Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Billmon tells a quality story about catching the Cairo-Luxor train on his trip to cover economic fora in Egypt.
I liked Alternet's Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State, especially, well, comprehensive domestic monitoring and "the Long War."
Andy Rooney can't handle Ali G.
I am posting some goofy stuff to spice your Thursday. Take it with triple grains of salt. Aside from the Zogby Poll, most everything below is basically fruitbat tinfoil stuff, the skimmings of the crazy paranoid side of the internet.
Empirical 9/11 skepticism: Zogby Poll: Over 70 Million American Adults Support New 9/11 Investigation:
May 22, 2006 -- Although the Bush administration continues to exploit September 11 to justify domestic spying, unprecedented spending and a permanent state of war, a new Zogby poll reveals that less than half of the American public trusts the official 9/11 story or believes the attacks were adequately investigated.
911Truth.org Urges 2006 Reform Candidates to Recognize a Powerful New Constituency
The poll is the first scientific survey of Americans' belief in a 9/11 cover up or the need to investigate possible US government complicity, and was commissioned to inform deliberations at the June 2~4 "9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future" conference in Chicago. Poll results indicate 42% believe there has indeed been a cover up (with 10% unsure) and 45% think "Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success" (with 8% unsure). The poll of American residents was conducted from Friday, May 12 through Tuesday, May 16, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.9. All inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be directed to Zogby International.
According to Janice Matthews, executive director of 911truth.org, "To those who have followed the mounting evidence for US government involvement in 9/11, these results are both heartening and frankly quite amazing, given the mainstream media's ongoing refusal to cover the most critical questions of that day. Our August 2004 Zogby poll of New Yorkers showed nearly half believe certain US officials 'consciously' allowed the attacks to happen and 66% want a fresh investigation, but these were people closest to the tragedy and most familiar with facts refuting the official account. This revelation that so many millions nationwide now also recognize a 9/11 cover up and the need for a new inquiry should be a wake up call for all 2006 political candidates hoping to turn this country around. We think it also indicates Americans are awakening to the larger pattern of deceit that led us into Constitutional twilight and endless war, and that our independent media may have finally come of age."
(The poll sponsors see knowledge of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 as a bellwether issue, because if people do not know this elementary fact, they have probably not been exposed to any independent 9/11 research at all. Because the number of respondents who support a new investigation of 9/11 (45%)) is roughly the same as the number who knew about the collapse of Building 7 (52%), it can reasonably be extrapolated that if the entire public were exposed to independent 9/11 research, about 90 percent would support a new investigation of the events of that fateful day.)
Wow. No wonder Loose Change is a top Google Video download. Scholars for 9/11 Truth have had trouble with their Wikipedia entry.
Internet dudes find link between Titan Corporation defense contractor and massive 5.5 ton cocaine bust. On my birthday no less: San Diego Defense Contractor Linked to Company in 5.5 Ton Cocaine Bust:
The MadCowMorningNews has uncovered evidence implicating a San Diego defense contractor, The Titan Corporation, in fraud involving the shadowy St. Petersburg FL company involved in last month’s mysterious 5.5 ton cocaine seizure in Mexico.
Titan is already embroiled in major scandals which include the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and conviction and a $28 million fine for fixing a Presidential election in the African state of Benin. The company is also receiving attention for its role as the biggest campaign contributor of disgraced former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
A MadCowMorningNews investigation of Titan Corp. also revealed that the firm has a curious and so-far unexplained connection to Makram Chams, a mysterious Lebanese man who provided assistance to Mohamed Atta and other terrorist hijackers in Venice Florida before the 9.11 attack.
Chams, who owned a convenience store in Venice, befriended and assisted the terrorist hijackers before disappearing after the 9.11 attack, leaving behind a thriving Kwik-Check mini-market which has since stood abandoned in the heart of the Venice business district.
Evidence in SEC filings recently brought to our attention reveal what happened to Chams: he went to work for Titan. According to documents filed by the company, Chams was a contractor working for Titan Corp in Saudi Arabia as recently as last year.
This was posted on some site called LibertyPost with a lot of strange comments afterwards.
