Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
This was an excellent holiday weekend for me, caught up with lots of people, found out who is far-flung and to where. I will not gossip about the details, but I feel like I'm properly in touch with most of my circles of friends nowadays, which makes me feel much more comfortable in my skin.
Drunk fun with the office copy machine -- who has to fix it afterwards?
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
The hit parade continues. More via Booman Tribune and DKos. The details are ugly and incriminating.
Tony Blair is going to pieces.
Smokin in the coal mine: Peter Gartrell wrote a story carried in quite a few papers about a program to get coal miners to quit smoking. Their lungs must be in terrible shape anyway...
Air Power in Iraq: Sudden talk that the US will withdraw ground forces and perhaps grant Iraqis the power to call in airstrikes, as Sy Hersh put in the New Yorker put it (as covered by the Guardian, Stygius, DailyKos - with terrifying bits from a CNN Hersh interview, and as always Juan Cole). Bush is having some messianic visions again, but hey, at least Ahmadi-Nejad is too.
More headline chunks: US says Iraq insurgents can be 'part of solution': US 're-evaluates' its position after initially expressed dissatisfaction with Cairo meeting statement 'right of people to resistance'. Juan Cole talks about what the insurgents told the CIA in Cairo.
In the broader context, Bush really did want al-Jazeera gone when he purportedly suggested bombing it. Crazed old neo-con Frank Gaffney approves of bombing al Jazeera. And Michael Jackson blames the Jews for his money woes.
Interesting site: DefenseTech. With regards to the Syria thing, UN chief: Arab leaders worried Syria could become the next Iraq. 19 different UAVs operate in Iraq, but how many can solve the situation? On the plus side, a UAV to deliver medical supplies has been invented.
Zarqawi-Goldstein, part 239: the great terrorist is a cartoon character. It was doubted last year. And Marshall puts a bit in on that. Less skeptical, the Zarqawi dilemma.
The Pentagon said that White Phosphorus was a chemical weapon, when Saddam was using it. How ironic. (this is the declassified doc) JawaReport on Iraq Gun Porn: Which Guns Suck, Which Guns Rock. The Rummy-Blitzer exchange is amazing.
This is sort of funny. The Weekly Standard is going to save the day and prove that Saddam had WMDs and was in fact, Osama's boyfriend. Good work. Daou gives us the ten major pro-war fallacies in case we forgot.
For the obsessively detail oriented, Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame (featuring our man 'Clean Break' Wurmser). Fortunately I merely skimmed it. Raimondo cackles about the Feast of Scandal for Thanksgiving.
Raimondo also pokes around the waters of anti-Semitism that apparently are now getting somehow spun towards Chris Matthews -- as an excuse for Scooter leaking him Valerie Plame's name. I am not sure this makes sense. However, Raimondo adds that Wilson once said the following:
"The real agenda in all of this of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum that was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90's which was called, 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm.' And what it is – cut to the quick – is if you take out some of these countries, some of these governments that are antagonistic to Israel then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions upon the Palestinian people – whatever those terms and conditions might be. In other words, the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad and Damascus. Maybe Tehran. And maybe Cairo and maybe Tripoli if these guys actually have their way. Rather than going through Jerusalem."
So the anti-Clean Break Conspiracy was also anti-Semitic, which legitimatized leaking Plame's name?
Crazed Mercenaries and their video cameras: There is apparently some creepy video of Iraqi civilian cars getting blown up by the good folks at Aegis Defence Services, a privatized military firm set up Lt Col Tim Spicer -- the former director of Sandline International, a defunct company that used to sell arms to the guys in Sierra Leone, along the shadier side of geopolitics. AegisIraq.co.uk was the site the video was on. (CSM on the story)
There is of course pretty much no congressional oversight of the vast mercenary army in Iraq. (more on Aegis, Sandline and Executive Outcomes - here's even more!) The more one thinks about private armies, the more it seems like an amazingly self-reinforcing arrangement. Capitalism-squared, you might say.
Kurt Vonnegut said that terrorist die for their own self-respect. That is fairly insightful, but of course draws flack from much wiser keyboard commandos.
"What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back. Peace wasn't restored in Vietnam until we got kicked out. Everything's quiet there now."
There's a long pause before Vonnegut speaks again: "It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."
....I ask one more question: "But terrorists believe in twisted religious things, don't they? So surely that can't be right?"
"Well, they're dying for their own self-respect," Vonnegut fires back. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
There's another long pause and Vonnegut's eyes suggest his mind has wandered off somewhere. Then, suddenly, he turns back to me and says: "It must be an amazing high."
The CIA wants Dr. Phil's tactics for Guantanamo. Well, maybe it's an improvement.
The UK Ministry of Defense complains that farmers are shining lights at their Apache helicopters around Dorset -- and they think this could could cause a crash. Huh.
Iran Spring?? (Foreign Policy) Realists Tighten Grip as Talks Open with Iran by Jim Lobe. Why bother getting into the gory details? But I will say that Lobe is really an excellent source on this stuff & the neo-cons. Basically the point is that the neo-cons have been discredited, and the 'realists' are getting the upper hand finally.
Washington's growing reliance on and support for regional diplomacy marks a serious setback to neo-conservatives who, long before the Iraq war, had championed the unilateral imposition of a Pax Americana in the Middle East that would put an end to what in their view constituted the chief threats to Israel's security -- Arab nationalism and Iranian theocracy.
Now, two and a half years after invading Iraq to put that peace into place, the administration finds itself seeking the support of both forces, just as the realists had warned.
Check out this huge statement that Iran purchased in the NY Times. In particular that they haven't started a war of aggression against their neighbors in 250 years. I think that the way that various parties have managed the ethnic groups on the periphery was not exactly polite over that time... either way the demonization will continue.
BBC: Doubts grow over US Afghan strategy.
Internet hug transmission: Scientists in Singapore are developing a way to 'transmit hugs' over the Internet through vibrating jackets.
The Drunkard's Guide to Poker. What if hackers ruled the world? New Firefox. Something in the ocean goes Boing.
Big Bang in Israel: It's very big news that Sharon has decided to quit the Likud Party and go for elections. Alongside this, there is a younger leftist in charge of the Labor Party now, so suddenly the meanest part of the Israeli right-wing -- the faction that opposed even the Gaza pullout -- will likely find itself without any power in the next Israeli government.
Let me press all these Haaretz headlines together into one mush. 11 Israelis injured, at least 4 Hezbollah gunmen killed in failed kidnap attempt. Hezbollah releases video footage of [last] Monday's fighting. PM to offer PA independence for security. Eyeing Likud leadership, Mofaz, Shalom lambaste Netanyahu. Israel maintains its strategic advantage, says Jaffee Center. Poll: 25% of settlers east of fence prepared to leave homes.
Oh Sharon: graphic from excellent Haartez article. "Sharon knows the Likud was not a done deal." Palestinians hopeful after political volcano. Analysis / Where politics and security meet: A very interesting bit about when Israeli internal politics and the Hezbollah thing collide in real-time. Sharon aides: PM planning far-reaching diplomatic initiatives. Ariel Sharon's new faction is a one-term party.
Settlers throw stones at Palestinian homes in Hebron. Palestinians reported that settlers cut down 200 olive trees near Nablus. Nothing quite like olive tree-based warfare.
In Israel, it's the end of the Ashkenazi era? Peretz is a Sephardi. But this I thought most interesting:
At the same time, will the end of the era of generals arrive, as well? Will the time come when the top political rank does not originate in the security forces? If the conflict with the Palestinians were to end, the entire agenda would change, and the relative advantage of the generals would be eliminated. Generals would no longer be able to move so easily between the highest echelons of the army, Mossad and Shin Bet, to the political leadership.
This is one of the reasons why the generals are in no rush to end the conflict. They know that one of the most powerful factors influencing the voters is fear. Which is why they try to frighten, to pump up the volume on threats, to brandish the Iranian missiles, to carry out targeted assassinations and to always, but always, keep the finger close to the trigger. Conversely, a civilian leader does not view the other side through the gunsight, and his chances of resolving the conflict are therefore better.
