How will Obama change the structure of the Democratic Party: is it progressive or autocratic? Etc??! Matt Stoller: Obama's Consolidation of the Party - Politics on The Huffington Post and The Obama Squeeze | The Agonist.

Meanwhile over @ No Quarter they are pretty grumpy b/c they've been in the Hillary camp for a dang long time: I Call a Spade a Spade : NO QUARTER

PSYOPS update: here's your raw data: John Stauber: Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online: But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process."

Here is the official Pentagon website with the 8,000 pages of documents, the most interesting and revealing of them previously secret and only available to the Pentagon and the New York Times:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/

More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have still not mentioned the report at all."

Keep running the airtight ship, guys!

Meanwhile, General Electric didn't have a dog in that media game, did they? Hmmm.... The Raw Story | Chris Matthews: MSNBC bosses were 'basically pro-war'

As previously noted on this website, the Pentagon has had an extensive agenda to manipulate mainstream media in order to promote the war, via PSYOPS strategies that make the American population a "strategic" target for brain spoofing. Controlling elite opinion and mass ideas has been the big picture, which is prety obvious. But actually reading all those strategic emails about how to spoof the news via 'military analysts' is another matter altogether.

This was reported in the New York Times and then obviously deleted from the A-story media agenda because it raises too many questions about news oversight and industry-wide management practices.

Meanwhile the paranoid thread digs parallel concerns: Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet with exciting new systems designed to help the powers that be do... something.

It is not a surprise: the Pentagon's ever-expanding system of total rationality would see the off-message resistance to the war agenda as a kind of distributed evil/terrorist network. Ensuring the primacy of war and top-down information control as the organizing principles of our 21st century society would be a primary goal. True? Probably, even if the various individual humans in the system can't actually see or understand this.

WIRED adds: What's Up with the Secret Cybersecurity Plans, Senators Ask DHS | Threat Level from Wired.com

Why might citizens be worried about privacy and civil liberties? Consider that the whole initiative appears to have been launched after the Director of National Intelligence told the President Bush that a cyber attack might wreak as much economic havoc as 9/11 did.

Consider that the NSA, which currently protects classified networks, wants to expand into protecting all non-classified federal government networks. Consider that Congress is set to legalize the NSA's monitoring rooms in the nation's phone and internet infrastructure.

For its part, the FBI says it also needs access to the internet's backbone, while the Air Force is hyping its own efforts at cyber defense and offense. Meanwhile, THREAT LEVEL's sister blog Danger Room reports that DARPA is getting in on the hot cyber-action, with a project to make a fake internet to develop new cyber attacks and defenses.

It's been said many times that if the government knew what the internet was going to become when it grew up, they would had never let it out of the lab.

Now it seems the only question is whether the government will be able to turn the net into a controllable, monitorable and trackable pre-internet AOL-type service or whether the chaotic net will live on as just another frontier for the military-industrial complex to start an arm's race and rake in billions of government dollars.

Meanwhile the paranoia side also blames the schemes of the Bilberberg Group for the gas pump disaster. I'd say, well, this kind of thing wouldn't surprise me anymore. Goldman Sachs: Bilderberg Target Of $200 Dollar Oil Nears.

And why not some more stuff: Military and Homeland Security Dictate Who Lives And Who Dies In A Pandemic

Rational Annihilation. Of ideas, sick old people, whatever. The ominous specters continue, and blog posts go up apace....

Pigs!

God Damn... pigs!

Potbelly... pigs!

Punch-drunk... pigs!

Take money, money... pigs!

Loudmouth... pigs!

Wide load... pigs!

Let's make a deal...

--Aesop Rock , "Coffee" from the excellent new album "None Shall Pass"

A delicious press release arrives:

STATEMENT

For Immediate Release

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Contact:

Matt Burns - 651-925-7208

mburns@gopconvention2008.com

GOP CONVENTION COORDINATOR RESIGNS

SAINT PAUL, Minn. -- The 2008 Republican National Convention today accepted the resignation of convention coordinator Doug Goodyear. Mr. Goodyear issued the following statement on his resignation:

“Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign.”

###

What ever could be the matter? Oh damn, their chief Convention Flack took a ton of cash to work promoting the Burmese junta in Washington.

Exactly like Duke's excellent work for Berzerkistan on Doonesbury:

I mean, exactly like Duke. $348,000 buys a lot of sleep, I bet.

Yeah, the chief RNC St. Paul organizer guy worked for that torture-insanity-what-the-hell Burmese military Dictatorship. Newsweek shook it loose!

