Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
So I am chilling here in Tucson, and I got up hella early to work out with my hosts at the University club, so I am being productive for vacation. I'm going to wander around downtown in a bit. And I'm gonna put some pictures up later.
On the plane I read "Crashing the Gate" by Markos "DailyKos" Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong, both of them top liberal bloggers. They set out to look at where the Democratic Party needs to go, structurally, while looking at how Republicans keep stuff tamped down. It was worth reading to get a better understanding of the chokehold that DC consultants place on how local parties are run, and how the media buy commission game works. On the other hand, parts of it seemed to drag a bit. Especially since these guys have been writing paragraph-length posts for a few years, any book would be uneven.
It is laden with useful facts about how the Dems need to fix their field-level operations as well as generate some thick DC policy books - and a population of well-fed wonks to counterbalance Heritage/AEI/CATO - that can distill a sense of thought-out planning to a better-populated liberal talkers in the media. They note how Democrats can't match the Republicans' incubation structure of scholarship->College Republican>fat intern gig> corporation/ conservative grad program>think tank type pathway that churns out more and more little Ralph Reeds. This is where a lot of the Scaife-type money has been put since Goldwater and it's paid off, because it's a complete food chain that produces broad political power. So the Dems need one, "Crashing the Gate" is saying.
It was cool to look at how genuine Democrats can get going in states like Colorado and Montana (Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sen. candidate Jon Tester figure big in the book) and win. I think that's really encouraging for more liberal people out in places that DC Democrats always write off as "permanently Red." There's a lot of criticism for how the Democratic Party seems to be piloted by the checkoff lists of its major constituent interest groups - excluding people who aren't cookie cutters. They note how the National Organization of Women's support of Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, because while they're feinting pro-choice, they're actually putting abortion MORE at risk, because Chaffee's just Another Republican that shifts power to the right.
There's a lot more to the book, so if you're an activist (of any party) it's useful for looking at the state of the campaign. It's a bit odd, but anyway...
American Theocracy:
When we look back on the three subsequent decades (70s, 80s, 90s), it is now possible to describe a much grander convergence of forces: (1) oil's ever tightening grip on Washington politics and psychologies; (2) the cumulative destabilization of the Middle East; (3) the rise of varying degrees of radical Christianity, Judaism, and Islam around the world; (4) the biblical and geopolitical focus on Israel; and (5) the reemergence during the 1990s of [the Great Game]....A summary of "American Theocracy", a new book from Kevin Phillips, the guy who brought out 1969's eerily prescient The Emerging Republican Majority, which created the term Sun Belt as a key pole of Republican power for the future. Since 1969 Phillips has gone further to the left, and American Theocracy is his comeback swipe at the current state of affairs. The NY Times review was interesting. Check the Agonist feature on it. The guy in Slate is pissed about it.
Bloggers get fucked by Associated Press: Media wants to discredit blogs while plagarizing the reporting: Huge surprise. Recently, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com did an in-depth story on a bizarre bit of executive branch regulations set by Stephen Hadley, the President's current National Security Adviser. The story was cloned by the AP, but the AP refused to give credit to RawStory. Here is Alexandrovna's response. (posted of course on the Huffy)
Her story took a while to get confirmed, checked, compared with old documents, run by another writer and a researcher, talked to people in the intelligence community. In other words, Larisa did the works and triple-checked everything like a responsible reporter. She is coming up with some interesting goods these days, including the tidbit that Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings CIA front organization was doing clandestine research on Iran's WMD activities... (more on that here)
Anyway, so in this case, the new Hadley regulations had some bizarre implications for gay people, so Larisa sent the docs and notes to some gay advocacy groups. Their reactions were included in the story, and the groups gave the story and background notes to an Associated Press writer, and asked them to cover it.
So the day after the story was released on RawStory, an Associated Press reporter basically copied most of the story and claimed that the information had been dug up by the advocacy groups - and the AP adamantly refused to credit RawStory, saying that they don't credit blogs. The AP editor was pretty damn rude about it... So that's kinda fucked up.
Josh Marshall at TPM has also recently found that the mainstream press is repeating TPMmuckraker.com stories without giving them credit. (this one on the corrupt Cunningham-linked MZM defense contractor doing god-knows-what is good, for example)
This underscores how in terms of "actual journalism", blogs are doing some heavy lifting that the mainstream just can't fucking handle because they just suck so much. Alexandrovna cites a few websites that have done a hell of a lot more than anyone else to deal with certain scandals that CBS and the Rest just won't put together these days.
These are all blogs cited by Alexandrovna that I have linked to before, when looking at these various scandals. The mainstream media can't deal with the truly weird stuff, so it falls to the Motley Crue to straighten it out. The Left Coaster has the Truly Complete Dissection of the Niger forgery case - and the fake WMD generally. If you want the nitty gritty of how the Republican bullshit machine has covered up a ton of scandals, this will walk you through it, page by page. EmptyWheel at thenexthurrah also has gotten deep into the Plame case - far beyond anything featured on TV. Of course there is the BradBlog, which has gotten way inside the shady operations of electronic voting machines and Diebold. During the creepy time on Nov-Jan 2004, when the mainstream media refused to speak of the anomalies in Ohio, BradBlog was without a doubt the place to be. Wot is it good 4 has certainly tacked down more aspects of the Sibel Edmonds/FBI/Turkish Spies/WTF?! scandal than anyone else.
Well i just wanted to put some red meat bits up there. When my computing situation is better I'll put up some photos.
I am going to be in Arizona until April 2. Until then I don't know if anyone is going to post or what, although I'll try to put up some photos and stuff. In the meantime, enjoy a retro-cold war disinformation conspiracy theory... Why not?
March 24: Pentagon report says Russia gave Iraq intelligence (Reuters)
Russia provided intelligence to Iraq's government on U.S. military movements in the opening days of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report released on Friday said.
The report said an April 2, 2003, document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein stated that Russian intelligence had reported information on American troops plans to the Iraqis through the Russian ambassador.
....Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Cucolo of U.S. Joint Forces Command told a briefing he viewed Russia's decision to give intelligence to Saddam's government as "driven by economic interests." The report noted Russian business interests in Iraqi oil.
Let us take a gander at those oil contracts, via the famous Cheney Energy Task Force Iraq document collection from Judicial Watch (PDF of this page):
And I am putting up this classic Cheney Energy Task Force map (PDF) because it says way more than a thousand words (remember, this is older than 9/11 - March 2001, to be exact). I have fast hosting now and I just love this damn map and its "exploration blocks" that need to get taken away from the damn Russians. With guns. Classic imperialism. Ok, that's old news.
Ok ok, we know about the map, but what does this have to do with these new claims about Russian intelligence in the war? The Russians played some role giving Iraq military goods, including, it has been said, tactical training for soldiers and night vision gear, right up until the low-grade bombing war (10+ years) upgraded to a full invasion in March 2003.
So now the line out of the Pentagon is that the Russians were actively supplying tactical combat intelligence of sorts to Saddam Hussein, and there's some rumor of Russian moles in Qatar or something. It would be interesting if it were true, but I wouldn't really be angry with the Russians because there is no law from God that they couldn't tell Saddam jack shit (and what they did tell, wasn't really helpful, if its true).
However, what we should consider is
A) is this a propaganda front designed to reactivate the classic American hatred of Russians?
B) is this designed to prepare the American public for the dozens of Russian scientists that would be killed if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran?
C) is this yet another example of some bastards in Washington using petty forgeries (see the Niger Uranium classics) to control perceptions, creating an atmosphere of fear and instability, and in turn offering the ruling party as the solution to the public's constructed fears? (thanks Anti-Flag - the new album fucking rules by the way)
Well, of course Wayne Madsen has a comprehensive claim that this is all a propaganda front from the usual DC bastards that brought us all the original fake Iraq intelligence in the first place. Basically, since the days of Team B scaring everyone about the Russians, they have made a 30-year career of scaring the shit out of people.
Even if this information about the Russians is true, this is exactly the kind of electoral engineering of perception that we have to expect before the election. They call it the October Surprise for a reason!!
Wayne Madsen Report, March 25 2006. Take it for what you will:
The Pentagon's role as a source of media disinformation. First it was the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, which morphed into the Office of Special Plans. Both served as conduits for neo-con propaganda spewed forth by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Hudson Institute, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among others prior to the invasion of Iraq.
Now the Pentagon has issued an "unclassified report" stating that in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia obtained war plans and planned U.S. troop movements from “inside the American Central Command.” The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) denied the charge, stating that "similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once."
The Pentagon cited as its source two captured Iraqi documents that describe Russian penetration of the US Central Command in Qatar. However, the Pentagon's story later changed. The revised story stated the Russian obtained the war plans from signals intelligence intercepts of pre-war U.S. military communications. In either case, the citing of "captured" Iraqi documents has been used in the past to falsely implicate various anti-war international politicians with being in league with Saddam's "Oil for Food" program. Many of these "captured" documents were forgeries emanating from notorious Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi. Bogus Niger government documents were forged by a neo-con cabal based in Rome, Washington, and Jerusalem to justify an attack on Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
The information contained in the two "secret" Iraqi documents could have been obtained from any number of open sources, including Jane's Defence Weekly. The "sic" appearing next to "special forces unit 'Papa'" in the purported Iraqi documents is a clue to a forgery. The standard NATO/DoD phonetic code for the letter "P" is "Papa." Why the authors would indicate a possible misspelling of Papa in the document is curious unless its because the real authors include some of our most noted neo-con draft dodgers who are unfamiliar with U.S. and NATO military nomenclatures. The two secret Iraqi documents are handwritten and contain no official government seal or stamps, another clear indication of a forgery. Update: The memo dated March 25, 2003 is also a likely forgery because of the use of the Western calendar and not the lunar Muslim Hijri calendar used in many Arab and other predominantly Muslim countries. The Muslim date would have been 16 Muharram 1424.
