Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Yeah, I can't bring myself to write any more about the whole arrest incident. So I won't.
Start with Machiavelli for the Twenty-First Century from New Left Review. I liked this.
It is true that Bush sounds like LBJ in 1967 with staying the course. Tom DeLay got indicted, what fun. They are screaming partisanship but the Democratic Texas prosecutor has hit a lot of Democrats in the past.
In Ohio they are trying to un-gerrymander the legislative districts. Good luck folks.
Robert George, a self described "Catholic, West Indian black Republican" asks himself "Why Am I (Still) A Republican?" Indeed. There is a good deal of gloating on the left-blogosphere these days, as conservatives seem to split in all directions and run for cover. Stygius and Laura Rozen note that such luminaries as Andy Sullivan, Dan Drezner and Robert "the ghoul" Novak are running for cover.
I might have the sniffles. I wonder if it is H5N1 KILLER FLU. Which is spreading rapidly.
Arianna is saying what I said a while ago, that John Bolton is quite likely connected to the Valerie Plame CIA case. (antiwar.com was on it a while ago as Raimondo quickly puts on the comments). For more old bits, consider "They Knew" the intel was spoofed in In These Times, Aug 2004. Oh by the way, HongPong.com has the top Google ranking for "bolton fake intelligence," for the excellent post: "More stories of the fake intelligence and John 'the Moustache' Bolton". Hey, not bad!
The US is really leaving Uzbekistan. I really enjoyed this lengthy New Left Review profile about the history and situation of Chechnya. It very astutely points out that no legitimate Chechen leader has ever agreed with the Russians to be part of Russia or the USSR. Also the article adds that the FSB and Putin were widely suspected of orchestrating the 1999 apartment bombings subsequently blamed on Chechen rebels - terror99.ru is a sweet Russian site elaborating on some "conspiracy theories" about why a beam of shining light like Putin would ever dare do such a thing as bomb some buildings to freak out the Russian public.
Check out Arms Control Wonk. It's just cool. They have good info about North Korea among other things.
Oddly, Arlen Specter accused the Pentagon of blocking an investigation in the pre-9/11 "Able Danger" Pentagon intelligence project that people are now saying somehow identified Mohammed Atta, and other weird stuff. NY Times on it as well as CNN. I will spare you the billions of weird theories that could spring from this. Sorry - use your imagination.
The NY Times Company is cutting out 500 jobs.
An American diplomat characterized the depth of Shiite fundamentalist organizations taking solid control of southern Iraq as "our dirty little secret." If you are looking for a more realistic summary of Islamic militant movements and "the far enemy" check out this review of The Far Enemy on the Agonist. Some are arguing that Iran is not a global threat. Try "Give Iranian Nukes a Chance" by Slavoj Zizek (Aug. 2005), a lot of stuff about how the state projects its threat perceptions onto foreigners, justifying ongoing 'security measures' that are in fact the real threats to Democracy & Freedom. I think the truth lies in between, but it certainly is true that MAD logic may get the Iranians peace in the end - or a large glass parking lot. I hope for peace, and I am not a paranoid racist who thinks that Iranian civilization is totally suicidal and irrational.
Slavoj Zizek also wrote this bit about how the WMDs were MacGuffins in the narrative. Old but funny.
The Afghan heroin kingpins / warlords did quite well in the elections. Juan Cole noted that the British agents captured in Basra were apparently active in trying to intercept arms coming into Iraq from Iran. Basra is wack these days (FT adds to this, and Raimondo remarks that we're on the war road to Damascus and Tehran via Basra). Cole adds:
Among the more powerful Iranian arms merchants is Manucher Ghorbanifar, this one with friends in high places in Washington, who is trying to pull the United States into a war against Iran. War is good for arms merchants.
There is also some info about how much be-Baathification has really happened.
Check out this new film, Occupation Dreamland, about how some US troops handle their situation in Fallujah. There are sweet trailers. It looks amazing. Also check out this story about Turkey and its social conflicts.
Some commentary about Katrina's economic effects. The "Fog of Katrina" is being used to obscure unrelated economic information, they say. MorganStanley economist talking about how and when the global economy will get rebalanced. Richard Cohen at the WaPo says choose, dammit, Guns or Butter.
As always, between Israel and Palestine there is plenty of violence and even more spin. The Israelis got mighty angry when Hamas fired a bunch of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, which Hamas justified by claiming that Israel blew up a vehicle at a militant rally, killing lots of people. It seems reasonable to me that the vehicle blew up on its own, but it is certainly possible that Israel did it. So Israel attacked Gaza and arrested a bunch of people in the West Bank. The 'militants' supposedly captured in the West Bank were to some extent part of the militant organizations' "political wings" and some of the more moderate elements, including those that favor reconciliation and intend to run in the upcoming Palestinian elections. I found the following on some kind of rightwing Israeli site, unitedjerusalem.org, where the text was loaded into some kind of interactive bias-judging webpage. Weird. But here is the "political" vs "militant wing" bit, which seems to be on Haaretz's print page here but not here or here. Thanks google.
In the largest arrest sweep since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the IDF apprehended 207 leaders of Hamas´ political wing, along with a number of Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank early yesterday. Most of those arrested are not on the list of wanted men from the two organizations´ military wings, but rather their accomplices or activists in the political and civilian wings.
Palestinian sources said that among those arrested were several local leaders considered key figures in the upcoming third round of municipal elections to take place Thursday in 105 local authorities in the West Bank and in the fourth round of elections scheduled to take place in December, which include the major cities.
Among key activists arrested yesterday were several expected to run on Hamas´ ticket for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on January 25. Prominent among the detainees is Sheikh Hassan Yusuf, along with his two sons. Yusuf, who was released from prison six months ago, and Muhammad Ghazal, a senior Hamas leader in the Nablus area, is considered a leader of the moderate camp espousing Hamas´ involvement in the political process.
But such a move was probably deemed necessary by Sharon for his own sordid domestic political reasons: On the other side, Sharon narrowly won his battle with Netanyahu over the Likud premiership and primaries, managing to retain the later Likud primary date and blunting Netanyahu's ever-intrigiuing conspiracy to take over the state. In a humorous twist, Sharon couldn't give his speech to the Likud Central Committee because his microphone went dead. This sparked a huge controversy between both sides, with the Netties claiming that Sharon did it himself to posture as a victim. Akiva Eldar always has interesting things to say about "Sharon's Cheerleading Squad", that is, the Israeli Left that now finds themselves in a strange political alliance.
I would like to believe that it was Sharon's idea, but Netanyahu actually approved it, to suit their weird personalities.... Anyway, also Likud members accused each other of ballot manipulation and voting fraud (as has happened in the past).
Israel would like a seat on the UN Security Council. The director of the Shin Bet security service says he expects more attacks from the West Bank now, which seems true as far as it goes tactically, but then again I think we can expect the settlers to Amp their Land Grab up now as well. The settlers are on a mission to persuade Likud Central Committee members of how freakin great they are.
I just found informationwar.org, a UK peace project. Nice name. Did you know that Winston Churchill once praised dropping poison gas on the Kurds? Funny story.
