus the rest further south. A summary of Chaostan and some principles involved. He thinks that you can make quality investments based on his geopolitical conceits. And sell you a newsletter about it.

Alito scares me. But there is nothing to be done about it, which is depressing. Dionne: A Hearing About Nothing. The Senate is basically a black hole from which no logic can emerge. On the other hand, the media has studiously avoided quoting Russ Feingold, who, like the pretty much the rest of the judiciary committee, is probably running for President.

Google Earth comes to OS X: (and finally isn't beta) Huzzah, we can play with Google Earth now. You can do many cool things to extend its functions, like near-real-time 3D flight tracking as well as the CIA factbook, and even geo-tagging of Flickr photos. Check out the Google Earth Blog for lots more. (Is Apple trying to pad the performance stats in the newly released Intel Macs?)

Family Killed by Ninjas: A photo from City Pages that Nick Petersen sent to me.

Apple == Super Hotness. The only stock I own is some Apple stock. Which is definitely the hot stock these days. In fact, it has been going up about as fast as Google. Somehow, Forbes magazine tells us that even though iPod sales went up 240% last year, and computer sales more than 60%, Apple stock is too hot right now. I rarely never have faith in the market, but seriously, their fourth quarter earnings were 50 cents a share. The video iPod will probably move 4 million units in the first quarter, as they say... so what's the problem?

Russians for Condi: Her whole middle aged single thing is too much for Vladimir Zhirinovsky:

"Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention," he added. "Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'

"Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible."

Superconductors are frickin sweet: There is apparently this theory now that suggests that superconductors could neutralize gravity fields and propel spaceships while bending the fabric of space. Or something like that. There was this German scientist (who blew off his hands and most of his eyesight experimenting with explosives as a teenager), anyway he developed a theory which was capable of predicting the mass of particles from first principles. He thought that the interaction between gravity and electromagnetism could be explained by adding some extra dimensions to the model of the universe, and now they think that this could be applied to a superconducting method of launching spaceships. Damn, that would be the coolest thing ever.

You can purchase a little superconducting disc, and a couple quality magnets, for $145. Ms. Anderson back at MPA did this in Chemistry class, and it was amazing to see the magnets hovering. I definitely felt like there was some weird shit going on there. Why not try the same stuff, only a couple million times higher intensity? Sweet.

Well that is all for now. I need to go drink and watch the Timberwolves.

Secret LSD military projects; Why are conservatives so afraid? Agonist reflects on Iran

TheMemoryHole.org: LSD Reports From the US Military, mostly from back in the 1950s. Totally for real. I was delighted to hear that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who inadvertently created Lysergic Acid Diethyl-Amide, celebrated his 100th birthday this week. Thanks, Albert! You are cooler than all the Beat poets combined! (I just had this vision of a giant Allen Ginsberg robot stomping around Tokyo. I've got to lay off these magic droplets!)

We'll have lots more later today, but this batch of goodies should entertain until later.

Why are conservatives so afraid? by Kos. (But is Kos a coward?) Damn right, Digby:

This idea that we are living in a unique time that calls for special measures is what they always say. (And this current fantasy about the unique threat that proved our oceans couldn't protect us is particularly rich considering they fearmongered a communist threat of total annihilation for decades.) Often cooler heads are able to quell the worst excesses (like the fervent belief that we needed to launch a tactical nuclear war against the commies) and satisfy the right wing's other ongoing paranoid fantasy --- the left as a fifth column --- with silly, wasteful surveillance of animal rights groups or Quakers or former Beatles (along with pernicious surveillance of their partisan opponents.)

They are rhinestone cowboys who are scared to death and don't know how to contain their fear. So they lash out at their domestic political enemies, who they can bluster about and pretend to be tough, while hiding behind the military uniforms of their Big Brother and Preznit Daddy (which is a real stretch when it comes to Junior.)

The fact that they continue to win elections as being the tough guys perhaps says more about our puerile culture than anything else. They lash out like frightened children and too many people see that as courage or resolve.

Violent Islamic fundamentalism is a serious problem, not an existential threat. And it's a difficult problem that requires adults who can keep their heads about them when the terrorists put on their scary show, not big-for-their-age eight year olds staging a temper tantrum.

War and Piece rocks for your Washington 'defense' and neocon tidbits. Laura Rozen 'gets it.'

MediaMatters video: Olbermann awards "Worst Person" honors to Gibson for his religious "intolerance"; Coulter named runner-up for "Nazi block watchers" comment.

Parapolitics, from those calm people at PrisonPlanet: Spooky AOL Ad Says Big Brother Is Watching the Internet. At this site, AOL is essentially trying to scare people off the Internet? A few other PP posts, some from other sources: Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue: A President at war with America. Local paper reports that Canadian Army to occupy downtown Winnipeg as part of a drill. The Decline of the American Empire and the ever-popular 9/11 intrigue thread, Silverstein Answers WTC Building 7 Charges, are by PP writers. Around and around it goes.

From the similar SIANews.com, a division of LibertyThink, MySpace.com: Rupert Murdoch's New Takeover/IP-invasion Project and Michael Berg Changes Story About Nick & Moussaoui. I think it is funny that this one dude, Michael P. Wright of Norman Oklahoma, is on a crusade to prove whatever the hell happened with Nick Berg - and the fact that Zacharias Moussaoui somehow had Berg's computer password is one of the weirdest 9/11 anomalies out there. Seriously, my best of luck to him, but whatever happened seems to have been covered up quite thoroughly.

The DeLay Babylon Project: WaPo: The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail. Case Bringing New Scrutiny To a System and a Profession. Think Progress » Abramoff: The House That Jack Built.
Even David Brooks rips GOP over Abramoff and sleaze. Oh Bobo, where's the love?

Followup on Sibel Edmonds: Edmonds has evidently told the blogger at 'Wot Is It Good 4' that he's brought together many Sibel-approved nuggets of info/conspiracy. So let's list: sibel and feith and perle?, Outing Plame? or Outing Brewster Jennings? and of course sibel edmonds, brewster jennings, edelman and grossman. I'll have some more on this later.

Secret Pentagon Study: Armor Problems Have Killed Many. Sounds like whoever wrote that thing is about to get fired and find a horse head in their bed.

Some goodies from the Agonist: More on Iran attack plans, Iran and deterrence, and the Persian difference. Stirling Newberry comments on the GWOT for the Agonist. Makes a lot of sense:

...the creation of intelligence product has demonstrably been compromised, this is what Afterdowningstreet shows, what Daschle's comments on the information that Bush gave, and didn't on spygate shows, and what the constant flow of rosy scenario Iraq reconstruction reports show. Computer people have a phrase "GIGO" for "Garbage In, Garbage Out", but there is also the "filter effect", where a program or mathematical operation yields the same result no matter what is put in.

With a lumpenexecutive at the top, and a corruption of the synthesis process, all the high sounding organizational ideas are not worth anything. Further more, if there were a serious drive to integrate information, then people such as Crowley [Rowley? -Hongpong] - who wrote one of the two "gun shot residue" memos on the possibility of terrorists learning how to fly planes - would be promoted, not exiled, and the people who have overseen the failure to find the Anthrax attacker or forsee 9/11 would not have been promoted to the top of the counter-terrorism chain. An agency run by screw ups, is going to screw up. An agency managed by kiss ups, is going to spend its time managing up, not down.

Also he makes the point that the 'terror' organizations pursued by the FBI fail to include right-wing Christian groups. I feel that Newberry's basic theory of what constitutes 'terrorism' is really pretty accurate:

Thus, there is not only an ineffective executive, but an entire subculture whose functional effectiveness is degraded by the realization that they work for a political, and not national, security apparatus. There is a willing participation in the construction of an inaccurate paradigm, the construction of institutions designed to perpetuate and disseminate that inaccurate paradigm, the execution of plans based around that inaccurate paradigm, and the acceptance of the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of civilians because of the willfully inaccurate and criminally negligent handling of the global war on terrorism. The trend line is not upwards for ourside, but flat. And that means that the next spectacular terrorist attack on our soil is a matter of when, not if.

The corruption of executive institution, the willing prostitution of the executive branch of government, and the politicization of hierarchy and research are the root causes for our failure to decapitate Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
[.....]
Terrorism has two modes: that of asymmetrical warfare - where one side chooses not to oppose the military of the other side directly, but instead attacks civilians or prisoners. The other is a mode of political control, where privileged - economically or politically is immaterial - actors act in arbitrary and capricious ways, often through proxies, to prevent the formation of political counter-consensus. This second form of terrorism is far more common and pervasive. Its actions account for the bulk of deaths by terrorization. The use of terror and terrorization is an intergral part of warfare and even governance, in that some agentes will only be deterred by the possibility of disproportionate force. However, it only becomes terrorism, when there is the attempt to terrorize the mean, not the extreme, of the body politic. It also is terrorism when there is the discontinuity with the rule of law. The difference between repression and terrorism, is that terrorism strikes without legal justification or accountability. Crystalnacht was terrorism, Dachau was something far worse.

This paradigm makes it clear that the flip side of non-state terrorism, and revolutionary or anarchist terrorism, is state or hierarchical terrorism. The two are co-dependent upon each other.

All right. The State Dept straightens it out: “Identifying Misinformation” as summarized by FTW.

Liberal hawks piss me off because they seem to wholly lack integrity. Ugh.

Liberal Hawks: Flying in Neocon Circles
By Tom Barry
In the heat of Iraq the neoconservatives are seeing their visions of Pax Americana turn into nightmares and headaches. But they are not alone. Liberal hawks like Ivo Daalder, Robert Kerrey, and Will Marshall also find themselves discredited as the quagmire in Iraq swallows up all their arguments supporting the invasion and occupation.

James Risen: NSA rockstar

CNN.com - Officials: Error tipped Iran to CIA agents - Jan 3, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Several U.S. agents in Iran were rounded up after the CIA mistakenly revealed clues to their identities to a covert source who turned out to be a double agent, according to a book that hit shelves Tuesday...

Risen's new book get megadittoes for revealing a great many dark things about Bush, the CIA and the NSA. Cryptome has a useful chunk of the book. Discussing it on Volokh.com from the grouchy anti-libertarian wing.

Some other parts about the book: Guardian: George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb? Amazing story: the CIA forks over slightly flawed bomb plans, to clever people who will probably find the tiny flaws.

Peter Dale Scott: Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s. Scott is one of your paratypical parapolitical writers of the shadow conspiracy etc.

An equation for our times: via ThisModernWorld.

Heck of a Job, Hayden! - by Ray McGovern. Ray McGovern is an old hand at the CIA, a bit crusty, but with key insights into the structural problems over there. This is the kind of perspective I support in Washington.

• Stygius: NSA data-mining preceded 9/11 as well as Law, liberty, security, etc.
• Tinker, Tailor, Miner, Spy - Why the NSA's snooping is unprecedented in scale and scope. By Shane Harris and Tim Naftali.
• NSA Report to Congress on Legal Standards for Electronic Surveillance (dead letters, currently).
• newsrack blog: NSA background: the old Project Shamrock was a bit like this situation.

Has sparked some rather unusual speculations about the political consequences of domestic monitoring. Bill Richardson and Christiane Amanpour are the leading 'NSA political targets' of the moment. Albuquerque Tribune reports that Bill Richardson fears the NSA eavesdropped on him, in part due to a Wayne Madsen report.

Bizarre case that ricoched around the Internet and CNN over the last couple days. Sort of a paradigm-shaking omniscient big brother hullabaloo: NBC changes official transcript of Andrea Mitchell interview, deletes reference to Bush possibly wiretapping CNN's Christane Amanpour. AmericaBlog: What it means to John Kerry, Wesley Clark, and Bill Clinton if Bush wiretapped CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Steve Clemons advises cooling it with connecting Bolton's NSA intercept shenanigans with the current mess. Also talks about an NSA advertisement and its weird phrasing:

Rather than saying that you are looking for "intelligent and imaginative people" to "protect U.S. information systems", the line should be that you are looking for such people to protect the Constitution and Democratic government as well as the general welfare and liberty of the American people.

NY Times: Noah Feldman on the situation with executive power (via DailyKos):

Not since Watergate has the question of presidential power been as salient as it is today. The recent revelation that President George W. Bush ordered secret wiretaps in the United States without judicial approval has set off the latest round of arguments over what the president can and cannot do in the name of his office. Over the past few years, the war on terror has led to the use of executive orders to authorize renditions and the detention of enemy combatants without trial. . . . The limits of presidential power will almost surely be a major topic of discussion during Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which are scheduled to begin this week.

"[P]residentialism" . . . is not the system envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. The framers meant for the legislative branch to be the most important actor in the federal government: Congress was to make the laws and the president was empowered only to execute them. The very essence of a republic was that it would be governed through a deliberative legislature, composed carefully to reflect both popular will and elite limits on that will. The framers would no sooner have been governed by a democratically elected president than by a king who got his job through royal succession.

From the repressed homosexual Okie preacher department: Tulsa Pastor Arrested In OKC On Lewdness Charge. Ha.

CNET: Windows flaw spawns dozens of attacks. Huge security holes, terrible. Glad I have a Mac.

Hornets VS Bees; Synthetic life forms? Wal Mart Sux0rs

Ah, pretty damn amazing. National Geo video (WMP): 30 Japanese hornets take on 30,000 European honeybees. But how do the Japanese bees defend against the onslaught?

Scientists in Canada are working on a fully synthetic life form (more here and here).

Microsoft Confirms They are Censoring Their Blogs in China.

Awesome. From Corey Anderson at CityPages (via AmericaBlog).

MNPublius offers a list of MN blogs of the year, copied from MNspeak's author Rex. Publius gets a nod... Hongpong continues 100% under the radar, where all the kool kids really hang out.

Oh those Russians: MOSNews: West Should Not Be Scared of Russian Spies, says Russian Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergei Lebedev. Nice.

What is this bullshit? Students pressed F5 (reload) too much and that's a felony? Student accused of trying to crash school's computer system!

Thinking about Wal-Mart? Need to convince conservatives they suck? Try the Neighborhood Retail Alliance: Conservative Case Against Wal-Mart in NYC . Subsidies for private corporations should be a conservative's enemy. Also ProfessorBainbridge.com: The Conservative Case Against Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart screws up health care. Costs taxpayers a lot. How can the Party of Nixon Reagan support such welfare mommas sucking at the Capitol's teats?

News from the Wilderness: Former LAPD cop Michael Ruppert is an enigmatic, larger than life character among the various conspiratorial journalists and 9/11 researchers that tell exciting tales of intrigue and Peak Oil suspense. He claims to have stumbled into CIA-backed drug trafficking in Los Angeles as a narcotics officer.

His confrontation with former CIA director John Deutsch in a room full of angry Angelenos (as C-SPAN recorded) is an absolute classic para-political moment - the room erupts when he names the CIA programs involved in supporting drug operations (Amadeus, Pegasus and Watchtower, according to Ruppert). This is featured in Guerrilla News Network's video Crack the CIA, an excellent look at the Central Intelligence Agency and its storied associations with Central American traffickers, featuring Ruppert (Iran-Contra didn't pay for itself, hon).

He sort of went on a deep & weird geopolitical tangent from there — Crossing the Rubicon is one of the oddest political books of our times — and certainly one that the mainstream media doesn't want to review or promote. Nonetheless, his view of how peak oil may propel psychotic and reckless behavior in the U.S. leadership is certainly worth considering. His site, From The Wilderness, also carries a lot of energy stories from other sources (with remarks), so it is useful for finding the odd Chinese pipeline story and all that. The Agency That Could Be Big Brother by NSA whiz James Bamford, Nuclear Clouds Gather Over Asia from IPS, and China lays down gauntlet in energy war from Asia Times are all useful.

The Shadows around Sibel Edmonds: Plame spied on neocons? Turkish agents, Special Plans teams, Afghan heroin, 9/11 intel & funding: is it for real?

Antiwar.com's blog returns to the story of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, (her official site) a strange post-9/11 shadow case that Ashcroft helped gag. Her case involves, at the least, illegal cash getting moved around and Turkish spies. Edmonds, trying to act as a whistleblower, still can't speak freely about what she wants to say; however, what she has said is bombshell, decidedly off-the-charts paranoid intrigue.

Maybe she's a disinformation agent, but more likely she's another random person dragged into a shadowy geopolitical nightmare. I've previously posted about her here and here, wherein she alleged that Dennis Hastert was getting secret cash from Turks.

So consider the post 'sibel edmonds, brewster jennings, edelman and grossman' on the blog 'wot is it good 4' that pulls together the rich-sounding threads of this tale. Take it as you will, with as many grains of salt as needed (posted about on DailyKos):

Sibel makes 2 specific related claims
a) Sibel claims that she has information which proves that senior officials knew that there were plans to attack America months before 9/11.

Specifically:
"There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."
and
"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away."
b) Sibel claims that she has evidence of a global multi-billion dollar smuggling/dealing network of weapons and drug which is hidden in plain view. Of course, there is also the requisite money-laundering infrastructure. She claims that the network comprises senior american government officials, terrorists, and 'unsavoury regimes.'

and they merge, giving us:
“drug trafficking, money laundering, foreign names and American names directly involved in the financing of the 9-11 attacks on WTC (World Trade Center) and the Pentagon.”

But also consider this good caveat from xymphora:

"Edmonds sometimes makes me a bit nervous as she seems overly adept with the terms and arguments of conspiracy theory for someone who is supposed to have been a lowly FBI translator (it's like she's been reading Peter Dale Scott!). Is she part of the battle in Washington between the Bush Administration enablers involved in the drugs/arms business who don't mind directly or indirectly supporting al Qaeda if it is good for business, and those old-fashioned types who still consider that dealing with American enemies is treason?"

And here is her Grand Conspiracy of Everything, salacious!!

SIBEL: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

CD: But you can start from anywhere –

SIBEL: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

There is a lot more exciting stuff. I am assuming every American arms contractor and high-ranking person at State Department will have to be arrested. Marc Grossman and Eric Edelman are two guys the blog suggests have played a role in illegal activities in "the 'Stans" of Central Asia, WMD trafficking with Islamic militants, and anything else we could think of.

My intuition tells me that the scope of this tale perfectly fits a 'negative narrative,' i.e. the exact inverse of what we are 'supposed to believe', so it is designed to be an attractive view for anti-Bush folks. In other words, it has the markers of a 'decoy conspiracy theory,' or one of those 'information operations' we've heard so much about.

On the other hand, it seems an obvious geopolitical necessity that all that heroin getting created by the Tajik and Uzbek 'Northern Alliance' warlords now running Afghanistan must be getting moved somewhere through the 'Stans of Central Asia & Pakistan, and probably some very clever guys from the State Department have been dealing with it. And in all probability, it was old hands that knew the major regional hustlers during Clinton's term -- such as Marc Grossman and Eric Edelman.

Edelman, for his part, has now replaced Douglas Feith as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, a high honorary post for fucking maniacs. In a fine look at many of the background neo-cons, Chris Deliso noted in 'Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame',

Although Grossman "has not been as high profile in the press" FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, "don't overlook him – he is very important." She was not speaking about the Plame affair, though Grossman did indeed have a key role there, as we will see.

According to her, Grossman was one of three officials – the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith – who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002.

Marc Grossman has served in a number of interesting countries and positions over the past 29 years. From 1976-1983, at a pivotal point in the Cold War, he was employed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan – America's key regional ally, through which millions of dollars in weapons and other "aid" were delivered by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service to the mujahedin following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Yow!!! Talk about your heroin-connected State Department guys!! In a final twist for Grossman, he happened to meet up with Pakistani ISI director General Mahmoud Ahmed just before September 11 — and Ahmed has been linked to sending cash to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Wot is it good 4 adds a few more bits in a handy bio:

Edelman left Libby's [employ] on June 6, 2003 "'to begin language training in preparation for a posting as ambassador to Turkey." This is a week after 'Libby asks Bolton, and Grossman for information about news report about CIA's secret envoy to Africa in 2002"

According to Fitzgerald, 2 weeks later (June 19, 2003, before Wilson's NYT op-ed), Edelman "asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson's trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the VP had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure phone line."

In Central Asia, Everything is Permissible: The plain truth is that, especially out in Central Asia, the concept of 'corruption' does not exist, and there is no real barrier between the legitimate economy and the 'shadow economy' of weapons, drugs and other contraband. Controlling your turf means controlling the passage of all goods, especially the really good goods. And that's how it's been for centuries.

So perhaps Edmonds represents a kind of domestic blowback against this staggering corruption of American institutions and secretive misuse of executive power. Although, maybe it is all purely symbolic. With a little luck, this weird case will finally get the top-level media attention it deserves, perhaps as Libby's court date approaches...

Douglas Feith: His Business is the Turks: wot is it good 4 also informs that Richard Perle used to consult for some shadowy Turkish concerns, and Douglas Feith, of all people, was a registered foreign agent of Turkey from 1989-1994!! This certainly adds a shade to the whole Turkey/neo-con model - and Grossman was recently ambassador to Turkey.

This seems to tie into the Valerie Plame matter, somehow: As long as we are fishing in these murky waters, Sibel Edmonds has implied that her case is closely tied to the Plame affair and the American Turkish Council. there has been some speculation that Valerie Plame was actually burned by Libby and the neo-cons not because of Wilson's Op-Ed, but because her CIA front company, Brewster Jennings, may have been getting 'too close' to exposing illegal WMD activities that someone like Libby might have been tied up in.

Perhaps even Libby's longtime former client, billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, is involved. Rich's partner in intrigue, Russian mogul Boris Berezovsky, has been tied up in some exotic deals, including nuclear trafficking with the Chechens.

Secret Office of Special Plans units going around in Iraq to fabricate WMD?! On a parallel track, here is a story from Larisa Alexandrovna in RawStory which details apparent secret military units dispatched under the authority of Feith and the Office of Special Plans, with the apparent intent of coming up with some WMDs in Iraq, faking their origin if necessary. However it failed, if the story is to be believed. "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq, intelligence sources say":

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
[......]
One intelligence source says the Office of Special Plans’ off-book team was using [missing US pilot] Speicher and WMD as a pretext for whatever their real objective may have been.
[.....]
This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members who were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

Ok, then. Grains of salt etc.

Brewster Jennings and the Planted WMD: I will add one more bit to this mix of really quite paranoid stuff: Maverick/'highly untrustworthy' internet journalist Wayne Madsen raised the possibility that Brewster Jennings and Valerie Plame got burned because they intercepted a WMD that some in Turkey were trying to sneak into Iraq — but the twist is that neoconservatives were trying to get the weaponry into Iraq, because they wanted to stage its exciting discovery there, thus providing the casus belli to drive the American public into a belligerent, fearful frenzy. A fun theory...

Since we are really out on a kick here, why not add what Madsen put out on Nov. 11 (again, many grains of lysergic acid salt recommended):

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

So, under possible motives to out Plame, we can tentatively consider that her CIA team wouldn't help stage WMD in Iraq to justify a war. Again, this sounds much too delicious to be true, but if it were true, it would help make some sense of Libby's motive. (Madsen also posted some other stuff about Brewster Jennings going after Libby, nuke traffickers and the Russian mob on Oct. 25 - again, many salt grains)

There's plenty of speculation here, and I don't want to make conclusions yet. Except for one: It's nobody's business but the Turks!!

Oil spikes; Mel Gibson's Apocalypto subliminal madness; Germans speak of US attack plans in Iran

Mel Gibson tries subliminal maniacal grin: Apple - Trailers - Apocalypto. Look at about 1:46 in the trailer for this bizarre film. For a single frame, Mel Gibson is chomping on a cigarette, leaning on the clay-encrusted native. Best weird subliminal moment of the year, so far.

Oil prices climb on speculative buying. Chinese claim to develop first live vaccine against bird flu.

Peter Bartz Gallagher has struck up InfantFoundation.com. Thus far it's a few thumbnails of the crew and such, but it's a fine start.

Strib: Older story, but a fun fantasy: Trolleys may be jolly, say Minneapolis officials.

How evil are you? I came up Evil. Must be because I got an ex-stripper on a Clear Channel station today.

National Security bits: Urban design + war on terror = National Security Sprawl. NSA Web Site Puts 'Cookies' on Computers.

Aljazeera.Net - US increases air attacks in Iraq. Antiwar.com: Two False Options - by William S. Lind

Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the Bush administration set for this war – a peaceful, democratic Iraq that would be an American ally, a friend of Israel, a source of unlimited oil and of basing rights for large American forces – were never attainable, no matter what we did. Strategies invented in Fairyland cannot be implemented in the real world. Pity the military that is ordered to try.

Defeat is an option. In my last column I described one way that could occur, an Israeli and/or American attack on Iran that leads Iraqi Shi'ites to join the Sunni jihad and cut our lines of supply and retreat through southern Iraq. There are additional scenarios that could lead to a dramatic American defeat, a defeat we could not disguise to anyone, not even ourselves.

German media suspects US strike in Iran: UPI: German media: U.S. prepares Iran strike

...the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes "What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

The German news agency DDP cited "Western security sources" to claim that CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkey's premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. Goss, who visited Ankara and met Erdogan on Dec. 12, was also reported to have to have asked for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation.
[....]
It is possible that leaks from NATO and German security sources are part of a ploy to convince the Iranian government that the Americans and their NATO allies are in dead earnest when they say a nuclear-armed Iran would not be tolerated, and that Iran had better start negotiating seriously.

But the German media speculation about the supposed U.S. plans has been fueled by a number of high-profile visits to Turkey this month, including trips by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, by the CIA's Porter Goss and by the FBI Director Robert Mueller, who also delivered U.S. intelligence reports on Iranian backing for PKK operations aimed against Turkey. There have also been some significant Turkish visits to Washington, as reported by Der Spiegel.
[the PKK Kurdish faction, with Iran, against Turkey and Iraqi Sunnis?! Oy!....]
The original story in the German press which provoked the wider media furore was written for the DDP agency by a veteran reporter on security and intelligence matters, Udo Ulfkotte, who has in the past been criticized in the German media for being "too close to sources at Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND" (Bundesnachrichtendienst).

Anti-Imperialists Beware – Bush Is Reading Again - by Jim Lobe. Lobe has been a close follower of the neo-cons since the 1980s as UPI's Washington DC. This makes the point that Bush seems easily swayed by cheesy imperialist writing — these guys really do deceive themselves with breathless talk of empire. Don't miss Robert Kaplan's characterization of the entire Islamic world as "Injun Country." Bush friggin' loves Kaplan, as Lobe details why:

[Kaplan] describes the presumed thoughts of a Filipino in Zamboanga, presumably a descendant of Moro who resisted, at the cost of tens of thousands of their lives, U.S. imperialism 100 years ago: "His smiling, naïve eyes cried out for what we in the West call colonialism."

Good stuff from Raimondo (the anti-war libertarian) at Antiwar.com for how to Beware the New Year:

.... conservatives often pave the way for more government spending and centralized controls in the name of "national security" by supporting war and preparations for war. The same principle operates – in reverse gear – in the case of ostensibly antiwar liberals. As history shows, they are all too often persuaded that the domestic "benefits" of operating in a wartime atmosphere – conducive to economic and social planning – outweigh the moral and material costs of war.

The War Party is counting on this kind of opportunism to quash antiwar dissent in the Democratic party and marginalize the candidacy of Russ Feingold. The Senator from Wisconsin voted against the Iraq war and was the only member of that august body to cast his vote against the PATRIOT Act. On domestic policy, he is the quintessential liberal, well to the left of the determinedly "centrist" Hillary. One can easily imagine the Democrats being persuaded that Feingold is too "extreme" to even think about carrying a single "red" state. If the Democratic "Leadership" Council can successfully invoke the specter of "McGovernism" – convincing Democratic delegates to ignore the antiwar grassroots for "pragmatic" reasons – the War Party can sell Hillary as The Only Alternative to four more years of Republican misrule.

He's right that the Democratic hawks will try to eat Feingold. DLC is almost worse than the Republicans. However, Feingold seems to actually be the most 'vigilant patriot,' if I can wield that phrase. Meanwhile, from the disgruntled old Dem Dept., Sidney Blumenthal: The Long March of Dick Cheney:

The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined. [this is what I am talking about!!]

Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held "cabal" - as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it - wields control.

Within the White House, the office of the vice president is the strategic center. The National Security Council has been demoted to enabler and implementer. Systems of off-line operations have been laid to evade professional analysis and a responsible chain of command. Those who attempt to fulfill their duties in the old ways have been humiliated when necessary, fired, retired early or shunted aside. In their place, acolytes and careerists indistinguishable from true believers in their eagerness have been elevated.

Says it all. Crush the bureaucracy with political appointees. Drink the Kool Aid, we've got New Realities to make here! Study it, judiciously, as you will.

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?

NSA talk on MPR

Right now there is a sweet discussion of the NSA wiretapping situation on Talk of the Nation with Neal Conan. James Bamford is talking about it, and he said that the CIA is approximately half private contractors now - an ongoing integration of the private sector into the intelligence community.

(Which seems to be something that Gillian Harding is moving towards -- how interesting. And now her name is going to be on my highly flagged website. :-D)

Scandal breakfast: Speeding up the war; Duke scandal reaches into CIA; Diebold revelations; GOP war-dialing in New Hampshire; More mercenaries

I have plenty of scandals for you today. But I'll try to keep it concise.

Texas gerrymandering: Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal.

DIEBOLD insider speaks out on Vote Spoofing: One of my reliable spies sent this in. Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends 'sterling' record. This talks a lot about how Diebold may have manipulated the Georgia 2002 Senate race, among other things. Basically it indicates that Diebold should not be trusted at all. And they are diabolical.

New probes in the prewar intel, but Those Italians mighta done the forgery! Spicy Meat-aball! So yah, Lewis Libby attacked Wilson because he called out the yellowcake uranium thing, which turned out to be a forgery. The hot rumor -- supported in the Italian media -- is that Michael Ledeen and some other neo-cons channeled the stuff into Washington. And now it seems like they might finally get nailed for it. Congress Opens New Front In Iraq-War Probe. Treasongate: The Niger Forgeries v. the CIA Intel Reports - Preliminary Conclusion: An Italian Job. Consult Raimondo for more. FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence. Marshall's take on that, check it out.

Marshall adds that Scooter Libby's legal defense fund is being run by Mel Sembler, the US Ambassador to Italy "when all the secret meetings took place and when the forged uranium papers showed up at the US Embassy in October 2002." However he sees no evidence Sembler was involved.

New Hampshire scandal: via Marshall, blogger Betsy Devine is covering the court case of NH Republicans phone hacking -- more like phreaking -- no, wardialing. Yeah, wardialing on election day is illegal.

Bomb Jazeera-Gate: Clemons promises news from London on the Bush Bombing Al Jazeera memo, so check that later.

SAVE XMAS: Oh great, another holiday video from the White House. And holiday cards. Where is our Jesus??! Conservatives are really disappointed that Bush surrendered Christmas -- really!

SAVE BORAT FROM KAZAKHSTAN: Kazakhstan shows the world tyranny is not dead. And not only that, they threatened to sue Sasha Cohen for his fine Borat portrayal on MTV. Borat, for his part, "fully support my government's decision to sue this Jew" immediately, in a response video on his site.

SAVE NIXON: 'I Didn't Like Nixon Until Watergate': The Conservative Movement Now. Interesting reflections on a weird philosophy.

Meth for Iraqi insurgents: When you need to conduct a war, it is a good idea to get your forces sped up with pharmaceuticals, as we learned from the Stim Packs in Starcraft. The UK Mirror reports that methamphetamine has been found in pills around Basra -- and claims that Mahdi Army irregulars have used it fearlessly. However, it is also official US government policy to give speed to pilots sometimes -- which was blamed as a cause for the deaths of several Canadians in Afghanistan. Meth or dextro -- which is the ethical War Stimulant??

IRAQ: Why no army & how to get out: What? Dems dont know a strategy? James Fallows' recent bit on Why Iraq Has No Army from the Atlantic. Interesting column from E&P about White Phosphorus and the media spin that followed. Armando on the Kos suggests that we need to stick with criticizing Bush, since theoretical Democratic plans (a fuzzy mess nowadays) don't really do as much as discrediting Dear Leader (which is something that Lieberman attempted to attack this week. Fuck you, Lieberman!! Why articulate when obscenities express it better?)

"Donald Rumsfeld Is Mad As a Hatter" Funny how that victory strategy was written by some shady professor. US Rep. Adam Smith (D) on the ground in Iraq.

Shrewd people are thinking about getting out. Via the solid Steve Clemons, some good strategies. Politicians square off against each other. Republicans try a bizarre two-handed trick, claiming that the Dems are treasonous for demanding it more quickly, while still claiming that withdrawal is going to happen, sooner rather than later.

The Hard Nosed Realists are worth consulting. Lt. Gen. William Odom is one of these. He was merely director of the National Security Agency and was the Army's senior intelligence officer for a time. I am hardly such a damn fool as to not appreciate the kind of wisdom that only one of these old, battle-tested characters could give you. Odom: Want stability in the Middle East? Get out of Iraq!

On the flip side, journalist Nir Rosen has kicked around Iraq a lot, so he's got a pretty solid view of why the hell we need to get out.

The Insurgencies Are Winning by Dreyfuss, always good. Ten ways to argue about the war. Well at least Sunnis and Shiites are praying together a bit. "Profusion of Rebel Groups Helps Them Survive in Iraq".

Wes Clark, still Big Pimpin with war plans here. Clark-Mentum. Drum is confused. There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for Clark in the Democratic netroots, but I feel ambivalent.

Death squads instead! Billmon sighs about the execution squads now deemed to be Iraq's Last, Best Hope, characterized as Salvadoran Option, Pt. II. And his bit about the Lincoln Group and its organized efforts to propagandize for the military in Iraq was interesting. More below...

Marketing the Dogs of War: Mercenaries are always interesting. So here is a pile o links. Private Security Guards in Iraq Operate With Little Supervision. American Security Firm Implicated in Iraq Killings. Triple Canopy investigation. This PDF is interesting because it indicates that they kill Iraqis and lie about it. Booman Tribune on the Aegis Security Corporation and Tim Spicer. Also more about Triple Canopy.

A NY Times story about these forces, with some random Nazi thing attached to it.

PERU: Veteran Soldiers, Police Recruited for Iraq by U.S. Contractors.
Mercenaries Guard Baghdad Green Zone. Green zone security switch increases risk.
Sandline mercenaries: from Sierra Leone to Iraq.
CPI: Marketing the Dogs of War: Making a Killing.

As earlier reported, "Trophy Video" of Civilian Shootings By Contractors Emerges and guess what folks, here is the actual video. Creepy. Crooks and Liars has more on Spicer.

I wrote a big paper for Wendy Weber about these private military firms and their role in geopolitical developments. Actually my view is not 100% negative, but I mostly worry that they are used to A) cover up covert foreign policy, like DynCorp spraying herbicide in Colombia, and B) destroy the chain of command -- and in turn our adherence to international treaties, etc. More later.

Pentagon Propaganda Matrix. For some conspiracy stuff, see the PropagandaMatrix. For a real Matrix of Propaganda, look at Iraq these days. In the so-called Serious Media:

Williams: Bush administration has "right" to buy media coverage
Appearing on the December 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration has "the right" to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. Williams also condoned the "politiciz[ation]" of programming on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

Bastard. Let me just put in these DAMN links.
WaPo: Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Efforts / Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News
NYT: U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
SourceWatch: Burson-Marseller's BKSH Gets Piece of Pentagon Psy-ops Pie
Forbes.com: Military Explains News Propaganda in Iraq
Freepaz: U.S. propaganda effort described
KR Washington Bureau: U.S. military pays Iraqis for positive news stories on war
LA Times: Secret Program May Have Erred, Pentagon Says
GovExec.com: What's Lincoln Group?
LA Times: U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News
DO YOU FEEL SAFER FROM TERROR YET? MUST BE THAT WARM AND FUZZY 'PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION' FEELING!! (sorry that was tacky. This pisses me off)

Bribery scandal has many tentacles! Rep. Harris to donate contributions linked to Cunningham. Florida schemes? Of course! The Cunningham bribery scandal extends into the area of Pentagon defense spending -- and shadowy contributions leading to classified spending contracts (MZM gives cash to Duke, Duke hooks up open-ended contracts). Josh Marshall recently insinuated that people 'looked the other way' at what Cunningham was doing, while their own machinations around Defense sailed forth. Money quote:

The Pentagon's classified budget for buying goods and services has increased by nearly 48% since 9/11 — from $18.2 billion in fiscal 2002 to $26.9 billion this year — according to figures compiled by the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

......Harold Relyea, who studies government secrecy at the Congressional Research Service, says even if lawmakers had the time to study classified programs, most are not inclined to question the pet projects of their colleagues. And within the defense industry, "there is a coziness that sometimes builds up. You are familiar with the company and their people, it's easy to go back to them" for more work. "It's a new phase of what we used to call the military-industrial complex."

Neither Congress nor the executive branch regularly produces reports on oversight of classified spending. ... "We don't have the manpower or time to look into this, so we take it on faith that all of the companies working the black world are basically honest."

One of Porter Goss' boys at the CIA is apparently implicated in the Cunningham scandal, and other guys at the CIA are talking to the media about it. (Goss brought in a bunch of nasty national security punks to push people around at the Agency, and perhaps it will backfire since they were somewhat corrupt. Office politics from hell!) Jason Vest reports on this for GovExec.com about the details, including CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who ought to go down on this.

Josh Marshall's on it too, as well as Laura Rozen. Marshall adds that legislative spending 'earmarks' have been used to provide patronage / funding for favored companies, maintaining the Power Structure.

BIG RED: China: Boom or Boomerang?

CFR: Council of Frickin' IDIOTS: Bush speaks at the CFR yesterday, and they were weak about it. Atrios mocks.

Psychological & economic damage of war: Coping with Combat. "Has 'War' become a leading brand for United States? How Bush's imperial policies are being linked to economic woes and CEO angst in America".

Wiki bad! To spoof Wikipedia's latest problems, consider Uncyclopedia and its fine CNN, Nostradamus and German grammar entries.

Misc file: Dems still polling damn well. Haaretz says, OK Sharon, what about the damn West Bank outposts!? Guess I finally found the vast right wing conspiracy. Pointers from Hunter on how to write massively for the DailyKos. Ah, good stuff. Hunter is always pretty cool.

Spin Charting for Fun! Part of the new liberal institutions' priorities are to track the subtle points of spin. For example, ThinkProgress got Bush Knew 10 Marines Had Died Prior To Rose Garden Remarks, Didn’t Mention It because he wanted to keep the happy spin going.

Alito in trouble. Don't really care.

Torture vs the media: Project Censored presents Hard Evidence of US Torturing Prisoners to Death Ignored by Corporate Media. Even the WaPo says Rice offers a weak defense of torture.

Skyscrapers and carbon sequestration schemes may cause earthquakes. The world's tallest tower in Taipei may have cracked open a fault line. Ouch.

Microsmish: IE flaw lets intruders into Google Desktop. Xbox 360 is lacking in some good features. SO much damn hype.

