I noted all this nonsense a while ago: March 27, 2007: New GeoMap; Kremlin warns of "Operation Bite" American attack on Iran April 6? More rumors etc.

The latest twist is that apparently the Democrats agreed to give Bush as much money as they wanted in order to do the "U.S. Covert - BALUCHIS" attack detailed on this sketch here. At roughly the time of my post, actually!

April 4, 2007: Iran paranoia, covert war escalates; Tensions rise as Persian Gulf fills with carriers, media crews, tribal revolts; US Air Force buzzes infiltrated Iranian Khuzestan

At that time we had the excellent "Approximate Covert Crisis GeoMap: Shitstorm 2007:

April 8, 2007: Jundullah: Baluchi ally of the United States... And Al Qaeda... in covert Iran war.

Since those heady days, I haven't had too much to say about the Baluchi pawn situation. However, the drums of war have continued and my tasty diagrams are as accurate as last year. Both the CIA-sponsored tribal uprisings and the Mujahideen el-Khalq actions are going forth accordingly.

At least, that's what good ol Seymour Hersh has divined from his vast array of establishment sources, who generally seem quite frightened of the alternate chains of command that Dick Cheney has built up from his office.

Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Pay very close attention to this part, kiddos, because herein lies the primary potential source of a cataclysmic Iran war: the "small group" at the White House who are developing an alternate chain of command.

Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”

Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.”

The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”

There you have it. This is huge. Bigger than the usual British-style strategy of renting local warlords like the Baluchis. Also duly noted:

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.

The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.

The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

I have zero faith in any element of America's political class to even understand what is happening, let alone get some degree of control over these covert operations, ever escalating and widening out into the aggressive galaxy of contractors and militant baby boomers, all set in motion on their own, partitioned even from the regional American military commanders.

When even the President's direct regional commander, General Fallon, couldn't find out what the fuck Special Forces are actually doing, then by definition we have a serious and insane war conspiracy unfolding.

And for now, that is basically all I can say.

Actually I'm impressed. The list of articles of impeachment are well-chosen, and all very well-documented. Huzzah! Right now we're following it on C-SPAN, getting read aloud!

Even includes the PSYOPS of the war propaganda campaign - and the 9/11 coverup. Not bad at all!

Download it here: as a PDF

Rep. Kucinich calls for Bush impeachment | Reuters

All the supporting documents: Congressman Dennis Kucinich

What a nice list of articles: thanks to these guys: Krazy Kuncinich Offers Articles of Impeachment on GW Bush (With Text of Impeachment Articles) Updated with Video

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

Article XX
Imprisoning Children

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders

******

Duly noted. It was important to get this on the record, even if the mainstream Dems don't care. It's all very well cited and certainly worthy of any politician to stand on.

In any case, you could campaign against all of these articles, in talking-point form. They're quite well-worded, and I have to hand it to the clever wordsmiths that put this beast together.

Unfortunately, in our system of government the actual impeachment system is a mess - and there's really very little way for the legislative branch to chip away at patently awful leaders.

On the other hand, the DFL-controlled Minnesota Senate blocked Lt. Gov. Molnau's confirmation as Transportation Commissioner. So you've got a bit more chutzpah around these parts.

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....

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......

Reuters: Impact of 9/11 terror attacks evident in dreams Feb 19, 2008 10:31am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A comparative analysis of dream images suggests how deeply the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks impacted Americans' emotions, researchers report.

Everyone experienced some sort of trauma, or at least emotional arousal by these events, Dr. Ernest Hartmann told Reuters Health. "We found, surprisingly, even dreams could pick this up," said Hartmann, of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.

Hartmann and colleagues assessed the dreams of 11 men and 33 women living outside of Manhattan when the attacks occurred. The participants, who ranged in age from 22 to 70 years, had been recording their dreams for years, and none had relatives or friends who died in the attacks, the investigators note in the journal Sleep.