It seems that my case will come down to the matter of whether or not I was taking pictures. Well, anyone can tell you that police officers make an excellent photographic element. So here are my some of my best photographs of police officers from the Republican National Convention. (click to enlarge)
The (lower) photo of the NYPD officer on the motorcycle is one of my all-time favorite photographs. On his forearm, his tattoo reads "All gave some / Some gave all / 9-11-01". It is so much more authentic than all the cheap rhetoric...
Well folks, tomorrow the City of St. Paul is going to try to assert that there was Probable Cause that I committed a crime on May 11, but never photographed any police officers. Let this little post indicate that I have had a great deal of success photographing police officers. Police officers are more likely to behave themselves when they are being recorded. It cannot be denied.
I feel... as if I am looking at the world from the bottom of a well...
And the only way to beat it is to bat it down...
I would like to note for the rest of the Internet that Nick Werth's AOL Instant Messenger client is infected with some kind of nasty program (although he blames John van Wagenen as the source of infection) that sends out links to dynu.com and johnslaten.com , which in turn downloads weird virus files. Fortunately I have a Mac and use Adium as my client. So no problem here!
You need to ditch AOL Instant Messenger and use an alternative IM client program, which will not get infected, and takes less CPU and memory besides. For Macs I recommend Adium. For Windows PCs and Linux, Gaim is the gold standard. Go for it, you won't look back.
Ok, other than AIM viruses, well folks, the hearing for Macalester's May 11 incident is on 9 AM, this Tuesday morning at the County Courthouse/City Hall at 15 West Kellogg Boulevard with Judge Ostby. I can't remember at the moment which room it's at but you should be able to ask for directions to Judge Ostby's courtroom, if anyone is so interested in getting over early to see what happens.
There will be a number of witnesses testifying, including Laurie Hamre and various students. I may also testify.
As you might imagine, it is a tense situation for me, which brings forth all kinds of questions about Truth vs. Expediency, and all the rest.
Wish me luck. It's time to Double Down. :-/
Oh how annoying - the power died after a big storm blew through the Twin Cities. It was out for several hours - knocked everyone's plans for the evening down. Dang.
Meanwhile they say that Hurricane Rita is the third most powerful hurricane ever recorded. Nothing is half assed these days, that's for sure... My wishes for the best of luck to the apparent hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in this strange nation of ours...
HuffyPost:
US AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ PREDICTS US WILL GO INTO SYRIA…
Worth the huge type:
Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, made the off the record prediction that the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in Iraq.
Ambassador Khalilzad’s comments were made at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend.
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.
Today's Republicans believe in pork, but they don't believe in government. So we have the largest government in history but one that is weak and dysfunctional. Public spending is a cynical game of buying votes or campaign contributions, an utterly corrupt process run by lobbyists and special interests with no concern for the national interest.
Arch-conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen has a really entertaining one up at his website: "The Demise of Global Communications Security: The Neo-Cons' Unfettered Access to America's Secrets." There is some interesting stuff about the National Security Agency, backdoors in Swiss Crypto AG machines, Jonathan Pollard, billionaire fugitive Marc Rich and his lawyer Scooter Libby, Canadian peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, Larry Franklin, Martin Indyk, John Bolton, the suspicious Israeli moving company (Urban Moving Systems) that some have alleged was linked to 9/11, and late FBI agent John O'Neill. And also the True reason Daniel Pearl was killed in Pakistan.
Not that I believe such a story. However, I would love to write a movie script that sounded like this. And I did agree with the statement at the end: "U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former Prime Minister and current Prime Minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu." A fine work, Madsen, can we get you into screenwriting?
Raimondo kicks around a little with the old Anthrax Attacks of 2001. They sure were helpful in driving the country into a frenzy of fear... A frame up? etc etc... WaPo says little progress in FBI work.
Reuters: "Psychopaths could be best financial traders." Who makes the most cash? Sure they're all sane.
Apparently White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card may end up secretary of the Treasury. Weird. As Kevin Drum says:
Has it really gotten to the point where it's impossible for Bush to find solid, conservative appointees for these positions who have actual experience in the relevant fields? Aren't there any left who are still willing to work for him? Or does he feel so besieged by life that he literally feels he can't trust anyone with a big job unless they've spent a couple of years working within a few feet of him?
Check out the AliveInTruth New Orleans oral history project. Best blog title I've heard lately: "Clusterfuck Nation" by Jim Kunstler. There's trouble a brewing... and he thinks life is on the edge in this Long Emergency of ours:
The new assumption will be that when shit happens you are on your own. In this remarkable three weeks since New Orleans was shredded, no Democrat has stepped into the vacuum of leadership, either, with a different vision of what we might do now, and who we might become. This is the kind of medium that political maniacs spawn in. Something is out there right now, feeding on the astonishment and grievance of a whipsawed middle class, and it will have a lot more nourishment in the months ahead.
As always, bagNewsNotes is excellent.
BAD TIMES: They are charging for me to read my Krugman and Dowd. No good. So we will have to turn to places like this for Krugman. Dammit!!
Polls Baby: Bush's speech didn't do anything good for his poll numbers. Speaking of poll numbers, Hot Damn, the Democrats are polling really damn well these days! w0000!!! Independents favor Donkeys right now 55 to 27!!! MyDD also says that "the progressive blogosphere is a larger source of news for younger Americans than all of the cable news networks combined". So Good news. Peter Daou reflects on "limits of blog power" in Salon. He was basically the Kerry Campaign-blog connection, which must have been dicey. Interesting. Much wisdom, but this nails it:
"Rightwing bloggers will do everything in their power to prevent another Katrina triangle, where the confluence of blogs, media, and Democratic leadership exposes the real Bush and shatters the conventional wisdom about his ability to lead. .... For the progressive netroots, the past half-decade has been a Sisyphean loop of scandal after scandal melting away as the media and party establishment remain disengaged."
There's some kind of video blog interview thing going on at something called EvolveTV. Apparently Kos will interview Juan Cole. Sounds good to me. (more on it)
How are Talking Points drilled into the heads of the pundits?
When John G. Roberts is approved as chief justice of the United States, as expected, he can thank President Bush 's "Friends & Allies" program, which went to work on him immediately after he was nominated. The project, started by the Republican National Committee in the 2004 re-election campaign, is simple and effective: Give opinion makers, media friends, and even cocktail party hosts insider info on the topic of the day. How? Through E-mailed talking points, called D.C. Talkers, and conference calls. For Roberts, it worked this way: A daily conference call to about 80 pundits, GOP-leaning radio and TV hosts, and newsmakers was made around 9 a.m. On the other end were the main Roberts gunslingers like Steve Schmidt at the White House and Ken Mehlman and Brian Jones at the RNC. D.C. Talkers would then be distributed to an even larger list filled with positive info about Roberts and lines of attack on his critics. "The idea," said one of those involved, "is to feed them information and have them invested in us." It has even created addicts, he added. "Now they come to us before going on TV."
Not really that clever. But interesting.