The neo-con stranglehold on the Pentagon continues to permit this cabal of provocateurs and dual loyalists to pump out false charges in an attempt to damage relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin as Russia continues to push for negotiations with Iran and lay the possible groundwork for Russian casualties at Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of war with Iran. Neo-cons would argue that such casualties were legitimate considering previous Russian support for Saddam against the United States.
In fact, the Pentagon neo-cons now have more power than ever considering the current presence of anti-Russian neo-con-influenced governments in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, an AEI alum and colleague of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen, is married to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum. All four are virulently anti-Putin, especially since Putin began cracking down on the Russian oligarchs who looted the USSR's treasury and resources and made themselves instant billionaires, at the expense of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.
Over 70 percent of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs carry Israeli passports. Ukraine President Viktor Yuschenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, is an American citizen and held positions in the Reagan White House that were directed against "the evil empire." She was, and remains, close to the leading neo-con war hawks of the Reagan years, including Perle, Ledeen, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Ken Adelman. Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, in an anti-Putin U.S.-trained lawyer who ousted his predecessor in a U.S.-financed and supported coup backed by oil companies like Halliburton and Exxon Mobil. In addition to the offices of AEI, AIPAC, Hudson, WINEP, and Heritage, in addition to the Pentagon, the embassies of Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia in Washington have become virtual neo-con nesting places, working overtime to formulate all sorts of anti-Russian propaganda aimed at destabilizing Russia and toppling Putin. They are assisted in these efforts by the US Mission to the United Nations, which under arch neo-con John Bolton, has become a favorite off-site meeting place for Washington-based neo-cons right in the middle of Manhattan.
If it's all true, it's one hell of a problem. How do we, as sane Americans and non-Americans, deal with a Pentagon that is attempting to manipulate all these public perceptions? What is the appropriate response to this problem? Maybe this is all too wild. But I just loved how the whole thing was framed by the usual dickheads in DC thinktanks, in this article in the LA Times:
Russians Told Iraqi Regime of U.S. Troop Movements By Peter Spiegel and Greg Miller: March 25, 2006
....But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war.
"This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution. "It's actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It's hard to get more unfriendly than that."
Kevin Wood, a retired Army officer who served as the senior researcher and chief author of the study, said he was surprised when he learned of the Russian actions...... But Frederick Kagan, a Russia and defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the actions would not be out of keeping with other efforts by Moscow to advance Iraq's cause internationally.
"We knew the Russians were opposed to the sanctions; we knew they opposed the war," Kagan said. "I'm not terribly surprised." Analysts also said it would be important to learn whether upper levels of the Russian government were involved, adding that the signals were more likely to have come from diplomatic and intelligence agents in the region rather than from Moscow.
It also was unclear how much of the information was genuine intelligence and how much was educated guesswork.
Regardless, the revelations could undermine efforts to forge a united front against Iran's nuclear program.
"I think we have to assume that we can't trust the Russians to be impartial or even honest with us," Kagan said. "The Russians have ties with the Iranians that are also very worrying."
So Kagan is demanding that you personally should start to hate the Russians on his behalf at the end there. Shocking. Time will tell, if this just fades away, if it is proven to be true. We'll keep an eye on this one. By the way, here is a clip of O'Hanlon saying a crock of shit on CNN in 2003 about Saddam's weapons.
On random yet interesting notes: Global Guerrillas: STARTING AN OPEN SOURCE WAR. This was buzzwordy but interesting. Papers Show Split in Nixon-Iraq Policy
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nixon administration was split over whether to try to improve relations with Saddam Hussein's Soviet-allied Baathists in Iraq, State Department documents released Thursday show.
Who is Satan? No one trusts the atheists these days. It must be a carryover from the Cold war. I feel like a Russkie!
If this works, it means that the new hosting system XMLRPC works completely. And that is fantastic news because it means I can get down to Tucson and land... exactly 24 hours and 10 minutes from now.
So... does it work?
Ok, here's a first test entry to see if the new webhosting actually works. Sweet!!!
I was so impressed with Wednesday's South Park episode and how it got rid of Isaac Hayes' character, while at the same time nailing Scientology for its founder's pedophiliac appetites. The solution to a libel suit was Super Adventure Club - and to make it crystal clear they put "This is what Super Adventure Club actually believes" during a brief explanation of its founding myth, going around the world and sodomizing children, which makes you immortal because of invisible spirit particles in the children. And something about an alien overlord.
You bastards. It wasn't Chef, it was that fruity little club that brainwashed him. Here are video clips of key scenes on rooftopreport.com, which appears to be some chick celebrity gossip site. Chef's death in Quicktime.
There is a whole internet storm around this, as some people want to boycott Mission Impossible 3 unless Tom Cruise quits pressuring Viacom/Paramount/Comedy Central not to rerun the original South Park Scientology episode.
Here's the king Fruit Bat himself, appearing in his only Outsider-conducted interview in 1968. From XenuTV.com: The World in Action: The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard. Download the WMV here, or see it recut as "As Mad as the Madman" (5 minutes).
Note the little Star-wreath hat logo. That is the Sea Org logo (the ad is on clambake.org). "It is possibly a bit above your reality to say that we intend to salvage this sector. No one has been able to do it for 75 million years. We are the first." According to Xenu.net:
In the Advanced Orgs in Edinburgh and Los Angeles, staff were ordered to wear all-white uniforms, with silver boots, to mimic the Galactic Patrol of seventy-five million years before. According to Hubbard's Flag Order 652, mankind would accept regulation from that group which had last betrayed it.
The Sea Org order 652 has the memorable quote: "We are faced with a society in which governments aren't governing, SPs are fighting imaginary Martians, and a planet whose inhabitants must have an engram to run out on the 4th Dynamic." Funny, that's what I said to my roommate yesterday.
If you want to see the original South Park Scientology episode online, you might still be able to here. And make sure you read this amazing Rolling Stone article. And a Daily Show segment.
WaPo: 'South Park' Responds: Chef's Goose Is Cooked. BBC: South Park gets revenge on Chef.
Randomness: Mario was a Communist. You can't deny he raised the Red Star. How did we miss this?
Technorati Tags: L Ron Hubbard, Scientology, Sea Org, South park, Xenu
March 20: CLEVELAND, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said he hoped to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran with diplomacy, but warned Tehran he would "use military might" if necessary to defend Israel.
AIPAC Offensive: Ah what a sublime concept. "Defense". On the same day, news spread of a report by two high-octane professors of international studies criticizing the United States' alliance with Israel, and a detailed dissection of how AIPAC intimidates all opposition to Israeli government policies on Capitol Hill. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are big wheels in the international politics arena, and not doctrinaire liberals, nor terrorists. Of course Justin Raimondo at Antiwar has his take on this.
This is a pretty big ol' bombshell to put in the beginning: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," (PDF, 70+ pages)
"The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?"
I won't spend any more time on that now. But it's a certainly a big deal, and we will stick around the AIPAC case to see what turns up. Also worth considering: WHY IRAN WANTS THE BOMB.
Corporate media sucks: 1) Chris Matthews is taking corporate cash to speak places. Wow, big surprise that MSNBC is in awash in corporate cash. 2) The WaPo really uses sloppy terms a lot, such as:
For months the Democrats have resisted calls from their liberal base to more aggressively challenge President Bush.
...as a way to defuse what Feingold is saying and discredit the majority of the country that doesn't believe in White House policies. And to suck at the Teat. At least the Christian Broadcasting Network has the guts to go with their fanaticism properly.
The WaPo gave this young rightwing RedState jackass a blog on their site. Some negative reactions from the liberal side, since this guy is apparently allowed to pretty much make shit up all day long.
From the sphere of friends with websites: PBG has some new stuff up at InfantFoundation.com. I liked this photo. Something about those gay atheist liberals, via the Norman.
For the occasion of the Fourth Year of the war, it is good to look back and remember the insane propaganda we lived in, that sparked the whole fucking mess in the first place. Fortunately, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting pulled together: "The Final Word Is Hooray!" Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits:
"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)
"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)
"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
And it goes on and on. And for reasons that escape me, these people still control the fucking debate. DAMN IT.
Some random bits: well, conservatives are skittish right now. Duh. Pundits suck. Duh. In an interview, ABC Nightline refuses to acknowledge that Billy Graham's son Franklin is a fanatical hater of Islam.
Antiwar.com, some goodies: How to fix the intelligence process by Charles Peña. Also "Why Libertarians Should be Critical of War," Raimondo: "American Megalomania"; TomDispatch: "Reprogramming the Infinite Loop: The NSA Spying Debate", Solomon: "War-Loving Pundits".
Check out the DailyKos straw poll of 2008 presidential candidates. Feingold's kickin ass!!
It's not impossible: Jim Webb, a conservative Democrat running for Congress, says: “The Reagan Democrats” – and how to get them back. A general criticizes Rummy's total incompetence.