Persian Atom Smash: Iran Plans to Build Two More Reactors. Look to Khuzestan for the potential "FIRST FRONT IN THE WAR ON IRAN."

Now we've got some mothafuckin' scandals. Have fun kids.

Madsen: Discreet top political / intel torture meeting today in DC

Posted at the DailyKos. I wonder if it will get any bounce, or just slide through the torrent of diaries...

Wayne Madsen (maverick/somewhat conspiratorial) DC journalist, reports that a major meeting of defense and intelligence personnel, including John McCain, are quietly meeting later today to come up with some kind of answer on the torture problem. This in turn has sparked investigation from the Pentagon, according to Madsen.

Retired generals and admirals subject to special investigation by Pentagon surveillance/ intelligence team. Retired top U.S. generals and admirals planning to attend a December 7 meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, an office and hotel complex next to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, have drawn the interest of a special investigation by special agents of the Department of Defense. According to informed sources, the meeting, described as a "retreat," is to be attended by a number of former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former heads of intelligence agencies, and key members of the U.S. Congress, including Sen. John McCain...

I offer this with some caveats, below....

The generic subject of the meeting is torture and detaining of prisoners. The meeting is strictly a "no media" event, according to individuals familiar with its planning. Pentagon agents have called individuals who have been invited to the meeting and inquired about details and the involvement of active duty officers. One agent, Special Agent Fred Shaw, said to be with Defense Department security and coordinating his activities with Pentagon Inspector General Steve Anthony, also made contact with local police departments asking for assistance in tracking the movements of some of the invited attendees. The Rumsfeld Pentagon is clearly interested in the meeting and the identities of the some 40 invited attendees.

Personally, I always take his stuff with a grain of salt, but I think this guy has kicked around long enough to come up with some weird and deep sources. He has been around for a while.

Supposedly, diaries involving Madsen stuff have been banned because they are unreasonably conspiratorial -- and he's vented a bit at the DailyKos community. Is this true? What does this say about DailyKos faith in the 'marketplace of ideas'? Indeed, such pieces as "Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software" are difficult for anyone to believe, but we live in really weird times.

I would say that when the Pentagon has totally been exposed attempting to run psychological operations against the Iraqi public, and in turn Americans, then at the least we ought to give a moment's more thought to the weird world of intelligence disinformation and info warfare. I'm genuinely interested if anyone can tell me how to really prove that someone like Madsen is just not worth paying any attention to.

In this case, well someone should get digging and see if this secret meeting checks out -- and see if the Pentagon routinely spies on high officials.

Finally, I'll add that he's published a number of pieces about hard-working Americans in the intelligence community that have been squashed -- in a sense he is charting the slow purging of intelligence professionals by neo-cons and other nasty types; for example, the Porter Goss CIA purges. There is also an interesting story (Dec. 3) about how MZM (the Cunningham bribers) were tampering with databases at the NSA to exaggerate threats, including the famous Aluminum Tubes.

Even if he is fabricating a lot of stuff, I can't help but feel that the general direction of his reporting reflects something real. Can we please dig into this and find out?

Minutemen Nazis for Congress: What could go wrong with white nationalist border militia?

There is a lot of weird shit on the Internet, and the last few days' dark December surfing have brought me to some mean and lowly places.

I have not said much about the Minutemen militia / vigilante groups that have spontaneously mobilized on the southern border. Healthy democracies don't usually have strange mobs milling around their border deserts, acting out militant nationalist fantasies of control. No, not healthy at all.

While I sensed an violent undercurrent right away, I underestimated the direct white supremacist organizational ties to Minutemen. It seems that neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are deeply tied in with the Minutemen, seeing them as an instrument to attempt to mainstream their unpopular views.

One of the Minutemen leaders, Jim Gilchrist, is running for Congress in California's 48th CD, where he will probably split the hard-right vote as the grassroots goes xenophobic, possibly allowing a Democrat to squeak into victory. Small plus, but if this one-issue movement expands further it could herald a New Intolerance.

In times that feel this right-wing, it seems unlikely for mainstream politicians to veer fully into racist politics, but I worry that it could mushroom easily.

These groups are using the Internet to chat and organize, of course. The average armchair militant racist, who formerly had to find physical groups, now finds virtual community among the 'white' genome purists. But this allows we who fear them to peer in and see what they are really thinking, and publicize it.

In particular, the Internet exchanges around a set of Minutemen and "SOS" (Save Our State) protest rallies in California — where a Nazi flag was suddenly unveiled — show that the display of the swastika is a debated but widely accepted move among the hardcore racists and border vigilantes. (the photos came from an Indymedia post)

The (liberal) blogger David Neiwart at Orcinus, who has written a book about right-wing extremists, offered a fine summary and links to a neo-Nazi white supremacist forum called Stormfront and its discussion of the Minutemen rallies and the Nazi flag. Some argued that it would turn whites off of the message, but there seemed to be no real sense of shock that such a symbol was an element of their movement. As Neiwart explained,

The Stormfront forum is especially enlightening, since it is a specifically neo-Nazi chatroom. Especially noteworthy were the many posts questioning the use of the Nazi symbology at the rally, since it would "turn off" many whites. It's worth remembering that most dedicated racists take care not to let it show publicly -- unlike these fellows. But the whole thread makes clear to what extent these extremists now move among allegedly "mainstream" right-wing operations and not infiltrate them, but fully hijack them.

(Neiwart's work called "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis" (PDF) is a classic at explaining where a latent fascist movement or proto-ideology could lie in America today)

The idea that such openly racist stuff is going straight into the mainstream right via sites like RedState.org ought to be considered as well.

George Wallace and David Duke left their mark on the American political landscape (Duke is still involved with Stormfront) by scapegoating the Other, as so many experienced politicians did before them. American political discourse these days is in a twitchy state of paranoia, and the Borders remain a favorite topic for cable news anchors like Lou Dobbs to bitch about, to burnish their tough-nationalist credentials.

Most of what I found today pointed out that Republicans are reluctant to criticize these groups, and instead co-opt them. Their outward agenda is just a thin facade for traditional xenophobic white supremacism. Their members know it. Why doesn't the media?

National Socialists of some sort also have a TV show on MTN - Minneapolis public access TV. I support the marketplace of ideas, and I think that we can disprove racist genetic dogma quite easily nowadays, so it's not surprising that they have coded their virtual-KKK politics into the matter of immigration. I think that they have the right to organize for peaceful politics on the Internet, and if that lets the concerned Real World peer in and get an idea of their basic idiocy, then perhaps the consequences will be positive.

But this Nazi-Minutemen thing is spooky. It ought to be talked about.

Hersh: Covert War extends into Syria

Ah, for the longest time I have been speculating that they were going to let the war spill into Syria, under the ridiculous assertion that this would somehow improve the Situation. Finally Sy Hersh has said that we have gone in... Oh boy, what ever the fuck could go wrong? (and who approved of Attacking Syria, exactly? Congress??)

There is a lot of terrible stuff in here.

UP IN THE AIR
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Where is the Iraq war headed next?

....“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”
......

Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”

Another part of the article points out the fears among many in the military if American air power is provided to the Iraqis, meaning the "Iraqi government" -- and whichever tinpot tribal leader is in control that Thursday -- will be able to order American airstrikes on whichever 'terrorist' sect they choose.

So in both instances, force spiraling out of control. But what else is new?

November 2 Antiwar rally at University

I arrived in the middle of an antiwar rally at the University of Minnesota yesterday, as approximately 1000 people, mostly students, came to mark the 2000th US military death, the indictment of Lewis Libby, and a rapidly shifting national political situation.

When the newly-formed Youth Against War and Racism group met at the Loring Park Coffee House in March to plan a fall student protest, they couldn't have foreseen how America's view of the war would shift by then: the Downing Street Memos showed the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invasion, I. Lewis Libby was indicted for damaging national security while trying to discredit a war critic, and worst of all, more than 2000 American service personnel were killed.

On Wednesday afternoon, activists staged dozens of protests nationwide, as about 1000 people, including hundreds of Minneapolis high school students, rallied on the U's East Bank to mark the strange year that's passed since Bush's re-election. YAWR students demanded that Minneapolis schools ban military recruiters (as a Minnesota Daily video documents), though such a move could endanger their federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act. "War leaves every child behind," read one protester's sign.

As the protest spilled off the Mall into Washington Avenue, turning east towards the military recruiting offices, Minneapolis City Councilman Dean Zimmermann was spotted standing high atop a utility box, attempting to count the crowd. More than a dozen counter-protesters lined up in front of the offices with signs such as "Peace through Strength" and "The leaders of tomorrow should be in class today!" Protesters responded by shouting that "the leaders of tomorrow are getting practice today!"

Across the spectrum, America is becoming a majority anti-war country. 53% of Americans believe that the administration "deliberately misled the public" on WMD issues, a Gallup/CNN poll discovered last week. Meanwhile, reports in the Italian media suggested that before the war, Italian military intelligence and the Pentagon's secret Office of Special Plans channeled these lies, including the Niger uranium forgeries, into the White House.

Who could blame high school students for war anxiety? The same Pentagon bureaucracy that ruthlessly targets Sunni tribesmen selects students based on intelligence like their grades, ethnicity and income. What student could believe a war with 27 rationales? They see their friends and family disappear, only to return injured, psychologically damaged, exposed to depleted uranium and IEDs, or worse, draped under a flag.

One anonymous black-clad protester, masked with a bandana, told me that he and his associates represented the Minnesota branch of the Anarchist Black Cross organization. His principal reason for protesting? "Revolution," he said, revealing the core of our nation's spirit - to rebel, grow, prosper. It still flourishes: in October, Ipsos Public Affairs found that 50% of Americans agreed that "if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

After the street protest, at the Oak Street Cinema a teach-in was held to teach students how to challenge recruiters in their schools. The protest was also organized by the Anti-War Committee, Socialist Alternative and the Anti-War Organizing League.

Time to Double Down; Instant Messenger viruses are trying to get me

I feel... as if I am looking at the world from the bottom of a well...

And the only way to beat it is to bat it down...

I would like to note for the rest of the Internet that Nick Werth's AOL Instant Messenger client is infected with some kind of nasty program (although he blames John van Wagenen as the source of infection) that sends out links to dynu.com and johnslaten.com , which in turn downloads weird virus files. Fortunately I have a Mac and use Adium as my client. So no problem here!

You need to ditch AOL Instant Messenger and use an alternative IM client program, which will not get infected, and takes less CPU and memory besides. For Macs I recommend Adium. For Windows PCs and Linux, Gaim is the gold standard. Go for it, you won't look back.

Ok, other than AIM viruses, well folks, the hearing for Macalester's May 11 incident is on 9 AM, this Tuesday morning at the County Courthouse/City Hall at 15 West Kellogg Boulevard with Judge Ostby. I can't remember at the moment which room it's at but you should be able to ask for directions to Judge Ostby's courtroom, if anyone is so interested in getting over early to see what happens.

There will be a number of witnesses testifying, including Laurie Hamre and various students. I may also testify.

As you might imagine, it is a tense situation for me, which brings forth all kinds of questions about Truth vs. Expediency, and all the rest.

Wish me luck. It's time to Double Down. :-/

Macalester teaches Billy Joe Armstrong to differ from the hollow lies; Zarqawi == Emmanuel Goldstein

I missed the Green Day concert in St. Paul on Friday. It sounded like a hell of a good time, made particularly special by Billy Joe Armstrong's connections to the area: his wife is from New Brighton, and I have heard on reasonably good authority that he purchased a house on Summit Avenue. Star Tribune reported Saturday:

St. Paul was where he wrote some of the songs for the politically charged "American Idiot," the Grammy-winning album that is the best-selling nonrap CD of the past year, with more than 4 million copies sold. In the summer of 2003, he had walked around the track at Macalester College in St. Paul, writing the songs in his head.

This also tracks with what I've heard, that Armstrong was spotted a few times around the track - a more interesting celebrity sighting than that time Josh Hartnett came into the SuperAmerica and Grand and Cleveland when Alison was working. It would also explain why much of the album has a perfect rhythm for running. This song always made a lot of sense to me - it must have been because I was living down the street when he wrote it! :-)

So what's my real point today? The image of Senior Demon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an essential element of the Bush Administration's strategy to manage perceptions of their disastrous war - diverting blame and creating an attractive 'negative image'. Zarqawi is one of the principle Hollow Lies of the war.

Say, Hey!

Hear the sound of the falling rain / Coming down like an Armageddon flame / The shame / The ones who died without a name

Hear the dogs howling out of key / To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" / And bleed / The company lost the war today

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On Holiday

Hear the drum pounding out of time / Another protester has crossed the line / To find / The money's on the other side

Can I get another Amen? / There's a flag wrapped around the score of men / A gag / A plastic bag on a monument

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On holiday

Meanwhile, in the Information Age of Hysteria, we have perhaps the underlying principle of our government in a nutshell, as Ron Suskind put it before the election:

The [White House] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Enter the Demon of our Times.

Let me offer a theory: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may actually exist, but his "existence" in the media is an essential element of the Bush Administration's Public Relations strategy to manage perception of the war. He is a personification of malevolent intent: if he wasn't around, we are told to believe, things would sort themselves out, so our motive has to be to crush him instead of confronting the Pentagon's essentially racist, disastrous policies. The Star Tribune carried a Washington Post/AP story on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's latest pledge to kill all the Shiites. Consider the following:

More bombings push Baghdad deaths near 200: Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post

BAGHDAD -- Insurgents believed to be allied with Al-Qaida in Iraq kept up bombings in the capital on Thursday, launching strikes that brought the two-day death toll close to 200.

The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the surge in bombings represented the kind of occasional spikes in attacks that the military has been expecting "around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy."

In this case, an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's new constitution is only a month away.

"Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency," Lynch said. "So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum."

Police targeted

In the violence Thursday, suicide bombers killed at least 31 people in two attacks about a minute apart that targeted Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos, officials said. Insurgents also managed to land a single mortar round inside the Green Zone, the base for U.S. officials and Iraq's government. There were no casualties and only minimal damage, U.S. officials said.

A day earlier, at least 14 car bombs across Baghdad killed 167 people, the majority of them Shiite Muslim civilians -- the highest one-day toll of the war inflicted by insurgent attacks in the capital. Seven of the victims died overnight of their wounds.

An audiotape released on a website linked to Al-Qaida in Iraq after Wednesday's attacks said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group had opened "all-out war" on Iraq's Shiite majority.

Attacks linked to Al-Qaida also hit the city of Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar, a stronghold of foreign-led fighters. Witnesses said Al-Qaida-allied fighters rocketed and shelled two U.S. military installations at Ramadi and traded fire with U.S. patrols in the city. The U.S. military reported one Marine killed and said a would-be car bomber also died. Iraqi emergency medical workers said Marine snipers killed six Al-Qaida fighters.

The two-day barrage of attacks attributed to Al-Qaida in Iraq, and the increasing control of towns in the west along the Euphrates River being asserted by foreign-led insurgents, intensified the U.S. military's focus on Al-Zarqawi.

U.S. commanders often have publicly denigrated his role in the insurgency to little more than that of a media-fostered figurehead. On Thursday, however, Lynch discussed Al-Zarqawi in some of the sharpest terms yet, calling him the Americans' main target and saying the United States was winning the fight against him.

"We believe we are experiencing great success against the most crucial element of the insurgency, which is the terrorists and the foreign fighters. The face of that is Zarqawi and Al-Qaida in Iraq," Lynch said.

"We've got great intelligence which tells us where he's moving to and where he's trying to establish safe havens. As soon as we see him trying to establish a safe haven, we will conduct operations," such as the one underway against northwestern insurgent strongholds in Tal Afar, Lynch said. "We're using all assets under our control in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces to find him and kill him."

Now let us refer to a little bit from Orwell's 1984... As WikiPedia summarizes the teachings of Emmanuel Goldstein:

...the state of war creates a mentality that suits the Party well. A Party member should be "a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war." Though "the entire war is spurious...and waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones", even Inner Party members who potentially could know better passionately believe that the war is real and will "end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world". .... There can never be any large-scale invasion of enemy territory, so that citizens of one superstate would come face to face with citizens of another and discover that conditions there are very much the same as in their own superstate: Even the prevailing ideologies are almost identical. To maintain the image of the enemy as a monster whose ideology is a barbarous outrage on common sense, all sides realize that "the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs"!

Since the war is a sham and each superstate is unconquerable, the ongoing "conflict" has no sobering effect on the oligarchies ruling the three superstates: .... "The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they chose." [Paging Mr Suskind...]

Thus, the war is actually "waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact". As far as the lack of any genuine outside threat is concerned, the superstates might just as well agree to live in permanent peace; then they would still be "freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger" (the kind of danger that might force the rulers to behave somewhat responsibly). This, according to the author, "is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace."

While I quietly alluded to this earlier, other people have been making this point for a while, but damn it, even the newspaper admits this "media figurehead" phenomenon is partly true. There's probably a real Zarqawi figure out there, but basically, these days I generally believe he is a media construction designed to provide a narrative that Joe Six Pack can understand. The exciting Zarqawi Chase (with, say, captured laptops and narrow escapes) is the kind of story that the NASCAR dad needs to stave off cognitive dissonance. The insurgency is not a failure of policy, it's not Rummy's and Myers' fuck-ups, it's this damn Zarqawi always trying to throw monkey wrenches in the system AKA "building democracy". Some might say it's a Leo Straussian Noble Lie to provide succor for the Bronze Masses. Let me throw in a Billmon post on this matter from a year ago:

The problem here is not with the Fallujans, the problem here is not with the coalition. The problem here is with foreign fighters, international terrorists, people like Zarqawi, who we believe to be in Fallujah or nearby.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor: Press Briefing April 13, 2004

The security situation in Fallujah, Iraq, remains stable, and coalition forces there are engaged in a "robust hunt" for al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be in or near the city, coalition officials said today.

American Forces Information Service: 'Robust' Manhunt for Zarqawi Under Way April 13, 2004

Former regime elements can be former Ba'athists, they can be Iraqi extremists, they can be outside jihadists, they can be Zarqawi network folks as well.

Gen. Dick Myers: Press Briefing April 7, 2004

The terrorists, assassins are threatened by the Iraqi's people's progress toward self-government, because they know that they will have no future in a free Iraq. They know, as al Qaeda associate Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi put it in his letter recently, that we intercepted: "Democracy is coming"...

Donald Rumsfeld: Press Briefing April 7, 2004

A statement circulating in Iraq and signed by anti-U.S. groups last month claimed al-Zarqawi was killed earlier by American bombs in northern Iraq. A senior U.S. official denied the report of al-Zarqawi's death.

Associated Press: Al Qaeda tape takes credit for Iraq attacks April 6, 2004



The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.

George Orwell: 1984

And let us not forget Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's entry into the universe of the News Cycle came with the notorious Nick Berg decapitation video. This video had a number of strange anomalies in it, and I have suspected for quite a while that it was fake. My favorite alternate explanation was that the video was actually shot by US personnel inside Abu Ghraib prison (aside from the "Lawn Chair from Hell" connection) to distract attention from the exploding torture scandal.

Too conspiratorial? Such a video could never be fake? Then why does the great Zarqawi appear to have Two Legs, not One? Try the WikiPedia Nick Berg conspiracy theories page for even more! This WikiPedia paragraph essentially sums up my point:

There are rumors that Zarqawi is dead because no sightings of him have been confirmed since 2001. In one report, the conservative British newspaper Daily Telegraph described as myth the claim that Zarqawi was the head of the "terrorist network" in Iraq. According to a U.S. military intelligence source, the Zarqawi myth resulted from faulty intelligence obtained by the payment of substantial sums of money to unreliable and dishonest sources. The faulty intelligence was accepted, however, because it suited US government political goals, according to an unnamed intelligence officer.[14] The Zarqawi myth has also been purported to be the product of U.S. war propaganda designed to promote the image of a demonic enemy figure to help justify continued U.S. military operations in Iraq[15], perhaps with the tacit support of terrorist elements wishing to use him as a propaganda tool (a sort of Al-Qaeda Ronald McDonald).

I'm just going to wrap this up with a chunk from iconoclastic researcher Michel Chossudovsky, who wrote "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?" at the Centre for Research on Globalisation:

The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations. Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine". The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America."
The underlying objective is to galvanize public opinion in support of America's war agenda. The "war on terrorism" requires a humanitarian mandate. The war on terrorism is presented as a "Just War", which is to be fought on moral grounds "to redress a wrong suffered." The Just War theory defines "good" and "evil." It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as "evil individuals". .....

To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat. The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an "advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to terror." The "war on terrorism" rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.

.....Al Zarqawi is often described as an "Osama associate", the bogyman, allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several countries. In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, it is stated that he has no links to Al Qaeda and operates quite independently. He is often presented as an individual who is challenging the leadership of bin Laden. His name crops up on numerous occasions in press reports and official statements. Since early 2004, he is in the news almost on a daily basis.

Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which historically had business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil establishment. Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US government.

In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His parents are dead. He emerges out of the blue. He is described by CNN as "a lone wolf" who is said to act quite independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this lone wolf is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on American soil.
.....In Iraq, he is said to be determined to "ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites". But is that not precisely what US intelligence is aiming at ( "divide and rule") as confirmed by several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to weakening the resistance movement. (See Michel Collon [1], See also [2] )
......What is the role of this new mastermind in the Pentagon's disinformation campaign, in which CNN seems to be playing a central role? In previous propaganda ploys, the CIA hired PR firms to organize core disinformation campaigns, including the Rendon Group. The latter worked closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War.
What is the pattern?
Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist event or warning, CNN announces (in substance): we think this mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is behind it, invariably without supporting evidence and prior to the conduct of an investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.
In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event, there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible mastermind. The report will often say (in substance): yes we think he did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, CNN may come up with a definitive statement, quoting official police, military and/or intelligence sources.
Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic website or a mysterious Video or Audio tape. The authenticity of the website and/or the tapes is not the object of discussion or detailed investigation.
Bear in mind that the news reports never mention that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA and that Al Zarqawi had been recruited to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (This is in fact confirmed by Sec. Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003) (see details below). Both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are creations of the US intelligence apparatus. The recruitment of foreign fighters was under the auspices of the CIA.
.......
Colin Powell's Address to the UN Security Council
In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, Al Zarqawi's name reemerges, this time almost on daily basis, with reports focusing on his sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein. A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5, 2003. Al-Zarqawi was in the spotlight following Colin Powell's flopped WMD report to the UN Security Council. Powell's speech presented "documentation" on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, while focusing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi: (emphasis added):
Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations...
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons.
When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC report, see below]
The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons.... Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
......
The Nicholas Berg Video
Barely a couple of weeks later (11 May 2004), Al Zarqawi is reported as being the mastermind behind the execution of Nicholas Berg on May 11, 2004. Again perfect timing! The report coincided with calls by US Senators for Defense Sec Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. It occurs a few days after President Bush's "apology" for the Abu Ghraib prison "abuses" on May 6. The Nicholas Berg video served to create "a useful wave of indignation" which served to distract and soften up public opinion, following the release of the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners. (See the intelligence assumptions underlying Operation Northwoods, a secret Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to kill civilians in the Cuban community in Florida, and blame it on Fidel Castro. (More: [3]))
..........
Extending the War on Terrorism
Are "we winning or losing" the war on terrorism. These statements are used to justify enhanced military operations against this illusive individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World. Al Zarqawi is used profusely in Bush's press conferences and speeches in an obvious public relations ploy.
You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold-blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright -- bright future. (Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, but the Chase keeps it Interesting. Hedges:

We become the embodiment of light and goodness. We become the defenders of civilization, of all that is decent. We are more noble than others. We are braver than others. We are kinder and more compassionate than others -- that the enemy at our gate is perfidious, dark, somewhat inhuman. We turn them into two-dimensional figures. I think that's part of the process of linguistically dehumanizing them. And in wartime, we always turn the other into an object, and often, quite literally, in the form of a corpse.

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)??!?!?!

Final Random Bits: Mozilla goes for profit; Kirkuk looks to go boom; Blair slashes protest freedoms, "the last of the Great British"?

"Bombs Becoming Biggest Killers in Iraq." "Insurgents in western Iraq town prove an elusive enemy for Marines". "Syria rejects US blame for Iraq's unrest." Someone kills Chalabi's cousin. More about the growing sense of Kurdish separatism, which leads us to the problem that Kirkuk is Really a Tinderbox:

Tension was rising Saturday in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk as residents say they fear an outbreak of civil war among the Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen.
Local officials in the northern city said a crisis erupted when hundreds of Kurds, accompanied by National Guards, began distributing residential lands to ethnic Kurds who were allegedly expelled from the area under the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
Turkmen sources in Kirkuk said these lands belonged to their own ethnic people before the former regime pushed them out or executed their members, after which the lands were excavated with bulldozers.

The story of murdered reporter Steven Vincent in Iraq is quite sad, but it has been suggested in the Telegraph that he was not killed merely for criticizing hardcore Shiite police behavior. Apparently no one claimed responsibility for his killing, which possibly had something to do with sleeping with his slain Iraqi interpreter, perhaps some kind of honor killing.

It would appear that Blair has decided to cut off some undesirable chunks of free speech in Britannia and push for treason against uppity Muslim clerics. Also, apparently you can't protest within a half-mile of Parliament without a license anymore due to the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act. Protesters have gotten arrested. However, Brian Haw, a dude I personally encountered outside Parliament last spring, has been sitting there since June 2001, and apparently his post has been grandfathered in. As he tartly put it within his unyielding stream-of-consciousness yowling at the government:

As the arrests were being made he shouted to police: "Officer address your heart, officer why are you here?"
Speaking about the protest on Sunday, he said: "I'm the last of the Mohicans, I'm the last of the Great British.
"My fellow compatriots have been denied a voice. I'm outraged by this, I'm outraged that the police are busy chasing old ladies with peace signs down Whitehall when there are bombs going off in London."

How depressing, I really expected better from the folks that brought us such fine traditions of free speech.

"Europe plays nuclear poker with Iran," some pretty good stuff from an Iranian based in India.

Mozilla Foundation is metastasizing into Mozilla (for-profit) Corporation. This is not necessarily bad, so I hope they stay smart. They are still on the open source path, but perhaps now they have ideas for making more money, which can be turned back into development. People ought to keep open minds about the various evolving ways to join open source software and capitalism together.

On a totally unrelated subject, Joel Stein's comparison of the trendiness index for Scientology and Kabbalah is pretty funny. He's very much after the K-Hotties...

A murderous settler, Chinese earthquake machines

Another blast from the past came today as Peter Gartrell materialized in town, on his way to a cub reporter gig at a newspaper in Gillette, Wyoming, covering the natural gas industry. I've got to run over & say Hi in a sec...

So then, the Gaza withdrawal is less than two weeks away. A 19-year-old AWOL Israeli soldier-turned-settler got on a bus and shot four Israeli Arabs, wounded more, and was in turn killed by those he hadn't shot. He spent a while in the settlement of Tapuah, which is dominated by Kach followers or Kahanists, one of the most dangerous radical Jewish groups, which believes in the widespread ethnic cleansing of Arabs from both the West Bank and Israel.

Such groups are now pitted against the Israeli government, the courts, law enforcement and the military as the Gaza action gets underway. Of course, Sharon is wary of such radical groups, seeing as how a very similar assassin to the bus assailant killed Yitzak Rabin those years ago.

I don't have time to toss in the links now. Damn
Home Front: (not that I am fond of such terms) "Mass casualties push war sentiments back to forefront".

As I noted earlier, the Pentagon is trying to forestall releasing even more horrible Abu Ghraib photos. Military lawyers argued against harsher interrogation methods in early 2003 (NYT).

Iran has the upper hand perpetually, it seems.

China: It's never too late to gear up some more enemies. Max Neocon Max Boot has the latest paranoia about China's research into Earthquake Weapons to make us quiver...

Max Boot: China's Challenge
In 1998, an official People's Liberation Army publishing house brought out a treatise called Unrestricted Warfare, written by two senior army colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. This book, which is available in English translation, is well known to the U.S. national-security establishment but remains practically unheard of among the public.

Unrestricted Warfare recognizes that it is practically impossible to challenge the U.S. on its own terms. No one else can afford to build mega-expensive weapons systems such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost more than $200 billion to develop. "The way to extricate oneself from this predicament," the authors write, "is to develop a different approach."

Their different approaches include financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), psychological and media warfare (manipulating perceptions to break down enemy will), international-law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes or other natural disasters).

The two write approvingly of al-Qaeda, Colombian drug lords and computer hackers who operate outside the "bandwidths understood by the American military." They envision a scenario in which a "network attack against the enemy" would be carried out "so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network and mass media network are completely paralyzed." Only then would conventional military force be deployed "until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty."

Who are these 21st Century acolytes of Sun Tzu? I'm sure they have interesting lives deep in the Chinese military. This review said "Colonel Qiao Liang, for instance, received his B.A. degree in Chinese literature, and has published several notable novels. He is employed in the Creative Writing Departament of the Air Force..." If you wish to read "CHAOXIANZHAN" or "Unrestricted Warfare" it may be found in HTML (via Cryptome) or PDF (via Terrorism.com). It's around 200 pages so get ready for fun.

Well that's all I've got time for tonight. Time to kick it with Peter, and also Will Rothschild, who is leaving town Real Soon Like.

Cleanup to move into the new HongPong uncovers CNN visitor, another CIA visit to HongPong in July, for condos & text messaging?

As I have previously explained, my ironclad Internet marketing and search engine strategy so far has relied upon comment spammers or spambots to regularly plug their crap into old posts on my site, although periodically I close threads older than a month or so.

About a week ago, the number of comments on the site reached beyond a staggering 10,000 (10,921 was the highest comment serial number). This has a negative effect on MovableType's ability to export the entire contents of the site. in other words, it hasn't yet been able to create the complete export file because it gets overwhelmed with spam.

So I spent a few hours today trimming the fat off the spam, while opting to preserve the spams with funny quips and philosophical fragments about Hegel above the cialis links.

I also ran across *real* comments that I'd never seen before, as they were tucked away in infinite Texas Holdem plugs. It seems that, shockingly enough, people these days actually look at their referrer logs (which indicate to a website where surfers come from). I found that the proprietor of "NewsCorpse" took some umbrage when he found i'd described his site as somewhat "pretentious." I suppose I should clarify: I thought the graphics are a little cheesy, but NewsCorpse has an all right name and metaphor for its purpose. Anyhow...

There was a CNN reporter who responded to my post that addressed the Pentagon's new plans to scoop up high schoolers' data for recruiting purposes. They were wondering if I was someone who had initially supported the war, and become pissed off by the new policy. Unfortunately, as this site documents pretty well, I was opposed to this mad conflict before it started, and have since followed along by publishing stories (169 about Iraq, in all) about the deceptive and intentional schemes of fake intelligence and disinformation that were used to sell it to the public.

So if the draft comes along, I have enough evidence to prove I'm a conscientious objector. At least I'm planning ahead for a change. This from a kid who had to pay more than $140 for two incredibly late parking tickets today >:-(

This may be part of the reason that I keep getting all these hits from the government. The CIA openly returned on July 7, on a Google search for "text messaging IED" and ended up on the Afghanistan page. The "text messaging" keyword appears in a blockquote from, who else, Michael Ledeen, who is talking about what a great idea it is to arm the Iranian opposition. Fortunately the rest of it goes on to make fun of John Bolton and his potential connections to the Iranian terrorist group, based in Iraq, the MEK.

So let us consider the IP numbers of the CIA's openly marked relays. This is information released publicly (over DNS) - so don't anyone accuse me of going Novak. The CIA obviously has computers whose IP numbers don't say friggin "CIA.gov" when you look them up. 198.81.129.194 and 198.81.129.193. On the 193 address they came on a google search for "goss punish cia analysts cold war 2004" back on Nov. 10, 2004, when surely Agency employees were pondering the blowback from the election. They ended up on the War on Terror index page.

So for some bizarre reason the CIA also looked for "bloomington lrt condo" on March 17, 2005, and landed on some nighttime light rail shots.

Blah. Who knows what intelligence agencies want these days: condominiums or text messaging?

Anyhow here is a grand old list of every domain containing ".gov" that visited since the start of the year: (ignore the odd numbers there)

apm.gov.ec 2928
pix-a-20.gov.calgary.ab.ca
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
ins.nh.gov
daoutside.hanford.gov
chameleon.doechicago.gov
strata.mt.gov
bhappy.jpl.nasa.gov
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca
bcccache6-3.tco.census.gov
nersc2.lbl.gov
some.security.gov.ge
gw.conab.gov.br 1 2
pix-a-20.gov.calgary.ab.ca
testcache.rtp.epa.gov
gk-central-23.srvs.usps.gov 0
nat-235.fw08nat.dot.ca.gov
lsm5.gtwy.uscourts.gov
sherman.state.gov+computer+logging 1
sherman.state.gov 2
sherman.state.gov 3
jaffwa.staffordshire.gov.uk
s0b1ed1.ssa.gov 0
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca
bcccache6-3.tco.census.gov
gk-west-24.srvs.usps.gov
n021.dhs.gov
ip12-156-194-3.ita.doc.gov 2
sherman.state.gov
vicce001.net.gov.bc.ca
relay2.cia.gov 6498
box.suffolkcountyny.gov

More below.. w00p w00p!

ip .gov.nf.ca
cache2.cdc.gov 6
152-130-7-130.res.net.va.gov
wkst146.uc.usbr.gov 0
152-130-6-130.res.net.va.gov
bowie-fc.census.gov 0
gtwy.uscourts.gov 1
office+of+personnel+management.gov 2
housegate4.house.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
gtwy.uscourts.gov 1
housegate4.house.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
management.gov 2
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
smtp1.sanantonio.gov
n021.dhs.gov
sherman.state.gov
clayton.state.gov
cwood.etl.noaa.gov
turnerra.ornl.gov
152-133-7-130.kc.net.va.gov
unwgsgs3.customs.treas.gov
vicce003.net.gov.bc.ca
wcfc.ocio.usda.gov
gk-central-23.srvs.usps.gov 0
wdcsun24.usdoj.gov
sherman.state.gov 2
sherman.state.gov 2
denver-254.blm.gov
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
enduser5.faa.gov 6498
unwgsgs4.customs.treas.gov
ns1.corr.ca.gov 6274
host246.welsh-ofce.gov.uk
ip12-156-194-3.ita.doc.gov
clayton.state.gov
internet.fsa.gov.uk
digger1.defence.gov.au
client1.ed.gov 6498
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca 2 0
152-133-7-133.kc.net.va.gov
user.plano.gov
ns2.corr.ca.gov
vicce002.net.gov.bc.ca
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
dknrgwpxav02.defence.gov.au
bcccache6-2.tco.census.gov
dknrgwpxav01.defence.gov.au 224
server4.gba.gov.ar
correo.transmilenio.gov.co
smtp.mpi.gov.vn
gatehouse.cambridgema.gov
a032-fw1.nyc.gov
housegate10.house.gov
vicce002.net.gov.bc.ca 168
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
pool3253.ihs.gov
pt .pnl.gov 1
clayton.state.gov
b12-arbiter-b.net.nih.gov
proxyout2.maricopa.gov 8
binhdinh.gov.vn 6778
smtp.mpi.gov.vn 84
bacninh.gov.vn 6934
relay1.ucia.gov
152-132-11-64.dal.net.va.gov
subnet84.idsc.gov.eg 1786
housegate10.house.gov
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
dnscachelastupdate.hongpong.com.txt: 50 130.20.172.158 pt .pnl.gov
dnscachelastupdate.hongpong.com.txt: 50 209.128.29.254 ip .gov.nf.ca

Pentagon drawing up plans for nuking Iran after terror attack; "Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack"?!

Via billmon and various other people, in The American Conservative, not available online:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.
Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

Now let's not get riled up yet. For one thing the story could be totally fake. Also, we all remember that fine scene in WarGames where WOPR runs all the fun nuclear war scenarios the military has stashed away, just in case. And Washington reporter Laura Rozen says settle down here:

as I've said before, a plan is not the same thing as a policy decision. I would be more surprised if we were to learn that the US has no such contingency plan for Iran. But still....

On the other hand, this scenario ever so slightly parallels the idea behind Operation Northwoods. (read the damn declassified PDF or James Bamford's interpretation) Namely, that a terrorist attack would justify attacking Cuba, even though the Cubans had nothing to do with the attack.

I'd like to quote Bamford's description of what happened around Northwoods. While reading, ask yourself if something vaguely similar could occur regarding Iran:

[After the Bay of Pigs] the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.
[.......something about planning remotely piloted planes getting shot down and framing the Cubans.. quite amazing itself.......]
[....] Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.
[......] It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.

Scott Ritter said that "The US War with Iran has Already Begun." And I note that Raimondo finished writing his own tidbit tying the American Conservative plan with that poll showing most Americans expect World War III. With all apparent seriousness, he says that he's got to help save us from Cheney's apocalypse:

We must mount a last desperate attempt to stand athwart the apocalypse shouting "No!" The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
Never for a minute did any of us who founded Antiwar.com imagine we would one day be front and center in a twilight struggle to protect the country and the world from such a monumental evil, and yet here we are, a band of hobbits up against all the dark powers of Mordor. Without getting any more melodramatic than is absolutely unavoidable, I can only note that we've come a long way on our quest to rid the world of this particular Ring of Power, and the battle seems to be reaching some sort of dramatic climax. As to whether or not the Cheney-neocon-War Party axis of evil will be defeated in the end, no one can confidently predict at the moment. Yet one thing does seem clear: as long as Antiwar.com is around, we have at least a fighting chance.

I don't know if that much hyperbole is really warranted yet. Whatever. Everyone has duly noted the fine piece by Juan Cole about the recent love fest in Tehran. It is not exactly a subtle irony that (most of) Iraq will end up being a close ally of that other Axis of Evil that we thought we'd surrounded so well...

In contrast, Bush calls Iran part of an axis of evil and dismisses its elections and government as illegitimate. So the Bush administration cannot have been filled with joy when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and eight high-powered cabinet ministers paid an extremely friendly visit to Tehran this week.
The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east.

Let's remember what WOPR told us: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Poll: Americans say World War III likely, Republicans needed nuke threat to scare their own base?

I had a dream last night that I ran into Donald Rumsfeld at a picnic. It was really awkward! Anyway,

This was kinda disturbing:

Poll: Americans Say World War III Likely:

(07-24) 02:14 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never justified.
Those findings come six decades after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war claimed about 400,000 U.S. troops around the world, more than three times that many Japanese troops and at least 300,000 Japanese civilians.
Out of the ashes, Japan and the United States forged a close political alliance. Americans and Japanese now generally have good feelings about each other.
But people in the two countries have very different views on everything from the U.S. use of the atomic bomb in 1945, fears of North Korea and the American military presence in Japan.
Some of the widest differences came on expectations of a new world war.
Six in 10 Americans said they think such a war is likely, while only one-third of the Japanese said so, according to polling done in both countries for The Associated Press and Kyodo, the Japanese news service.
"Man's going to destroy man eventually. When that will be, I don't know," said Gaye Lestaeghe of Freeport, La.
Some question whether that war has arrived, with fighting dragging on in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism.
"I feel like we're in a world war right now," said Susan Aser, a real estate agent from Rochester, N.Y.