Private prisons are coming to Israel. What could go wrong? The article notes that private prisons are second only to America's high tech sector as a growth industry. A parallel thought:
"Private prisons are not the only reason for this increase, but there is no doubt that their lobbying activity is one of the reasons for the increasing stringency of punishment and the increase in the number of prisoners," says attorney Aviv Wasserman, the head of the human rights division at the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan, whose petition to the High Court of Justice against the decision to establish a private prison here is still pending.
The UK's Foreign Office and the EU leaked a document harshly critical of expanding Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem area. The EU heads of mission around there believe that all these settlements could radicalize local Palestinians, and indeed likely cause more terrorism to occur. Yet another logical reason that settlements are totally insane. Israel calls the Foreign Office 'unrelentingly pro-Palestinian.' The document, which reflects the views of many European diplomats, specifically bears a lot on the E1 Ma'ale Adumim settlement that I detailed here a while ago.
Russian missiles: You have to love the Russians and their missiles. They have made a new one that can change around in midflight and deploy decoys. Nice.
Wow, Cunningham really knew how to take bribes with gusto. Lots of spreading probes.
Banning foreigners that the Bush Administration doesn't like: Believe it or not, a huge proportion of America's most valuable inhabitants were not born here, nor did they march in an acceptably quiet lock-step with the Nixon, Ford or Reagan Administrations when they got here.
Indeed, a common theme of American history has been blaming foreigners for their weird and subversive politics poisoning our fair landscape, so now we must understand why it was a terrible idea to let the Jews, Italians and Irish in here in the first place.
Nowadays, the Muslims threaten to pray at weird times of day here, and lecture university students on ancient battles and esoteric organizations like the Cult of the Assassins. THIS SHALL NOT STAND. And when the Irish, Hebrews, Muslims, Italians, Chinese and the Cajun French and the Koreans and the Mexicans are all finally gone, we will look around at a desolate land and wonder where all the good restaurants went.
So I heartily approve that the US is banning academics and accusing them of supporting terrorism. If we do not maintain the purity of our precious bodily fluids, then the terrorists win.
(here's a link purporting an Assassin-Al Qaeda conspiracy link, at Rotten.com of all places! Ha! Oh wait, the Assassins were Shi'a, so it's nonsense - but the structure of the secret society is interesting. Nothing's True, everything is permitted :-) )
Ah, for the longest time I have been speculating that they were going to let the war spill into Syria, under the ridiculous assertion that this would somehow improve the Situation. Finally Sy Hersh has said that we have gone in... Oh boy, what ever the fuck could go wrong? (and who approved of Attacking Syria, exactly? Congress??)
There is a lot of terrible stuff in here.
UP IN THE AIR
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
....“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”
......
Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”
Another part of the article points out the fears among many in the military if American air power is provided to the Iraqis, meaning the "Iraqi government" -- and whichever tinpot tribal leader is in control that Thursday -- will be able to order American airstrikes on whichever 'terrorist' sect they choose.
So in both instances, force spiraling out of control. But what else is new?
Some scientists have discovered an iceberg that 'sings' at about .5 Hz, but right now the Ig Nobel prize ceremony is on MPR, with infinite lectures on infinity, penguin poo pressure research, paper airplanes and frog sniffers. The geek audience is at its best.
The ceremony video is online. All right.
Happy turkey days to all. I have been hiding out as a sudden cold has hit me - but its already getting better. Video games and Orange Juice can cure most anything, especially deep in November.
Strange days though. I find myself less concerned than usual about tracking the war. Plus Israel would appear to be shifting to the left, as Sharon looks to ditch the Crazy Right of Likud. That's really good, I think. But let's put aside those nasty situations and consider what Fark tells us about the world.
William Shatner wants to sell a kidney stone on eBay (bottom of page). Same page: Scotty's ashes will not get shot into space on schedule. Now scheduled for January. It seems like they went thru the transporter a few times too many...
Wireless mosquito defense network. Yes. Food Agency Tries To Quell Fears About Glow-In-The-Dark Meats. Police Search for Gary Glitter in Vietnam.
Fox News reviews the upcoming Clooney Middle East flick Syriana very positively. Also calls it a good companion piece to Three Kings, one of my favorite movies. And it's based on a book by former CIA dude Robert Baer. Hmmm... ok I'm interested. Also the guy who did Traffic is involved.
The basic story is that an oil company has set up shop in the Gulf, just as a merger is going through. The local royal Arab family is in the middle of a succession as the Emir (king) is about to step aside for one of his two sons: an idiot, and a sensitive, forward thinker. Guess who gets the job?
Clooney plays a CIA agent who’s a little over the hill and washed up. But he’s onto the fact that the government and the oil companies are trying to stay in control through the manipulation of who becomes king.
Most profitable East Bank poetry ever: Bob Dylan poems written at the University of Minnesota in 1959-60 fetch $78,000. And today it's the Loring Pasta Bar...
NSA and UFOs: The National Security Agency gave out some information about UFOs -- not much information. Surprisingly, the secretive intelligence agency pointed out that since so much of their reports about 'unidentified' phenomena came from spying on foreign communications systems, they couldn't share most of it! Really, that's pretty funny. A 'Top secret UMBRA' file is declassified here (PDF). (more sweet NSA documents from FAS - check out Secrecy News and the CRS reports)
Is the earth in a space-time vortex? NASA's on the job.
All this Raw Milk must be stopped. Russian scientist trains remote control turtles to spy? Cell phone explodes. Robber holds up bar with ham sandwich.
News from the Co-Prosperity Sphere: Japan to have a 'military' again for first time since WWII. Survey shows money can help buy happiness.
Stephen Hawking is tough as hell. Before a lecture, when he was taken off a respirator, he nearly died, but they resuscitated him. Hawking went on to give the lecture via Internet teleconferencing.
What did he think of "The Simpsons" TV show, which has had Hawking as an animated guest star? "It's the best thing on American TV." What did he think of the program to send American astronauts back to the moon? "Stupid," he answered. "Sending politicians would be much cheaper, because you don't have to bring them back."
Also an elderly Georgia man on oxygen managed to foil some robbers.
Mexican border squads (drug militia?) handle their marijuana with aplomb. El Paso Times:
Pot-laden truck creates armed standoff
A marijuana-laden dump truck got stuck in the Rio Grande on Thursday evening in Hudspeth County, leading to a standoff between U.S. law enforcement and what appeared to be the Mexican military, sheriff officials said.
.....Doyal said the truck driver returned with the armed men, including men who arrived in official-looking vehicles with overhead lights and what appeared to be Mexican soldiers in uniform and with military-style rifles.
In related news, the same part of the brain that gets "the munchies" is altered by a new drug suppressing appetite.
Nothing quite like that British All-Seeing Eye. Now they are going to TRACK ALL VEHICLES IN BRITAIN. Oh what will they think of next? Plus it all got snuck through Parliament, of course...
Gatso 2: rollout of UK's '24x7 vehicle movement database' begins
A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times. The system, which will use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), and will be overseen from a control centre in Hendon, London, is a sort of 'Gatso 2' network, extending. enhancing and linking existing CCTV, ANPR and speedcam systems and databases.
Which possibly explains why the sorcerer's apprentices in ACPO's tech section don't seem to have needed any kind of Parliamentary approval to begin the deployment of what promises to be one the most pervasive surveillance systems on earth.
The control centre is intended to go live in April of next year, and is intended to be processing 50 million number plates a day by year end. ACPO national ANPR co-ordinator John Dean told the Sunday Times that fixed ANPR cameras already exist "at strategic points" on every motorway in the UK, and that the intention was to have "good nationwide coverage within the next 12 months." According to ACPO roads policing head Meredydd Hughes, ANPR systems are planned every 400 yards along motorways, and a trial on the M42 near Birmingham will first be used to enforce variable speed limits, then to 'tackle more serious crime.'
