Putin boasts of defence-piercing missiles

re Putin - wonder what he meant by this ..

In reply to a western reporter Mr Putin said: "We know better than you what happened in Andijan.

"We know who trained the people who ignited the situation in Uzbekistan."

According to a Democratic Underground thread and its pictures, the reports of Cindy Sheehan being arrested for being about to "unfurl a banner" turn out to be incorrect. She simply was wearing a t-shirt showing the number of US military dead so far because of Iraq. The number was already out of date.

At P!.

A clip:

You may have noticed that I've been on a specific crusade (I was gonna say jihad, but the Ft Meadies are already overwhelmed) of my own of late: trying to convince y'all that The Doubleduh-Cheney Gang is NOT incompetent - that they've done quite nicely, in fact, of furthering their goals of creating chaos, diabling and dismantling our government, destroying democracy, and getting rich.

That's not to say, however, that there aren't any idiots or incompetents around. The State Department seems to be full of them. Mike "Heckuva Job" Brown is certainly a poster child. Delay, Frist, and Santorum seem to have a collective IQ of 6. And anyone with at least one brain cell coulda seen the Abramoff thingy comin'. Oh, yeah . . . and I will concede that Doubleduh is one of the stupidest people to walk the pollution-ravaged face of the earth - that's why they hired him. But I'm convinced that these are a few exceptions that prove the rule. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but that's corruption, not incompetence . . .

No one seems to be reporting this at this time.

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

via woodslot

I've written some personal poems for 4 Alito filibuster holdouts: Byrd, Akaka, Landrieu, Nelson. Here's one of them:

An Open Limerick To Senator Byrd
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Sen. Byrd you're at times quite inspired,
Speaking words that I've often admired.
Now it's time to help muster
A Sam filibuster.
If you don't, all our rights shall expire.

You can find all four of my personal Alito filibuster poems here and the audio podcast version is here.

WASHINGTON — A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.

Sen. Arlen Specter , R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored the measure, which would extend the authority of the Secret Service to allow agents to arrest people who willingly or knowingly enter a restricted area at an event, even if the president or other official normally protected by the Secret Service isn't in attendance at the time.

The measure has civil libertarians protesting what they say is yet another power grab for the executive branch and one more loss for free speech...

And so it goes.

It Could Alienate the Iraqi People, Experts Say
Damn, who woulda thunk it...

Gen. Janis Karpinski said detaining wives of suspected insurgents has been a practice of U.S. troops throughout war in Iraq. (ABCNEWS)

Politics:

2005: Labor Adds $70 million in Annual Income.

Americans prefer Democrats in 2006.

Environment:

Coral Reefs Cheaper to Protect than Neglect - UN.

Health:

Vaccine provides 100 percent protection against avian flu virus in animal study.

Gates gives $600m more to stop TB.

Master Genetic Switch Found For Chronic Pain.

Follow-up Study Shows Drug Slows Severe Alzheimer’s Symptoms For One Year.

Herpes Virus Offers New Hope in Curing Cancer.

Other:

Guggenheim hires its first curator of Asian art.

Remember: these weekly round-ups are public domain. You can repost them on your own site.

- Rose Colored News.

They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation.

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps Instead of the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the warrantless spying on Americans, we've received only the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation and a couple of big, dangerous lies...

this is an editorial pointing out the lies given the American public about spying. In addtion some 15 legal scholars here conclude that the Bush "initiative" is clearly illegal and violates the American constitution. Declaring "war powers" simply will not do!

Also, see:


A Legal Defense of Russell Tice, the Whistleblower who Revealed the President's Authorization of NSA's Warrantless Domestic Wiretapping


And this op-ed :

Using Our Fear

"A citizen in United States should never expect to gain justice through the judicial system. The system is so corrupted that in the rare case when justice prevails, it is not because of, but it is in spite of, the system.”
Rosemarie Jackowski

We are posting this call to action today because a kind and decent woman needs your help. Rosemarie Jackowski is a 68-year-old grandmother/Air Force Veteran/writer/anti-war activist and an advocacy journalist living in Vermont.