Perhaps this is somewhat connected with the fear of nuclear attack firmly embedded in Bush's base. As a Drum post on the Washington Monthly points out, Rove and the White House may have been taking the Niger Uranium story and running with it because the Republican base was scared shitless of a nuclear attack, and needed to stay all riled up.

...the White House political operation wasn't lashing out just because of Joe Wilson. They were lashing out because they believed their political lives depended on their own supporters continuing to believe that Saddam had been actively working on a nuke program. Without that belief, they'd lose support within their own base even if they eventually found evidence of chem and bio programs.
In Karl Rove's world, the base is sacred, and nukes were the key to their support. Joe Wilson threatened to open a crack in that support, and that's why he had to be destroyed.

Israeli settlers' march halted near edge of Gaza, some infiltrate; Sharon wants new Jerusalem wall

The coverage of the disengagement in Haaretz is real good. There are roughly four major forces pressuring the situation right now: the Israelis are basically divided between the hardcore religious nationalists, who oppose the withdrawal and have actually come out to protest, versus the rest of Israel. On the Palestinian side, Hamas is upping the violence in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority's wobbly control of Gaza, so that Hamas can be the real winner once the settlers are gone.

"IDF: Settlers slipping into Gaza":

The Yesha Council of settlements reneged on a verbal agreement with security officials by deciding to continue the demonstration at Kfar Maimon, senior army officers said last night. The Israel Defense Forces believe that the demonstrators plan to stay there for a long time - to exhaust the security forces.

Army sources said that right-wing activists are also slipping into Gush Katif while the army's attention is focused on Kfar Maimon. They estimated that some 600 nonresidents had infiltrated Gaza in the week since it was closed, most of them in the cars of Gush residents. Since the start of the year, some 1,500 people have moved to Gush Katif.

As of last night, thousands of demonstrators remained in Kfar Maimon, surrounded by more than 20,000 policemen and soldiers. In the evening, they tried to continue their march toward Gush Katif, but were forced to give up when faced with a wall of policemen and soldiers. Settler leaders continued to vow that the march would happen.

More about the nasty Jerusalem wall they are trying to throw up from Amira Hass: "On the slope of Jewish democracy":

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not dividing Jerusalem. Neither is Minister Haim Ramon. They have simply found a faster and more efficient way than those tried before to get rid of tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem - after the process of robbing them of their lands for the benefit of the Jewish residents has been exhausted.

At the beginning of last week, the government decided to speed up the construction of the separation fence in the Jerusalem area, which will also surround and imprison the residents of three East Jerusalem neighborhoods: the Shoafat refugee camp, and the Salaam and Dar Khamis neighborhoods in Anata. For more than a year and a half from the time the route was set, the state was in no hurry to build, and it delayed replying to the petitions filed by attorney Danny Seideman on behalf of neighborhood residents. Now, when all the spotlights are on the incidents surrounding the disengagement, the state is rushing to construct a concrete wall and watchtowers, which have cut off the residents from their city and their entire way of life.

The major summary of what happened yesterday:

According to Peres, the actions of disengagement foes in recent days is the best proof that the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank settlements should be evacuated as soon as possible, and allow the thousands of police officers and officers to face the real task of fighting terror, crime and violence.

Meretz-Yahad leaders convened Thursday and called on the government to advance the pullout, saying that doing so would prevent an "unnecessary and dangerous war of attrition with those trying to prevent the disengagement by violent and undemocratic means."

Officials might discuss moving up the pullout with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived in the region later Thursday, according to another senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said he hoped Rice's visit would trigger a "comprehensive diplomatic process," with the pullout from Gaza as the first step.

The evacuation originally was to have begun in mid-July, but was pushed back to mid-August, ostensibly out of consideration for observing a three-week mourning period - beginning Sunday - for the destruction of the biblical Jewish Temples. Critics said the pullout was delayed because the government was far behind in its preparations.
[......]
Security forces in the Negev town of Kfar Maimon on Thursday morning dismantled their temporary headquarters and most troops left the area after anti-disengagement protesters decided against continuing a banned march.

The heads of the Yesha Council of Settlements announced Wednesday night that the march to the Gush Katif settlement bloc was over, and that they would instead try to use small groups to infiltrate into the Strip, which was last week declared closed to non-resident Israelis.

According to estimates some 200 protesters are expected to remain in Kfar Maimon.

Yesha leader Benzi Lieberman told protesters Wednesday night that the attempt to reach Gush Katif with a massive march would be replaced by infiltration in small groups.

"We will get there bit by bit, and in two weeks' time we'll have another 10,000 people in Gush Katif," Lieberman said. The number of settlers set to evacuate the Strip under the disengagement is approximately 9,000.

Lieberman also asked all those who were able to remain in Kfar Maimon to do so in order to force large numbers of police to stay there as well. Military sources said settlers intend to employ this tactic in order to wear down the security forces ahead of the disengagement to hamper their operational capabilities.

More below on the disengagement, as well as Hamas causing problems for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. At the end some creepy statements from a wild rightwinger.....

Nadav Shragai, who is the regular Haaretz settler correspondent and fairly sympathetic to them: The Opposition / Practical losers, media winners:

More than anything else, the pullout opponents are worried about the picture of police and demonstrators clashing. In their hearts they pray that if violence does break out, it will come from the police.

In this "love march," the demonstrators sing to the soldiers "we love you"; Effi Eitam is photographed embracing the commander of the Southern District of the police.
[......]
Yesterday, another 1,000 demonstrators marched toward Kfar Maimon, and additional groups were seen organizing in Sderot. The win/loss calculation of this battle has two sides: the media and the practical. On the practical level, the government is the winner so far. Masses of pullout opponents did not reach Gush Katif, and this fact probably won't change. On the media level, the protesters are the winners for the meantime. As the underdogs, they set the media and public agenda, and even managed to gain some sympathy, thanks to the harsh measures of the police and the sacrifice and devotion of the protesters over the past few days.

Visually, the pictures we saw from Kfar Maimon were reminiscent of the orange revolution in Ukraine - an army of protesters headed by determined leaders. In practical terms, the difference is huge: in Ukraine, people with a wider variety of opinions took part in the protest. In the "engagement march" only the national religious camp is taking part. The secular opponents to disengagement stayed home.

Thousands left Kfar Maimon yesterday morning either because the heat was too much for them or they were daunted by the sight of huge numbers of troops around Kfar Maimon, and convinced there was no way they would get to the Gush. In the evening, things changed - more arrived, fewer left.

Also there is an interview with Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister. "Dahlan: Hamas is trying to carry out a military coup against the PA":

Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan told Haaretz this week that Hamas is trying to carry out a military coup against the PA.

"When someone tries to take over a police station by means of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, that is an attempted military coup," he said.

Dahlan also said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Hamas have the same goal: destroying the PA.

[.....]Dahlan admits that Hamas is stronger today in Gaza than the PA. "I'm surprised that the PA hasn't collapsed yet," he says.
Kind of classic: "Neveh Dekalim / `Aren't you ashamed to be standing here?'"

But the roadblock brought [the settlers'] target audience directly into their hands. No publicist could have dreamed a better setup: The police, arms locked, and the Israel Defense Forces troops behind them are not allowed to move. They are a captive audience, an open target.

During times of calm every protester turns preacher, orator, prophet, confidant, friend. Only a few inches separate the speakers and their audience, they stand only a breath away. "Think of yourself, not of me. It will destroy your soul from within, your Jewish soul," a youth said, preaching to a policeman not to take part in the evacuation. Such monologues abound along the row of police. For the most part they remain silent, trying to avoid the protesters' gaze, but sometimes they respond, or begin a dialogue: the Holocaust, Golda, Begin, Judaism - everything is discussed. "You will have children in a few years," says a protester, with a look of pity. "What will you tell them? I uprooted thousands of Jews from their homes? How will you face them? And what about the Jewish graves, no, listen to me, this is the time to stop. Don't let them brainwash you." [......] The protester followed [the policewoman]: "You're a Jew, Etti, when your boy is eight days old you will circumcise him, right? What will you say to him?"

Here is an argument from the right-wing Israel Harel. It is fairly spooky. "When the government loses control":

There is no doubt that the delegitimization of the settlers and their supporters has in recent months created a parallel process in which the injured public - mainly because government institutions have provided it with valid justifications - has in response begun delegitimizing the government and all the institutions that have mobilized completely behind it. The most normative public in the country, which is careful to observe even the most trivial as well as the most serious precepts of both criminal and moral law, is now ready, because the inhibitions against doing so have disappeared, to respond by breaking laws in areas that could shake the foundations of those government bodies that have risen up against it - and to pay the price.

And this, in my view, is the real disengagement, far more fateful than the diplomatic one, that Sharon has caused, with backing from all those state institutions that have enlisted on his side. "Here we have an attempt by tens of thousands to undermine the foundations of the government," declared Elyakim Haetzni, the leading advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience, with satisfaction. The government, he said, is panicking and playing into our hands. The precedent of employing the army is a clear sign of loss of control that brings the end of the Sharon government near.

And one of the listeners responded: Once, I thought you were an extremist, an angry prophet who always sees only the bad. Today, you should know, I and those like me, ordinary members of the religious bourgeoisie, are beginning to agree with you. Consider the silence of the jurists and all the other defenders of human rights in the face of the unbelievable step of using the army at Kfar Maimon. Even during the Arab riots of October 2000, the government did not dare use the army against Arab citizens of Israel. Only here, since Sharon knows that the High Court of Justice will back him - even though this precedent is liable to be used against the Arabs in the future - has he dared to use the army against the settlers.

To Dr. Yitzhak Weiss, a medical doctor, historian and biographer of Herzl (in French), the use of the army against one's own citizens recalls the government's loss of control on the eve of the Russian revolution. As was beautifully described in the film "Battleship Potemkin," he noted, the beginning of the czar's end was when the army, rather than the police, was sent in to end the workers' strikes. The soldiers then switched sides, and thus began the revolt that changed history.

[.......]And, undoubtedly because of the achievement of having tens of thousands show up for a lengthy, exhausting mission, the very atmosphere tingles with the feeling that the goal - stopping the uprooting - is achievable. And there is certainly an educational message, and perhaps even something more, in the sentence printed on the orange shirts worn by many of the youth: "The eternal people is not afraid of a long road."

FBI Monitored Web Sites for 2004 Protests: Groups Criticize Agency's Surveillance for Terror Unit

Washington Post, July 18:

FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit, according to FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to the documents as evidence that the Bush administration has reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States by blurring the distinction between terrorism and political protest. FBI officials defended the involvement of counterterrorism agents in providing security for the Republican and Democratic conventions as an administrative convenience.
The documents were released by the FBI in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil rights, animal rights and environmental groups that say they have been subjected to scrutiny by task forces set up to combat terrorism. The FBI has denied targeting the groups because of their political views.
"It's increasingly clear that the government is involved in political surveillance of organizations that are involved in nothing more than lawful First Amendment activities," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "It raises very serious questions about whether the FBI is back to its old tricks."
A Sept. 4, 2003, document addressed to the FBI counterterrorism unit described plans by a group calling itself RNC Not Welcome to "disrupt" the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. It also described Internet postings from an umbrella organization known as United for Peace and Justice, which was coordinating worldwide protests against the convention.
"It's one thing to monitor protests and protest organizers, but quite another thing to refer them to your counterterrorism unit," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice.
Another document, addressed to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which coordinates anti-terrorist activities by the FBI and local police forces, described threats to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Responding to the lawsuit filed in May in U.S. District Court in Washington, the FBI said it had identified 1,173 pages of records relating to the ACLU and 2,383 pages relating to Greenpeace. The content of the records, which were generated since 2001, is not known.

I feel safer already.

A very cautious note on London bombings and perpetual hunts for the Grassy Knoll

What a weird summer for news.

I would like to take a sec to note the various wingy conspiracy theories cropping up around the London bombing. Not because I find them readily credible, but because they are sort of an instant folk mythology that gets generated these days through the Internet. Also if any bits of it pan out, well you can say that you heard about them around here.

I'm just throwing these out there, to illustrate the kinds of counter-narratives that pop up around all sorts of major events. It's the X-Files mentality, the Grassy Knoll syndrome of American politics. The CIA killed JFK, some said even then. There are always people attracted to some weird explanation, (say the Flight 800 missile story) where the Council on Foreign Relations, the VFW post and the Taxpayers' League collude in some great scheme to take over the world and get free cable while fluoridating the water.

Anyway, the main nut of the conspiracy theory right now, "Blair Knew" in a nutshell, (via the very paranoid sites Propaganda Matrix and PrisonPlanet) is that some dude named Peter Power, (not to be confused with Austin) who used to be a key anti-terrorism law enforcement officer in London, and now runs some private security consulting agency, said on the BBC right after the bombing that there were anti-terror drills involving like 1000 people, practicing dealing with bombs on the London Underground at virtually the same locations that the bombs actually went off. (and perhaps stations were closed before the bombings) "How the Government staged the London bombings in Ten Easy Steps."

As this Webster Tarpley guy put it,

Last week's London explosions carry the characteristic features of a state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terror provocation by networks within the British intelligence services MI-5, MI-6, the Home Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch who are favorable to a wider Anglo-American aggressive war in the Middle East, featuring especially an early pre-emptive attack on Iran, with a separate option on North Korea also included.

Wheeee!!!! You have to admit, politics is more interesting when everything's frickin crazy!!!

Other people have similar theories. So the conspiracy goes that some covert ops group, with Powers as an auxiliary, triggered the bombings and set up some typical Pakistanis to take the fall for it. Also, they point out that the numerous cameras on the exploded bus just happened to be turned off on July 7, therefore conspiracy! (And of course they say that Madrid was a coverup too)

A top Iranian cleric alleges that the UK could have bombed itself. And there was some strange tie between Web claims of responsibility and a Saudi dissident.

Conspiracy theorists love to say that security drills are the best opportunity for Evil Illuminati to fake terrorist events because it circumvents the usual security measures and provides cover for incriminating activity, and some are saying that London reprises the alleged 9/11 drills. September 11 conspiracists / "investigators" such as Michael Ruppert argue that the military was doing some kind of operation called "Vigilant Warrior" and/or "Vigilant Guardian" on the morning of September 11, where agents posing as terrorists were performing airline hijackings. And also, there were supposedly fake "blips" put into air traffic control systems to simulate these planes, thusly permitting the real hijackings to go through and smash the WTC. Massive list of conspiracy stories. The National Reconnaisance Office had scheduled a plane crash drill on 9/11, the AP reported.

Of course, many conspiracy types complain that the flight that hit the Pentagon clearly isn't there, the wreckage just isn't there, it must have been a missile or something. A surprising number of people I've talked with find this plausible. Someone from 911citizenswatch talked about these drills. And so this is claimed to fit into why NORAD did such a bad job on September 11. (there's plenty of silly websites about 9/11 Mystery images, as well.

On a totally different (and much more well-documented) tack, the London bombing has been tied to a strange Bush Administration leak about a captured Al Qaeda agent last fall, which may have led in part to the London bombing. Lat year, people alleged that during the 2004 campaign, the Bush Administration blew the cover of Naeem Noor Khan, a recently turned Al Qaeda double agent that the British and Pakistanis were using to smoke out more militants. That is, the law caught this guy, he was sending out more emails to militants in England, someone in Washington dropped his name to some papers, and then the British authorities had to swoop prematurely, to prevent the militants from getting away. This compromised the operation, and perhaps let people get away to attack subways later, as plans on Khan's computer indicated.

So, the wilder theory suggests that "they" did it, while the more well-documented story indicates that they merely screwed up a British investigation last year that might have caught the bombers, in order to win the White House.

These days, at least the Rove/Plame story has finally stuck at the top level of the news, and perhaps that should be the basic yardstick for measuring deception nowadays. Like it or not, something nasty happened with forged documents about uranium. Cryptome.org has the actual Niger documents, for yr viewin' pleasure. The Bush Administration, and Karl personally, went through a lot of hoops to propagate disinformation about Iraq and crush anyone like Wilson that tarnished their fantasy.

As Frank Rich put it this morning in "Follow the Uranium":

[Attacks on Wilson], too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

And let's not forget that this whole thing happened because of a damned New York Times editorial. Rich's "We're Not in Watergate Anymore" is also interesting.

Right-wing Israeli march towards Gaza Strip on Monday; a month until Gaza pullout

Lots of stuff going down in Israel: Haaretz editorializes that with the Gaza closure, "The evacuation has begun" in earnest.

People like Nadia Matar, Moshe Feiglin, Noam Livnat, Uri Ariel and Effi Eitam, all of whom recently moved to Gush Katif, did not come to contribute to the routine of daily life, but to stir up the residents and organize resistance activities. The prime minister correctly assessed the risks inherent in this development and did what was necessary.

The settlers cannot continue to play a double game and expect empathy. They cannot build a tent city for opponents of the disengagement near the Strip, organize a march of thousands of people to Gush Katif, incite soldiers to disobey orders, and bring thousands of new residents, whom the IDF will then have to evacuate, into Gaza and then expect the government to sit with folded hands. The army and the police must focus on the main task, not waste their strength on nuisances. The complaints of the opposition's leadership, including the comparison of the Strip's closure to the siege of Jerusalem, to ghettoes and to concentration camps, are hardly unexpected.

These are exceptionally difficult days, with a high potential for violence and a constant fear of bloodshed.

I thought that this column by Akiva Eldar, "Impressions from the mid-Jerusalem roadblock," about Sharon's sudden, bizarre plan to build a huge wall through the middle of the city was really quite interesting. Also it shows Israeli polls showing wide support for peace negotiations and withdrawals from the territories. But it is an incredibly weird portrait of life in Jerusalem. This look by Meron Benvenisti how life will get messed up by a new Jerusalem fence, including the idea of a "soft transfer", strengthening the Jewish element of Jerusalem while dissolving its Arab element.

Analysis: Timing of Gaza closure was defined by Yesha leadership
The timing of the Gaza Strip's closure was determined by the chief of staff of the Yesha Council of settlements, Bentzi Lieberman, rather than the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Dan Halutz. The minute the council announced its plans for a mass march to Gush Katif, it was clear that the IDF would advance the closure of Gaza and block access to Gush Katif before the marchers reached it. The question of why the council scheduled the march for next week, rather than allowing Gush Katif residents to enjoy a normal life for as long as possible, as many residents had requested, has two answers.

The first is that the march was scheduled to coincide with the Knesset debate on a bill to postpone the disengagement. The Yesha Council, unlike the militant right, believes that the battle will be won or lost in the Knesset, not in the streets. The council's hope is that a mass march will influence some MKs to vote for postponement. How? The council has no real answer, but it hopes that by creating an atmosphere of crisis, of a country on the verge of an explosion, some MKs will be persuaded that postponement is preferable.

More below the fold.....

"It is all Israel," Fragmentation of Palestinian agricultural land behind the West Bank fence by Amira Hass:

Listen to the soldier in the field. He says what his commanders were trained to cover up and embellish. Listen to the red-headed soldier, who prevented residents of Qafin from passing through the gate in the separation fence last month to get to their lands. These are 5,000 out of 8,200 dunams of agricultural land in a village in the northwestern West Bank. These are lands belonging to the families of these residents for several generations, and for so-called security reasons they were separated from the village - as has happened, and will happen, with hundreds of other Palestinian villages.
[.......]
But the red-headed soldier didn't discuss only the gate. He didn't hide the geopolitical worldview in whose name he is commanded to safeguard the gate's welfare. "There is no entry to Israel from here," he said. When he was told that the farmers don't want to enter Israel, but to walk 200 meters to get to their age-old lands, a few kilometers away from the Green Line, he responded: "To be politically correct, it is all Israel."

How right the soldier is. From his standpoint, on the security road that links up with bypass roads for Jews only, which in turn link up with settlements and Israel proper, this is what he and his colleagues watch every day: The space called "Israel," from the river to the sea, containing all kinds of "crowded population concentrations" surrounded by fences and imprisoned behind locked gates.
[......]
The residents of Qafin have come to one conclusion: The goal is to bring about the neglect of their green agricultural lands until they become wilderness. Then Israel can rely on an old Ottoman law that allows neglected and abandoned land to become public property, in order to make the wilderness bloom. In Israel, as every soldier knows, the "public" is the same as the "Jews." And so will the mistake of 1948 be rectified. At that time, some 18,000 dunams from Qafin became part of Israel, became Jewish land. Now it will happen to an additional 5,000 dunams.

Noam Livnat is the brother of the Israeli education minister, and he was just arrested for violating a restraining order barring him from entering Gaza after a violent confrontation:

Noam Livnat, brother of Education Minister Limor Livnat, was arrested yesterday in the Gaza settlement of Shirat Hayam, following a violent confrontation between his supporters and police. Livnat, a resident of Yitzhar in the West Bank, had violated a restraining order barring him from entering Gaza. Livnat is a leader of the Defensive Shield and Jewish Heart movements, which encourage soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlements. Over the past two years, the organizations have collected more than 20,000 signatures from soldiers saying they would refuse such orders.
[......]
After his arrest yesterday, Livnat said, "The government is nervous because of the success of the Jewish Heart campaign to spread the word about refusal of orders. The arrest is an attempt to shut us up, but it won't help, and on the day of reckoning thousands will refuse orders."

Haaretz editorializes that they wish that the Israeli government won't knock down the houses in the settlements they are going to abandon in just over 30 days. "IDF chief denies link between London attack and Mike's Place [Tel Aviv] bombing". After this bombing, "Israel may renew policy of assassinations."

A leftist MK comments about how the settler movement has succeeded in blurring the Green Line in the perceptions of Israelis:

Despite the settlement project's failure to establish the territories and the settlements as a legitimate part of the State of Israel, it appears it did succeed in one thing: With the encouragement or tacit agreement of all the governments, it blurred the Green Line (pre-Six-Day War border) - which is, in fact, the one and only clear border that can be drawn, and the only border on the basis of which it is possible to arrive at an agreement that will be acceptable to the two sides and also win international recognition.

Even now it is clear that at least in certain areas of the West Bank - Ma'aleh Adumim, the neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc - the Green Line will not go back to being an agreed-upon border. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to evacuate these areas, and Israel will have to give other territories in exchange for them. In the rest of the areas of the West Bank, the only chance for a peace agreement is based on the distinction in the consciousness of the Israeli and Palestinian publics between sovereign and legitimate Israeli territory and occupied territory, the status of which has yet to be determined. It is possible only to imagine what would happen to this mental distinction between Israel and the territories if settlements had not been erected in them. Returning from these imaginings to the reality reveals a surprising and worrisome success on the part of the settlement project - undermining the Israeli public's perception of the Green Line as an agreed-upon peace border between Israel and its Palestinian neighbor. It is no accident that at the behest of all of the education ministers, the Green Line vanished from the maps that are displayed in Israeli schools.
[........]
We are now at a historic crossroads. Never before has a single Jewish settlement been evacuated. The disengagement plan is the first test of the dismantling of imposed settlements that are stuck like a bone in the throat in the midst of a foreign Palestinian territory. Therefore, the disengagement must be carried out to the letter, completely and at the designated time, before a new generation arises that did not know 1967, and before our children and our grandchildren are condemned to live by the sword forever, without even understanding why.

Despite all the nasty business about how criticism of Israel supposedly equates to antisemitism, as Mr Ledeen has resorted to lately, I think what's really antisemitic is how the American media never bothers to air the opinions of the Israeli left at all -- they are virtually invisible here. Yoel Marcus, unfortunately, also labels Blair an antisemite:

When Tony Blair cites the conflict in the Middle East ("the Israeli occupation," of course) as one of the three reasons for Islamic terror, he is no different from your common anti-Semite.

Other than that its an interesting column. Adjustments have to be constructed with the Egyptians. It seems that Egyptian border police will guard the Gaza-Egypt border after the withdrawal, instead of the regular Egyptian police. An interesting Anti-Defamation League poll about Israel, conducted in the US and Europe, shows that

71 percent of those polled expressed support for the disengagement plan, 52 percent believed Israel was working harder for peace than the Palestinians, and 43 percent said they sympathized with Israel.

"It is apparent from the survey that Israel's bold initiatives to bring security and peace to its people resonate with the American people," said Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, at a Jerusalem press conference.
[.....]
Support for Palestinians among Americans also increased: 68 percent said they thought Palestinians were serious about peace negotiations, up from 62 percent in the previous survey.
[.....]
Foxman said yesterday that "light years" separate European and American public opinion in relation to Israel. Foxman estimated that if more terror attacks occur in Europe, the tendency to blame Israel indirectly for them will increase. 

Among the 500 respondents in the 12 major states of the European Union, including Hungary and Poland, only 13 percent sympathized with the State of Israel, compared to 25 percent who sympathized with the Palestinians. Only 19 percent of the respondents said they saw Ariel Sharon as a positive figure, compared to 39 percent who saw him as a negative figure. In 2004, 8 percent saw him in a positive light, compared to 39 percent who viewed him negatively.

More very bad things for Karl Rove, and Bolton was probably involved with Yellowcake as well

Stay tuned here for one hell of a scandal.... Damn skippy, things are blowing up all over the place.

The Star Tribune just put up a pretty scathing editorial about Rove, Wilson and the case for war, for the July 14 newspaper, "Karl Rove/Real issue is the case for war". What do you know, they cut right to the chase:

The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence -- in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to "fix" the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.
[.......]
In January 2003, however, President Bush asserted an Iraq-Africa uranium connection in his State of the Union message. Subsequently, it turned out that Bush was indeed referring to Niger. The Niger-Iraq connection became one of the pillars in Bush's case for war with Iraq.

After the start of the war, Wilson wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for the New York Times laying out the facts of his trip and saying he had "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Five days later, Rove told Time reporter Matt Cooper he should "not get too far out on Wilson." His trip to Niger, Rove said, wasn't approved by Cheney or CIA Director George Tenet. Cooper wrote to his boss, "It was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."
[.....]
This is a classic Rove technique: undercut a critic by planting the notion that he was off to Africa on a lark arranged by his wife. Rove's history as a rough political player is well-documented. But this wasn't about a political campaign; this was about a serious question of national security and the justification for a difficult war.
[......]
It is instructive to remember that the investigation into who revealed Plame's identity was initiated by Tenet, not by administration critics. Remember also that Wilson was correct; ultimately the White House had to retract Bush's State of the Union statement on the Niger connection.

In addition to discrediting critics of the Niger connection, the Bush administration, through the actions of John Bolton -- now nominee to be U.N. ambassador -- sought to intimidate intelligence analysts who objected to conclusions about Iraq's WMD, and to get a U.N. chemical weapons official fired so he wouldn't be able to send inspectors back to Iraq, where they might disprove more of the case for war.

In the scheme of things, whether Rove revealed Plame's identity, deliberately or not, matters less than actions by Rove, Bolton, Cheney and others to phony up a case for war that has gone badly, has cost thousands of lives plus hundreds of billions of dollars, and has, a majority of Americans now believe, left the United States less safe from terrorism rather than more.

The Republican communications team shifts into high gear trying to lay out a multi-pronged defense for Karl Rove, now that he's been outed for telling Matt Cooper of TIME that Plame worked at the CIA. It looks rather half-cocked, as Republican partisans try hard to spin while claiming they don't want to impede the investigation. President Bush and Scott McClellan have declined to answer questions about the matter. The RNC and its chairman Ken Mehlman are playing the attack dog role while the White House waits and hopes the story will blow over. As it very well could when Rehnquist suddenly turns into a pile of dust...

I started by reading a bizarre Wall Street Journal editorial today about how Rove should be rewarded for his valiant efforts against CIA nepotism -- or something like that. It all made more sense when I found out that this was a quite precise regurgitation of RNC talking points, with many WSJ points still in the same order. Happily, RawStory.com managed to get ahold of the RNC's actual talking points memo against Wilson. Mehlman said that Rove was merely "discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise." A-haaa... It is so staggeringly unethical that some Republicans are complementing each other for supporting outing Plame. How weird. Maybe Rove should really have been more careful. So many of his past statements are now known to be lies.

A fairly good general summary of the mess. The Great Grilling of McClellan been going on for days now. On Monday, I spent several hours watching network news TV, for the first time in a few weeks. It was quite satisfying to see the normally emasculated White House press corps pounce on hapless, clumsy McClellan (QT video awesome!) about his past statements defending Rove. Nowadays he's not even willing to still uphold those statements. It would be funny, if this whole clusterfuck hadn't damaged America's ability to track weapons of mass destruction (let's not forget about the fallout for Plame's former fake CIA company).

ABC's quasi-insider memo The Note is happily framing the matter as Washington journalists acting like a pack of dogs. The Daily Show returns to skewer FOX News' fucking maniacal John Gibson (QT video) and the rest of the media reaction. Gibson is even more scary today (QT video). "Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody and nobody else had the cojones to do it. I'm glad Rove did, if he did do it, and he still says he didn't." OMG it's crazy....

A transcript of TIME reporter Matt Cooper's public remarks after swallowing hard and going to the Fitzgerald grand jury today. Oddly enough, it seems possible that Cooper only secured that release from his non-disclosure agreement because Rove's blustering lawyer, Robert Luskin, fucked up. There is also some amusing background on Luskin (via TPM). Luskin is himself a somewhat shady operator, who once represented Stephen A. Saccoccia, a guy accused of laundering hundreds of millions in drug money through precious metal companies. He paid Luskin handsomely... with gold bars! (Luskin discussion thread)

The mess has even reached back to Minnesota, where Norm Coleman is yet again the cheesy Capitol hatchet man (as assigned), fresh off his Kofi-bashing tour-de-force. Norm has Karl himself to thank for the Senate seat, as Karl halted Pawlenty's quest to run against Wellstone.

There's plenty of bamboozlement and disinformation getting peddled. I don't really know how to get ahead of this story, except to push it back towards its most fundamental context--the mendacious attitude at the White House towards anyone in government who threatened the Administration's case for invading Iraq, as the Strib points out. The yellowcake uranium claims were a fairly minor pillar of their case, but what's interesting is that it was based on forged documents, apparently concocted by a former member of Italian intelligence (SISMI). As Josh Marshall points out, these documents seemed to take a weird path through the executive branch, different than most of the fraudulent parts of their case for war.

While most of the fabricated Iraq WMD/terrorism disinformation came out of the Pentagon (Office of Special Plans, Bill Luti, people under Douglas Feith, etc.), it seems that the Niger documents kept getting put back on the table and inserted into speeches by people in the State Department, which was hardly the neo-con's center of operations. But who in State would have known about Valerie Plame working on CIA WMD counter-proliferation? Then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton.

Indeed, the ever-watchful Steve Clemons at TheWashingtonNote has an update on possible links between Rove, Bolton and the Yellowcake case, and he has pushed this angle before. Former CIA officer Ray McGovern asserts a tie between Bolton and the Yellowcake matter, and of course I had a post about how Rep. Henry Waxman claimed that Bolton was involved with generating Yellowcake documents at State (Waxman's PDF letter). And Bolton also apparently instructed State personnel to lie to Congress about his role in the Niger uranium case. His assistants, John Hannah and David "Clean Break" Wurmser, who were also working for Cheney at the time, also were probably related. Scooter Libby and Hannah believed for years that the CIA was being unfair to Chalabi, so they were certainly not Agency lovers.

It seems that Hannah and Bolton likely helped to shepherd along these forged yellowcake documents through the process, stuffing them into Bush's speeches, and they could have known all along that they were forgeries. At various points, the yellowcake documents were debunked by State Department analysts, and Bolton would have had to throw away the analysts' objections and soldier forth. Hell, Bolton could have forged them himself.

And so when Wilson wrote his famous op-ed in the Times, Rove, Bolton and the rest of the inner circle quite likely perceived it as a political swipe at them coming from the rational CIA/State analysts, which explains why their counterattack took the improbable form of this famous leak, intended to make the CIA look bad. Otherwise, Rove probably saw it would be politically critical to scare the rest of the analysts and bureaucrats shitless about what would happen to them and their families if they stood up to the lies and disinformation winding through Washington. In my view, intimidating potential whistleblowers from stepping forward about war lies was the primary purpose of Karl Rove's attack on Wilson, Plame and the CIA. As Juan Cole wrote about the Plame affair last year:

We now know that the Niger story involved the forgery of documents by a man with ties to Italian military intelligence, and that, moreover, Italian military intelligence has ties to Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode and Lawrence Franklin, pro-Likud neoconservatives, two of whom had high-level positions in the Pentagon and all three of whom were tightly networked with the American Enterprise Institute. Franklin (a neoconservative Catholic) is being investigated for spying on the U.S. for Israel. The nexus of Italian military intelligence, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the neoconservatives in the Pentagon suggests a network of conspiracy aimed at dragging the U.S. into wars against Iraq and Iran.
[.......]
The neoconservatives around Dick Cheney, including Scooter Libby and John Hannah, were highly committed to the Niger uranium story as a casus belli against Iraq, and were furious when Wilson revealed that he had shown it false in spring of 2002. They were convinced that the CIA was behind this strike at their credibility, and that Valerie Plame had been the one who managed to get Wilson sent. That is, in their paranoid world, Wilson's honest reportage of the facts was a CIA plot against the Iraq War and perhaps against the neoconservatives around Cheney and in the Pentagon.

It has been being leaked for many months now that the FBI believes the leak came from persons in Cheney's circle, possibly John Hannah and/or Scooter Libby.

Juan Cole has even more nasty things to say about Karl right now.
Most people I've talked to seem convinced that Karl will get off somehow. Indeed, the spin is thick and heavy on that point.

The first key Republican argument is that Karl didn't use Valerie Plame's actual name when conversing with reporters. This is totally irrelevant, since anyone could have found the ambassador's wife's name on Google, as MediaMatters points out. David Corn debunks this stuff.

Second argument is that Karl didn't share anything classified. This could very well become the focus of the legal debate, but politically it really isn't that helpful for them. This is BS: it's not legal to leak a CIA agent's name just so that a reporter doesn't have the wrong idea. Corn again. Larry Johnson, a guy who went with Plame through CIA training, says that they were all "covert."

Another element in the Republican defense plan is that some intelligence committee report showed that the intelligence about Niger was still ambiguous. Consider Wilson's own rebuttal to that.

Yet another element is a claim that Wilson was already caught lying about why he was sent to Africa. Mehlman says that Wilson had earlier lied that Cheney had sent him there. But the news clip that Mehlman references actually says the exact opposite, according to TPM.

There's a great many Washington liberals finally pouncing on the Plame leak story. Some say that Karl may be guilty of conspiracy because he was conspiring to make it difficult for Plame to do her job. Maybe it made Bush a lame duck, although I think that's a little premature. On TPMCafe, Marshall Wittmann, a Heritage/McCain/Christian Coalition/DLC conservative, points out that Karl is too damn important for the President to cut him loose. (Yes you can go from McCain to the DLC. That's why they suck) Naturally tons of people on the HuffyPost. Buzzflash has plenty of stories. Josh Marshall has been doing a hell of a job this week. Murray Waas exclusive: "Novak co-operated with prosecutors" and totally spilled the beans.

Incredible. Whatever part of my body processes irony is totally burned out....

Technorati Tags: cia

Weird stories that piss me off about Israeli intelligence and the London bombings

I am tired of hearing about how the Israeli government is doing this that or the other thing, and the strange press reports about how Israelis in London got tipped off by Scotland Yard just minutes before the bombing piss me off because I don't want to ponder another bizarre conspiracy-lke situation. And yet here it is...

It's a strange time in Israel right now, with the Gaza disengagement only 30 days away. The settlers are doing all sorts of crazy shit there, blocking roads, fighting with Israeli soldiers, etc.

It's pretty damn hazardous to be a pro-withdrawal Israeli leader, as Sharon seems to be for the moment. Last time around, radical religious nationalists of the right wing wanted to murder Prime Minister Rabin, applied a talmudic theological concept called 'Din Rodef', a pronouncement that murder is acceptable for someone who threatens Jewish lives. Then a student, Yigal Amir, partly educated in West Bank settlements, killed Rabin.

Israeli politicians are maneuvering between the settlers and the rest of Israeli society, and in my view one of the shadiest operators is current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hardcore hawk who has made many declarations about the importance of preserving West Bank settlements. Consider this pre-bombing editorial by an Israeli rightwinger about the importance of finding a secular leader to protect the settlement movement. He names Netanyahu as a leading, but tainted, contender for that spot.

So it is quite annoying that Netanyahu happened to be practically on top of one of the bombings in London, and according to an early Associated Press report, his security team was warned minutes before the bombing occurred, as I posted yesterday.

Later press reports altered this account, and now the British and the Israelis Totally Deny everything. Not surprisingly, various people are taking this weird story and running with it. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com is asking "What did Bibi know - and when did he know it?" with some antiwar blog entries about how the timeline of Israeli denials doesn't make any sense (because now the Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is claiming they were warned after the first explosion, yet the Brits didn't detect it was actually a terrorist attack until around the third explosion) , and the right-wing blogosphere helping to spin the story towards oblivion. (including Powerline. Fuck those guys.)

In any case, I'm not going to level accusations. It's all quite weird and who knows what really happened. However, the private intelligence service Stratfor posted a very odd report about the London bombings, which someone put onto the Internet:

July 7, 2005
Israel Warned United Kingdom About Possible Attacks
Summary

There has been massive confusion over a denial made by the Israelis that the Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks “minutes before” the first bomb went off July 7. Israel warned London of the attacks a “couple of days ago,” but British authorities failed to respond accordingly to deter the attacks, according to an unconfirmed rumor circulating in intelligence circles. While Israel is keeping quiet for the time-being, British Prime Minister Tony Blair soon will be facing the heat for his failure to take action.

Analysis

The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7.

Several hours later, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom officially denied reports that Scotland Yard passed any information to Israel regarding the bombings, and British police denied they had any advanced warning of the attacks. The British authorities similarly denied that any information exchange had occurred.

Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned “minutes before” the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks “a couple of days” previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack.

Also, Arutz Sheva, an extremely right wing Israeli news source affiliated with the settler movement and Arutz 7, a pirate settler radio station, posted this strange story this morning:

Report: Israel Was Warned Ahead of First Blast
10:43 Jul 08, '05 / 1 Tammuz 5765

(IsraelNN.com) Army Radio quoting unconfirmed reliable sources reported a short time ago that Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred.

The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit.

At present, train and bus service in London have been suspended following the series of attacks. No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility at this time.

Israeli officials stress the advanced Scotland Yard warning does not in any way indicate Israel was the target in the series of apparent terror attacks.

In typical style, Raimondo threw into his "When did Bibi Know" story a link to this incredibly strange FOX News story from 2001 about an Israeli espionage operation running across the United States. I'd never seen the actual FOX video until now. It has since been deleted from Fox's website.

At least the G8 is still going to hand out some aid. Huzzah.

