Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
There was a big earthquake over in Montana, and I shot Andy an email about it. He says he's doing all right, but the big thing he's looking out for is the Yellowstone Caldera, which could really take out the whole area if it blew up. What is in Yellowstone's Future? There was an earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka just a little while later.
Couple days ago: Bloomberg Reporting That Rove, Libby May Be Subject To Perjury Charges
Arianna raises a theory that Judith Miller herself got very angry with Joe Wilson, which propelled her into telling Rove Plame was a CIA agent. In other words, good Judy was very much a fellow traveler of the neocons and Chalabi, and therefore took accusations they were spoofing the intelligence very personally. That would be a horrible twist, yes?!?! Steve Clemons on it, he thinks it tracks loosely with other things he's heard.
Social Security: Thomas Frank, a good article on the trillion dollar hustle. Frank is doing this Book Club thing online at TPMcafe and it's pretty interesting. He also linked to Pissed Off White Truck Driver Guy:
Can't you morons in the DLC see that blue-collar America clings to the Repubs. because the Repubs. WANT us. And they PROVE it by consistently addressing just 1 or 2 wedge issues that concern blue collar America. Nevermind that these issues don't even relate to our work life; it still trumps the absolute NOTHING that Democrats offer! And _traditional_ Democratic values offer the blue-collar worker nothing less than actual salvation from what ails him at work. But these working-man values - even the mere NAMING of these ailments we are plagued with - have been WITHHELD for 20 years! Not a peep. Not a sound. No one comes. No one speaks. No one gives a diagnosis. So, clearly, we have been thrown away. Disposed of. And there still are MILLIONS of us. Millions who could be voting Democratic by 2006 if the Party would actually come and talk to us, beginning with the NAMES of the Unfair Labor Practices used against us everyday. Posing for pictures with John Sweeney once every 4 years is not even in the ballpark of what is needed! Do you want us? Really? Then show us. Come down to the loading dock.
The GOP wishes to investigate Pat Fitzgerald. Josh Marshall thinks it's funny that Sen. Roberts is such a tool, but will Hastert try to can PattyPat?. Also a dude named Murray Waas on the situation. Agonist notes: For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises: NYT - At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative's identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.
Also see: Ex-CIA Officers Rip Bush Over Rove Leak and related thread: Testimony By Rove And Libby Examined
Also WaPo: "Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net" now including all that damn fake intelligence!!!
Always worth checkin in on Juan Cole. Just found occupationwatch.org and its list of news aggregators.
CNN.com - U.S. study: Insurgents infiltrate Iraq police - Jul 25 Raimondo: Blowback in Iraq: The U.S. invasion empowered Iran: was that the agenda all along?
Maybe I put this before but its worth repeating: Government Defies an Order to Release Iraq Abuse Photos. Sad: Burns in NY Times: If It's Civil War, Do We Know It - Iraq. Patrick Cockburn: Sunday Independent - Iraq has descended into chaos way beyond West's worst-case scenario. Peter Galbraith: NY Review of Books: Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic
The DLC is quite catty these days. (via Atrios)
If only we could hear such moral clarity from our own party's left! Instead, we heard from Daily Kos, the ur-liberal ur-blogger, whose blog included a cheer for, among others, outcast Labourite George Galloway, who blamed the attacks on Blair's Iraq policy -- and was roundly denounced by virtually all British politicians. "See, Democrats? That's how it's done," lectured the blogger ignorantly [Ed note: This item was written by "Bill in Portland Maine," a regular contributor to Daily Kos]. Likewise, Matt Yglesias, an articulate liberal voice at The American Prospect, who belittled Marshall Wittmann's call for moral clarity as a phrase never used "unironically" anymore. No wonder Democrats are perceived to have a values problem.
My liberal friends are quick to point out that the left's chief grievance is with the war in Iraq, not the war on terror. But what does it do for the image of the Democratic Party -- not to mention the thinking of rank and file Democrats -- when some of our most skilled commentators use a moment of unambiguous terror to first find fault with an American policy (unseating Saddam Hussein) rather than first condemning the terrorists? It's both morally wrong and politically dumb. These musings in the left-wing blogosphere may be read regularly by only a few thousand people, but they seep into the intellectual bloodstream of the Democratic Party. They once again place Democrats on the wrong side of the ultimate issue of our time: winning the war on terror.
Haaretz - U.S.-Israel crisis deepens over defense exports to China. Corridors of Power / Who would give the go-ahead? Peace Now: TV program funding incitement by extreme right wing. This stuff about the religious right wing wanting to take over the state, and their bizarre messianic theology, is most alarming.
The results of this poll of Israeli settlers are fascinating:
Compensation law should apply to West Bank too, settlers say
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
Most settlers want the government to compensate residents of West Bank settlements - and not just those from the Gaza Strip - who move within the Green Line, according to a poll conducted by Market-West on behalf of the Peace Now movement. Fifty-three percent of settlers said the Evacuation-Compensation Law, which determines that settlers evacuated under the disengagement plan will receive compensation payment, should also apply to the West Bank. While a solid majority of religious settlers (83.6 percent) oppose the disengagement, the level of support for the pullout among the secular settler population is not much lower than the level in the overall Israeli population. Nearly 47 percent of secular settlers support the pullout from Gaza and part of the northern West Bank, while 58 percent of the overall population expressed support for the plan. The Peace Now poll, conducted on July 18, surveyed a representative sample of 503 people over the age of 18 from 57 settlements. Of the respondents, 126 described themselves as secular, 207 as religious, 111 as traditional and 60 as ultra-Orthodox. A slight majority of secular settlers oppose continued construction in the West Bank settlements, the poll found. While 51.3 percent of secular settlers say further construction must be prevented, 42.7 percent expressed support for more building in the West Bank. However, 67 percent of the overall settler populace expressed support for the construction of new West Bank settlements, an increase of 6 percent since January. A whopping 86.6 percent of religious settlers expressed support for continued construction, while just 7.5 percent oppose more building. Among settlers who described themselves as traditional, 58.1 percent support continued settlement construction and 35.2 percent oppose it. Among the ultra-Orthodox settlers, 66.7 percent said they support more construction and 25.4 percent oppose it.
Well who knows, even settlers can surprise the hell out of me.
Nevermind. The cat is observing matters from the kitchen, we are waiting for the weekend to start. Crushingly ordinary.
On the plus side I accomplished some useful PHP coding after 2 AM, which as usual is the most insightful time for these sorts of things. Right now I am trying to get a news aggregator type program put together, which will take posts from other blogs & news sources, and recombine them in order by date, so I can put together specialized subject news pages. It seems to work so far: http://wp.hongpong.com/agg-test.php.
I succeeded in importing all the stories from this HongPong site into the new one, but there are still some anomalies to be worked out (and I want to get rid of another 50% of the comment spam), so it's not quite ready yet.
I am trying to determine the best way to organize the new operation, and I have settled on making a few top-level categories, while stuffing the usual things - Iraq, Israel-Palestine, War on Terror - into subcategories, so that these posts don't wash out everything on the front page. Here is the topic layout so far:
Topics
• Uncategorized (36)
• geo (3)
• Iraq (168)
• Israel-Palestine (93)
• Afghanistan (20)
• Iran (1)
• War on Terror (114)
• politics (1)
• Military-Industrial Complex (57)
• Minnesota (37)
• Tracking Election Irregularities (21)
• Campaign 2004 (66)
• News (62)
• tech (3)
• hongpong-meta (1)
• Open Source (9)
• words (1)
• Books (6)
• Quotes (13)
• Mac Weekly (16)
• Usual Nonsense (29)
• tidbits (1)
• kulturny (1)
• Music (14)
• Macalester College (31)
• Movies (11)
• Media (44)
Another CIA guy, Pat Lang, started a blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, and he even put up some novel he wrote. Good for him.
Disturbing stuff about that "Over There" series on FX. Ok that's all for now. It's a really nice day, I want to go ride my bike. Syd Barrett knew it well. (Album: Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967):
I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings
And things to make it look good.
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.
I've got a cloak it's a bit of a joke.
There's a tear up the front. It's red and black.
I've had it for months.
If you think it could look good, then I guess it should.
...
I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house.
I don't know why I call him Gerald.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
...
I've got a clan of gingerbread men.
Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men.
Take a couple if you wish. They're on the dish.
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world.
I'll give you anything, everything if you want things.
I know a room full of musical tunes.
Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork.
Let's go into the other room and make them work.
Via a good story in the Pulse this week by Burt Berlowe, I heard that there are three different gatherings about the state of Democracy in these United States over in Minneapolis this week. Maybe I should snoop around, see if I can get some of those sweet hackable voting machine memory cards. Pulse:
Forty years later, the right of people of color to cast their ballots freely and equally is still being questioned.
To find evidence of that, look no further back than the last two presidential elections, both of which were fraught with efforts to deny minorities their right to vote. Black names were purged from Florida voting lists; Ohio voters in minority precincts stood in line for up to 10 hours while their white counterparts had virtually no wait at all; and in our own Minnesota, Native-American ID cards were challenged.
In contrast to four decades ago, the culprits in this case have come not primarily from the White House but from the state houses—specifically the office of those in charge of running elections, the secretaries of state. In 2000, it was Florida Secretary of State Kathryn Harris who led efforts to keep blacks away from the polls. In 2004, Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell drew fire for alleged discriminatory election practices. In Minnesota, secretary of state Mary Kiffmeyer has used various tactics to make voting more difficult for minority populations. All three of these secretaries were Republican Party activists—Harris and Blackwell both were state coordinators of George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. This weekend the ongoing conflict between the secretaries of state and voters of color will be played out in the Twin Cities. While the two entities will not meet face to face, their agendas will collide in separate but intersecting events. On Friday, Minneapolis will host one of a series of national public hearings sponsored by the Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights (LCCR) and several other concerned organizations. It will be held all day at the Dorsey and Whitney Law Firm in downtown Minneapolis. The object of the event will be to assess the impact of the Voting Rights Act on individuals and communities as a proposed renewal of some its provisions draws near. The event will feature a series of panel discussions by experts in voting rights followed by open public testimony. Citizens are invited to attend and testify about their voting experiences.
[.......]
Beginning that same Friday and continuing through the following Monday, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) will stage its annual summer convention at the Radisson Riverfront Hotel in downtown St. Paul. Some 300 to 400 secretaries and/or their representatives from 40 states are expected to attend the four-day conference. Voting rights and election reform issues of various kinds are among the items up for discussion. Minnesota will also host a third event with some relationship to the electoral process, immediately following those two mentioned here. There will be an international E-Democracy conference July 26 and 27 at the U of M Humphrey Center. Julian Bowery will be a featured speaker, and one session focuses on the use of computer technology in voting and data collection. Go to DoWire.org for more information.
[.......]
Most of the relevant election-related issues, including HAVA, will be discussed during the last day of the conference. The public is invited to attend any of the open sessions for a fee of $250 a day or $475 for the entire event by registering at the NASS web site. In addition to the conference business, delegates will be treated to cruises, tours and parties during the conference, most of which are paid for by conservative corporate sponsors, including voting machine manufacturers who sell their products to state election officials. Among them is Accenture, a company with a history of questionable electoral practices, including close ties to the Republican Party, a role in the purging of felons from the roles in Florida in 2000, and numerous breakdowns and failures. Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite, a national election reform advocacy organization, is critical of this practice. “Not only are the voting machine manufacturers directly sponsoring much of this conference, most of them are also corporate affiliates of the National Association of Secretaries of State, paying up to $20,000 a year for the privilege,” she said. “When the Secretaries of State are under this constant influence from the vendors, it’s difficult to see how they can make objective decisions about our voting systems.”
Take a look @ blackboxvoting.org and Velvet Revolution for the latest on the fine field of shady county officials and the voting machine companies that love them.
It's not just secretaries of state getting seduced by the voting machine manufacturers. Brad Blog reports that Franklin County, Ohio Elections Director Matt Damschroder was punished for accepting a nice $10,000 check from a Diebold lobbyist. More about Damschroder in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and RAW STORY. (Damschroder was closely involved with the interesting pattern of keeping voting machines away from non-whites around Columbus last November, instrumental in tilting the outcome of 'democracy')
As I have previously explained, my ironclad Internet marketing and search engine strategy so far has relied upon comment spammers or spambots to regularly plug their crap into old posts on my site, although periodically I close threads older than a month or so.
About a week ago, the number of comments on the site reached beyond a staggering 10,000 (10,921 was the highest comment serial number). This has a negative effect on MovableType's ability to export the entire contents of the site. in other words, it hasn't yet been able to create the complete export file because it gets overwhelmed with spam.
So I spent a few hours today trimming the fat off the spam, while opting to preserve the spams with funny quips and philosophical fragments about Hegel above the cialis links.
I also ran across *real* comments that I'd never seen before, as they were tucked away in infinite Texas Holdem plugs. It seems that, shockingly enough, people these days actually look at their referrer logs (which indicate to a website where surfers come from). I found that the proprietor of "NewsCorpse" took some umbrage when he found i'd described his site as somewhat "pretentious." I suppose I should clarify: I thought the graphics are a little cheesy, but NewsCorpse has an all right name and metaphor for its purpose. Anyhow...