According to the results, post-9/11 dreams showed more intense images, which is "very consistent with findings in people who have experienced trauma of various kinds," Hartmann said in a statement. "The idea is that that we all experienced at least some trauma on 9/11."

The dreams after 9/11, however, did not contain more images of airplanes or tall buildings. Actually, none of the recorded dreams involved airplanes flying into towers or anything remotely close to that, even though all subjects had seen these images on TV. Hartmann suggests this is because a dream is a creation, not a replay. Dreams make new connections that integrate new material into existing memory, he said. [more on it]

I am cooped up with a cold. I have very little productive to do right now, it's Saturday and I am fidgety. Therefore it is time to listen to some techno and post links like a good little February recluse.

How the spooks took over the news: In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale, Monday, 11 February 2008

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war.

The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."......

...There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake – and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I've spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

.......Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

I have definitely been on top of the Zarqawi PSYOPS case. K thx.

Here's a spooky tale. There are other aspects to this. In fact, Lockheed Martin is developing a kind of RFID control regime for I-35 as we speak.

An Iraq vet told me that this map reminded him of the Iraq supply line...

This story kind of appears to hinge on Peter Dale Scott, who is an old-school decoder of evil establishment conspiracies: Peter Dale Scott: Poetry and Political Writings and also Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps by PD Scott, Feb 2006

Rule by fear or rule by law? Lewis Seiler,Dan Hamburg Monday, February 4, 2008

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law......

Don't say yaz wasn't warned!! Of course Alex Jones on it: Former Congressman Warns Of Martial Law Camps In America.

Windows Vista is a terrible prospect: flag.blackened.net/ati/zine/10thingsIHateAboutVista.txt

This week in peak oil | mnblue not bad!

Economic Crash: teh Latest Lols: Gold is up around $925/ounce now. hah. Business Spectator - Twelve steps to meltdown.

The Alternative Information Center - Economy of the Occupation 10: Cheap Wars - Very important!!

Housing vs. voting.

German Banks crashing!!! Worst Financial Crisis since 1931? German State-Owned Banks on Verge of Collapse - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Buffett Sees Poetic Justice in Banks Woes - New York Times

Cloud EV for all your electric car needs!

For your daily secrets: Cryptome.org of course! Brits shaft their own spies. What's up with undersea internet cables? Spies' Battleground Turns Virtual:

The intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons that could be used against terrorists or enemies, intelligence officials said.

Because the Terrorists will get depressed when they get booted, etc. AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops. Old news. (AIPAC on Sourcewatch)

OpenMute looks cool. And so does Mute. Cool stuff about Russian urban design conflict.

The Jericho TV series - season 2: It's trucking along, I hope the show makes it. In next week's episode, a virus epidemic crosses the Mississippi into the western martial-law fragment of the United States, and threatens to kill Jericho unless they can get the vaccine from some evil corporation. Meanwhile the Ravenwood Mercenaries have arrived to abuse the townsfolk yet again.... Watch it online, now the writers are getting paid!

Verizon tells the man to screw off and they won't sniff their customers.

Black Hat : Black Hat Briefings and Training for your hacker needs! LayerOne 2007 - Adam Laurie - RFIDiots explains RFID hacking!

Time for dirty laundry! Obama on Rezko deal: It was a mistake :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

There is some kind of thing getting floated about the Obama/Rashid Khalidi connection. This is goofy stuff, but there is some rightwing stuff along these lines, @ NRO , Commentary (the arch-retreat of grouches). More from Larry Johnson, whom I disagreed with (see comments)

Creepy Princess Di thing: Butler "Did Deal" With Queen To Hide Diana Murder Facts, secret video is located here!