IRAQification: The Score. What happened to that $1 billion? Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad is on it. The part about 28-year old Soviet helicopters and phony Egyptian-made MP5 knockoffs is kind of funny. TIME has "The Secret History of How the US Misjudged the Enemy in Iraq (condensed)." (also this full article) And the WMD hunt fucked up early efforts that might have reduced the strength of the insurgency. The article indicates that once Tommy Franks moved his HQ to Florida from Qatar, the force in Iraq was basically run by colonels, with less than 30 intelligence officers left in Iraq. Amazing. And then they dissolved the Iraqi army and civil service. A great moment. Needs to be read. It ends:
"We have never taken this operation seriously enough," says a retired senior military official with experience in Iraq. "We have never provided enough troops. We have never provided enough equipment, or the right kind of equipment. We have never worked the intelligence part of the war in a serious, sustained fashion. We have failed the Iraqi people, and we have failed our troops."
On the other hand, Condi says it's about coffee. So what would an actual Civil War look like? Meanwhile in Central Asia, the Great Game Reloaded.
Juan Cole had a fine look at the Egyptian elections: "A people who figured out how to get rid of Napoleon Bonaparte within a year is hardly flummoxed by a mere Texas poseur." "Church of England offers to meet Muslim leaders to apologize for Iraq war." I was talking earlier about the Zarqawi-Goldstein symbolic connection. Well also, someone named Ritt Goldstein had a good story about anomalies in the Berg video last year from Asia Times Online.
Right Wing Echo Chamber invents missiles: Apparently for some reason the right wing blogosphere is inventing stories about missiles getting shot at a flight last Thursday. I have no special insight here, except that it shows a fertile fantasy life... Speaking of fantasies, Pandagon mocks PowerLine's PowerLies. But the more I think about people like that, the less free time I have. A funny interview about Creationism and Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, the Faith of Our Times. Haven't you heard that the leftists are trying to destroy America? That's new!
Someone is still keeping score on the Valerie Plame affair. Hopefully that will come roaring back again. Arianna had a bit on it.
One of the side effects of looking at Fark is that you come away with a bunch of links that seem like they should be passed along to everyone. You can get a "mint" condition Mig 21 aircraft for a mere $225,000 on eBay. It would appear this seller has all kinds of weird military hardware, and no, foreigners can't buy. No bids yet.
They are putting USB connections into Volkswagens. What could go wrong? Could I drive by mouse? PC World offers 20 tidbits about tech that manufacturers don't really want you to know about. Overclocking, bad warranties, sucking the Windows registration number out of your computer, hacking cell phones and game consoles, worthless product specs made up for marketing.
Some author is getting rich writing about straight girls going for lesbian hookups. Surely everyone will find this fascinating. Apparently the title alone, "The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping with Chicks", was good enough that she got a mountain of cash from Simon & Schuster without having to write a word. Nothing like Insane Homophobes protesting at Rehnquist's funeral (via Dailykos).
Martial Law seems to be in the air. Bush called for expanding the role of the military in disaster situations. William Arkin in the WaPo says that this is Real Bad:
I for one don't want to live in a society where "a moment’s notice" justifies military action that either preempts or usurps civil authority.
What is more, nothing about what happened in New Orleans justifies such a radical move to give the military what bureaucrats call "a lead role" in responding to emergencies.
In the wake of Katrina, the military was standing by awaiting orders, as it should be. The White House and the federal government were for their part either on vacation or out to lunch. The problem wasn’t the lack of resources available. It was leadership, decisiveness, foresight. The problem was commanding and mobilizing the resources, civil and military.
Yeah. For more try this really excellent bit on Social Militarization, characterizing it as a "fascist move." Yeah. So this leads to a unnerving discussion of how Liberal Democracy is not good enough to confront the State of Exception (such as catastrophic disasters), and Social Militarization is offered as a kind of illusory panacea. I need to quote this:
The charismatic leader is indeed historically necessary for successful, final-stage fascist movements (i.e. movements that actually lay claim to political power). But there remains a more fundamental and contemporary pressing facist concern, an earlier stage in which the rhetorical structure of fascism is laid by celebrating (Robert Paxton's recent Anatomy of Fascism is quite good on this point) the necessary failures of liberal democracy to respond to the exigencies of the present day. For four years we have been told that a new type of war must be waged, that new types of laws must be passed (even if those laws short-circuit the freedoms they ostensibly protect), that the old conventions by which we fight illegalities and terrorism must be scrapped in favor of more proactive solutions. In effect, we have been told that the liberal democratic state was simply ill-prepared to handle the threat of terrorism, and so something else, something new, defined by a Bush doctrine and a rethinking of our constitutional protections, would be needed. Now we are told that the liberal state can no longer handle the constant challenges of nature, and that now, again, something new is needed: social militarization.
For the facist movements that eventually came to power in Italy and Germany, and that also surfaced in Spain, Poland, and the majority of countries, the supposed failure of liberal democracy became apparent with the ravages and duration of World War I, the Great War. Its intensity seemed so unfitting civilized society, so anethema to the vision of evolved, Enlightened, European culture. For the fascists, it was evidence that the liberal state was weak, that it lacked the necessary will to power to do right by it citizenry. I fear that history is repeating itself.
You don't repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent. If conservatism can't grasp that point, what is it good for?
As for the military, same difference. The Army clearly has an important role to play in major domestic disasters. And they've been playing it in this case. But what broader role was required exactly?
As I've been saying, repressive governments mix adminsitrative clumsiness and inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies. That's almost always the pattern. The direction the president wants to go in is one in which, in emergencies, the federal government will have trouble moving water into or enabling transportation out of the disaster zone but will be well-equipped to declare martial law on a moment's notice.
Rozen makes a small note on Martial Law and The Agonist as well. For the Pissed Off Old CIA Dude perspective on the insurgency and Katrina, try Larry Johnson and Pat Lang at No Quarter. Katrina cleanup volunteers got routed to a casino. An on the scene report via AmericaBlog. Bush's poll numbers are tanked like hell these days (atrios):
President Bush's vow to rebuild the Gulf Coast did little to help his standing with the public, only 40 percent of whom now approve of his performance in office, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.
Just 41 percent of the 818 adults polled between Friday and Monday said they approved of Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while 57 percent disapproved.
And support for his management of the war in Iraq has dropped to 32 percent, with 67 percent telling pollsters they disapproved of how Bush is prosecuting the conflict.
Frank Rich memorably puts it, "the administration's priority of image over substance is embedded like a cancer in the Katrina relief process." A very good column. Bush might be Losing it altogether and it seems like his inner circle is more tightly sealed than ever before. A DailyKos followup on how Katrina refugees that were previously photographed have fared.
And so Maybe they're feeling Doomed?! (via Americablog) The American Spectator says:
But at this stage of the game, barring some imaginative political moves that bear some resemblance to the Bush Administration circa 2002, Republicans on Capitol Hill and even some longtime Bush team members in various Cabinet level departments say this Administration is done for.
"You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."...