There was a CNN reporter who responded to my post that addressed the Pentagon's new plans to scoop up high schoolers' data for recruiting purposes. They were wondering if I was someone who had initially supported the war, and become pissed off by the new policy. Unfortunately, as this site documents pretty well, I was opposed to this mad conflict before it started, and have since followed along by publishing stories (169 about Iraq, in all) about the deceptive and intentional schemes of fake intelligence and disinformation that were used to sell it to the public.
So if the draft comes along, I have enough evidence to prove I'm a conscientious objector. At least I'm planning ahead for a change. This from a kid who had to pay more than $140 for two incredibly late parking tickets today >:-(
This may be part of the reason that I keep getting all these hits from the government. The CIA openly returned on July 7, on a Google search for "text messaging IED" and ended up on the Afghanistan page. The "text messaging" keyword appears in a blockquote from, who else, Michael Ledeen, who is talking about what a great idea it is to arm the Iranian opposition. Fortunately the rest of it goes on to make fun of John Bolton and his potential connections to the Iranian terrorist group, based in Iraq, the MEK.
So let us consider the IP numbers of the CIA's openly marked relays. This is information released publicly (over DNS) - so don't anyone accuse me of going Novak. The CIA obviously has computers whose IP numbers don't say friggin "CIA.gov" when you look them up. 198.81.129.194 and 198.81.129.193. On the 193 address they came on a google search for "goss punish cia analysts cold war 2004" back on Nov. 10, 2004, when surely Agency employees were pondering the blowback from the election. They ended up on the War on Terror index page.
So for some bizarre reason the CIA also looked for "bloomington lrt condo" on March 17, 2005, and landed on some nighttime light rail shots.
Blah. Who knows what intelligence agencies want these days: condominiums or text messaging?
Anyhow here is a grand old list of every domain containing ".gov" that visited since the start of the year: (ignore the odd numbers there)
apm.gov.ec 2928
pix-a-20.gov.calgary.ab.ca
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
ins.nh.gov
daoutside.hanford.gov
chameleon.doechicago.gov
strata.mt.gov
bhappy.jpl.nasa.gov
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca
bcccache6-3.tco.census.gov
nersc2.lbl.gov
some.security.gov.ge
gw.conab.gov.br 1 2
pix-a-20.gov.calgary.ab.ca
testcache.rtp.epa.gov
gk-central-23.srvs.usps.gov 0
nat-235.fw08nat.dot.ca.gov
lsm5.gtwy.uscourts.gov
sherman.state.gov+computer+logging 1
sherman.state.gov 2
sherman.state.gov 3
jaffwa.staffordshire.gov.uk
s0b1ed1.ssa.gov 0
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca
bcccache6-3.tco.census.gov
gk-west-24.srvs.usps.gov
n021.dhs.gov
ip12-156-194-3.ita.doc.gov 2
sherman.state.gov
vicce001.net.gov.bc.ca
relay2.cia.gov 6498
box.suffolkcountyny.gov
More below.. w00p w00p!
ip .gov.nf.ca
cache2.cdc.gov 6
152-130-7-130.res.net.va.gov
wkst146.uc.usbr.gov 0
152-130-6-130.res.net.va.gov
bowie-fc.census.gov 0
gtwy.uscourts.gov 1
office+of+personnel+management.gov 2
housegate4.house.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
gtwy.uscourts.gov 1
housegate4.house.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
management.gov 2
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
smtp1.sanantonio.gov
n021.dhs.gov
sherman.state.gov
clayton.state.gov
cwood.etl.noaa.gov
turnerra.ornl.gov
152-133-7-130.kc.net.va.gov
unwgsgs3.customs.treas.gov
vicce003.net.gov.bc.ca
wcfc.ocio.usda.gov
gk-central-23.srvs.usps.gov 0
wdcsun24.usdoj.gov
sherman.state.gov 2
sherman.state.gov 2
denver-254.blm.gov
vance004.net.gov.bc.ca
enduser5.faa.gov 6498
unwgsgs4.customs.treas.gov
ns1.corr.ca.gov 6274
host246.welsh-ofce.gov.uk
ip12-156-194-3.ita.doc.gov
clayton.state.gov
internet.fsa.gov.uk
digger1.defence.gov.au
client1.ed.gov 6498
vance002.net.gov.bc.ca 2 0
152-133-7-133.kc.net.va.gov
user.plano.gov
ns2.corr.ca.gov
vicce002.net.gov.bc.ca
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
dknrgwpxav02.defence.gov.au
bcccache6-2.tco.census.gov
dknrgwpxav01.defence.gov.au 224
server4.gba.gov.ar
correo.transmilenio.gov.co
smtp.mpi.gov.vn
gatehouse.cambridgema.gov
a032-fw1.nyc.gov
housegate10.house.gov
vicce002.net.gov.bc.ca 168
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
pool3253.ihs.gov
pt .pnl.gov 1
clayton.state.gov
b12-arbiter-b.net.nih.gov
proxyout2.maricopa.gov 8
binhdinh.gov.vn 6778
smtp.mpi.gov.vn 84
bacninh.gov.vn 6934
relay1.ucia.gov
152-132-11-64.dal.net.va.gov
subnet84.idsc.gov.eg 1786
housegate10.house.gov
sherman.state.gov 1
sherman.state.gov 1
dnscachelastupdate.hongpong.com.txt: 50 130.20.172.158 pt .pnl.gov
dnscachelastupdate.hongpong.com.txt: 50 209.128.29.254 ip .gov.nf.ca
SCOTUS and other intestinal parasite-like acronyms: WaPo: Unraveling the Twists and Turns of the Path to a Nominee. They are trying to keep Roberts docs out of the hands of Democratic lawmakers. Clash likely. He was in the cheesy Federalist Society, but claims no memory of it.
UK cops (are) killaz: Blast Inquiry hampered by shooting (UPI)
A summary of tasty Karl Rove Yellowcake news:
You can tell Frank Rich is having a lot of fun these days: Eight Days in July
Dan Froomkin in the WaPo Gets It: What Did the President Know?: My favorite:
So was the Roberts nomination moved up in an attempt to distract from the CIA leak scandal? And did it fail?
Howard Kurtz asked the National Review's Byron York for his thoughts.
"Just shows you the president's brilliance," York said with a big smile. "Roberts is not taking the heat off Rove; Rove is taking the heat off Roberts. And now we don't have the Supreme Court controversy which we thought we were going to have."
Some dude in Niagara Falls: "Karl Rove: An American Traitor."
TIME: "The Rove Problem": featuring fun at teh Home with Valerie.
Pissed off ex-CIA dudes: Larry Johnson is all right. He was Plame's classmate back in CIA training, he's been out defending her record. And best of all, he and another ex-CIA dude, Pat Lang, have a fine blog called NO QUARTER. Well done, good luck.
Whizbang weird political things: Liberty Dollar - Inflation Proof Currency - only in America. Small question: How can it be inflation proof if it's pegged to the US Dollar?
Best .gov site ever: Sen Lautenberg deconstructs the Chickenhawk. Also check out WhiteHouseTapes.org.
Torture Watch: Government Defies an Order to Release Iraq Abuse Photos.
Moustache Watch: Bolton may snag the recess appointment, McClellan says. And now that batshit neocon Frank Gaffney is lauding Bolton as our man to stop the UN's EVIL GLOBAL (BLACK HELICOPTER) TAX!!!! YAY!!!! Who'd think they needed the Idaho militia set? Via Clemons.
Collapse of Civilization Watch: Jared Diamond on Failing to Think Long Term. What was the guy cutting down the last tree on Easter Island thinking?
Global Guerrilla Watch: I feel dumb that I didn't find Global Guerrillas, a site run by some trendy buzzword defense analyst type dude, earlier. It has lots of good stuff, sort of a merger of open-source talk with security strategy: The Global Guerrilla Venture Model, THE BAZAAR OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ, 4GW -- FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE, STIGMERGIC LEARNING AND GLOBAL GUERRILLAS, SCENARIO: CHECHEN INDEPENDENCE, THE OPTIMAL SIZE OF A TERRORIST NETWORK, Global Guerrilla Credo, THE BAZAAR'S OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM, AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY: SUPERPOWER BAITING, EXPORTING SYSTEMS DISRUPTION, URBAN TAKEDOWNS, TRANSNATIONAL GANGS. OK wasn't that a fun collection of keywords? Should get me some FBI hits for sure. I will return to this fine subject later...
Iran Contra Infiltration Watch: Confessed Iran-Contra Figure Lands Sensitive Pentagon Post
Iran Belligerency Watch: Congresscritters want to use the MEK to swipe at Tehran: Alert for proxy war potential... Iran ‘terrorist’ group finds support on Hill.
Israel Disengagement Watch: Hey the United Arab Emirates is going to build a nice new Palestinian town in Gaza on the site of an abandoned settlement, with at least $100 million for 30,000 to 40,000 Palestinians. Not bad!
Protest March: "Victory or Flop?" Haaretz asks. Opinion: Democracy needs to go on the offense:
The rule of law faced a battle of life and death last week. The determined efforts of the police and army succeeded in thwarting the desires of tens of thousands of demonstrators to reach Gush Katif and prevent implementation of the order issued by the prime minister under the Disengagement Implementation Law that limits entry into the areas to be evacuated. This determination will be put to trial day after day, and any acceptance of a "small" infringement will end up as a dangerous downward spiral.
[....]The overall conclusion is that our defensive democracy at this time must defend itself against rebels from within, and turn into an offensive democracy, with all the human suffering involved.
Knesset passes immunity reform on eve of Omri Sharon indictment. Bush nominates Richard Jones as next ambassador to Israel. Editorial about Egyptian efforts to deal with sudden terror surge.
Settlers still trying to get into Gaza & cause trouble. Going to organize out in the western Negev desert.
But somehow this mess is a civics lesson?!
The recent days have, in fact, strengthened Israeli democracy. Contrary to all the whining about the supposed damage to the rule of law, the police and the Israel Defense Forces have learned an important lesson on the subject of human dignity and freedom. [.....]
For the first time in their history, they learned to use a foreign language: non-violence. Now it is only to be hoped that the thousands of soldiers and police, the new learners, will internalize what they studied in the fields of Kfar Maimon, at the Kissufim roadblock and on the roads of Israel: It is also possible without beatings, without "means for dispersing demonstrations" and, of course, without shooting. Not only is it possible, it turns out that these methods also harvest great success. Indeed, even when a soldier is run over by demonstrators, there is no need to open fire immediately. Henceforth, every Hebrew soldier and every member of the police force will know that there is also another way, and that it is possible to think twice before beating, kicking and shooting. Someone who did not hit anyone at Kfar Maimon will not shoot at Kissufim, and perhaps will not do so elsewhere either. It is an irony of fate that it has, in fact, been the Jewish settlers in the territories, the sector that has turned breaking the law into a way of life more than any other population group, are the ones who have, unintentionally, taught this stunning lesson in civics to the police and soldiers of Israel.
And a great deal of further detail about Israeli police violence upon the residents of Israel, Arabs and Jews. Hm. Good ol dove Shimon Peres says that Hebron has to go back to Palestinians, Jerusalem has to be divided, but illegal West Bank settlement bloc of Gush Etzion is fixed to be annexed no matter what. Dammit man, that's wrong. One more final thing about the settlements: Israeli president Moshe Katsav praised the values & goals of the remaining West Bank settlers, and credited Bush for acceding to illegal settlement bloc annexation:
In an op-ed published in Yedioth Ahronoth, Katsav said that the settlers "have played a significant role in the achievements of the State of Israel," including U.S. President George W. Bush's agreement to "settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria."
Katsav said Bush also reached his conclusion thanks to the prayers of Jews in the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb. The president called on settlers to restrain themselves, but expressed much sympathy for the objectives of their struggle. He advised them to stay calm ahead of the struggle over the West Bank and said, "The values for which the residents of Judea and Samaria are struggling continue to be essential for the nation and the state."
These are untenable statements. The settlements play no role in the achievements of the state. On the contrary, the more they multiplied, the smaller the chance of reaching an agreement with the Palestinians and the greater the danger to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Hey, check it out, it's happening:
The WP stands for WordPress. it will move out to the regular www Real Soon Now. It has a lot of sweet tag features & other bells & whistles. Much better than MovableType, and I will have a more open way for everyone to get logins....
Also, site traffic is up sharply for July, and I am trying out a new program to measure hits. Should be sweet... I am averaging about 1000 hits a day, of which about 40% seem to be from the AskJeeves bot, and another 20% are pure spam attempts. So maybe around 300 real people a day? This new stat program should help me figure it out.
Also for some reason, muddled Macedonian characters have become my top Google search this month. Don't know why.
More later.