However, in Britain a 1689 law helped get a man out of a parking ticket. This memorable quote:
A spokeswoman for the National Parking Adjudication Service said no previous challenge to parking fines using the Bill of Rights had been successful.
Good luck with your cameras!! They still love drinking. BBC reported that
Looking back only 700 years, London had over 1,300 alehouses - one for every 50 people living in the city.
Meanwhile in Australia they are still messing around with the gnomes. Worst tech products of 2005.
Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet:
The ITU's vision goes further, highlighting refrigerators that independently communicate with grocery stores, washing machines that communicate with clothing, implanted tags with medical equipment and vehicles with stationary or moving objects.
Industrial products would also become increasingly "smart", gaining autonomy and the intelligence thanks to miniaturised but more powerful computing capacity.
"Even particles and 'dust' might be tagged and networked", the ITU said. "
Robot moose foils poachers in Canada (CNN video). Speaking of particles, the nice "Mountains of Creation."
NBC chief says that they pay too much attention to blogs over there, but pushing video over the Internet has improved ratings. What?
Superspreaders of disease are primarily responsible for mass epidemics, new study says. "A lot of people don't infect anyone".
Too much CO2? Stash it underground, says a guy from BP. Weird. An Austrian city is building giant mirrors to get light over a huge hill between November and February. Sweet!!
Bomb the Television. In some ways Bush is a bit of an Anarchist. I mean some radicals have fantasies like this, but really floating this kind of thing in the halls of power, like some crazed giant child -- I find it too easy to believe. Paper Says Bush Talked of Bombing Arab TV Network:
President Bush expressed interest in bombing the headquarters of the Arabic television network al-Jazeera during a White House conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004, a British newspaper reported Tuesday.
The Daily Mirror report was attributed to two anonymous sources describing a classified document they said contained a transcript of the two leaders' talk. One source is quoted as saying Bush's alleged remark concerning the network's headquarters in Qatar was "humorous, not serious," while the other said, "Bush was deadly serious."
I have always thought there was something shadowy and vicious about the conflict between al-Jazeera and Bush. The part in Control Room where American planes kill Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayub is killed in Baghdad was a terrible moment in the history of journalism -- and stories such as this make it seem more likely that the Pentagon really does believe this is a workable PR strategy. Juan Cole reflects on Al Jazeera & the conflict on all this.
Either way, this seems to be serious, given the Official Secrets Act gag orders on the whole thing, reports Guardian. The White House scoffed contemptuously.
Cheney: Drudge: X Marks the spot.
The More Well Known Pong: The history of Beer pong at Dartmouth.
The Mongolian Armed Forces are serving the cause of freedom.This WSJ bit about Mongolia made me sort of happy. I don't know why, but the idea that Bush managed to stir up the spectre of the Mongol Hordes seems so ... appropriate.
But Mongolia, which contributed about 130 soldiers, has maintained its number through five troop rotations, managing to avoid the sort of explosive local debate that has echoed through other foreign capitals. If that number sounds small, consider this: As a proportion of population, the infantry company and engineering platoon Mongolia sent from a population of 2.5 million people makes it the third-largest U.S. partner per capita.
"The Mongolian Armed Forces are serving the cause of freedom," Mr. Bush said, "and U.S. forces are proud to serve beside such fearless warriors."
....In preparing for Mongolia, the president needed to figure out how to tactfully refuse a gift horse. ...Rumsfeld got a horse -- a black-maned steed he named "Montana" -- when he visited this visually stunning nation of desert steppes in October. Such gift horses aren't actually taken home; instead, they are kept around but not ridden, in anticipation of the next visit.
But White House aides say Mr. Bush was worried about the obligations of ownership. Would taxpayers be on the hook for upkeep? Was there any way to guarantee the horse's well-being down the road? The question occupied not one but several meetings at the National Security Council in the days leading up to Mr. Bush's trip...
Kyrgyzstan on verge of anarchy: official.
Gang feuds for control of local bazaars have flared up in the south, while an angry crowd managed to seize and briefly hold the main government building in the north, a severe blow to the reputation of newly elected President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Volkswagen rocked by claims of sex junkets. What more can I say? Oh well, it's Brazil?
MOSCOW (Reuters) - An eagle-eyed investigator's wife ended a Russian manhunt by spotting a murder suspect's name in the credits of a television show, a newspaper said Tuesday.
SONY DRM copy protection defeated by tape. I will always believe that Securing Freedom by protecting Fair Use rights are essential to maintaining a vital and healthy culture. Therefore, whenever corporate copy protection systems are defeated be ingenious human beings, I think it makes a real positive -- and immediate -- improvement. A piece of tape defeats Sony's new DRM system - the rootkit one:
The user can simply apply a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 - which contains the self-loading DRM software, unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD "rip" programs continue to work as usual.
Misc file: What happens when you get possessed by Bill Cosby? Jeff Goldblum is watching you... Cebu mayor: I will go to sex den if I want to. Chinese develop the liquid condom. In the ever-expanding world of the cosmetic surgery industry, new breast implant gel technology promises to be less likely to kill you. Getting a tech job in the XXX internet business.
Interweb securitay: The Bavarian police issue a strangely precise advisory about a Sober.worm virus - before it seemed to appear on the Internet. Always time for intrigue in Bavaria... Oddly enough the worm also comes with (fake) messages that claim to be from the FBI and CIA, implicating illegal activity. Oh my.
Consider the Top 20 Internet Security Vulnerabilities -- and note that there really isn't much wrong with the Mac. Paris Hilton used as virus bait (wha?)
Honduran Teen Escapes Prison for 5th Time. He said he was going to break out and kill all the journalists. Somewhere, the future Karl Rove-Che hybrid of Central America is hiding...
Josh Marshall asks the million dollar question:
This is one of those media questions for which there is no real way to provide a concrete answer. But it is at least worth asking: How many of the stories coming out now under the very broad heading of botched or manipulated intelligence could have been reported and written at more or less any time over the last two years? I suspect the answer is, the great majority of them.
They're getting written now because the president's poor poll numbers make him a readier target.
I know I'm not saying anything most of you don't know. And better late than never, of course. But all working reporters and editors should consider what that says about the profession.
Damn media. More tomorrow.
I have to praise Clocky, the clock that randomly rolls away after you hit the snooze button, so you have to chase it down. I also have to praise the BRILLIANT crazy "talking bobblehead nodder Trading Spouses GOD WARRIOR!!" as sold on eBay - a small, talking statue replicating a crazed Christian fundamentalist mom from an episode. This got some major internet and media buzz and got bid up beyond $800!
Many people were shocked and disgusted with Marguerite's behavior on the show. Not me! I thought it was so hilarious and wonderful it inspired me to create a bobblehead in her likeness! She is now my favorite t.v. personality of all time. When judgement day comes, me and Marguerite will be fighting the demons and stabbing the jaws of gargoyles and the demonic "moon creatures"! Everything's unholy!
An interview with the Dude (the basis for the Big Lebowski) on bullz-eye.com. Really enjoyed this. In particular the part where he just keeps running into the Coen brothers at several parties, a coinsidence that inspires them to do the movie.
What happens when you combine Mario and Che for a T shirt? Genius.
In the interests of offending everyone, I'd like to present Al-Jazeerah.info's official list of Jews in the Media. It's quite a list, but they left off one of my new heroes, quasi-fictional Ninja Hollywood Agent Ari Gold! Its posting on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK site was headlined, "If Jews Can Be This Successful In The Media, Why The Hell Are Mosque Half Wits Not Teaching it!" There's plenty of room in the media for everyone...
SONY Rootkit followup: Sorry i forgot to mention that a virus - worm, rather - has already been found on the internet that exploits this horrible thing. See also Boston Globe.