Willie Nelson: I'd Rather Have an Electric Chair Named After Me Than a Toll Road. Willie Nelson Joins the 9/11 Conspiracy!! In a good way. He thought it all looked like bullshit especially WTC7. Tehlols. Willie Nelson Questions 9/11 Official Story On National TV. Willie Nelson questions Sept. 11 on local talk radio show - KVUE. FOXNews.com - Willie Nelson: I Question Official Sept. 11 Story. No More Partying For Willie Nelson : GAC. Nelson: Impeach Bush, "Throw The Bastards Out"

I got linked off this blog i thinks: looks cool: Fierce Planet

More from the life of trolls: We're in your docks, kidnapping your flightmaster - WOW Insider related to this great story: The Great Goon Squad Flightmaster Caper - wired

Welcome to free Kosovo and its American Military Masters! I got linked off a blog in Portugal run by one Antonia Maria Cerveira Pinto O António Maria. Pretty awesome. He was noting how Kosovo is dominated by the U.S., and here is teh gigantic and very geopolitically key Camp Bondsteel.

Breakaway Role Model: Separatist Movements Seek Inspiration in Kosovo - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE. Naturally the Romanian/Hungarian separatists have torches.

Techie Drupal bits: Drupal newsletter for February - recommended for the curious! Drupal Dojo is sweet. Not bad, guys. Integrate w/ Google Apps.

The dumbing of America.

Well that's about it guys. Have a great weekend!

Hey everyone, I caught some important news late Friday afternoon (And I've got a cold right now and nothin' better to do!).

The big news is that the City of St. Paul would take all applications for demonstrations and space in parks on March 3rd. Naturally the City put out the news very late on Friday to keep it off the news radar. There are only a few days to offer some kinds of finalized plans for the permitted use of public space during the Republican National Convention. http://www.stpaul.gov/convention/rncpermits.html
Since the process apparently involves a drawing/lottery, it may be a good idea for many groups of people (bands?) to enter into the lottery system and win space/time in a park.
There was a brief story about it in the Star Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/15883057.html

Protesting at the RNC? Forms due March 3

St. Paul outlines its process for getting permits for demonstrations or large-group park space during the Republican National Convention.

By CHRIS HAVENS, Star Tribune

Last update: February 22, 2008 - 11:06 PM

Protesters, parkgoers and parade organizers, put March 3 on your calendar.

That's the day permit applications will be accepted for demonstrating or getting park space for groups of 25 or more during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Applications are available now.

The permits would cover the time between Aug. 30 and Sept. 4. The convention will be held Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center. More than 45,000 delegates, members of the news media and protesters are expected.

"We hope to accommodate as many people as logistically possible," said Erin Dady, the city's marketing director and convention planner.

Demonstration applications are available at the city website or at the Police Community Services Office, 1169 Rice St. The office is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Some people want a protest area within sight and sound of the Xcel, and that space hasn't been determined yet, Dady said. "By no means will free speech be limited to one area," she said.

Applications will be reviewed by police and decisions made in a timely manner. More specific guidelines might be forthcoming, Dady said. Approvals could be delayed if more clarification or information is needed.

For more information on the city's rules regarding demonstration permits, go to www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/code/lc366a.html.

Applications to use space, pavilions and boat slips in the city's parks system for parties of 25 or more people are available at the city website and at the Parks and Recreation Permit Office, 1100 Hamline Av.

Parks permit applications will be accepted until 2 p.m. March 3, and a public lottery drawing will happen at 3 p.m. Applications received later will be handled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

A limited number of parks have been held for security reasons or convention activities.

Applications are online at www.stpaul.gov.

********

This was posted on the City of St. Paul website and I think matched the initial press release:

http://www.stpaul.gov/convention/rncpermits.html

Permit applications to use space, pavilions, and boat slips in Saint Paul 's parks system for parties and gatherings of 25 or more people during the Republican National Convention Aug. 30 to Sept. 4 are now available online and from the Saint Paul Parks & Recreation Permit Office, 1100 Hamline Ave. North.

In addition, permit applications for demonstrations during the same period are also available online and through the Saint Paul Police Community Services Office, 1169 Rice Street .