Congressional committee sources on both sides of Capitol Hill predict tough slogging on anything of policy consequence. "Social Security is dead as far as my chairman is concerned. So are the tax cuts," says a Ways and Means staffer of Chairman Bill Thomas.
Before hurricane season wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast and in Washington, the thinking was that Thomas was poised to take up a major tax bill that might feature several critical components of the Bush Administration's Social Security reform. Now those plans appear to have dimmed considerably.
Josh Marshall points out that we can Expect Corruption in the Gulf.
If there's nothing else this decade has taught us it is that there was never and never could have been any Iraq War separated from the goals and intentions of those with their foot on the accelerator. Anything else is just a sad delusion. That's why the whole mess is as it is now: fruit of the poison tree.
Same here.
Maybe you want to spend $200 billion on rebuilding the Delta region too. Fine. Something like that will probably be necessary. But don't fool yourself into thinking that what's coming is just a matter of a different chef making the same meal. This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn't believe. Money blown on ideological fantasies and half-baked test-cases.
You could come up with a hundred reasons why that's true. But at root intentions drive all. You'll never separate this operation or its results from the fact that the people in charge see it as a political operation. The use of this money for political purposes, for what amounts to a political campaign, tells you everything you need to know about what's coming.
The Register reports that Google Earth is getting in trouble with governments that don't like to have their military installations available to the everyday web surfer. Lots of fun imagery. Also you can see the Great Area 51 itself in this article. Not bad. Edwards Air Force Base has all kinds of sweet freakin stuff sitting around. (see also Microsoft cloaks area 51 - hah!)
For the serious visitor, consider some classic internet marijuana imagery via i-am-bored.com and fresh99.com. Also weird Japanese condom wrappers.
PottyGate: In a followup to Bush's UN bathroom break, The UK Times offers a roundup of famous bathroom breaks and undiplomatic flatulence.
From emptying of the diplomatic bag to breaking wind before Virgin Queen
By Michael Binyon
THE need to relieve oneself diplomatically has on occasion determined the fate of nations.
The most notorious practitioner of “bladder diplomacy” was the late President Assad, the hardline Syrian President for more than 25 years. Western statesmen visiting his palace were offered juice, water and bountiful cups of coffee while the President lectured them for hours on end. Eventually the visitors cut a deal simply to escape to the lavatory.
Enoch Powell, the late Conservative politician and noted orator, said that politicians should speak with their bladders half full, as it gave a sense of urgency to their speeches. On the other hand, Morarji Desai, Prime Minister of India from 1977 to 1979, drank a pint of his own urine every day. He lived to the age of 99.
.....In the 1960s, President Johnson used to adjourn conversations when the need arose and ask his interlocutors to accompany him to the men’s room. Their embarrassment was a source of great amusement to him. He often recounted a story about “one of the delicate Kennedyites who came into the bathroom with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet”. ....
Court etiquette grew stricter over the centuries. Famously, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was so embarrassed at having broken wind in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I that he voluntarily exiled himself from court for seven years. When he returned, her first words to him were: “We have quite forgot the fart.”
Some RawStory bits: Condoleezza Rice took time out of her busy schedule to threaten Syria and compared Islamic fundamentalists to Marxists. Meanwhile, real intelligence experts say that we are repeating "every mistake we made in Vietnam", adding that the WMD fantasy chase precluded early efforts that might have blunted the strength of the various militant movements in Iraq. And another bit offers a guide to the Roberts nomination and his nomenclature. Framers' intent, activist judges, what do these things really mean?
In Iraq, lots of stuff from the new Iraqi Defense Ministry of Doom has been skimmed off for anti-Sunni hit teams and rambunctious Kurds preparing to seize and probably ethnically cleanse the Kirkuk area. Juan Cole has more about $1,000,000,000 or $2,000,000,000 getting stolen. Something insane happened in the Basra area as undercover British agents got mobbed or something. But either way, Reuters/Yahoo provides a photo of what appears to be a British soldier, consumed by fire, falling off a tank. Juan Cole reports that at least five Baghdad neighborhoods have become controlled by militants:
"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.
The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody.
Rove, His Remarks and His Memos: A memo to Karl Rove about immigration policy from Lamar Smith of Texas, which accidentally got sent to Democrats, says various creepy things. Rove said a bunch of hilarious things to a retreat when he thought he was really Off the Record, according to the HuffyPost:
Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on. On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government... On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally... On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything... On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East... On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand... On Joe Wilson: Joe Wilson and I attend the same church but Joe goes to the wacky mass...
In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.
Via Defamer and BB, you too can indicate your insane insecurity and adherence to the last throes of the authoritarian gas guzzling bourgeoisie by purchasing a Hummer brand ugly laptop.
Guess what, Congressional Democrats tried to get Downing Street Memo-related documents out of the White House, and they got shot down. I am shocked, just shocked! John Conyers is on it.
Who thought that 9/11 was an enormous opportunity? I try not to get tangled up with Gibberish from Fukuyama about neoconservatism and his weird End of History nonsense. But if you are interested in how Mr. NeoLiberalism is faring these days...
That's all for now..... Wake me up when September Ends.......
I missed the Green Day concert in St. Paul on Friday. It sounded like a hell of a good time, made particularly special by Billy Joe Armstrong's connections to the area: his wife is from New Brighton, and I have heard on reasonably good authority that he purchased a house on Summit Avenue. Star Tribune reported Saturday:
St. Paul was where he wrote some of the songs for the politically charged "American Idiot," the Grammy-winning album that is the best-selling nonrap CD of the past year, with more than 4 million copies sold. In the summer of 2003, he had walked around the track at Macalester College in St. Paul, writing the songs in his head.
This also tracks with what I've heard, that Armstrong was spotted a few times around the track - a more interesting celebrity sighting than that time Josh Hartnett came into the SuperAmerica and Grand and Cleveland when Alison was working. It would also explain why much of the album has a perfect rhythm for running. This song always made a lot of sense to me - it must have been because I was living down the street when he wrote it! :-)
So what's my real point today? The image of Senior Demon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an essential element of the Bush Administration's strategy to manage perceptions of their disastrous war - diverting blame and creating an attractive 'negative image'. Zarqawi is one of the principle Hollow Lies of the war.
Say, Hey!
Hear the sound of the falling rain / Coming down like an Armageddon flame / The shame / The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key / To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" / And bleed / The company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On Holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time / Another protester has crossed the line / To find / The money's on the other side
Can I get another Amen? / There's a flag wrapped around the score of men / A gag / A plastic bag on a monument
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies / This is the dawning of the rest of our lives / On holiday
Meanwhile, in the Information Age of Hysteria, we have perhaps the underlying principle of our government in a nutshell, as Ron Suskind put it before the election:
The [White House] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Enter the Demon of our Times.
Let me offer a theory: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may actually exist, but his "existence" in the media is an essential element of the Bush Administration's Public Relations strategy to manage perception of the war. He is a personification of malevolent intent: if he wasn't around, we are told to believe, things would sort themselves out, so our motive has to be to crush him instead of confronting the Pentagon's essentially racist, disastrous policies. The Star Tribune carried a Washington Post/AP story on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's latest pledge to kill all the Shiites. Consider the following:
More bombings push Baghdad deaths near 200: Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post
BAGHDAD -- Insurgents believed to be allied with Al-Qaida in Iraq kept up bombings in the capital on Thursday, launching strikes that brought the two-day death toll close to 200.