The Grand Federalist Society conspiracy: David Cumming pointed out to me once that the Masons mostly just eat pancakes. A valuable insight. Meanwhile the FedSoc, as it should be called, has systematically eaten the government. More or less.
Old tidbit on Tracking Election Irregularities: Voting machines in Virginia were reported to malfunction as touchscreen votes for victorious Democrat Tim Kaine were seemingly diverted to Republican Jerry Kilgore.
Virginia televsion station WDBJ-TV reports voters in at least four different precincts "say their votes for Tim Kaine were not recorded or took several attempts to go through. They contend the electronic touch screens repeatedly indicated they were voting for Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore instead of registering their intended vote for his Democratic opponent Tim Kaine."
There were also voting machine problems in Ohio and California. Schwartzenegger himself was initially denied the vote as the system indicated he'd already voted. Wow.
A sweet old 500KB hard drive getting wheeled across a clean room. All right. Sorry I forgot where this link came from.
This is a complex one. DC journalist / conspiracy theorist / ex-NSA/State guy Wayne Madsen is one of those weird sources, and I hardly automatically take stuff on his website seriously. However, he has been out there awhile and he's cultivated some strange sources... Earlier this week he said that there was some kind of homosexual/pedophile ring in the White House that was responsible for ordering a lot of the sexually humiliating practices at sites like Abu Ghraib. (A controversial assertion, to say the least, but where the hell DID all this deviant shit come from? A handful of Kentucky yokels??)
...But that is not the main point today. He has a long quote from something purportedly written by a guy in French intelligence that describes the origins of al Qaeda ("The Base" in Arabic) as essentially the contact information and network architecture of a relatively modest computer setup -- which only later became the grand imaginary demon we shudder at today. So take this with the proper grains of salt...
t is roughly analogous to my usual way of thinking about the whole "nasty international terror network", only put in more concrete and concentrated terms. I won't believe this till someone shows me, but in some ways it makes more sense than the usual nonsense we hear. Hezbollah is just a database query away -- the International Islamic Front was always just a email server. Heh.... wouldn't it be another fine irony? Madsen (sorry no dated link):
November 18, 2005 -- More on Al Qaeda -- the database. Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Courtesy of World Affairs, a journal based in New Delhi, WMR can bring you an important excerpt from an Apr.-Jun. 2004 article by Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence."I first heard about Al-Qaida while I was attending the Command and Staff course in Jordan. I was a French officer at that time and the French Armed Forces had close contacts and cooperation with Jordan . . .
"Two of my Jordanian colleagues were experts in computers. They were air defense officers. Using computer science slang, they introduced a series of jokes about students' punishment.
"For example, when one of us was late at the bus stop to leave the Staff College, the two officers used to tell us: 'You'll be noted in 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' which meant 'You'll be logged in the information database.' Meaning 'You will receive a warning . . .' If the case was more severe, they would used to talk about 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Meaning 'the decision database.' It meant 'you will be punished.' For the worst cases they used to speak of logging in 'Al Qaida.'
"In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements. At the time the system was more sophisticated than necessary for their actual needs.
"It was decided to use a part of the system's memory to host the Islamic Conference's database. It was possible for the countries attending to access the database by telephone: an Intranet, in modern language. The governments of the member-countries as well as some of their embassies in the world were connected to that network.
"[According to a Pakistani major] the database was divided into two parts, the information file where the participants in the meetings could pick up and send information they needed, and the decision file where the decisions made during the previous sessions were recorded and stored. In Arabic, the files were called, 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' and 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat' which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for "base." The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called 'q eidat 'riyadh al 'askariya.' Q eida means "a base" and "Al Qaida" means "the base."
"In the mid-1980s, Al Qaida was a database located in computer and dedicated to the communications of the Islamic Conference's secretariat.
"In the early 1990s, I was a military intelligence officer in the Headquarters of the French Rapid Action Force. Because of my skills in Arabic my job was also to translate a lot of faxes and letters seized or intercepted by our intelligence services . . . We often got intercepted material sent by Islamic networks operating from the UK or from Belgium.
"These documents contained directions sent to Islamic armed groups in Algeria or in France. The messages quoted the sources of statements to be exploited in the redaction of the tracts or leaflets, or to be introduced in video or tapes to be sent to the media. The most commonly quoted sources were the United Nations, the non-aligned countries, the UNHCR and . . . Al Qaida.
"Al Qaida remained the data base of the Islamic Conference. Not all member countries of the Islamic Conference are 'rogue states' and many Islamic groups could pick up information from the databases. It was but natural for Osama Bin Laden to be connected to this network. He is a member of an important family in the banking and business world.
"Because of the presence of 'rogue states,' it became easy for terrorist groups to use the email of the database. Hence, the email of Al Qaida was used, with some interface system, providing secrecy, for the families of the mujaheddin to keep links with their children undergoing training in Afghanistan, or in Libya or in the Beqaa valley, Lebanon. Or in action anywhere in the battlefields where the extremists sponsored by all the 'rogue states' used to fight. And the 'rogue states' included Saudi Arabia. When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages.
"Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden's personal property . . . The terrorist actions in Turkey in 2003 were carried out by Turks and the motives were local and not international, unified, or joint. These crimes put the Turkish government in a difficult position vis-a-vis the British and the Israelis. But the attacks certainly intended to 'punish' Prime Minister Erdogan for being a 'toot tepid' Islamic politician.
" . . . In the Third World the general opinion is that the countries using weapons of mass destruction for economic purposes in the service of imperialism are in fact 'rogue states," specially the US and other NATO countries.
" Some Islamic economic lobbies are conducting a war against the 'liberal" economic lobbies. They use local terrorist groups claiming to act on behalf of Al Qaida. On the other hand, national armies invade independent countries under the aegis of the UN Security Council and carry out pre-emptive wars. And the real sponsors of these wars are not governments but the lobbies concealed behind them.
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money."
One hundred greatest internet moments, including Pokey the Penguin, James Guckert, the Bert-Osama photo, Hamster Dance, DeCSS.... the hits go on. (and how better to start than an illegal link to DeCSS?)
Ant eats away woman's eye in hospital:
KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in eastern India lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said on Tuesday.
The patient recovering from a post-surgery infection shrieked for help as the ants attacked her on Sunday night, but nurses told her it was normal to feel pain from the infection.
On Monday, the patient's family saw a gaping hole with swarming ants in it when they lifted the bandage on her left eye.
Authorities of the Sambhunath Hospital in Kolkata said they were probing the incident.
"It's not uncommon for ants to attack diabetic patients. We have set up a committee to investigate the unfortunate incident," hospital superintendent A. Adhikary said.
Scampering rats and stray cats and dogs sharing bed space with patients are not uncommon sights at India's overcrowded state-run hospitals that are used by millions of poor and middle-class people.
Jon Lyons with a certain camp Anime style: Jon is still chugging away at the whole "amazingly proficient practitioner of the Japanese cartoon style the kids call anime" thing. He entered a comic in a Japanese contest, and thoughtfully put an English version on the Internet for us (open the links in a separate window). Sort of an afternoon daydreaming imagination, Calvin & Hobbes meets Voltron Retro style sort of thing.
He's been refining it, since well, pretty much any of us knew him. So it's really good now. Good luck, Jon, and you've got a good shot at winning yet another contest. Nice. He is wrapping up a final leg at U-W Madison in the Art and Japanese programs. (duhhhh!)
Post college: Points in Case has some entertaining stuff. The Cost of Living in Athens, Georgia, inside the minds of college guys and girls. Well it's over for me, what a bummer...
Sony CD Root Kit causes 500,000 infected computer networks: BoingBoing tells us that vast numbers of computers have been infested with the rootkit program that automatically installs from audio CDs on PCs, which creates lots of dangerous security vulnerabilities. First the details (via earlier post):
The consequences of the flaw are severe. It allows any web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That's about as serious as a security flaw can get.