McCain's Convention Chair Worked for Burma's Military Junta | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com:

After John McCain nailed down the Republican nomination in March, his campaign began wrestling with a sensitive personnel issue: who would manage this summer's GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.? The campaign recently tapped Doug Goodyear for the job, a veteran operative and Arizonan who was chosen for his "management experience and expertise," according to McCain press secretary Jill Hazelbaker. But some allies worry that Goodyear's selection could fuel perceptions that McCain—who has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests—is surrounded by lobbyists. Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients.

Potentially more problematic: the firm was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today. Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to "begin a dialogue of political reconciliation" with the regime. It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing "falsehoods" by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses. "It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," Goodyear told NEWSWEEK, adding the junta's record in the current cyclone crisis is "reprehensible."

Another issue: DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so–called 527 groups, precisely the kind of operations that McCain, in his battle for campaign-finance reform, has denounced. In 2004, the DCI Group led a pro-Bush 527 called Progress for America, which was later fined (along with several other 527s on both sides of the political divide) for violating federal election laws. Goodyear, however, says that DCI is "not in the 527 business anymore."

Ironically, Goodyear was chosen for the post after the McCain campaign nixed another candidate, Paul Manafort, who runs a lobbying firm with McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis. The prospect of choosing Manafort created anxiety in the campaign because of his long history of representing controversial foreign clients, including Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. More recently, he served as chief political consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian prime minister who has been widely criticized for alleged corruption and for his close ties to Russia's Vladimir Putin—a potential embarrassment for McCain, who in 2007 called Putin a "totalitarian dictator." "The Ukrainian stuff was viewed as too much," says one McCain strategist, who asked not to be identified discussing the matter. Manafort did not return calls for comment.

Then: Stumper : McCain Convention Manager Resigns After NEWSWEEK Reveals Burma Ties

Andrew Romano

Around noon today, the powers-that-be at NEWSWEEK posted "A Convention Quandary" on our website. In the story, investigative ace Michael Isikoff reported that the man chosen by John McCain's presidential campaign to run this summer's GOP convention--Arizonan Doug Goodyear--was causing some headaches within the ranks. The problem? Goodyear is CEO ofDCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients--not the most convenient association for a candidate who's already struggling to reconcile his reputation as an anti-special interests crusader with the sizable number of lobbyists on his senior staff. Further complicating matters: Isikoff's revelation that DCI was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, leading "a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing 'falsehoods' by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses." Ouch.

Apparently, Goodyear agreed.

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, the Republican National Convention announced that it had accepted Goodyear's resignation, setting a new land speed record for shortest time lapsed between the "story breaks" and "ax falls" phases of a political scandal. "Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign," said Goodyear in written statement. "I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign." Asked later by the Politico whether Team McCain had given him the boot, Goodyear said no. "My decision," he added. "[It was] unambiguously the right thing to do."

Nice.... Say what you will, who could possibly be more evil than a public relations strategist for an evil, corrupt Asian dictatorship?!

NY Times exposes the PSY OPS Pentagon campaign against your brain: (i should have posted this earlier!)

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”

The Nation on it: NYT Investigation Exposes Pentagon Pimps & Propaganda Operation

Horrible PSYOPS. justifies everything I have ever said about the PSYOPS and manipulating yr brains @ the Pentagon, in great detail with many grumpy ex-talking heads speaking out about how the Pentagon fabricated news and nursed sweetheart military industrial lobbyist relations . (Including Ken Allard, who always seemed extra awful to me)

Pentagon Conduits (from the Old Right)

Read this and freek out: A Pentagon's Who's Who of Your Life - by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt

If you buy it via this link, you'll support antiwar.com (which is more deserving than I): Amazon.com: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives: Nick Turse: Books:

A mind-boggling investigation of the allpervasive, constantly morphing presence of the Pentagon in daily life—a real-world Matrix come alive Here is the new, hip, high-tech military-industrial complex—an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.

From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon’s little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. Turse investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon’s collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with the World Wrestling Federation and NASCAR. He shows the inventive ways the military, desperate for new recruits, now targets children and young adults, tapping into the “culture of cool” by making “friends” on MySpace.

A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.

People are talking shit about Douglas Feith again. He got fired from his sweet college prof gig, so it's a rough turn. Good times, once upon a time I had that shit cornered. Right Web | Profile | Douglas Feith

Dana Milbank - Iraq War Is Everyone Else's Fault, Feith Explains - washingtonpost.com

TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | The Banality of Evil: What Would Hannah Arendt Say About Doug Feith?