P.S. Tuesday morning is the long awaited appearance at the County Courthouse regarding the infamous Macalester Seniors vs St. Paul/Minneapolis/Airport Police May 11 incident. I could be a totally free man just hours from now!! Or not.
And I still haven't gotten my pictures from the police/DA/powers that be.
(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, well I can't blather about it on the Internet. If it's all over tomorrow, then I'll talk)
Via Gorillamask, "Probably not the most successful camping trip in history." I ran a translation and found that Пикничок! means "Piknichok!" apparently, while "Picnic" turns into "Пикник". So it's probably picnicking or however you spell that. If you can't see the Russian characters, it just mean yr OS sux0rs major bits.
See also the dude who built his prom tuxedo out of Coke cans. Amazing. Thanks, you bastions of internet integrity @ gorrillamask.
Via billmon and various other people, in The American Conservative, not available online:
The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.
Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
Now let's not get riled up yet. For one thing the story could be totally fake. Also, we all remember that fine scene in WarGames where WOPR runs all the fun nuclear war scenarios the military has stashed away, just in case. And Washington reporter Laura Rozen says settle down here:
as I've said before, a plan is not the same thing as a policy decision. I would be more surprised if we were to learn that the US has no such contingency plan for Iran. But still....
On the other hand, this scenario ever so slightly parallels the idea behind Operation Northwoods. (read the damn declassified PDF or James Bamford's interpretation) Namely, that a terrorist attack would justify attacking Cuba, even though the Cubans had nothing to do with the attack.
I'd like to quote Bamford's description of what happened around Northwoods. While reading, ask yourself if something vaguely similar could occur regarding Iran:
[After the Bay of Pigs] the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.
[.......something about planning remotely piloted planes getting shot down and framing the Cubans.. quite amazing itself.......]
[....] Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.
[......] It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.
Scott Ritter said that "The US War with Iran has Already Begun." And I note that Raimondo finished writing his own tidbit tying the American Conservative plan with that poll showing most Americans expect World War III. With all apparent seriousness, he says that he's got to help save us from Cheney's apocalypse:
We must mount a last desperate attempt to stand athwart the apocalypse shouting "No!" The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
Never for a minute did any of us who founded Antiwar.com imagine we would one day be front and center in a twilight struggle to protect the country and the world from such a monumental evil, and yet here we are, a band of hobbits up against all the dark powers of Mordor. Without getting any more melodramatic than is absolutely unavoidable, I can only note that we've come a long way on our quest to rid the world of this particular Ring of Power, and the battle seems to be reaching some sort of dramatic climax. As to whether or not the Cheney-neocon-War Party axis of evil will be defeated in the end, no one can confidently predict at the moment. Yet one thing does seem clear: as long as Antiwar.com is around, we have at least a fighting chance.
I don't know if that much hyperbole is really warranted yet. Whatever. Everyone has duly noted the fine piece by Juan Cole about the recent love fest in Tehran. It is not exactly a subtle irony that (most of) Iraq will end up being a close ally of that other Axis of Evil that we thought we'd surrounded so well...
In contrast, Bush calls Iran part of an axis of evil and dismisses its elections and government as illegitimate. So the Bush administration cannot have been filled with joy when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and eight high-powered cabinet ministers paid an extremely friendly visit to Tehran this week.
The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east.
Let's remember what WOPR told us: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
I had a dream last night that I ran into Donald Rumsfeld at a picnic. It was really awkward! Anyway,
This was kinda disturbing:
Poll: Americans Say World War III Likely:
(07-24) 02:14 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never justified.
Those findings come six decades after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war claimed about 400,000 U.S. troops around the world, more than three times that many Japanese troops and at least 300,000 Japanese civilians.
Out of the ashes, Japan and the United States forged a close political alliance. Americans and Japanese now generally have good feelings about each other.
But people in the two countries have very different views on everything from the U.S. use of the atomic bomb in 1945, fears of North Korea and the American military presence in Japan.
Some of the widest differences came on expectations of a new world war.
Six in 10 Americans said they think such a war is likely, while only one-third of the Japanese said so, according to polling done in both countries for The Associated Press and Kyodo, the Japanese news service.
"Man's going to destroy man eventually. When that will be, I don't know," said Gaye Lestaeghe of Freeport, La.
Some question whether that war has arrived, with fighting dragging on in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism.
"I feel like we're in a world war right now," said Susan Aser, a real estate agent from Rochester, N.Y.
Perhaps this is somewhat connected with the fear of nuclear attack firmly embedded in Bush's base. As a Drum post on the Washington Monthly points out, Rove and the White House may have been taking the Niger Uranium story and running with it because the Republican base was scared shitless of a nuclear attack, and needed to stay all riled up.
...the White House political operation wasn't lashing out just because of Joe Wilson. They were lashing out because they believed their political lives depended on their own supporters continuing to believe that Saddam had been actively working on a nuke program. Without that belief, they'd lose support within their own base even if they eventually found evidence of chem and bio programs.
In Karl Rove's world, the base is sacred, and nukes were the key to their support. Joe Wilson threatened to open a crack in that support, and that's why he had to be destroyed.
So China's a big deal. More stuff about it on this Agonist post. Morgan Stanley has a lot to say about it:
This is also a plus for the rest of the world -- but with a potentially painful twist. By moving to a currency basket, China will need to diversify its enormous portfolio of foreign exchange reserves, which totalled some $660 billion at the end of 1Q05. Other Asian central banks -- also massively overweight dollars -- should follow China’s lead. The near-simultaneous announcement by Malaysia to abandon the Ringgit peg in favor of a managed basket float confirms such a possibility. Other central banks, such as the Bank of Korea, have been itching to diversify out of dollars.
Consequently, a more flexible RMB mechanism raises the odds of an Asian shift out of dollars, in effect removing the artificial bid for dollar-denominated assets that has provided a subsidy for US interest rates. This will undoubtedly put pressure on the interest rate support to US asset markets -- especially property. Asset-dependent American consumers will certainly be challenged by such a development. This could result in a reduced impetus from US consumption support -- in the end, the only real hope for a US current account adjustment. This is a plus for a long overdue global rebalancing but will be admittedly painful. Unfortunately, that’s probably the only way for the US and the rest of the world to come to grips with its most glaring excesses.
The financial market implications of this shift in Chinese currency policy cannot be minimized. At the most basic level, the FX reserve diversification play is likely to be negative for the dollar and bearish for US interest rates -- mirroring the classic trappings of a current-account adjustment. That, however, is not the only consideration bearing on the US interest rate outlook. The combination of persistently low inflation and a still-likely China slowdown remain important prospective developments on the bullish side of the interest rate equation. Over the near term, I suspect that the balance will now tip more toward the bearish outcome than I had previously thought. Over the medium term, however, I still believe that pressures on longer-term US interest rates will be contained by subdued inflationary expectations and the likelihood of a China-led shortfall in pan-Asian economic growth.
Wasn't that easy to comprehend? :-P
So along comes Billmon to depress us about the fact that the Patriot Act and all its unchecked expansions of the executive branch are getting expanded and un-sunsetted. Sucks.
Congress will vote to renew and possibly expand PATRIOT today, tomorrow or early next week. This will all be over long before Roberts has a hearing, before Fitzgerald finishes his investigation.
If Congress renews or expands Section 215, as they seem intent on doing, you can kiss the 4th Amendment good-bye . . . What two World Wars and a Civil War could not accomplish, al-Qaeda and the cowardly leadership of George Bush will. (emphasis added)
This is probably a good time to remind people what Section 215 gives the government the power to do:
•Order any person or entity to turn over "any tangible things," so long as the FBI specifies that the order is part of an authorized terrorism or intelligence investigation.
•Obtain personal data, including medical records, without any specific facts connecting those records to a foreign terrorist.
•Prohibit doctors and insurance companies from disclosing to their patients that their medical records have been seized by the government.
•Obtain library and book store records, including lists of books checked out, without any specific facts connecting the records to a foreign agent or terrorist.
•Obtain private financial records without a court order, and without notification to the person involved.
•Conduct intelligence investigations of both United States citizens and permanent residents without probable cause, or even reasonable grounds to believe that they are engaged in criminal activity or are agents of a foreign power.
•Investigate U.S. citizens based in part on their exercise of their First Amendment rights, and non-citizens based solely on their exercise of those rights. (Naturally, decisions about what constitutes "in part" are left to a secret court, meeting secretly.)
•Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing that fact to anyone -- even their attorney. (This provision was struck down by a U.S. district court last year.)
Section 213 of PATRIOT, meanwhile, allows federal agents to:
•Conduct secret “sneak and peek” searches of your home.
•Enter your home or office and seize items for an indefinite period of time, without informing you that a warrant has been issued.
And Section 216 lets the feds:
•Seize records that could show the subject lines of your e-mails and the details pf your Web surfing habits.
Just to highlight what an Orwellian witch's brew the Patriot Act has turned into, consider that while the Cheney administration claims Section 215 has never been used to search or seize library records, a 2002 survey of librarians found that almost half of them reported being visited by federal or local law enforcement agents demanding access to patron records.
Confronted with these results, the Justice Department insisted the vast majority of those visits were related to criminal investigations, but refused to disclose how many were terror-related, saying that information was (you guessed it) classified.
Naturally, as if all this wasn't bad enough, many of the "reforms" now being rammed through our Chamber of People's Deputies would make the law worse. For example, the House Judiciary Committee (led by chairman James "turn off their fucking microphones" Sensenbrenner) has voted to extend the sunset on Section 215 from four years to ten.
(The Senate Judiciary Committee's version would retain the four-year sunset on Section 215. But both bills would permanently extend all but one other section of the law.)
The biggest threat, however comes (surprise!) from the Senate Intelligence Commitee, which has taken a break from its continuing efforts to whitewash the Iraq WMD scandal in order to vomit up a bill allowing the FBI to exercise many of the powers outlined above without even bothering to ask a judge or grand jury for permission -- not even the Star Chamber magistrates on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The House Rules Committee is also doing its part to keep the police state steamroller moving forward. Last night it refused to permit straight up-or-down floor votes on more than half of the amendments sought by reform advocates but rejected by Sensenbrenner and his stooges.
This includes the Bernie Sanders's bid to at least protect library and bookstore records from the Section 215 vacuum cleaner. This was endorsed by a big bipartisan majority in a kind of test vote last month -- but of course none of that matters when the securitycrats and their legislative water carriers get together behind closed doors.
And I do mean closed. In some cases, deliberations on Patriot Act renewal themselves have been classified, and closed to both the public and the press. More grist for the Orwellian mill.
Apologies to Billmon for tossing basically the whole post up, but it tackled the gory details so damn well...
The coverage of the disengagement in Haaretz is real good. There are roughly four major forces pressuring the situation right now: the Israelis are basically divided between the hardcore religious nationalists, who oppose the withdrawal and have actually come out to protest, versus the rest of Israel. On the Palestinian side, Hamas is upping the violence in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority's wobbly control of Gaza, so that Hamas can be the real winner once the settlers are gone.
"IDF: Settlers slipping into Gaza":
The Yesha Council of settlements reneged on a verbal agreement with security officials by deciding to continue the demonstration at Kfar Maimon, senior army officers said last night. The Israel Defense Forces believe that the demonstrators plan to stay there for a long time - to exhaust the security forces.
Army sources said that right-wing activists are also slipping into Gush Katif while the army's attention is focused on Kfar Maimon. They estimated that some 600 nonresidents had infiltrated Gaza in the week since it was closed, most of them in the cars of Gush residents. Since the start of the year, some 1,500 people have moved to Gush Katif.
As of last night, thousands of demonstrators remained in Kfar Maimon, surrounded by more than 20,000 policemen and soldiers. In the evening, they tried to continue their march toward Gush Katif, but were forced to give up when faced with a wall of policemen and soldiers. Settler leaders continued to vow that the march would happen.
More about the nasty Jerusalem wall they are trying to throw up from Amira Hass: "On the slope of Jewish democracy":
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not dividing Jerusalem. Neither is Minister Haim Ramon. They have simply found a faster and more efficient way than those tried before to get rid of tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem - after the process of robbing them of their lands for the benefit of the Jewish residents has been exhausted.
At the beginning of last week, the government decided to speed up the construction of the separation fence in the Jerusalem area, which will also surround and imprison the residents of three East Jerusalem neighborhoods: the Shoafat refugee camp, and the Salaam and Dar Khamis neighborhoods in Anata. For more than a year and a half from the time the route was set, the state was in no hurry to build, and it delayed replying to the petitions filed by attorney Danny Seideman on behalf of neighborhood residents. Now, when all the spotlights are on the incidents surrounding the disengagement, the state is rushing to construct a concrete wall and watchtowers, which have cut off the residents from their city and their entire way of life.
The major summary of what happened yesterday:
According to Peres, the actions of disengagement foes in recent days is the best proof that the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank settlements should be evacuated as soon as possible, and allow the thousands of police officers and officers to face the real task of fighting terror, crime and violence.
Meretz-Yahad leaders convened Thursday and called on the government to advance the pullout, saying that doing so would prevent an "unnecessary and dangerous war of attrition with those trying to prevent the disengagement by violent and undemocratic means."