Points in Case: Ten things to believe in. Way to go, Keith Olbermann.
Nasty neocon Max Boot suggests that George Clooney has been pimping the neo-con line throughout his career, noting that Three Kings provides a neocon-certified Moral Basis for attacking Iraq in 2003 (not really true but it reads well), and The Peacemaker alerted people to the hazards of WMD attacks and such.
Bush White House overdoes 'manliness'. But the problem is that they are sort of gay, but weird about it.
Something called the Iraq Study Group has been set up, with a bunch of mostly shady Washington insiders and defense contractors, etc., who are probably going to attempt to whitewash aspects of the war policy, and perhaps some fake intelligence after lunch and tea. And for some of them, keep selling lots of weapons to the government.
Helen Thomas on the Lap Dogs of the Press. Her recent press conference moment with Bush was pretty badass.
Even more random: Top 10 weirdest animals.
A Franz Ferdinand kinda place? Milosevic's death has afforded hawks an opportunity to reminisce about how warm and fuzzy it made them feel to bomb Serbia and stop the ethnic cleansing, although oddly, it seems that the mass graves in Kosovo never really turned up in the kinds of numbers we were led to believe at the time.
Of course, the Kosovo intervention was mainly about gaining more American control over the oil and gas energy pathways leading west from the Black Sea (and the surrounding political structures). The AMBO pipeline (Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria) and the massive Camp Bondsteel in Southern Kosovo were the two major products of the war in Kosovo. Aside from these goodies the US doesn't much care what happens over there.
Israel Goodies: "Settlers, you have failed" by Aluf Benn. Good to hear. Guess what? Israel has its own dickhead spoiler politician named Lieberman, and better yet, Avigdor Lieberman is a fanatical settler and is the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party. Apparently National Union, pretty much a fascist party that essentially supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, once had a coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu, but they split up a while ago. They are messing around with Netanyahu and maneuvering to his right. "Right-wing parties mull ways to contend with rise of Lieberman". Joe and Avigdor are apparently distant cousins.
Also "Of love and anger" as young Israelis, some of them born and raised ex-Gaza settlers, raise doubts about whether or not the IDF can still be an instrument to bring about the return of the messiah.
Here is a funny story that indicates that "Syria was ready for peace" in the mid-1990s. Bishara acted as Syria-Israel mediator in 1990s talks. Also funny: Saddam Hussein maintained pretense of chemical arms to prevent Israeli attack. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Netanyahu says the next Israeli election will be a kind of referendum on the whole damn mess. "A referendum indeed" by Uzi Benziman. and The cynicism of Olmert and Lieberman By Israel Harel. Nerds for Netanyahu? Augh.
On the left side of the spectrum, see the interview with Meretz leader Yossi Beilin in "'Not afraid of 'autonomy' By Nurit Wurgaft." (there's a bit about Lieberman's ethnic cleansing plans at the end) And don't forget the Israeli Arabs! Not pawns on the board By Nurit Wurgaft.
Some cool thoughts on Islamic Archaism from one of Islam's best writers. I lost the link to a Haaretz story about Lafif Lakdar, but check out: Why the Reversion to Islamic Archaism? (also featured here), and The modern schizophrenia of Islamic integralism. On AnarchistNews.org see the links to "Islam and (communist) Anarchism" as they term it, (far be it from me to try to control their semiotics). And InfoShop.org's page on Iran.
Well that was some stuff I had piled up. Sorry, no pictures. You can enjoy that for the weekend, I think I just want to go watch movies the whole time.
There's a nine minute Ali G Show clip wherein Borat checks out the American political scene, and in a subtle conversation about religion, gets one James Broadwater to say that Jews will go to hell because they aren't for Jesus. There's plenty more, but I am always amazed how easily Cohen can bring out the latent antisemite in Americans.
Charlie Sheen popped up on Alex Jones' radio show (for the uninitiated, Jones is one of the leading Internet Conspiracy Guys - infowars and prisonplanet are kinda required if you're into that sort of thing). Anyhow there was an interview that can be downloaded (mp3) and here is the summarized story about it.
"It feels like from the people I talk to in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning."
I listened to the interview on my iPod when I went to Target this morning, and there wasn't anything particularly new about the vaunted 9/11 conspiracies, such as the funny-looking hole in the Pentagon, the "pulling" of WTC 7, controlled demolition and all the rest. I am really not a believer in such things, although I will always be happy to note that the hole in the Pentagon just doesn't look right at all. But Jones and Sheen go through the basic motions of the Story, so it's sort of amusing.
Oh yah, PrisonPlanet currently claims that there is a media coverup, as the Associated Press refuses to run a wire story about Sheen's remarks. They say:
Mainstream Media Blackout On Sheen 9/11 Piece (March 22):
Controlled gatekeepers and delusional Neo-Cons attempt to kill story
.....We will not cease in our efforts to turn this into a massive story but we need your support. Get the story and e mail it out to every newspaper, newswire and TV news station in existence.
And also March 21: PrisonPlanet: Huge Reaction To Sheen 9/11 Story. Gawker: Escort-Loving Sitcom Actors Lend Credibility to 9/11 Doubters.
All right, I am officially amused by the Charlie Sheen Effort to Expose the 9/11 Conspiracy of March 2006. Everyone gets bonus points for originality.
On the flip side there is a massive story on 9/11 conspiracy theories from a skeptical perspective (although I have not read it yet) "The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll" in New York Magazine.
Well those are a couple brief and weird things. More later. Sorry things have been sparse but i've been trying to get the other sections of my life together, and watching bizarre Egyptian movies and stuff...
New To Me But Not to You
Product Reviews and Culture Criticism Well Past Their Shelf Life
Hello, Hongsketeers, c'est moi. Today I will be bringing you a new feature, New to Me But Not to You, wherein I review movies, music and other consumer products months, years, or even decades after they come out. The point of this installment is to give you the reader and unbidden and undesired look into the lack of artistic, intellectual and culinary development in my life. By looking at the movies, music and food products that sustain me day-to-day, the utter vapidity of my existence, the complete senselessness of it, can be fully absorbed. And who knows, maybe you're a moron, too, in which case you might actually get something out of it.
Kronik Low-Carb Energy Drink: In a sea of vile-tasting hyper caffeinated sodas, Kronik stands out. It tastes like watermelon Jolly Ranchers dissolved in tonic water with a touch of rust, and doesn't seem to have the kick of other competing brands. I've never seen it advertised except for in the gas station and I suspect that the name is merely to attract stoned college kids into buying it so that they can make it all the way through Tron and pretend that it is, indeed, a great piece of "camp" entertainment. The packaging is corny, the graphics suck, and it isn't any cheaper than Rockstar or whatever else is in the case. In fact, in a market of slickly-marketed off-tasting coffee substitutes, it is singularly successful at presenting a sub-par product from the market research phase all the way through R&D to the packaging, advertising and distribution. In a world of hyper-developed products, Kronik is refreshing in its lack of complexity, forethought or quality. Rock on guys, just not anywhere near me (unless I'm stoned and they're playing Dark Side at the student union).
The Warriors: Now, I've only watched this movie twice since renting it three days ago, but I think that I can say, without drifting into hyperbole, that The Warriors is quite simply the coolest single thing in the history of things, thingness and thingery. Gratuitous sex and violence, fantastic cinematography, a plot a monkey could follow and the best wardrobe since, well, again, the dawn of thingness. Based on Xenophon's Anabasis, the movie follows an incredibly dressed street gang called (duh) The Warriors as they attempt to make their way from the Bronx to Coney Island without getting "wasted" by rivals gangs looking for them. Think of it as the Odyssey without any of those sophisticated imagery and metaphor and lots more hats. The word cinematic feels invented for this film, as the New York City shown is a complete fabrication, devoid of any semblance of reality, a woozy, dangerous parallel reality that I've been running over again and again in my mind. Watch it and love it.
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: I can't really add anything to the tomes of reviews and retrospectives covering David Bowie's most famous album. Ambitious is a term often used to describe rock musicians' magnus opuses (opii?), but it seems apt here, as the album is almost more of a Broadway show-ette, big melodramatic nonsense numbers. A great intersection between rock, show tunes, self-aware narcissism and fame for its own sake, the first one or two listens won't probably have the same effect that Dookie had when you were thirteen (or whatever crappy music was flipping your switches at thirteen) but hang in there. An excellent compliment to The Warriors, as well, being a flamboyant folly of style over substance of the same general era. Will make you feel cooler, and will also allow for a greater appreciation of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zisou. It will not heighten your appreciation to the point of thinking that Life Aquatic is a good movie (only huffing paint thinner could do that) but will give you enough to get through it and, more importantly, its Seu Jorge covers soundtrack.
Crytal Light Fruit Punch: My penchant for all beverages diet has been duly noted, but rarely is a product as fan-fucking-tastic as this, as they rarely provide something so firmly connected to one's childhood without consequence. They may call it fruit punch, suckas, but don't get it twisted: this is Kool-Aid. Red Kool-Aid with zero calories and no difference in taste. Though we aren't all fighting the battle against simple carbohydrates (certainly Dan isn't- they make up about two-thirds of his caloric intake) but even for those who aren't, you can drink seven gallons of this stuff in a day without fear of stomach cramps, sugar highs and the corresponding comedown headaches. Unfortunately, no answer has been found for the stain-a-rific red color and your poops will still be purple, but your chance of adult-onset diabetes will certainly be lower.