The American Conservative » Israeli Spy Case Will Name More Spies

Sweet: ccMixter - Welcome to ccMixter. open source culture - creative commons!! featuring free music from the Beastie Boys and everyone else in the RemiX Generation!

FBI wants to move hunt for criminals into Internet backbone

Here is some more tasty stuff: cryptogon.com: The American Culture Bomb: Satire from the Onion and a Long Forgotten U.S. Army War College Essay

cryptogon.com » Archives » CBOT Resembles Carnival Act as Billion Dollar Black Box Operators Move In

Deadly Greed: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

SurvivalBlog.com it's time!!!

cryptogon.com » Archives » Raw Milk and Lifting the Veil that has Been Pulled Over Our Eyes

cryptogon.com » Archives » NATO Forces Supplied Food, Water and Arms to Taliban Forces in Southern Afghanistan

Three States Subjected To "Martial Law Sweeps" More fancy marketing for the Big Evil Machine!

Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10bn clean energy project | Environment | The Guardian

FT.com / In depth - Rice traders hit by panic as prices surge

Aboriginal children 'injected with leprosy' | The Daily Telegraph

Hear the Six Best Minutes of Tim Robbins' Controversial NAB Speech - Advertising Age - News

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Pure Fantasy: Colombia's Laptop Revelations- by Justin Raimondo More fake neocon intel from our South American rich cocaine trafficker friends! Classic!!

Mother Jones Exclusive: Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups. Mercenary spies against lefties!!!

Dumb old Council on Foreign Relations: Globe With Multipolar Disorder in Need of Prozac Says Expert | The Agonist

I like the sound of this: Chalabi, RAND and the Iraq War

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Event Video/Audio) | Berkman Center

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

Rupert Murdoch's Black Ops hit squad: NDS Group Tried for Tech Sabotage - Portfolio.com

Software as a service: The next big thing | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2006-03-20 | By Eric Knorr

That's all for today, thanks for visiting!!

Antiwar.com Blog · Did Israelis Leak New Spy Info to Thwart War?

Things in the Middle East are always too thoroughly linked together, backwards, forwards, each way through the hall of mirrors. And it's going to be the traditional 'summer fightin' months' all around the region soon enough.

Deadlock in Afghanistan, Negotiations in Pakistan | The Agonist

There's a certain preamble of mega-spin going on right now. Hillary makes these weird statements about obliterating Iran, and McCain is chuckling all the way to the Big Red Button.

As usual, the rationality of the Baby Boomer generation drifts towards paranoia, incoherence, rage and infinite debt. Whether or not the American people get it together and block the Middle East mega-war from blowing up out of control seems to be the big question.

Iran gets blamed for killing American soldiers occupying Iraq. Not surprisingly, the guys selling this line never acknowledge that the arms market is quite a free market over in Iraq, with many busy arms dealers working all directions. And people are buying weapons that come from Iran. Is that some kind of surprise? "FREE MARKET WEAPONS FOR IRAQ: ALWAYS PLENTY OF DEALS!" That's a motto which the Iranians should try... Then remind everyone which country is importing the most weapons into Iraq, handing them over to parties unknown...

British dealers supply arms to Iran: The Observer

As you may have noticed, there has been a lot of extra buzz about possible American conflict with Iran in the news (after cooling for a couple months prior).

Is War With Iran Imminent?- by Justin Raimondo

A couple weeks ago, the story from last fall about the mysterious Israeli bombing of a purported nuclear-or-something site in Syria came back strong into the news: exciting tidbits that the North Koreans were propagating some nuclear research at the Syrian location. Very exciting stuff for the news.

For example, Stratfor.com is all over this case and its exciting murkiness:

What is important to note is this information is not new. It is a confirmation of the story leaked by the administration shortly after the attack and also leaked by the Israelis a bit later. The explanation for the attack was that it was designed to take out a reactor in Syria that had been built with North Korean help. There are therefore three questions. First, why did the United States go to such lengths to reveal what it has been saying privately for months? Second, why did the administration do it now? Third, why is the United States explaining an Israeli raid using, at least in part, material provided by Israel? Why isn’t Israel making the revelation?

It has never been clear to us why the Israelis and Americans didn’t immediately announce that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. Given American hostility toward Syria over support for jihadists in Iraq, we would have thought that they would have announced it instantly. The explanation we thought most plausible at the time was that the intelligence came from the North Koreans in the course of discussions of their nuclear technology, and since the North Koreans were cooperating, the United States didn’t want to publicly embarrass them. It was the best we could come up with.