A little more silly conspiratoria: France saves us from British terror bombing: I ended up with some more wild conspiracy stories and I will post them in the name of Thursday afternoon boredom. The idea is floated around paranoid corners (cloakanddagger.de) that last Thursday's Amtrak powerdown was in fact a narrowly averted "false flag" terrorist attack that "Dunblaine Pedophile Tony Blair" and "N.S.A. British-Mossad" nearly pulled off, but a French/American team killed the power to prevent trains sailing into government-planted bombs (noted on Alex Jones' PrisonPlanet). And former Illinois governor George Ryan and Fidel Castro are both Mossad agents. I really really don't believe it - in fact it is sort of an obvious inversion and the silly writing style doesn't enhance the entertainment value. But there you are. There were also theories that the London bombing was staged by the Brits. Check Total Information Analysis for more along these lines.
Obligatory scheming shadow powers note: The Bilderberg Group is meeting in Ottowa, Canada June 8-11 according to AmericanFreePress.net. They are "especially concerned about Venezuela" right now according to the strange AFP.
Some vet named Patrick Briley: CHERTOFF CREATED TERROR PRETEXTS FOR US POLICE STATE and Did the Fed's Cover Up Oklahoma University Bombing?
There Is No Conspiracy - Only Official Policy. Mostly related to Chavez. Sure, whatever.
The Late Great Sherman Skolnick: An oddball Chicago guy named Sherman Skolnick passed away at 75 after decades of messing with the notoriously corrupt Illinois legal system through the "Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts." Here's part 29 of his "Overthrow of the American Republic", Coca-Cola, the CIA and the Courts, part 16. Here's the Cloak and Dagger Obit. This really weird biography from DailyCatholic.org says he managed to get a federal judge thrown in jail, which is quite impressive.
PP also has paranoid things to say about mysterious Mexican separatists that wish to secede from the southwest US and form "Aztlan". Here's what Aztlan say today about Sensenbrenner's anti-immigrant proposals. I guess they are playing into his hands. I have heard that the NSA, FBI, etc. monitor these sorts of secessionist groups, which I would say is probably a logical thing to do.
Of course you can trust this man - Jeff Rense
I had an argument about skim vs 2% milk the other day, then ran into this milk conspiracy on arch-conspiracy theorist Jeff Rense's site, Rense.com: The Pus-Bacteria Moustache Marketing Milk And Disease and more "truth" about milk. Rense has plenty of other weird stuff like UFOs, and this thing about how AIDS was created by the government as they engineered a "Gay Cancer". (check out the shady polio vaccine site too). 9/11 was a Cheney-orchestrated Reichstag Fire type event. Ok fine.
Well that is all from the crazy paranoid side for now. I don't really know how to lend coherence to this post and I sort of feel like a bastard for even writing it. Go back to your fucking cable news now!
Looks like I'm going to handle the booth a bit for Politics in Minnesota at the Republican state convention down at the Minneapolis convention center this afternoon, Friday & Saturday. I woulda been able to make some bank if I could do the DFL convention at Rochester, but it looks like I'll have to deal with the Chunkies graduating from high school next Saturday.
Mordred sends word that he's busy moving out of his apartment in Tucson and I think going to Santa Fe. But he sent along a REALLY sweet video of one North Carolina Republican's Vernon Robinson's ad for Congress.
His platform is basically pretty straightforward:
Vernon Robinson's Public Policy Views in a Nutshell
I am pro-Constitution, pro-national sovereignty, pro-military, pro-veteran, pro-growth, pro-business, pro-property rights, pro-marriage, pro-adoption, pro-farmer, pro-school choice, pro-states' rights, pro-religious freedom, pro-Pledge of Allegiance, pro-death penalty, pro-gun, and pro-life.
I will secure our borders and demand the vigorous enforcement of our immigration laws. I support market-based reforms of government entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I am unabashedly and unalterably opposed to racial quotas, special rights for homosexuals, the United Nations, the proliferation of frivolous lawsuits, women in combat, pork barrel spending, useless government programs and agencies, onerous regulations, and all tax hikes.
Securing Our Borders
Our current immigration policy is a treasonable threat to both public health and national security. We do not need a wall to secure our borders. Five thousand Marines and 100 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) can do the job tomorrow. We must also make English the official language of the United States. Any local government or college that interferes with immigration enforcement should lose its federal aid. Finally, automatic citizenship for those born here must be replaced with the baby adopting the citizenship of the mother. These steps must precede any guest worker program.