A limited number of Parks have been held for security purposes and convention activities, but the vast majority of Saint Paul Parks are available for permits. The City of Saint Paul Division of Parks and Recreation manages over 160 parks and open spaces, the Como Park Zoo and Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, 41 recreation centers, a 9 hole and three 18 hole golf courses, over 100 miles of trails, indoor and outdoor pools, a public beach, sports and aquatics facilities, and wonderful rental facilities for public and private gatherings.

“Hosting the Republican National Convention gives us an incredible opportunity to showcase the city's world-class parks system to visitors from around the globe,” said Bob Bierscheid, director of Saint Paul Parks & Recreation. “Park space will be in high demand, and we want to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to access our parks and enjoy themselves during this exciting event.”

Similar to the process in which the city awards permits for park use through a lottery at the beginning of the year, permits during the RNC convention period will be accepted up to 2 p.m. March 3 at the permit office.

A lottery drawing from permit applications will then follow at 3 p.m. The drawing is open to the public and will be broadcast through the city's cable channel soon after the drawing. The permit office will notify people of the status of their application by mail.

Based on park availability, permit applications received after March 3 will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Demonstration permit applications will be accepted starting March 3, at which time applications received through the mail also will be opened. Community Services Office hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Applications will be reviewed and decisions made in a timely manner. However, if there are more questions or clarification is needed, the application approval can be delayed until the information is gathered.

More information on the city's rules regarding demonstration permits can be found in the City Charter and Codes section on the city's Web site at www.stpaul.gov/code . Reference Chapter 366A, which describes the procedures for applications as well as the rules, regulations, and fees.

“The City of Saint Paul is committed to accommodating as many people as logistically possible while ensuring a safe and enjoyable convention for residents and visitors,” said Erin Dady, Saint Paul marketing director. “Hosting a national event of this magnitude takes a lot of coordination from many city departments and outside groups. This permitting process facilitates the necessary planning for a successful event.”

**********

That's all. Thanks for reading through! (hopefully not spam to ya!)

--Dan Feidt - dan.feidt@gmail.com

Whichever day that is. In these dark months, you get the drift of active time, as your circadian rhythms get farther and farther from the intervals of natural light.

At least, I sure do, since my job does not require me to show up anywhere at a certain time every day (besides at my computer to send out the Morning Report).

Start here: Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures - I Can Has Cheezburger? Incredible.

WIRED: Phone and email data mining used on War on Drugs. Surprise! AT&T invents a new programming language to parse mass data mining streams, dubbed Hancock.

The always-excellent Cryptogon changed its banner to a NATO tank behind some opium poppies, which is about as apt a geopolitical symbol as you ever need these days.

Hard Times Cafe in Cedar-Riverside is BACK!

So here are a bunch of links to spice your day: Informed Comment: Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007.

The Charlie Wilson Afghan adventure movie: pretty awesome.

I feel sorry for Pakistan, which was a mistake anyway. What Bhutto's Death Means and Al Qaeda is not taking credit for it. This is big.

Daily Kos: FISA, SCHMISA: DHS Eye in the Sky ready to spy on Americans Related!: TwinCities.com - Inherent powers, ignoble history make new idea anything but innocuous: The Thought Crime thing and also DHS Finalizing Spy Satellite Program To Watch Americans Without Congressional Oversight.

Go here and put in funny searches. You will be amused: CIA FOIA - Overview. Putting in "Barry Seal" is what got me in trouble!

NAFTA Superhighway skepticism dominates leftie interwebs: The existing left-wing blogosphere wisdom is very skeptical: ‘There’s no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway’ - The Carpetbagger Report

The whole idea was considered bullshit propped up by Jerome Corsi, at least along the left. Example: Crooks and Liars » The NAFTA Superhighway doesn’t exist and ‘There’s no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway’ - The Carpetbagger Report and Rumors of a Superhighway - New York Times Blog. Also Matthew Yglesias, same thing: Aug 13, 2007 - The Highway That Wasn't there supporting The Nation's skepticism. But there are also impressively ugly 'tinfoil' sites like this one: NAFTA FLAG.