"On March 20, 2003, I participated in a peaceful protest against the war. I was arrested, incarcerated, handcuffed, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, arraigned, tried, convicted and sentenced. My conviction is currently under Appeal in the Vermont State Supreme Court.
Courtroom procedure allows the condemned the Right of Allocution. This was the first time that I was allowed to speak freely and openly to the court. Below are my words, as I spoke them, to Judge David Suntag, in Vermont District Court, in Bennington, Vt., on October 7, 2004."

A Courtroom Speech
By Rosemarie Jackowski

To get an idea of where Rosemarie is coming from I would suggest you read the above article as well as:
"Silence is the greatest of all crimes"
An interview with Peace Grandma, Rosemarie Jackowski By author Mickey Z

The details of her protest trial can be found at the Veterans for Peace website.

The idea of a jury steamrolling a grandmother for committing an act of civil disobedience is, unfortunately, not very surprising in America’s current political climate.
BUT…
That is not subject of today’s appeal to you.
The current injustice facing this amicable woman has to do with her actions as a plaintiff stemming from a traffic accident in Vermont in the year 2000. While waiting in a line of traffic she was rear ended by a loaded logging truck. Many eyewitnesses reported the truck driver was “distracted” by some young ladies on the roadside and clearly the negligent party in the accident. It would seem like a straightforward case but for the fact that the truck was owned and operated by the state of Vermont. It gets worse. It has taken FIVE YEARS for the government to even begin her deposition. I urge you to read the horrific details of this matter in her recent article:
The Deposition
By Rosemarie Jackowski

Being deposed by a government lawyer for a case where the State is the defendant is, no doubt, a rough ride. It would seem that the State of Vermont had an intimidation card up its sleeve when the lawyer’s questions began to stray far from the case at hand into the realm of Rosemarie’s political beliefs and very personal life.
An excerpt from The Deposition:

"The big day arrived. I was taken into a small, windowless room in the state’s attorney’s office complex. I looked around. There was a one-way mirror opposite to where I was seated. There were some metal bookshelves with black garbage bags on them. It reminded me of Abu Ghraib.

I was told to raise my right hand and was sworn in. Then the interrogation by an assistant to the state attorney general began. She asked questions about my political activities… questions about my political writings. She had copied all of them from the Internet and waved them about with great emotion. She seemed excited by the fact that some of my articles had appeared on a web site that has a four-letter word in its name. Obviously, she thought that this would embarrass me. It did not. I calmly explained to her that I do not have a web site and I have no control over what name other people give to their web sites.

I don’t know if she believed me or not.Then the interrogation got even more interesting. She asked questions about my sex life. She asked questions about my marriage that had ended 35 years prior. Then she started to ask detailed questions about the fact that I had been the victim of a brutal rape. The rape, which is irrelevant to this case, had occurred 40, yes 40, years ago during a time when I was working in Florida. By now, it had become very clear to me what was happening. There was no doubt in my mind that this was an attempt to intimidate me."

Whether or not you agree with Rosemarie’s political beliefs they should not hold any bearing in her case against a State-owned trucking company that had caused her much physical anguish and financial devastation. As for the exceptionally private matters of sexual assault or divorce- the representative of the State of Vermont has gone too far! This is not the progressive State that I have read about over the years. This is brutal.

We are appealing to you, dear reader, to take a few moments to write to one or all of the people listed below and join us in demanding a fair and equitable conclusion to this rather straightforward case of negligence on the part of an employee of the State of Vermont.The harassment and obfuscation by the assistant to the state attorney general and the dragging out of this otherwise uncomplicated matter are Justice delayed and Justice denied.

Dick Sears, Chairman of the State Judiciary Committee: rsears@leg.state.vt.us

Speaker of the State House, Gaye Symington: speaker@leg.state.vt.us

Governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas: http://www.vermont.gov/governor/contact.html

A susinct sentence or two is all we ask. If you are a Blogger we would ask that you perhaps utilize your own space to help spread this appeal with your own article or a link back to this one.
Thank you very much.
Amelopsis and Youngfox.

Despite protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda, U.S. officials say.
...
Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on the record because the program is classified.

Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their
...
High-ranking U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials said the program's expansion was not merely geographic. They said it had grown from targeting a small number of senior Al Qaeda commanders after the Sept. 11 attacks to a more loosely defined effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists, depending on where they were found and what they were doing.

"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former counter-terrorism official who worked at the CIA and State Department, which coordinates such efforts with other governments.

"In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do them. However, there are a few countries where the president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government."

Step by step the Pentagon is taking over the State Department and is set to finance military coups.

Congress has granted unusual authority for the Pentagon to spend as much as $200 million of its own budget to aid foreign militaries, a break with the traditional practice of channeling foreign military assistance through the State Department.

The move, included in a little-noticed provision of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act passed last month, marks a legislative victory for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who pushed hard for the new powers to deal with emergency situations.
...
After striking out with the Armed Services committees, Pentagon officials found an ally in Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has a particular interest in Africa. Inhofe agreed to propose the new authority on the Senate floor as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act. To ensure compliance with existing foreign aid rules, language was included saying that funds for the missions would be transferred from the Pentagon to the State Department before being expended and would be subject to limitations of the Foreign Assistance Act.

These conditions were dropped in a later Senate-House conference. But other conditions were added still reflecting congressional reservations.

The final version -- Section 1206 of the authorization act -- says the Pentagon can provide training, equipment and supplies "to build the capacity" of foreign militaries to conduct counterterrorist operations or join with U.S. forces in stability operations.

My friend, the esteemed Sky Cosby, has started a anarchist/green/alternative/whatever father blog. He has this to say:

When my twin daughters Lyli & Scarleht were born 6.1.04 some talk flew about our belfrys concerning a papa 'zine & its dire societal necessity. i had never seen one at the time & to date have found only a few. i had neither the time nor energy to set thought into action. now i feel as if i have put off the inevitable for too long. thusly, here is my small contribution to society & its ills. i hope that you fathers are healed somewhat by the material presented here & submit some of your own.

Who is DBT? Watch this 14 min 20sec. documentary and you will know who DBT is and how Bush stole the election.

I am most definitely not a vegan. In, fact, I must confess that I generally find vegans to be annoying. But I can't for the life of me imagine how picketing a food store could possibly threaten national security.

The American Civil Liberties Union has released photographs that the government took of vegans protesting in front of a honey-baked ham store. The incident prompted the ACLU to file a lawsuit in September on behalf of one of the protestors, Caitlin Childs. Childs was arrested after she wrote down the license plate number of the undercover Homeland Security detective who was taking pictures of the protestors. Gerald Weber of the ACLU of Georgia said of the case, "We believe that spying on American citizens for no good reason is fundamentally un-American, that it's not the place of the government or the best use of resources to spy on its own citizens and we want it to stop. We want the spies in our government to pack their bags, close up their notebooks, take their cameras home and not engage in the spying anymore."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in a document made public on Thursday that information spread by the
Pentagon to influence foreign peoples and enemies increasingly seeps back home and is "consumed by our domestic audience."

the research organization that obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act described it as propaganda planted overseas that inevitably made its way back to the United States....

The document, marked "secret," was titled "Information Operations Roadmap," and laid out the need for the Pentagon to improve its capabilities in psychological operations, electronic warfare, military deception and other areas....

It's the collateral damage theory of propaganda," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington.

The document stated that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP (psychological operations), increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa."

Also see:
Rumsfeld's Roadmap to Propoganda
The GWU NSA archive added this curious subtitle:
Secret Pentagon "roadmap" calls for "boundaries" between "information operations" abroad and at home but provides no actual limits as long as US doesn't "target" Americans

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain. -Colin Wilson

Also see,
Sharon's Terror Child
How the Likud Bloc Mid-wifed the Birth of Hamas
and
Hamas, Son of Israel
The Israelis birthed and nurtured their Islamist nemesis

Support our Kidnappers!