.....Defending Marriage and Traditional Values
I will always fight for what's right and you will always know where I stand. We cannot redefine marriage as any grouping of adults and children. I will vigorously oppose homosexual marriages, marriage-lite proposals and adoptions, as well as "gay" Scoutmasters. While my opponent believes that those in a drag queen parade and Rosa Parks are both civil rights leaders, I will join the dozens of Congressmen who sponsored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that provides that "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."
There was also some funny stuff about stopping the "feminization" of the military and shutting down bases in Japan, Germany and Korea.
I can only hope that the denizens of the MN GOP are half as entertaining.
I wandered off and didn't feel like writing on Memorial Day. However the many sacrifices of America's soldiers, sailors and Marines should be noted. Before this strange and dark administration took the helm, I had a pretty serious view of what service in the military meant. In part this was because there were two other Daniel Feidts who fought for the United States.
Daniel S. Feidt Sr., my grandfather, enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, even though he could have avoided service since he was an elected Minnesota state senator, more than 30 years old, and color-blind. He went into the intelligence section and planned raids against the Axis from Britain, Egypt and late in the war, at the Poltava air base in recaptured Ukrainian territory. At one point there was a Nazi air raid and a bomb whizzed through his tent and out the other side. He eventually reached the rank of major, and since he was a lawyer, they asked him to go work at the Nuremberg trials, but he declined because it was time to go back stateside and start a family.
Another interesting story was the one of Daniel Feidt of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who fought in the Civil War. We have transcripts of his letters home, which really would be interesting to put up here. I am not certain if he is my direct ancestor, though.
But the Daniel Feidts had the good fortune to survive their brushes with war. Not so for my dad's cousin, Bruce William Heskett, who was killed in a tank in Quang Tri, South Vietnam on 29 June, 1970. He was born 20 April 1945 and came from Spokane. He was a first Lieutenant, cut down only a few months into his tour that commenced on the 8th of February that year. He served in the 5th Infantry Division, A Company, 1st Battalion. His official death code was "Hostile, Died; Ground Casualty; Gun, Small Arms Fire". The summer after 7th grade during our trip to Washington I took an etching of his name on the Vietnam memorial.
Quang Tri province, near the DMZ and the Ben Hai river that divided the country, saw nine years of fighting, intense bombing, free fire zones, and extensive land mine and Agent Orange contamination. Of the 3,500 villages, only 11 remained by the end of the Vietnam war. (see a 1975 Army study of the Northern Provinces)
Just in time for Memorial Day, a batch of Henry Kissinger's old documents have been released by the National Security Archives. Almost two years to the day after my dad's cousin fell in central Vietnam, Kissinger had a charming and 'loquacious' conversation (PDF)with the Chinese Prime Minister at the Great Hall of the People. It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but this passage got news coverage:
If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.
Some folks couldn't live with it. These, and a few million more from Southeast Asia. Words can't really wrap around the reality of it. There were worthwhile ventures in the World Wars, perhaps Korea, maybe a bit of the Balkans. And of course keeping the Confederates down. Our citizens (and immigrants trying to become citizens) who stick it out are braver than my imagination can handle. But their commanders are only carrying out the policies of the generals, and the generals are (hopefully) only developing policies under orders from the civilian leadership, with transparent oversight from Congress. These days several links in that chain seem to be shattered, and the result are dead-end policies in places that American troops shouldn't be, and autonomous actions that don't support any kind of realistic goals.
They go without body armor so that privatized military firms can make off with fabulously lucrative contracts. The brass cower under Rumsfeld and look the other way when units in places like Abu Ghraib and Haditha go crazy under the stress and lack of support, among a confusing labyrinth of enemies, spies, mercenaries, contractors and the hapless local population.
The responsibility falls to those of us state-side to go after the military's uniformed and civilian leadership for its policies of deploying depleted uranium and caustic white phosphorus, private mercenaries instead of body armor, picking fights with clans instead of negotiating, its alarmingly delusional pattern of planting Psy Ops fake news stories (such as "Zarqawi's" February 2004 letter) instead of taking responsibility for their failed policies.
The good and honorable folks in uniform are getting left to twist in the wind not by us, but by a leadership that has failed to deploy them responsibly, provision them properly, hand down realistic policies, accept blame for failures or plan adequately. It's on us to fish a way out of this, if Memorial Day means anything at all.