The root of the problem is a serious design flaw in Sony's web-based uninstaller. When you first fill out Sony's form to request a copy of the uninstaller, the request form downloads and installs a program - an ActiveX control created by the DRM vendor, First4Internet - called CodeSupport. CodeSupport remains on your system after you leave Sony's site, and it is marked as safe for scripting, so any web page can ask CodeSupport to do things. One thing CodeSupport can be told to do is download and install code from an Internet site. Unfortunately, CodeSupport doesn't verify that the downloaded code actually came from Sony or First4Internet. This means any web page can make CodeSupport download and install code from any URL without asking the user's permission.
And its effects:
More than half a million networks, including military and government sites, were likely infected by copy restriction software distributed by Sony on a handful of its CDs, according to a statistical analysis of domain servers conducted by a well-respected security researcher and confirmed by independent experts on Tuesday...
Kaminsky asked over 3 million DNS servers across the net whether or not they knew the addresses associated with the Sony rootkit -- connected.sonymusic.com, updates.xcp-aurora.com, and license.suncom2.com. He uses a "non-recursive DNS query" which allows him to just peek into the cache of that server, and find out if anyone else has asked that particular machine for those addresses recently.
If the DNS server said yes, it had a cached copy of the address, which means that at least one of its client computers had used it to look up Sony's DRM site. If the DNS server said no, then Kaminsky knew for sure that no Sony-compromised machines existed behind it.
The results have surprised Kaminsky himself: 568,200 DNS servers knew about the Sony addresses. With no other reason for people to visit them, that points to one or more computers behind those DNS servers that are Sony-compromised. That's one in six DNS servers, across a statistical sampling of one third of the 9 million DNS servers Kaminsky estimates are on the net.
More details here. COPY PROTECTION CAUSES VIRUSES. Fucking A.
Further Geek News: The story of a rebellion in the Linux community and Linus Torvalds demonstrating he is still King of the Geeks (via digg).
China: All this stuff about China, well I ran into an interesting history of Tiananmen Square. Not that interesting. But Chinese history has that sense of theater... The declassified history of Tiananmen Square. Thanks, National Security Archives
Apparently a Chinese scheme to sell tracts of land on the moon was shut down by those heartless anti-Capitalists, who pulled their license on grounds of "profiteering and lunacy."
There is this book (and a forthcoming video game) about nonviolent conflict called "A force more powerful." One part is about how many protests have happened at Tiananmen over many years. Interesting argument about what the student protesters failed to accomplish. However it also has a somewhat patronizing tone ("we are privileged to decide how these things ought to go, why did you kids put up the Goddess statue?"):
But the defeat of the student movement cannot fully be explained by the violence used to send it underground or into exile, for many other nonviolent movements in the twentieth century deflected repression and endured to fight another day. Erratic and divided leadership, that believed more in the power of the moment than seeing the right moment to apply power, was at least as great a problem. This overconfidence diverted student leaders from the necessary work of organization and strategy. Had they seen the value of recruiting support from other parts of society - workers in transport and communication, civil servants, and, most important, the police and the military - they might have consolidated their gains and opted to develop a broader challenge not confined to Tiananmen, a convenient venue for repression.
Failing to appreciate or plan for the possibility of repression was an error in itself, but it also freed the students to indulge in whatever provocative action seemed enticing. Inflammatory gestures such as erecting, opposite Mao's Mausoleum, a "Goddess of Democracy," a replica of America's Statue of Liberty, doubtless antagonized the regime while not changing any facts on the ground. In short, while the students were familiar with the most obvious forms of nonviolent action - occupying public spaces, hunger strikes and playing to the international media - their decisions in using these sanctions did not reflect "any significant degree of strategic thinking..."10
The failure of strategy at the moment of crisis kept echoing throughout its aftermath. The government's use of repression taught the wrong lesson to many about how rights and democracy should be pursued. In 1999 one former protestor called himself "a victim of June 4," since he was fired and prevented from getting another job; he had decided that "the only path for China was. . .cautious, progressive liberalization." Even the flammable Wu'er Kaixi, who fled China and later had to pump gas and wait on tables in California, succumbed to lower expectations. Explaining why he hoped that Beijing would not be forced to acknowledge its Tiananmen savagery, he said that doing so might only set back gradual reforms. And he wanted to return home. "I think if everything goes okay, I'll be able to go home in five years. If something happens, if there are demonstrations and another crackdown, it will take longer."11
ExplodingDog comic says it all. "I knew the answer in the beginning." The poor stick figure works through it now, too late -- the war was rationalized in terrible ways, turned now to mist. The righteous American stands alone, confused, as the world smolders with conflict, blood all around. The US has apparently introduced White Phosphorus chemical weapons into the arena of Iraq, apparently using them around Fallujah to kill targets and surrounding people:
White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
..... Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.
White Phosphorus shells apparently react with human flesh by sort of melting it, giving victims a carmelized, melted appearance while the clothes remain intact. There are reports that it's a developed Marine tactic, used in Fallujah.
The US Army itself admitted that it uses WP in Iraq, in their own "Field Artillery Magazine", as a DKos diarist pulled it together. The military said (PDF):
"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
When Paula Zahn introduced the exciting Suicide Bomber Woman Video the other day, they couldn't resist throwing in this horrible theatrical music, that kind of "Islamic Threat" theme, heavy with throbbing drums and synth strings, the stuff that keeps FOX News so jazzy and amusing. The thrill of the chase! Vicarious pursuit! Who can stop these Arabs before they come down the street!?
For some reason there are tornadoes ravaging the country today - the atmosphere is weird right now. Why are there so many Lockheed-Martin and Boeing feelgood promotional ads on CNN? What are they even selling?
"The End of News?" by Michael Massing - as rightwing dominance settles over much of the news landscape. This pretty much sums up the toxic information swamp we're in:
Through the Internet, commentators can channel criticism of the press to the general public faster and more efficiently than before. As became plain in the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, to cite one of many examples, an unscrupulous critic can spread exaggerated or erroneous claims instantaneously to thousands of people, who may, in turn, repeat them to millions more on talk radio programs, on cable television, or on more official "news" Web sites. This kind of recycled commentary has become all the more effective because it is aimed principally at a sector of the population that seldom if ever sees serious press coverage.
On the other hand, there's been this change in the political wind over the last month or so, with Libby's indictment, Harry Reid's recalcitrance -- forcing the long-suppressed investigation into the spoofed intelligence. It's been a treat to see Wolf Blitzer asking everyone about it, over and over, while Cafferty cackles. It seems the elite crew finally smell blood.
James Fallows runs through the basic points of the whole case. When every chattering head on TV claims "the Senate Intelligence report PROVES this intelligence manipulation never happened", and yet, that's pretty much their only firm point, it signals that a great many pillars of the pro-war case have finally been knocked away.
Another major defense of the war was the National Intelligence Estimate on October 1, 2002 that the CIA produced about Iraq - which they claim showed that the CIA and other intelligence agencies was dumb as anyone about the matter. There was a classified version that only a limited circle of politicians could read, and the unclassified version. The classified one had lots of things like "The State Dept thinks this WMD is not really certain", while the version that they deigned to permit Congress to read lacked the statements of doubt. Small catch. Lots of details on the NIE here and here.
RUMSFELD STRIKES BACK read the CNN title bar today, as he cited the Dems who'd talked about Iraq's threat in the past. He says that the decision to invade was based on the same stuff they had, they were all seeing, before 2000. He implies that the quality and quantity of information available to the Dems in 2002 and 2003 was the same as what the President saw, as 'everyone knew.' But even the Washington Post can't take that seriously anymore:
But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.
Rummy even trotted out the Orwellian classic "Islamofascists: we just gots to kill 'em!"
Nothing quite as handy as merging political identities for a quick & lazy ethnic demonization -- see 'Judeo-bolshevik' for how these things work out.
