Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Plains dealing: Andy recommends Left in the West as a top spot for spotting the actions of Senator Conrad Burns in covering up his Abramoff connections, among other things. References to "US-Asia Network" are getting scrubbed off Burns' official website.
Newt Gingrich is posing as a champion of reform, as his 2008 campaign for President opens. However, as David Sirota notes at The Nation, Newt is quite responsible for helping start Abramoff's career, and the whole K Street Project complex that has worked out so well.
Some really wicked lasers: WickedLasers.com is pimp (via HipTechBlog). You can purchase a $559 laser from them that will burn holes in things. Even their most minor laser can mess with someone's eye. Nothing says "now it's really the 21st century" like your own directed energy weapon! Photo/video gallery of laser effects.
Michael Ledeen says Osama is dead: mainly to make his point that the old Middle Eastern patriarchy is wheezing its last right now. Ends "Faster. Please?" as always. Fortunately I'm sure he will make a lot more money dealing arms very soon. Raimondo: "War, Lies, and Videotape: They fabricated the case against Iraq – now they're moving on Iran." Ledeen will play a role in these maneuvers, to be sure. Robert Dreyfuss: "The Bush who cried wolf," pointing out that we can't really pressure Iran much, because of the Iraq disaster.
Chaostan: The theory: Dude named Richard Maybury says that a third of the world (North Africa, middle east, Asia, Europe up to Poland) should basically be characterized as Chaostan, a place of increasing violence and disintegrative political forces – Moscow-based fascists versus Islamic radicals in the north, and the West versus the rest further south. A summary of Chaostan and some principles involved. He thinks that you can make quality investments based on his geopolitical conceits. And sell you a newsletter about it.
Alito scares me. But there is nothing to be done about it, which is depressing. Dionne: A Hearing About Nothing. The Senate is basically a black hole from which no logic can emerge. On the other hand, the media has studiously avoided quoting Russ Feingold, who, like the pretty much the rest of the judiciary committee, is probably running for President.
Google Earth comes to OS X: (and finally isn't beta) Huzzah, we can play with Google Earth now. You can do many cool things to extend its functions, like near-real-time 3D flight tracking as well as the CIA factbook, and even geo-tagging of Flickr photos. Check out the Google Earth Blog for lots more. (Is Apple trying to pad the performance stats in the newly released Intel Macs?)
Family Killed by Ninjas: A photo from City Pages that Nick Petersen sent to me.
Apple == Super Hotness. The only stock I own is some Apple stock. Which is definitely the hot stock these days. In fact, it has been going up about as fast as Google. Somehow, Forbes magazine tells us that even though iPod sales went up 240% last year, and computer sales more than 60%, Apple stock is too hot right now. I rarely never have faith in the market, but seriously, their fourth quarter earnings were 50 cents a share. The video iPod will probably move 4 million units in the first quarter, as they say... so what's the problem?
Russians for Condi: Her whole middle aged single thing is too much for Vladimir Zhirinovsky:
"Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention," he added. "Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'
"Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible."
Superconductors are frickin sweet: There is apparently this theory now that suggests that superconductors could neutralize gravity fields and propel spaceships while bending the fabric of space. Or something like that. There was this German scientist (who blew off his hands and most of his eyesight experimenting with explosives as a teenager), anyway he developed a theory which was capable of predicting the mass of particles from first principles. He thought that the interaction between gravity and electromagnetism could be explained by adding some extra dimensions to the model of the universe, and now they think that this could be applied to a superconducting method of launching spaceships. Damn, that would be the coolest thing ever.
You can purchase a little superconducting disc, and a couple quality magnets, for $145. Ms. Anderson back at MPA did this in Chemistry class, and it was amazing to see the magnets hovering. I definitely felt like there was some weird shit going on there. Why not try the same stuff, only a couple million times higher intensity? Sweet.
Well that is all for now. I need to go drink and watch the Timberwolves.
TheMemoryHole.org: LSD Reports From the US Military, mostly from back in the 1950s. Totally for real. I was delighted to hear that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who inadvertently created Lysergic Acid Diethyl-Amide, celebrated his 100th birthday this week. Thanks, Albert! You are cooler than all the Beat poets combined! (I just had this vision of a giant Allen Ginsberg robot stomping around Tokyo. I've got to lay off these magic droplets!)
We'll have lots more later today, but this batch of goodies should entertain until later.
Why are conservatives so afraid? by Kos. (But is Kos a coward?) Damn right, Digby:
This idea that we are living in a unique time that calls for special measures is what they always say. (And this current fantasy about the unique threat that proved our oceans couldn't protect us is particularly rich considering they fearmongered a communist threat of total annihilation for decades.) Often cooler heads are able to quell the worst excesses (like the fervent belief that we needed to launch a tactical nuclear war against the commies) and satisfy the right wing's other ongoing paranoid fantasy --- the left as a fifth column --- with silly, wasteful surveillance of animal rights groups or Quakers or former Beatles (along with pernicious surveillance of their partisan opponents.)
They are rhinestone cowboys who are scared to death and don't know how to contain their fear. So they lash out at their domestic political enemies, who they can bluster about and pretend to be tough, while hiding behind the military uniforms of their Big Brother and Preznit Daddy (which is a real stretch when it comes to Junior.)
The fact that they continue to win elections as being the tough guys perhaps says more about our puerile culture than anything else. They lash out like frightened children and too many people see that as courage or resolve.
Violent Islamic fundamentalism is a serious problem, not an existential threat. And it's a difficult problem that requires adults who can keep their heads about them when the terrorists put on their scary show, not big-for-their-age eight year olds staging a temper tantrum.