Officials might discuss moving up the pullout with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived in the region later Thursday, according to another senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said he hoped Rice's visit would trigger a "comprehensive diplomatic process," with the pullout from Gaza as the first step.
The evacuation originally was to have begun in mid-July, but was pushed back to mid-August, ostensibly out of consideration for observing a three-week mourning period - beginning Sunday - for the destruction of the biblical Jewish Temples. Critics said the pullout was delayed because the government was far behind in its preparations.
[......]
Security forces in the Negev town of Kfar Maimon on Thursday morning dismantled their temporary headquarters and most troops left the area after anti-disengagement protesters decided against continuing a banned march.
The heads of the Yesha Council of Settlements announced Wednesday night that the march to the Gush Katif settlement bloc was over, and that they would instead try to use small groups to infiltrate into the Strip, which was last week declared closed to non-resident Israelis.
According to estimates some 200 protesters are expected to remain in Kfar Maimon.
Yesha leader Benzi Lieberman told protesters Wednesday night that the attempt to reach Gush Katif with a massive march would be replaced by infiltration in small groups.
"We will get there bit by bit, and in two weeks' time we'll have another 10,000 people in Gush Katif," Lieberman said. The number of settlers set to evacuate the Strip under the disengagement is approximately 9,000.
Lieberman also asked all those who were able to remain in Kfar Maimon to do so in order to force large numbers of police to stay there as well. Military sources said settlers intend to employ this tactic in order to wear down the security forces ahead of the disengagement to hamper their operational capabilities.
More below on the disengagement, as well as Hamas causing problems for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. At the end some creepy statements from a wild rightwinger.....
Nadav Shragai, who is the regular Haaretz settler correspondent and fairly sympathetic to them: The Opposition / Practical losers, media winners:
More than anything else, the pullout opponents are worried about the picture of police and demonstrators clashing. In their hearts they pray that if violence does break out, it will come from the police.
In this "love march," the demonstrators sing to the soldiers "we love you"; Effi Eitam is photographed embracing the commander of the Southern District of the police.
[......]
Yesterday, another 1,000 demonstrators marched toward Kfar Maimon, and additional groups were seen organizing in Sderot. The win/loss calculation of this battle has two sides: the media and the practical. On the practical level, the government is the winner so far. Masses of pullout opponents did not reach Gush Katif, and this fact probably won't change. On the media level, the protesters are the winners for the meantime. As the underdogs, they set the media and public agenda, and even managed to gain some sympathy, thanks to the harsh measures of the police and the sacrifice and devotion of the protesters over the past few days.
Visually, the pictures we saw from Kfar Maimon were reminiscent of the orange revolution in Ukraine - an army of protesters headed by determined leaders. In practical terms, the difference is huge: in Ukraine, people with a wider variety of opinions took part in the protest. In the "engagement march" only the national religious camp is taking part. The secular opponents to disengagement stayed home.
Thousands left Kfar Maimon yesterday morning either because the heat was too much for them or they were daunted by the sight of huge numbers of troops around Kfar Maimon, and convinced there was no way they would get to the Gush. In the evening, things changed - more arrived, fewer left.
Also there is an interview with Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister. "Dahlan: Hamas is trying to carry out a military coup against the PA":
Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan told Haaretz this week that Hamas is trying to carry out a military coup against the PA.
"When someone tries to take over a police station by means of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, that is an attempted military coup," he said.
Dahlan also said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Hamas have the same goal: destroying the PA.
[.....]Dahlan admits that Hamas is stronger today in Gaza than the PA. "I'm surprised that the PA hasn't collapsed yet," he says.
Kind of classic: "Neveh Dekalim / `Aren't you ashamed to be standing here?'"
But the roadblock brought [the settlers'] target audience directly into their hands. No publicist could have dreamed a better setup: The police, arms locked, and the Israel Defense Forces troops behind them are not allowed to move. They are a captive audience, an open target.
During times of calm every protester turns preacher, orator, prophet, confidant, friend. Only a few inches separate the speakers and their audience, they stand only a breath away. "Think of yourself, not of me. It will destroy your soul from within, your Jewish soul," a youth said, preaching to a policeman not to take part in the evacuation. Such monologues abound along the row of police. For the most part they remain silent, trying to avoid the protesters' gaze, but sometimes they respond, or begin a dialogue: the Holocaust, Golda, Begin, Judaism - everything is discussed. "You will have children in a few years," says a protester, with a look of pity. "What will you tell them? I uprooted thousands of Jews from their homes? How will you face them? And what about the Jewish graves, no, listen to me, this is the time to stop. Don't let them brainwash you." [......] The protester followed [the policewoman]: "You're a Jew, Etti, when your boy is eight days old you will circumcise him, right? What will you say to him?"
Here is an argument from the right-wing Israel Harel. It is fairly spooky. "When the government loses control":
There is no doubt that the delegitimization of the settlers and their supporters has in recent months created a parallel process in which the injured public - mainly because government institutions have provided it with valid justifications - has in response begun delegitimizing the government and all the institutions that have mobilized completely behind it. The most normative public in the country, which is careful to observe even the most trivial as well as the most serious precepts of both criminal and moral law, is now ready, because the inhibitions against doing so have disappeared, to respond by breaking laws in areas that could shake the foundations of those government bodies that have risen up against it - and to pay the price.
And this, in my view, is the real disengagement, far more fateful than the diplomatic one, that Sharon has caused, with backing from all those state institutions that have enlisted on his side. "Here we have an attempt by tens of thousands to undermine the foundations of the government," declared Elyakim Haetzni, the leading advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience, with satisfaction. The government, he said, is panicking and playing into our hands. The precedent of employing the army is a clear sign of loss of control that brings the end of the Sharon government near.
And one of the listeners responded: Once, I thought you were an extremist, an angry prophet who always sees only the bad. Today, you should know, I and those like me, ordinary members of the religious bourgeoisie, are beginning to agree with you. Consider the silence of the jurists and all the other defenders of human rights in the face of the unbelievable step of using the army at Kfar Maimon. Even during the Arab riots of October 2000, the government did not dare use the army against Arab citizens of Israel. Only here, since Sharon knows that the High Court of Justice will back him - even though this precedent is liable to be used against the Arabs in the future - has he dared to use the army against the settlers.
To Dr. Yitzhak Weiss, a medical doctor, historian and biographer of Herzl (in French), the use of the army against one's own citizens recalls the government's loss of control on the eve of the Russian revolution. As was beautifully described in the film "Battleship Potemkin," he noted, the beginning of the czar's end was when the army, rather than the police, was sent in to end the workers' strikes. The soldiers then switched sides, and thus began the revolt that changed history.
[.......]And, undoubtedly because of the achievement of having tens of thousands show up for a lengthy, exhausting mission, the very atmosphere tingles with the feeling that the goal - stopping the uprooting - is achievable. And there is certainly an educational message, and perhaps even something more, in the sentence printed on the orange shirts worn by many of the youth: "The eternal people is not afraid of a long road."
Right now I'm listening to the new Murs & Slug album, Felt 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet. Not bad.
I finally got around to changing the email address on this page to my new email address, dan.feidt AT gmail.com.
Also I'll note that I had a few glasses of Diet Dr. Pepper the other night in honor of Elizabeth Severance's six-month trip to London. Have fun Sev!!!
In other news I am working on a bit for the Politics in Minnesota newsletter based on the piece I put in the Mac Weekly about interviewing the Minnesota Legislature.
Then I really really really need to have this damn Job thing sort itself out. Augh.
FBI agents monitored Web sites calling for protests against the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston on behalf of the bureau's counterterrorism unit, according to FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to the documents as evidence that the Bush administration has reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States by blurring the distinction between terrorism and political protest. FBI officials defended the involvement of counterterrorism agents in providing security for the Republican and Democratic conventions as an administrative convenience.
The documents were released by the FBI in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil rights, animal rights and environmental groups that say they have been subjected to scrutiny by task forces set up to combat terrorism. The FBI has denied targeting the groups because of their political views.
"It's increasingly clear that the government is involved in political surveillance of organizations that are involved in nothing more than lawful First Amendment activities," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "It raises very serious questions about whether the FBI is back to its old tricks."
A Sept. 4, 2003, document addressed to the FBI counterterrorism unit described plans by a group calling itself RNC Not Welcome to "disrupt" the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. It also described Internet postings from an umbrella organization known as United for Peace and Justice, which was coordinating worldwide protests against the convention.
"It's one thing to monitor protests and protest organizers, but quite another thing to refer them to your counterterrorism unit," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice.
Another document, addressed to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which coordinates anti-terrorist activities by the FBI and local police forces, described threats to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Responding to the lawsuit filed in May in U.S. District Court in Washington, the FBI said it had identified 1,173 pages of records relating to the ACLU and 2,383 pages relating to Greenpeace. The content of the records, which were generated since 2001, is not known.
I feel safer already.
What a weird summer for news.
I would like to take a sec to note the various wingy conspiracy theories cropping up around the London bombing. Not because I find them readily credible, but because they are sort of an instant folk mythology that gets generated these days through the Internet. Also if any bits of it pan out, well you can say that you heard about them around here.
I'm just throwing these out there, to illustrate the kinds of counter-narratives that pop up around all sorts of major events. It's the X-Files mentality, the Grassy Knoll syndrome of American politics. The CIA killed JFK, some said even then. There are always people attracted to some weird explanation, (say the Flight 800 missile story) where the Council on Foreign Relations, the VFW post and the Taxpayers' League collude in some great scheme to take over the world and get free cable while fluoridating the water.
Anyway, the main nut of the conspiracy theory right now, "Blair Knew" in a nutshell, (via the very paranoid sites Propaganda Matrix and PrisonPlanet) is that some dude named Peter Power, (not to be confused with Austin) who used to be a key anti-terrorism law enforcement officer in London, and now runs some private security consulting agency, said on the BBC right after the bombing that there were anti-terror drills involving like 1000 people, practicing dealing with bombs on the London Underground at virtually the same locations that the bombs actually went off. (and perhaps stations were closed before the bombings) "How the Government staged the London bombings in Ten Easy Steps."
As this Webster Tarpley guy put it,
Last week's London explosions carry the characteristic features of a state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terror provocation by networks within the British intelligence services MI-5, MI-6, the Home Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch who are favorable to a wider Anglo-American aggressive war in the Middle East, featuring especially an early pre-emptive attack on Iran, with a separate option on North Korea also included.
Wheeee!!!! You have to admit, politics is more interesting when everything's frickin crazy!!!
Other people have similar theories. So the conspiracy goes that some covert ops group, with Powers as an auxiliary, triggered the bombings and set up some typical Pakistanis to take the fall for it. Also, they point out that the numerous cameras on the exploded bus just happened to be turned off on July 7, therefore conspiracy! (And of course they say that Madrid was a coverup too)
A top Iranian cleric alleges that the UK could have bombed itself. And there was some strange tie between Web claims of responsibility and a Saudi dissident.
Conspiracy theorists love to say that security drills are the best opportunity for Evil Illuminati to fake terrorist events because it circumvents the usual security measures and provides cover for incriminating activity, and some are saying that London reprises the alleged 9/11 drills. September 11 conspiracists / "investigators" such as Michael Ruppert argue that the military was doing some kind of operation called "Vigilant Warrior" and/or "Vigilant Guardian" on the morning of September 11, where agents posing as terrorists were performing airline hijackings. And also, there were supposedly fake "blips" put into air traffic control systems to simulate these planes, thusly permitting the real hijackings to go through and smash the WTC. Massive list of conspiracy stories. The National Reconnaisance Office had scheduled a plane crash drill on 9/11, the AP reported.
Of course, many conspiracy types complain that the flight that hit the Pentagon clearly isn't there, the wreckage just isn't there, it must have been a missile or something. A surprising number of people I've talked with find this plausible. Someone from 911citizenswatch talked about these drills. And so this is claimed to fit into why NORAD did such a bad job on September 11. (there's plenty of silly websites about 9/11 Mystery images, as well.
On a totally different (and much more well-documented) tack, the London bombing has been tied to a strange Bush Administration leak about a captured Al Qaeda agent last fall, which may have led in part to the London bombing. Lat year, people alleged that during the 2004 campaign, the Bush Administration blew the cover of Naeem Noor Khan, a recently turned Al Qaeda double agent that the British and Pakistanis were using to smoke out more militants. That is, the law caught this guy, he was sending out more emails to militants in England, someone in Washington dropped his name to some papers, and then the British authorities had to swoop prematurely, to prevent the militants from getting away. This compromised the operation, and perhaps let people get away to attack subways later, as plans on Khan's computer indicated.
So, the wilder theory suggests that "they" did it, while the more well-documented story indicates that they merely screwed up a British investigation last year that might have caught the bombers, in order to win the White House.