They keep saying, "How dare we have this discussion now, when the war is still happening and the troops need moral support?" Well, three arguments:
First, the American public ought to see the difference in Iraq intelligence between what Democrats in Congress, Bush himself, the various intelligence agencies, and the shady guys around Cheney and Rumsfeld saw. The stuff from Chalabi should be on the public record, one piece at a time.
Second, because I believe that things were willfully manipulated (and aggressively defended when attacked - the Plame case a key symptom), the people who did that shit should lose their security clearances and go play golf with their devious friends. They don't have some intrinsic right to government paychecks, even if firing them would embarrass or fragment Bush's sad White House more than it has already. It has been widely said, especially in recent weeks, that people like Michael Ledeen were running around in 2002, helping move the specific Niger forgeries that scared the hell out of the American people. Some of this was dug up by Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen in "Iran Contra II?" Larry Franklin and the AIPAC scandal fold right into this stuff, as well.
Third, it is plenty patriotic to believe that the American people should pressure the government to have a realistic, honestly weighed and "not murderously insane" view of the world. The Bush Administration has no short-circuit to infallibility or the Wisdom of God. The embattled ranks of the U.S. military need to know that the pencil-pushers in DC will actually have to pay a price for their nonsense, and their evasion of disasters like the torture policy. The blame here resides near the top of the chain of command -- we have to help out the lower rungs by getting them out of the system. The armed forces have to know that we are going to protect them from being forced to commit such terrible acts as torture.
From an article in the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts:
In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them, or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason. And we have tortured.
Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham attempts to suspend Habeus Corpus for people detained as terrorist suspects. (If you permit yourself to believe that they're all known, proven terrorists, well, that just isn't true of any jail or shadow detention network - sorry)
Fortunately there are lots of military veteran Democrats, many from Iraq, who are getting into the elections less than 12 months from now. While I can't demand their politics align with my own perfectly, they'd be a hell of a lot better than the chickenhawks at understanding the terrible price of war and violence (as well as treating veterans decently).
The blowback against the Right is reaching far and wide.
Jordan bombing: Juan Cole reflects on the death of Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian movie producer who was involved with the Halloween movies, among others. Akkad was on track to produce a film about Saladin, but now it won't happen:
The guerrilla war in Iraq has claimed a unique cinematic voice of transnational modernity, who had explored the terror of psychopathology and the angst of alienation, as well as the history of anti-colonial movements.
The Iraq conflict has become a bad horror film. It has killed the grandfather of the "Halloween" movies. And it has snuffed out the man who wanted to bring real Muslim heroes such as the Prophet Muhammad, Omar Mukhtar and Saladin to American film-going audiences. Now, his last project will remain unachieved. Saladin was a Kurd from what is now northern Iraq, and he defeated the Crusaders with a legendary chivalry that inspired their respect.
Zarqawi's henchmen inspire only horror, not respect. They have no chivalry, only bloodthirstiness. They are Michael Myers, not Saladin.
Moustapha Akkad was an American voice as well as a Muslim one. We needed his ability to communicate one culture to the other. His death diminishes us all, and signals the nightfall of a decade-long "Halloween" of the horrific sort for Iraq and for the United States.
New Israeli Labor Party leader wants to pay settlers to leave West Bank: Condi Rice managed to cut a deal to fully open the Gaza-Egypt border for the Palestinians, a major step forward towards independent operations. This is good, but also the new leader of the Israeli Labor party, Amir Peretz, said that he wants to compensate settlers who want to leave the West Bank.
Peretz, who accuses the government of neglecting the poor and wants to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, also told Israeli television on Saturday he would back any bid "to give back parts" of the West Bank.
Wegner said Peretz agreed with Sharon that Israel should keep large Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied land. But, Wegner said, Peretz wanted the "billions" Israel spends on building those enclaves to be diverted to help the country's poor.
.....Wegner said Israel was in effect holding settlers not protected by the barrier as "political hostages".
This is true. It is unethical to force Jewish people to live in an occupied territory when they simply can't afford to move out. Perversely, market forces keep impoverished Jewish settlers trapped there, deprived of the choice to leave -- trapped by tax incentives and poverty, they're hapless pawns in the Israeli right-wing's absurd land game.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I have decided that the Internet was better off without my collected musings the last few days.
Meanwhile in the middle of the night, I am working on managing the photos from the Minnesota trade mission to China as Sarah Janecek sends them over. I was surprised to find that AOL Instant Messenger works through the Great Red Firewall....
Anyway I am very tired so I am going to bed now. But it's an interesting thing to be checking out. See PoliticsInMinnesota.com for the blog of the trip. Night!
I recently found this interview posted on Anarkismo.net - from "Beating Fascism: Anarchist Anti-Fascism in theory and practice." Interesting stuff about a sort of hidden battle between organized fascists in the UK and US against the punk/anarchist groups. (more on racist vs. anti-racist music: tolerance.org, National Socialist black metal on Wikipedia, and of course, the white power bands of northern New Jersey). The subject of the interview, 'Three Way Fight' their alias, also has a group "insurgent blog on the struggle against the state and fascism." Sounds about right.
So at the Anti-Flag/Pennywise/Bad Religion show last night, Alison was in one of her favorite places in the world, bouncing around in the mosh pit whirling around that esoteric star in the middle of the Quest. She spied some guy with a shaved head - then saw his shirt featured the SS - the Nazi Schutzstaffel symbol - with some German words. A true racist skinhead punk. So Alison punched him in the back of the head a couple times. Call it anti-fascist direct action.
While France Smolders: Here's a statement from the "Federal Secretariat of Alternative Libertaire" via Anarkismo.net:
People in working class neighbourhoods live in constant fear, both for themselves and for their children. They are afraid of humiliating identity checks, arbitrary arrests, unpunished police violence, and spurious convictions for “outrage and rebellion,” all in order to meet some police quota. Even recent official reports have called attention to this increasing lawlessness on the part of the police.
And what can one say about provocations of the Minister of the Interior, and even worst about the policy which sees the suburbs as territory that needs to be reconquered, all of which increasingly resembles colonial and military “peacekeeping.”
And so yes, we are sorry that this violence – this answer to the illegitimate violence of those in power – is so often paradoxically directed against the very people who are forced to live in these neighbourhoods, who already have to deal with State and ruling class violence. The logic of this spontaneous rebellion is somewhat understood by the population, but its legitimacy is hurt by the destruction of cars, schools and buses.
[.......]
We support the rebellion against injustice, the sense of mass solidarity, the elements of political awareness amongst most young people. As such, we understand and are in solidarity with both the necessity and the reasons behind the direct action now taking place throughout the working class areas.
This week or riots expresses the hopelessness of the most marginalized section of a generation with no future. Yet it should also be seen as being connected to the government’s strategy of tension and current repression of the social movements (transportation, postal workers, students, anti-GMO activists…). All of these struggles bear witness to the same social insecurity.
We are not going to demand a return to “community policing” or building new sports centers so that young people can work out their frustrations in silence. Does anyone seriously believe that this will solve the social tension caused by the political and social violence of those in power?
We are not even going to demand that the Minister of the Interior resign, as has a section of the left. This is a side-issue, a politician’s issue, and it is scandalous when we remember that the Plural Left [1] also passed security legislation and even today has not broken with the dominant liberal-security model.**
There are certain to be more explosions of anger unless there is a redistribution of work and wealth, all the more certainly so if social regression, inequality, racism and marginalization continue unchecked.
“Prevention,” religious recuperation and repression will all be useless. Only justice and social and economic equality can solve things.
There's a certain logic there. Like Hunter said about another time, you could strike sparks anywhere. But with that 21st century twist.
There is a big punk show at the Quest tonight (not that the Quest is really the 'correct' place for punk, but what can you do?) Anti-Flag, Pennywise and Bad Religion are playing... My favorite Anti-Flag song is probably Anatomy of your Enemy. (image link)
10 easy steps to create an enemy and start a war:
Listen closely because we will all see this weapon used in our lives.
It can be used on a society of the most ignorant to the most highly educated.