The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the surge in bombings represented the kind of occasional spikes in attacks that the military has been expecting "around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy."
In this case, an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's new constitution is only a month away.
"Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency," Lynch said. "So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum."
Police targeted
In the violence Thursday, suicide bombers killed at least 31 people in two attacks about a minute apart that targeted Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos, officials said. Insurgents also managed to land a single mortar round inside the Green Zone, the base for U.S. officials and Iraq's government. There were no casualties and only minimal damage, U.S. officials said.
A day earlier, at least 14 car bombs across Baghdad killed 167 people, the majority of them Shiite Muslim civilians -- the highest one-day toll of the war inflicted by insurgent attacks in the capital. Seven of the victims died overnight of their wounds.
An audiotape released on a website linked to Al-Qaida in Iraq after Wednesday's attacks said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group had opened "all-out war" on Iraq's Shiite majority.
Attacks linked to Al-Qaida also hit the city of Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar, a stronghold of foreign-led fighters. Witnesses said Al-Qaida-allied fighters rocketed and shelled two U.S. military installations at Ramadi and traded fire with U.S. patrols in the city. The U.S. military reported one Marine killed and said a would-be car bomber also died. Iraqi emergency medical workers said Marine snipers killed six Al-Qaida fighters.
The two-day barrage of attacks attributed to Al-Qaida in Iraq, and the increasing control of towns in the west along the Euphrates River being asserted by foreign-led insurgents, intensified the U.S. military's focus on Al-Zarqawi.
U.S. commanders often have publicly denigrated his role in the insurgency to little more than that of a media-fostered figurehead. On Thursday, however, Lynch discussed Al-Zarqawi in some of the sharpest terms yet, calling him the Americans' main target and saying the United States was winning the fight against him.
"We believe we are experiencing great success against the most crucial element of the insurgency, which is the terrorists and the foreign fighters. The face of that is Zarqawi and Al-Qaida in Iraq," Lynch said.
"We've got great intelligence which tells us where he's moving to and where he's trying to establish safe havens. As soon as we see him trying to establish a safe haven, we will conduct operations," such as the one underway against northwestern insurgent strongholds in Tal Afar, Lynch said. "We're using all assets under our control in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces to find him and kill him."
Now let us refer to a little bit from Orwell's 1984... As WikiPedia summarizes the teachings of Emmanuel Goldstein:
...the state of war creates a mentality that suits the Party well. A Party member should be "a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war." Though "the entire war is spurious...and waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones", even Inner Party members who potentially could know better passionately believe that the war is real and will "end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world". .... There can never be any large-scale invasion of enemy territory, so that citizens of one superstate would come face to face with citizens of another and discover that conditions there are very much the same as in their own superstate: Even the prevailing ideologies are almost identical. To maintain the image of the enemy as a monster whose ideology is a barbarous outrage on common sense, all sides realize that "the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs"!
Since the war is a sham and each superstate is unconquerable, the ongoing "conflict" has no sobering effect on the oligarchies ruling the three superstates: .... "The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they chose." [Paging Mr Suskind...]
Thus, the war is actually "waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact". As far as the lack of any genuine outside threat is concerned, the superstates might just as well agree to live in permanent peace; then they would still be "freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger" (the kind of danger that might force the rulers to behave somewhat responsibly). This, according to the author, "is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace."
While I quietly alluded to this earlier, other people have been making this point for a while, but damn it, even the newspaper admits this "media figurehead" phenomenon is partly true. There's probably a real Zarqawi figure out there, but basically, these days I generally believe he is a media construction designed to provide a narrative that Joe Six Pack can understand. The exciting Zarqawi Chase (with, say, captured laptops and narrow escapes) is the kind of story that the NASCAR dad needs to stave off cognitive dissonance. The insurgency is not a failure of policy, it's not Rummy's and Myers' fuck-ups, it's this damn Zarqawi always trying to throw monkey wrenches in the system AKA "building democracy". Some might say it's a Leo Straussian Noble Lie to provide succor for the Bronze Masses. Let me throw in a Billmon post on this matter from a year ago:
The problem here is not with the Fallujans, the problem here is not with the coalition. The problem here is with foreign fighters, international terrorists, people like Zarqawi, who we believe to be in Fallujah or nearby.
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor: Press Briefing April 13, 2004
The security situation in Fallujah, Iraq, remains stable, and coalition forces there are engaged in a "robust hunt" for al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be in or near the city, coalition officials said today.
American Forces Information Service: 'Robust' Manhunt for Zarqawi Under Way April 13, 2004
Former regime elements can be former Ba'athists, they can be Iraqi extremists, they can be outside jihadists, they can be Zarqawi network folks as well.
Gen. Dick Myers: Press Briefing April 7, 2004
The terrorists, assassins are threatened by the Iraqi's people's progress toward self-government, because they know that they will have no future in a free Iraq. They know, as al Qaeda associate Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi put it in his letter recently, that we intercepted: "Democracy is coming"...
Donald Rumsfeld: Press Briefing April 7, 2004
A statement circulating in Iraq and signed by anti-U.S. groups last month claimed al-Zarqawi was killed earlier by American bombs in northern Iraq. A senior U.S. official denied the report of al-Zarqawi's death.
Associated Press: Al Qaeda tape takes credit for Iraq attacks April 6, 2004
The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.
George Orwell: 1984
And let us not forget Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's entry into the universe of the News Cycle came with the notorious Nick Berg decapitation video. This video had a number of strange anomalies in it, and I have suspected for quite a while that it was fake. My favorite alternate explanation was that the video was actually shot by US personnel inside Abu Ghraib prison (aside from the "Lawn Chair from Hell" connection) to distract attention from the exploding torture scandal.
Too conspiratorial? Such a video could never be fake? Then why does the great Zarqawi appear to have Two Legs, not One? Try the WikiPedia Nick Berg conspiracy theories page for even more! This WikiPedia paragraph essentially sums up my point:
There are rumors that Zarqawi is dead because no sightings of him have been confirmed since 2001. In one report, the conservative British newspaper Daily Telegraph described as myth the claim that Zarqawi was the head of the "terrorist network" in Iraq. According to a U.S. military intelligence source, the Zarqawi myth resulted from faulty intelligence obtained by the payment of substantial sums of money to unreliable and dishonest sources. The faulty intelligence was accepted, however, because it suited US government political goals, according to an unnamed intelligence officer.[14] The Zarqawi myth has also been purported to be the product of U.S. war propaganda designed to promote the image of a demonic enemy figure to help justify continued U.S. military operations in Iraq[15], perhaps with the tacit support of terrorist elements wishing to use him as a propaganda tool (a sort of Al-Qaeda Ronald McDonald).