Why not throw in some links to various reactions. Disturbingly, Fox commentators agreed that this attack was a good thing for the West. An oddball site Propaganda Matrix goes further with the Israel angle and posts a claim from the ever weirder Prison Planet site that as they say: "Cover-up in progress." The far saner Juan Cole has more to say. George Galloway said that this is the price for invading Iraq. A Dude on TomPaine.com. Tariq Ali reacted.

Last thing, I strongly recommend looking at what Efraim Halevi, the former director of the Mossad and now the head of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at Hebrew University, wrote about how after the bombings, a very generalized "we" have to escalate the anti-Islam war:

Ex-Mossad Chief Calls For World War After London Attack
Rules of conflict for a world war
By Efraim Halevi
07/07/05 "The Jerusalem Post"
......There will be supreme tests of leadership in this unique situation and people will have to trust the wisdom and good judgment of those chosen to govern them. The executives must be empowered to act resolutely and to take every measure necessary to protect the citizens of their country and to carry the combat into whatever territory the perpetrators and their temporal and spiritual leaders are inhabiting.

The rules of combat must be rapidly adjusted to cater to the necessities of this new and unprecedented situation, and international law must be rewritten in such a way as to permit civilization to defend itself. Anything short of this invites disaster and must not be allowed to happen.

So, you know, another ranting Israeli hawk. Big deal...

This post is a little more hodgepodgy than I intended, but I want to close by noting that I don't really support believing these accusations and innuendoes about the attacks yesterday. As the wise big guy in the film Control Room sarcastically put it, "Everything that happens in the middle east is an Israeli conspiracy, a water pipe in Damascus breaks, it's an Israeli conspiracy." I'm paraphrasing. There are some strange threads to this story, and I certainly think that Stratfor is a quite credible source. I've got no ultimate conclusions on the matter, just questions.

Yet another thing to roll my eyes about...

I'm going up north for the weekend so there might not be any more posts. I am also working on a new Hongpong.com version, and hey, you can check out how it's getting put together @ wp.hongpong.com. Go WordPress!

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...

Oil prices at record high, Sibel Edmonds is talking. Let's roll, baby.

Wouldn't you know it, my over-laden browser finally crashed, taking with it a couple dozen interesting sites that I opened up, which have already slid off the browser's history page. However, I managed to get through most of them before it halted.

"The Deal," about a sleazy oil executive, Christian Slater, who gets tangled up in some kind of deal to traffic illegal oil, looks really sweet and I wish it was playing in town. Because we're going north of $60 a barrel, baby, and it ain't comin back down...

It looks like John Bolton may refuse to accept a recess appointment, perhaps because it would be Quite Silly to have a UN ambassador that never got approved by the Senate. But sillier things have happened. The Washington Note is still the place to look for news on it.

Iran's election happened. There's a real good user, alimostofi, posting every day about Iran on the Agonist, as well as the unwieldy nickname vsredthoughtsecondedition at DailyKos. The Lebanese Daily Star has a piece making fun of the Western media. Gordon Robison, the author of that piece, has a new site, mideastanalysis.com. But can it meet the Juan Cole standard?

(Cole's analysis of what makes a last "throe" is hilarious, as well as Ahmadinejad's usage of Bush-style political tactics. And Afghanistan's "neo-Taliban" forces are regrouping for another round.)

AmericaSedition or America's Edition? Karl Rove says there's not much difference these days. Also check out news of the apocalypse at The Boom Shelter. "What happens in Gitmo stays in Gitmo." Thanks, Rush.

The Supreme Court is less beloved than ever, by both left and right, polls show.

There were bombings in Iranian Khuzestan, which Iran blamed on the People's Mujahedin, which I believe is the same as the neo-cons' beloved MEK or Mujahedin-el-Khalq:

"It's unbelievable," one State Department official said. "It's a pretty cushy arrangement for a terrorist organization. But the Pentagon continues to see them as useful, and they seem to be playing a waiting game until the policy toward the MEK changes."

Guardian: WMD claims were 'totally implausible':

A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".
He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".
Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry...

Poor Senator Durbin. Fell yet again to the Republican strategy of bitching about how someone is bitching in order to avoid talking about what's so bitch-worthy in the first place. Now we all know about how you shouldn't compare your opponent to Nazis, it's worth considering how spooky absolute power is being implemented in our system of government. This guy complains that it's the startup chime of fascism. Actually he didn't phrase it that way. I did...

The Red States got their own mega community blog. Good for them. I hope they can reach a better level than littlegreenfootballs.

Agonist:Toxic waste containers wash up in Somalia. This story about Bird Flu drugs being rendered useless by wide use in China is depressing.

The Downing Street reporter reflects on the nine months since he got the first Downing Street Memo. This focuses more attention on the "secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress" as he terms it.

Also on the Agonist, Sean-Paul is cackling a bit about how he was already covering the airstrikes against Iraq before the War Proper started... he notes the monopoly media "in the run up to their wargasm they missed several very important stories that were sitting in their faces" Wargasm. I like it. This is in response to a big feature at RawStory about the massive pre-war Iraq bombing campaign that some people are now pondering as illegal. I am sorry I used the inherently false phrase "massive pre-war Iraq bombing campaign." As RawStory explains:

“It was no big secret at the time,” GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike told RAW STORY. “It was apparent to us at the time that they were doing it and why they were doing it, and that was part of the reason why we were convinced that a decision to go to war had already been made, because the war had already started.”

I just want to throw in this op-ed by Sibel Edmonds, the mysterious FBI whistleblower.

Over four years ago, more than four months prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, during April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden.

This asset/informant was previously a high-level intelligence officer in Iran in charge of intelligence from Afghanistan. Through his contacts in Afghanistan he received information that:

1. Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities;

2. The attack was going to involve airplanes;

3. Some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States;

4. The attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months.

The agents who received this information reported it to their superior, Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism, Thomas Frields, at the FBI Washington Field Office, by filing “302” forms, and the translator, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, translated and documented this information. No action was taken by the Special Agent in Charge, Thomas Frields, and after 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to ‘keep quiet’ regarding this issue. The translator who was present during the session with the FBI informant, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar, reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing, and later to the Department of Justice Inspector General.

The press reported this incident, and in fact the report in the Chicago Tribune on July 21, 2004 stated that FBI officials had confirmed that this information was received in April 2001, and further, the Chicago Tribune quoted an aide to Director Mueller that he (Mueller) was surprised that the Commission never raised this particular issue with him during the hearing (Refer to Chicago Tribune article, dated July 21, 2004).

Mr. Sarshar reported this issue to the 9/11 Commission on February 12, 2004, and provided them with specific dates, location, witness names, and the contact information for that particular Iranian asset and the two special agents who received the information. I provided the 9/11 Commission with a detailed and specific account of this issue, the names of other witnesses, and documents I had seen. Mr. Sarshar also provided the Department of Justice Inspector General with specific information regarding this case.

For almost four years since September 11, officials refused to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists’ plans to attack the United States. The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the 9/11 attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the United States. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the ‘use of airplanes’, ‘major US cities as targets’, and ‘Osama Bin Laden issuing the order. ’ Coleen Rowley likewise reported that specific information had been provided to FBI HQ. All this information went to the same place: FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, in Washington DC.

In October 2001, approximately one month after the September 11 attack, an agent from (city name omitted) field office, re-sent a certain document to the FBI Washington Field Office, so that it could be re-translated. This Special Agent, in light of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rightfully believed that, considering his target of investigation (the suspect under surveillance), and the issues involved, the original translation might have missed certain information that could prove to be valuable in the investigation of terrorist activities. After this document was received by the FBI Washington Field Office and retranslated verbatim, the field agent’s hunch appeared to be correct. The new translation revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas (country name omitted). It also revealed certain illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East, through network contacts and bribery. However, after the re-translation was completed and the new significant information was revealed, the unit supervisor in charge of certain Middle Eastern languages, Mike Feghali, decided NOT to send the re-translated information to the Special Agent who had requested it.

I found another story about Edmonds at TomFlocco.com. However, Tom Flocco seems like he might be crazy. Consider this: "Campaign coffers profit from 911, coke and courts: FBI linguist won’t deny intelligence intercepts tied 911 drug money to U.S. election campaigns":

"It’s so simple," Edmonds told TomFlocco.com. "Nobody is looking at the Department of Defense aspect of the whole 911 cover-up. The FBI is citing two reasons for my gag order: to protect ‘sensitive’ diplomatic relations and to protect foreign U.S. business relationships."

In attempting to let the American people how close the 911 cover-up comes to home, Edmonds told us, "I will say this: the FBI is only a mouthpiece for the State Department. The State Department is the main reason for the cover-up. It has to do with foreign business relationships and who they are...Pakistan, Turkey...espionage in the State Department...preventing an investigation." 

The former FBI translator has implicated everything "from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism," adding "they don’t deal with 1 or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions."
[.....]
While only a subpoena, testimony and questioning by non-political, career prosecutors will properly answer the insider trading question, we asked Sibel Edmonds the big question anyway--given the above FBI track record implicating espionage:
Do you deny that the FBI intercepts you translated indicated that financial arrangements were in place well before the 911 attacks to both fund and profit from the World Trade Center and Pentagon "terrorism" while also facilitating the laundering of drug money into recent congressional and presidential campaigns?

"I cannot comment on that, Tom. You know I’m under a gag order," she said.

Hilarious! But kind of cheesy journalism. She could deny any crazy question. On the other hand, this Tom Flocco story about a brainwashing sex ring operating at the highest levels of government is hands-down the funniest "news" I've read in a long time.

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. I hope that works. Lots of solid people are members.

Even more important: Mean gossip about Jared Fogle.

Was GHW Bush linked to JFK's shooting? Sure, why not?

A Great Day for Freedom: Naked Justice statues back in action

USATODAY.com - Drapes removed from Justice Department statue:

With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years. Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice's ceremonial Great Hall.

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

Grad school is a shady proposition. Village Voice has a depressing series, "Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young" about how kids in grad school end up with mountains of debt and crappy underpaid jobs as TAs and adjunct professors. Oh crap. These aren't new articles but they feel relevant as All Hell...

Wanted: Really Smart Suckers
Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty
by Anya Kamenetz
Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off.

Also the Voice has another piece on "The Ambition Tax: Why America's young are being crushed by debt—and why no one seems to care":

High levels of debt preclude the young from getting the sweetest mortgage deals, and they often end up in the clutches of sub-prime lenders. On average, people who had to borrow their way to a graduate degree are already behind $45,900; median debt for grad students has increased 72 percent since 1997. (Aspiring doctors have it the worst, with average loans of $103,855.) Add to those obligations an investment in a humble bungalow, and you're on the hook for a quarter million or more—not counting interest.
The cumulative effect is that merely keeping one's head above water, rather than getting ahead, has become the top priority for Americans between the ages of 18 and 34. Pursuing the relatively modest dream of doing better than the generation before requires serious capital—up front in the form of tuition and loans, and hidden in the form of lost opportunities. Call it the ambition tax—the money you've got to pony up if you want a college degree and a shot at middle-class bliss. But it's really more of a gamble, as there's no guarantee those tens of thousands of dollars will get you where you want to go.
"The next generation is starting their economic race 50 yards behind the starting line," says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and author of The Two-Income Trap. "They've got to pay off the equivalent of one full mortgage before they make it to flat broke, in order to pay for their education. They can never get ahead of the game, because they're constantly trying to play catch-up.
"And once you've got accumulated debt, the debt takes on a life of its own. It demands to be fed, and it takes that first bite out of the paycheck. And it means the opportunity to accumulate a little, to get a little ahead, to maybe put together a down payment—it's just never there. It's just staggering to me that this is not a part of our national debate right now."

On the lighter side, Slashdot is talking about some high school kids with laptops who got themselves in heaps of trouble when they figured out how to subvert the Orwellian spy programs on their computers, and now the kids are seemingly facing charges. Gee, how does this remind me of the good old days at MPA? Well, when we got caught messing around, they cut us a little more slack... Some suspensions were experienced, but no felony charges. This website had a role in all of that, I recall... Useful legal (non)advice:

Unfortunately, under the law, accessing a computer system without authorization is a very serious crime.
And furthermore, the courts have decided that violating an acceptable use policy amounts to accessing the computer without authorization.
Worse, it is accepted within the courts that an existing "terms of use" or whatever does not have to have been read nor accepted for it to be enforceable.
It is presumed that such a policy exists, and it is the burden of the user to find and read it.
It sucks! 
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice

And of course such a thread brings funny old stories about hacking:

Cornell was Mac-dominated (oh, happy memories) and the Upson lab had a network of IIci's just waiting to have their security hacked. I forget the tool that was used, but we figured out that it stored the password in a certain file that we could reach by bypassing the file security with Norton Utilities for Macintosh (haha Mac OS 6 security, bah). We procured a copy of the software, installed it and created a password on my own IIci, then took a copy of that file (with the obfuscated password) and replaced the file on the lab IIci. Instant admin access.

But we didn't stop there. We had such organization that we managed, as a team, to use this trick to install a fun little background process called NetBunny... on ALL the macs in ALL the labs. NetBunny does nothing on its own, but paired with a little utility called StartWabbit that we pointed at any campus AppleTalk network we wished, would begin the chain reaction. What then happened is that the Energizer Bunny would walk across the screen thumping the drum, going literally from screen to screen across the whole lab. It was pretty much a riot, if you were in on the joke, but the admins couldn't figure it out (we had hidden the executable well through obfuscation by renaming it and pasting another icon on it) and after they heard the recognizable "thump, thump, thump" sound would jump up and run around helplessly yelling "It's the bunny!!" We did it a few times with "agents" at each location to witness the mayhem. Good geek times.

For some reason our president has an obsession with touching, grabbing and rubbing people's heads. How weird.

Military builds teen database, intelligence agencies to watch blogs, and those liberal freaks go toooo farr....

This just rolled in: "Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes" for the purposes of profitable eminent domain, in this case a constructing huge friggin Pfizer research plant that locals objected to. So Pfizer has more rights than Joe pink Flamingo ranch house owner. Really quite awful. But that's just the beginning!

I forget who said: you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Fortunately this circle will apparently widen to include all 16 to 18-year olds, whose private data will be added to a privately owned database administered on behalf of the Pentagon. Adding lots of personal information, including GPAs, Social Security numbers, and ethnicity, for the primary purpose of more closely targeting students to recruit into the military. I'd almost forgotten that the No Child Left Behind Act requires high schools to give the DoD information:

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.
The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.
[.....]
According to the Federal Register notice, the data will be open to "those who require the records in the performance of their official duties." It said the data would be protected by passwords.
The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.
Some see the program as part of a growing encroachment of government into private lives, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It's just typical of how voracious government is when it comes to personal information," said James W. Harper, a privacy expert with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Defense is an area where government has a legitimate responsibility . . . but there are a lot of data fields they don't need and shouldn't be keeping. Ethnicity strikes me as particularly inappropriate."
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the Social Security Administration relaxed its privacy policies and provided data on citizens to the FBI in connection with terrorism investigations.

Oddly enough, an AP story from last year entitled "Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials" has since vanished from Yahoo! News. However a Google search on the matter shows that many around the Internet found the story interesting enough to post in full. As the Maritime Homeland Security and Force Protection Blog posted it:

Yahoo! News - Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials
Tue Apr 27, 8:53 AM ET
By Doug Tsuruoka

People in black trench coats might soon be chasing blogs.

Blogs, short for Web logs, are personal online journals. Individuals post them on Web sites to report or comment on news especially, but also on their personal lives or most any subject.

Some blogs are whimsical and deal with "soft" subjects. Others, though, are cutting edge in delivering information and opinion.

As a result, some analysts say U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials might be starting to track blogs for important bits of information. This interest is a sign of how far Web media such as blogs have come in reshaping the data-collection habits of intelligence professionals and others, even with the knowledge that the accuracy of what's reported in some blogs is questionable.

Still, a panel of folks who work in the U.S. intelligence field - some of them spies or former spies - discussed this month at a conference in Washington the idea of tracking blogs.

"News and intelligence is about listening with a critical ear, and blogs are just another conversation to listen to and evaluate. They also are closer to (some situations) and may serve as early alerts," said Jock Gill, a former adviser on Internet media to President Clinton (news - web sites), in a later phone interview, after he spoke on the panel.

If they had read my stuff a while ago they might have learned more clearly that the neocons are dangerous liars and so is Ahmed Chalabi. But tragically that circle never got completed.

Well I am not terribly surprised. I have already gotten 95 hits from US military computers this month, 170 in May. More military computers than Israelis or French end up here for whatever reason. And of course the Central Intelligence Agency paid a visit last November, shortly after the election. hm, it doesn't seem that I wrote a post about that. The CIA also came to Hongpong earlier on a search for "tower bridge terrorism" and why not, the Department of Homeland Security came looking for "unedited iraqi prison photos and videos". And of course CENTCOM.mil, the US Central Command, downloaded the whole Iraq category page. The everyday military guys love searching for the helicopter kill video. (my post is lacking in details about the incident: apparently the dead Iraqis were farmers or something)

If you want to see more military video excitement, check out militaryvideos.net, with files via bittorrent. It was really quite shocking, although I couldn't play a lot of the WMVs on my infidel Macintosh.

If you have certain keywords sitting around, then it's not a huge surprise that your site might come up on a few Google searches. Once the CIA starts getting your RSS feed, then you must really be important... I recently noticed that I've also got the top result for "Pipelines balkans" purely because I laid out the sources for a paper on the Pipelines:Balkans hongwiki page, purely for my own use. Google found its way in there, and the rest is history...

Let's not forget,
there's a lot of flag burners who have got too much freedom and I want to make it legal for policemen to beat em', because there's limits to our liberty!
For the fifth time the US House addressed the serious problems facing our troubled nation and passed a Constitutional amendment barring the torching of the American flag. I suppose this will become a justification to bomb Iran. Thune speaks for the mythical fascists of the plains:

Among the new votes for the amendment is Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who pushed the issue in his campaign and helped recruit co-sponsors. "Out in the country, at the grass-roots level, it's seen as a common man's practical patriotism," Thune said.

Not surprisingly, John Kline voted for it, Betty! against, and unfortunately Collin Peterson (D-Rural MN) supported it, as well. Now that's settled, we just have to ignore the budget, steal the Arabs' oil, fund some Israeli settlements, design nuclear bunker-buster bombs and sit back and wait for the apocalypse. While the Pentagon tracks my little brother's GPA.

"Reporters Press McClellan on Secret CIA Report on Iraq"

This is one of those beautiful moments where spin, lies, truth, death, image, the friction of war and cause and effect come together to show us once and for all that we are totally fucked in the past, present and future. Iraq was always the central front of the war on terror. And it always will be......

Editor and Publisher reports:

Reporters Press McClellan on Secret CIA Report on Iraq
By E&P Staff

Published: June 22, 2005 5:10 PM ET

NEW YORK At the daily White House press briefing Wednesday, reporters raised with Press Secretary Scott McClellan a bombshell story from Iraq carried earlier Wednesday in The New York Times and wire services, based on a CIA report. Essentially, the questions at the White House boiled down to: Has the invasion and occupation of Iraq actually created more terrorists than it has crushed, and also given them much-needed experience in killing Americans and others?

According to the classified CIA report, the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

“The assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several Congressional and intelligence officials,” Doug Jehl wrote in The New York Times. “The officials said it made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.”

The report says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of deadly skills, from car bombings and assassinations to tightly coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets. If and when the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.

Vice President Dick Cheney has recently argued that the insurgency is in its last throes, despite reports that the guerrillas have grown more sophisticated and more deadly.

Naturally, McClellan was asked about all this today at his daily press briefing. Here is the relevant part of the official transcript:
**
 Q Scott, how concerned is the administration about the potential for Iraq to become a sort of training ground for Islamic extremists who may go back to their home countries and use these techniques to destabilize their governments? There's a new report on that recently.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me mention a couple things. As the President has said for some time now, Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. Wherever you stood before the decision to go into Iraq, I think we can all recognize that the terrorists have made it a central front in the war on terrorism. That's why, as the President said earlier today, we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here at home. And that's where things are. And that's why the terrorists understand how high the stakes are ...
Q The report suggested that there's concern that Egyptians, Jordanians and others will go back to their home countries, using the techniques they've learned in Iraq to destabilize those countries.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I don't know what your question is.
Q Are you concerned about that? Do you think there's potential for that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. In terms of what's your question on it, I think you're making the assumption that these individuals would just be sitting around sipping tea, as Secretary Rice likes to refer to in her previous comments. So I don't know what your question is regarding that.
Q Just following up on that question, you said at the outset of that, the terrorists have made it a central front in the war on terrorism. I thought it was a central front in the war on terrorism before we invaded.
MR. McCLELLAN: It is. It's part of the war on terrorism, yes.
Q It was.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, it is.
Q It is now --
MR. McCLELLAN: Both.
Q Was it prior to --
MR. McCLELLAN: Both. It's part of the war on terrorism, David.

Linkdump: Israel-America-China arms confrontation, etc.; Iran, more on Downing Street

Let's do the link dump again!
Agonist reported twice that the DC-based Nelson Report discussed how the Downing Street Memo is causing people to begin making historical comparisons to impeachments and other scandals. "British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office", referring to the Iraq bombing that escalated before the "real" war started. Getting to be big news on the AP finally... Produced a faboulous Poll on MSNBC... anyway, the goods::

A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.

The advice was first provided to senior ministers in March 2002. Two months later RAF and USAF jets began “spikes of activity” designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating and giving the allies a pretext for war.

The Foreign Office advice shows military action to pressurise the regime was “not consistent with” UN law, despite American claims that it was.

The decision to provoke the Iraqis emerged in leaked minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and his most senior advisers — the so-called Downing Street memo published by The Sunday Times shortly before the general election.

Democratic congressmen claimed last week the evidence it contains is grounds for impeaching President George Bush.

Those at the meeting on July 23, 2002, included Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The minutes quote Hoon as saying that the US had begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime.

Ministry of Defence figures for bombs dropped by the RAF on southern Iraq, obtained by the Liberal Democrats through Commons written answers, show the RAF was as active in the bombing as the Americans and that the “spikes” began in May 2002.

However, the leaked Foreign Office legal advice, which was also appended to the Cabinet Office briefing paper for the July meeting, made it clear allied aircraft were legally entitled to patrol the no-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq only to deter attacks by Saddam’s forces on the Kurdish and Shia populations.

The allies had no power to use military force to put pressure of any kind on the regime.

The increased attacks on Iraqi installations, which senior US officers admitted were designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences, began six months before the UN passed resolution 1441, which the allies claim authorised military action. The war finally started in March 2003.
[.....]
Although the legality of the war has been more of an issue in Britain than in America, the revelations indicate Bush may also have acted illegally, since Congress did not authorise military action until October 11 2002.
The air war had already begun six weeks earlier and the spikes of activity had been underway for five months.

it is fun to follow gov't proceedings on CSPAN via threads on DailyKos. In this case, yet another blocking of Mr Bolton in the Senate. Gotta love this Bolton cartoon. Sounds like things are already working better at the State Department now that he's gone.

Also via the Kos, Scott Ritter is saying the war on Iran has already begun. Well, that's true, as far as we let the dogs of war at the MEK go attack Iran... And of course the new Republican effort to shut down the independence of reporting at PBS. A consultant termed pieces on the show Now with Bill Moyers. Various new tags included "anti-corporation," "anti-DeLay" and "anti-Bush." Orwell is so helpful.

Old transcript from MSNBC Hardball featuring Pawlenty and James Bamford, author of "A Pretext for War." Not relevant to everyone else, I just needed the link.

There is news that the United States is pissed off that Israel is selling sweet tech to China, in particular Harpy Killer unmanned attack drones designed to target radar systems. The U.S. apparently developed these drones and now fears they could be used to attack Taiwan. Nice.

Kinda liked this Friedman article because it suggests that without an heir apparent, Bush's agenda is drifting towards chaos and pandering instead of actually useful policy.

Richard Clarke about the quiet squawking coming from military people in Washington who are-gasp-willing to depart fluffy cloud country and say something negative about Freedom Quest:Mesopotamia.

The "gay vague" style. WTF, this is another reason why popular culture is ridiculous to me.

Political orientation may have genetic markers. Oh shit, here comes the mental genetic engineering.

Older stories about Syria's state-sponsored clergy and it's voices for change.

i gotta go. Arthur Cheng's here, and we're going to a Twins game tonight. Hell yeah!

Shadiness about the Kurds

WEll well well... the Kurds are rumored to be up to no good. After all, they just want to live in peace, once they have gained control of Kirkuk and Mosul, after chipping off some nice swaths of Turkey, Iran and Syria. WaPo reported June 15 that "Kurdish officials Sanction Abductions from Kirkuk," apparently a direct effort to intimidate Sunni Arabs into leaving. There is a great deal of violence, including suicide bombings, now happening in the area. Under the cloak of the war on Terror, population re-engineering is going down, and who knows what the results shall be?

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.

A confidential State Department cable, obtained by The Washington Post and addressed to the White House, Pentagon and U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the "extra-judicial detentions" were part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by Kurdish political parties "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner."

The abductions have "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines" and endangered U.S. credibility, the nine-page cable, dated June 5, stated. "Turkmen in Kirkuk tell us they perceive a U.S. tolerance for the practice while Arabs in Kirkuk believe Coalition Forces are directly responsible."
[....]
Kirkuk, a city of almost 1 million, is home to Iraq's most combustible mix of politics and economic power. Kurds, who are just shy of a majority in the city and are growing in number, hope to make Kirkuk and the vast oil reserves beneath it part of an autonomous Kurdistan. Arabs and Turkmens compose most of the rest of the population. They have struck an alliance to curb the ambitions of the Kurds, who have wielded increasing authority in a long-standing collaboration with their U.S. allies.

Some abductions occurred more than a year ago. But according to U.S. officials, Kirkuk police and Arab leaders, the campaign surged after the Jan. 30 elections consolidated the two main Kurdish parties' control over the Kirkuk provincial government. The two parties are the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The U.S. military said it had logged 180 cases; Arab and Turkmen politicians put the number at more than 600 and said many families feared retribution for coming forward.

U.S. and Iraqi officials, along with the State Department cable, said the campaign was being orchestrated and carried out by the Kurdish intelligence agency, known as Asayesh, and the Kurdish-led Emergency Services Unit, a 500-member anti-terrorism squad within the Kirkuk police force. Both are closely allied with the U.S. military. The intelligence agency is made up of Kurds, and the emergency unit is composed of a mixture of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens.

The cable indicated that the problem extended to Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city and the main city in the north, and regions near the Kurdish-controlled border with Turkey.

The transfers occurred "without authority of local courts or the knowledge of Ministries of Interior or Defense in Baghdad," the State Department cable stated. U.S. military officials said judges they consulted in Kirkuk declared the practice illegal under Iraqi law.

Early on, the campaign targeted former Baath Party officials and suspected insurgents, but it has since broadened. Among those seized and secretly transferred north were car merchants, businessmen, members of tribal families, Arab soldiers and, in one case, an 87-year-old farmer with diabetes.
[....]
[Kirkuk police chief] Abdel-Rahman said he was concerned that the Americans were being duped by the Kurds, who he said have cloaked what is effectively a power grab as a crackdown on the insurgents. Their strategy, he said, is to bolster their alliance with the Americans.

"Unfortunately, they have succeeded," he said.

Blagburn, the intelligence officer, said that even though the Emergency Services Unit is largely responsible for the secret transfers, it continues to provide valuable assistance in the counterinsurgency. Blagburn termed the unit "a very cooperative, coalition-friendly system."

"We know we can drop a guy in there and he'd be taken care of and he's safe," Blagburn said. "That's the reason why the ESU is used most of the time. That's basically the unit we can trust the most."

Iran election turnout nearly 63%, really not so bad? Or fraud?

Free Thoughts In Iran reports:

Participation: 61.7%

Rafsanjani: 6,108,029 (21.2%)
Ahmadi Nejad: 5,555,458 (19.3%)
Karrubi: 5,394,031 (18.7%)
Qalibaf: 4,009,620 (13.9%)
Moeen: 3,949,240 (13.7%)
Larijani: 1,715,190 (6.0%)
Mehr Alizade: 1,269,790 (4.4%)

Spoiled Ballots: 847,642 (2.9%)

A day before the election, Bush sharply denounced the vote, saying it was designed to keep power in the hands of the clerics. But some Iranians said they were motivated to vote to retaliate against Bush’s denunciations.

“I picked Ahmadinejad to slap America in the face,” said Mahdi Mirmalek after attending Friday prayers at Tehran University.

And I don't even want to start into what happened in Lebanon. In a move sure to annoy the many regime change enthusiasts in Washington, the Iranian public (including a significant number of expatriates) voted in surprisingly large numbers in the first round of their presidential election--although naturally Michael Ledeen now claims that various people cooked the numbers, provided fake ballots and perhaps bussed in a million Shiites from Pakistan. Now the former president, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, will face off against a rather hardcore mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the final election this Friday. Snooping around the burgeoning Iranian presence online these days shows that progressive Persians are annoyed as hell that they'll have to vote for Rafsanjani to prevent the even more conservative Ahmadinejad from taking over.

Check an interesting NY Times Q&A with professor William Beeman, who just returned from there. (Rafsanjani, by the way, was involved with Iran-Contra back in the good ol' days, but it doesn't seem to bother people too much, because, hey, they got some missiles out of it, right?) A good summary of the whole thing, including a broader look at how American hawks tried to frame the situation.

And there are claims of voting fraud now coming from Rafsanjani's people, as well as the #3 candidate Mehdi Karroubi, who represented sort of an anti-poverty religious angle that progressives took cynically. A letter about fraud that Karroubi published was printed in two daily newspapers, Eqbal and Aftab Yazd, and they got shut down by the government. Even IRNA reported this was about "some rigging in the elections."

There were polls in Los Angeles, and some people tried to picket them. Apparently the "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran" quoted in this story is basically a one-man front that people shouldn't take seriously. But he did yell at people.

Human Rights Watch summarized Iran's exclusionary election system, termed as 'pre-cooked elections.' The distribution of votes was fairly close among six candidates, which suggests that if the various progressive movements in the country hadn't tried to boycott it, they might have actually gotten someone more preferable into the final round. Mostafa Moin (spellings vary-"Moeen" as well) was the supposed progressive candidate and he seems to be claiming that he took a nap in the morning and when he awoke a million votes had shifted. But Moin might not really be that progressive. As the Sunnis in the next war zone over learned, boycotting elections in imperfect systems doesn't really solve anything.

There are many pictures of the election process available online. That is pretty nifty to see.

As Prof. Juan Cole described the results,

The Iranian voting public put a hardliner and a conservative pragmatist into a run-off election with their ballots on Friday. With a turnout of 62 percent or more, voters rejected reformist youth calls for a boycott and some said they meant their vote to be a slap in the face of US President George W. Bush. In the lead is Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran and a hardliner close to the Islamist vigilantes ("Basij") of the grass roots Khomeinist movement. Coming in close second is former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a conservative pragmatist who dealt with the Americans during the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal. They will face each other in a run-off next Friday. Wire services report,

“I picked Ahmadinejad to slap America in the face,” said Mahdi Mirmalek after attending Friday prayers at Tehran University.
At Tehran University, the leader of Friday prayers, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, told worshippers that voting “strengthens the pillars of the ruling Islamic establishment.” Followers then joined in with the common chant of “Death to America!”

The vote is a repudiation of the relatively timid reform movement of outgoing president Mohammad Khatami, which never delivered an improved economy or administration. Its attempts to open up the Khomeinist system to greater personal liberties and greater freedom of speech were relentlessly blocked by the hardline clerics that controlled the judiciary and other oversight bodies. The Right closed dozens of reformist newspapers and cracked down on student demonstrations. The most outspoken reformist on the ballot, Mostafa Moin, did poorly. He had initially been excluded by the hardline clerics that vet Iranian candidates, but was put back on the ballot at the insistence of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. A more moderate reformer, Mehdi Karrubi, came in third and charged ballot fraud by the Revolutionary Guards who supported Ahmadinejad.

It is likely that the Iranian electorate's swing to the Right reflects in part a deep unease about being surrounded by the United States, which has troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Post-revolutionary Iranians are nationalistic and determined to maintain their national independence, and all the talk by the Bush administration about regime change, aggressive action against Iran over its nuclear research program [which so far appears to have been conducted within the limits set by the Non-Proliferation Treaty], and the illegitimacy of the Iranian elections themselves, appears to have contributed to the greater success of the hardliners.

Ahmadinejad is a very bad character, with a long history of essentially fascist activity in suppressing points of view other than those of the hardline Khomeinists. He is said to have plotted the murder of novelist Salman Rushdie and to have been involved in planning terrorist actions by Iranian agents in the 1980s. Ironically, in Iranian terms he is a "Neoconservative," the opposite number of the Cheneys, Perles and Feiths in the United States.

I did some research on how the domestic scene is put together in Iran, and it is interesting that indeed there is a segment labeled 'neoconservative' that is closely tied to the religious establishment and the bazaaris, more traditionalist merchants of the informal economy that have a great deal of influence over affairs. An Interview with Ahmadinejad on IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency. What a great name for an agency. Anyway:

Nuclear energy is the scientific achievement of the Iranian nation. Our youth have crowned themselves with this achievement, via domestic technology and by reliance on their own knowledge. The energy belongs to the Iranian nation. Definitely, the progress of a nation can not be obstructed. Scientific, medical, and technical development of our nation is necessary.

I believe there are certain individuals that create a false mood. They want to portray the situation as critical, while there is no crisis here. The technology is at the disposal of the Iranian nation. Certain powers do not want to believe this. They resist a bit against accepting such a right, such an achievement of the Iranian nation. Their scientists and experts have admitted that the Iranian nation is entitled to this right.

I believe the problem can be solved with prudence and wisdom, by utilizing opportunity and relying on the endless power of the Iranian nation, through our self-confidence. The ongoing artificial mood is political sleight of hand. The mood aims to influence the Islamic Republic's domestic developments.

One can not impede scientific progress. You can see scientific progress everywhere in the world. One can not obstruct this movement. This is not something that can be prevented with an order. No one can deprive the Iranian nation of this right. They are vainly trying to stir conditions worldwide. They want to fan tension, create crisis to meet their transitory objectives.

That's a kind of psychological war; nothing else meets the objectives. That may not be the case. This is as if you want to deprive someone of industrial progress. This is something impossible. Industry is intertwined with the nature of an individual. Technical knowledge has now become an integral aspect of the Iranian psyche. You can not say that the Iranian nation should not use math, should not have physicians, should not build large dams, or should not be able to build a refinery or a plane.

So that is kind of disturbing, but interesting... Really shocking that they feel entitled to use technology, oh how could they ever be so crazy? :-P To put another point on this, Beeman said:

I think there is no question that the public, all the candidates, and the current establishment are completely unified on this point: Iran should be developing its nuclear industry.
Here's one point that utterly escapes us in the United States, and I really wish people in power could understand: The discourse on the nuclear question between the United States and Iran is almost a complete disconnect. The United States, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks Iran is going after nuclear weapons in order to do some damage to the United States and its allies. To put it really crudely, as one adviser connected to the White House told me, "Look, we know Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb to drop on Tel Aviv." This kind of statement just utterly and completely floors me.
The Iranian side of the discourse is that they want to be known and seen as a modern, developing state with a modern, developing industrial base. The history of relations between Iran and the West for the last hundred years has included Iran's developing various kinds of industrial and technological advances to prove to themselves--and to attempt to prove to the world--that they are, in fact, that kind of country.
The nuclear-power issue is exactly that. When Iranians talk about it, and talk about the United States, they say, "The United States is trying to repress us; they're trying to keep us down and keep us backward, make us a second-class nation. And we have the ability to develop a nuclear industry, and we're being told we're not good enough, or we can't." And this makes people furious--not just the clerical establishment, but this makes the person on the street, even 16- and 17-year-olds, absolutely boil with anger. It is such an emotional issue that absolutely no politician could ever back down on this question. But again, the public, when you ask them about nuclear weapons, they just sort of look at you like you are crazy. Because that's not even close to what it means to them.

Here are some links. Editor:Myself by Hossein Derakhshan, who is based in Toronto. He says that things are getting kind of scary.

Also check out Iranian Truth, IranScan1384, Free Thoughts on Iran, IranMania news service/portal, aptly named Brooding Persian, The Iranian Feminist Tribune, Adventures of Mr. Behi, and a huge friggin' list @ blogsbyiranians.com. And of course Iranians have many sites purely in Farsi.

More articles... bitterness about Iran's double apartheid based on gender and beliefs. I liked the different notes on freethoughts.org.
Finally then, I think this post by an Iranian student in Toronto rounded it out:

History seems to follow no pattern. The lesson is that there is simply no lesson to learn(*). Politics due to <put your favorite reason here> is not a deterministic game.

There is no guarantee of what is going to happen to Iran after this presidential elections and many of the heated debates going on about boycott or supporting a specific candidate are at best superficial.
I know this was a lousy post but I thought the nihilistic nonchalant should have a voice as well.
-----------
(*) Reminds me of "We learn from history that we never learn anything from history," as Hegel said.

A Nietszche quote from Mr Schwartz

Only after the last forest has been cut down, and perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, “We break the sword,” and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations.

Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind.  One trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared- this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth. . .

 -Nietzsche

Apple heart Intel?! What the?

It was strange to hear that Apple is really going to switch to Intel chips soon in the future. Was the PowerPC faith all for nothing?! They are going to produce a program called Rosetta that can convert old PPC code to Intel code, at an estimated speed of around 70 to 80 percent of native. Motley Fool on the Chip Wars. Also ZDnet on "Just one straw remains on the camel's back" in this case.

Macs basically don't get viruses, Except of course there are macro viruses in Microsoft Office documents. But check out the tales on this thread at DealMac.com. Doesn't that sound better than the Windows experience?

A story about switching from Mac to PC in an office. Well, strange stuff for Apple, what can I say?

Yet another Downing Street Memo as the Patriot Act sweeps aside Democracy

The British security bureaucracy has done it again, as another exciting memo from 2002 has leaked out, this one more closely detailing how the Brits feared the consequences of an illegal invasion of Iraq. Check out Walter Pincus' story in the WaPo, vs. the rather more intense one in the London Times, as well as one from a couple days ago about how America finally learned about the memo... Juan Cole has informed comment on the memos:

It makes me deeply ashamed as an American in the tradition of Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and King, that in their private communications our international allies openly admit that the United States of America routinely disregards international law. The Geneva Conventions were enacted by the United Nations and adopted into national law in order to assure that Nazi-style violations of basic human rights never again occurred without the threat of punishment after the war. We have an administration that views the Geneva Conventions as "quaint." The US has vigorously opposed the International Criminal Court.

The cabinet briefing, like Lord Goldsmith, is skeptical that any of the three legal grounds for war existed with regard to Iraq. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US or the UK. Saddam's regime was brutal, but its major killing sprees were in the past in 2002. And, the UNSC had not authorized a war against Iraq.
[.......]
The polite diplomatic language hides the implications that there would be a global black psy-ops campaign in favor of the war, conducted from London. Since the rest of the briefing already admits that there was no legal justification for action, the proposal of an information campaign that would maintain that such a justification existed must be seen as deeply dishonest.