These days, at least the Rove/Plame story has finally stuck at the top level of the news, and perhaps that should be the basic yardstick for measuring deception nowadays. Like it or not, something nasty happened with forged documents about uranium. Cryptome.org has the actual Niger documents, for yr viewin' pleasure. The Bush Administration, and Karl personally, went through a lot of hoops to propagate disinformation about Iraq and crush anyone like Wilson that tarnished their fantasy.
As Frank Rich put it this morning in "Follow the Uranium":
[Attacks on Wilson], too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.
And let's not forget that this whole thing happened because of a damned New York Times editorial. Rich's "We're Not in Watergate Anymore" is also interesting.
Ouch. When the Associated Press goes this way, you've lost that bit of spin you really need:
Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was among the sources for a Time magazine reporter's story about the identity of a CIA officer, the reporter said Sunday.
Until last week, the White House had insisted for nearly two years that vice presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove were not involved in the leaks of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity.
I found this really weird and interesting: "Vladislav Surkov's Secret Speech: How Russia Should Fight International Conspiracies," complete with allegations of CIA meddling in the recent Ukraine elections, etc. There's even a jab at James Woolsey for interfering. The site also carries a story about possible Soviet WMDs hidden in the US. The government of tiny, horribly poor Russian republic of Dagestan, adjacent to Chechnya, is on the verge of collapsing, and Islamic militants are causing persistent problems.
Eurasia Daily Monitor: LEAKED MEMO SHOWS KREMLIN FEARS COLLAPSE OF DAGESTAN
On July 8, Moskovsky komsomolets published a report leaked from the office of Dmitry Kozak, Russian President Vladimir Putin's Special Envoy to the Southern Federal District. The report, from Kozak to Putin, described Dagestan as rife with interethnic, religious, and social conflicts and on the brink of collapse. Specifically, "One should recognize that, taken together, the unsolved social, economic, and political problems are now reaching a critical level. Further ignoring the problems and attempts to drive them deep down by force could lead to an uncontrolled chain of events whose logical result will be open social, interethnic, and religious conflicts in Dagestan" (Moskovsky komsomolets, July 8). The authors of the report also warned that the rising influence of religious communities, especially at the local-government level, could result in the emergence of "Sharia enclaves" in the mountain districts of the republic. The report warned that an Islamic state could potentially materialize in the Dagestan mountains.
Iraq: Billmon curses the Flypaper theory of anti-terrorism how Bush's advisor, Townsend, still seems stuck on it. Krugman on the depressing White House detachment from reality. Sunni-Shiite violence and tensions intensify. "Insurgents active again on the streets of Falluja". Tales of an Iraq veteran. Another leaked British document indicates that the Iraq war is seen to radicalize British Muslims. "Shiites bring rigid piety to Iraq's south."
A strange story about ongoing conflict between privatized military firms/forces and the US military in Iraq. There are conflicting stories about whether the US wants to build permanent bases in Iraq -- either in the desert or urban enclaves -- as Stratfor reported last year, VS. recent reports that the British want to get the hell out.
Iraqi blogger Raed "in the Middle" Jarrar's brother has been arrested by the new Iraqi security forces or new Mukhabarat / Mokhabarat. "Fortunately, it's a nice governmental gang!"
If your child or sibling vanishes for two days then calls from the secret service jail in any other place on earth, that would be considered a disaster and a violation of human rights… In Iraq, however, it’s Happy News.
Because the other options include: To be tortured, executed, and thrown in garbage by SCIRI and their Badr brigades. To be held by the Iraqi police and left to choke to death in one of their cars. To be held by the US troops then disappear and be mistreated for months in one of their many prisons. To be kidnapped by one of the countless criminal gangs and cost your family some tens of millions of Iraqi Dinars and/or your life.
So now you can see why being held at the mukhabarat jail is such happy news!
Rovification: (defined as a vortex of scandal from which not even spin can escape)
See the Video: Cooper confirms Rove told him! Ouch! Cooper's tell all TIME story (excerpts). Howard Fineman with a surprising amount of candor in Newsweek. Via CrooksAndLiars.com, sweet site. Alex Cockburn bitterly compares coverage of the Rove story with the Franklin/AIPAC scandal, and a lot of nasty things to say about the CIA. Scooter Libby may have released Miller from confidentiality agreement?
Wilson pounces, calls for Rove resignation. Krugman points out that Rove was the guy who changed our political environment post-9/11, making it clear that "we're living in a country where there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth." In other words, we're in Team B country now.
it seems plenty clear that rightwing hawks band together to provide more threatening propaganda about enemies of the United States, in order to undermine other people in Washington's professional intelligence community. This has happened quite a few times, and the general moniker of "Team B" style thinking -- named after a 1976 group that produced dramatically inflated disinformation about the Soviet Union from the CIA's data -- has become associated with manipulating intelligence, to create public impressions the hawks need to support their policies. Wolfowitz was on Team B back in the 1970s, which is where he first started mucking about with the exciting political potential of WMD threat construction. (Andy Tweeten and Adam Zelmer introduced me to this interesting idea about how security discourse is manipulated. Threat construction arguments in debate are very helpful.)
As Rovegate goes down, Team B-style tricks seem to be popping up all over. The Yellowcake uranium forgeries may yet get tied to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which worked quite a bit like Team B to subvert America's intelligence agencies. Scooter Libby was the OSP's liason to the CIA, which means he might be involved with the whole thing, as Wilson has alleged more than once. I earlier linked to this interview with a former top CIA officer, Vincent Cannistaro, who quite directly talks about Ledeen, the Iraqi National Congress fabricating WMD intel, the whole bit.
Keep an eye on TPM, it's damn good.
Juan Cole is yet again saying he thinks that Michael Ledeen was involved with fabricating the Niger-Yellowcake documents. Daniel Schorr on NPR talking about how the real issue is how America was misled into the war, featuring Wilson. Raimondo maps it onto the conflict between neo-cons and the CIA, before the war started:
Seen against the backdrop of the fierce intra-bureaucratic war that broke out in the administration in the run-up to the Iraq war – with the CIA and the mainline intelligence and diplomatic communities pitted against civilian neoconservatives in the upper echelons of the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President – the outing of Plame and her colleagues amounts to an act of espionage committed out of a desire to exact revenge. The leakers meant to retaliate not just against Joe Wilson, through his wife, but against the "old guard" that was resisting the campaign to lie us into war. When the CIA wouldn't go along with the neocon program and "spice up" their analyses with Ahmed Chalabi's tall tales and the outright forgery of the Niger uranium documents, the War Party struck back at them with the sort of viciousness for which the neocons are rightly renowned.
And it goes on further into the links between Scooter Libby, John Hannah, John Bolton, AIPAC, Chalabi, the Yellowcake forgeries, etc. etc. etc. Raimondo's earlier piece about the unmitigated calls for post-London fascism from former Mossad director Ephraim Halevi is also quite interesting, as I noted earlier.
Older stories: "A Flood in Baath Country" about depressing conditions in Syria has been widely acclaimed in Lebanon. The filibuster deal has apparently harmed the Senate Republicans, causing fundraising setbacks--they are way behind the Democrats! It would seem the hard-right base is furious that Senators cut a deal, and ties have loosened between the leadership and the base. All the more pressure on Bush to appease them with some dingbat on the Supreme Court
Iran: Kissinger says don't discount military action if talks fail. (via CFR... bum bum bummm...)
Whatever: Guardian: Reporters find cocaine in EU parliament. World of Paparazzi: Photo Wars. They've got the best intel of all, it seems:
He opens a drawer, pulls out a few stacks of paper. Here, he says, are this week's scheduled movements of every famous passenger of a major limousine company in Los Angeles. He has an employee of the limo company on retainer, with bonuses "if there's results."
Here, too, are what Mr. Griffin describes as the passenger manifests of every coast-to-coast flight on American Airlines, the biggest carrier at Los Angeles International Airport. "I get the full printout," he says. "If they fly any coastal flight, I know. I can also find anybody in the world within 24 hours, I guarantee it. If they don't mask the tail number on a private plane, I'll find it." He says he has law-enforcement officers on his payroll, too, and can have a license plate checked in an hour on weekdays, 20 minutes on weekends.
I thought this set of photographs from the point of view of snipers was creepy but sort of cool.
It's going down in Israel: Fighting both Palestinian militants and hardcore Jewish protesters, the protest actions are starting up pretty much right now. It's coming: "Settlers to march on Gaza despite police ban". Keep tabs with right-wing sites Arutz Sheva (offering opinion from settlers), GAMLA, a for more on settler actions. Of course there is also the weird and disinformation-laden DEBKAfile.
Disturbing new law enforcement stuff: "Genesis of an American Gestapo," a somewhat ranting bit about the spooky new National Security Service, or as this writer dubbed it, the New SS. I don't feel like looking for new horrible news about the FBI-law enforcement shakeup, but it's damn interesting, and real important. The next COINTELPRO or whatever could spring out of this kind of stuff...
Tech: Wouldn't this keyboard be amazing? Programming on offshore boats = sweatshops at sea?
It's hard to know where the motives of defense people begin or end... Another memo leaked out from that sieve of a British government, which said that they are looking for a way to withdraw troops. We've got a little bit about Syria, as well.
BAGnewsNotes is usually interesting photo analysis, including this pic of an Iraqi soldier in some house, as well as photos of Bashar Assad and the memorably titled "Move Over Zarqawi: The New Iranian President And The 1979 Embassy Take-Over."
Brad at Bradblog interviews Joe Wilson.
I would recommend looking at Syria Comment, which is down at the moment but quite good. Josh Landis has a lot of interesting stuff, including a really good story translated from French press about Syria's history and political development. A huge feature on Syria & Assad by lead NY Times reporter James Bennet is really quite good.
Prof. Juan Cole talks about increased sectarian violence in Iraq, as well as the fact that apparently his site is being censored by some military computer administrators in Iraq itself--the soldiers are cut off. (via Dkos) As he says:
I have a lot of .mil readers, and know for a fact that the blog is valued by many intelligence professionals in DC, so it is a shame if it is not available at some bases.
Good stuff from Billmon at Whiskey Bar: The Devil's Flypaper. I didn't know that Bush's nasty new counterterror specialist, Fran Townsend, had quite likely pressured Abu Ghraib personnel to give detainees that special care. Evidently she's still upholding the flypaper theory. As Billmon put it,
"I don't know how you would even begin to de-program someone capable of believing, with fanatical certainty, two completely contradictory statements: i.e., that because there are terrorists in Iraq, they can't be in London blowing up the subways -- even though they're in London, blowing up the subways."
There's a good column by Dionne about this in WaPo:
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Fran Townsend, the president's homeland security adviser, said that the war in Iraq attracts terrorists "where we have a fighting military and a coalition that can take them on and not have the sort of civilian casualties that you saw in London."
Huh? If British troops fighting in Iraq did not stop the terrorists from striking London, then what is the logic for believing that American troops fighting in Iraq will stop terrorists from striking our country again? Intelligence reports -- and Townsend's own words -- suggest that Iraq has become a terrorist breeding ground since the American invasion. How, exactly, has that made us safer?
This is also a weirdly racist or at least dehumanizing argument: Townsend is stating that there aren't massive civilian casualties in Iraq? Can we actually be sure she believes Iraqis are real human beings?
This was a good article in The American Conservative about how the phenomenon of suicide terrorism is most closely linked to foreign military occupation -- or the perception of foreign military occupation.
Oh good, one of Bush's top intelligence advisors is lobbying to help China buy UNOCAL.
I feel like throwing in a true classic: Judith Miller's famous NY Times article about Saddam purchasing those damn aluminum tubes.
Arch-neocon Michael Ledeen is accusing a wide set of the British public, including the BBC, of sweeping, deeply rooted antisemitism... and who better to exemplify this than Ahmed Chalabi?!?
The final component of British blindness on the subject of the Middle East is one we are not supposed to talk about in good company: the Jews. Yet I don't know any country this side of the Levant in which there has been so much anti-Semitism, so many complaints that "Zionists," "Likudniks," "Jewish hawks," and — the single epithet that sums up all of the above — "neocons" had manipulated America and its poodle Blair into the ghastly blunder of Iraq. The BBC has devoted hours of radio and television to slanderous misrepresentations of places like the American Enterprise Institute, where I sit, and of such Jewish luminaries as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Paul Wolfowitz. Sometimes it seemed one was reading translations from the Saudi or Egyptian or Iranian press, so total was the hatred of the Jews.
This fit nicely with the desire of the British establishment to carry on their special relationship with some Arab leaders, and many British elites often seemed a micro-step away from saying that the world would be a better place if only Israel weren't there. The Middle East would be so much easier, you know. And when London was bombed, you can be sure — indeed you can read it — many of these people blamed Israel and the Jews, both those in the Middle East and those in New York and Washington. Indeed, within minutes of the attack, a story appeared according to which the Israelis had advance notice, and had instructed Finance Minister Netanyahu to stay put, instead of going to give a speech. The story was as false as the one according to which Israelis had stayed away from the World Trade Center on 9/11, but they both reflected a state of mind. An anti-Semitic mind.