There it is, boppers. Keep cool in the big cities and we'll keep bopping down here in the desert. Until next time...
I feel very much obliged to write something about the entering the fourth (fourth!) year of the Iraq war, seeing as how our side was pretty much right about the likely problems and eventual sectarian breakdown of the country. However, that is hardly any comfort to anyone, since it's everyone's national disaster.
Since March 10, 2003, when the post-high-school version of this site was inaugurated from my sophomore Dupre single, this has been pretty much the loose axiom:
There is something wrong. There is a war about to go underway which will kill thousands without just cause. People must object to the unilateral, hasty, and unjustified conflict. We have to get the word out and the Internet is an exceedingly valuable tool for this. There should be several news and opinion links a day as we go forward into what Thomas Friedman is already calling "World War III."
Well, I would say that this website has scored pretty well, in terms of exposing the conspiracy of War Lies, rationalized annihilation, the vile agendas of radical right-wing Zionists, the humorous hypocrisies of the War on Drugs, and other assorted favorite topics. While these have been gratifying to share, it is not always a productive element connecting me to the real world rushing past me.
Either way, over the last few days my calcified and generally unsatisfying order of priorities in my life has been shaken, but I think in a good way. I have to take some actions to get rid of really negative and contemptuous facets of my own life. My birthday is in less than two months, and I feel that this year of my life has mostly been one of waiting for things to happen, unhappily. Part of that was due to being under an indictment for many months, which put me in a bit of a Scooter Libby/Abramoff frame of mind.
But January/February/March 2006 have been a kind of continuous slouch that has provided no real benefit. Seasonal Existential Horror Disorder is a deeply-rooted problem at these latitudes. I need to get into another line of work. I have to take my own fool problems head-on because no one else will.
What does that mean for the website? Oh well, i don't really know. Thanks for sticking with us over the last few years. I think I at least ought to put up a tip jar or something to cover the technical expenses.
We will remain vigilant, resolved, ever watchful for Psychological Operations, information operations, the men in the military-industrial complex stealing money from our wallets and eating the government, messianic and eschatological structures of political thought, humorous tidbits and technological wizardry, the many benefits of open-source software, the nature of fourth-generation warfare, the corrupt state of American partisan politics in the 21st century, the glories of atheism, and the latest words from the friends who follow this website from half a world away.
I am going to hang out with Mordred in Tucson during March 27-April 3rd. I have never felt the need to get out of town so badly as now.
Welcome Back to America, Buddy...
Eat Up.
I apologize for the delay in this posting. I've been in Mexico, on the worst vacation of my life (more on that later). As we've seen little action from our merry band of HongPosters, I am going to offer up some Saturday Grab Bag™ action for anyone out there who's just looking for something to pick at...
Dean Johnson: I'm a Flippin' Idiot, Give Me Another Chance: Why oh why, Deanster? Had to laugh at this news item, actually. It seems that MN-DFL Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson (or MNDFLSMLDJ for short) met with a group of Pastors in his constituency some time back to discuss the proposed ban on Gay Marriage (I assume this is the one being forwarded by the great Satan herself, Michelle Bachman) and told them that he had spoken to members of the state Supreme Court, who had assured him that the 1997 law that defined marriage as [blah, blah, blah] would be sufficient to hold off any advances on the homo-hitching front. Well, turns out that not only was Mr. Johnson apparently lying (no MNSC members recall ever discussing the issue with him) but he was being taped by one of the pastors in attendance. As you might have guessed, the Forces of Medievalism have already pounced on the issue as proof of the need for stricter anti-non-white-middle-class-suburban-protestants legislation and Johnson's essential unfitness in his role as Majority Leader. Well, they're right about one thing; Johnson is a hack politician extraordinaire, and hopefully this ugly episode will make room for someone too bright to lie to a bunch of spies for Jesus. [Story Here]
Navy Exchanges Fire With Sexy Pirates: Two American ships, the USS Cape St. George and the USS Gonzalez (A guided missile cruiser and guided missile destroyer, respectively) came upon a 30 foot fishing boat towing several smaller skiffs this morning while in a Dutch-led patrol off the coast of Somalia. When the American craft moved in to board the Somali boats, they were fired upon by small arms and possibly an RPG launcher. The Navy fired back, wounding five and killing one with no American casualties. I had to read the article a couple of times first in order to giggle, and then I had to find this picture (this is what I imagine the lead pirate to have looked like) before I could really consider where the pirates went wrong. I think I've got it now, though; Their first mistake was probably firing AK-47s from a 30-foot boat at 300+ feet of American military hardware, packed to the gills with a terrifying array of missiles, artillery and, apparently, more conventional heavy machine guns. Interestingly enough, Piracy is actually on the rise around the world, especially on the coasts of East Africa (where there were 35 attacks last year) and in the South China Sea, where large-scale piracy against major shipping craft and, in one case, a racing yacht have become commonplace in recent years. Personally, I think it is time to declare a Global War on Sexy Piracy, if only to hear all of Rummy's iterations on the theme as he fails to do anything about it- "Worldwide Struggle With Extremely Provocative Maritime Thievery", anyone? [Story]
Cheeseburger in Paradise
Mexico was a bust this Spring Break '06, for a variety of reasons. A trip to the Baja with Tha Fam went horribly wrong. Dreams of sandy beaches and great seaside food gave way to days of huddling indoors as the 50 degree winds whipped the windows of the darkened, unheated house we were staying in, forcing water under the doors and leaving all of our clothes smelling dank. The first problem was planning- the planner of the trip, who shall remain unnamed, didn't bother to find out that Baja California Del Norte is, as a rule, cold in March. Quite cold, really, rarely climbing out of the mid-60s during the day. Also, Baja California Del Norte sucks, a collection of corrugated shacks clinging to the side of a cliff along a steep, rocky, unprotected coastline, with no culture of any sort, a complete lack of any kind of shopping (other than, of course, I Fuck on the First Date t-shirts) and shitty restaurants whose defining feature is the zeal of their employees in their attempts to coerce you to eat at their establishment, including (no joke) jumping in front of the car in order to entice you to park (for free!) outside of the joint. Should you get in, you will be met by the likes of this gentleman above, fat southwestern types who come down in droves to sand race on the dunes in heavily-modified trucks and ludicrously overpowered sandrails. Apparently, driving around in circles on sand is a sport, not just something that ataxia-addled meatheads do in the absence of a real life. The less said about it the better, really. We left early, and it is 80-some degrees here in Tucson.
Hopefully Dan will be down here soon and we will keep you guys posted.
I noted earlier that someone was forging Russian spam emails from 'thwart.net', one of the mysterious domains that I purchased because they seemed like good ideas at the time. (some people get tattoos, I purchase little slices of the information universe).
Anyhow, since email header forging is trivially easy (faking the 'from' address), the spamming continues, and my inbox gets all the rejection notices sent to thwart.net. It would appear that besides the advertisers noted before, a Russian web hosting company is also doing it.
It would appear that a Russian web company named web-911.ru has been spamming various Russian email servers with promotional advertising, faking email addresses owned by me. This would anger me, although there's little to be done about it. However, upon viewing the site, I have decided that those who operate web-911.ru have an excellent sense of humor:
From: earth-bounces@mlist.sgu.ru
Subject: The results of your email commands
Date: March 16, 2006 2:14:14 PM CST
To: info@thwart.net
The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your
original message.
- Results:
Ignoring non-text/plain MIME parts
- Done.
From: "Web-911" <info@thwart.net>
Date: March 16, 2006 11:46:04 AM CST
To: downhill <aspirant@mlist.sgu.ru>
Subject: Юридические услуги в Москве
I know better than to break off a spat with Russian IT experts. Who knows what kinds of interests want Ethernet and web hosting in those parts. Actually, it would probably be sort of a fun industry. But if they sent me some good local vodka I would be happier.
Juan Cole catches a bitter Muqtada al-Sadr: (UPI)
Young Shiite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr said Monday that Iraq is in a state of civil war. He responded to guerrilla provocations against Sadr City, with bombings and mortars having killed over 50 persons there Sunday, by ordering his Mahdi Militia not to engage in reprisals.
Like many Iraqi and Arab observers, Muqtada was shocked when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the US military would not intervene in an Iraqi civil war, leaving that to Iraqi forces.
' "May God damn you," Sadr said of Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere." '
The Machine Rages On: Raimondo: Another War for Israel: The amen corner howls for war with Iran, The Shame and the Sorrow. UK Independent: Iraq: The reckoning. (photo via KarbalaNews.net)
Welcome to the Long War: We are moving from the War on Terror®© to the Long War©, a hellish state of perpetual warfare forever, but it will be totally badass according to the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon planning document prepared every four years. It's called the Long War, and most of the stuff in this article is apocalyptically gloomy and depressing. And they are going to take your money to pay for it too.
On a note that I hope is totally unrelated, from the Antiwar blog, Why are Marines Training in US Neighborhoods? as reported in the Toledo Blade. Let me fetch my tinfoil.
Blunt Honesty Dept: The State Department informs us in "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" of Iraq's many human rights shortcomings: "The following human rights problems were reported:
Other than that, it's peachy. There's a ton of stuff in there, worth glancing at. I like how 'Impunity' has its own bullet.