One press report said that the British military had planted stories in the American press aimed at getting up the Iraq war. A shadowy group called the Rockingham cell was apparently behind it. Similar disinformation campaigns have been waged by Israeli military intelligence, aiming at influencing US public opinion. (Israeli intelligence has have even planted false stories about its enemies in Arabic newspapers, in hopes that Israeli newspapers would translate them into Hebrew and English, and they would be picked up as credible from there in the West)

Also check out a couple earlier posts on British memos, the WMD spoof and etc. As well as Cole's recent piece in Salon about Iraq.

Meanwhile, in a disturbing display of anti-democratic tendencies, Wisconsin Rep. Sensenbrenner got infuriated as the House committee he chairs discussed the upcoming renewal of everyone's favorite piece of righteous legislation, the Patriot Act. They halted in the middle of the hearing, and it was an awful display of the surprisingly rapid erosion of our democracy. And then they cut the Democrats' mikes off. I can't find the damn links & video clip I had of this. Will post later.

So now we have AfterDowningStreet.org as well as DowningStreetMemo.com, both sites devoted to discussing the real meaning of these memos as well as what sorts of political action people ought to take in response. They're putting a petition together, to go along with Rep. Conyers letter to the President:

Dear Mr. President:
We the undersigned write because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war.
Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."
In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions: 
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document? 
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?
These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

In a not very related matter, something is going on between the Pentagon and China. Also check out the story of the trojan programs that the Israeli police found all over many different companies.

Now available: Warspying and music produced by Iraq troops on Teh Scene

A couple interesting things reflect how it's becoming easier to come up with original content and offer it up. First I found a link to a video by some young guys at Systm.org (not to be confused with the pretentious System.net 'global aesthetic conditioning'). They released a short video about 'warspying,' or modifying a wireless video camera receiver, putting it in a cash box, with a little LCD screen on it. The guys drive around town and capture other people's unencrypted video transmissions.

So these guys made a short video, complete with custom circuit diagrams, and distributed it over BitTorrent (high quality Quicktime / Windows Media torrents). Related links: Kevin Rose's blog (or this), one of the guys on the video, a very rich Technorati tag, review of the show on O'Reilly's Makezine.com, also randomculture.com, an earlier project called thebroken.org, switcherman.com is their project blog, they got the /. and CNet stories the lucky bastards.

So this would be an example of putting yourself in the right spots for a PR offensive online.

Stuff like podcasting is becoming increasingly popular and sites like podnova and ipodderx provide a constant source of these home brewed audio broadcasts. The idea is that such content might finally fulfill the promise of the internet etc etc.... Meanwhile people can hook into streams of links like those at Make Magazine put onto del.icio.us.

Looking around at this led me to some interesting sites. Digg.com is sort of like MetaFilter for geeks. Fromtheshadows.tv is another crew that put together some videos including another one about the fun of hacking into wireless data connections ("0wning 2.4GHz" is a great name for an episode)

Meanwhile military guys are starting to release rap music, such as the guys featured in Gunner Palace. There was a major feature on MetaFilter about this with many links.

Hackermedia.net gets points for the obvious name, and links to many other little internet TV shows. My favorite title is "Teh Scene" (not a typo). Good luck to all these kids.

Meanwhile such operations as Guerrilla News Network are still rolling along, and let's not forget the classic video they released some time ago, "Crack the CIA" about the links between cocaine trafficking and intelligence agencies.

Google has gotten this insane three-dimensional flyover map thing... not available to the public yet. Or is it some kind of 3D mapping truck scheme where lasers measure the dimensions of buildings to generate maps. Wow.

I just learned today that there is a peace-based organization down the street @ 1045 Selby Ave., Friends for a Non-Violent World and a buddy of mine is interning there.

You can take CEH (certified ethical hacker) exams now. and practice for them.

Hollywood paid for video cameras in LA to catch bootleg DVD vendors. No comment necessary. Located here to be precise.

Oh great, a 'Minnesota court takes dim view of encryption' as they rule that having PGP software on your computer can be seen as part of malicious intent, in this case against some kiddie porn guy.

Your misc blogs: brainwagon.org , mckinneysucks (discontinued since last January, and I don't agree, but it's funny) freedomhater, israelpundit, neocon-insanity, Sabbah's blog. It's the info age and it's all gravy.

Technorati Tags: cia, google, minnesota, encryption, rap, warspying

Memorial Day and a dissolving social sphere

So I have been settling into this new apartment. It's a cool spot to be at, and everyone likes the front porch's lofty perch above Selby Avenue. However, the relaxation of summer has been disrupted by the departures of so many of my best friends from school... Peter, Tim and Chris took off over the last couple days, and it really stings to realize I won't see those guys for a long time.

On the plus side Adam Gerber and Arthur Cheng are back in town for a while... And of course there are still plenty of people around town until at least the end of the summer.

With the ridiculous charges against me still to be resolved (obstruction of legal process with force), it adds some little bit of tension to my whole situation. I have to call into my Conditional Release officer every week, or else face Something Bad Happening. Until the charges go away, getting nailed any little thing, probably even jaywalking, could send me right back to jail. That's a horrible feeling, but at least it adds... zest, I guess.

And hey, I've got a new computer now, a fine graduation gift. A G5 tower with dual processors @ 2.4 GHz should keep me occupied for quite a while. You wouldn't believe how many friggin browser windows I can have open. Top Notch.

Ok ok... so I suppose everyone would like some interesting stuff to look at. I have been piling up the links for a few days, so I think these chunks of info will have to go into a few posts.

Memorial Day: It started oddly, as I finished packing my stuff from the house at 1834 Grand Avenue, as plumes of carpet fibers and decades of dust mite feces plumed around me. My former landlord Scott, in his infinite wisdom, decided that the fetid, ancient carpets of the living room and bedrooms needed to be ripped out Right Away. I couldn't pack my stuff with all the dust, as he chopped them up with a razor blade. I left for about 45 minutes and when I returned, he had shut and locked all the windows, locking in all the trillions of particles of dust and shit. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that those old carpets (pre-1995, I learned) were responsible in part for my sniffles and nasty coughs over the last 24 months.

And I spent a while in the final embrace of Cable, sweet sweet cable. I packed all night long in the dust, and as the sun on Memorial Day rose, I watched the patriotic programming fire up. Very early, Saint Paul Network News carried a Democracy Now! special feature on "Preventive Warriors," which was really pretty damn good. Then they played ironic music to footage of American bombers cruising over Southeast Asia. The program ended with "THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULERS" on the credits, and SPNN clicked back on to bombastic music over the usual slideshow. (speaking of DN, here's a fun bit with Seymour Hersh about Israeli agents in Iran Iraq and Syria)

A few hours later the plug was pulled for good. Brit Hume is a fading memory.

So then, what about the nameless soldiers, the ones who get wiped out by an IED or friendly fire or disease or the heat or a suicide or a RPG or a helicopter crash. State Rep. Becky Lourey's son met his end only a few days ago. The war touches lots of people, it takes them away. That is the essential moral framework of the issue. The Hiawatha light rail cruises past the National Cemetery before it reaches the Mall of America. How excellent that people should be reminded of the many who left this world in the name of serving the calling for their nation, before they enter that edifice of materialism and sheer idolatry.

I curse the anti-war folks for somehow not making the connection with the rest of the country, to help them understand that we value the people of our military the most highly when we protect them from having to go to these places, before we force them to make terrible decisions and compromise their morals. To respect their sacrifice is to reduce the amount of sacrificing that the leaders deem necessary.

The argument of our time is that "he/she did what they had to do," be they the insurgent, the soldier, the settler, the terrorist, the drug smuggler, the lobbyist, the PR flack, the factory laborer. Politics and ethics these days are situational — there is no good platform to stand on anymore. To protect and respect our soldiers, we should have kept them out of the Casbah in Ramadi and Fallujah, the teeming slums that we couldn't begin to really understand. We should never have put these young folks in the irrational position of having to decide these matters of life and death, always without the adequate information, guidance and leadership from the top needed to make sane decisions.

I've met quite a few people in the active service, the reserves, veterans and the recently discharged. They're of all sorts, came in misfits and down on their luck, looking for some sort of money and some sort of structure. They got worldly whether they wanted to or not. Haiti, Somalia, parachute missions into North Korea, the base complexes of Europe. Cogs in a vast machine, leveraging its power over the whole world.

As an atheist, the tragedies that pile up, one after another, becoming all the more bitter as I realize that their souls don't get some kind of automatic nice ride to somewhere sweet — isn't that a common thread binding the true Islamic fundamentalists and their monotheistic brethren?

I want to toast those many fallen Americans and their counterparts in the living world. They are trying to do what they have to do with some kind of morality, and some kind of a goal in mind, even if it is bitterly impossible to reach. I wish their top leadership wasn't totally crazy, and I wish that they hadn't gotten snagged in Iraq, fighting ghosts. We should redouble our efforts to get them out of this mess, and rip the lunatics away from the ability to give these folks orders.

AIPAC and the fake intel connection: noose tightens?

I'd like to note the unceremonious dismissal of some top AIPAC officials, due to the fact they were allegedly passing intelligence and secret government machinations about Iran to Israeli intelligence. This would apparently be fallout from the Larry Franklin scandal.

This particular case gnaws at the underpinnings of the case for war, and as more information becomes widely know about how much stuff was truly fabricated in order to start the Invasion of Iraq, it will extract a political price from the neo-cons and perhaps one day lead to their downfall.

Certainly John Bolton's role in spoofing information and intimidating honest analysts has become more prominent in recent weeks... even with all the madness in the Capitol regarding judicial nominees and the Nuclear Option, arguments about the threat they pose to "National Security" could still make a difference. Maybe the Democrats should take this and run with it for 2006?

Raimondo at Antiwar.com describes his view with characteristic bluntness:

...the FBI clearly has the goods, not only on Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman, but on AIPAC as well. They don't just start launching raids on one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington for the fun of it: this investigation has been going on for at least two years, and something has been sustaining it. Mowbray and Israel's amen corner insist it's anti-Semitism, but is AIPAC, too, part of the Vast Anti-Semitic Conspiracy? The once-powerful lobby is now running away as fast as possible from these two because they're the victims of a pogrom?

A nest of spies in the Pentagon, determined to bend policy – and the rules governing the dissemination of top secret materials – to Israel's benefit. That's what the FBI investigation has uncovered, and it's no accident that the core of this espionage cell is located in the policy department of the Pentagon, formerly overseen by Douglas J. Feith, who resigned earlier this year. Why did he resign so suddenly? Perhaps we are about to find out.

Franklin worked in the bureau for Near East and South Asian Affairs, under William J. Luti, until he was reassigned in the wake of the scandal: it was Luti who presided over the infamous Office of Special Plans, which was responsible for "stove-piping" patently false "intelligence" on Iraq prior to the invasion. According to Julian Borger of the Guardian, there was an identical unit based in Israel that was funneling phony intelligence to key decision-makers: Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, now retired, also witnessed a strong Israeli connection, with IDF officers exempted from having to sign in on visits to agency facilities. What is under investigation by the FBI is what Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, writing in Mother Jones, dubbed "the shadow agency within an agency" – Israel's fifth column in the Defense Department.

John Bolton is fux0red

Read this: "Is John Bolton Going Down? An amazing afternoon at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By Fred Kaplan"

you can download the most unlikely video of the committee hearing that halted Bolton's march. NY Times reports. Reuters. Agonist.org Bolton Watch thread.

Wow, yesterday was an unexpected political victory for the "reality-based community" as somehow Republican Senator Voinovich from Ohio (something of a maverick) said he wouldn't vote to get John Bolton out of his nominating committee. This came out of the blue and apparently surprised everyone. Now there are three more weeks to accumulate nasty information about Bolton and his radical duplicitousness, and I'd say he's probably toast.

This is without a doubt the first major public setback the neoconservative clique has had since the election. Aside from the harm to Bolton's reputation, his little trial is causing all sorts of well-cemented lies about the war (and WMD lies, in particular the Niger case) to slide apart. This could go very far, and there is quite a bit of energy suddenly floating around. It seems possible that moderate Republicans see a need to push back against DeLay-Bolton-style embarassingly corrupt petulance and bullying, let alone their many crimes and pathological lying.

The long-awaited Return of the Establishment Conservatives may be at hand, and the Great Battle of RightWing ThinkTankery may yet unfold. Perhaps Lewis Libby will go to jail after an opportune leak about the Valerie Plame CIA case, perhaps Cheney will have to resign. As the Republicans seem to be agitated like a tank of hungry piranhas, and the Lame Duck air that Bush reeked of back in 2001 has returned with force.

Washington Post: "Bolton often blocked information, officials say", somewhat related "The Neocons' Unabashed Reversal" by Michael Kinsley. A tidbit about Bolton lying about Cuba.

I have bumped into some nice blogs about the subject, some new, some not. Democracy Arsenal, Washington Note is totally essential, Obsidian Wings, War and Piece, Arms Control Wonk, Stygius, Mattie Yglesias, Juan Cole, hey why not CounterPunch?

Slate on some specific allegations:

The allegations were made by at least seven officials who have been interviewed by the committee staff (and leaked or otherwise provided to the press) as well as, in a public hearing, by Carl Ford, a conservative Republican and career intelligence official who, until recently, was assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. They boil down to these: On at least five occasions, Bolton intimidated and tried to get fired intelligence analysts at the State Department and the CIA who disagreed with his views. A former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a letter to the committee stating that during one run-in with Bolton, while she was working on projects in Kyrgyzstan, he harassed her in a Moscow hotel lobby, banged on her door, then went to Kyrgyzstan and spread lies about her—saying she was being investigated for absconding with government funds—that nearly derailed her work. Several officials have claimed, though anonymously for now, that Bolton blocked official documents about Iran from moving up the chain of command to Colin Powell.

During his hearings, Bolton was asked about some of these matters. He said that he'd asked for the reassignment of one intelligence analyst not because of a dispute over substance but because the analyst had gone behind his back. This claim has been thoroughly rebutted by several witnesses, who affirm that the dispute was over substantive intelligence analysis. A small but telling lie: When Biden asked Bolton whether he personally drove out to CIA headquarters to pressure one high-ranking official to fire the national intelligence officer for Latin American affairs, Bolton said that he'd gone there mainly to ask about intelligence procedures and that he drove there on his way home from work—it was no special trip. Biden said today that he'd since received Bolton's logs for that day. It turned out he made the trip in the morning, then came back to the State Department for a full day's work.

On a totally unrelated note, the George W. Bush conspiracy generator is awesome. It gave me "George W. Bush lowered taxes so that big corporations could oppress transgendered people."

Other stuff: More about oil-for-food, the real deal. That weird fake hostage thing shows sectarian tension growing. FT: Sunni Arabs face dilemma. Shiite bloc plans purge of Saddam-era officials. BBC: "Iraq militias 'could beat rebels'". A Hole in Bush's Exit Strategy (interesting stuff about Privatized Military Firms SAIC etc) Cockburn: "Iraqi Peace in Tatters". Is God taking sides in Iraq?

Fear and loathing with Republicans.

Israel's Military "Justice" system in occupied territories.

What the fuck are these Minutemen, really?

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.

More stories of the fake intelligence and John "the Moustache" Bolton

Well Mr Bolton is winding his way through Washington and things look more dicey than many expected. He will probably get in, and go on to start Armageddon sometime this summer, but at least his nomination caused some mostly hidden contradictions about how we went to war in Iraq to burble up in Washington. It's pretty widely known that Bolton was an essential part of the war scheme.

I have returned yet again to the questions of Chalabi and fake intelligence that enabled the drive to war. The interview with a former CIA officer, Vincent Cannistaro basically describes the process of how the U.S. convinced itself to invade Iraq as an instance where the intelligence process went in "reverse," and various obviously false stories were pushed along at just the right moments and places through the system. (he also said that the Niger forgeries were manufactured in the U.S.)

I want to put huge chunks of this in, because it involves the closest details of how the members of Congress were wrongfully persuaded to support the war:

...there was an awful lot of so-called information coming from Iraqi exiles, primarily Ahmed Chalabi’s INC—the Iraqi National Congress. And that seemed to have a very receptive audience in some areas of the government, particularly at the Defense Department and at the vice president’s office. These were reports that tended to support the preconception of the administration that Saddam Hussein needed to be gotten rid of, and the primary reason for doing that was that he was in imminent possession of weapons of mass destruction, which could be turned against the United States of America or its allies.

So in that kind of environment — where there’s a tremendous policy need for information and you don’t have a great deal of source information that’s proprietary — then that’s how information that seems to be comprehensive, coming in from a foreign source, is overemphasized.
[.....]
The interesting thing to me is that the only DIA analyst who ever met with Curveball — who went to Germany and was given access to him — came back with an assessment which was very, very negative.

The problem was: what happened to his assessment? It didn’t get reported up through the senior levels of DIA — and therefore it didn’t get disseminated to CIA — until the Germans were directly queried by CIA on Curveball. That’s when they said, “Look this guy may be a fabricator, don’t trust any of his information.” His information had already gotten into the system, because it had been disseminated by the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And it had been distributed through our government, where of course in some sectors — particularly the Defense Department policymakers civilian policy makers and at the vice president’s office — it found an extremely receptive audience.

It was believed because it fit the preconceptions of those policy makers. Now, why did the CIA — which ultimately was responsible for putting the National Intelligence Estimate together in 2002, which was the most critical assessment of any intelligence report that the U.S. government has to offer — put the information in there and play a part in its key judgment of alleged WMD programs by Saddam Hussein? And that’s the question which is still not answered. We do know that some of the analysts at CIA were very suspicious of the Curveball information, as well as information provided by other so-called Iraqi defectors in exile. But that information, that assessment, was reported up through the chain of command at CIA, but apparently nothing was done about it.
[.....]
...the point is that it’s being taken as conventional wisdom that there really wasn’t any pressure by policy makers on the analytical process itself. And that’s just simply not true. It’s simply not true because analysts, generally, are like anyone else. They are concerned about their careers, their futures. Many of them are ambitious. If they understand that a dissenting opinion against the conventional policy wisdom is heard, that it’s going to affect their careers. There was a chilled environment in which to express any kind of opposite opinion.

Not only that, there wasn’t very much of a receptiveness at the senior levels of the CIA — at George Tenet’s level, for example, because he was a very political director. And he was very concerned about getting along with the administration. He was formerly a Democrat, appointed by a Democratic President and he had to stay on in a Republican administration. And he had to compete with a secretary of defense, Rumsfeld, who really didn’t want the CIA playing a large role in the intelligence community, and wanted to supplant that role. So, George had a more political bent. He wanted to get along, and therefore he had to play along. And “playing along” really meant to sustain the conceptions of the policy makers — particularly at the Pentagon and the vice president’s office — that Saddam Hussein was a real and imminent danger.

To do that, you had to accept some of these alarming reports that kept coming in, being fed by Ahmed Chalabi and his INC group. In many cases, the information was fabricated. Information, for example, about an alleged attempt by Saddam Hussein to acquire nuclear material, uranium, from Niger. This, we know now, was all based on fabricated documents. But it’s not clear yet — either from this report, or from any other report — who fabricated the documents.

The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and you had to do it soon to avoid the catastrophe that would be produced by Saddam Hussein’s use of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Q: Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ... it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE—I’m not sure which one.

It was SISME, yeah. ... [D]uring the two-thousands when we’re talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn’t that anyone had a good source on Iraq—there weren’t any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

Q: Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion ...

I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case...

Q: If I said “Michael Ledeen”?

You’d be very close . . .

The great thing about John Bolton is that he was a key element of the scheme, as he managed to Box In Colin Powell.

Here's a great post from Antiwar.com which sums up a great deal of the story. Also interesting is the claim that the famous Curveball was in fact the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides.

The stroke of genius was to put Bolton into the "Arms Control" undersecretary slot, where he could make hell for Colin Powell, going over him and behind his back, intimidating the segment of analysts who correctly believed that the WMD stuff (needed to build up the imaginary threat from Saddam Hussein) was really, truly fake.

Bolton also seems to be an enthusiast about using the weird MEK matriarch cult/terrorist organization/something-or-other, which opposes the Iranian government, as an instrument to bring them down. (via the well named armscontrolwonk.com) StopBolton.org, yet another website dedicated to an impossible cause. (informative agonist.org news thread about Bolton)

So it seems that Bolton may have caused State Dept. employees to lie to Congress about where the WMD discrepancies came from. (Steve Clemons on the Washington Note is All About This) The Great Niger Uranium forgery returns to play a role, it seems. Rep. Henry Waxman (D) wrote a letter about this (PDF):

Concealment of a State Department Official's Role in the Niger Uranium Claim
In April 2004, the State Department used the designation "sensitive but unclassified" to conceal unclassified information about the role of John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, in the creation of a fact sheet distributed to the United Nations that falsely claimed Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

On December 19, 2002, the State Department issued a fact sheet entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council." (9) The fact sheet listed eight key areas in which the Bush Administration found fault with Iraq's weapons declaration to the United Nations on December 7, 2002. Under the heading "Nuclear Weapons," the fact sheet stated:

The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.
Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?

It was later discovered that this claim was based on fabricated documents. (10) In addition, both State Department intelligence officials and CIA officials reported that they had rejected the claim as unreliable. (11) As a result, it was unclear who within the State Department was involved in preparing the fact sheet.

On July 21, 2003, I wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for an explanation of the role of John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, in creating the document. (12) On September 25, 2003, the State Department responded with a definitive denial: "Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, John R. Bolton, did not play a role in the creation of this document." (13)

Subsequently, however, I joined six other members of the Government Reform Committee in requesting from the State Department Inspector General a copy of an unclassified "chronology" on how the fact sheet was developed. (14) This chronology described a meeting on December 18, 2002, between Secretary Powell, Mr. Bolton, and Richard Boucher, the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Public Affairs. According to this chronology, Mr. Boucher specifically asked Mr. Bolton "for help developing a response to Iraq's Dec 7 Declaration to the United Nations Security Council that could be used with the press. According to the chronology, which is phrased in the present tense, Mr. Bolton "agrees and tasks the Bureau of Nonproliferation," a subordinate office that reports directly to Mr. Bolton, to conduct the work.

This unclassified chronology also stated that on the next day, December 19, 2003, the Bureau of Nonproliferation "sends email with the fact sheet, 'Fact Sheet Iraq Declaration.doc.'" to Mr. Bolton's office (emphasis in original). A second e-mail was sent a few minutes later, and a third e-mail was sent about an hour after that. According to the chronology, each version "still includes Niger reference." Although Mr. Bolton may not have personally drafted the document, the chronology appears to indicate that he ordered its creation and received updates on its development.

Waxman's a good guy on some important matters, and has done stuff about the famous Cheney energy task force, Halliburton and other stuff...

Bolton was also tied to some sketchy business and foreign fundraising, as well.

More about Google searches: I am happy to have the top Google result for "disinformation designed to direct the united states in a certain direction," a quote from Dr. Rashid Khalidi regarding the wild stories used to persuade Americans to support invading Iraq, from a Mac Weekly interview in October 2003:

DF: A Frontline interview with Richard Perle was published with the documentary “Truth, War and Consequences.” He talked about the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which reviewed intelligence on Iraq prior to the war. Perle said the office was staffed by David Wurmser, another author of the Clean Break document. Perle says that the office “began to find links that nobody else had previously understood or recorded in a useful way.” Were the neo-cons turning their ideology into intelligence data, and putting that into the government?

RK: I can give you a short answer to that which is yes. Insofar as at least two of the key arguments that they adduced, the one having to do the connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, and the one having to do with unconventional weapons programs in Iraq, it is clear that the links or the things they had claimed to have found were non-existent. The wish was fathered to the reality. What they wanted was what they found.

It was not just the Office of Special Plans, or whatever. There are a lot of institutions in Washington that were devoted to putting this view forward. Among them, other parts of the bureaucracy, and the vice president’s national security staff. [....] Basically any fantasy that Chalabi's people brought in, “we have a defector who says,” was turned into gold by these folks.

We now know this stuff, with a few exceptions, to be completely and utterly false, just manufactured disinformation designed to direct the United States in a certain direction. Whether the neo-cons knew this or not is another question, but I believe Chalabi’s people knew it. I would be surprised if some of them didn’t know it.

So apparently Mr. Bolton was the man at State making the disinformation happen. That's not a great reason to send him to the UN, but it is a fabulous reason to send him to prison.

Israel's Internal War (coming soon)

Haaretz: PM: Settlement blocs to stay ours in any final deal

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking at a new conference with President George W. Bush in Texas on Monday, said large West Bank settlement blocs would remain in Israeli hands in the framework of any final status agreement with the Palestinians.

"The settlement blocs will remain in Israel's hands in any final-status agreement no matter the repercussions entailed," Sharon said.

"We are very interested in having (territorial) contiguity between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, however the matter will take many years and we will have many more opportunities to discuss it with the Americans," Sharon added.

Bush, concerned about the progress of negotiations toward peace in the Middle East, asked Sharon both publicly and privately Monday not to expand the key West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim.

PM: Atmosphere in Israel looks like eve of civil war
In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Sharon spoke of the growing threat of violence by extreme-right Jewish activists in Israel ahead of the disengagement plan.

"The tension here [in Israel], the atmosphere here looks like the eve of the civil war," Sharon said. He also said that although he had been defending Jews all his life, steps are now taken to protect his own life from attacks by Jews.

PBS Frontline "Days of Rage":

Scene III: Late February, the Jerusalem headquarters of the Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza
Twenty-five settler leaders gather in emergency session around a long polished boardroom table a day after the cabinet's authorization of Sharon's plan. The morning is devoted to political and PR action against the plan, the afternoon to "practical steps." The leaders emerge with a two-pronged strategy: to go on pressing for a referendum on disengagement and, failing that, to flood the areas designated for evacuation with tens or even hundreds of thousands of supporters to help settlers physically block police and army efforts to remove them. The council members set up a "general staff" to work out the details. Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein, who a few days earlier declared that settlers and their supporters should be "ready to risk their lives" to reach the evacuation areas, dubs it the "Judgment Day" team.

These scenes demonstrate what lies ahead in the struggle over evacuation. Together they reveal the three major strategies that Israeli authorities expect opponents of disengagement to adopt: precipitating "a cata-clysmic event that changes the course of history"; using the system to beat the system; and scuttling the disengagement plan by sheer weight of numbers.
[.....]
Besides the threat to [Ariel] Sharon, the police identify two other potentially "cataclysmic" events: An attack on the mosques of the Temple Mount, sacred to Muslims the world over; or indiscriminate gunning down of Arab civilians, following the example of Kahanist Baruch Goldstein's massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs in February 1994. An event of either kind could inflame the Muslim world, disrupt the nascent accommodation with the new Palestinian leadership and jeopardize Sharon's disengagement plan.

In early February police reported "intelligence of a general sort" of an impending attack on the Temple Mount. On February 22, National Police Chief Moshe Karadi told the Knesset's Finance Committee that he wanted 187 more men and an additional 61 million shekels ($14 million) to beef up security at the holy site. Over the next few days, police called in the media to show the tight measures already in place to cope with what they see as an emergency situation: cameras in strategic places, stringent body checks for all visitors, ground patrols and spotter planes.

Today I heard Bush and Sharon's press conference in Texas, wherein Bush basically handed the major West Bank settlement blocs to the Likud, and "at least" managed to extract a promise from Sharon to remove the more recent outposts and freeze construction. This disturbed the morality of my worldview, and came as yet another signal reinforcing the new Israeli-American hegemon in all its ever-expanding glory. However, the engine of this spatial acquisition, the settlers themselves, will prove to be a hazardous geopolitical tool as political friction increases inside Israel...

I'm going to turn this one over to a bunch of extended blockquotes.... I want to go to bed and leave these elements for the record. See also the extended section...

Also, shame on the neoconservatives who have, by and large, supported the Likud party quite closely, since of course neo-cons have an ideological debt to the patron saint of Likud, Vladimir "Iron Wall" Jabotinsky. I have been over this all before, but now we are really going to see the nasty fallout from their militant ideas...

There are rumors that Israeli settlers will try to attack the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa complex in Old Jerusalem in July, in order to Precipitate a Regional Conflict and forestall the evacuation of settlers from Gaza and a few West Bank points. On the other hand, Hezbollah sent an unmanned drone whizzing into northern Israel. Things nearly got out of hand just the other day:

Haaretz: Vigorous law enforcement needed:

Rightists opposed to the disengagement, including MKs Aryeh Eldad, Uri Ariel, Yehiel Hazan and Michael Ratzon, wanted to go to the Temple Mount yesterday during Muslim prayers, to actualize what they called "the State of Israel's sovereignty" over the site. They apparently forgot that the decision on the content and meaning attributed to the historic cry, "The Temple Mount is in our hands," is not in the hands of MKs or the citizens of the state, but rather in the hands of the political echelon of the government.

Given the level of sensitivity at present, Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra's decision not to allow the rightist MKs to reach the mount was particularly justified. Security considerations can override the special "freedom of movement" afforded MKs. Calls by the Revava organization for a mass demonstration of Jews on the Temple Mount created the "real possibility" of violence. The relative quiet with which the Muslim prayers ended yesterday is not necessarily a harbinger of what is yet to come.

While the police were concentrating enormous forces on and around the mount yesterday to prevent violence, rightist activists managed to surprise the police by blocking a major transportation route - the Ayalon highway. The demonstrators burned tires and blocked traffic in both directions during the morning rush-hour traffic. The police gradually managed to open the route and arrested dozens of activists. This was not the first time the highway was blocked. Presumably, in the coming months there will be more scenes of refusal to obey the law on main thoroughfares.

ArabNews.com:

Prevent Jewish Moves on Al-Aqsa: Cabinet
JEDDAH, 12 April 2005 — Saudi Arabia yesterday called for prompt action by the international community to prevent Jewish extremists from invading the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and warned that such moves could destabilize the region.

The Council of Ministers, chaired by Crown Prince Abdullah, said that the move by ultranationalist Jews would also derail the Middle East peace process.

“The move by Israeli extremists to storm into Al-Aqsa Mosque will endanger security and stability in the Palestinian territories as well as the region as a whole and will obstruct all efforts to establish peace in the region,” said a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

Haaretz:

IDF to disarm four West Bank settlements set for evacuation
Jewish settlers in four West Bank settlements will be disarmed about two weeks before they are to be removed from their homes this summer, military officials said Monday, reflecting growing concern that settler resistance to a West Bank pullback will be particularly intense.

Settlers, however, said they would not give up their weapons.

Israel plans to dismantle all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank in July and August, removing about 9,000 Israelis from their homes. While the Gaza operation will be much larger, Israeli officials have grown increasingly worried about violence in the West Bank.

Gaza is surrounded by a barrier and access can be easily controlled, while West Bank settlements can be reached from many directions. The West Bank also holds special significance for religious Jews, raising the likelihood that Jewish ultranationalists might pour into the West Bank settlements to resist the evacuations.

Military officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said troops will collect all military-issue weapons from residents of the four settlements slated for evacuation about two weeks before the pullout. Military commanders expect more settler resistance in the West Bank than in Gaza, the officials said.

Gaza settlers will also be disarmed, although the timing of the weapons collection remains unclear, they added.

The West Bank withdrawal, meanwhile, is increasingly shaping up to be a more complicated operation than the Gaza evacuation. "We are worried more about settlers coming from the outside, not necessarily the residents," said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Yedioth Ahronoth daily quoted a senior military officer as saying "violent cells" have already been established in two of the West Bank settlements slated for evacuation, Sa-Nur and Homesh. The four settlements have a total population of about 500 people.

PBS Frontline: Israel's Next War? Against the Extremists: (interview with producer)

How many people are we talking about -- those who believe the country should be exclusively Jewish?

Latest polls show that 30 percent of the people in Israel support the idea that the land belongs exclusively to the people of Israel, to the Jews, and that the state should be exclusively Jewish.

Can you break down this 30 percent into smaller groups?

Think of it as a pyramid. At the very bottom is the foundation, the ideology. At this bottom level you get to those who believe that Israel should be inhabited by Jews only, that the Arabs should find another place to live in. Go higher and you have less people, but more determined ones, who say something should be done to reach that goal. At the very top are the people who are willing to do something about this themselves, to take some action to escalate events, to help bring about the final biblical redemption. They are a small minority, but it only takes a few to change the course of history. We saw what happened when one man assassinated Prime Minister Rabin [Yigal Amir]. It stopped the peace process, changed its course. It took a while until it was resumed again. This was a very traumatic event that is still fresh. It has not been forgotten.

Now there's a chance that we resume the process. And what the security forces and many people in Israel are concerned about is that some of these extremists will derail the fragile process again, using violent means.

Is there a sense that the security forces and the media didn't take these extremists seriously enough before Rabin's assassination in 1995?

Yes, very much so. Or else how can you explain the easy way in which it happened? No one believed this was possible. That a Jew would murder a Jew?… Even those who did not accept Rabin's views and his ways were shocked at the very fact that this was possible, that it happened. And if it happened once, it can happen again. Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, came from the same circles, the same ideology as the people in the film. He might be from a different background, but he shares the same values and was just as determined as they are. In essence the extremists are very much against the way Israel is run and want to change it. They want a Jewish Kingdom, a monarchy. They want a king. They want the Torah to be the law.
[....]
What did [convicted violent settler] Shlomi and the others think of the film?

The people I portray in the film, and many like them, weren't shocked by what they saw. They felt I represented what they believed in, although I'm told they didn't like the tone.

The wider Israeli audience [see press reaction in Israel] was shocked by what these guys had to say. Again, they knew about radical settlers, but suddenly, it came to them in full color along with the real "revelation" if you want, that having the Arabs leave is only their first step. What the extremists really want is a different kind of country altogether. A different way of life. They don't want a democratic state. They don't want a country with Western elements. They don't want a country with cinema and television and what have you, all the Western kind of culture, Western music, secular books and all that. They want a pure Jewish country. A Jewish theocracy with a king who rules by the law of the Torah. They want a Temple. They want to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount and rebuild the temple that's their temple. They want to have sacrificial rituals.

Frontline excerpts "Talking with Jewish Extremists" by Jessica Stern:

...But what about the murder of [Itzak] Rabin? I ask. Do you believe it was religiously acceptable, given that there exists today no ultimate authority to sanction such a step?

"You've got a ticklish point," he says. "Contrary to popular belief, the highest value for a Jew is not the preservation of human or even of Jewish life. The highest value is doing what God wants you to do. So in an attempt to put Jewish values in a hierarchy, human life in general, Jewish life in particular, is high on the list. But it's not the top."

But how, I wonder, does a Jew know what God wants him or her to do in any given instance? Why is it that the only people who seem to know with absolute certainty are the people who become terrorists?

"There are a number of circumstances under which the individual is enjoined to take a Jewish life if necessary without consulting a court," Lerner continues. "If you see a person preparing to commit a capital crime -- rape or murder -- it is your duty to stop him. You must stop him any way you can. It's similar in some respects to the right Jewish law accords the individual to restore his own property from a thief if it is stolen. You don't have to bring him to court. If you can catch up with him, you can take your property back by force. You don't have to bother the court with stuff like that. Rabin was stealing Jewish property, proposing to give it away."

So the death of Rabin was simply "collateral damage" in an effort to recover stolen property, according to Lerner's convoluted reasoning. His murder would not even have required a ruling by the Sanhedrin, if it had existed.

"I had been convinced for some time that Rabin's death was coming, that it had to come," Lerner continues. "I understand what motivated Yigal Amir [Rabin's murderer]. I am convinced that he felt that Yitzhak Rabin was putting the survival of the Jewish people in danger by his policies. There was no other way of removing Rabin from the gun he was pointing at the Jewish people. I'm ninety-nine percent positive that that's what he thought. Honestly, I can't argue with it."

After his arrest, Amir proclaimed that the killing of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was justified, even commanded, by the rulings of Din Mosser and Din Rodef, as described in the Jewish religious law, or halakha.

According to the halakah, the rulings of Din Mosser and Din Rodef apply to those Jews who have committed the most despicable crime imaginable -- the betrayal of their fellow Jews. The punishment of the Mosser -- a person who hands over sacred Jewish property to the gentile -- as well as that of the Rodef -- a person who murders or facilitates the murder of Jews -- shall be death. Since the execution of the Mosser or the Rodef is aimed at saving the lives of other Jews, there is no need for a trial.
[....]
Kach and Kahane Chai were declared terrorist organizations in 1994 by the Israeli cabinet. The banning of the two groups followed one of the most well-known incidents of Jewish extremism, namely the massacre of twenty-nine Muslims in Hebron by Dr. Baruch Goldstein on February 25, 1994. Goldstein, a thirty-seven-year-old doctor and father of seven at the time of the shooting, was a prominent member of Kach. The group had issued statements supporting Goldstein's attack.

Both Kach and Kahane Chai organize protests against the Israeli government and harass and threaten Palestinians in Hebron and the West Bank. Groups affiliated with them have threatened to attack Arabs, Palestinians, and Israeli government officials. They claimed responsibility for several attacks of West Bank Palestinians in which four persons were killed and two were wounded in 1993. In April 2002, the current leader of Kach, Baruch Marzel, was arrested by Israeli police in connection with a plot to leave a trailer laden with two barrels of gasoline and two gas balloons outside a Palestinian girls' school in East Jerusalem. The West Bank settlements of Tapuah and Kiryat Arba are strongholds of the Kahanist movement. According to the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, both organizations receive support from American and European sympathizers. ...

I ask Erzion to explain his feeling of urgency about rebuilding the Temple. "If you seek the kernel of meaning in the Temple," he says, "it is akin to the meeting of love between the Jewish people and God, or the attraction between men and women. The Jewish people are the female aspect, and they are missing their other, an other which can only be recovered when the Temple is rebuilt. The view of God is symbolized by the man, and the Jewish people as a woman.

"It is something so wonderful you can hardly imagine it. None of us has ever seen or touched anything like it. It is not just the stones it's built of. That's just the framework, like the peel of an orange. The Temple is the collective spirit of the people." Erzion is clever, like Lerner. But he is also poetic. Listening to him, I start to feel the loss of this mystical place. I feel the longing. For the Temple, and for this sensual union between God and man that he describes. Fundamentalism is always about longing, I remind myself, often for something that never existed.
[.....]
On May 2, 1980, Fatah threw a grenade into a group of Jews who were praying in Hebron, six of whom were killed. The Jews in Hebron wanted to take revenge. Most of them wanted to go to a market and blow up as many Arabs as they could or do the same in a mosque. But Erzion persuaded his colleagues that wounding, not killing, several Palestinian leaders was a better strategy. Erzion felt that killing them would only make them heroes. This was a clever strategy. The group managed to wound several Palestinian mayors.