I'm just going to wrap this up with a chunk from iconoclastic researcher Michel Chossudovsky, who wrote "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?" at the Centre for Research on Globalisation:
War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, but the Chase keeps it Interesting. Hedges:The US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations. Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine". The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America."
The underlying objective is to galvanize public opinion in support of America's war agenda. The "war on terrorism" requires a humanitarian mandate. The war on terrorism is presented as a "Just War", which is to be fought on moral grounds "to redress a wrong suffered." The Just War theory defines "good" and "evil." It concretely portrays and personifies the terrorist leaders as "evil individuals". .....To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat. The propaganda campaign presents the portraits of the leaders behind the terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an "advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to terror." The "war on terrorism" rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose names and photos are presented ad nauseam in daily news reports.
.....Al Zarqawi is often described as an "Osama associate", the bogyman, allegedly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in several countries. In other reports, often emanating from the same sources, it is stated that he has no links to Al Qaeda and operates quite independently. He is often presented as an individual who is challenging the leadership of bin Laden. His name crops up on numerous occasions in press reports and official statements. Since early 2004, he is in the news almost on a daily basis.Osama belongs to the powerful bin Laden family, which historically had business ties to the Bushes and prominent members of the Texas oil establishment. Bin Laden was recruited by the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and fought as a Mujahideen. In other words, there is a longstanding documented history of bin Laden-CIA and bin Laden-Bush family links, which are an obvious source of embarrassment to the US government.
In contrast to bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi has no family history. He comes from an impoverished Palestinian family in Jordan. His parents are dead. He emerges out of the blue. He is described by CNN as "a lone wolf" who is said to act quite independently of the Al Qaeda network. Yet surprisingly, this lone wolf is present in several countries, in Iraq, which is now his base, but also in Western Europe. He is also suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on American soil.
.....In Iraq, he is said to be determined to "ignite a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites". But is that not precisely what US intelligence is aiming at ( "divide and rule") as confirmed by several analysts of the US led war? Pitting one group against the other with a view to weakening the resistance movement. (See Michel Collon [1], See also [2] )
......What is the role of this new mastermind in the Pentagon's disinformation campaign, in which CNN seems to be playing a central role? In previous propaganda ploys, the CIA hired PR firms to organize core disinformation campaigns, including the Rendon Group. The latter worked closely with its British partner Hill and Knowlton, which was responsible for the 1990 Kuwaiti incubator media scam, where Kuwaiti babies were allegedly removed from incubators in a totally fabricated news story, which was then used to get Congressional approval for the 1991 Gulf War.
What is the pattern?
Almost immediately in the wake of a terrorist event or warning, CNN announces (in substance): we think this mysterious individual Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is behind it, invariably without supporting evidence and prior to the conduct of an investigation by the relevant police and intelligence authorities.
In some cases, upon the immediate occurrence of the terrorist event, there is an initial report which mentions Al-Zarqawi as the possible mastermind. The report will often say (in substance): yes we think he did it, but it is not yet confirmed and there is some doubt on the identity of those behind the attack. One or two days later, CNN may come up with a definitive statement, quoting official police, military and/or intelligence sources.
Often the CNN report is based on information published on an Islamic website or a mysterious Video or Audio tape. The authenticity of the website and/or the tapes is not the object of discussion or detailed investigation.
Bear in mind that the news reports never mention that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA and that Al Zarqawi had been recruited to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (This is in fact confirmed by Sec. Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003) (see details below). Both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are creations of the US intelligence apparatus. The recruitment of foreign fighters was under the auspices of the CIA.
.......
Colin Powell's Address to the UN Security Council
In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, Al Zarqawi's name reemerges, this time almost on daily basis, with reports focusing on his sinister relationship to Saddam Hussein. A major turning point in the propaganda campaign occurs on February 5, 2003. Al-Zarqawi was in the spotlight following Colin Powell's flopped WMD report to the UN Security Council. Powell's speech presented "documentation" on the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, while focusing on the central role of Al-Zarqawi: (emphasis added):
Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations...
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons.
When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in Northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp. Graphic, above. [there were no WMDS at this camp according to ABC report, see below]
The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons.... Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
......
The Nicholas Berg Video
Barely a couple of weeks later (11 May 2004), Al Zarqawi is reported as being the mastermind behind the execution of Nicholas Berg on May 11, 2004. Again perfect timing! The report coincided with calls by US Senators for Defense Sec Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. It occurs a few days after President Bush's "apology" for the Abu Ghraib prison "abuses" on May 6. The Nicholas Berg video served to create "a useful wave of indignation" which served to distract and soften up public opinion, following the release of the pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners. (See the intelligence assumptions underlying Operation Northwoods, a secret Joint Chiefs of Staff plan to kill civilians in the Cuban community in Florida, and blame it on Fidel Castro. (More: [3]))
..........
Extending the War on Terrorism
Are "we winning or losing" the war on terrorism. These statements are used to justify enhanced military operations against this illusive individual, who is confronting US military might, all over the World. Al Zarqawi is used profusely in Bush's press conferences and speeches in an obvious public relations ploy.
You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold-blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright -- bright future. (Press Conference, 1 June 2004, emphasis added)
We become the embodiment of light and goodness. We become the defenders of civilization, of all that is decent. We are more noble than others. We are braver than others. We are kinder and more compassionate than others -- that the enemy at our gate is perfidious, dark, somewhat inhuman. We turn them into two-dimensional figures. I think that's part of the process of linguistically dehumanizing them. And in wartime, we always turn the other into an object, and often, quite literally, in the form of a corpse.
There are quite a few things to post later. But for now I can add to my list of interesting political figures I've met. My dad got invited to a Russ Feingold fundraiser this afternoon, and I thought it would be worth checking out. Indeed it was. The great anti-Patriot Act senator talked about why the heck he was raising money so soon after his re-election. Apparently the plan is to keep local political committees running, supporting other progressive and Democratic candidates. As this unusual guy somehow has lasted so long in the Senate, he's really becoming a Wisconsin institution, so why not try to leverage his long-term popularity by keeping the effort going?
Other than that, well, he talked about how irresponsible President Bush is for proposing funding Katrina recovery efforts with deficit spending and cutting services. He talked about Judge Roberts - and in particular, the connection between the Patriot Act, the Chief Justice, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (wikipedia). He said that the primary reason he voted against the Patriot Act was because of this shady secret court, whose members are in fact selected by the Chief Justice. So the Roberts thing is even more important. But he felt that Roberts was clearly not their first choice, so relatively not so bad. The next one, he feared, would take the rest of the year to sort out.
That's my dad at right - with the blue shirt and tallness, can you see the resemblance?! ... I wasn't taking any notes, so I can't really get into lots of details. But he also talked about how the Katrina situation has helped illustrate to Americans that the Iraq war has really damaged our preparedness. But he was disappointed that now that Katrina is at the top of the agenda, the vast amount of unrest about the war that members of Congress have been exposed to on their summer break has sort of gotten pushed aside. In particular, he felt, the Republicans have succeeded in making it "taboo" to challenge Bush's leadership on the war and to even suggest that it is time to discuss getting out. He was the first to offer an actual target date for a pullout - the end of 2006. But the other Democrats are too tepid to even support him, or openly start discussing the matter of deadlines because Republicans have made it appear that you can't do this while "supporting the troops."