REALLY, IT'S GOOD: CounterPunch: Neocon Advocates Civil War in Iraq as "Strategic" Policy; Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims:
"The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one." .... The fact is that the neocons who control U.S. strategy have no interest in preventing a civil war but only in inciting one. Sectarian tensions were virtually unknown in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. And in fact the Iraqi Shia fought loyally as Iraqis against Iranian Shia in the disastrous Iran-Iraq war. So to avoid an Iraqi civil war, the most important step is to get all the U.S. troops home and thus to terminate U.S. provocations. For it is now crystal clear that the neocon strategy is one of civil war to divide and destroy Iraq; and such a strategy amounts to a crime against humanity.
Which will really be a funny notion when the oil ports in eastern (the suppressed Shiite part of) Saudi Arabia get bombed. A real thigh-slapper.
JPost: India is not Iran. But they are Asians with Nukes, which counts for -10,000 points these days.
Fourth Generation Warfare: I have been saying that this is probably the best model to understand America's current strategic and especially tactical situation. It's gaining more notice now. They even care about the concept in Grand Forks. This long essay by Michael Mazarr, a professor at the U.S. National War College, details a crucial problem with the body of 4GW theory so far: it explains the modes of conflict, but not the underlying causes and motivations.
Libertarian critique of war and socialism: Iraq and the Democratic Empire by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The US spends money, invades countries, sheds blood, and becomes ever more powerful at home and unpopular abroad. In the end, no matter how powerful its weapons or how determined its leaders, it loses. It loses because people resist empire. It loses for the same reasons that socialism and its central plans always fail. Large-scale attempts to force people into predetermined molds founder on the inability of the state to allocate resources rationally and to anticipate change, as well as the ubiquitous and pesky phenomenon called human volition. Mankind was not meant to live in cages.
Why did the US win wars in the past? Because it fought far poorer governments. Today it loses because it fights populations – people acting on their own, forming their own associations, using their brains to outwit bureaucrats, and cobbling together resources from underground markets. The market always outruns the planners for the same reason that guerilla armies usually win over regular armies. Decentralized and spontaneous associations of dedicated individuals are smarter and wiser and more committed than centralized and planned bureaucrats who follow their rule books.
.....Therefore, [Mises] said, war and socialism are both part of the same ideological apparatus. They both presume the primacy of power over property. In the same way, peace and free enterprise are cut from the same cloth. They are the result of a society with a regime that respects the privacy, property, associations, and wishes of the population. The liberal society trades with foreign countries rather than waging war on them. It respects the free movement of peoples. It does not intervene in the religious affairs of people but rather adopts a rule of perfect tolerance.
I'm sorry, this caught my eye and made me laugh:
Former Teacher Surrenders at French School: Armed Ex-Teacher Holds 23 Hostages, Mostly Students, at French School Before Surrendering:
Vilpail had taught at the Colbert de Torcy High School until two years ago, school officials said. He was armed with a gun that fires rubber bullets, police said, adding that the weapon was nevertheless dangerous. He surrendered after hours of negotiations, said Jean-Luc Prigent, a top aide in the local administration.
Even their crazies surrender!! All right, that's a little crass. But it speaks to a certain less-than-subtle difference in the American character. Our paranoid edge goes all the way to the bitter end -- see Falling Down, Fight Club, Glory, Bonnie & Clyde, Thelma & Louise. That key part of the American narrative where the suggestion of violent subversion is transformed into The Real. It is part of our national psychology. We are proud of it: any proper story tends to go this way. Otherwise it seems half-finished.
In this case, well, the French guy wanted to make a symbolic gesture without quite crossing over into the Real. It appears that he wanted to take a little swipe and then step back like a reasonable European. This is part of the reason that the various apocalyptic segments of the population voted for Bush in droves. It's who we are. No surrender.
Pissed off CIA dudes are cool: I still dig Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog, as well as Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis. Johnson is on point with tidbits about the Plame case, the 'victory' strategy, Libby's legal tactics, etc.
Misc file: Isaac Hayes quits 'South Park'. Hopefully Chef will have a funny death scene. Top 10 strangest Lego creations. Radiohead's 'Just' video brought to life via London graffiti (QT). This is really pretty sweet.
DC Democrats are Bastards & Chickenshits®™: Greenwald lays it out (via Kos - more here):
With very few exceptions, national Democrats in Washington see the blogosphere as composed of uninformed, ranting, dirty masses who need to be kept as far away as possible. While they are willing to take your money, many of the Beltway Democrats see the vibrant activism in the blogosphere as some sort of an embarrassment, while others see it as a threat to their feifdoms.
Here's a tip for DC: Your methods suck. Your fiefdoms are powerless. You guys have no guts (except Feingold). No one better deserves to put up with Howard Dean than you fuckwits that have absolutely no idea how to tread water, let alone win. Go cry with Joe Lieberman about how no one likes you anymore. Go straight to Hell, do not pass Go.
This was in the context of a NY Times review of "Crashing the Gate", a new book from Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com and Markos Zuniga of DailyKos. It details how the Netroots can revolutionize the power structure in America and DC, and how it makes the Confused DLC Douche-bag Consultant Class (or whatever you care to call them) a little hot under the collar. Order it here
For his part, Kos has some really good wisdom today on how blogs can generate fundraising seed money for candidates, as well as more on the book & tour.
Oops, I guess [legal] abortion is doomed: "They Mean It" by digby, worth checking.
Batch O Goodies: Small victory for the First Amendment. And bongs.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Alaska high school violated a student's free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday.
Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner -- which refers to smoking marijuana -- in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school. Friday's ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a decision by a federal court in Alaska that backed Frederick's suspension and said his rights were not violated. "Public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to suppress speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in the court's opinion. The court also cleared the way for Frederick to seek damages, saying Morse was aware of relevant case law and should have known her actions violated his rights.
Joe Fuckin Lieberman spends some quality time with Rush Limbaugh at a 50th anniversary party for National Review. Nuke him and support Democratic challenger Ned Lamont in the primaries.
Russ Feingold is on point these days, and CNN sucks in their coverage of the censure thing. What else is new?
Guardian: US postwar Iraq strategy a mess, Blair was told. In pretty blunt language, the British staff was honest about so much of the bad stuff, so long ago.
Israel is the New Athens: Time to gank some land already: Guardian: Israel sets four year deadline to draw final borders:
Mr Olmert, who is strongly favoured to win a general election in three weeks, told the Jerusalem Post that by 2010 he intended to "get to Israel's permanent borders, whereby we will completely separate from the majority of the Palestinian population and preserve a large and stable Jewish majority in Israel".
He did not specify the route of the new frontier, which he said would be decided after an "internal dialogue inside Israel" and consultations with Israel's foreign allies. But he repeated his intention to annex the main settlement blocks in the West Bank and retain control of the Jordan river area "as a security border", resulting in a Palestinian state entirely surrounded by territory under Israeli control.
The plan outlined by Mr Olmert would require the removal of about 60,000 Israelis from settlements deeper inside the West Bank but leave about 350,000 in the main blocks and East Jerusalem.
As they used to say in the Greek times, "Take it, bitch." The Thrasymachus principle of political power. Things haven't changed much since 431 BC: "History of the Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides: Chapter XVII: Sixteenth year of the war: The Melian Conference (aka The Melian Dialogue):
The Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to the Athenians like the other islanders, and at first remained neutral and took no part in the struggle, but afterwards upon the Athenians using violence and plundering their territory, assumed an attitude of open hostility. [Athenian generals] Cleomedes and Tisias, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. The Athenian envoys spoke as follows:
.....Athenians: For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences - either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us - and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
....Athenians: When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage.
Thucydides: Summer was now over. ...the Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
Old boss, same as the new boss. Thanks, Leo Strauss. Power => Morality.
Dubai deal and racism: Raimondo: Dubai and Demagoguery. Juan Cole basically notes that, well, if you spend five years whipping up racist nationalism, it can sort of spill over in ways you don't expect. Not that it's happened before. The Big Lie eventually catches up with you. There's more good stuff in this one about Islamic theology & how it relates to Christians... in other words, the backstory that the 'hatemongers' never ever talk about.
The hatemongers are well known. Rupert Murdoch's Fox Cable News, Rush Limbaugh's radio program and its many clones, telebimbos like Ann Coulter, Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Congressmen like Tom Tancredo, and a slew of far rightwing Zionists who would vote for Netanyahu (or Kach) if they lived in Israel-- Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, David Horowitz, etc., etc. And finally, there are many Muslims who have an interest in whipping up anti-Islamic feeling. Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress helped maneuver the US into a war against Iraq with lies about a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection and illusory WMD. The dissident Islamic Marxist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is now placing equally false stories about Iran in the Western press and retailing them to Congress and the Pentagon.
More goodies coming. I had to get the Melian thing in though.
Hey all, things have been a little sparse here lately. It's damn early and I am just wrapping up the PIM Morning Report, which is quite a pain in the ass to deal with at 7 AM, but at least I have a nearly omniscient view of what is happening around Minnesota. I really promise that The Big Score will be up later today. Also some weeks ago, I promised Mordred a proper explanation of why I did not want to post the famous 'Mohammed bombhead' picture.
Also there have been some Turks around the site, and they are worth responding to. So there is a pile of goodies to deal with. Stand by folks, it's not a snow day anymore.