The announcement on Thursday seems to debunk that theory, at least to the extent that the primary material displayed was U.S. satellite information and the Israeli video, which was said to have been used to convince the United States of the existence of the reactor and of North Korean involvement. So why didn’t the administration condemn Syria and North Korea on Sept. 7? It still seems to us that part of the explanation is in the state of talks with North Korea over its own program. The North Koreans had said that they would provide technical information on their program — which they haven’t done. Either the United States lost its motivation to protect North Korean feelings because of this or the Bush administration felt that Thursday’s briefings would somehow bring pressure to bear on North Korea. Unless the United States is planning to use these revelations as justification for attacks on the North Koreans, we find it difficult to see how this increases pressure on them.

More interesting is the question of why the United States — and not Israel — is briefing on an Israeli raid. Israeli media reported April 23 that the Israelis had asked the Americans not to brief Congress. The reason given was that the Israelis did not want the United States to embarrass Syria at this point. As we noted on April 23, there appeared to have been some interesting diplomatic moves between Syria and Israel, and it made sense that revealing this information now might increase friction.

Meanwhile another more original story got lost in the sea of buzz: some old defense engineer, 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish, got caught by the FBI stealing secret documents from his top secret research lab during his career, and has admitted everything. Antiwar.com broke that to me:

Pollard's Ghost- by Justin Raimondo. Check this out for a well-linked background in the case, though I'm not totally sold on Raimondo's spin...

Kadish would smuggle out the papers, photograph them, send 'em over to his foreign spy handler, and bring them back to the lab, no one the wiser. A pretty classic scheme which should have gotten a bit of news bounce in the War on Terror, but of course it didn't. The engineer was passing secrets to Israel. Uff da...

This raises the question of how big the Israeli espionage thingy really gets. It's a big question especially since two AIPAC officers are supposed to go on trial this summer for circulating secrets between neo-con Pentagon staffer Lawrence "Larry" Franklin and the Mossad officers over at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

In the Fed's case for this "big" AIPAC scandal, everyone pretty much got caught red-handed, so the AIPAC defense strategy appears to be "graymailing" the Justice Department into disclosing all kinds of classified stuff. (The idea is that the feds' tummies turn sour and they give up because they don't want to cough up the docs. This is the traditional strategy DC lawyers for Oliver North / Elliot Abrams type guys use to get their guys off the hook in scandals like Iran-Contra.)

But let's go back to the beginning of the "big" AIPAC scandal. How did it start? The FBI was already spying on the AIPAC officers when Franklin wandered up to them at a DC restaurant. The Feds already wanted AIPAC on espionage. Why? The short speculative answer: the FBI has continuously been looking for a high-level spy/mole known by code name MEGA.

MEGA was the secret guy somewhere in the U.S. government in the 1980s who (among other things) provided extremely secret document numbers to the Israelis. In turn, the Israelis sent a more disposable spy, Jonathan Pollard, the low-level Pentagon staffer, as a gofer to get the documents. Pollard got caught; he's still in a U.S. jail. (There's a rumor Bush might pardon him, ugh). MEGA never got caught. So we could speculate that officially the FBI was looking to see if MEGA sends AIPAC messages, enter Franklin accidentally.

Ok ok... this is pretty baroque spy stuff. Why did this engineer get exposed? How did the FBI catch him? Well, they got a tip. A tip from somewhere in Israel.

Reportedly, someone in Ehud Olmert's government tipped off the FBI about the engineer spy because they wanted to prevent the expanding middle east war. In other words, an Israeli exposed an old engineer spy in order to damage the neocons / hawks' chances of ginning up the war with Iran.

Old school ex-CIA dude Phil Giraldi spilled it:

"Israeli sources are reporting that the FBI investigation of the Ben-Ami Kadish spy case resulted from a leak coming from inside the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The information on Kadish and on a number of other Americans who have spied for Israel was provided to the FBI anonymously, leading to the Bureau's opening of a full investigation. One source reports that the National Security Agency was provided with Yosef Yagur's current phone number and address and was able to obtain corroborating information on the case by tapping the phone."

It was interesting to read that, in a change-up, some Israeli military officials would not brief the U.S. Congress about the big bad Muslim threats because the Congress would now grill them over that just-exposed Israeli espionage.

Sounds like a good time to put out some fun stories about evil Syrians and bombing their weird shacks of shadiness.

Interesting stuff I suppose... If you're into that kind of thing. Beyond that, there is of course the Sibel Edmonds scandal, which involves a certain network of nuclear secrets traffickers, intersecting with heroin and Washington lobbyists, or something.