We need to see their tactics as a weapon against humanity and not as truth.
First step: create the enemy. Sometimes this will be done for you.
Second step: be sure the enemy you have chosen is nothing like you. Find obvious differences like race, language, religion, dietary habits fashion. Emphasize that their soldiers are not doing a job, they are heatless murderers who enjoy killing!
Third step: Once these differences are established continue to reinforce them with all disseminated information.
Fourth step: Have the media broadcast only the ruling party's information.
This can be done through state run media. Remember, in times of conflict all for-profit media repeats the ruling party's information. Therefore all for-profit media becomes state-run.
Fifth step: show this enemy in actions that seem strange, militant, or different.
Always portray the enemy as non-human, evil, a killing machine.
CHORUS: THIS IS HOW TO CREATE AN ENEMY. THIS IS HOW TO START A WAR.
THIS IS HOW TO CREATE AN ENEMY.
Sixth step: Eliminate opposition to the ruling party.
Create an "Us versus Them" mentality. Leave no room for opinions in between.
One that does not support all actions of the ruling party should be considered a traitor.
Seventh step: Use nationalistic and/or religious symbols and rhetoric to define all actions.
This can be achieved by slogans such as "freedom loving people versus those who hate freedom."
This can also be achieved by the use of flags.
Eighth step: Align all actions with the dominant deity. It is very effective to use terms like, "It is god's will" or "god bless our nation."
Ninth step: Design propaganda to show that your soldiers have feelings, hopes, families, and loved ones. Make it cleat that your soldiers are doing a duty; they do not
want or like to kill.
Tenth step: Create and atmosphere of fear, and instability and then offer the ruling party as the only solutions to comfort the public's fears. Remembering the fear of the unknown is always the strongest fear.
CHORUS (repeat); We are not countries. We are not nations. We are not religions.
We are not gods. We are not weapons. We are not ammunition.
We are not killers.
We will NOT be tools.
I'm not a fucker
I will not die
I will not kill
I will not be your slave
I will not fight your battle
I will not die on your battlefield
I will not fight for your world
I am not a fighter
I'm in UNITYYY!!!
I sent this email out to lots of people. If you're reading it, well that means you care about my dear website so you are invited too! (I sure as hell don't have the email addresses of everyone I wanted to invite...)
**********
Long story short: the mess is over and I win. Rambling details below. We are having a Victory Party this Friday evening - at whatever evening time - at the new apartment @ 32 Spruce Place, Apartment 200, in downtown Minneapolis, and everyone's invited. I mean everyone. Forward this email around if you like - 'they' are invited too. Here's the GoogleMap to the Apt. - you just drive up Hennepin towards downtown, turn right at Spruce Place (a block before South 13th street) and then go a block to Harmon Place. The building's on the corner, and I'm going to put my red stoplight in the window as a beacon!
My contact info is: 651 338 7661, AIM: hongpong2000, http://www.hongpong.com (as always)
Last night I was walking to the Hennepin Ave. Davannis with my roommate Colin Kennedy, and a random dude asked us for a cigarette, as they do so often. He talked with us as we walked, about how good friends have to give hard advice (as a friend did about the case that night)... I told the dude my dilemma - that I had to go to court tomorrow and decide if I should plea bargain. He said he'd had his troubles with the law and had been caught with 17 ounces of cocaine (someone else's, of course!) and he'd had the option of a plea for 15 years or going up for 40. He said that going to jail was good for him, it forced him to change his life, and he spent 3 years reading law books. The state wouldn't fight hard to force a plea because it costs lots of money to impanel a jury, he said. He told me that I should stick it out and tell the truth, and whatever higher power I might believe in would see that the truth would set things right, and it would be plain for all to see. Best legal advice I'd gotten in a while!
It took almost seven full months, but we stuck it out in court and rotated through three judges in all. However, today I didn't expect anything would happen, except setting a court date with yet another judge. This time around, the new one, Judge Kathleen Gearin, talked with Gary Wood, my lawyer, and the city prosecutor Jeffrey Martin, for quite awhile in the Chambers.
When Gary came back it was some good news. He wasn't sure how the judge was feeling about it but they'd offered a Disorderly Conduct with a $50 fine. I compared that with the thought of hundreds more dollars on legal fees that I can't afford and I decided to go for the plea. We went back in to wait to finish this thing.
I'm recollecting this from memory here... So when we went up to the judge in court, she asked if I wanted to take the plea and I said something like 'Yes, because I can't afford to go any further.' She looked over the police statements and said that there was something about the issue of spoilage of evidence and a memory card. She asked the prosecutor if this memory card ever showed up at the property room and he said it never had. However, he never offered a particular defense or explanation of this.
She asked me to explain in my own words what happened, and what if anything was contained on the memory card. I said that we, as a senior class, had been on a riverboat cruise that day, and I'd taken around a hundred pictures of everyone gathered together for one last time ... and she said, alright get to the point... so I said that we'd been in a cottage, the police came in, I took a picture of that and took more pictures outside. I said that I know it is legal to take photographs from a public space as long as you obey lawful orders from police, etc. I told her that I took a picture of someone (Andrew Kracziewicz) being arrested, and then the police hit the camera out of my hand and I got arrested. I said that at the jail, the police had showed me the camera and asked if it was mine, and I said that it was, then I got it back when I was released, without the memory card.
She asked if the photos indicated something illegal by the police, and I said something like that they were being forceful and overreacting. Well, she said, they had to be forceful, and that it seemed from the police reports that some people had been out of control. I didn't try to defend the actions of everyone there and stuck to the matter of the pictures. I said that the existence of the pictures proved that I hadn't been shoving Officer Moore -- I'd been taking pictures. The prosecutor didn't try to defend or challenge this, aside from claiming that the police report was the state's full statement on the matter.
The judge said (I wish I had the exact quote) that, with a reference to a precedent of McGill vs. someone, that failing to produce the evidence was prejudicial to the defendant - and that she was bothered by the fact that these pictures never showed up. Citing some statute, she said that the charge of obstruction of legal process of force was dismissed. She seemed quite ticked about how they never brought the pictures. I had never expected such sharp words about it, so it was really great to hear after all this.
I didn't pontificate about any grand concepts of freedom of the press or claim that Macalester students are all saints because that kind of thing would not really resolve the situation. It was easier to deal with all this with no friends or family at the courtroom watching me - it simplified the whole thing mentally, and well, I hadn't actually expected anything at all to happen today, so I never suggested that anyone go with me.
In the end, at the very least I proved to the police that they can't just destroy photos and expect to totally get away with it. Gary thought that they'd fought so hard in this case because of some of the top city attorneys decided to pressure us - they had earlier demanded written apologies with the other plea bargains, but they forgot to do this in writing, so it's not going to happen.
After the case I bragged to my dear old roommate Alison Norman, who is going crosseyed squinting at law books at William Mitchell 60 hours a week, that I'd won one case and now she better catch up!
When all of this was over I remembered what one friend always used to say to me... "Now Dan, drive carefully. I know what your country does and I don't want to go to Guantanamo!" The terrible truth of what happened in this incident was that Audun, an international student, was assaulted by the jail personnel, and his lack of a US passport probably contributed to that. The police also maced Zeynep in front of her cottage. The experience ruptured their sense of what this country's about -- and with the news these days that Cheney is darting around the Capitol begging Republicans to let them keep torturing vanished foreigners, along with news of a secret network of CIA detention camps in Eastern Europe (why would anyone think badly of secret camps around there, anyway?) -- it seems that this contempt for the rights of non-citizens trickles right down from those policies at the top. Inside jail it's not too difficult to see that you're only a few cells on the spreadsheet away from Guantanamo. It turned out that my ever-cynical friend was quite correct.
There's some possibility of a lawsuit down the line, in the hopes that we could discourage the police and sheriffs from abusing people like this, but I won't make any predictions or plans, and I sure as hell don't want to worry about it that much, after having experienced this weird and time-consuming trip through the System. The odometer's finally rolled over on this mess, and I'm happy about it. Tomorrow I'll wake up free of Conditional Release, having won a piece by standing my ground, but oddly winning after I'd given up.