In subsequent attacks, Erzion failed to prevail over his more violent colleagues. On July 17, 1983, an Israeli yeshiva student was killed in Hebron. Erzion's colleagues entered the Islamic College in Hebron, determined to kill as many Arabs as they could. They killed three and injured over thirty.
[.....]
Although Erzion appears to have given up violent struggle, at least for now, he has not given up his efforts to prepare Israelis to rebuild the Third Temple when the time is ripe. Yehuda Erzion, Yoel Lerner, and Avigdor Eskin are all members of the Temple Mount Treasury, a group that continues to raise funds to rebuild the Temple.

Gillon believes that the radical right continues to pose a grave threat to Israeli national security, perhaps even more than Hamas. "Here in Israel we don't like to say this very loudly, bur the radical-right Jewish groups have a lot in common with Hamas," he told me. Hamas and the radical-right groups have twin objectives: one religious, the other political, Gillon explains. Both use selective readings of history and of religious texts to justify violence over territory.

Etzion tells me sadly that he has learned the Jewish people are not ready for redemption. He serves as the leader of the group Chai Vekayam (Alive and Existing), which regards itself as "the catalyst for a Jewish renaissance." The group focuses on encouraging Jews to prepare themselves for the imminent redemption through prayer.

The Temple Mount is the only holy place for the Jews, Etzion explains. "The one thing I am sure of," he says, "is that the Dome of the Rock is a temporary building. It must come to an end. Exactly when and exactly how I cannot say. But as a principle, I am sure its end is near."

Other nice links: so who was this Kahane fanatic anyway? See what his fans put on the Internet.

Kung Fu in Kyrgyzstan

Tonight's entry is dedicated to my favorite Roman god, Non Sequitur. We have many things to note.

The Montana House resoundingly confirmed a resolution disparaging the Patriot Act as Fascist Horse Manure. (via Eschaton)

Prince Charles is an ill tempered hemorrhoid of a heir.

Misc links: Did anyone notice that the famous The Blogging of the President bopnews.com needs to update all this '2004' crap they have written all over. HongPong.com started going in 2001 but I'm not still obsessed with high school... Taegan Goddard's PoliticalWire.com, interesting stuff... American Constitution Society has a fancy lookin blog with all sorts of ongoing legal news, and in particular some good thoughts about the Schiavo case and federalism:

...the Schiavo case reveals the true priorities of the right: they are happy to abandon the principles of federalism if the issue is related to questions of "life." But if they are willing to cast aside federalism in the Schiavo case, won't they be willing to do the same in the context of abortion? And if they are, won't that inevitably lead to attempts to pass federal legislation banning abortion?

There is a big deal going on regarding how political contributions via websites should fit into the FEC regulations. Info @ redstate.org. Behold pretentious blog of rightwing Robert Kaplan supporters. This is why Kaplan and his pagan ways make him a bastard.(Hey, they use WordPress, which probably works better than this system).

Gonna have to get me a gravatar. In here is the very best picture to come out of the Terri Schiavo circus (this one). A more moderate Republican dared asked for sanity, then they cut off his fingers. The Pope pleaded for world peace.

C-SPAN provides platform for Holocaust denier to badger author??

MOONIES! John Gorenfeld takes it upon himself to look out for the good Reverend Moon and his Unification Church's ongoing efforts to destroy America and bring that special blend of Korean Neo-Jonestown Messianism to us all... Scrap Democracy! The Evil Elliot Abrams will speak at your functions! I believe Gorenfeld was the one who found out about that crazy crowning ceremony when good ol Moon told us he was the Messiah. That's Washington for ya!

These links should have been in the last post: A little more about the White Supremacists getting ignored by the Department of Homeland Security, as I mentioned earlier. And a little More about Team B in the late 1970s using fake information to support hawkishness...

Kyrgyzstan revolution: it seems like another mess on Afghanistan's doorstep, rather than one of these glossy color coded revolutions intended to provide a jolly narrative for the Folks Back Home. Most of these are sugarcoated, like Ukraine's Yuschenko, for example, is portrayed as a Hero of Democracy rather than someone who embezzled vast sums from the IMF.

In Kyrgyzstan, a poor country that lacks even a spellcheck entry on my computer, is one of these rather authoritarian (post-Stalinist?) Central Asian republics, overrun with heroin smuggling operations and the Russian mob. This article from March 1 describes the local "managed democracy" (ie rigged systems) that the former president, Akayev, couldn't quite rig enough to Inspire Confidence. Oddly enough, some people say that Kung Fu was responsible for this turn of events:

KARA SUU, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) - Many say people power brought down the regime in Kyrgyzstan last week. But Bayaman Erkinbayev, a lawmaker, martial arts champ and one of the Central Asian nation's richest men, says it was his small army of Kung Fu-style fighters.

In southern Kyrgyzstan, where the protests that brought down the Askar Akayev's 15-year regime first flared, the name of 37-year-old Erkinbayev seems to be on everyone's lips. Erkinbayev is the wealthy playboy head of the Palvan Corporation, who led 2,000 fighters trained in Alysh, Kyrgyzstan's answer to Kung Fu, to protests launched after the first round of a parliamentary election on February 27.

A hero in his hometown Osh, he is generally considered to have financed the protests and sent his martial arts trainees to the front lines of the demonstrations, including in the capital Bishkek.

"When our old men were beaten and thrown out of the regional administration building, my fighters were on the front line. And during the siege in Bishkek, my fighters went in first," Erkinbayev told AFP in his gymnasium in Osh.

Iraq still rockin: The Fallujah brigades might be comin back again. Keep reading Juan Cole. Hey, who remembers how Ahmed Chalabi provided all that fake information about weapons of mass destruction in a successful effort to trick the American public into supporting an invasion? Ahh, the good old days... For that honed sense of outrage about the recent panel report on the WMD lies, consider Raimondo:

If and when the [Larry] Franklin [AIPAC-related] case finally comes to trial, the courtroom deliberations could shed new light on the question of how and why we were lied into war. It will prove in a court of law what I have long contended: that the only way to understand this shameful episode in the history of American wars is to look at the series of "mistakes" and "miscalculations" as a covert operation carried out by agents of a foreign power. Contra the WMD report, it wasn't "tunnel vision" that led to a monumental "intelligence failure" – it was treason.

Ray McGovern on the need for Honest Intelligence, regarding National Intelligence Estimates (such as those previously spoofed) etc., and of course our spotty intel on Iran. Scott Ritter says that Bush has a plan to get ready for war with Iran by June this year of our lord 2005.

Lebanon: something written in an unorthodox fashion by William Lind against the U.S. meddling about in Lebanon, and how it plays into al-Qaeda's interests if we go after Authoritarian Syria.

Israel: The Planned Chaos Of Illegal Settlements. This is very important.

Israel/Russia: Funny story about a corrupt financier named Vladimir Gusinsky and his Russian and Israeli schemes. Apparently he has some sympathy from characters like Benjamin Netanyahu... The Agonist is doing some serious reporting of its own now, kudos to them.

The Local Front for Fatal Hubris: Any criticisms of Tom DeLay and the cockroaches oozing from his mouth will be Taken Personally and Reinserted Rectally.

Shifting the brackets

Our hazy theme today is how rhetoric and threat language are used to shift around the perceived morality of Acting Against The Evil Ones.

Sometimes we should reflect on how the government views internal enemies. The inclusion or exclusion of various groups from heightened law enforcement scrutiny tells us a lot about how that government perceives its own identity.

So I have some stuff about Natan Sharansky, whose supposed ideology about the spread of freedom has totally infatuated Bush, but is itself the slanted product of a hardcore Likud supporter, shifting the definition of Arabs to suit his own purposes, influencing both Israeli and American government identities.

First thing is a report of a leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security which indicates DHS will institutionally become more fixated on left-wing groups, those Real Dangerous Earth Liberation Front types, apparently placing less emphasis on right-wing militia and white supremacist groups. Great:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation’s security.

According to the list — part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security — between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.

It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.

On the flip side is Bush's Democratic Revolution Loverboy, Israeli Minister of Jerusalem Affairs/Olde Time Soviet Dissident Natan Sharansky. Sharansky wrote some book about the global democracy movement, but this all seems to be slick packaging within which lies a typical Likud hawk. Perhaps I'm not being fair; he did truly spend the better part of a decade in the Soviet gulag. However, as a piece in the American Conservative, a paleo-con periodical put it...

The one-time Soviet prisoner, now an Israeli cabinet minister, became the personal embodiment of the link that neoconservative intellectuals had long asserted in print between the Cold War and “World War IV”—a long twilight struggle against totalitarianism morphing seamlessly into the War on Terror. Sharansky could claim authoritatively that the battles against Soviet despotism and Islamic terrorists were essentially part of the same fight, the free against the unfree. As a result of his personal struggle, Sharansky embodied, to use a favorite catchword of the administration’s ideologists, “moral clarity.”

But in real political life, moral clarity between liberty and despotism is not so easy to come by—and perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in Sharansky’s own path since he entered Israeli politics. For there his career has been marked not by moral clarity but rather by moral ambiguity and inconsistency in his advocacy of democracy and human rights, particularly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [....]Over the course of Sharansky’s political career, he has steadily morphed from avatar of universal human rights into a pillar of Israel’s nationalist camp.

Soon after Sharansky’s arrival on Israel’s political scene, international human rights advocates and members of the Israeli peace movement began to suspect that he adopted a double standard in dealing with the Palestinians. After a long and exasperating exchange with Sharansky in 1997, an Arab reporter for Al-Sharq al-Awsat threw up his hands and exclaimed, “What you are in effect saying is that everything that the Israeli Government does today is right, that the whole world is wrong to criticize Israel, and that there is no possibility of making any changes in Israel’s policies?” Sharansky blithely responded, “I would not put it quite so strongly.”
[....]
In a particularly cynical move, Sharansky and Sharon’s other opponents sought to twist Israel’s democratic process to hobble even this very tentative step toward peace [the Gaza withdrawal]. As a recent Ha’aretz editorial characterizes this ploy: “The referendum campaign being waged by Sharon’s ministers, his buddies in the Likud, the settlers and fanatics of every stripe, is a threat to the democratic-parliamentary structure of the state, no matter how you look at it.” In a recent cabinet vote on Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, Sharansky cast one of five nays.
[...]
....the nature of Sharansky’s political constituency in Israel drove him to the nationalist extreme. His original party started out narrowly focused on advancing the ethnic interests of Russian Jews and was fairly moderate on most other issues. But Avigdor Lieberman, another Russian Jew, saw the potential for a political party based on the growing Russian Jewish community and better understood that this community was very hawkish, particularly on the issues of Islam (which for Russians was clearly identified with the Chechen War) and the Arabs. Subsequently, Sharansky and Lieberman formed the National Unity Block, which came to represent the most nationalistic edge of the Israeli political spectrum. Like their former countrymen back in the old motherland, Russian Jews in Israel are, in the words of Eduard Kuznetsov, editor of the Israeli Russian-language paper Vesti, “the descendants of an imperial attitude. Land is sacred. And though only 1 percent of them live in the occupied territories, they have an instinctive hatred of Arabs and see no reason to make any concessions.”

Well, "instinctive hatred" is more of a blanket term than I really like, but then again this is a Russian newspaper editor talking. The following interview in Mother Jones illustrates the Likud-nationalist ideology behind the flowery democracy talk:

MJ: Another criticism of you is that as Housing Minister in Ariel Sharon's first government, you participated in the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. And many people say: "Well, how can one promote a democratic Palestinian state while at the same time supporting settlements which Palestinians see as an impediment to that state?"

NS: Well, look, Palestinians see the strengthening of Jewish settlements as an impediment, and some Israelis see the strengthening of the Palestinian Authority as an impediment. But the truth is that if you really want to live in peace, with two democratic societies—Palestinian and Israeli—these must be societies where people can live without fear. And here's something that's strange. The whole world expects that Arabs should be able to live peacefully in Israeli territory—and as you know 17 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs. At the same time, the world also expects that Jews should leave the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, because those Jews will be killed there. That, from the beginning, shows that the world expects very different things from these two types of societies.

I never saw the legitimate strengthening of the Jewish community in the territories under discussion as an obstacle to peace. Israel has showed many times that, as soon as there is any hope for peace, we will make all sorts of concessions. The last example of this was Ehud Barak. But if we're making these concessions, I want to make sure that we have a reliable partner first, a partner who is also ready to take those concessions, for the sake of peace.

MJ: Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, which have held, even though neither state is a democracy, why wouldn't the same be true for an undemocratic Palestinian state?

NS: First of all, we want to have peace with everybody, whether they are a democracy or not. But the difference is that with democracy you can have peace that you can rely on. For leaders of democratic states, war is always the last option, but when you have peace with a non-democracy, you have to rely on the strength of your military to enforce it. So we have peace with Egypt backed by a treaty, but also peace with Syria without a treaty. In both cases, it's because we can rely on the strength of our army. Peace with the Palestinians, however, will not come with their state safely behind the Sinai. The new state will be in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In this case, it's much more difficult for Israel to rely on the strength of its army to enforce peace, so we need a partner we can trust and rely on, a democratic partner.

One more word about Egypt. What's interesting about our agreement with Egypt is that Egypt got a lot out of it: the territories, financial support, weapons from Americans, and so on. But it lost something very important to the government: It lost Israel as enemy. And for a dictatorial regime, an outside enemy is something that helps the regime survive. So they lost us as a political enemy, but then in the last twenty years they emerged as the new anti-Semitic center in the world. The country prints more anti-Semitic literature, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, than any other Arab country, and that's a direct result of the fact that Egypt is not a democracy. When they lost us as a political enemy, they still needed us as a national enemy, so now they're becoming the center of anti-Semitism.

A whole array here of Likud bits. The "rely on the strength of your military to enforce [peace]" option == Revisionist Zionism's Iron Wall philosophy. The "I never saw the legitimate strengthening of the Jewish community in the territories under discussion as an obstacle to peace" bit was pure Land Grabbery and Hegemonic Discourse, and lazy hegemonifying at that. Of course it's legitimate, that's why it wasn't an obstacle to peace! Now that is a tautology worth putting clusters of zealots on the West Bank for. And we can see the ideological continuity with the Clean Break neocon folks as well.

On the other hand, he is right that the outside enemy helps the regime survive. USSR and the Capitalist Cigar smokers, Nazi Germany and International Jewry, the New Pentagon and Shibboleth O Evil Zarqawi, these are handy things. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. To hate at least rhetorically delays the pressures of reform, but doubly so in a democracy where vast sections of the population have been brainwashed.

To make the American people intolerant of imaginary WMDs held by an inflated enemy image, that was the genius of Wolfowitz, and his Cold War predecessors like Wohlstetter. To run intelligence puffing-up using totally fake Empirical Evidence, like the old Team B venture, was recognized as the best political strategy to making doves look foolhardy. in those days, it was the nukes, whereas nowadays it was the Curveball-based intel, Yellowcake Uranium and Aluminum Tubes.

I have to go to bed now. More later. Augh, I always say that.

Just another freak in the freak kingdom

Hell, I'm finally back. My computer is acting weird which prevented me from updating the site earlier.... Anyhow...

We had a hell of a time in Colorado. I skied for the first time in eight years, so that was awesome.

God, I am too tired to deal with this right now. There were good stories. The National Security State came around at unexpected times. A guy told me that they know where Osama bin Laden is.

Our society seems to be obsessed with mortality, wall to wall Schiavo on the wretched airport CNN televisions that can never be turned off, as I found trying desperately to sleep on Friday before last in the Atlanta airport.

I have this weird psychological problem, which I think relates to my atheism. Simply put, I would say that we die every day, as some realities are brought about and other potential realities are crushed. As we move from one phase of life to another the old personality dies. But maybe not, maybe there is a firm and Profound bond between all the moments that make up a person's life, and it isn't all complex, random movements of inherently mundane and truly dead molecules.

Ugh, I don't mean to get negative. To be truly honest, I feel all right about where my life is going to go and I don't quite have the same level of anxiety that's sweeping through many of my classmates. We are moving on Real Soon, that's what's clear. The old social forms are ticking away, ready to go into the dust of these strange years of college...

Something about civil war in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran

All right, Major Things have to Happen today and I've got to set about doing them real quick-like, in preparation for the trip. Have to write midterm exam all day...

Civil war stuff further down. Turns out that the Bush Administration makes up more shit than any other presidency, ever. They use fake news broadcasts with fake reporters, distributed to TV stations, to help provide the public with a fuzzy background of "a caring get-it-done Administration". The Congressional Budget Office has considered some of this stuff potentially "covert propaganda". The NY Times had a major feature on it Sunday.

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.

Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

All right other stuff, quickly. Stratfor says that John Bolton is not such a horror for the UN post, and of course I disagree because he is A) batshit crazy B) antagonizes people purely for symbolic value C) incredibly dishonest and dangerous.

In fact, there is some extremely deep diplomacy going on here. Bolton belongs to the "put-up-or-shut-up" branch of American neocons, believing that the United Nation's original charter prescribed a much more activist organization -- where resolutions would be strengthened by possible consequences if violated, often including the use of force. In Bolton's mind, the Korean War is precisely the type of military action the United Nations was designed to authorize and carry out.

This is, needless to say, very different from the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war of 2003 -- in which the Bush administration, we believe, hoped that the United Nations would not go along with U.S. requests. The whole point of the war was not to oust Saddam Hussein but to intimidate Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia into acting against al Qaeda on Washington's behalf. Bush wanted to scare regimes that supported or enabled al Qaeda by placing uninvited, unsanctioned American armored divisions -- not a sea of polite blue helmets -- in the sands of Iraq.
[.....]
Had the administration simply wanted to destroy the United Nations, it would have appointed someone far less controversial and independent-minded who would simply rubber-veto U.N. Security Council resolutions ad nauseam. As Bush pointed out during his first term, the United Nations is relevant only if it takes steps to enforce its own dictates.

Bolton feels the same way. He believes the U.N. system is not necessarily irredeemable, but simply discredited. Rather conveniently, he has two ready-made test cases waiting: North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while Iran is, at best, attempting to skirt the IAEA on technical grounds. In effect, both states have -- in the eyes of the United Nations -- placed themselves outside of the system, and are therefore squarely in what Bolton and his neocon circle feel are the United Nations' crosshairs. Bolton's task will be to get the United Nations to act against them -- not for American interests, but to prevent the United Nations from sliding into total irrelevance.

In the four years to come, the United Nations is likely to have several "legitimate" targets, from the neocons' point of view. In his second term, Bush seems committed to finishing the work not just of his first administration, but of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations as well. The White House has made no secret of goals that include not only tying up the final loose ends of the Cold War and completing the rollback of Russian power, but also of extending that geopolitical effort to Communist East Asia and the Middle East.

I don't buy it. Ok. Also a former US soldier, Nadim Abou Rabeh, claims that the U.S. faked the news of Saddam's capture on Dec. 13, 2003, and he was actually captured by Rabeh and others somewhere totally different on Dec. 12. Justin Raimondo speculates on whether this is true, and the upcoming demonization of Bashar Assad as the next-worst-thing-to-Hitler. He also has a bit about how the Neo-cons have been chased out of one of their periodical redoubts, National Journal.

The pro-Syrian govt in Lebanon is back in the saddle. Experts warn that the War on Terror (TM) is going to make more terrorists. Apparently the U.S. is finally ready to acknowledge that Hezbollah has a key role to play in Lebanon. We just don't have the traction to play the stupid demonization card anymore.

Speaking of liars around Bush, a bit by David Corn about the bad old days of massacres in El Salvador, and Elliot Abrams lying to Congress to cover it up. These days are going to be here again, with people like him and Negroponte running around. Dowd points out that these 'security-minded' bastards are not really that competent at security.

Oh yeah, here's some batty stuff. David Horowitz made up a site, discoverthenetwork.org, that purports to connect, say, the editors of The Nation with Zacharias Moussaui. It also shines light on the evil conspiracy that is Counterpunch.org. Nuts.

Ok finally, something about that civil war stuff. Uri Averny, an old-school Israeli peacenik, has a ton of good thoughts about what kind of mess we are getting drawn into with Lebanon and elsewhere.

Many years ago, I read a book called The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Its central character is a high-minded, naive young American operative in Vietnam. He has no idea about the complexities of that country but is determined to right its wrongs and create order. The results are disastrous.

I have the feeling that this is happening now in Lebanon. The Americans are not so high-minded and not so naive. Far from it. But they are quite prepared to go into a foreign country, disregard its complexities, and use force to impose on it order, democracy, and freedom.
[....]
Exactly 50 years ago, a secret, heated debate took place among the leaders of Israel. David Ben-Gurion (then minister of defense) and Moshe Dayan (the army chief-of-staff) had a brilliant idea: to invade Lebanon, impose on it a "Christian major" as dictator, and turn it into an Israeli protectorate. Moshe Sharett, then prime minister, attacked this idea fervently. In a lengthy, closely argued letter, which has been preserved for history, he ridiculed the total ignorance of the proponents of this idea in face of the incredibly fragile complexity of the Lebanese social structure. Any adventure, he warned, would end in disaster.

At the time, Sharett won. But 27 years later, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon did exactly what Ben-Gurion and Dayan had proposed. The result was exactly as foreseen by Sharett.
[....]
In Lebanon, all the diverse communities are in action. Each for its own interest, each plotting to outfox the others, perhaps to attack them at a given opportunity. Some of the leaders are connected with Syria, some with Israel, all are trying to use the Americans for their ends. The jolly pictures of young demonstrators, so prominent in the media, have no meaning if one does not know the community that stands behind them.
[...]
It took us 18 years to get out of that morass. Our only achievement was to turn the Shi'ites into a dominant force. When we entered Lebanon, the Shi'ites received us with showers of rice and candies, hoping that we would throw out the Palestinians, who had been lording it over them. A few months later, when they realized that we did not intend to leave, they started to shoot at us. Sharon is the midwife of Hezbollah.
[....]
If a civil war breaks out in Lebanon, it will not be the only one in the region. In Iraq, such a war – if almost secret – is already in full swing.

The only effective military forces in Iraq, apart from the occupation army, are the Kurdish peshmerga ("those who face death"). The Americans use them whenever they are fighting the Sunnis. They played an important role in the battle of Fallujah, a big town that was totally destroyed, its inhabitants killed or driven out.

Now the Kurdish forces are waging a war against the Sunnis and Turkmens in the north of the country, in order to take hold of the oil-rich areas and the town of Kirkuk, and also to drive out the Sunni settlers who were implanted there by Saddam Hussein.

How can such a war be practically ignored by the media? Simple: everything is swept under the carpet of the "war against terrorism."

But this small war is nothing compared to what may happen in Iraq, once the time comes for deciding the future of the country. The Kurds want complete autonomy, or independence by another name. The Sunnis would not dream of accepting the rule of the Shi'ite majority, which they despise, even if it came about in the name of "democracy." The outbreak of a full-fledged civil war may only be a question of time.
[....]
If the Americans succeed, with Israel's discreet help, in breaking the ruling Syrian dictatorship, there is no assurance at all that it will be replaced by "freedom" and "democracy."

Syria is almost as splintered as Lebanon. There is a strong Druze community in the south, a rebellious Kurdish community in the north, an Alawite community (to which the Assad family belongs) in the west. The Sunni majority is traditionally divided between Damascus in the south and Aleppo in the north. The people have resigned themselves to the Assad dictatorship out of fear of what may happen if the regime collapses.

It is not likely that a full-scale civil war will break out there. But a prolonged situation of total chaos is quite likely. Sharon would be happy, though I am not sure that it would be good for Israel.
[....]
Israel is now openly threatening to bomb the Iranian nuclear installations. Every few days we see on our TV screens the digitally blurred faces of pilots boasting of their readiness to do this at a moment's notice.

The religious fervor of the ayatollahs has been flagging lately, as happens with every victorious revolution after some time. But a military attack by the "Big Satan" (the U.S.) or the "Little Satan" (us) may set fire to the whole Shi'ite crescent: Iran, south Iraq, and south Lebanon.
[....]
And here, too. Israel, too, has recently witnessed a tiny civil war.

In the Galilean village Marrar, where a Druze and an Arab Christian community have been living side by side for generations, a bloody incident suddenly erupted. It was a full-fledged pogrom: the Druze fell upon the Christians, attacking, burning, and destroying. By a miracle, nobody was killed. The Christians say that the Israeli police (many of whose members are Druze) stood aside. The immediate reason for the outbreak: some doctored nude pictures on the Internet.

Here are a couple other writings by Averny. This one is interesting but in particular please read "Israel's coming civil war," it is scary as hell. It was written back in October but it is highly relevant.

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it. Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.
The talk is about the coming civil war.
[....]
The seeds of the civil war were sown when the first settlement was put up in the occupied territories. At the time, I told the prime minister in the Knesset: "You are laying a land mine. Some day you will have to dismantle it. As a former soldier, let me warn you that the dismantling of land mines is a very unpleasant job."
[...]
Many settlers do not yet say so openly and pretend to be insulted when such attitudes are attributed to them, but in fact they are dragged along by the hard core that has already thrown off all the masks. They challenge not only the policy of the government, but Israeli democracy as such. They declare openly that their aim is to overthrow the State of Law and put in its place the State of the Halakha.

A State of Law is subject to the will of the majority, which enacts the laws and amends them as necessary. The State of the Halakha is subject to the Torah, revealed once and for all on Mount Sinai and unchangeable. Only a very small number of eminent rabbis have the authority to interpret the Halakha. That is, of course, the opposite of democracy. In any other country, these people would be called fascists. The religious coloration makes no difference.

The religious-rightist rebels are powerfully motivated. Many of them believe in the Kabbala – not Madonna's fashionable Kabbala, but the real one, which says that today's secular Jews are really Amalekites who succeeded in infiltrating the People of Israel at the time of the exodus from Egypt. God Himself has commanded, as everyone knows, the eradication of Amalek from the face of the earth. Can there be a more perfect ideological basis for civil war?

In preparation for the Great Rebellion, the settlers have unveiled their potential. The most eminent rabbis of the "Religious Zionist movement" have declared that the evacuation of a settlement is a sin against God and have called upon the soldiers to refuse orders. Hundreds of rabbis, including the rabbis of the settlements and the rabbis of the religious units in the army, have joined the call.

The voice of the few opponents is being drowned out. They quote the Talmudic saying "the law of the kingdom is law," meaning that every government has to be obeyed, much as Christians are required to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, etc. But who listens to these "moderate rabbis" now?

The conquest of the army from the inside began long ago. The "arrangement" with the yeshivot (religious schools) that serve in the army as separate units has allowed the entry of a huge Trojan horse. In any confrontation between their rabbis and their army commanders, the soldiers of the "arrangement yeshivot" will obey the rabbis. Worse: for years now, the settlers have systematically penetrated the ranks of the officers' corps, where they now constitute an even more dangerous Trojan horse.
[....]
Altogether, the settlers, together with their close allies in Israel including the yeshivot students, may amount to something like half a million people – a mighty phalanx for rebellion.

Well that's a pretty serious blog post. I don't think I'll have time to add anything else. I didn't really even have time for this, but it is really important stuff to note. Everyone have a great spring break, and hopefully Mordred will offer something to us over that time....

Cryptic enough to start the homework

"It's the story of the development of the soul," Miss Portinari was saying at that moment, spreading out the twenty-two trumps or "keys" of that very ancient deck. "We call it a book—the Book of Thoth—and it's the most important book in the world."

George and Joe Malik, each wondering if this was the final explanation or a new put-on leading to a new cycle of deceptions, listened with mingled curiosity and skepticism.

"The order was deliberately reversed," Miss Portinari went on. "Not by the true sages. By the false Illuminati, and by all the other White Brotherhoods and Rosicrucians and Freemasons and whatnot who didn't really understand the truth and therefore wanted to hide the part of it they did understand. They felt themselves threatened; the real sage is never threatened.

"They spoke in symbols and paradoxes, like real sages, but for a different reason. They didn't know what the symbols and paradoxes meant. Instead of following the finger that points to the moon, they sat down and worshipped the finger itself. Instead of following the map, they thought it was the territory and tried to live in it. Instead of reading the menu, they tried to eat it. Dig?

"They had the levels confused. And they tried to confuse any independent searcher by drawing more veils and paradoxes across the path. Finally, in the 1920s, some real left-handed monkey wrenches in one of these mystic lodges recruited Adolph Hitler, and he not only read the book backward, like all of them, but insisted on believing it was the story of the exterior, physical universe."

The Illuminatus Trilogy, p. 715-717

What now, Syria?

Bush orders Syria out of Lebanon

United States President George W. Bush on Wednesday pointedly ordered Syria out of Lebanon, saying the free world is in agreement that Damascus' authority over the political affairs of its neighbor must end now.

He applauded the strong message sent to Syria when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier held a joint news conference in London on Tuesday.

"Both of them stood up and said loud and clear to Syria, 'You get your troops and your secret services out of Lebanon so that good democracy has a chance to flourish," Bush said at a event on his job training programs at a community college in nearby Maryland.

Also Wednesday, Lebanon's opposition demanded the full withdrawal of Syrian military and intelligence services and the resignation of Lebanese Syrian-backed security chiefs.

I am highly suspicious of this stuff about Syria causing the assassination of this Hariri cat, and I fail to see how people can leap to such conclusions so quickly. Either way it is not a surprise that many Lebanese are tired of the Syrians, but then again Syria is perched in a quiet state of war with Israel, recently interrupted by an Israeli bombing of what they called an Islamic Jihad base, and of course the recent accusations that Devious Syrians were instrumental in the recent suicide bombing. And of course the Iraq thing. So where does Syria go? What are they really doing right now? Why is Lebanon any of our god damn business?

I'll note at this point that Hongpong.com has in fact gotten hits from the Paris of the Middle East... I forget what the ISP was called but it was kind of funny.

News links: Here I have a bunch of links mostly from Lebanon's Daily Star. I would like this set to illustrate the fact that Lebanon has quite an excellent degree of press freedom... not infinite but hey it's there.

Two weeks of turmoil summarized by the Daily Star."People power" brings down cabinet. History in the making. A good thing? Let's look at this great Lebanese model or so they say. Fragile Syria must withdraw. Electrified youth hope for new beginning. Saudis demand Syrian withdrawal. Cheers in Beirut (which you have to admit doesn't happen often).

Thoughtful second thoughts on Lebanon from Matt Yglesias. Keep reading Juan Cole, its good for you.
Some people are highly cynical: The Cedar Revolution is hollow by Justin Raimondo:

George W. Bush's journalistic sock-puppets are hailing their own hallucinations: what's sweeping the Middle East is not a wave of capital-"D" Democracy, but a tsunami of nationalistic and religious fervor that can only redound against us.

Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" is a case in point, one that illustrates the entirely illusory nature of the media hype – which is, unsurprisingly, identical to the U.S. government's official line. The official story is that the long-suffering peoples of Lebanon have had enough, and – drunk with the mere promise of the magical elixir of Democracy – are at last rising up, seizing their liberty, and throwing off their Syrian oppressors. It's a pretty story, albeit a bit simple-minded and hackneyed, but there's just one problem: it isn't true.

The reality is that Lebanon has had democracy for quite some time: or, at least, more so than any other Middle Eastern Arab nation. But instead of being a panacea for the country's problems, this relative excess of democracy has merely exacerbated them. Divided into a bewildering array of ethno-religious and political fiefdoms, Lebanon has managed to survive the foibles of majority rule largely by avoiding centralization and devolving power back to the various clans, parties, and religious groups that constitute, in effect, a collection of mini-states.
[.....]
The sudden and quite unexpected resignation of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government – which would have won any vote of confidence in the parliament – is being portrayed as a necessary concession to a rising populist movement patterned after Ukraine's "orange revolution" – but it seems to me it was a very clever ploy. The so-called "opposition" is united by nothing but a common hatred of Syria and a willingness to act on behalf of foreign interests. Once the government is out, however, and the Syrians withdraw to the Bekaa valley, they will be left to fight among themselves – and who can doubt that the communal grudge matches that have afflicted Lebanon for most of her history will reassert themselves in the absence of a stabilizing force?

So that's a few points on the matter. I really can't say what's what about this whole thing. It reeks of manipulation, and as jolly as it might look on TV, we are set for all kinds of problems to unfold...
also of random interest: sex lies and jeff gannon by justin raimondo...

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.

Crushing Babylon and the new intelligence wars: the rise of Black Reconnaisance

A brief break from writing profiles of Minnesota state House and Senate members for the book. I bring you a bit of the past and future wreckage of the Bush3 Administration... Also I have been sort of out of the loop on my usual things this week. Dan Schwartz sent me the Sy Hersh story that I totally missed, and for that I thank him.

If you ever wanted evidence that the Pentagon is a pathologically destructive force bent on destroying the past, present and future of the planet simultaneously, here you go. From the Beginning:

US-led troops using the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon as a base have damaged and contaminated artifacts dating back thousands of years in one of the most important archeological sites in the world, the British Museum said yesterday.

Military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, for example, and archeological fragments, including broken bricks stamped by King Nebuchadnezzar II around the same time, were scattered across the site, a museum report said.

The dragons at the Ishtar Gate were marred by cracks and gaps where someone tried to remove their decorative bricks, the paper said.

John Curtis, keeper of the British Museum's Near East department, who was invited by Iraqis to study the site, also found that large quantities of sand mixed with archeological fragments have been taken from the site to fill military sandbags.

''This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," Curtis said in the report.

In an interview yesterday with Associated Press Television News, Iraq's minister of culture, Mufeed al-Jazairee, said coalition troops in Babylon had used ''armored vehicles and helicopters that land and take off freely. In addition to that, the forces also set up other facilities and changes."

He added, ''I expect that the archeological city of Babylon has sustained damage, but I don't know exactly the size of such damage."
[....]
In the report, Curtis acknowledged that at first the US presence had helped to protect the site from looters.

But subsequent work, including the decision to cover large areas of the site with gravel brought in from elsewhere to provide parking lots and heliports, was damaging, he said.

Lord Redesdale, an archeologist who heads a parliamentary archeology committee, described the report's findings as ''just dreadful."

''Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world," he said.

For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world's premier cities, where King Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Meanwhile Seymour Hersh has a whole barrel of info for us about the planned unleashing of the Pentagon to 'prepare the battle space' around Iran. "Prepare the battle space" was one of my favorite creepy euphemisms for the strategic bombing campaigns they undertook just before the invasion of Iraq.

Ah yes, the weapons of mass destruction were never found. So why did Fallujah become an all-important social engineering project by force? Was the intent of this circus to demonstrate national will rather than secure the U.S. from actually dangerous materials? Yeah, of course it was. But it had something to do with Iran too. Before the war we were apparently going to use Iran against Saudi Arabia (yes, that seems to be why we marched into the Mesopotamian mousetrap) but now it's all gone to hell, and yet another brilliant scheme is At Hand.

Anyhow back to Hersh: the Bush Administration intends to attack the Iranian nuclear project complexes, and in fact has been running covert operations within Iran for quite a while. Also Defense Undersecretary of Batshit Madness Douglas Feith (not to be confused with Undersecretary of Fanatical Crusaderism William Boykin) is closely coordinating with the Israeli military to figure out which things to try and blow up.

Clearly this is yet another scheme which will unfold perfectly and only involve propaganda that isn't designed to mislead the American public. These are serious people here....

I thought that I would have some more stories for you today but I feel that this stuff is big enough to justify its own post. Yes, the national security state we all know and love is reconstituting itself in a new and more uncontrolled form. This is an exceedingly dangerous problem for those of us living Inside the Asylum.

I also saw some stories about how the Pentagon is going to conduct its own preemptive intelligence covert wars, operations, whatever the hell you call it these days. In this article it is called 'black reconnaissance' as a way of distancing it from the beloved old CIA label of 'covert operations.' Read Mr. Hersh... Sy, I'm sorry I quoted like half your story, but this one is too important not to enter into the record:

The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degre unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—durin his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one governmen consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
[....]
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”
[....]
Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief.
[....]
In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
[.....]
There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach. Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, “It’s a fantasy to think that there’s a good American or Israeli military option in Iran.” He went on, “The Israeli view is that this is an international problem. ‘You do it,’ they say to the West. ‘Otherwise, our Air Force will take care of it.’” In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor, setting its nuclear program back several years. But the situation now is both more complex and more dangerous, Chubin said. The Osirak bombing “drove the Iranian nuclear-weapons program underground, to hardened, dispersed sites,” he said. “You can’t be sure after an attack that you’ll get away with it. The U.S. and Israel would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how quickly they’d be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they’d be waiting for an Iranian counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you can’t begin to think of what they’d do in response.”
[...]
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me. [....] The American task force, aided by the information from Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt for underground installations. The task-force members, or their locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.
[....]
There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. (After Osirak, Iran situated many of its nuclear sites in remote areas of the east, in an attempt to keep them out of striking range of other countries, especially Israel. Distance no longer lends such protection, however: Israel has acquired three submarines capable of launching cruise missiles and has equipped some of its aircraft with additional fuel tanks, putting Israeli F-16I fighters within the range of most Iranian targets.)

“They believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can be destroyed from the air, and a quarter are too close to population centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted,” the consultant said. Inevitably, he added, some suspicious sites need to be checked out by American or Israeli commando teams—in on-the-ground surveillance—before being targeted.

The Pentagon’s contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.

[....]
The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least temporarily derail, Iran’s ability to go nuclear. But there are other, equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to a toppling of the religious leadership. “Within the soul of Iran there is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement,” the consultant told me. “The minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse”—like the former Communist regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.

“The idea that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed,” said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security Council in the Bush Administration. “You have to understand that the nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum, and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that’s technologically sophisticated.” Leverett, who is now a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, “will produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying around the regime.”
[.....]
Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism.” The two former officers listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)

Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military’s expanded covert assignment. “I don’t think they can handle the cover,” he told me. “They’ve got to have a different mind-set. They’ve got to handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other people think. If you’re going into a village and shooting people, it doesn’t matter,” Giraldi added. “But if you’re running operations that involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can’t do it. Which is why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency.” I was told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of command for the new commando operations. [and they're fucking crazy -- Dan]
[.....]
“I’m conflicted about the idea of operating without congressional oversight,” the Pentagon adviser said. “But I’ve been told that there will be oversight down to the specific operation.” A second Pentagon adviser agreed, with a significant caveat. “There are reporting requirements,” he said. “But to execute the finding we don’t have to go back and say, ‘We’re going here and there.’ No nitty-gritty detail and no micromanagement.”

The legal questions about the Pentagon’s right to conduct covert operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. “It’s a very, very gray area,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate who served as the C.I.A.’s general counsel in the mid-nineteen-nineties. “Congress believes it voted to include all such covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says, ‘No, the things we’re doing are not intelligence actions under the statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to “prepare the battlefield.”’” Referring to his days at the C.I.A., Smith added, “We were always careful not to use the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding. The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance.”
[....]
In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities.
[....]
The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”
[....]
There was pressure from the White House, too. A former C.I.A. clandestine-services officer told me that, in the months after the resignation of the agency’s director George Tenet, in June, 2004, the White House began “coming down critically” on analysts in the C.I.A.’s Directorate of Intelligence (D.I.) and demanded “to see more support for the Administration’s political position.” Porter Goss, Tenet’s successor, engaged in what the recently retired C.I.A. official described as a “political purge” in the D.I. Among the targets were a few senior analysts who were known to write dissenting papers that had been forwarded to the White House. The recently retired C.I.A. official said, “The White House carefully reviewed the political analyses of the D.I. so they could sort out the apostates from the true believers.” Some senior analysts in the D.I. have turned in their resignations—quietly, and without revealing the extent of the disarray.
[....]
“Rummy’s plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Then all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence assets”—including the many intelligence satellites that constantly orbit the world.