Someone speculated that MEGA was really Marc Grossman, a longterm DC hack who is certainly in well over his head on this scandal. Grossman also has been rumored to have tipped off the Turks and Pakistanis that Valerie Plame's front company, Brewster Jennings, was really a CIA front. But he got caught on an FBI wiretap which Sibel Edmonds probably had to listen to, while she worked there.

So there is that angle. Good luck figuring it out, kids! There's a good chance this stuff will get some sunlight during the summer. I'll drink to that!!

********

Some more awkward PR that had to get drowned out: Carter calls Gaza blockade a crime and atrocity | World | Reuters

I've been so damn busy these days, writing anything interesting for good ol Hongpong.com has been pretty much set aside.

It's a really weird political season, hell, around here it's been a weird weather season. There was freezing rain all over my car on Friday night. It's already the end of April. It's probably a good thing that I haven't been puttering around blogging and obsessing over what's on the Internet. That shit gets tiresome!

Can't Mess With The Atmos: I got the new Atmosphere album, "When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That S*** Gold", and it's damn good. Slug dropped damn near all the bombast, now he's just trying to tell us kids to pay the bills and get it together... Be sure to check out their awesome "Paint it Gold" webcasts - they have been really excellent.

Visit the "not Google Killer Google Killer": Twine.com: Quite a while ago I mentioned the interesting Twine.com project, which lets you add all your own bookmarks/notes/videos/etc into a big online repository, kind of like Del.icio.us plus Facebook.
Basically you can cluster your areas of interest by setting up "Twines" of semantically tagged content. Most interestingly, you can upload huge chunks of text and PDFs, and it will automatically scan through and pull out the names and organizations involved.
Finally I got the 'beta invite' to join Twine, and of course I dumped in as much hard Iran-Contra conspiracy evidence text I had laying around. Add a few bookmarks, and Twine went crazy all over the stuff, indexing all the CIA drug dealers, locales and front companies of interest. Verdict: Fantastic conspiracy data mining!
Look at all the Conspiracy Entity Names it automatically spit out (in orange at right) when I put in the famed CIA Limited Hangout Frederick Hitz report on "Allegations of connections between CIA and Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States." Contrary to popular belief, you can still read this report on the CIA's website (with some alterations).
If anyone else would like an invitation to try Twine, plz send me an email @ hongpong AT hongpong.com ! Use data mining to exp0se the stuff! Oh noooes!!

Sorry everyone, I got swamped with stuff going on and haven't had the time to knock out some blog posts. Sunday's big project during the April showers was to get ready to erase my main hard drive and get it ready for OS X 10.5.

I managed to consolidate my iTunes library by getting rid of a lot of duplicates, and 'consolidate' it onto one hard drive, which has never been done before. I fear that a few old free-floating Mp3s got chucked, but them's the breaks.

A lot of stuff got chucked, and I am pretty close to fitting everything on the main drive to where the music used to be. It was certainly an all-day project. Probably about 70% of the junk work is over with! I'm really looking forward to getting this beast onto 10.5, it'll be like a new machine!

*******

Other than that, well in the world it's been one series of grim news after another.

And I don't feel like talking about it. It's finally getting nice outside and things are working out pretty well for me right now. As long as I get enough sleep and have a bit of luck, everything'll be fine?

I promise there will finally be a return to some blogging around here this week. Wheeeee

Check out the video by The Heavy - its pretty sweet.

PIMCO Bonds - Investment Outlook- January 2008 "Pyramids Crumbling".

Modern Mafia Operates at Every Level of Italian Society

Pay day loans exacerbate housing crisis | U.S. | Reuters

Welcome to Jim Sinclair's MineSet - The Financial Destruction Of The Average Man

Five insane politicians people still voted for.

All right it's time for some HST. As true today as ever! (via here with the usual pictures embedded)

Panicked Sheep

“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”

—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

Living Proof

“Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final.”

—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

Eat Shit and Die

“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”

—Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988

Pure Gibberish

“Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.”

—Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s, 1988

Or also, from the last several days...

Political Punch: Liberal bloggers sayin Clinton ads darken Obama. Some others say it is a YouTube artifact effect.

Atmosphere released a free MP3 from the next album.

Hillary, Obama and the Establishment Machine | The Agonist

Hm. Definitely interesting: The Man Between War and Peace, Admiral Fallon.

Cuban Cyber Rebels and their flash drives and blogs! Viva Cuba flashdriva!

Smashing Magazine has nice design and free fonts.

io9 has random sci fi stuff. cool design too.

When in doubt, check out the Gary Webb video @ Archive.org, late in his life reflecting on the whole Los Angeles CIA crack cocaine thingy.