Here are some other random threads about the subject: NAFTA Super HighWay - Canada links to Mexico! - Canada/US Relations - CKA and NAFTA Superhighway - Ready to shit your pants?, and Anomaly Television » Is the North American Union Conspiracy Theory Really Real? Also, Aftermath News had Campaign of mass-deception exposed over NAU-NAFTA Superhighway agenda.

Interestingly, Wikipedia Nafta Super Highway goes to Trans Texas Corridor! Trans-Texas Corridor - Wikipedia.

This seems to be from the same docs that I put out there: Sound Of Cannons: Money From The SuperCorridor: Already Falling Into The Elite's Hands

The latest popular item is: WorldNetDaily: North-of-border link finishes NAFTA superhighway grid

Fake Christians: NAFTA Highway is Holy. This is weirding people out.

So here are just some of the places that the MnDOT docs I got out there ended up:

• MySpace random college threads.
• Very popular on PrisonPlanet: New NASCO NAFTA Superhighway Docs Released From MnDOT
• 13 Diggs so far - New NASCO NAFTA Superhighway Docs released from MnDOT
• BartBlog - The Blog of BartCop.com » Ron Paul's problems. "haters" indeed!
• 9/11 Truth Movement Forums -> What Ron Paul is fighting against...
• Know Now : a splog?
• The Great Deception -> New Nasco Nafta Superhighway Docs Released From
• Govt. Asks Firefighters To Search For Terrorists In U.S. Homes, As Borders Remain Undefended | 911Blogger.com. first few comments!
• The Great Deception -> Superrondo Superhighway? Mndot, Nasco

Oddly it got into what appears to be a White Supremacist forum Vanguard News Network: there are a lot of angry signatures about the Jews... Yeck. New NAFTA NASCO Superhighway Docs released from MnDOT: The whole plan - Vanguard News Network Forum

The grand list of misc Corridor Watch North American Union activists (weirdos?) etc: For your reference!

• MilitaryCorruption.com - Fighting for The Truth - Exposing The Corrupt in the U.S. Military
• North American Union & Security and Prosperity Partnership | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom
• T-Shirt, white- Nafta HWY
• SPP MALL
• Channeling Reality
• AmeroCurrency.com contact page Welcome to a discussion of the Amero, the possible new North American currency, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the formation of a North American Union between the U.S., Canada and Mexico
• The August Review - About Us
• North American Union
• AmeroCurrency.com $$$ Buy Ameros here--Fight the NAU / UNA--Welcome to a discussion of the Amero, the possible new North American currency, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the formation of a North American Union between the U.S., Canada and Mexico Home of the Amero Coins
• Stop the North American Union
• StopSPP.org - Links
• Welcome to American Policy Center
• www.OK-Safe.com
• TruthNews.us » homepage
• The saga continues: Galloping Beaver

• NAFTA Superhighway and the Hit Piece from Newsweek on Ron Paul

• CorridorWatch.org - Challenging the Wisdom of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

• NAU Info

• The Canadian National Newspaper: Anti-NAU Warriors Beginning to Move the Rock Uphill!!

The I-35W collapse conspiracies! I really have nothing new on this but wanted to put the links anyway. I-35W bridge theories collapse « Mysterious Universe

• And What the bleap? Bleap - Bleap - Bleap!!: Mpls 35e Bridge inspires conspiracies Day One.
• 35W Collapse Roundup: Weird News covered at Minnesota Monitor includes further evidence that the Mothman Prophecies are true, and Sorcha Faal who said that "Russia's Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics detected an ultra-low-frequency blast emitted from Augsburg College, located only a mile from the bridge."
• Which sounds awesome. And also: Minnesota Monitor's more mainstream transportation news including shitty MN bridges of the week. Also bits: The Great Deception -> Bridge Collapse In Minneapolis - Audio Included.

Don the Drug Smuggling Cowboy.