Someone anonymous sent me the following story from a doctor inside the U.S. military's medical trauma operations center. I did a quick check and this has already appeared here and here on the Internet, as far back as December. Oh well, enjoy. According to BlackFive, the source is one "Scott D. Barnes, LTC, MC, USA". It's a harsh one, but decidedly all too real...
"Well, as promised, with this letter I have kept my commitment to do better in keeping you informed of what I was doing over here in Iraq. Since I had only sent one letter previously, with this update I have doubled my correspondence. Again, if there is anyone else you think would want to get a copy of this letter, please feel free to pass it along.
I had every intention of trying to get this out just around Thanksgiving but very soon after that holiday, things seemed to pick up at work and I have just been trying to keep pace with the influx.
November has been an interesting month. Certainly not as busy as October but patients would come more in waves than a steady stream. During the month of October, the 86th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) was the 3rd busiest trauma center in the world! You read that correctly, only the trauma centers in Miami and Los Angeles did more work that we did. Just think of all the trauma hospitals in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and those in Europe, Asia, and Central/South America - most of which have 5-10 times the number of staff which we have here. It's amazing what you can get done when you eliminate the burdensome task of JCAHO (hospital regulating organization) and the exponentially expanding administrative tasks that have grown like Kudzu (weed that has overtaken much of the highways in the southeastern US) as they choke off efficient patient care. That and the fact that if you work 24 hours a day and live in the hospital while being locked down to about two square blocks seem to help us see more patients.
This is medical and surgical care practiced the way that many doctors dream. You see problems, diagnose the condition, quickly plan the operation, and you just do it. Patients don't wait, doctors don't wait, OR staff doesn't wait. It is amazing! We all love it and if it weren't for missing our families or dealing with the occasional rocket and mortar attack, most of us would not want to leave.
I have had the privilege of being adopted by the neuro team. We have world class care here. COL Ecklund is the chief of the neurosurgery program at Walter Reed, COL Ling is the only neuro-intensivist in the entire department of defense (he actually works at Johns Hopkins neurosurgical ICU teaching most of the military's critical care and neurology residents as they rotate through), and COL Mork is the anesthesiologist dedicated to the neurosurgical cases. As a number of head injuries involve eye injuries, it is a somewhat natural pairing. This has afforded me an incredible opportunity to be involved in quite a number of neurosurgical cases. COL Ecklund has shown me how to drill some burr holes in the skull and screw on plates to hold the bones after the case as well as closing up the scalp incisions over the craniotomy at the conclusion of the case. I can operate on the eyeball and use suture much finer than human hair, but to be a surgical assist to such a master as COL Ecklund has been inspiring.
These soldiers, civilians, and even prisoners have no idea how fortunate they are to have such skilled hands at work in their case.
More on the flip:
The integration of the whole team approach is one of the greatest factors in setting this experience apart. Within minutes of a patient hitting the doors of the emergency room you have a general surgeon, neurosurgeon, oral-maxillo-facial surgeon, urologist, orthopedic surgeon, and an eye surgeon all examining and conferring on the way to best care for a patient.
The nursing staff, the OR staff, the radiology techs..everything..it all just appears. Sort of like magic, a couple of doctors get called, word starts to get out and the machine starts working. The medics start drawing blood, the radiology techs arrive and start shooting pictures, the administrative personnel (yes we do have some!) start preparing the necessary paperwork, the anesthesia providers coming around like all of the other doctors, blood products from the blood bank starts to appear, and often the chaplain arrives. It really is beautiful to watch if you have a chance to sit back and really see what is going on.
Too often we don't see it because we are knees deep into the moment. We need to be reminded by those outside. Last month, the commander of one of the MP brigades asked to have a service for the OR/ER personnel that have meant so much to this unit over the duration of their deployment. This unit had been hit so hard week after week. Almost 40% of their members have been impacted by injuries. They had been such frequent fliers that we have become brothers in this struggle; the unit commander and sergeant major often join us in the operating room as we work on their men. This closeness and unity of purpose is not commonly seen between the medical corps (docs and the like) and the line units (real soldiers)...but in this setting we are brothers. These line units no longer see us as detached, primadonnas who sit in a luxury white hospital while they train in the mud and dirt. They see us in our environment and see the same faces when they come in on Monday morning as when they come in at midnight on Tuesday and again on Thursday night. They ask if we ever get any sleep and how we can keep going. My answer is always the same, "Sergeant, when you are on combat operations, when was the last time you slept and how do you keep going?"
When the unit Sergeant Major told me that they do it because they don't want to let down their buddy next to them because he is depending on that help and they do it because they know that if they get hurt, they feel sure that the medical machine will not let them down. I told him our answer was similar for how we can operate the way we do. I don't want to let down my neurosurgeon or my general surgeon who depend on me for helping with the eyes (a lot of the neurologic function in an unconscious patient comes from the eye exam and in a severely traumatized eye that can be difficult to asses even for an eye surgeon) and I don't want to let down that soldier who puts his life on the line in part because he put his faith in our ability to put him together if he gets broken.
We work two sides of the same street but when we meet it is under the most difficult circumstances. When those young MPs roll in after having been torn up by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and their lives are in the balance the family pulls together. The unit leaders come into the OR and the jobs are less defined, you just look for something that needs to be done and you do it. One young sergeant was badly broken and rushed to the OR. The IED had done its intended job and shredded this courageous American everywhere that wasn't covered by body armor. He was dying, but we weren't going to let him go without a fight. He had no immediate eye injury, so I just went to work getting the blood and hanging it on the infusers since those that usually do this were otherwise occupied. We kept pouring unit after unit into him but he was loosing it as quickly as we were able to get it in. The trauma surgeon and the vascular surgeon cracked his chest and started going after his injuries to try to stop the hemorrhaging. His heart stopped a number of times. The trauma surgeon held his heart and kept squeezing to aid in circulation while the anesthesiologists were infusing the medications needed to restart the heart. The two unit commanders were right there voicing their support and praying as they were watching the team. Two major injuries were found in the carotid and subclavian artery but too much damage had been done too much blood had been lost, and too much time had passed before his injuries could be repaired. We went through 45 units of blood. His heart stopped 7 times and we were able to restart it 6 times. When it became clear that we would not win this battle and that this young sergeant had gone into that good night, we turned off the machines and monitors, the chaplain stepped forward, and the unit commanders, nurses and doctors closed into a circle and we asked for the Lord's mercy on his soul and for God's peace with the family that will soon find out what we already know. This hero paid the ultimate price while doing his country's bidding.
I walked out onto the hospital roof which has been my refuge after such cases. I usually stay closer to some cover because I don't want to give snipers any target practice but this time I went over to hang over the rail looking down into the parking lot/patient receiving area. This is where the men usually gather to wait for news on what happened to their buddies (we don't have a waiting room). I will never forget what I saw there. For the strength of the emotion but also because I have seen it now too many times.
About 30 soldiers hanging out in various groups, some talking, some joking, some smoking, some tossing a football, some catching a few winks, but just doing what waiting soldier do. LTC T (their commander) walked out to the group who immediately jumped up and gathered around the boss. I couldn't hear what was said from the roof, but I knew that commander had a difficult message to deliver. I didn't have to hear the words, these warriors' actions said it all. Some just there motionless, some grabbed their buddies and just let the tears run down their dirt-stained faces, others unable to contain their anger, went to find a wall and began hitting it. The commander and sergeant major moved through their guys, reaching out to each one with a hug or supportive arm. Sometimes I can put all the damage and suffering behind me; my years in medicine have introduced me to death and in some ways I can detach myself. But to see this effect on his brothers in arms, transformed my previously detached self and turned on my humanity. In the ER and the OR, I can be the professional doctor, but on the roof, I become a human again. Under the cover of darkness I feel the pain of what I've seen.
Once the sergeant's body was prepared, his fellow soldiers came through and paid their last respects. This will always be the hardest part of my time here, to see these rough men break down at the sight of their fallen comrade. These leaders and subordinates file past their brother, touching him and paying their respects, shedding their tears, hugging their surviving brothers. Then in a most amazing display of professionalism, they wipe their tears, put on their gear, and walk out of the hospital back to their unit and start their patrols all over again.
So the Sergeant Major asks how can we go without sleep and how can we operate for hours at a time. After seeing the heart of his soldiers, how can we not?."
I'm going to toss in some brief bits, but first I have to tell about the recent dicey situation over here by Loring Park. Last week, as many students were milling around the Minneapolis Community / Technical College across the street, some people in a red compact rolled up off Hennepin. According to one anonymous local known as Papa Smurf who witnessed the event, suddenly a number of guys jumped out and started shooting at a group of people on the south end of the parking lot, as portrayed in a somewhat garish way here, from my living room window:
The targets took cover behind cars in the lot (there were more at the time), and the assassins sped off east down Spruce, towards Loring Park. If only I hadn't been working in St. Paul, I might have seen it from my window.
Papa Smurf said that one person was left limping around with an apparent gunshot to the leg, while most everyone else hid until the police showed up less than 5 minutes later. It was not featured on the news.
I told this to a friend, expecting some sort of 'oh wow.' Instead she was like, "Well they shot up the Tires Plus next to my house last night." You just can't impress some people.
Jane Cat, by the way, is fine now. The right ear healed up quite nicely.
On with the miscellaneous: DailySixer presents a sweet Reservoir Dogs poster and a Live Action Simpsons intro.