Global Guerillas is pretty buzzwordy, but it's pretty good. For your daily dose of super-modern open source insurgent warfare, extortion through DDoS - both Russian and Botnet variants, the imminent insect techno-eschaton, and how one super-empowered individual guerilla Henry Okah has brought Nigeria into total chaos and propelled oil over $100 a barrel. This Robb guy is definitely paying attention. National security bureaucracies are doomed?! Not if they can hoard up their own very biggest bestest haystack!

Meanwhile the economic crash continues apace. Much hand-wringing at one of my favorite spots, the Agonist . Wheat is over $12/bushel.

Buffett: it's a recession, stupid.

Banks face systemic margin call, $325 billion hit: JP Morgan!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime U.S. mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N:Quote, Profile, Research), said in a report late on Friday.

JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (TMA.N: Quote,Profile, Research) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.

"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."

The credit crisis that began about a year ago will likely intensify after Friday's weak February U.S. employment report "that most definitely signals recession," JPMorgan said.

Bush Family Piggy Bank Receives Default Notice! | The Agonist

The best news I have heard is the insane bastards in Florida who have taken advantage of the crashed system. They are sitting in their homes, paying nothing at all, waiting for the totally conked court system to struggle with the lost paperwork at every level of the mortgage. An awesome thing to behold!! The Big Picture | Foreclosure-proof Homeowners:

What is shocking, that in each and every case, I have been told by brokers and banks that the owners, have ceased paying their mortgages in some cases for nearly 2 years and have continued to occupy these homes. Now, these are homes in excess of $2,000,000 in the very best neighborhoods in South Florida. Brokers have added that these buyers further complicated things by putting huge home equity lines on top of their mortgages and now have no possibility of selling their homes for amounts needed to cover their accumulated debt.

America is amazing. Ok.

Bloomberg.com Citigroup needs Arab cash, fast!!!! Rlly fast!!!

Russians pissed off about American/Pakistani opium smuggling support in Afghanistan: (via cryptogon)

Narco Aggression: Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan by Vladimir Radyuhin

Global Research, February 24, 2008: Global Research Editor's Note

The global proceeds of the Afghan drug trade is in excess of 150 billion dollars a year. There is mounting evidence that this illicit trade is protected by the US military.

Historically, starting in the early 1980s, the Afghan drug trade was used to finance CIA covert support of the Islamic brigades. The 2003 war on Afghanistan was launched following the Taliban government's 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a collapse in opium production in excess of 90 percent.

The following report, which accuses the United States of using military transport planes to ship narcotics out of Afghanistan confirms what is already known and documented regarding the Golden Crescent Drug Trade and its insiduous relationship to US intelligence.

February 23, 2008

Russia, facing a catastrophic rise in drug addiction, accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan.....

....“Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

“The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.”

U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in American Chronicle in December what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com in March 2002 of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”

AFP

(A USAF cargo plane takes off from the U.S. airbase in Incirlik in Turkey in March 2003. A Russian news channel reported that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.)

Now Russia has joined the fray accusing the U.S. military of involvement in the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. The Vesti channel’s report from Afghanistan said that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey.

The Ganci Air Force base at the Manas international airport in Kyrgyzstan was set up in late 2001 as a staging post for military operations inside Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz government threatened to close the base after neighbouring Uzbekistan shut down a similar U.S. airbase on its territory in 2005, but relented after Washington agreed to make a one-off payment of $150 million in the form of an assistance package and to pay $15 million a year for the use of the base.

One of the best-informed Russian journalists on Central Asia, Arkady Dubnov, recently quoted anonymous Afghan sources as saying that “85 per cent of all drugs produced in southern and southeastern provinces are shipped abroad by U.S. aviation.”

A well-informed source in Afghanistan’s security services told the Russian journalist that the American military acquired drugs through local Afghan officials who dealt with field commanders in charge of drug production.

Writing in the Vremya Novostei daily, Dubnov claimed that the pro-Western administration of President Hamid Karzai, including his two brothers, Kajum Karzai and Akhmed Vali Karzai, are head-to-heels involved in the narcotics trade.

The article quoted a leading U.S. expert on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin, as telling an anti-narcotics conference in Kabul last October that “drug dealers had infiltrated Afghani state structures to the extent where they could easily paralyse the work of the government if decision to arrest one of them was ever made.”

Sure, they can say the Russians are grumbling like usual. But from Moscow's perspective, the U.S. is just trying to keep on top of all the Players in the Game. And they run the Wire all over the whole territory, so they know exactly who is doing what where, and can watch the opium caravans go cruising by. The fact that this doesn't track in American conventional wisdom is a monument to the intentional ignorance of Baby Boomers, regardless of how accurate the Russians are here.