He also added that we invaded Iraq for "fake reasons," which I particularly liked (see the last two years of this site).
So Russ is out there, changing the dynamics of the situation. Even in quite conservative northern counties, he said, people are feeling very queasy about the war. Russ said that he told a group up there, it wasn't a "radical county," and an older woman piped up and said, "We're getting there!!" On the heels of all this, he said, surely we're tired of hearing that every election is the most important of our lifetimes. But the last one was. And this next one will be. For it is nearly time to start getting things turned around. After more than a decade without control of Congress, the next one will be a "watershed" that will finally flip things around, he said.
When he departed the stage, heading for another fundraiser in Prescott, the Pierce County Democratic Chair suggested that once we have Congress, we can start talking about Impeachment. *Massive Applause*. That was exciting.
Ok a couple more pictures. This is What is Happening in Western Wisconsin politics. Hell Yeah.
(all photos by Me except for the one with me in it. that was my dad)
Colin Kennedy emailed me this excellent Reuters photo. Apparently Bush noted to Condi Rice at the UN World Summit, "I think I may need a bathroom break?" Not exactly decisive sounding leadership for going to the Pot. But either way I think it sets the tone.
"Nightmare is over as study says cheese doesn't cause bad dreams." A weird little Apple story.
HongPong.com enters Google Blog Search, and finds out the site is enmeshed in other people's conspiracy theories... It seems to update pretty quickly too. Oddly enough, the first "hongpong.com" hit turns up a link to a story on freedomforyou.blogspot.com... the paragraph that follows is certainly a weird enough thing to say. Oh the places that link to me...
Israel, Mossad, Iran and a Nuclear False Flag Attack...
...Since the US Army War College already acknowledges that the Mossad "has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act," it may well be that the FBI has finally realized how dangerous the Israeli Fifth Column is, having begun to tighten the noose around the legendary Israeli spying operation in America by arresting Larry Franklin, Doug Feith's deputy in the Office of Special Plans, origin of the fraudulent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction intelligence. Not yet indicted, but identified as Co-Conspirator 1 and 2 along with Franklin are the two top AIPAC operatives to whom he passed higly classified intel: Steven Rosen, head of Policy and Keith Weissman, Iran specialist. Israeli sources expect Weissman and Rosen to be indicted for espionage in the coming weeks. [<--- that one is my link - Dan ]
Perhaps the two largest factions of the New World Order, Skull and Bones and the Zionists are now going into open warfare, as the Bush Administration attempts to clean out the neoconservatives, discipline the Israeli military and enforce the two state solution.
Uhm, for the record, I really disagree that Skull and Bones and "the Zionists" are the two major factions of anything at all... I keep looking around for this New World Order and all I seem to find are crazy people. Damn! :-) Nonetheless freedomforyou has a fairly classic conspiracy tale about Mohammed Atta, the "Able Danger" intelligence project that supposedly uncovered some of the 9/11 hijackers, and why not, a massive heroin smuggling operation being covered up by the government. Like I said, classic. Keep on going, Starfish Prime!
Katrina klusterfuck: Billmon tries to find enough Pepto-Bismol to swallow the nasty slime of spin and madness. As always Atrios is holding it down on the matter along with Josh Marshall, who is putting together a Katrina Timeline. William Rivers Pitt on "Washing Away the Conservative Movement" is very worth reading. In a nutshell his point is that the Grover Norquist "Starve the Beast" philosophy is dead because the first task of government is to look after the citizens, and it just don't work when you've starved it. Also "Wake of the Flood" is damn good. I liked this bit from Stirling Newberry:
The Days of Death and the Wings of Victory:
Every age buries the last, but the old age digs its own grave. And that is what Bush is doing, digging the grave of the 20th Century. It was a gleaming century that launched itself into space, it was a brutal century that killed millions. It was the century that fed more people, and cured more diseases than all the others. It was a century that saw more die in famines than in all the others.
The waste of that century has killed New Orleans. It is not the flooding, but the toxic wastes of decades that makes it uneconomical to rebuild the shattered streets of the Crescent City. It is not colonialism, but oil that drew us into Iraq. And we need not point out that Saddam came to power because of the Cold War realpolitick. But it is ours to bury the past, not to blame it. There are those who refuse to deal with reality, and think that simply distancing themselves from what was is enough - and there are many millions more who simply do not understand that the era of extraction, the era of oil and the era of a small closed affluent world surrounded by an ocean of dictatorships, deprivation and destitution is over.
........The coming weeks will strain the faith of those who have watched and waited so long. It will seem that so little of what needs to be done will be done. It will seem that the ponderous waith of putainous politics, and apathetic public opinion, will lumber only slowly in the direction of change. But the end is coming, and it will come with that shocking swiftness that the first wave of rain in a thunderstorm.
We should expect over the course of the next year, not a decline, but a crescendo of the corruption and cronyism that has marked this era and marred its politics. The thieves will be intent on throwing the last bags of loot before the robbery is over. Expect that the billions spent on Katrina's aftermath will leave Haliburton above the water, and hundreds of thousands below the poverty line. Piratization is the ethos of these last days of untrammelled and unchecked power.
And it is this that will overthrow them. The naked greed will shock a jaded public, one that will turn elsewhere, any where, for leadership and vision. They will recall in previous, even darker, hours, how the nation came together, and in that unity found achievement. They will ask why this time there was such a failure. They will not blame themselves - for in the minds of the public, they did what they were asked. Instead, they will blame the leadership to whom power was given.
Now, today, this instant, it is time to answer the call to arms. Some will protest, but more important is to contest. In 14 months time America will have a new revolution. Do not waste another minute, lest you be forced to admit that you were not there. The relief effort needs aid and comfort now. Candidates across the country need volunteers now. These two projects - to relieve the suffering and then to end it - must occupy every spare moment and ounce of energy. For it is the will of the people, that drives the wings to victory. And from victory to vindication of that which we have so long believed: that an America reborn, is an America redeemed.
Ah so then a few more links. Katrina, an economic tipping point. Good ideas for Principles of Reconstruction. Why is Blackwater there?! "Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans." The major media picks over the spin between federal and state officials about command of troops and the various chaotic snags. A million dumb things FEMA did. DomeBlog carries the news of evacuees at the Astrodome and George Brown Convention Center. Morgan Stanley on the Shoestring Economy. They seem to be starting to block the media. "The Thin Veneer of Civilization." Disturbing. As noted earlier:
Police in Suburbs Blocked Evacuees, Witnesses Report
By GARDINER HARRIS
Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, two paramedics who were in the crowd said.
The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.
Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.
"The police kept saying, 'We don't want another Superdome,' and 'This isn't New Orleans,' " said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing.