War and Piece rocks for your Washington 'defense' and neocon tidbits. Laura Rozen 'gets it.'
MediaMatters video: Olbermann awards "Worst Person" honors to Gibson for his religious "intolerance"; Coulter named runner-up for "Nazi block watchers" comment.
Parapolitics, from those calm people at PrisonPlanet: Spooky AOL Ad Says Big Brother Is Watching the Internet. At this site, AOL is essentially trying to scare people off the Internet? A few other PP posts, some from other sources: Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue: A President at war with America. Local paper reports that Canadian Army to occupy downtown Winnipeg as part of a drill. The Decline of the American Empire and the ever-popular 9/11 intrigue thread, Silverstein Answers WTC Building 7 Charges, are by PP writers. Around and around it goes.
From the similar SIANews.com, a division of LibertyThink, MySpace.com: Rupert Murdoch's New Takeover/IP-invasion Project and Michael Berg Changes Story About Nick & Moussaoui. I think it is funny that this one dude, Michael P. Wright of Norman Oklahoma, is on a crusade to prove whatever the hell happened with Nick Berg - and the fact that Zacharias Moussaoui somehow had Berg's computer password is one of the weirdest 9/11 anomalies out there. Seriously, my best of luck to him, but whatever happened seems to have been covered up quite thoroughly.
The DeLay Babylon Project: WaPo: The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail. Case Bringing New Scrutiny To a System and a Profession. Think Progress » Abramoff: The House That Jack Built.
Even David Brooks rips GOP over Abramoff and sleaze. Oh Bobo, where's the love?
Followup on Sibel Edmonds: Edmonds has evidently told the blogger at 'Wot Is It Good 4' that he's brought together many Sibel-approved nuggets of info/conspiracy. So let's list: sibel and feith and perle?, Outing Plame? or Outing Brewster Jennings? and of course sibel edmonds, brewster jennings, edelman and grossman. I'll have some more on this later.
Secret Pentagon Study: Armor Problems Have Killed Many. Sounds like whoever wrote that thing is about to get fired and find a horse head in their bed.
Some goodies from the Agonist: More on Iran attack plans, Iran and deterrence, and the Persian difference. Stirling Newberry comments on the GWOT for the Agonist. Makes a lot of sense:
...the creation of intelligence product has demonstrably been compromised, this is what Afterdowningstreet shows, what Daschle's comments on the information that Bush gave, and didn't on spygate shows, and what the constant flow of rosy scenario Iraq reconstruction reports show. Computer people have a phrase "GIGO" for "Garbage In, Garbage Out", but there is also the "filter effect", where a program or mathematical operation yields the same result no matter what is put in.
With a lumpenexecutive at the top, and a corruption of the synthesis process, all the high sounding organizational ideas are not worth anything. Further more, if there were a serious drive to integrate information, then people such as Crowley [Rowley? -Hongpong] - who wrote one of the two "gun shot residue" memos on the possibility of terrorists learning how to fly planes - would be promoted, not exiled, and the people who have overseen the failure to find the Anthrax attacker or forsee 9/11 would not have been promoted to the top of the counter-terrorism chain. An agency run by screw ups, is going to screw up. An agency managed by kiss ups, is going to spend its time managing up, not down.
Also he makes the point that the 'terror' organizations pursued by the FBI fail to include right-wing Christian groups. I feel that Newberry's basic theory of what constitutes 'terrorism' is really pretty accurate:
Thus, there is not only an ineffective executive, but an entire subculture whose functional effectiveness is degraded by the realization that they work for a political, and not national, security apparatus. There is a willing participation in the construction of an inaccurate paradigm, the construction of institutions designed to perpetuate and disseminate that inaccurate paradigm, the execution of plans based around that inaccurate paradigm, and the acceptance of the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of civilians because of the willfully inaccurate and criminally negligent handling of the global war on terrorism. The trend line is not upwards for ourside, but flat. And that means that the next spectacular terrorist attack on our soil is a matter of when, not if.
The corruption of executive institution, the willing prostitution of the executive branch of government, and the politicization of hierarchy and research are the root causes for our failure to decapitate Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
[.....]
Terrorism has two modes: that of asymmetrical warfare - where one side chooses not to oppose the military of the other side directly, but instead attacks civilians or prisoners. The other is a mode of political control, where privileged - economically or politically is immaterial - actors act in arbitrary and capricious ways, often through proxies, to prevent the formation of political counter-consensus. This second form of terrorism is far more common and pervasive. Its actions account for the bulk of deaths by terrorization. The use of terror and terrorization is an intergral part of warfare and even governance, in that some agentes will only be deterred by the possibility of disproportionate force. However, it only becomes terrorism, when there is the attempt to terrorize the mean, not the extreme, of the body politic. It also is terrorism when there is the discontinuity with the rule of law. The difference between repression and terrorism, is that terrorism strikes without legal justification or accountability. Crystalnacht was terrorism, Dachau was something far worse.
This paradigm makes it clear that the flip side of non-state terrorism, and revolutionary or anarchist terrorism, is state or hierarchical terrorism. The two are co-dependent upon each other.
All right. The State Dept straightens it out: “Identifying Misinformation” as summarized by FTW.
Liberal hawks piss me off because they seem to wholly lack integrity. Ugh.
Liberal Hawks: Flying in Neocon Circles
By Tom Barry
In the heat of Iraq the neoconservatives are seeing their visions of Pax Americana turn into nightmares and headaches. But they are not alone. Liberal hawks like Ivo Daalder, Robert Kerrey, and Will Marshall also find themselves discredited as the quagmire in Iraq swallows up all their arguments supporting the invasion and occupation.