All too many Brits (as some Americans, albeit far fewer) would prefer to devote their national energies to the elimination or "taming" of Israel, and, as they see it, the silencing of their own Jews, rather than fighting Islamic terrorism. Combined with the desire to keep Arab money in London and special access for British businessmen and diplomats and scholars in the Arab world, it explains why HMG gave sanctuary and indeed benevolent assistance to the jihadis in their HMG midst.
IRAQIS — THE NEW JEWS?
And so Israel was not on the prime minister's list [of damaged countries]. What about Iraq?
The Iraqis are viewed much the same way, and are at some risk of becoming the new Jews of the Middle East. In the enormous hate literature directed against the neocons, Ahmed Chalabi is part and parcel of the anti-Semites' hateful vision. No matter that he is a Shiite, and no matter that he was rudely dismissed by the Israeli government before Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was in cahoots with the Jewish cabal, and was therefore "one of them." And as Chalabi, so the rest of the lot. ..... When is the last time you read anything, anywhere (with all too few exceptions — like Arthur Chrenkoff's "good news" beat), celebrating these rare qualities of spirit? And this question goes hand in hand with its twin: When is the last time you read anything about the incredible performance of the State of Israel, similarly under siege and similarly stressed by the crisis that surrounds it?
[......]
This sickness is certainly not limited to Great Britain; we find it here as well, in such personages as Pat Buchanan and Juan Cole, along with their acolytes.
It is a bit depressing to hear Ledeen resort to tarring the BBC with the Nazi brush. Where does Macalester prof. Emily Rosenberg, for example, fit into his rubric of Jew haters? In a fine moment during the International Roundtable conference last year, she took him to task for his shady prescriptions of global Trotskyist-inspired revolution, the war and all the rest. Naturally Ledeen also calls for attacking Iran after the London bombings (via Prospect.org).
It's also a little weird to hear him claim that the AP story about Israel getting tipped off by Scotland Yard was basically the product of an antisemitic mind. It was just an AP story, not 21st Century Goebbels. The antisemitism gun is pretty much the first refuge of a scoundrel, the rhetorical fog deployed to cover for a handful of nasty bureaucrats in Washington - Christians, Jews, Muslims, Moonies and their newspapers. (note: Among Holocaust researchers it is accepted to spell "antisemitic" as such, or as "anti-semitic" -- "Semitic" doesn't need to be capitalized because the term was first developed by bigots anyway)
More about post-London hawks randomly calling for overthrowing Tehran without really explaining how, or why the hell it would even be feasible, helpful, good, etc...
Kos bans some people who have been posting raving conspiracy theories in the diaries, as well as those recommending said diaries. This seems like a decidedly hazardous step for DailyKos, as one of the people on the huge reaction thread put it:
Or maybe my definition of a conspiracy theory is different. Definitions are important, because a large portion of "acceptable" diaries on this site could be defined as conspiratorial in nature, by right wing ideologues or even average joe types. Check the recomended list, Congressman Conyers diary asks for a timeline of Bush Administration actions up to the war, specifically looking for evidence of fixed intelligence. The President lies and it ends up in the death of close to 2000 military personnel, thousands badly injured, and billions of tax payer dollars sunk into the sand and the pockets of corporations linked to administartion officials. Sound like a wacked out conspiracy theory?
But this response makes some damn good sense:
The point is (so far as I can tell) not to ban all discussion of conspiracies at all.
Markos believes in several conspiracies, at least.
The point is that if you are speculating about a conspiracy, or promoting others who do, you have an obligation to either:
a) cite some documented facts that lend credence to your assertions
or
b) recognize that you are engaging in rank speculation and that therefore
b-sub1) especially if it is inflammatory and not backed up by any real investigation -
b-sub2) and most especially if you are nasty to those who challenge you to back up your claims - b-sub3) people here will come down on you
True enough... but the question about the barrier between conspiracy and plain political speculation's a tough one... Eh whatever...
Lots of stuff going down in Israel: Haaretz editorializes that with the Gaza closure, "The evacuation has begun" in earnest.
People like Nadia Matar, Moshe Feiglin, Noam Livnat, Uri Ariel and Effi Eitam, all of whom recently moved to Gush Katif, did not come to contribute to the routine of daily life, but to stir up the residents and organize resistance activities. The prime minister correctly assessed the risks inherent in this development and did what was necessary.
The settlers cannot continue to play a double game and expect empathy. They cannot build a tent city for opponents of the disengagement near the Strip, organize a march of thousands of people to Gush Katif, incite soldiers to disobey orders, and bring thousands of new residents, whom the IDF will then have to evacuate, into Gaza and then expect the government to sit with folded hands. The army and the police must focus on the main task, not waste their strength on nuisances. The complaints of the opposition's leadership, including the comparison of the Strip's closure to the siege of Jerusalem, to ghettoes and to concentration camps, are hardly unexpected. These are exceptionally difficult days, with a high potential for violence and a constant fear of bloodshed.
I thought that this column by Akiva Eldar, "Impressions from the mid-Jerusalem roadblock," about Sharon's sudden, bizarre plan to build a huge wall through the middle of the city was really quite interesting. Also it shows Israeli polls showing wide support for peace negotiations and withdrawals from the territories. But it is an incredibly weird portrait of life in Jerusalem. This look by Meron Benvenisti how life will get messed up by a new Jerusalem fence, including the idea of a "soft transfer", strengthening the Jewish element of Jerusalem while dissolving its Arab element.
Analysis: Timing of Gaza closure was defined by Yesha leadership
The timing of the Gaza Strip's closure was determined by the chief of staff of the Yesha Council of settlements, Bentzi Lieberman, rather than the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Dan Halutz. The minute the council announced its plans for a mass march to Gush Katif, it was clear that the IDF would advance the closure of Gaza and block access to Gush Katif before the marchers reached it. The question of why the council scheduled the march for next week, rather than allowing Gush Katif residents to enjoy a normal life for as long as possible, as many residents had requested, has two answers. The first is that the march was scheduled to coincide with the Knesset debate on a bill to postpone the disengagement. The Yesha Council, unlike the militant right, believes that the battle will be won or lost in the Knesset, not in the streets. The council's hope is that a mass march will influence some MKs to vote for postponement. How? The council has no real answer, but it hopes that by creating an atmosphere of crisis, of a country on the verge of an explosion, some MKs will be persuaded that postponement is preferable.
More below the fold.....
"It is all Israel," Fragmentation of Palestinian agricultural land behind the West Bank fence by Amira Hass:
Listen to the soldier in the field. He says what his commanders were trained to cover up and embellish. Listen to the red-headed soldier, who prevented residents of Qafin from passing through the gate in the separation fence last month to get to their lands. These are 5,000 out of 8,200 dunams of agricultural land in a village in the northwestern West Bank. These are lands belonging to the families of these residents for several generations, and for so-called security reasons they were separated from the village - as has happened, and will happen, with hundreds of other Palestinian villages.
[.......]
But the red-headed soldier didn't discuss only the gate. He didn't hide the geopolitical worldview in whose name he is commanded to safeguard the gate's welfare. "There is no entry to Israel from here," he said. When he was told that the farmers don't want to enter Israel, but to walk 200 meters to get to their age-old lands, a few kilometers away from the Green Line, he responded: "To be politically correct, it is all Israel." How right the soldier is. From his standpoint, on the security road that links up with bypass roads for Jews only, which in turn link up with settlements and Israel proper, this is what he and his colleagues watch every day: The space called "Israel," from the river to the sea, containing all kinds of "crowded population concentrations" surrounded by fences and imprisoned behind locked gates.
[......]
The residents of Qafin have come to one conclusion: The goal is to bring about the neglect of their green agricultural lands until they become wilderness. Then Israel can rely on an old Ottoman law that allows neglected and abandoned land to become public property, in order to make the wilderness bloom. In Israel, as every soldier knows, the "public" is the same as the "Jews." And so will the mistake of 1948 be rectified. At that time, some 18,000 dunams from Qafin became part of Israel, became Jewish land. Now it will happen to an additional 5,000 dunams.
Noam Livnat is the brother of the Israeli education minister, and he was just arrested for violating a restraining order barring him from entering Gaza after a violent confrontation:
Noam Livnat, brother of Education Minister Limor Livnat, was arrested yesterday in the Gaza settlement of Shirat Hayam, following a violent confrontation between his supporters and police. Livnat, a resident of Yitzhar in the West Bank, had violated a restraining order barring him from entering Gaza. Livnat is a leader of the Defensive Shield and Jewish Heart movements, which encourage soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlements. Over the past two years, the organizations have collected more than 20,000 signatures from soldiers saying they would refuse such orders.
[......]
After his arrest yesterday, Livnat said, "The government is nervous because of the success of the Jewish Heart campaign to spread the word about refusal of orders. The arrest is an attempt to shut us up, but it won't help, and on the day of reckoning thousands will refuse orders."
Haaretz editorializes that they wish that the Israeli government won't knock down the houses in the settlements they are going to abandon in just over 30 days. "IDF chief denies link between London attack and Mike's Place [Tel Aviv] bombing". After this bombing, "Israel may renew policy of assassinations."
A leftist MK comments about how the settler movement has succeeded in blurring the Green Line in the perceptions of Israelis:
Despite the settlement project's failure to establish the territories and the settlements as a legitimate part of the State of Israel, it appears it did succeed in one thing: With the encouragement or tacit agreement of all the governments, it blurred the Green Line (pre-Six-Day War border) - which is, in fact, the one and only clear border that can be drawn, and the only border on the basis of which it is possible to arrive at an agreement that will be acceptable to the two sides and also win international recognition.
Even now it is clear that at least in certain areas of the West Bank - Ma'aleh Adumim, the neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc - the Green Line will not go back to being an agreed-upon border. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to evacuate these areas, and Israel will have to give other territories in exchange for them. In the rest of the areas of the West Bank, the only chance for a peace agreement is based on the distinction in the consciousness of the Israeli and Palestinian publics between sovereign and legitimate Israeli territory and occupied territory, the status of which has yet to be determined. It is possible only to imagine what would happen to this mental distinction between Israel and the territories if settlements had not been erected in them. Returning from these imaginings to the reality reveals a surprising and worrisome success on the part of the settlement project - undermining the Israeli public's perception of the Green Line as an agreed-upon peace border between Israel and its Palestinian neighbor. It is no accident that at the behest of all of the education ministers, the Green Line vanished from the maps that are displayed in Israeli schools.
[........]
We are now at a historic crossroads. Never before has a single Jewish settlement been evacuated. The disengagement plan is the first test of the dismantling of imposed settlements that are stuck like a bone in the throat in the midst of a foreign Palestinian territory. Therefore, the disengagement must be carried out to the letter, completely and at the designated time, before a new generation arises that did not know 1967, and before our children and our grandchildren are condemned to live by the sword forever, without even understanding why.
Despite all the nasty business about how criticism of Israel supposedly equates to antisemitism, as Mr Ledeen has resorted to lately, I think what's really antisemitic is how the American media never bothers to air the opinions of the Israeli left at all -- they are virtually invisible here. Yoel Marcus, unfortunately, also labels Blair an antisemite:
When Tony Blair cites the conflict in the Middle East ("the Israeli occupation," of course) as one of the three reasons for Islamic terror, he is no different from your common anti-Semite.
Other than that its an interesting column. Adjustments have to be constructed with the Egyptians. It seems that Egyptian border police will guard the Gaza-Egypt border after the withdrawal, instead of the regular Egyptian police. An interesting Anti-Defamation League poll about Israel, conducted in the US and Europe, shows that
71 percent of those polled expressed support for the disengagement plan, 52 percent believed Israel was working harder for peace than the Palestinians, and 43 percent said they sympathized with Israel.
"It is apparent from the survey that Israel's bold initiatives to bring security and peace to its people resonate with the American people," said Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, at a Jerusalem press conference.
[.....]
Support for Palestinians among Americans also increased: 68 percent said they thought Palestinians were serious about peace negotiations, up from 62 percent in the previous survey.
[.....]
Foxman said yesterday that "light years" separate European and American public opinion in relation to Israel. Foxman estimated that if more terror attacks occur in Europe, the tendency to blame Israel indirectly for them will increase.
Among the 500 respondents in the 12 major states of the European Union, including Hungary and Poland, only 13 percent sympathized with the State of Israel, compared to 25 percent who sympathized with the Palestinians. Only 19 percent of the respondents said they saw Ariel Sharon as a positive figure, compared to 39 percent who saw him as a negative figure. In 2004, 8 percent saw him in a positive light, compared to 39 percent who viewed him negatively.
Stay tuned here for one hell of a scandal.... Damn skippy, things are blowing up all over the place.
The Star Tribune just put up a pretty scathing editorial about Rove, Wilson and the case for war, for the July 14 newspaper, "Karl Rove/Real issue is the case for war". What do you know, they cut right to the chase:
The real issue, more serious and less glitzy than whether Bush will stand by his political adviser, is the extraordinary efforts the Bush administration made to protect a case for war in Iraq from all contradictory evidence -- in effect, as the British spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove put it, to "fix" the facts and intelligence so they would support a decision already made.