I received a total of fifteen years for my crimes. Under current law, it would have been much more, perhaps in the neighborhood of twenty years, and I would not be eligible for parole. My children grew up without a father and bear the scars even today.

I think it fair to say that none of us emerged from this business unscathed.

I think it is also fair to say that we all – the smugglers, the dealers and the whores – have been replaced, and that a similar or worse fate awaits the present day crowd involved in the business. And then they will be replaced.

Don Henry Ford is really cool. He wrote stories about his times as a drug smugglin Iran Contra cowboy. And tells everyone good stories @ the Agonist. All right: Cinco Puntos Press: Portrait of a dope-smuggling cowboy by NarcoNews

Speir Publishing runs the fictional account.

Cinco Puntos Press: CONTRABANDO: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy

Reviewed: Austin Chronicle:

He spent seven years smuggling marijuana into the United States over the border from Mexico and somehow lived to write about it. From the dusty streets of dirt-poor mountain villages to the gleaming corruption of the American justice system, Don Henry Ford paints a picture of a business where no hands are clean – it’s that old song about the war nobody wins, only this time it’s being played out of a beat-up old truck as it heads north filled with dope. All but bankrupted after a failed attempt at cotton farming in the 1970s but in possession of an indomitable work ethic and a fierce desire for self-determination, Ford slips into the role of drug smuggler with a nonchalance (“This is too damned easy”) and an audacity you have to marvel at: He just dreams it up and does it, headfirst all the way. Temerity, Ford demonstrates time and again, is the one compulsory attribute of the drug smuggler, and the one he’s most blessed with. The really remarkable thing about Ford and his book isn’t so much the experiences he’s had – his stories probably aren’t all that dissimilar from those of 10,000 of his colleagues – but rather the humanity and philosophical distance he maintains while having them. His sympathy for the plight of the working poor and disenfranchised, regardless of class, color, or country; his distaste for the indifference of the rich and the laws that favor them; his ability to step back and view the larger universe of the war on drugs, and his role in it, through the lens of a class-conscious, homegrown philosophy: They all mark him as a decent man, regardless of his occupation or criminal record. And I’d be willing to guess this kind of sympathy and awareness is rare among those who traffic in illegal narcotics, rarer even than it is among those who don’t. Don Henry Ford’s no saint and no Robin Hood but at the same time, those expecting the self-indulgent confessions of an unrepentant outlaw will be disappointed: Ford’s harder on himself than the legal system and the drug lords ever were. And it’s to his credit that in a business built on dehumanization, he managed to retain his humanity and conscience and see beyond himself to something larger.

And the Austin American Statesman too.

Repossessin' Texas--a review by the author :)

***** MISC LINKS TIME! *****

RNC Protest news for St. Paul 2008: See UnconventionalAction.org . Shh!

Useful: a large set of embedded social bookmarking HTML codes. Slashdot badges. Digg HTML embeds.

SoCal anarchists inherently a fire hazard -> Shutdown!

Cool graphic novels of 2007 - Salon.

For paranoias check out the Main Page - TinWiki.org: the first full-feature Wiki dedicated exclusively to all the topics that inspires the authors to consider "Tin foil hats". Topics such as conspiracy theories, UFO cover ups,extraterrestrial programs, New World Order, Illuminati, secret government programs, top secret bases, and nearly any other "alternative topic" that would cause paranoid fear of the government reprisals, wire taps, and email monitoring are the focus of this collaborative Wiki.

Bear Sterns reaps what they sow.

The war on greed! We Need A War On Greed.

These so-called Al Qaedas in Iraq are by and large from Saudi Arabia according to West Point. What a surprise.

Wall Street like a cockroach - interesting ideas here.

Journalism today! In cartoon form.

Fimoculous.com - misc - Best Blogs of 2007 That You (Maybe) Aren't Reading by the guy that Started Mnspeak. Admittedly I have never heard of many of these blogs but they sounded good. MeFi was snarky on it: <