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it."

Stratfor chief provides key links to Chalabi/fake WMD intelligence/Office of Special Plans story: Iran, indeed!

I got several books from Amazon this weekend that distracted me from the much-belated homework that is increasing before finals time. I started reading George Friedman's "America's Secret War," an unparalleled tome of wisdom about the late great War on Terror, intelligence agencies and what I'd like to talk about today: how the Bush administration knowingly sold false intelligence, mainly provided by Ahmed Chalabi, mostly about WMD, to the American public.

Now you might say, "That's old news" or "What? Chalabi lied?!" but this particular book is different, because Friedman is one of the founders of STRATFOR, an amazing organization kind of like a 'private CIA' that sells intelligence (strategic forecasting) to businesses and whoever else. They provide a free page of information every week, and it is always interesting. (Right now it's all about the Ukraine stuff)

Anyhow, Friedman's book turns a lot of things inside out for a more rational view of what exactly has propelled the U.S. to invade Iraq. It stresses how the points of view of various intelligence agencies are very important to understanding how events unfold. Fortunately, they've got a lot of the inside dirt on this.

The book's jacket claims to address "the real reasons behind George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, and how WMD became the cover for a much deeper game." I have been one of those folks who believed that the WMD stuff was so overtly fake that someone should go to prison about it, but Friedman lays out how the guys in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans basically knew this stuff was baloney, but sold it anyway.

The real reason we invaded, according to the book, was to cajole the Saudi government into cracking down on the Al Qaeda movement thoroughly in its midst. However, this had to be covered up because the American public wouldn't support that. Blockquoth Friedman (p 250-1):

Iran wanted the United States to invade Iraq. It did everything to induce the United States to do so. Its strategy was to provide the United States with intelligence that would persuade the United States that the invasion was both practical and necessary. There were many intelligence channels operating between Teheran and the United States, but the single most important was Ahmed Chalabi, the Defense Department's candidate for President of Iraq. Chalabi... was the head of the Iraqi National Council, which provided key intelligence to the United states on Iraq, including on WMD. But what it did not provide the U.S. was most important: intelligence on Iranian operations in Iraq or on Iraqi preparations for a guerrilla war. Chalabi made it look easy. That's what the Iranians wanted.

The primary vector for Chalabi's information was not the CIA, but the [Pentagon's Office of Special Plans] under Abe Shulsky. OSP could not have missed Chalabi's Iranian ties, nor could they have believed the positive intelligence he was giving them. But OSP and Shulsky were playing a deeper game. These were old Cold Warriors. For them, the key to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the American alliance with China. Splitting the enemy was the way to go, and the fault line in the Islamic world was the Sunni-Shiite split. The United States, from their point of view, was not playing the fool by accommodating Iran's wishes on Iraq. Apart from all of its other virtues, they felt that the invasion would create a confluence of interests between the U.S. and Iran, which would have enormously more value in the long run than any problems posed by the Iraqi invasion. From the standpoint of OSP—and therefore of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld—Chalabi's intelligence or lack of it was immaterial. The key was alignment with Iran as another lever against Saudi Arabia. And there were more immediate effects as well...

You can judge for yourself whether Dr. Khalidi's statements to me about Chalabi, the Office of Special Plans and the faked intelligence in an interview last October fit into this framework or not. I think the interview still holds up real well. Friedman adds that "the entire point of the WMD rationale was to put France in a position where it could not reasonably object to the undertaking [i.e. the war]. (p 272)" There's more to how they actually argued the case to the American public—an interesting thing for any rhetorician to look at—but for now this is what I feel like typing in.

Well, that's really more of a metal helmet than a tinfoil hat theory. Coming up in a sec, we will return to Votergate. In the meantime, now you finally know a key underpinning of the war's rationale. Not bad, eh? I'll talk more on this book later, to be sure!

CIA & Bushies knew Chavez coup was coming. That's what I call democratic leadership!

I just got a few things from Dan Schwartz that I deemed interesting for a Turkey Day Spy Spectacular. Ok, not that spectacular. More of a Tryptophan National Security Adventure. First, it now seems that the Bush administration did in fact have forewarning of the coup attempt against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in April 2002. This means that they lied about it coming out of the blue. Also, as most people don't know, the Bush administration was among very few governments to recognize the coup leaders as legitimate, until they were trapped in the Miraflores palace and deposed by Chavez's people a couple days later.

This made the Bush administration embarrassingly appear to support military coups, and it discredited them in Latin & South America. I'm sorry, Rummy and Cheney, it's not the Gerald Ford days anymore, and South American leaders you don't like can't just be hacked down. Newsday reports that a FOIA request got the info out of the CIA:

The U.S. government knew of an imminent plot to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, in the weeks prior to a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him, newly released CIA documents show, despite White House claims to the contrary a week after the putsch.

Yet the United States, which depends on Venezuela for nearly one-sixth of its oil, never warned the Chávez government, Venezuelan officials said.

The Bush administration has denied it was involved in the coup or knew one was being planned. At a White House briefing on April 17, 2002, just days after the 47-hour coup, a senior administration official who did not want to be named said, "The United States did not know that there was going to be an attempt of this kind to overthrow - or to get Chávez out of power."

Yet based on the newly released CIA briefs, an analyst said yesterday that did not appear to be the case.

"This is substantive evidence that the CIA knew in advance about the coup, and it is clear that this intelligence was distributed to dozens of members of the Bush administration, giving them knowledge of coup plotting," said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington.

However, Kornbluh said that while the documents show U.S. officials knew a coup was coming, perhaps implying tacit approval, they do not constitute proof the United States was involved in ousting Chávez, Venezuela's elected leader. That is partly because the briefs are from the intelligence side of the CIA, not the operational side.
[....]
Chávez was traveling in Spain yesterday and could not be reached for comment, although his information minister, Andres Izarra, said through a representative that his government had not yet taken a position on the documents. Tarek William Saab, a state governor and member of the president's inner circle, said the documents showed "that the United States was implicated in this coup and did nothing to stop it."

The Bush administration and Chávez, a fiery former paratrooper, have clashed repeatedly, with Chávez accusing the United States of backing the coup against him and U.S. officials denouncing his leadership as authoritarian. The United States was one of the few nations to embrace the coup initially, though it later reversed its position.

The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by Eva Golinger, a Long Island attorney and pro-Chávez activist who also is investigating U.S. funding of groups opposed to the Venezuelan leader. Golinger said she was outraged by the documents. "If they knew that a democratic government was going to be overthrown, why wouldn't they send signals to it or at least explain what was going to happen?"

The documents - called Senior Executive Security Briefs - are one level below the highest-level Presidential Daily Briefs and are circulated among about 200 top-level U.S. officials, Kornbluh said.

Chávez was arrested and overthrown on April 12, 2002, after military dissidents blamed him for violence at an opposition protest march that left 19 people dead and 300 wounded. He was returned to power two days later.

All the CIA documents were heavily censored before being released. One, dated April 6, 2002, states that "dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chávez, possibly as early as this month."
[....]
Julia Sweig, deputy director of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington, said: "The fact that we didn't call Chávez and say, 'This is brewing,' reflects the incredible antipathy toward Chávez at that time" on the part of the Bush administration.

'To avoid confrontation, don't worship elephants;' Drunken pachyderms rampage thru Indian villages

Assam state in India has about 5000 elephants running around, causing havoc and consuming alcohol, reported a story on The Agonist today. The elephants have killed at least 22 people in the state this year. This maybe related to the fact that 100,000 acres in the state were cleared by humans since 1996.

(Indo-Asian News Service) Ranchi, Oct 5 : Don't store liquor. Don't go out into the forests drunk. Don't worship elephants. And move only in groups at night.

These are among a list of do's and don'ts brought out by the forest department of Jharkhand in a bid to check the growing cases of man-elephant conflict that have resulted in the deaths of over 300 villagers here in the last four years.

Huge posters carrying these do's and don'ts have been put up in areas where elephants often stray and damage crops and property and sometimes even kill people.

The villagers have been advised not to store 'mahua' (a substance from which local brew is prepared) in their homes.

Elephants can smell 'mahua' from a distance of three to five kilometres. Intoxicated by it, elephants often attack villages and houses and trample anyone coming in their way.

Villagers have also been asked not to move out of their homes in an inebriated condition. "Sometimes a person who is drunk mistakes an elephant for a hillock and tries to climb it. This irritates the beast who in turn attacks the person, resulting in his death," said a forest department official.

Worshipping of elephants, an animal considered by many as a divine incarnation, has also been put on the don'ts list.

"Every elephant is not trained to accept the worship and when they feel threatened they attack human beings," said another forest official.

The villagers have been asked not to venture into the forest after sunset to collect firewood. In case it became necessary to step into jungle at night, the posters advise the villagers to move in groups and carry with them torches, drums and other tools to drive away elephants in case they are confronted by elephant herds.

Attacking the 'face' of 'Satan' at Fallujah, black propaganda and "The Power of Nightmares"

Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians:

With US forces massing outside Fallujah, 35 marines swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect them in what could be the biggest battle since American troops invaded Iraq last year.

Men with buzzcuts and clad in their camouflage waved their hands in the air, M-16 assault rifles beside them, and chanted heavy metal-flavoured lyrics in praise of Christ late on Friday in a yellow-brick chapel.
[....]
"You are the sovereign. You're name is holy. You are the pure spotless lamb," a female voice cried out on the loudspeakers as the marines clapped their hands and closed their eyes, reflecting on what lay ahead for them.

Between the service's electric guitar religious tunes, marines stepped up on the chapel's small stage and recited a verse of scripture, meant to fortify them for war.

One spoke of their Old Testament hero, a shepherd who would become Israel's king, battling the Philistines 3,000 years ago.

"Thus David prevailed over the Philistines," the marine said, reading from scripture, and the marines shouted back "Hoorah, King David," using their signature grunt of approval.

The marines drew parallels from the verse with their present situation, where they perceive themselves as warriors fighting barbaric men opposed to all that is good in the world.

"Victory belongs to the Lord," another young marine read.

Their chaplain, named Horne, told the worshippers they were stationed outside Fallujah to bring the Iraqis "freedom from oppression, rape, torture and murder ... We ask you God to bless us in that effort."

"American Marines attack Fallujah" via ScotlandToday:

Colonel Gary Brandl of the United States Marine Corps commented:
"The enemy has a face. It is Satan's. He is in Fallujah, and we are going to destroy him."

The Americans needed to free up hundreds of troops for this operation and the Black Watch was moved from the relatively benign Basra area to allow that to happen.

On Thursday, three soldiers died in only their second day in the area - Sergeant Stuart Gray and Privates Paul Lowe and Scott McArdle, all of whom were from Fife.

There's an interesting documentary that I found out about called "THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR" by Adam Curtis, originally aired in late October on BBC2. You could have gotten part 1 via BitTorrent, but it seems to be gone now.

This guy made a transcript of the whole thing (Part 1 [A B], part 2 [A B] part 3 [A B]) It starts with the adventures of one Sayyed Qutb in Colorado, 1949. The writings of this guy have been highly influential in forming Sunni fundamentalist ideas. Then it flips straight over to Leo Strauss. Regardless of how you think these guys fit into the scheme, they are definitely part of the intellectual backdrop of both sides of the 'War o' Terror.'

I have two main threads to post here from the documentary. One theme is the origins of modern Islamist ideology. The other is how the neoconservatives filtered into power and manipulated how the U.S. perceived the threat from the Soviet Union. Both of these are quite important, yes?

Voiceover: This was Truman’s America, and many Americans today regard it as a golden age of their civilization. But for [Sayyid] Qutb, he saw a sinister side in this. All around him was crassness, corruption, vulgarity—talk centered on movie stars and automobile prices. He was also very concerned that the inhabitants of Greeley [Colorado] spent a lot of time in lawn care. Pruning their hedges, cutting their lawns. This, for Qutb, was indicative of the selfish and materialistic aspect of American life. Americans lived these isolated lives surrounded by their lawns. They lusted after material goods. And this, says Qutb quite succinctly, is the taste of America.

VO: What Qutb believed he was seeing was a hidden and dangerous reality underneath the surface of ordinary American life. One summer night, he went to a dance at a local church hall. He later wrote that what he saw that night crystallized his vision.

CALVERT: He talks about how the pastor played on the gramophone one of the big-band hits of the day, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He dimmed the lights so as to create a dreamy, romantic effect. And then, Qutb says that “chests met chests, arms circled waists, and the hall was full of lust and love.”

VO: To most people watching this dance, it would have been an innocent picture of youthful happiness. But Qutb saw something else: the dancers in front of him were tragic lost souls. They believed that they were free. But in reality, they were trapped by their own selfish and greedy desires. American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards. They were becoming isolated beings, driven by primitive animal forces. Such creatures, Qutb believed, could corrode the very bonds that held society together. And he became determined that night to prevent this culture of selfish individualism taking over his own country.

[ TITLE: CHICAGO ]

VO: But Qutb was not alone. At the same time, in Chicago, there was another man who shared the same fears about the destructive force of individualism in America. He was an obscure political philosopher at the University of Chicago. But his ideas would also have far-reaching consequences, because they would become the shaping force behind the neoconservative movement, which now dominates the American administration. He was called Leo Strauss. Strauss is a mysterious figure. He refused to be filmed or interviewed. He devoted his time to creating a loyal band of students. And what he taught them was that the prosperous liberal society they were living in contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Professor HARVEY MANSFIELD, Straussian Philosopher, Harvard University: He didn’t give interviews, or write political essays, or appear on the radio—there wasn’t TV yet—or things like that. But he did want to get a school of students to see what he had seen: that Western liberalism led to nihilism, and had undergone a development at the end of which it could no longer define itself or defend itself. A development which took everything praiseworthy and admirable out of human beings, and made us into dwarf animals. Made us into herd animals—sick little dwarves, satisfied with a dangerous life in which nothing is true and everything is permitted.

VO: Strauss believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom led people to question everything—all values, all moral truths. Instead, people were led by their own selfish desires. And this threatened to tear apart the shared values which held society together. But there was a way to stop this, Strauss believed. It was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation. And in America, that was the idea that the country had a unique destiny to battle the forces of evil throughout the world. This myth was epitomized, Strauss told his students, in his favorite television program: Gunsmoke.

The episode quickly goes into Qutb's philosophy of jahiliyya (roughly "the pervasively corrupting influence of the West that has poisoned our people and must be destroyed") and how that led to Ayman Zawahiri starting Islamic Jihad.

The documentary also talks about how the neoconservative clique wormed its way into Washington with Cheney and Rumsfeld in 1975-76. Then Paul Wolfowitz started the 'Team B' plan to demonize the Soviet Union and exaggerate the threat it represents. Then the Committee on the Present Danger was created to propagate their bollox findings. A fascinating tale of cold war hawk propaganda.

Suddenly I realize why they titled this "The Power of Nightmares"... But wait, Michael Ledeen makes an appearance!

VO: To persuade the President [Reagan that the Soviets were a global threat], the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don’t know what their motive was. I mean, I don’t know what people’s motives are, hardly ever. And I don’t much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA’s Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn’t exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

So in other words, neoconservatives used the CIA's black propaganda against the policymaking process of the American people. That's clever! Ledeen again, and he really sounds like he did when he came to Macalester:

VO: [Reagan's 1983 order authorizing covert action against leftists globally was a] triumph for the neoconservatives. America was now setting out to do battle against the forces of evil in the world. But what had started out as the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had said was necessary for the American people increasingly came to be seen as the truth by the neoconservatives. They began to believe their own fiction. They had become what they called “democratic revolutionaries,” who were going to use force to change the world.

LEDEEN : We were aiming for an expansion of the zone of freedom in the world. And in part that had to do with fighting Communism, and in part that had to do with fighting other kinds of tyrannies. But that’s what we were about, and that’s what we’re still about.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): When you say you were democratic revolutionaries, what do you mean?

LEDEEN : It meant that we wanted to support the people who wanted to carry out revolutions against tyrannical régimes in the name of democracy, in order to install a democratic system.

INTERVIEWER : As simple as that.

LEDEEN : Yeah. It’s not nuclear physics, you know. I mean, freedom is a fairly simple thing to get.

In a nutshell, then, we have gone from the faked threat from the Soviet Union to a situation where our armed forces claim to be fighting the face of Satan in Fallujah.

Ah, the sweet, sweet power of fake moral frameworks. I hope this illustrates a little of how they lied to us before, and how they found the political power of racist dehumanization...

Tanks whiz by Los Angeles Protests--mysterious situation

Mysterious stuff from San Andreas... I mean Los Angeles. Apparently some tanks showed up at an anti-war protest. We were sent an opinion piece with a link to some video of the tank hosted on LA IndyMedia, but it doesn't work. However, LA Indymedia still has something of the story, which is where I ripped off this strange picture from.

[UPDATE Nov. 12] The vehicles are marine Armored Personal Carriers (APCs), not tanks. I thought the barrel of the turret looked a little small. The video of what happened is now available.

Not sure what to think of this. The LA site has stuff rambling about the Posse Comitatus Act, as if that will protect us from the threat of domestic militarization. This policy paper about domestic militarization from the libertarian Cato Institute looks like it opposes such nastiness.

Holy Tons of Stolen High Explosives, Batman!!!

A big story's popped up over the weekend about 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX, for those keeping score at home) stolen from a Baathist military compound in Iraq sometime after the war. The explosives, which can be used to blow up vehicles—or trigger nuclear weapons—apparently were hauled away by some large-scale operation. Because these were a classic 'dual use' product, for construction, military and WMD purposes, was the old Iraq permitted to keep such stockpiles. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency had tagged the stockpiles

So, in a sense, they were at least tied to the international system that was supposed to defend us from the anarchy of their widespread distribution. Which is exactly what has occurred.

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo.com broke the munitions story to the Internet, quoting the Nelson Report. He has followed up the story with several posts. The New York Times has a story out on the munitions now, as well.

Only now has the 'interim' Iraqi government officially notified the IAEA that they disappeared. Apparently the Bush administration was hoping that this could be covered up until after Nov. 2. Unfortunately, the Iraqis are now left carrying the ball of exposing the disastrous occupation policies, and how avoidable the disaster has been.

The Nelson Report writeup has quotes from military people saying that this stuff probably plays a huge role in providing the explosives that rip through American military vehicles and personnel on a regular basis.

This should provide all sorts of flak for the hypercharged political week we're looking at. Hell, it could finally drive home the 'malicious incompetence' meme that just hasn't quite stuck since Abu Ghraib went down the mental Novocain hole of our domestic media environment.

This is only the latest episode in the whole disturbing arms-cache saga. I had a very bad feeling when the U.S. soldiers started running across piles of guns all over the country. Yet now we find that we even managed to lose the tagged explosives.

Honestly, why should I bother trying to avoid losing things when the Pentagon can't even track TONS OF EXPLOSIVES IN A CONQUERED COUNTRY?

Have a happy week, everyone. Try not to visualize how much trouble you could cause with just one ton of this stuff.

Then multiply by three-fifty.

Porter Goss is gross, and Pakistan doesn't work

Two things: firstly, Porter Goss is part and parcel one of Dick Cheney's evil congressional badger brigades, as a Congresscritter acting to cover up investigations into the intelligence distortions that unfolded into the invasion of Iraq. Like Cheney's little finger, said Billmon:

Goss - last seen in Farenheit 9/11 giving out the number to an entirely ficticious civil liberties complaint hotline - is a former CIA operative turned Florida hack congressman who has made himself useful to the administration in ways both large and small, not least by savaging the reputation of the agency he once worked for and now hopes to lead.

In other words, picking Porter Goss to be CIA director is roughly the same as nominating Dick Cheney's little finger...

Billmon referred to an excellent piece in CounterPunch by Ray McGovern, retired CIA dude and a representative of the "sane" intelligence analysts around Washington, ripping Goss apart as a horrible Republican piece of garbage:

That possibility conjures up a painful flashback for those of us who served as CIA analysts when Richard Nixon was president. Chalk it up to our naivete, but we were taken aback when swashbuckling James Schlesinger, who followed Richard Helms as CIA director, announced on arrival, "I am here to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon!" To underscore his point, Schlesinger told us he would be reporting directly to White House political adviser Bob Haldeman (Nixon's Karl Rove) and not to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.

No doubt Goss would be more discreet in showing his hand, but his appointment as director would be the ultimate in politicization. He has long shown himself to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney, and would likely report primarily to him and to White House political adviser Karl Rove rather than to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Goss would almost certainly follow lame-duck director George Tenet's practice of reading to the president in the morning and become an integral part of the "White House team." The team-membership phenomenon is particularly disquieting.

If the failure-prone experience of the past few years has told us anything, it is that being a "team member" in good standing is the kiss of death for the CIA director's primary role of "telling it like it is" to the president and his senior advisers. It was a painful moment of truth when former Speaker Newt Gingrich--like Cheney, a frequent visitor to CIA headquarters--told the press that Tenet was "so grateful to the president that he would do anything for him."

...There are plenty of Mexicans dying for the War on Terror... David Ignatius says that the GWOT (military acronym for take over the world global war on terror) shouldn't get politicized, but of course it already has, shamelessly:

A government has no asset more precious than public trust. That's especially true for a nation threatened by a terrorist adversary, where good intelligence and reliable warnings can save lives. By linking its reelection campaign so closely to the war on terrorism, the Bush administration has eroded its credibility -- to the point that some members of the public are beginning to wonder whether terrorism warnings are all just politics. The administration risks compounding that climate of politicization by nominating a sitting Republican member of Congress, Porter Goss, to be the next CIA director.

But now to delightful Pakistan, where nothing makes sense. This Salon piece, "Subcontracting the hunt for Bin Laden," by a former bigshot of the deposed civilian government was quite unnerving:

The relative transparency of the U.S. political system should make it difficult for U.S. officials to be blatant about linking political agendas to a national security issue such as the war against terrorism. In an article titled "July Surprise?" in the New Republic, published several weeks before the Democratic Convention, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman and Massoud Ansari wrote of pressure on Pakistan by the Bush administration to produce a "high-value target" around the time of the convention to steal Kerry's thunder. The suggestion was rejected by some as a conspiracy theory at the time, but when Pakistan announced the arrest of Ghailani, a Tanzanian, in Gujarat, Pakistan, hours before Kerry's acceptance speech, eyebrows were raised even among those Americans who normally dismiss such conspiracy theories.

For the Bush administration to have risked playing politics with the timing of arrest of terror suspects is a disturbing enough possibility. More disturbing is the prospect that the initiative to gain political advantage from these arrests came not from the Bush administration but from the Musharraf regime. By subcontracting the hunt for bin Laden to an authoritarian ally who has a special interest in the flow of economic and military benefits resulting from this contract, the administration may be giving that ally a powerful say in America's political agenda whose effect is to undermine the war against al-Qaida.

Musharraf's enlistment in the war on terrorism is an extension of Pakistan's long-established willingness to be useful to the United States for the "right price." Pakistan's first military ruler, Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan (who ruled from 1958 to 1969), told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade as early as 1953, "Our army can be your army if you want us." Ever since, Pakistan's military leadership has seen its alliance with America as its meal ticket.
[.....]
As long as the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains a single-issue alliance based on the quid pro quo of changes in Pakistani policy for U.S. money, the regime in Islamabad will continue to be tempted to take its time in finding all the terrorists at large in Pakistan. After all, most subcontractors who are paid by the hour take longer to get the job done. And while this may seem like a risky scheme for Musharraf, it conforms to the past pattern of Pakistani military regimes collecting rent from the United States for providing strategic services.

Meanwhile the Paki government is now going to go after the grandaddy of all Islamic fundamentalist organizations, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the results won't be predictable:

Under immense pressure from the United States, a slow and gradual operation has begun in Pakistan against the strongest political voice of Islamists and the real mother of international Islamic movements, of which Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front is the spoiled child.

In a surprise move this week, Pakistan's federal minister of the interior, Faisal Saleh Hayat, listed a number of incidences in which members of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), the premier fundamentalist party in the country, had been tied to al-Qaeda, and called on it to "explain these links".

"It is a matter of concern that Jamaat-e-Islami, which is a main faction of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal [MMA], has neither dissociated itself from its activists having links with the al-Qaeda network nor condemned their activities," Faisal said, adding that  "one could derive a meaning out of its silence".

The MMA is an alliance of six religious parties that gained unprecedented electoral victories in national elections in 2002. One of its members is the leader of the opposition in the Lower House, while the MMA controls the provincial government in North West Frontier Province. It also forms part of a coalition government in Balochistan province. The MMA has 67 seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, with just under a third of them held by the JI.
[.....]
Intelligence insiders tell Asia Times Online that initial operations are not targeted against the main JI structure, but at lower-rank workers suspected of involvement in underground militant activities. At the same time, once this operation starts, it will be inevitable that it extends to the highest level. Further, every JI leader is involved with senior army officers, both serving and retired, and they will not be spared in the process.

The JI is not only the largest, most organized and most resourceful organization in the country, it has deeper roots in the establishment than any other outfit. Tackling it will surely open a Pandora's box, and at the same time create a vicious backlash.

From that new blog of Steve Clemons, "Who are the real neo-cons?" looking at a new book, "America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order" by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. Sounds excellent, but how much have I heard before? Old David Broder says that Bush has Two Albatrosses: going into the war, and not paying for it.

In the tit for tat realm of punditry, I say that this actually defines Kerry's position on the war, and Cheney accuses himself of sensitivity in the war on terror. Then the Daily Howler says: Cheney, thou have flipped and flopped!

'Between the Lines'

Mordred has posted something about Donald Trump this morning so I suggest ya check it. Again I'll note that he's going to have a top link on the side here, but I haven't had the time to change my templates yet, and I guess I won't until I get back.

The wild documentary "Outfoxed" that even Kerry is mentioning finally arrived at my house yesterday and I haven't had time to watch it yet. It sounds awesome though.

Well well, it took one hell of a long time, but my summer video project is finally finished. I decided to call it 'Between the Lines' because that's where I'm always looking, true?

In the University lab right now, I am burning a total of four DVD copies. Turns out the first two that I made last night have a couple glitches in the menus that i didn't catch. I would also like to note that Apple's DVD Studio Pro, while a fairly powerful and intuitive program, is really annoying because it seems to always want to render (in this case called 'compiling' menus and 'muxing' tracks) every time I want to burn a copy. In other words, it is rendering out the whole thing, and then throwing it away every time. What the hell? It wastes like 20 minutes a disc.

On the other hand I may have been using the wrong command, 'Build' instead of 'Build/Format.' Right now it's doing the latter, so my hopes are higher.

So I am getting picked up at 3:30 today to fly out to Utah for my cousins' wedding. As I wait for the discs to burn, let me share some quick headlines that have been sitting around. I have a stack of about 30 links to post up. In the meantime here's a smaller collection of older tidbits:

Times feature on a woman who educates naive county officials on the madness of electronic ballot systems. What can I say? These things scare the hell out of me and I try not to think about it. Some terrorist plotting to disrupt the election? Who cares, we've got electronic machines that can eat votes by what, the millions?

In Iraq

The Times has switched its little "Iraq news theme" motif to "THE REACH OF WAR: THREATS AND RESPONSES" with scary looking narrow type. Hey, they gotta be selling papers....

This cemetary fighting in Najaf is some seriously creepy stuff. Can you imagine the chills on their spines as the Marines go into this ancient collection of Shi'ite graves? This type of situation is so incredibly combustible I don't even know what to say. And Robert Fisk (or was it Juan Cole?) said that the governor of the province is some unemployed old Iraqi they dragged out of Michigan. However, I think that the anger Iraqis feel about violating the sanctity of the cemetary is perhaps directed as much to Muqtada al -Sadr's guys that hunkered down there. I mean, it's not exactly a standard insurrection tactic. Then again, if you were a fanatical pre-millennialist you might want to bring about a more mythic Mahdi Army by fighting among the dead spirits. Or something like that. Like I said, chills on the neck.
A National Guardsman was ordered to look the other way at torturous conditions in an Iraqi detention center. Down the slippery slope...
Newsweek on Fallujah: "We Pray the Insurgents Will Achieve Victory."
Al Jazeera shut down in Iraq again?grouchy ministers. So is Jazeera just a Jihadi PR device? (I don't buy that; Control Room really put the idea away)

Elsewhere

Alternet on the vast right-wing Scaife conspiracy and more specifically his grudge against Teresa Heinz-Kerry.

"Afghanistan's Transition: Decentralization or Civil War?" on EurasiaNet. Indeed.

BAGnewsNotes has the best regular collection of parody images. Laughs every day.

Kerry has an interview in the Army newspaper Stars & Stripes, and it's really a pretty gutsy one. Nice work on both sides. But does this stuff, particularly about the global military base arrangement, mean Kerry is just going to play the military-industrial game yet again? (in fairness, Kerry is not a huge military pork enthusiast) He knows the jargon pretty well.

I found this random weird online science fiction story via a BlogAd. Just for something different.

Spying on North Korea with U-2 fliers

Here's something bizarre: the U.S. Air Force flies recon missions over North Korea constantly. Did you know that? This picture is from a declassified "recce forecast" directive of the Air Force, obtained by the Federation of American Scientists. How would you like to be the U-2 pilot on that mission? On the other hand, if you were a militant atheist state bent on scaring the world and dealing in nuclear parts, how would you like to be photographed in zones A, B, C, and D?

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.

"World oil crisis looms" and other mostly harmless developments

As far as marvelous news go you can't ask for more than the respected news service Jane's. Recently published and partly accessible for free: World Oil Crisis Looms:

Other companies and even governments have hyped up the estimates of how much oil they have, which is a vital factor in measuring their economic health. If exaggeration proves to be widespread, it would have an immense impact on the Middle East, whose economic weight is almost totally dependent on oil and natural gas.
....
Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that internal documents and other data indicated that Shell had over estimated its proven oil reserves in Oman by as much as 40 per cent. But that seems to have been done because everyone hoped that the latest drilling techniques would reach more deposits than in the past and merit upgrading the estimates of reserves.

The Oman estimates were based on assessments made in May 2000 by a senior Shell executive who was subsequently fired. He was among several executives who were said to have known about the unrealistic estimates of reserves and to have done nothing about it.

If the exaggeration is confirmed, the estimate of recoverable oil will have to be lowered. That is bad news for Oman, which claims reserves of 5.4bn barrels and is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports but it is also bad news for the world as a whole.

As the world's natural resources shrink and global warming changes the environment, competition for unimpeded access to them has intensified and will continue to do so. About four-fifths of the world's known oil reserves lie in politically unstable or contested regions.

It is worth considering that a great proportion of the world's remaining oil exists in a roughly triangular basin between Oman, Kirkuk in northern Iraq and southeastern Iran. Easy territory. Also if the Ghawar fields in eastern Saudi Arabia continue to steeply decline then that country will really feel the pinch.

Surely such minor matters as these wouldn't generate warfare for the next 20 years?

Soldiers seek asylum in Canada; military nearing exhaustion; they fight back via Internet

Incredibly, Minnesota lost three soldiers in this week alone, the bloodiest week that our state has yet suffered from the war.

Cpl. Levi Angell of Cloquet, 20 years old, same age as me, was killed when his Humvee was hit by an RPG. Pfc. Moises Langhorst, 19, of Moose Lake was killed earlier somewhere in Al Anbar province on April 5. Cpl. Tyler R. Fey, 22, of Eden Prairie was killed in Al Anbar the day before.

Mark Shields made an excellent point on Lehrer News Hour about the Coalition veterans who should be getting rotated out of Iraq now but have been trapped by the new unrest and Pentagon orders: they are effectively the first round of draftees, conscripted to fight the battle.

While snooping at Steve Gillard's blog (Steve is one of the original DKos people) I found a number of stories, including one about two soldiers who drove to Canada to avoid shipping to Iraq.

Army private Brandon Hughey got in his silver Mustang around midnight on March 2, rolled past the gates at Fort Hood in Texas, and headed northeast. All he had to guide him was a deepening dread and principled objection to the war in Iraq and a promise of help from a complete stranger he'd found on the Internet. His unit was deploying to the Middle East the next morning and, as Hughey, 18, wrote in a February 29 e-mail to the stranger, an anti-war activist, "I do not want to be a pawn in the government's war for oil, and have told my superiors that I want out of the military. They are not willing to chapter me out and tell me that I have no choice but to pack my bags and get ready to go to Iraq. This has led me to feel hopeless and I have thought about suicide several times."

In contrast to Hughey, Hinzman engaged a lengthy process of pleading from within his unit for non-combat duty as a conscientious objector (C.O.). After his request was denied, Hinzman faced orders for Iraq. He and his wife crammed what they could into their Chevy Prizm and headed north, with their son, from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Hinzman, 25, understood what he was risking: if he wins his case, never being able to visit the U.S. again; if he loses, being deported, going directly to jail with a harsh sentence. Desertion during wartime is a capital offense; though the last execution for a runaway soldier was in 1945, Hinzman worries that the penalty could be revived. "The Bush administration has done so many unprecedented things," he notes.

The first soldier to request Canadian asylum, Jeremy Hinzman, has started a website to deliver news and updates on his situation. The second soldier, Brandon Hughley has also started a website to detail his story: "Do not allow Canada to Send an 18-year-old to prison for refusing to kill or to be killed in an illegal, unjust war."

Steve also wrote a really excellent response to the horrible Fox show The Swan, where entrants get plastic surgery and enter a beauty contest. I find the concept very disturbing, and reflective of where Fox's real values lie. A good summary from Gillard of how the White House is treating the events there:

There is this arrogant idea that all the US has to do is kill enough people and the resistance will end. Dan Barlett, the White House spokesman making the rounds of the morning shows, said "we're fighting evil".

When I heard that, my mouth fell open. Hasn't anyone in the White House noticed most Iraqis are on the fence, and many more have decided to oppose the occupation. They are not supporting us. They are not taking our side, except when we pay them. There isn't one pro-american group native to Iraq. No one cares about Chalabi's henchmen.

I heard a Lt. Col say "we're winning every firefight." So? Why are you in firefights? Why are people killing your Marines? Doesn't that speak of a massive policy failure. Now, I know he has to win a battle, but the idea that we're fighting in Iraq is insane. We were supposed to liberate these people, not have them turn on us.

Sistani is trying to split the difference and stop the killing. Well, that isn't going to work. Sadr is not the only Shia in arms. Iraqis are telling western reporters that they are sick of the incompetence and mishandling of Iraq. Iraqis have the most educated populace of the middle east, 130K engineers and architects, but the country is being rebuilt by Halliburton. Unemployment is 60-70 percent and not going down, the streets are unsafe.

This is a very interesting site: Soldiers for the Truth, run by soldiers who are prepared to criticize how badly the armed services are treated by the Bush administration. One of the group's writers weighs in on cheating National Guard soldiers into paying for services the government is supposed to provide:

It has been more than two years since Charlie Co. of the 2nd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group received mobilization orders for active duty in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It has been 16 months since the National Guard unit returned to the United States from assignment in Kosovo and demobilized.

But for 72 Army Guardsmen from that unit, their active-duty stint turned into a financial nightmare that continues to this day. Most of the soldiers were forced to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets for on-base meals even though DoD regulations state that they are entitled either to per diem allowances or access to base dining facilities at no cost. Their efforts to obtain reimbursement from the Army have produced “frustration and disgust,” as one soldier described it – but no justice.
......
The GAO report identified a number of major structural flaws in the system, including nonintegrated databases in hundreds of Guard and active Army units, insufficient resources Armywide to manage the influx of nearly 100,000 mobilized reservists and Guardsmen, and poorly trained payroll personnel. It said nothing short of a total re-engineering of the Army’s payroll system could halt the widespread problems.

But the men of Charlie Co. already knew that.

For seven months between the day they arrived at Fort Carson, Colo., for mobilization training in early January 2002 until their departure for Europe that August, the soldiers were forced to pay for their own meals at the dining facility used by the active-duty 10th Special Forces Group. Never mind the fact that under Operation Noble Eagle/Enduring Freedom – the post-9/11 operations to secure the continental United States and eject the Taliban from Afghanistan – mobilized Guardsmen and reservists were entitled to per diem for meals and lodging; the dysfunctional and haphazard Army personnel system was not going to budge.

Another piece, The US Military is in Real Trouble:

Our 30-year old all-volunteer Army is crucially close to being broken.

Never in the history of the post-Vietnam volunteer Army has such a beaten up and over-tasked force had to sustain itself in the face of ever-expanding requirements and constantly accelerating deployment tempos that we see today.

The quality of our force is suffering. Anybody who denies that fact is either blind or ignorant. If the military is not bolstered, very soon, with an infusion of smart, well-trained, and highly-motivated volunteers, the force will suffer even more.
.....
The cumulative effect of this deterioration on troopers’ morale cannot be underestimated.

Following a recent survey of U.S. soldiers in Iraq by the military newspaper Stars & Stripes, some analysts have concluded that the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq risks doing to the All-Volunteer Force what Vietnam did to the draft.

The survey, which polled thousands of troops, found that 40 percent of recipients said their missions in Iraq had little or nothing to do with what they had trained for. Perhaps even more foreboding, half the soldiers who were surveyed indicated that they will not reenlist when their tours end or when the Pentagon lifts the stop-loss order currently in effect that has prevented over 24,000 active duty soldiers and over 16,000 reservists from leaving the service.

This week I spoke over twenty Army NCOs, all recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan duty. Ranging in rank from corporal to sergeant 1st class, all but two said they intend to leave active service once they get the opportunity to do so. The majority added that they wish to completely sever their military ties and will not join reserve units to continue their service.

Two general officers, who have asked that they remain nameless, have both told me that it is their firm belief; that if it were not for the stop-loss policy then the total force would already be in critically severe jeopardy and it clearly could not complete its missions. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Reserve officials are pondering why they have missed their reenlistment goals for 2003.

Also they are following the depleted uranium issue, and its effect on US soldiers. I looked at the site after Gillard noted the story of intel agent David DeBatto, a veteran of our failing Iraq policies, whom the Pentagon is trying to discredit:

The Army has launched what I can only describe as a smear campaign against me by trying to destroy my credibility. They are claiming, among other things, that I am trying to present my self as an official Army or Pentagon spokesman (God forbid!) and that I have been trying to set national policy (I never realized I had that much authority). They are, of course, trying to minimize my experience and expertise by saying, in effect; I don’t know what I am talking about. Pretty standard stuff for a large agency trying to muzzle someone who is speaking the truth about them.