The planes, the drugs, the detainees, it all seems to be part of a nexus of secret military/DHS contractor airlines. These guys are soooo 1980s. The ponzi scheme depends on information asymmetry, which can always be disrupted......

Three examples of American political culture in 2008.

First, the latest efforts of the NSA to read my email and discover its exciting secrets. (Hayden's Haystacks: Chilling Effects and Fluffy Data Goodness...)

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Well well, we got a couple funny things which are probably Too Hot To link to - or something. I don't get it...

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This is pretty funny, but first I need to take note of their latest plans to spy on everybody... Wait... first, let's go back a couple years... These guys have such a great sense of humor.

I think this latest prank tops that Total Information Awareness logo in complete Maximum Conspiracy Irony. Back in the day...

2002: 'Mythical Evil Conspiracy Irony from the Establishment': We never thought anything would top the 'all seeing pyramid staring at Mideast.' But this is the Federal Government! They are Creative!

Fortunately the big pyramid is still up-n-beamin' around with it's Data Mining Sunshine and, yes, they are chucking all your emails and credit card transactions into the big Vortex. What were you expecting, punk?

The Wall Street Journal puts on their tinfoil hat to give us some nice radio waves: Via Cryptogon: NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data:

Wall Street Journal: NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data; Terror Fight Blurs Line Over Domain;Tracking Email By SIOBHAN GORMAN; March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system. The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all....

But wait! Folks, it gets better. All they gotta do is Wire in your phone number to all the others!

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon’s experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA — which also is funded by the Pentagon — and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. “When it got taken apart, it didn’t get thrown away,” says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says “the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they’re using today.” The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms’ immunity, he said. “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”...

Oh yeh let's put in another tasty WSJ nibble about how the Posse Comitatus Act never covered how the Military would build the SuperOrwell HAL FBI Fishing Expedition Big Brother 2008 model...

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects “expanded exponentially,” said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.....

Alright, so these guys are tracking all transactions, yet they can't find where the drug money goes. It just gets away every fucking time!

And just to drive the point home, the guys that specialized in the drug trafficking networks back in the 1980s get honored in a whole new way, somewhere deep in the Data System....

Now, for something completely different. But also not. Our second awesome story...

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According to the spy-exposure-weird-shit site Cryptome.org, a ton of 'telephone pseudonyms and true names' were listed at 411.com for a secret CIA phone number. That is, a ton of joke and real entries all assigned to (703) 482-1100, a CIA number in McLean Virginia.

Somehow 10,000+ records got assigned many-to-one to one phone number. Just for the CIA.

And better yet, a huge swath of the names are fucking pranks. Pranks about favorite names in the Conspiracy.

2008: 'Yes, the CIA put in all the best conspiracy names onto their own damn 411 reverse phone number lookup, just to piss me off!!!'

THIS IS TOO MUCH!!! OMG!!!! There are another 9980 fake names drawn from the great fabric of American spy conspiracy lore. Barry Seal has his place (or several). As we posted 11 months ago:

"William Buckley" has three listed CIA phone numbers @ (703) 482-1100. Don't these guys have something better to do? God damn, 'Ahmad Chelebi' is also listed @ (703) 482-1100. And 'Libby Plame.' and 'Laiffaire Plame'. And 'Judith Plame.' And Richard Secord. and Jose Rodriguez. And felix rodriguez. And Barry Seal. And Adler Seal. Covert Ops, the Skull & Bones days, all kinds of stuff. Maybe 'real names' of current people too? Put out onto the Web's 411 system? Really?

Cryptome

White House Telephone Nyms and Names

10,751 CIA Telephone Nyms and Names

4,151 NSA Telephone Nyms and Names. More aboot that last one: NSA Telephone Pseudonyms and Names: About 4,151 NSA telephone pseudonyms and true names are available via http://switchboard.intelius.com through a reverse telephone number look-up for (301) 688-0400. Some names are humorous ("Lawrence Waterhousespy," "Bin Laden") or ironic ("Hayden Lied," "Odom Warns"); others are spoofs: "Justin Rood" is the name of a national security journalist for CQ.com......

A2 provides a full index of the 10,751 CIA nyms and names, linked to Google Search for each name:

http://cryptome.org/cia-nyms-idx.htm

All right kids, now that we are really on a roll...

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Rumors of Denver Democratic National Convention deadlock to Hillary => Really pissed off Hordes vs. the Hacks? What would happen if the Hillary people went all the way to the convention and somehow ganked the nomination? Rick Perlstein passed along some emails from people comparing it to Chicago '68.