[.......]
In January 2003, however, President Bush asserted an Iraq-Africa uranium connection in his State of the Union message. Subsequently, it turned out that Bush was indeed referring to Niger. The Niger-Iraq connection became one of the pillars in Bush's case for war with Iraq.
After the start of the war, Wilson wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for the New York Times laying out the facts of his trip and saying he had "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
Five days later, Rove told Time reporter Matt Cooper he should "not get too far out on Wilson." His trip to Niger, Rove said, wasn't approved by Cheney or CIA Director George Tenet. Cooper wrote to his boss, "It was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."
[.....]
This is a classic Rove technique: undercut a critic by planting the notion that he was off to Africa on a lark arranged by his wife. Rove's history as a rough political player is well-documented. But this wasn't about a political campaign; this was about a serious question of national security and the justification for a difficult war.
[......]
It is instructive to remember that the investigation into who revealed Plame's identity was initiated by Tenet, not by administration critics. Remember also that Wilson was correct; ultimately the White House had to retract Bush's State of the Union statement on the Niger connection.
In addition to discrediting critics of the Niger connection, the Bush administration, through the actions of John Bolton -- now nominee to be U.N. ambassador -- sought to intimidate intelligence analysts who objected to conclusions about Iraq's WMD, and to get a U.N. chemical weapons official fired so he wouldn't be able to send inspectors back to Iraq, where they might disprove more of the case for war.
In the scheme of things, whether Rove revealed Plame's identity, deliberately or not, matters less than actions by Rove, Bolton, Cheney and others to phony up a case for war that has gone badly, has cost thousands of lives plus hundreds of billions of dollars, and has, a majority of Americans now believe, left the United States less safe from terrorism rather than more.
The Republican communications team shifts into high gear trying to lay out a multi-pronged defense for Karl Rove, now that he's been outed for telling Matt Cooper of TIME that Plame worked at the CIA. It looks rather half-cocked, as Republican partisans try hard to spin while claiming they don't want to impede the investigation. President Bush and Scott McClellan have declined to answer questions about the matter. The RNC and its chairman Ken Mehlman are playing the attack dog role while the White House waits and hopes the story will blow over. As it very well could when Rehnquist suddenly turns into a pile of dust...
I started by reading a bizarre Wall Street Journal editorial today about how Rove should be rewarded for his valiant efforts against CIA nepotism -- or something like that. It all made more sense when I found out that this was a quite precise regurgitation of RNC talking points, with many WSJ points still in the same order. Happily, RawStory.com managed to get ahold of the RNC's actual talking points memo against Wilson. Mehlman said that Rove was merely "discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise." A-haaa... It is so staggeringly unethical that some Republicans are complementing each other for supporting outing Plame. How weird. Maybe Rove should really have been more careful. So many of his past statements are now known to be lies.
A fairly good general summary of the mess. The Great Grilling of McClellan been going on for days now. On Monday, I spent several hours watching network news TV, for the first time in a few weeks. It was quite satisfying to see the normally emasculated White House press corps pounce on hapless, clumsy McClellan (QT video awesome!) about his past statements defending Rove. Nowadays he's not even willing to still uphold those statements. It would be funny, if this whole clusterfuck hadn't damaged America's ability to track weapons of mass destruction (let's not forget about the fallout for Plame's former fake CIA company).
ABC's quasi-insider memo The Note is happily framing the matter as Washington journalists acting like a pack of dogs. The Daily Show returns to skewer FOX News' fucking maniacal John Gibson (QT video) and the rest of the media reaction. Gibson is even more scary today (QT video). "Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody and nobody else had the cojones to do it. I'm glad Rove did, if he did do it, and he still says he didn't." OMG it's crazy....
A transcript of TIME reporter Matt Cooper's public remarks after swallowing hard and going to the Fitzgerald grand jury today. Oddly enough, it seems possible that Cooper only secured that release from his non-disclosure agreement because Rove's blustering lawyer, Robert Luskin, fucked up. There is also some amusing background on Luskin (via TPM). Luskin is himself a somewhat shady operator, who once represented Stephen A. Saccoccia, a guy accused of laundering hundreds of millions in drug money through precious metal companies. He paid Luskin handsomely... with gold bars! (Luskin discussion thread)
The mess has even reached back to Minnesota, where Norm Coleman is yet again the cheesy Capitol hatchet man (as assigned), fresh off his Kofi-bashing tour-de-force. Norm has Karl himself to thank for the Senate seat, as Karl halted Pawlenty's quest to run against Wellstone.
There's plenty of bamboozlement and disinformation getting peddled. I don't really know how to get ahead of this story, except to push it back towards its most fundamental context--the mendacious attitude at the White House towards anyone in government who threatened the Administration's case for invading Iraq, as the Strib points out. The yellowcake uranium claims were a fairly minor pillar of their case, but what's interesting is that it was based on forged documents, apparently concocted by a former member of Italian intelligence (SISMI). As Josh Marshall points out, these documents seemed to take a weird path through the executive branch, different than most of the fraudulent parts of their case for war.
While most of the fabricated Iraq WMD/terrorism disinformation came out of the Pentagon (Office of Special Plans, Bill Luti, people under Douglas Feith, etc.), it seems that the Niger documents kept getting put back on the table and inserted into speeches by people in the State Department, which was hardly the neo-con's center of operations. But who in State would have known about Valerie Plame working on CIA WMD counter-proliferation? Then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton.
Indeed, the ever-watchful Steve Clemons at TheWashingtonNote has an update on possible links between Rove, Bolton and the Yellowcake case, and he has pushed this angle before. Former CIA officer Ray McGovern asserts a tie between Bolton and the Yellowcake matter, and of course I had a post about how Rep. Henry Waxman claimed that Bolton was involved with generating Yellowcake documents at State (Waxman's PDF letter). And Bolton also apparently instructed State personnel to lie to Congress about his role in the Niger uranium case. His assistants, John Hannah and David "Clean Break" Wurmser, who were also working for Cheney at the time, also were probably related. Scooter Libby and Hannah believed for years that the CIA was being unfair to Chalabi, so they were certainly not Agency lovers.
It seems that Hannah and Bolton likely helped to shepherd along these forged yellowcake documents through the process, stuffing them into Bush's speeches, and they could have known all along that they were forgeries. At various points, the yellowcake documents were debunked by State Department analysts, and Bolton would have had to throw away the analysts' objections and soldier forth. Hell, Bolton could have forged them himself.
And so when Wilson wrote his famous op-ed in the Times, Rove, Bolton and the rest of the inner circle quite likely perceived it as a political swipe at them coming from the rational CIA/State analysts, which explains why their counterattack took the improbable form of this famous leak, intended to make the CIA look bad. Otherwise, Rove probably saw it would be politically critical to scare the rest of the analysts and bureaucrats shitless about what would happen to them and their families if they stood up to the lies and disinformation winding through Washington. In my view, intimidating potential whistleblowers from stepping forward about war lies was the primary purpose of Karl Rove's attack on Wilson, Plame and the CIA. As Juan Cole wrote about the Plame affair last year:
We now know that the Niger story involved the forgery of documents by a man with ties to Italian military intelligence, and that, moreover, Italian military intelligence has ties to Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode and Lawrence Franklin, pro-Likud neoconservatives, two of whom had high-level positions in the Pentagon and all three of whom were tightly networked with the American Enterprise Institute. Franklin (a neoconservative Catholic) is being investigated for spying on the U.S. for Israel. The nexus of Italian military intelligence, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the neoconservatives in the Pentagon suggests a network of conspiracy aimed at dragging the U.S. into wars against Iraq and Iran.
[.......]
The neoconservatives around Dick Cheney, including Scooter Libby and John Hannah, were highly committed to the Niger uranium story as a casus belli against Iraq, and were furious when Wilson revealed that he had shown it false in spring of 2002. They were convinced that the CIA was behind this strike at their credibility, and that Valerie Plame had been the one who managed to get Wilson sent. That is, in their paranoid world, Wilson's honest reportage of the facts was a CIA plot against the Iraq War and perhaps against the neoconservatives around Cheney and in the Pentagon.
It has been being leaked for many months now that the FBI believes the leak came from persons in Cheney's circle, possibly John Hannah and/or Scooter Libby.
Juan Cole has even more nasty things to say about Karl right now.
Most people I've talked to seem convinced that Karl will get off somehow. Indeed, the spin is thick and heavy on that point.
The first key Republican argument is that Karl didn't use Valerie Plame's actual name when conversing with reporters. This is totally irrelevant, since anyone could have found the ambassador's wife's name on Google, as MediaMatters points out. David Corn debunks this stuff.
Second argument is that Karl didn't share anything classified. This could very well become the focus of the legal debate, but politically it really isn't that helpful for them. This is BS: it's not legal to leak a CIA agent's name just so that a reporter doesn't have the wrong idea. Corn again. Larry Johnson, a guy who went with Plame through CIA training, says that they were all "covert."
Another element in the Republican defense plan is that some intelligence committee report showed that the intelligence about Niger was still ambiguous. Consider Wilson's own rebuttal to that.
Yet another element is a claim that Wilson was already caught lying about why he was sent to Africa. Mehlman says that Wilson had earlier lied that Cheney had sent him there. But the news clip that Mehlman references actually says the exact opposite, according to TPM.
There's a great many Washington liberals finally pouncing on the Plame leak story. Some say that Karl may be guilty of conspiracy because he was conspiring to make it difficult for Plame to do her job. Maybe it made Bush a lame duck, although I think that's a little premature. On TPMCafe, Marshall Wittmann, a Heritage/McCain/Christian Coalition/DLC conservative, points out that Karl is too damn important for the President to cut him loose. (Yes you can go from McCain to the DLC. That's why they suck) Naturally tons of people on the HuffyPost. Buzzflash has plenty of stories. Josh Marshall has been doing a hell of a job this week. Murray Waas exclusive: "Novak co-operated with prosecutors" and totally spilled the beans.
Incredible. Whatever part of my body processes irony is totally burned out....
Technorati Tags: cia
So much for the flypaper theory. Let's think about why the hell it was ever taken seriously in the first place.
Ok then, I am going off for the weekend real soon. So here is a bunch of links yall should check out.
Israel and Palestine: The Pullout is a real big deal, but Sharon is also trying to lock in the West Bank settlements as far as possible. There are 38 days until the pullout. I am suspicious that the recent money handed to the Palestinians may be used to build fences, checkpoints and shit in the West Bank on the premise that it "improves their quality of life" by allowing more streamlined processing around the vast chunks of stolen land. Haaretz has a furious editorial about detatching Jewish religious fundamentalism from secular Israeli politics. It is spooky:
While Gush Katif residents are trying to postpone the Gaza Strip's closure to visitors until the last possible moment, the Yesha Council of settlements has its own agenda, no longer focused on thwarting the disengagement, but on seizing the moment to arouse the entire settler camp.
It is doubtful that anyone in the settler leadership thinks protest can prevent the evacuation of Gush Katif. After all, they know Ariel Sharon better than anyone, and they know that the more spokes put in his wheels, the more determined he becomes. The settler leadership's political goal is to exploit the fire that has already been started in the youth, the yeshivas, the girls' schools, the road blockings, the prisons, the army and even the ultra-Orthodox camp to ignite a huge conflagration to prevent further evacuations. This blaze is also liable to destroy any remaining empathy that the Israeli public has for the settlers' concerns.
Given that we are dealing with brainwashed youngsters, who from their infancy have been spoon-fed the belief that it is forbidden to give up any scrap of land, grew up on memories of Sebastia and learned from their parents that breaking the law always pays, any attempt to direct and moderate the protest is doomed to failure.
[......]
The mass march to Gush Katif, like the scale of refusal by religious soldiers, will determine not only the future of the hesder yeshivas, but primarily whether religious Zionism in its current incarnation is not a Trojan horse that has infiltrated Zionism in order to destroy it from within.
The hardcore settlers and their supporters are going to have a mass march towards Gush Katif in Gaza pretty soon, and will attempt to overwhelm the Israeli military. It is interesting that the whole area is so small, that such tactics are viable.
Right-wing protesters set up new Gush Katif stronghold
Right-wing protesters have begun establishing a new stronghold in the settlement of Shirat Hayam, bringing in large amounts of equipment over the past few days and carrying on construction work, in contravention of the order issued last week by GOC Southern Command Dan Harel.
Far-right activist Moshe Feiglin, head of the Jewish Leadership faction in the Likud Party, moved there yesterday.
Israel denies the press reports about their getting intelligence (or providing it) to the British government. However we should point out the key sentence:
"After the first explosion, our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio.
We need to know for certain when the British actually determined they were experiencing a terror attack -- because it apparently wasn't after the first explosion. This timeline the thing that a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theorists dwell on, and if we're to parse out this whole crazy theory -- again, based on an AP story and a Stratfor report -- the timeline matter.