Alison and I got back to our East Metro roots at White Bear Lake's BearTown Lounge on Highway 61 for some really good cheeseburgers and $1 second beers in Happy Hour. The place is full of sculpted polar bears. This is exactly why East Metro beats the tar out of Edina and the West Metro.
Mordred sent over rrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnhhhh.blogspot.com, which is a Chewbacca spoof blog, inserting Chewy into such internet pop culture icons as the famous Gary Busey mugshot. Also has a myspace profile. Kind of a sublime exercise in whatever art form this is.
Chewy has a link to mchammer.blogspot.com, wherein MC Hammer has apparently learned how to upload low-quality photos from his Sidekick camera-phone. It seems this is authentic, it looks like him. And, I can't believe I am saying this, MC Hammer is audio blogging.
The Agonist has a really sweet new website now geared up. For organized international news it really rocks. The new NewsWire thing is sweet. Right now, top story is NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq, such as William Buckley, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Perle, Andrew Sullivan, George Will. Well fuck you guys. Thanks for joining the regularly scheduled disaster. I hope you hate yourselves.
Sketchy Narcotics conspiracies: NarcoNews.com is featuring, as always, lots of controversial stuff on the drug war. Today we find some of the corrupt Democrat flip side. As with most things of this nature, take it with your grains of salt. Catherine Austin Fitts is someone I would classify as from the same general sector of the infowars as Michael Ruppert (they're tight). So check out Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits: Part IV: The Clinton Years: Progressives for Private Prisons, HUD’s Corrupt Role in Centralizing Debt and Corporate Dirty Tricks.
Scooter your ass to jail:
Along the same lines as attempted homicides outside, the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust is pretty fucking great. Because nothing says freedom like outing a CIA agent, to intimidate the Washington bureaucracy into silence over the fake intelligence. Good times. And thanks for providing a list of evildoers such as Francis Fukuyama, Steve Forbes and Evil Emperor James Woolsey. And also apparently Dennis Ross. When the revolution comes, your crew will be first against the wall.
Quick batch of commentary & headlines: U.S. stuck with few options in Iraq. Preventing Iraq's disintegration. Outlook worsens in Afghanistan.
PENTAGON DISMISSES US TROOP POLL Thursday, March 02, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com
The Pentagon has dismissed a poll's finding that 72 per cent of United States troops in Iraq believe the US should pull out within a year or less. "It shouldn't surprise anybody that a deployed soldier would rather be at home than deployed, even when they believe what they are doing is important and vital work," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby International found that only 23 per cent believed US troops should stay in Iraq "as long as it takes," as US President George W. Bush has insisted.
As If There Were No Tomorrow: Sunnis Leaving Iraq by the adventuresome and indefatigable Iraqi journalist/blogger Khalid Jarrar. Juan Cole: Iraq's worst week -- and Bush's. Deep troubles as Iraq tries to form a new government. Al Ahram: The myth of civil war.
Subtle Irony Department: [via This Modern World and Under the Same Sun]: CommonDreams:
Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.
In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.
DKos: White House hunting down truth-tellers.
This is what happens when you pay too much of your credit card bill: Pay too much and you could raise the alarm:
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
Nothing left to say.
This is belated:
Kirby Puckett
1960-2006
Considering the bandwagon jumping that has accompanied the passing of Kirby Puckett, I must lay claim to my rightful place in the pantheon of those who would honor him. I was nine years old when Kirby led the Twins to victory in what is widely considered the best World Series ever played. As anyone who lived within a 250-mile radius of Minneapolis that season knows, Kirby was... in a word... Jesus. Not on a scale seen more than a handful of times in major league sports, Kirby Puckett was a figure of such sterling reputation and staggering popularity that, as many hack journalists have been quick to point out, he probably could not exist in the modern, post-A-Rod contract, Pacers brawl, Barry Bonds era. To anyone growing up in the region, his status was a given, a sort of agreed-upon point of faith: Kirby Puckett is inherently and intrinsically good. His lovability factor was high- 5'8" tall, 210 pounds, he was a tiny boulder of a man capable of moving quickly and rather gracelessly, stubby twig legs and barrel body chugging along. His personal problems have tarnished his public image, but does little to diminish his power as an icon for several generations, whose psychic connection to him was formed during his years of hard work and spectacular play. Every article I've read since his passing has focused on the home run in Game 6, but it's the catch that made that home run possible that dominated my memory. It was always Kirby's defense that delighted the most, as he looked at his most Kirby when his entirely unconventional body was fully in motion- his vertical leap was basketball big and his timing was usually dead nuts on, allowing him to grab balls a foot and a half past the outfield fence in a motion that, for him, was quite graceful, practiced and nonchalant. His work ethic always impressed but, I think, the attachment I (we) had with him had more to do with the fact that he made it look like fun. Bye, Kirby.
Technorati Tags: Sports
Via a story in the BBC sent by a friend: "Guantanamo: Anatomy of a Hearing", we find the Sketchy Bush Era Tribunal court documents of one Guantanamo detainee, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who was captured in Afghanistan, and the government claims was part of an Al Qaeda cell defending the airport. The PDF includes (12 MB) a surreal yet frightening court transcript between a Military Tribunal quasi-super-judgity-entity-power-man (the Tribunal President), the Detainee, and his Personal Representative. It also has a lot of handwritten legal statements from Abbasi.
I personally believe that setting up some kind of parallel shadow military-judiciary structure can only lead to cartoonish super-villainy and a general sense that the Law is about as meaningless as an afternoon in detention. These documents certainly lean that way. They ought to be treated as Prisoners of War, not Alien Pods from the Great Quivering Space Monster, or whatever the fuck bizarre fantasy lies at the sinister heart of the Detainee Rendering machine.
Straight from deep inside the Legal Black Hole, I offer Abbasi's formal declaration that he is indeed, a Prisoner of War, with all the legal implications therein:
The net result is some kind of Kafkaesque Neo-McCarthyism with the tone of the Vice Principal from Hell giving you detention. Includes the memorable quote, as Abbasi questions the legal basis for the invasion of Afghanistan in international law, from a prepared statement:
Tribunal President: "Mr Abbasi your conduct is unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I don't care about International Law. I don't want to hear the words International Law again. We are not concerned with International Law. I am going to give you one last opportunity, for which I am being much more generous and perhaps I shouldn't, but I will give you one last opportunity to address the specifics on the summary of evidence."
This is followed by many handwritten pages, apparently by Abassi from the confines of his cell in Cuba. It reminded me of a guy stuck in detention, complete with flourishes of handwriting and sketched arrows:
(d) anyone charged with an offense is presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law; [a provision, it seems, America has conveniently forgotten.]
But it gets better: "BOING!" is written there in the margin, associated with the statement that
The manner in which petitioner has been treated in Guantanamo Bay, and the "tribunal" that has been organized to try him – described by another respected British jurist, Lord Steyn, as a court that is a "mockery of justice" and that "derives from the jumps of the kangaroo" – cannot pass muster under the most basic and fundamental description of due process.
Further down there, Abbasi states that "I contest that I am properly classified as an 'enemy combatant.'" Finally, then, I will wrap it up with this bit...
In fact the unfounded use of military force, commencing I believe on October 9th 2001, is merely a repeat of the yet again unfounded cruise [missile] bombings of The Islamic-Emirate-of-Afghanistan, an ACT OF WAR I might add, after the Oklahoma bombing to which yet again Usama bin Laden was accused yet again without adequate evidence and yet again was unjustly attacked.
So, recent history has proven that the Terrorist United States of America has had an unjustifiable and unreasonable hate for the Islamic-Emirate-of-Afghanistan. Why so? The very words of your Commander-in-Chief reveal all:
"Crusade."
This point is made even more heinous by the subsequent point that Usama bin Laden possessed a fax line with the Terrorist American government. That though that fax line he was WARNED to the similar purport of, "The Americans are going to bomb in one month's time"! Knowledge only a handful could have possessed, who I would surmise within the upper echelons of the American government itself. Events were true to the news.
There is more to be read. The BBC report does not make clear his fate today. It's the Abassi view from inside the Legal Black Hole.
I don't much feel like writing. Over at Politics in Minnesota they assigned me the job of handling the Morning Report, which is a roundup of political news around the state. I am thinking about going down to the Minneapolis DFL Caucuses tonight, although it's quite a random experience. It is one of those things that still makes Minnesota an outlier...
Conveniently, the caucus is across the street from me at the MCTC gourmet dining room. You've still got 30 minutes to find ya DFL spots here.
Kirby Puckett was on some other level. In my younger days, well, you could count on A) Paul Wellstone and B) Kirby Puckett. To go and hang out in the outfield seats, eat a hot dog, Kirby right out there to take care of things. Somehow he was able to fool gravity, no one could understand why but it always was for the right reasons.
Where the hell did this brand of celebrity go? An athlete with more than the typical pastiche of Bling and Assholery. Who made winning the World Series look easy. Who proved that you don't have to be a whippet to run faster than hell.
Something magic was happening. The identity was less cluttered, the virtue of the game was actually there to see. Nothing like that happens anymore. That's why sports are boring today.
Great times. Something to actually believe in. Good days, now gone all over again.
Kind of a grab bag of stuff for the afternoon. We got posted as a City Pages MN blog o the day for Mordred's trip to Las Vegas yesterday. That is Teh Pimp. Thx to Mordred for a day of fame!