Cheers to all of you and thanks for your steadfast support, far flung you may be. I want to come and visit people sometime in the dead of winter... +1 for the good guys!
--Dan
I arrived in the middle of an antiwar rally at the University of Minnesota yesterday, as approximately 1000 people, mostly students, came to mark the 2000th US military death, the indictment of Lewis Libby, and a rapidly shifting national political situation.
When the newly-formed Youth Against War and Racism group met at the Loring Park Coffee House in March to plan a fall student protest, they couldn't have foreseen how America's view of the war would shift by then: the Downing Street Memos showed the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invasion, I. Lewis Libby was indicted for damaging national security while trying to discredit a war critic, and worst of all, more than 2000 American service personnel were killed.
On Wednesday afternoon, activists staged dozens of protests nationwide, as about 1000 people, including hundreds of Minneapolis high school students, rallied on the U's East Bank to mark the strange year that's passed since Bush's re-election. YAWR students demanded that Minneapolis schools ban military recruiters (as a Minnesota Daily video documents), though such a move could endanger their federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act. "War leaves every child behind," read one protester's sign.
As the protest spilled off the Mall into Washington Avenue, turning east towards the military recruiting offices, Minneapolis City Councilman Dean Zimmermann was spotted standing high atop a utility box, attempting to count the crowd. More than a dozen counter-protesters lined up in front of the offices with signs such as "Peace through Strength" and "The leaders of tomorrow should be in class today!" Protesters responded by shouting that "the leaders of tomorrow are getting practice today!"
Across the spectrum, America is becoming a majority anti-war country. 53% of Americans believe that the administration "deliberately misled the public" on WMD issues, a Gallup/CNN poll discovered last week. Meanwhile, reports in the Italian media suggested that before the war, Italian military intelligence and the Pentagon's secret Office of Special Plans channeled these lies, including the Niger uranium forgeries, into the White House.
Who could blame high school students for war anxiety? The same Pentagon bureaucracy that ruthlessly targets Sunni tribesmen selects students based on intelligence like their grades, ethnicity and income. What student could believe a war with 27 rationales? They see their friends and family disappear, only to return injured, psychologically damaged, exposed to depleted uranium and IEDs, or worse, draped under a flag.
One anonymous black-clad protester, masked with a bandana, told me that he and his associates represented the Minnesota branch of the Anarchist Black Cross organization. His principal reason for protesting? "Revolution," he said, revealing the core of our nation's spirit - to rebel, grow, prosper. It still flourishes: in October, Ipsos Public Affairs found that 50% of Americans agreed that "if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."
After the street protest, at the Oak Street Cinema a teach-in was held to teach students how to challenge recruiters in their schools. The protest was also organized by the Anti-War Committee, Socialist Alternative and the Anti-War Organizing League.
A major day in American history. Well there's been a lot of those lately. For the first time in decades, the Senate was abruptly shifted into a closed session. Unfortunately I have a bunch of stuff to deal with tonight so I'm not sure how much I can post. So why not cut to the chase with an article from the American Conservative by ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi, detailing how Michael Ledeen, SISMI (the Italian military intelligence agency), and the Office of Special Plans worked to help channel that spoofed intelligence, including the Niger forgeries so ardently defended by Libby, Rove et. al.
This was posted on ex-CIA officer Larry Johnson's website, No Quarter. Johnson is a strong supporter of Joe Wilson. This was posted in the morning. I wonder if it came up in the Senate.
Forging the Case for War
Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?
by Philip Giraldi
From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story. That she was exposed in an attempt to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is clear, but the drive to demonize Wilson cannot reasonably be attributed only to revenge. Rather, her identification likely grew out of an attempt to cover up the forging of documents alleging that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
What took place and why will not be known with any certainty until the details of the Fitzgerald investigation are revealed. (As we go to press, Fitzgerald has made no public statement.) But recent revelations in the Italian press, most notably in the pages of La Repubblica, along with information already on the public record, suggest a plausible scenario for the evolution of Plamegate.
Information developed by Italian investigators indicates that the documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian intelligence service. It also reveals that the introduction of the documents into the American intelligence stream was facilitated by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), a parallel intelligence center set up in the Pentagon to develop alternative sources of information in support of war against Iraq.
The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain’s MI-6.
But the Italian information was inconclusive and old, some of it dating from the 1980s. The British, the CIA, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyzed the intelligence and declared that it was “lacking in detail” and “very limited” in scope.
In February 2002, Pollari and Berlusconi resubmitted their report to Washington with some embellishments, resulting in Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger. Wilson visited Niamey in February 2002 and subsequently reported to the CIA that the information could not be confirmed.
Enter Michael Ledeen, the Office of Special Plans’ man in Rome. Ledeen was paid $30,000 by the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1978 for a report on terrorism and was well known to senior SISMI officials. Italian sources indicate that Pollari was eager to engage with the Pentagon hardliners, knowing they were at odds with the CIA and the State Department officials who had slighted him. He turned to Ledeen, who quickly established himself as the liaison between SISMI and Feith’s OSP, where he was a consultant. Ledeen, who had personal access to the National Security Council’s Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and was also a confidant of Vice President Cheney, was well placed to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State.
The timing, August 2002, was also propitious as the administration was intensifying its efforts to make the case for war. In the same month, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was set up to market the war by providing information to friends in the media. It has subsequently been alleged that false information generated by Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress was given to Judith Miller and other journalists through WHIG.
On Sept. 9, 2002, Ledeen set up a secret meeting between Pollari and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley. Two weeks before the meeting, a group of documents had been offered to journalist Elisabetta Burba of the Italian magazine Panorama for $10,000, but the demand for money was soon dropped and the papers were handed over. The man offering the documents was Rocco Martino, a former SISMI officer who delivered the first WMD dossier to London in October 2002. That Martino quickly dropped his request for money suggests that the approach was a set-up primarily intended to surface the documents.
Panorama, perhaps not coincidentally, is owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi. On Oct. 9, the documents were taken from the magazine to the U.S. Embassy, where they were apparently expected. Instead of going to the CIA Station, which would have been the normal procedure, they were sent straight to Washington where they bypassed the agency’s analysts and went directly to the NSC and the Vice President’s Office.
On Jan. 28, 2003, over the objections of the CIA and State, the famous 16 words about Niger’s uranium were used in President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying an attack on Iraq: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Both the British and American governments had actually obtained the report from the Italians, who had asked that they not be identified as the source. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency also looked at the documents shortly after Bush spoke and pronounced them crude forgeries.
President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Vice President Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.
The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.
In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.
At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.
It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.
The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.
Developing!!! What nice days...
Hey all, I sent out this email to some people about the ongoing Senior Week legal case. I had to go down to court on Monday but nothing happened. Suffice it to say, this is a big pain in the arse:
From: Dan Feidt <dan.feidt@gmail.com>
Date: October 31, 2005 2:46:38 PM CST
To: everyone
Subject: Bounced to another judge
So I get down there and asked where Judge Ostby is hearing cases today. The woman at the desk said that Judge Ostby isn't hearing any cases today. What?! Apparently she has rotated from misdemeanors to felonies and she ditched this case like the rotten fish it is. So we got reassigned to November 8 with Judge Gearin.
Also, the city attorney is angry that the previous plea bargains for the other guys failed to include an apology, so they may try to 'undo' the plea bargains in order to try to secure an apology.
While they said that we had been sent notices that the court date had changed, neither I nor Gary Wood got one so it was totally a surprise. What an excellent bureaucracy. A little Kafkaesque.
Today I am working on Politics in MN stuff as well as Computer Zone things. There's obviously a lot to say about TraitorGate - I mean the Plame scandal. I promise there will be more. In the meantime go see Firedoglake.