What does an ethnic war in the Middle East look like? "Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq." A relevant question these days. Anthony Shadid of the WaPo has an feature with TPMCafe about his new book on Iraq. The newspaper might tell you that the insurgents in Tal Afar are inscrutable evildoers, but a different moral frame (one where the Shiites and Kurds are not a bunch of Clark Kent do-gooders) suggests that the Tal Afar campaign is merely another episode in the splintering of Iraq. Prof. Juan Cole conceptualizes Tal Afar as Ethnic Civil War:
Much of the American press has reported the Tal Afar campaign as a strike by the new Iraqi Army, supported by US troops, against foreign infiltrators in the largely Turkmen city of 200,000.
As Jonathan Finer makes clear in the Washington Post, however, the operation looks different if we know some details. The "Iraqi Army" leading the assault turns out to be mainly the Peshmerga or Kurdish ethnic militia. Along for the ride are local Turkmen Shiites who are being used as informers and for the purpose of identifying Sunni Turkmen they think are involved in the guerrilla movement (apparently they sometimes make false charges to settle scores). Tal Afar was 70 percent Sunni Turkmen and 30 percent Shiite Turkmen. The Sunni Turkmen had thrown in with Saddam, and some more recently had turned to radical Islam. The Shiite Turkmen lived in fear of their lives.
So Kurds and Shiites are beating up on Sunni Turkmen allies of Sunni Arabs. That is what is really going on. The number of foreign fighters appears to be small, and US troops that had been guarding against infiltration on the Syrian border were actually moved to Tal Afar for this operation. It is mainly about punishing the Sunni Turkmen for allying with the Sunni Arab guerrillas. That the attack came in part in response to the pleas of local Shiite Turkmen helps explain why Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari (Shiite leader of the fundamentalist Dawa Party) authorized it, and went to Tal Afar on Tuesday for a photo op.
The US will never get stability in Iraq if it is merely an adjunct to a Kurdish-Shiite alliance against the Sunni Arabs and their Turkmen supporters.
As far as Iraq breaking into pieces is concerned, well the spooky new Constitution seems to have been finally tacked down, and there are key provisions that allow "super-provinces" to be organized. Probably Kurdistan and Sumer in the south would be organized to have federal-style power over many affairs, possibly including the all-important oil revenues. Again at juancole.com, guest writer Roger Myerson, a professor of economics who analyzes democratic structures interacting with economics, finds that the super-provinces would not help efficiency, but instead increase the likelihood of secession and breakup of Iraq:
Merging provinces into larger regions cannot increase the ability of local governments to adapt to local conditions. In the American federal system with its 50 states, the leaders of southern and northern states already have the ability to adapt their local administrative practices to their local variations of our southern and northern subcultures. Merging our state governments into larger regional mega-states could only decrease local adaptability. But such mergers could also seriously increase the possibility of secession. The leader of a regional mega-state that included a large fraction of America's population and resources would perceive more benefits and fewer risks in contemplating secession from the Union than any state governor would today.
In a well-designed federal system, the existence of small autonomous local governments can improve the performance of national democracy, because politicians in a federal democracy can prove their credentials for national leadership by serving successfully as leaders of autonomous local governments. Americans have regularly found strong candidates for president among our state governors. This effect of federalism on national elections may be particularly important for new democracies, where candidates with good reputations for responsible democratic service are likely to be scarce. For example, the PRI's long grip on national power in Mexico was broken by an independent state governor.
From this perspective, an ideal federal system would grant substantial autonomous power to local governments that are relatively small but are just large enough that successful management of a local government can demonstrate strong qualifications for national leadership. Given provinces that have this minimal size, the effects of merging provinces would be to decrease the number of such independent local leaders and to increase the chances of regional secession. So the principal beneficiaries of such mergers would be the politicians who expect to become leaders of the separate regions.
Israel business: Things are very wrapped up in Gaza and Palestinians are free to wander between Egyptian Rafah and Gazan Rafah (how did the line get down the middle of that city anyway?).
In New York where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he expected Egypt to bring the Egypt-Gaza border under control. "I imagine the Egyptians will get a grip," he said. "There is heavy American pressure on Egypt and the Palestinians on this issue." Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa on Wednesday blamed Israel for chaos at the border, as the frontier remained open for the third consecutive day and hundreds of people streamed freely from one side to the other. Addressing the GA, al-Kidwa said that the situation had been of Israel's making as it had insisted on a unilateral withdrawal from the area. Gaza's future, al-Kidwa added, would be determined by Israel's actions in the West Bank. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday that the government is going to make investing resources in developing the West Bank settlement blocs a top priority. Israel pulled the last of its troops from Gaza early Monday morning, marking the end of 38 years of miltiary rule in the area. Egypt initially said it was allowing free passage across the border as a humanitarian gesture, and pledged to restore order within days. On Wednesday, however, Hamas members blew a hole in the concrete fence that runs along the border, having cleared the area to prevent casualties. Palestinian police did not intervene. Egypt on Wednesday warned Palestinians crossing the frontier to return by sunset when passport controls were to be reimposed, and said it had found an arms-smuggling tunnel under the border. By nightfall, the border was still wide open.
So the Palestinians came in and whooped it up. There is even a bit of paranoia in Israel that Egypt is perhaps planning another war:
The Philadelphi route and the next war
There are quite a few policy makers in Jerusalem who believe that deploying several hundred Egyptian soldiers along the Philadelphi route is a strategic mistake, which will lead to disaster. .... Even 26 years after the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt, many believe, as does Steinitz, that the peace is temporary, and that Israel must prepare for the next war with Egypt. The strongest proof of Egypt's true intentions is its massive military armament. Why does Egypt need such a large and advanced army, they ask, if it has no intention of fighting Israel in the future? After all, Egypt has no other enemies whose military power justifies such extensive armament. And if Egypt is in fact planning war, why should Israel help it prepare, by allowing the deployment of an Egyptian military force on the border of the Gaza Strip?
......However, the reason for the military strengthening of Egypt is not the desire to wage war on Israel, but rather fear of Israel. It is hard for Israelis to believe that anyone is liable to consider their peace-loving country a military threat. But as is written in the annual report on the balance of power in the Middle East recently published by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Egypt sees Israel as a genuine threat, for several reasons.
The first is that the Israel Defense Forces is stronger than Egypt's army. The Egyptian regime sees Israel as an unstable factor, which tends to use force to resolve political problems. Egypt believes that Israel has extremist forces, whose rise to power is liable to lead to belligerence. In Cairo they have not forgotten the declaration by Avigdor Lieberman, who as minister of national infrastructure in 2001 warned that the IDF could destroy the Aswan Dam. Egypt regards the building of a modern military force as a factor that will deter Israel and ensure the stability of the peace treaty.
A third reason involves Egypt's low self-image in relation to Israel. Israeli economic, military, scientific and technological superiority intensifies Egyptian frustration, and this gap spurs Egypt to compete with Israel in the area of arming itself.
The final withdrawal after all these decade prompts some reminiscing from Haaretz about why the hell the Israeli government tried to dominate it in the first place:
The sky did not fall down
By Tom Segev, Haaretz Correspondent
The nearly 40 years of Israeli rule in the Gaza Stri