Kircher's Cat Piano is plainly the best thing ever. (via GM)
MN Governor Rasmussen Poll (via Kos). 2/20. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (1/16 results in parens)
Pawlenty (R) 40 (47)
Hatch (DFL) 45 (44)
Pawlenty (R) 42 (46)
Kelley (DFL) 42 (37)
The January results were perhaps an outlier, and of course the third party factor is unknown. But it indicates Kelley is solid - and I keep thinking that Kelley is a better candidate than Hatch, despite the fact that the DFL heirarchy seems to believe that it's automatically Hatch's turn – the same stodgy thinking that got us the Moe candidacy last time. Maybe...
The network news still sucks. ABC' Elizabeth Vargas is a fine example. Thanks to MediaMatters for chipping away at the typical layers of garbage. Such great moments in history as these recent Fox News moments deserve to be recorded: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" and "CIVIL WAR" IN IRAQ: MADE UP BY THE MEDIA?"
Random: A Rubik's Cube Prank and Mario Cookie from the infinite well-documented prank sphere of the Internet, a genre started by such great exploits as the 1994 Police Cruiser placed on MIT's Great Dome.
"Neo-Isolationists" take heart: 42% of Americans believed the US should "mind its own business" in a October 2005 poll. To the various warmongers of Washington, this is the 'dreaded isolationism' they fear -- or rather, its the natural inclination of the American people to step away from the tangled messes of Eurasia.
Just a third (34%) say Bush's calls for greater democracy in the region are a good idea that will succeed; 36% think it is a good idea that will not succeed; and 22% believe it is a bad idea. ..... Fully 71% say the Iraq war is a major reason that people around the world are unhappy with the U.S. And just 16% – the fewest in over a decade – are satisfied with the way things are going in the world.
Raimondo at Antiwar.com hails this as evidence that 'interventionism' is basically imposed by neo-cons and hawks upon the American public. Thus, Antiwar will keep holding the line. Moment of Truth and On the Road to Empire, indeed. Even Henry Hyde is warning against the arrogance of empire these days:
...by its very nature, the U.S. is a revolutionary power. Its foundational beliefs posit universal truths that permeate all of its actions and perceptions of the world. These have had, and continue to have, catalytic effects on other societies..... [but] Lashing our interests to the indiscriminate promotion of democracy is a tempting but unwarranted strategy, more a leap of faith than a sober calculation.
.....We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our avowed enemies and may do so again. But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.
.....We are well advanced into an unformed era in which new and unfamiliar enemies are gathering forces, where a phalanx of aspiring competitors must inevitably constrain and focus our options. In a world where the ratios of strength narrow, the consequences of miscalculation will become progressively more debilitating. The costs of golden theories will be paid for in the base coin of our interests.
There's even more but I think that gets the point. Seriously, what ever happened to the gruff conservatives of yore preaching caution? ... Tom Tomorrow predicts the future?
House Republicans sense a good time to retire. (Ten or 15 more?! wow) This could help us, of course.
Afghanistan: Opium still big-time as a Taliban spring offensive looms: Guardian: Four years after fall of Taliban, leader's power barely extends beyond the capital. WaPo: Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency: DIA Chief Cites Surging Violence in Homeland. Traditionally in Afghanistan, the fighters hunker down for the winter as snow closes off mountain valleys. In all likelihood, this spring will see the strongest Taliban offensives since 2001. Opium yields are slightly down this year, apparently because the market is flooded and prices have fallen. However, productivity per hectare is way up, and according to ABC News, a mere 200 hectares were actually shut down through NATO/Western political drug suppression efforts. About one in ten Afghans is directly employed by the opium industry, which makes up between 1/3 and 1/2 of GDP.
Thus, the Pentagon presides over probably the largest organized narcotics economy ever. Always remember that the Taliban's Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek rivals only managed to finance their survival through exporting the raw material for heroin. These are the "good guys" who control the turf, and this is how they do it. The central government can only be a passive framework, at best, in this environment. As I noted earlier, over about 200 years they defeated the British two or three times, and the USSR's great Red Army. That's how they roll. The Kabul prison rebellion (now reportedly crushed) is just the overture for the first movement.
Freedom beckons for the Bluth family: Apparently the rumors were true and Arrested Development got picked up by Showtime, for another 26 episodes. I was watching the DVDs recently and really, it might have been the best comedy on network TV. FOX is dumb for replacing it with more garbage.
How to consider purchasing an LCD monitor: A subtle art: This AnandTech comparison of top-end 20" Apple and Dell LCD displays explains all the factors.
Indian nuclear plans: According to ArmsControlWonk, it appears that only about 65% of India's nuclear plants will be monitored as civilian operations by the IAEA. Why do Americans generally ignore the existence of Israel and India's nuclear weapons, try to forget about Pakistan's and Russia's? Is Iran, which has its own damn uranium mines, really that different? Then again, the 21st century will probably have a nuclear history that will make the 20th look like Daisy picking flowers.
By the time you read this, it is already way too late for it to do you any good...
Vegas, baby!
Hell yeah, man- fucking Vegas!
Dude, I didn't go to bed 'till like two in the afternoon yesterday!
We went out to this club and there were, like, so many fine-ass chicks there!
I have always been a little confused as to why it was the city of New York that was attacked close to half a decade ago. Its position as the leading financial city in the Western world, the preponderance of media outlets, the density and the target were all perfectly chosen, if one wanted to attack the second most offensive and decadent Gomorrah inside the boundaries of the Great Satan. The best choice, one would think, the city for which the most amount of psychic justice would be rendered by its obliteration, is Las Vegas, right? 24 hours of raucous crowds, serious intoxication, non-stop entertainment and beautiful people- how can this not be the best symbolic target against the forces of smut and decadence in the war of ideologies?
Because you'd just kill this guy like eleventy million times.
I was never privy to the predecessor of the modern Vegas- I can only hope that it was truly the den of sin and iniquity it has been portrayed as. What I have seen is the cutting edge in the giant industry of shopping/gambling/hotel/theater/restaurant conglomerates: looming indoor cities containing labyrinths of paths along which one can do almost nothing else but lose money while one travels from rip-off to rip-off. There are small children all over the gaming floor, running around while Mommy grabs a cocktail. Stripping and prostitution is alluded to but not seen beyond the cards handed out on Las Vegas Boulevard and the wives of men in the High Stakes poker rooms. The tone is decidedly mall-ish, a familiar form of egalitarian commerce, no one person's money greener than another's, no one expected to dress up beyond their comfort. The proles mill about in even the nicer casinos, pulling handles on penny slots for hours at a time in order to hang out somewhere other than the Motel 8 with a shuttle to the strip- plus, they serve free booze on the casino floor, and they won't even get mad if you don't tip. In all, the experience is closer to that of a calf being fatted for slaughter than a rapacious animal on the loose for money and snatch. One of the overwhelming points of similitude between the polyglot group of visitors to Vegas is, indeed, large, slack, protruding stomachs, testaments to years of the sloth of convenience.
The average Vegas visitor looks more like this
than they do like George Clooney. In the three
days that I was there, I saw t-shirts that said "Eat
My Taco", "I [Heart] Vagina", "Just Add Wine" and
"A Gold Digger; Like A Prostitute, But Smarter"
That being said, this particular gentleman is, of
course, amazing to behold.
This selfsame sloth seems to be prowling almost every region of America, culling a very special strata of society and sending it to Vegas. Give me your tired, your indebted, your chattering classes longing to be on TV, the sloth commands! Give me morbidly obese alcoholics with advanced adult onset diabetes and bring lots of motorized scooters for them to use. Add world-class buffet facilities and free drinks so long as they're gambling! Give me every numbnuts frat boy who ever liked a Vince Vaughn movie and, while you're at it, why not throw in the real Vince Vaughn- bloated, boozy schmuck son-of-a-bitchs are always welcome. Why not, sloth says, have a city so devoid of imagination and originality that anyone can have fun, dropping money into slot machines while they sipping gratis yard long-margaritas? Here can be the realization of the banality of evil, the obliterating force of pointless, useless commerce in the hands of marketing majors and retail chain executives. And, to rub a palm full of sea salt in the open would, let's try to make it look like Venice and Paris and New York City so that it melts your mind with its hopeless bric-a-brac junkiness, its disposable gloom and dulling redundancy.
This will probably not fool you. If it does, there is a Carrot Top concert over at the MGM.
There it is, as well- the truth. Vegas is hard to hate as it is awfully banal, an indoor megaplex full of devices and activities with which to pass time for a fee. Far from being aghast at the depravity of the place, one wonders how its reputation for bad behavior has survived; It is clean and well-staffed, with courteous service employees and good security. It is family-oriented and plays host to a staggering number of major conventions. It is rather boring. Far from its baccanalian reputation, Vegas is just a great place to be separated from your cash. Maybe the reason Vegas hasn't been attacked is simple: Osama's been there (for a War on Freedom Industry Annual) and after losing, like, a zillion games of craps on the floor, went up stairs and drank two Chivas Regal bottles out of the minibar and then fell asleep on top of the covers in his clothes and woke up in time to pack up and go, and he doesn't remember much except all the blinking lights and the noise of the casino floor, the ceaseless blip-bloop of electronic slot machines.
Zzz...
Technorati Tags: hating freedom