IDF gives Amuna outpost 48 hours to evacuate 9 homes (built illegally on Palestinian land). Sharon's London statement and more on the denials. Radical stories from Right wing: More soldiers say "I cannot expel Jews". Israel wants US Aid for Pullout Plan. New border crossing system. West Bank barrier construction accelerated.
Iraq: Now it's being claimed that the Iraq insurgency may be directly tied to the bombings, besides a whole swath of people that are just quite happy about it because the British illegally invaded their country and helps continue blowing it up.
It's too bad though--if the American military leadership had been forced to take more cues from the Brits, it surely wouldn't have gotten so bad in Iraq. For example, the British initially accepted -- as the Americans finally came to accept -- the Shiite sheiks in southern cities that threw the Baath off and took relatively calm control of their areas immediately.
So it's all gone to hell. I usually count on Juan Cole to offer finer-grained details about the disaster. His line these days, "sometimes you are just screwed." In this Salon article, he remarks on the message the bombers posted, "the time of revenge has come".
Minnesota: /bin/shutdown --stategovernment now
It pisses me off. I also feel somewhat embarrassed because I helped put together the Politics in Minnesota index for a Legislature, that for whatever else, caused the state's first shutdown. BLAH. Why do they think that evaporating the government is useful? <That zap sound you're hearing is my neurons killing themselves in despair.>
Damn Judy Miller: Why the hell does she have to be the saint of journalism, after putting out all of Chalabi's WMD disinformation for the whole damn country to swallow? The WaPo says its a bad case for the fight. Although their editorials are usually ridiculous these days. Some say she should go to jail.. No one in White House press corps questions Rove.
Misc: ok we;re shifting to Linkdump:
Scarborough is crazy. Durrr. FOX's bombing reaction is fucking scary. FUcking SCARY. Again SCARY. Do conservatives believe in revolution? Yes it was practically an attack on London Muslims... "It's Up to the Anti-War Movement to Restrain the Thirst for More Blind Revenge". Fisk: "Bush was right, but too late"
Info Clearing House is good. Watch the Antiwar blog.
For some fun, NewsBreakers awesome!
Well I am sorry, that is all the links I have time for. MUST GO NOW. Damn... as always time's a bitch.......... Have a good weekend all.
To know the ending would be pretending...
I am tired of hearing about how the Israeli government is doing this that or the other thing, and the strange press reports about how Israelis in London got tipped off by Scotland Yard just minutes before the bombing piss me off because I don't want to ponder another bizarre conspiracy-lke situation. And yet here it is...
It's a strange time in Israel right now, with the Gaza disengagement only 30 days away. The settlers are doing all sorts of crazy shit there, blocking roads, fighting with Israeli soldiers, etc.
It's pretty damn hazardous to be a pro-withdrawal Israeli leader, as Sharon seems to be for the moment. Last time around, radical religious nationalists of the right wing wanted to murder Prime Minister Rabin, applied a talmudic theological concept called 'Din Rodef', a pronouncement that murder is acceptable for someone who threatens Jewish lives. Then a student, Yigal Amir, partly educated in West Bank settlements, killed Rabin.
Israeli politicians are maneuvering between the settlers and the rest of Israeli society, and in my view one of the shadiest operators is current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hardcore hawk who has made many declarations about the importance of preserving West Bank settlements. Consider this pre-bombing editorial by an Israeli rightwinger about the importance of finding a secular leader to protect the settlement movement. He names Netanyahu as a leading, but tainted, contender for that spot.
So it is quite annoying that Netanyahu happened to be practically on top of one of the bombings in London, and according to an early Associated Press report, his security team was warned minutes before the bombing occurred, as I posted yesterday.
Later press reports altered this account, and now the British and the Israelis Totally Deny everything. Not surprisingly, various people are taking this weird story and running with it. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com is asking "What did Bibi know - and when did he know it?" with some antiwar blog entries about how the timeline of Israeli denials doesn't make any sense (because now the Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is claiming they were warned after the first explosion, yet the Brits didn't detect it was actually a terrorist attack until around the third explosion) , and the right-wing blogosphere helping to spin the story towards oblivion. (including Powerline. Fuck those guys.)
In any case, I'm not going to level accusations. It's all quite weird and who knows what really happened. However, the private intelligence service Stratfor posted a very odd report about the London bombings, which someone put onto the Internet:
July 7, 2005
Israel Warned United Kingdom About Possible Attacks
Summary
There has been massive confusion over a denial made by the Israelis that the Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks “minutes before” the first bomb went off July 7. Israel warned London of the attacks a “couple of days ago,” but British authorities failed to respond accordingly to deter the attacks, according to an unconfirmed rumor circulating in intelligence circles. While Israel is keeping quiet for the time-being, British Prime Minister Tony Blair soon will be facing the heat for his failure to take action.
Analysis
The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7.
Several hours later, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom officially denied reports that Scotland Yard passed any information to Israel regarding the bombings, and British police denied they had any advanced warning of the attacks. The British authorities similarly denied that any information exchange had occurred.
Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned “minutes before” the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks “a couple of days” previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.
The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack.
Also, Arutz Sheva, an extremely right wing Israeli news source affiliated with the settler movement and Arutz 7, a pirate settler radio station, posted this strange story this morning:
Report: Israel Was Warned Ahead of First Blast
10:43 Jul 08, '05 / 1 Tammuz 5765
(IsraelNN.com) Army Radio quoting unconfirmed reliable sources reported a short time ago that Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred.
The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit.
At present, train and bus service in London have been suspended following the series of attacks. No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility at this time.
Israeli officials stress the advanced Scotland Yard warning does not in any way indicate Israel was the target in the series of apparent terror attacks.
In typical style, Raimondo threw into his "When did Bibi Know" story a link to this incredibly strange FOX News story from 2001 about an Israeli espionage operation running across the United States. I'd never seen the actual FOX video until now. It has since been deleted from Fox's website.
At least the G8 is still going to hand out some aid. Huzzah.
Why not throw in some links to various reactions. Disturbingly, Fox commentators agreed that this attack was a good thing for the West. An oddball site Propaganda Matrix goes further with the Israel angle and posts a claim from the ever weirder Prison Planet site that as they say: "Cover-up in progress." The far saner Juan Cole has more to say. George Galloway said that this is the price for invading Iraq. A Dude on TomPaine.com. Tariq Ali reacted.
Last thing, I strongly recommend looking at what Efraim Halevi, the former director of the Mossad and now the head of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at Hebrew University, wrote about how after the bombings, a very generalized "we" have to escalate the anti-Islam war:
Ex-Mossad Chief Calls For World War After London Attack
Rules of conflict for a world war
By Efraim Halevi
07/07/05 "The Jerusalem Post"
......There will be supreme tests of leadership in this unique situation and people will have to trust the wisdom and good judgment of those chosen to govern them. The executives must be empowered to act resolutely and to take every measure necessary to protect the citizens of their country and to carry the combat into whatever territory the perpetrators and their temporal and spiritual leaders are inhabiting.
The rules of combat must be rapidly adjusted to cater to the necessities of this new and unprecedented situation, and international law must be rewritten in such a way as to permit civilization to defend itself. Anything short of this invites disaster and must not be allowed to happen.
So, you know, another ranting Israeli hawk. Big deal...
This post is a little more hodgepodgy than I intended, but I want to close by noting that I don't really support believing these accusations and innuendoes about the attacks yesterday. As the wise big guy in the film Control Room sarcastically put it, "Everything that happens in the middle east is an Israeli conspiracy, a water pipe in Damascus breaks, it's an Israeli conspiracy." I'm paraphrasing. There are some strange threads to this story, and I certainly think that Stratfor is a quite credible source. I've got no ultimate conclusions on the matter, just questions.
Yet another thing to roll my eyes about...
I'm going up north for the weekend so there might not be any more posts. I am also working on a new Hongpong.com version, and hey, you can check out how it's getting put together @ wp.hongpong.com. Go WordPress!
It reminds me of when I went to London, only a few days after the Madrid bombings. At the time, the whole system was on a terror alert, as they feared a reprisal. However, I walked right past heavily armed police onto the Tube, and it wasn't as if they were patting everyone down. "Al-Qaeda shadow looms over London." This was very similar to the Madrid attacks:
"Like the attacks on the Spanish capital, the targets in London were key transportation nodes: underground stations which intersect with main railway stations, feeding through hundreds of thousands of passengers an hour during peak time," says Dr Eyal.
"And, like in Madrid, the purpose was to kill as many people as possible, by striking at different targets at more or less the same time."
The London stock market plunged after the attacks but the FTSE 100 index came mostly back up. US stock markets aren't hosed. And oil is at a record high but for some reason eased off after this. I wonder if the Plunge Protection Team is rolling out? (London's Evening Standard on the PPT)
The Guardian has a news blog running with updates (General summary). The photo here came from flickr.com. There is a large collection of pictures tagged "London Bomb Blasts" that has a lot of original pictures. (BBC also has pictures and a map of the bombed lines)
Wikipedia now has a picture collection as well as large set of emerging information. Wikinews covers "Four bombs rock London" with many news links, including the surprising news that Netanyahu of all people had some kind of advance warning from the Brits.
The Israelis were tipped off minutes before the explosions?! WTF?
Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 7:14 AM ET
JERUSALEM - British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.
Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.
Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.
Reporter Chris Allbritton put a translation on his site back-to-iraq.com, of a statement posted on an al-Qaeda linked website, www.qal3ati.com. The site seems to be gone for now, but this was the post:
Announcement on London's Operation 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe
In the name of God the most merciful...
Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders' Zionist British government.
As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.
And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.
We have warned the brutish governments and British nation many times.
And here we are, we have done what we have promised. We have done a military operation after heavy work and planning, which the mujahideen have done, and it has taken a long time to ensure the success of this operation.
And we still warn the government of Denmark and Italy, all the crusader governments, that they will have the same punishment if they do not pull their forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
So beware.
Thursday 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of al Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe.
BTW Allbritton is releasing podcasts of his journalism over in Iraq. Nice.
Speaking of Afghanistan, an interesting BBC tale about American troops battling near the Pakistan border. As their Afghan ally put it, are mostly Arabs, Waziris from Pakistan and Chechens. Also, the Iranians are going to train Iraqi troops. What could go wrong?! "Will the US be asked to leave key military bases?" in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan & Uzbekistan?
In the evening of the aftermath, Financial Times analysts have published a harsh rebuke to the United States and its Global War on Terror:
Bush has to review strategy, say US experts
By Guy Dinmore and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: July 7 2005 18:16 | Last updated: July 7 2005 18:16
A constant theme of the Bush administration is that America and the world are safer because of the US invasion of Iraq and its anti-terror strategy.
That argument prevailed during the US presidential election campaign last year, despite even official US evidence to the contrary, but may have been finally buried by Thursday’s bombings in London.
Experts in Washington said following the blasts that it was time for the Bush administration to re-evaluate its strategy. Confronted by opinion polls showing his falling popularity and waning support for the war in Iraq, Mr Bush stuck to his guns in a speech to the military last week that characteristically showed no hint of change.
“There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home,” said Mr Bush in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Last September, at the peak of his re-election campaign, Mr Bush told the Republican national convention: “We are staying on the offensive striking terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. Our strategy is succeeding. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.”
John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former deputy secretary of defence, said: “Clearly [the world] is not safer. I think this highlights the complexity of the problem.
“We must defend a vast infrastructure constantly while extremists get to pick the time and place with very limited tools. Obviously we must try to intercept the terrorists. But we must also address the broader socio-political context. We can’t solve this with a relatively limited dimensional model of counterforce. Being mighty is one thing. Being effective is another. This is a much more complex problem.”
Classified studies by the CIA and State Department leaked to the media last month concluded that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as the prime training ground for foreign terrorists who could travel across the world spreading destruction. The Bush administration has struggled even to work out whether the world is a safer place or not.
A year ago, the State Department had to withdraw a report by the Terrorist Threat Integration Centre that claimed terror attacks in 2003 had declined sharply. The revised report more than doubled the numbers of attacks and deaths.
We have to keep on going, doing whatever the hell we are doing...
Oh my, the Karl Rove Google News search looks pretty goddamn bad today!
I think I should just copy and paste the whole damn thing. It may be ugly and run all over the place, but that's exactly how it ought to be.
Maybe this summer will work out, after all.
My bitterness towards how this man apparently damaged the CIA's weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation programs can't be expressed.
Over a year ago I quoted an AP story suggesting Scooter Libby, or possibly Karl Rove, were named by Joe Wilson as prime suspects in the case, in his book. And of course there was Wilson's famous quote in 2003: ""At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."
Let's Roll, Joe, things are in motion...
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Editor & Publisher - Jul 2, 2005
... Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two sources have confirmed that the name is--top White House mastermind Karl Rove. ...
Report: 'Open season' on US journalists Science Daily (press release)
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In Plain Sight: Why the Betrayal of Our National Security by the ...
uruknet.info, Italy - 2 hours ago
... who would expose that the White House lied America into war, the White House -- in an action that could have only been authorized by Karl Rove, perhaps with a ...