Mind you, these accusations are being made primarily by men (I use the term loosely here) that either never served a day in Iraq or Afghanistan or spent their time in-theater in a nice, air-conditioned office with Internet and e-mail connections 24/7, showers, latrines, good food and never went over the wire except to re-deploy. This was done when soldiers like myself were going out, over the wire, on 3-4 mission a day, seven days a week and getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a day, if we were lucky.

We took incoming from RPG’s, AK-47’s, and 60 and 80 mm mortars every day and night. We were also exposed to the very real danger of attack from the enormous crowds that circled us every time we would stop and dismount in a town or village. As for my team, a THT (Tactical HUMINT Team) for which I was the team leader, we were responsible for some of the biggest and most significant intelligence collection efforts in the central Sunni Triangle area in which we operated. I am very proud of my team and what they accomplished, usually under very difficult conditions; conditions made all the more difficult because of poor leadership at the 0-4 and 0-5 levels, some of the very same people now leveling baseless allegations against me.

Too many these days would deem it impossible, but my solidarity lies with those who would choose to flee this country than fight the war, those who are trying to do their duty but bleed and die in the sands over there, and the young Arabs who see no further option but to pick up the gun.

The moral fault lies not with those who fight or flee, but with those who designed this war, and have by their malicious incompetence utterly failed to pacify and stabilize the country.

Israeli police alarmed about potential Temple Mount riot, J'lem Post demands wiping out Iraqis

The late news on the Jerusalem Post is that there were specific warnings of Palestinians rioting after Friday prayers at the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City.

Police: Riots may break out after Friday prayers

Massive police forces were stationed Friday morning in east Jerusalem and especially in the Old City, after police received specific warning that young Palestinians intend to riot following the Muslim prayers on Temple Mount, which are to resume at 1 p.m.

Last Friday, Palestinian youth rioted on the holy site in what was considered the most serious security incident on Temple Mount since the riots of October 2000, which sparked the second Intifada, known also as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Police said that entrance to the mosques was restricted to men above the age of 45 carrying Israeli IDs. Muslim women of all ages are allowed to enter the compound.

Meanwhile, the high terror alert continues across the country. Security forces are stationed in city centers, shopping malls and synagogues.

Meanwhile the Post's editorial board says "unless the US wipes out Mahdi's army and the Sunni resisters quickly and decisively, it will have a real intifada on its hands:"

Now it's a fair question whether the US will have to face down a popular uprising – a real Iraqi intifada – or be defeated by it.

Our sense is that what America faces now is similar to what Israel faced in the early days of the present conflict. Fallujah, as American military commanders have pointed out, is a city apart, a place that uniquely benefited from Saddam's largesse and now finds itself a loser in the new dispensation. Sheikh Sadr is a young upstart, supported mainly by Iran and opposed by the mainstream Shiite Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. As for "Mahdi's Army," Sadr's ragtag militia, it does not represent a serious military threat to the Coalition.

Yet what starts small can end large. A population that wishes to remain aloof from a conflict can gradually be drawn into it as orchestrated provocations engulf everyone in violence. Sadr's calculation is that as violence spreads – and as the Coalition resorts to increasingly aggressive measures, with all the "collateral damage" that entails – Iraqis will cast their lot with him, not the occupiers or their designated successors.

As of this writing, the Coalition has obliged the sheikh. The US has promised a "deliberate and precise" reaction; in Fallujah, Marines fired rockets at a mosque, killing more than two dozen Iraqis.

That does not mean that any military action taken against Sadr is counterproductive and will only strengthen him. What it does mean is that the Coalition cannot afford half-measures. The great mistake made by Israel in the early days of the intifada – and that, frankly, is what it has become, even if it didn't start out that way – was to ratchet up the violence slowly. Too much Israeli precision served too embolden the Palestinians rather than deter them. Too much American precision will accomplish the same.

We do not mean to suggest that the US employ indiscriminate force. But unless the US wipes out Mahdi's army and the Sunni resisters quickly and decisively, it will have a real intifada on its hands, and the temptation to retreat will ultimately prove overpowering. Just look at Israel.

Just look at Israel... It's almost as if the Post wants the U.S. to begin fighting both Sunni and Shia with extreme force.

Who would have ever thought they might want that to happen?

I am extremely concerned that there will be another incident around the Mount/Al Aqsa area, perhaps rounded out with something else in Karbala and Najf, a synchronicity between Arabs, Israel and the United States, having stumbled up to this point, having finally exhausted all plans...

Also, word is that all Sunnis in Baghdad are supposed to go to the central mosque. Raed in the Middle:

The next couple of days are going to be really red.
The Red Weekend…
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the “fall” of Baghdad.

Tomorrow is Friday, the Muslims sabbath, and the mosques of Baghdad will NOT be available for the noon prayer. The mosques announced that the Friday prayer of tomorrow is going to be in the central mosque, for all Sunnis. Um AlMaarek mosque, thousands and thousands are going to be there.

Thousands of Iraqis from all Iraq joined the Falluja blood donation campaign, Falluja is still under siege, more than 300 people killed there and more than 500 injured in the because of the collective punishment Bremer has ordered.

Iraqi police officers joined AlMahdi Army in Najaf and Kufa, where the coalition forces lost control over the city. The same thing in AlKut city too.

The GC is falling apart, some members resigned, others are on their way.
People are making jokes about the “hand over of authorities”, who is going to hand over what?

This Saturday is a sacred religious anniversary for Shia, the (Arbaeen) of AlHusien. This anniversary witnessed millions of Iraqi Shia marching to Karbala from all the Iraqi cities, and if this thing happens this year… ohhh…
......
This bloody cycle of violence is not going to stop in the next couple of days, but next week I think a political solution will be acceptable.

I feel sad and frustrated.
The sound of aggression and violence is louder than my voice.

This Friday will be one for the history books, no matter what happens... We are really on the rollercoaster now. All these guys calling for blood on FOX and Scarborough Country are really starting to bother me. But then I realize they've been bothering me for well over a year now.

Fragmentation begins?

I can't believe that Bush is yet again hanging out at the GOD DAMNED RANCH. Because God knows he did such a good job managing threats from there last time.

I have found a huge array of information today, so let me summarize:

Mesopotamia Aflame: DEBKA is not my idea of a serious source, but their Iraqi battle map is what you have to look at. Don't necessarily believe their report about Sadr, (nor Hamas) but it's interesting.

There is emerging information that a U.S. translator says that the government had all kinds of 9/11 evidence in its possession. And lo and behold the U.S. media won't pick it up.

There are Sunnis and Shiites marching from baghdad to Fallujah with humanitarian supplies, and they have been overrunning American checkpoints. Could go badly.

In the Irony Department Richard Perle says there wasn't enough planning. WHAT THE HELL MAN?!

Justin Raimondo on Sadr, "The New Saddam." Because the U.S. always needs someone to hate? Hmm...

More of Asia Times: One year on, from liberation to jihad by Pepe Escobar. Meanwhile it's time to reconstruct Islam!!! The Shiite voice that will be heard. Baathists on the bandwagon! But wait, its not a second war?!?!? Ahh hell...

The very paranoid site WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM is having a field day! (a paranoid report on whether or not a plane actually hit the Pentagon). I don't really need any more conspiracy theories, so regard these as questionable but entertaining. Pepe Escobar at Asia Times online is going off about 9/11. A mellow theological scholar publishes a book asserting that the 9/11 story was faked.

Al Jazeera on Asian hostages.

Command Post has continuing updates. More hawkish places are asserting that Iran is propelling matters. This piece does have a lot of nice background, though.

These are extremely graphic pictures of dead Iraqis in Fallujah from Al Jazeera. Asia Times on the uprising: When fear turns to anger.

Iraq Anarchy by Robert Fisk, a man whose early pessimism about the war turned out all too correct

Anarchy has been a condition of our occupation from the very first days when we let the looters and arsonists destroy Iraq's infrastructure and history. But that lawlessness is now coming back to haunt us. Anarchy is what we are now being plunged into in Iraq, among a people with whom we share no common language, no common religion and no common culture.
...
Dan Senor, the occupying power's spokesman, wouldn't tell anyone exactly what the evidence against Sadr was - even though it has supposedly existed since an Iraqi judge issued the warrant some months ago.

The US military response to the atrocities committed against four American mercenaries in Fallujah last week has been to surround the entire city and to announce the cutting off of the neighbouring international highway link between Baghdad, Amman and Damascus - thus bringing to a halt almost all economic trade between Iraq and its two western neighbours.

What good this will do "new" Iraq is anyone's guess. Vast concrete walls have been lowered across the road and military vehicles have been used to chase away civilians trying to by-pass them. A prolonged series of Israeli-style house raids are now apparently planned for the people of Fallujah to seek out the gunmen who first attacked the four Americans - whose corpses were later stripped, mutilated and hanged.
.....
And all this, remember, began because Mr Bremer decided to ban Sadr's trashy 10,000-circulation weekly newspaper for "inciting violence."

Here is something of significance: In the former capital of the Islamic Caliphate, Samarra, the uprising has arrived, according to AFP. I have said before that Samarra is a sort of 'magic' place in the logic of Al Qaeda, in the sense that they are trying to rebuild the caliphate, which would hold a special logic within this ancient city.
From the 9/11 commission this morning, Bob Kerrey said:

"I believe, first of all, that we underestimate that this war on terrorism is really a war against radical Islam. Terrorism is a tactic. It's not a war itself. Secondly, let me say that I don't think we understand how the Muslim world views us, and I'm terribly worried that the military tactics in Iraq are going to do a number of things, and they're all bad. ... I think we're going to end up with civil war if we continue down the military operation strategies that we have in place. I say that sincerely as someone that supported the war in the first place."

"Let me say, secondly, that I don't know how it could be otherwise, given the way that we're able to see these military operations, even the restrictions that are imposed upon the press, that this doesn't provide an opportunity for Al Qaida to have increasing success at recruiting people to attack the United States. It worries me. And I wanted to make that declaration. You needn't comment on it, but as I said, I'm not going to have an opportunity to talk to you this closely. And I wanted to tell you that I think the military operations are dangerously off track. And it's largely a U.S. Army -- 125,000 out of 145,000 -- largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation. So I take that on board for what it's worth."

More on this from salon.com.
Haaretz weighs in on Iraq: It's a war waged for prestige!

The rightwing Tacitus says something insightful, but also portentious of doom, as those hawks are wont to do:

Consider that if you are American, there is no open road to Baghdad from any of Iraq's neighboring countries. For the moment, CPA resupply is a triumph of airlift. Something to chew on. It's not the result of any one tragically wrong decision or miscalculation; rather, it's the end result of a year of accumulating bad calls and wishful thinking: disbanding the army plus not confronting Sadr plus giving the Shi'a a veto plus the premature policy of withdrawal from urban centers plus the undermanning of the occupation force (and the concurrent kneecapping of Shinseki) plus the setting of a ludicrously early "sovereignty" date plus the early tolerance of lawlessness and looting plus illusory reconstruction accomplishments plus etc., etc., etc. In short, the failure of the occupation to be an occupation in any sense that history and Arab peoples would recognize. Bad calls of such consistency are the product of a fundamentally bad system.
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As you read this in the cold, comforting, wan glow of your screen, United States Marines are adding Fallujah to the roll call of honor that stretches from our young nation's first defeat of jihad in North African sands, to the beaches of Tarawa and Saipan, to Hue, and beyond. And soon, the men and women of the United States Army will emerge from their embattled base camps to conquer the ancient valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates for the second time in a year. What they are doing is right and just; the enemy they fight is manifestly base and tyrannical. There is no question on this count, and there is no doubt of their battlefield victory. What is in doubt is whether their victory will last, and whether the price paid for it will be worthwhile. These magnificent instruments of our national will, soldier and Marine alike, are unstoppable by any insurgent, any jihadist, any fanatic, or any guerrilla.

Juan Cole on point as always. Also he illustrates the truth about the role the U.S. has played in influencing the growth of post-Saddam Iraqi militias:

Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor, who has often attempted to peddle frankly false stories, was at it again on Wednesday. He said Muqtada al-Sadr was targeted because he maintained a militia. Let's see: In April of 2003, the US Department of Defense flew Ahmad Chalabi into Iraq with over a thousand of his militiamen, actually transporting them in US troop carriers. They brought a militia to Iraq.

Just published, Robert Reich asks us to visualize what a second Bush administration might feel like.

A book review about The Rise of the Vulcans, a book I got but haven't read much of yet about the personal histories of Bush officials. It is not very polemical; the section about Wolfowitz's path from math to Wohlstetter's political science is quite good.
I already posted this before, but once again a book review from the Times about Bush's psychopathology:

the Schweizers quote one unnamed relative as saying that George W. Bush sees the war on terrorism "as a religious war": "He doesn't have a p.c. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."

Someone advised me today to keep an eye on CounterPunch. Not a bad idea.

Riverbend in Iraq is still going. Another Iraqi blog, Iraq-Iraqis.

...A united militia with the same uniform should be created grouping all the guards and armed people from the parties’ members and the followers of the GC members to enforce order in streets. It’s their duty and our duty would be to defend our democracy and freedom against terrorists and trouble makers and kayos lovers.

Lawrence of Cyberia, another nice blog. Reading A1 is another blog that criticizes the New York Times.

I just mentioned it below, but again Billmon's Death of a Dream is worth reading for its insight on neo-cons, Israel and anti-Semitism in the Middle East. This is the Arabic blog which the original mujahideen conversation apparently comes from.
Compare this press release with what actually transpired in that poor nation.
The casualties are piling up rapidly. This site is authoritative.

NY Times reporter John Burns was briefly captured by a Shiite militia.

Michael Lind wrote this last year about "The Weird Men Behind George W Bush's War," and I might be more skeptical of it if Lind wasn't a former neocon, and editor of the National Interest, himself. (Good info about PNAC in here) I ran into some old paranoid pieces about the war running beyond control. Another old piece by a Palestinian professor about how the war is supposedly ultimately to Israel's benefit. Ah, for those heady and speculative days.

Via Atrios a stunning little letter from a contractor working in Iraq:

Discipline is slipping in the forces and it reminds one of the Viet-Nam pictures of old. Instead of a professional military outfit here we have a bunch of cowboys and vigilantes running wild in the streets. The ugly American has never been so evident. Someone in charge needs to drop the hammer on this lack of discipline, especially that which is being hown by the Special Forces, security contractors, and "other government agencies". We won the war but that doesn't mean we can treat the people of this couotry with contempt and disregard with no thought to the consequences. Those contractors, just like the last ones who were killed, were out running free with no military escort. Armed or not, that is a breach of protocol and a severe security risk. While I grieve for the families of those persons I would like to see the person who decided that it was alright for them to convoy out there without the military brought up on charges, unless of course that person was in the convoy, in which case at least he won't be getting anyone else killed.

I'm angry about how we're treating peope here. I know it's not the entire military, in fact it is a very small, select group that believes they are somehow above the law of not ony this land but also the law of the military and those laws we hold dear in ouor own country. If someone were to try to treat our fellow Americans the way some of these people are treating the Iraquis the courts would certainly lock them away. I would phrase that last line harsher, but in light of recent events that would be cruel. Discipline is needed here, and I'm not certain that our current administration is prepared to take the steps necessary to crack down on all of this. In order for discipline to be restored I do believe Donald Rumsfield would have to admit that perhaps Powell's rules of war were in fact valid.

Inside the personal bubbles that the long-suffering Israeli populace inhabits:

Suicide bombings create small, self-enclosed worlds consisting of family, a few friends, and a tiny geography. You go to this supermarket which is not in a busy mall, this cafe which has an armed guard, drive your kids to school along this side road which isn't a bus route - and to hell with anyone you don't know or trust. This is your own personal bu'ah, your bubble, and no one who is not in it is above suspicion. What is happening in Gaza or Nablus - the curfews, the checkpoints, the terrifying incursions of troops, the targeted assassinations, the collapse of the social infrastructure, the malnutrition, the cages in which Palestinians are fenced off like zoo animals - could be happening in Bosnia instead of a 25-minute drive away, because no one goes there except your son the soldier or your husband the reservist, and he doesn't talk about what he's seen because he can't. He doesn't have the emotional language to express it, who among us does? He comes home and gratefully re-enters his bu'ah. If I were an Israeli businessman, I'd invest in escapism, the bu'ah's wallpaper...

If you ever wanted to understand what anesthitized language about cracking down on Palestinians looks like, read this from an Israeli terror institute.

Joe Conason observed in February that the president was oblivious.

Rummy admits it's serious! "Iraq's stability crumbling at a rapid rate."
This news report from Knight-Ridder looks grim:

Marine engineers patrolling near Ramadi on Wednesday reported coming across a mass grave containing up to 350 bodies of Iraqis who appeared to have been killed in the fighting. It wasn't clear whether the bodies belonged to combatants, civilians or both.
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Rumors, unconfirmed and unconfirmable, heightened the tension: Those involved in the insurgency said Sunnis, Shiites and even Palestinians would gather in a war summit in Sadr City on Thursday.

"The Sunni people, the Shiite people, we share the same God, the same suffering under the Americans and the same goal, to end the occupation of Iraq," said Said Ammer al Husainie, the Mahdi Army leader in Sadr City. "We have been working together, and will continue to work together, to see that our aims are met.
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-The BBC reported that Shiite fighters had entered a Sunni mosque Monday, recruiting volunteers to donate blood for the resistance. Once recruited, the volunteers "together agreed on a wide-range attack in the neighborhood on the Americans," the BBC reported.

-In Ramadi, a traditional Sunni stronghold, witnesses said Marines were fighting soldiers who were dressed like members of Mahdi Army.

-In southern and central Baghdad, traditional Sunni neighborhoods, pro-Sadr posters and literature were widely circulated.

Too funny to leave out: the dictator of Turkmenistan's dogmatic guide to better living: The Rukhnama. Radio Free Europe is a new news source. EurasiaNet has a lot of good news collecting going on. Don't forget the Argus.

If this whole post doesn't make any sense to you, it doesn't make sense to me, either.

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.

Gold market expert alarmed by suspicious currency fluctuations, spoofed numbers

I ran into this weird info via Cosmic Iguana and had to dig into it further. A professional metals trader named Jim Sinclair now sees strange actions in the U.S. dollar, which he can't pin down on anything normal. He thinks there may be a pattern marking it as similar to the mysterious stock market manipulations just prior to 9/11.

This guy clearly seems pretty eccentric, but if my job was to track the most notoriously silly market in the world, the gold market, I would probably be batty too.

Sinclair believes this pattern immediately emerged after the assassination of HAMAS spiritual leader Sheik Yassin. Gold community heads up, March 26:

In conversation with Kenny this morning, we both noted that gold is in what I call "the technician’s nightmare" which is not that infrequent once a long trend is underway.

All internals are now full-bore positive, well overbought and therefore screaming for a correction. A failure to see a relatively short-lived, but possibly sharp correction is what concerns me as I look at new market trading relationships and fish for the cause.

Al Qaeda is both a financial and military organization. My question is simple: Are we looking at the al Qaeda footprint in the market?
........
You know that there was significant, unexplained -either fundamentally or technically- buying of Puts and selling calls in the airlines' stocks just before 9/11. This has never been defined or investigated.

Here is what bothers me. I see a footprint in the US dollar that is not the Exchange Stabilization Fund. It is not the German Blitz-Market. It is not the Swiss Stair Ladder. It is not Pinky Green and his pal. It is the footprint I showed you last night and one that I have never seen before.

If I were Interpol, the CIA or the NSA, I would reacquisition the chart of the options on airline trading for 90 days before 9/11 and see if the footprint now in the dollar, which is unique, matched the footprint on the buy of the airline Puts and the sell of the airline Calls just before those exact airlines hit the WTC.

There is a scary combination taking place which is a skewing of relationships caused by a huge interest in the market muscling new market trading relationships between items by their execution. Please consider the following:

1. Asian currencies are strong on balance.
2. The US dollar has been accumulated over the past 7 days in a unique footprint.
3. The euro is weak on balance
4. Gold is strong, period.
5. The stock market, although it should be near a technical bounce, lost its bull appearance and has gone to neutral.
6. Commodities are quite strong, most certainly traditional war commodities.
7. We have a price crisis but not a supply crisis in energy.

What fundamentally would make the relationship above come into the markets? If my little friend in Kenya, the Seer, Mahendra Sharma, gets it right, what would be the reason? Well, it is an unthinkable event in the Middle East that causes concern that Euroland is the next target because its security is lax compared to the USA which has become a thinly veiled police state. Would that not do the following?:

1. Launch gold into the stratosphere?
2. Strengthen the US dollar by default because the short side is simply ENORMOUS.
3. Cause mixed events in equity markets.
4. Put the price of oil to at least $60 if not higher.
5. If it was serious enough in light of this scenario, could it possibly postpone the November US elections?

The evidence that such an event is possible is in the marketplace. This need not happen but should be thought about. If it occurs, the motivating factor that could go down in history as the modern version of the killing of Arch Duke Ferdinand is the recent elimination of the Hamas martial cleric.

Predicting higher interest rates on March 27. Hell, I'm no economist but even I understand that these percentages seem too low to last:

Interest rates will rise this year and my wager is that the rise will occur before the election, most likely in late spring or early summer. That event will injur gold slightly for a very short time after which the price will appreciate into the election.

I will refine the timing as we approach that event so broadly discussed but so meaningless. Just remember this: Once inflation bites, which it’s doing now as evidenced by the commodity price rise, inflation, the shark-like predator that it is, locks its jaws. Remember this well!

Later that day in another piece he suspects that gas prices are going to go sky-high:

Assuming that gas prices climb to the $3 per gallon level, the American public will go BALLISTIC. After that happens, any claims by the Federal Reserve that inflation does not exist will fall on deaf ears AND PERMANENTLY DISCREDIT THE FED INTERNATIONALLY. I suspect that a significant amount of the participants at our recent Florida G7conferrence stopped by Salim Gillani’s Chevron station prior to the meeting.

In a trifecta of a single day's mad posts, he quotes a big piece from Stratfor about Israel and Turkey. Stratfor is a great private intelligence service, and I only wish I could read all their stuff. "Elimination of Hamas Leader Could Realign Turkey With Arab and Muslim World."

Turkey knows the significance of this incident even if most Westerners don’t fully appreciate the danger. Turkey is maneuvering to get out of harm’s way. This is serious and when a government moves in such a significant way it has to tell you that the elimination of the leader of Hamas has widespread implications. The following is from my intelligence service Stratfor.com.

Turkish-Israeli Relations: An Axial Shift?
Summary
Turkey has condemned Israel's assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an act of "terrorism." This is the first time a Turkish government has criticized Israel for a position since the two states enhanced their military relationship in the mid-1990s. The mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara could not afford to remain neutral on this issue, especially because many Turkish citizens have been arrested on suspicion of ties to al Qaeda. The development could signal an initial AKP bid to realign with the Arab and Muslim world; Turkey and Israel have had diplomatic relations since 1949.

Analysis

Turkey has condemned Israel's targeted assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an act of terrorism. In an interview with Turkish daily Hurriyet on March 25, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that the international community must examine this kind of act, adding that there can be no peace in the Middle East unless Israel gives up its strong-arm tactics. Erdogan said Israel's actions have seriously derailed any role Turkey could have played in mediations between Israelis and Palestinians, and he hinted that he might cancel a visit to Israel in April if the current atmosphere does not change.

This is an unprecedented criticism of Israel from Ankara. The mildly Islamist Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party), or AKP, is taking advantage of international outrage over the killing of Yassin to try to undo Turkey's image as a pro-Israeli state. Ankara hopes this will stave off criticism from certain parts of the populace and the Muslim world. We should note that Hamas and the AKP trace their roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood organization of Egypt.

On March 29 he asked for the Maalox.

It’s a dangerous world out there that is getting even worse. That’s good for gold but for unfortunate reasons. The US simply doesn’t have any more properly trained troops to engage in Afghanistan in the manner required to meet the challenge. With this happening and the war for the minds and hearts of Iraqi citizens a disaster, where is plan B?
......
Increasingly, Alan Greenspan's reign as Chairman of the Federal Reserve is being reviewed more critically in the media. With over-the-counter derivatives out of control, householders being encouraged to borrow on their homes to finance consumer purchases, gas prices at record highs, and no indications of inflation anywhere, what can I say other than pass the Malox please.

On March 30 he added some further thoughts under "Terror Attacks Escalate:"

The water of hatred is boiling all over the world but press reports are muted and seek reasons always to maintain social order.

This is the most dangerous time we have faced in our lifetime. I have lived a good part of my 63 years in areas with high Islamic populations and frankly you have no idea of the hatred that is building out there every day. Nor do you appreciate the dedication that is associated with that hatred.

You do not appreciate that many more people than you can imagine are willing to die and pass along to their families the mission that this hated engenders. We do not appreciate or respect the beliefs of other cultures and that will be what history points to as the underlining cause of World War III which started long before 9/11.

Finally on April Fool's Day he posts "Rumor Control" and a bunch of Al-Qaeda news clippings when he feels that things are still afoot.

There is a high probability that what we are experiencing this morning is a very temporary blowout in the gold price from its march to the upside.

Shorts are gunning for $423 on the close. Any close under $428 will encourage the short sellers. The long funds - or about 45,000 new long contracts purchased at an apparent average of $413.50 - have likely not participated in this morning's selling and will in all probability have mental stops at $423.

All this adds up to one hell of a bear trap being set up next week. The only thing I believe can prevent a temporary and healthy decline here is a significant geopolitical event. No sane person would wish for that.

Finally, this was posted April 1 at 11 PM.

There are still strange footprints in the dollar that have yet to be defined. However, the hunt is on and they will be identified. The supply of gold between $430 and $435 will be overcome but that might take some consolidation first. Markets get stretched out when they have one way runs.

Gold is up over $40 since we called the bottom. That is a stretch that can only continue if the driver is a geopolitical event in the making. The crisis in energy prices continues as the falsification of economic indicators reaches a point of total absurdity.
.....
Should gold persist under $428 into tomorrow’s opening, that would call for a push to $423. At $423, the bulls will make their stand so be prepared for another shoot out at the Comex corral tomorrow.

The rub is that every day the world is moving towards some sort of military/terrorist catharsis and the solutions being applied do not seems to be easing that progression.

Bottom line: I understand very little of this jargon, yet it alarms me. So if you can decode this graph he published yesterday you are some kind of genius.

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?

Homework

Again, anyone can understand that war and conquest without and the encroachments of despotism within give each other mutual support; that money and men are habitually taken at pleasure from a people of slaves to bring others beneath the same yoke; and that conversely war furnishes a pretext for exactions of money and another, no less plausible, for keeping large armies constantly on foot, to hold people at awe. In a word, anyone can see that aggressive princes wage war at least as much on theis subjectts as on their enemies, and that the conquering nation is left no better off than the conquered.

--Rousseau
(from New & Old Wars by Mary Kaldor, p. 19)

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.

Last thoughts inside the box

In less than 12 hours I'll be winging it out of this country for the first time in many years. The last time I flew out was Jamaica in high school. Since then, I've driven into Canada and Mexico, which is an entirely appropriate way to learn how the country ends at a line. I've given a lot of attention to what happens elsewhere but i haven't been elsewhere in so long, which is plainly negligent or even hypocritical.

Meanwhile, rumors are flying that Al-Qaeda bombed Madrid in retaliation for Iraq, an entirely reasonable idea when we remember that Al-Qaeda means "the base." So who knows what branches of the base might be involved in bombing European public transportation? There have been bomb threats against French trains, as well. It is safe to say that the security apparatus will be out in full. I haven't flown since 9/11. I'm a little edgy that there might be another incident in London during this season of the unexplained.

Yet that is why it's so important for me to go away for a while. The negative forces on the TV tell us that order is crumbling all around, that The Terror is On Our Doorstep. We Must Cower, they say.

Before Madrid, I saw that the dark thunderclouds of baseless fear and malicious disinformation were finally starting to drift away in this country.

It feels much better to step out when things are finally turning the corner than when the forces of evil blow right on your back. America this spring already seems a safer place with the idea of another four years of Bush Imperium sounding more farcical and remote by the week. Their nasty vision is falling apart.

So with that, let me round up a few key things to look for:

Wait for the good Colonel, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkoski, to start making the rounds on cable TV. The bombshell piece "The New Pentagon Papers" in Salon.com is part of a grand liberal media offensive incorporating Salon.com and the UK's Guardian. Her writings thus far, including the regular column, are an excellent expression of profoundly alarmed everyday conservatism. "Soldier for the Truth: Exposing Bush’s Talking-Points War ." Funny how it sounds like the whole Iraq war (mainly via the Salon piece) was propelled by one Straussian (Mr Shulsky) deploying an array of threatening talking points memos.

There is the unfolding story of the stolen Congressional computer documents.

There is (another) Halliburton investigation.

Juan Cole puts it all too well when he asks: "US Intelligence Follies: Why Haven't Cheney, Feith and Chalabi been Impeached?

Whatever happens on this trip, by the time I return, I'll be changed. It will be a before-vs.-after experience, no matter what happens. And what better moment for the clean break than now?

I might see more clearly these things which puzzle me so. I have to go.

Hersh: Special Forces going into Pakistan

There have been a lot of stories flying today about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Seymour Hersh released a major article stating that the U.S. is going into the remote Hindu Kush areas with possibly thousands of troops to seek out Bin Laden. This article is worth reading in its entirety.

Hindu Kush means "Hindu Killer," and as Hersh pointed out today, Alexander the Great lost a division up here to the harsh conditions. These are highly tribal areas, and most people are well-armed.

The problem is that for a lot of the hard-core Islamists in the Pakistani security services--mainly the ISI--the entry of US troops into Pakistan is the real red line, the breaking point. Musharraf has already narrowly avoided death several times.

Should it be a red line for us? As Andy put it, this is massive intervention into a nuclear power we are talking about. Does this kind of thing have to be voted on somewhere? What can this lead to? (What might the North Koreans do?)

Stop.

Ok, alternatively, none of this madness is going on. It's all fiction and spy yarns. Sometimes I worry I am over-reacting, but then I think about how scary nuclear weapons seemed to me back in the day. Back then, we had huge states looking out for their crown jewels, but now its more of an virtual Persian bazaar of clandestine WMD trafficking and shady deals.

Besides that, Reuters reports NATO is planning to sweep through Afghanistan, taking security control of continuous areas in a grand sweep. Yet the Taliban has control of Zabul province now, according to one Pakistani article. The NGOs have been brutally driven off in these parts and the central government, corrupt in many places, is out of reach.

The Pakistani military killed some people a little ways inside Pakistan, in an area they are searching through.

There is an interesting story in the WaPo that the Palestinian Authority might crumble, too.

Something less terrifying about other fuzzy borders in Central Asia. Seems Uzbekistan, kind of a troll state, has been laying landmines well beyond its boundaries. Meanwhile Tajiks have been wandering into Kyrgyzstan and taking resources. It's a very nomadic place, which is part of the reason the land mines are such a problem.

Interesting campaign blog with the Columbia School of Journalism.

I TOLD you that Ahmed Chalabi was dirty dirty stuff, selling bad intel via the neo-cons. The investigations are piling up. Hurrah!

Iraqi civil war talk; Syria and Iran involved in Iraq violence?; The CIA can't see

I have to find some birthday presents for the Chunkies this afternoon, and I'm still struggling to get HongPong.com's photo album software I want. The Edwards slideshow is coming along nicely so far, though. Hopefully later today, and I'll send out some notifications to all who might be interested...

One of the big questions around the war is whether or not the "terror states" of Iran and Syria might be impelled to help Iraqis strike US forces, thusly proving QED for the neo-cons that they are all EvilDoers Waiting to Strike Against Us. TIME reports that it's really a locally-based thing, not foreigners pulling strings. But now comes a Guardian report that Syria and Iran have been helping some groups. (WiC again)

Senior Iraqi intelligence officers believe an Islamic militant group which has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Irbil and a spate of deadly attacks in Baghdad, Falluja and Mosul is receiving significant help from Syria and Iran.

The officers, who have been tracking the activities of domestic and foreign jihadists in northern Iraq, claim that members of Jaish Ansar al-Sunna (the army of the supporters of the sayings of the prophet) have been "given shelter by Syrian and Iranian security agencies and have been able to enter Iraq with ease".

The group is suspected of training suicide bombers and deploying them against US forces in Iraq and Iraqis considered to be collaborating with the US-led authorities.

Meanwhile the magic words "CIVIL WAR" are drifting around.

For Iraqis already in, or thinking about joining, one of the Iraqi security forces -- such as the Iraqi Civil Defence Corp (ICDC), the border guards or the police -- the dangers were made all too clear last week. Instead of being viewed by insurgents as people protecting their country, or simply needing a job, Iraqi police or corps members are simply labelled "collaborators", aiding and abetting the US occupation. Over 100 people were killed in Iskanderiya and Baghdad in two car bombings over two days, both targeting Iraqis signing up to join security forces.
.....
Standard operating procedures for troops stationed in Iraq have changed in such a way as to avoid lethal engagements. US soldiers in Iraq have told Al-Ahram Weekly that, for example, if a patrol comes under fire, the usual response is to leave the area rather than counterattack, unless absolutely necessary. As the US makes plans to pull troops out of cities to bases on the edges of urban centres, Iraqi security forces are being trained and deployed at a break-neck pace, often without proper vehicles or communications and security equipment. The goal is to hand over all security positions to the Iraqis, and damn the consequences.

Existing resistance activities, like the prison raid in Fallujah, could be an example of the chaos that may erupt this summer. Take the already volatile tensions between the Sunni, Shi'ites and Kurds, and the fact that some of these groups have their own militias -- like the Kurdish peshmergas or the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq's Badr Brigade and Muqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- then add some foreign fighters intent on inflaming those tensions and an elections showdown sure to make either Shi'ites or Sunnis very upset: we have the perfect ingredients for a civil war. If that happens, the US seems to be the only force in the country with the capability to keep the peace, but ironically they have not accomplished that even without widespread sectarian violence.

Evidently the CIA is having problems managing intelligence in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is pretty damned alarming that this grand intelligence service is apparently choking on the pressures of the War on Terra.

Confronting problems on critical fronts, the CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there, and has closed a number of satellite bases in Afghanistan amid concerns about that country's deteriorating security situation, according to U.S. intelligence sources.

The previously undisclosed moves underscore the problems affecting the agency's clandestine service at a time when it is confronting insurgencies and the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, current and former CIA officers say. They said a series of stumbles and operational constraints have hampered the agency's ability to penetrate the insurgency in Iraq, find Osama bin Laden and gain traction against terrorism in the Middle East.

One former officer who maintains close ties to the agency said it was stretched to the limit. "With Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, with Iraq, I think they're just sucking wind," he said.

But the officers also said the latest problems point to a deeper problem with the CIA leadership and culture. Some lamented that an agency once vaunted for its daring and reach now finds itself overstretched and hunkered down in secure zones.
....
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the agency has brought back hundreds of retirees, dubbed "green-badgers" for the color of the identification cards issued to those who return to the fold under contract. The agency has also turned to young officers without any overseas experience.

New agency recruits with military backgrounds are being sent to Iraq as soon as they emerge from the CIA training academy in Virginia, said one former agency official. "They don't speak the language, don't know how to recruit," the official said. "It's on-the-job training."
...
The problems [with turnover] also extend to Afghanistan, sources said. One CIA veteran said he recently spoke with an officer who had served as a base chief in Kandahar for 60 days, an unusually brief tenure for such an important assignment.

The base in Kandahar is one of five or six the CIA established in Afghanistan after the U.S. invaded the country in 2001, all reporting to the agency's primary station in Kabul, the capital. But a number of those remote bases have been closed in recent months, according to current and former CIA officials.
...
The CIA has struggled to fill high-ranking posts in other countries, sources said. Four former CIA officers with close ties to headquarters said in separate interviews that the agency struggled to fill its top post in Pakistan last year, that at least five candidates turned down the job of station chief in Islamabad before the agency found an officer willing to take it.

The always creative naomi Klein reports on the war as therapy.

It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Wash., who carried U.S. therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told the Internet magazine Salon that, "when they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated."

Yes, that's right: war opposition as self-help. The end goal is not to seek justice for the victims, or punishment for the aggressors, but rather "validation" for the war's critics. Once validated, it is of course time to reach for the talisman of self-help: "closure." In this mindscape, Howard Dean's wild scream was not so much a gaffe as the second of the five stages of grieving: anger. The scream was a moment of uncontrolled release, a catharsis, allowing U.S. liberals to externalize their rage and then move on, transferring their affections to more appropriate candidates.

That's hilarious!
What does terrorism mean? I kind of like the IHT's writers. They are more often based in sanity than the stuff on cable these days.
Oh good: we are hiring evil white guys who used to beat down the black population in South Africa to beat down Iraqis.
Digby says that such a grand strategic blunder as this one can only encourage wily generals and naughty states to cause trouble, since it proves the U.S. is not as omnipotent and intelligent as Generally Believed.(last two via Eschaton)

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.

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.

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.

It's not the end of the world

ut This War Had a Much Deeper Significance than Reported! according to a marvelous book I received on Friday. Beyond Iraq: The Next Move, is selling well on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, where it is listed under the 'non-fiction' and 'biblical prophecy' categories. I got my copy the only honest way, through Armageddon Books (order form: "Thanks again for selecting Armageddon Books as your supplier of end-time materials"). Evans' key points:

• Saddam Hussein and his demon-possessed sons are the current representation of the spirit of Babylon, which is prophesied to battle Jerusalem at the end of the Christian world.
• Islam is dangerous and probably wicked.
• Settling Jews in the West Bank is the will of God.
• The Israeli Likud party is righteous and believes in God, while Labor is made of liberal unbelievers.
• The problem is the "t" word, terror, not the "o" word, occupied territories.
• The present 'road map' is only bad for Israel because it means land for terror.

Introduction:

As I stood and shook Mayor Giuliani's hand, all I could see in my mind's eye were the two 189-ton bombs in the form of fully fueled Boeing 767s hitting the World Trade Towers just as my friend [Mossad director] had foretold. No one could have known that on that Tuesday, the 11th of September 2001, the first war of the 21st century would begin--a war against terror that may well draw the line in the sand, , forever dividing light from darkness, proclaiming like a trumpet a spiritual battle of monumental proportions. Who would have wondered at the time, that the epicenters of this battle would center on ancient Babylon (biblical Iraq) -- the spiritual center of darkness -- and Jerusalem -- the spiritual center of Light... Iraq will become the US base from which the war on terrorism is fought. From there it will only be a short reach to the throat of Syria and Iran and the terrorist networks.

Ahh, sweet sweet Christian evangelistic eschatology. It's the end of time and we have front row seats for the showdown of good and evil. What actually egged me to put down $11 on this book is how much it's getting promoted, at least on MSNBC. On Hardball the other day, the host (a sub for Mathews) introduced Evans without putting him into the context of his evangelical beliefs. He just rambled on (the host asked him if he was drunk, after blurting "Sugarcoating Sinai") about the "t" word, terror, being the issue. The issue of the end of the world never entered the discussion, and suddenly the discourse in the book becomes normal. Who is reading up on stuff this way, who sees the world through this lens? What do they believe about Palestinians?