However, this kind of fucked up violent incident isn't going to happen at the Democratic National Convention, but its pretty likely to expect a lot more of Raving Loonies in Emails getting treated as proof that the end is near. Chaos looms etc. Doom memes are self reproducing!

I think it's a good example of... political science fiction, showing how people's fantasies play out in an imagined reality. Stuff like this generates an atmosphere of tension and can be used to basically troll. It's just like everything else on the Internet. combine Obama + Battle in Seattle fantasies... Huffington Post: Some Apocalyptic Observations on the Democratic Nomination Fight from Here on Out:

A young friend who lives in a small town in a rural state sent me the following observation today:

If the Clintons push for the win in Denver, they're going to split the goddamn party down the middle. I read your chapter on 1968 Chicago, obviously. I'm of the generation who supports Obama. I know what we're like. Shit, I know what I'm like.

Rick, if the Machine tries to give the Clintons the victory at the convention, I swear to God, Chicago's going to look like a Sadie Hawkins dance. People my age are going to be throwing stones. We all have transportation -- cell phones -- disposable income -- the Internet -- free time -- and Seattle as our example. Part of me is scared of a riot. Part of me isn't. The nomination belongs to Obama. Do you think we're going to let the Democratic Leadership Council take it? "God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time."

and then the ominous Iraq vet reference... A different guy who works inside the Democratic Party somewhere told Rick Perlstein:

Not to mention that there's going to be a significant Iraq veteran contingent at the convention, ready to rock 'n' roll. We've already had planning meetings about it -- we're going about it the same way that we would plan any decent military operation.... I can't emphasize enough how potentially scary things could get -- we've got folks working on the inside of the convention, and it's all done on a cell basis, so that folks only know what they need to know.

I feel like you'd get too many hits from the Man over this kind of material. On a day like today, why not?********Well, I would say that these three elements - building the Big Brother Machine, the CIA's own prank phone index, and the fantasies of militant anti-Hillaryites, it reminds me of why American political culture has that certain outrageous, cowboy, bravado thing. Read all the emails! Why not?! Are ya... yellow?!
The British are way too half-assed to have a country where such utter bullshit holds forth. That's America!

Yeah, I don't know if it's true, but it won't surprise me if it is. A Canadian guy with a big head injury discovered that THC-rich medicinal hemp oil relieved his suffering, but then he also discovered that hemp oil kills cancerous brain cells while leaving the good cells unharmed. In fact, there's a video of the bad brain cells shriveling up into dead little balls after THC treatment.

SETH: Using the same tests used to judge new chemotherapies, the SETH team discovered that this herbal compound kills human brain tumor cells at a concentration that is nontoxic to normal brain cells. A computerized microscope captured images of the cells every 5 minutes to compile the time-lapse videos. After 20 hours of treatment, Δ⁹-THC kills all cancer cells but leaves normal brain cells alive. Cell death is evidenced by cells shrinking to inanimate whitespheres.

Here's the photos:SETH. Parallel experiments were performed testing the effect of Δ⁹-THC on human brain cancer cells (glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM) and also on normal brain cells. Putting this herbal compound through the same tests that a new chemotherapeutic agent would go through revealed a potent and remarkably specific anti-cancer effect. Both types of cells were treated with the same concentration of Δ⁹-THC but after 20 hours only the cancer cells died. Cell death is seen in the lower right panel as cells shrinking to inanimate white spheres. For more information about this project, click toLEARN MORE.

More here: The SETH Group: background:

The major active component of the medicinal plant cannabis, Δ⁹-THC, has been shown in experiments with rats to have therapeutic potential against brain tumors. SETH Group scientists Garret Yount, Ph.D. and Sean McAllister, Ph.D. designed experiments in a time-lapse microscope to test whether Δ⁹-THC can stop the growth of human glioblastoma multiforma (GBM) brain cancer cells. Using the same tests that are used to judge new chemotherapies, the team discovered that the herbal compound kills human GBM cells at a concentration that is nontoxic to normal brain cells. Click here to see Featured Experiment.

future development: Test whether a combination of active components of medicinal cannabis, as present in the plant, will act synergistically and prove to be a more effective treatment against the growth of brain cancer cells compared to Δ⁹-THC alone.

Implications: No chemotherapy can match this nontoxic anti-cancer action. The implication is that this plant compound could be a safe medicine against brain tumors, without the side effects of chemotherapy. These exciting results may be just the tip of the iceberg, however, because Δ⁹-THC is only one of many active compounds in medicinal cannabis. Other active constituents of the Canna