"The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

One Nation, under fear. with regulations and mandates for all

"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated. . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,'that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .
Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched,all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . .could never have imagined."
-From They Thought They Were Free : The Germans, 1933-45

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Seymour Melman worked tirelessly to teach people about the ills of State Capitalism: militarism, poverty, racism, sexism and deindustrialization to name a few. With his words and actions he declared that human life is dearer than the accumulation of profit and power. His writings also offer us a description of the struggles underway whereby alienated people attempt to regain control over their lives, and a glimpse of what the world may be like when these struggles succeed. A beloved teacher and friend, he will be missed.

Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II

And I suspect every other goddamn thing the Bush crime mafis does be it abroad or domestic.

In a brief departure from political humor, I've written an Ode To Takeout:

Ode To Takeout (Sing To My Favorite Things)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

"Baked meat lasagna and Indian curry.
Sesame noodles. I'm famished! Please hurry!
Buddha's Delight that is fit for a king.
Takeout is one of my favorite things.

Greek beef moussaka and cheese ravioli.
Brocc'li and eggplant, stir fried with aioli...

This rest of my Ode To Takeout song parody is here.

By Galen Moore/ Daily News Staff
NEWTON -- FBI agents responding to a terrorist threat last Wednesday could lawfully have seized library e-mail records, but decided not to, a bureau spokeswoman said yesterday.

"For a threat kind of event, you don’t necessarily need a warrant," said Gail Marcinkiewicz, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Boston office. Warrants are usually time-consuming, she said. "If you wait, the emergency could turn into a crisis, and maybe a loss of life."

Between 11 a.m. and noon, Jan. 18, Brandeis University Police received an e-mail making an unspecified, but credible terrorist threat against a university building. Emergency responders evacuated several campus buildings and a nearby elementary school, and local and federal officials swept the buildings with bomb-sniffing dogs.

By about 2 p.m., law enforcement officials had traced the e-mail to a computer at the Newton Free Library on Homer Street.

Newton police officers and FBI agents rushed to the library, but Newton Mayor David B. Cohen and library Director Kathy Glick-Weil asked officials to obtain warrants before surrendering library computers for search.

About 10 hours later, warrants in hand, agents removed the computers from the building for inspection.

FBI agents involved decided not to invoke their right to seize the material, in order to "be cooperative and not inconvenience the library," Marcinkiewicz said. She would not say on what information they had based their decision, citing the ongoing investigation.

"The decision on the imminence of this threat was not determined by the city of Newton," said city spokesman Jeremy Solomon. "It was determined by the FBI," and Cohen’s decision did not hinder their investigation.

Glick-Weil said FBI agents never told her they needed the information to prevent a terrorist attack.

She disputed statements by an unnamed law enforcement official, quoted in yesterday’s Daily News Tribune, suggesting local officials had been uncooperative. Library technology staff helped investigators locate the computer from which the e-mail had been sent, she said.

"I feel I did everything I needed to do to protect the privacy of the people I need to protect, and to obey the law," Glick-Weil said.

During the afternoon encounter between library and law enforcement officials, FBI agents locked down the library building, briefly -- "for about five minutes," she said.

The Newton officials acted in accordance with state law and the guidelines of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, said board spokesman David Gray. State law prohibits release of records that reveal a person’s identity and interest, without a warrant, he said.

"You cannot just go into a library and demand e-mail records," he said. "It’s not like you’re just looking at one person. You’re exposing everyone who would have used that computer."

Gray said he is not aware of any cases in which that law has not applied.

But Marcinkiewicz said when there is "evidence of a crime in plain view," case law and rules of criminal proceedings allow officers to search and seize property immediately, without a warrant. "That’s one of the exceptions to the Fourth Amendment," she said.

Marcinkiewicz said the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law allowing secret warrants to search library records, did not come into play in this case.

A Waltham Police Department spokesman declined to comment for this story, saying the FBI is handling public statements in the case.

Inspiring. And I briefly graced the classrooms of this place. Honored.

A July 2002 Justice Department statement to a Senate committee appears to contradict several key arguments that the Bush administration is making to defend its eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants.

* * *

In its 2002 statement, the Justice Department said it opposed a legislative proposal to change FISA to make it easier to obtain warrants that would allow the super-secret National Security Agency to listen in on communications involving non-U.S. citizens inside the United States.

Today, senior U.S. officials complain that FISA prevents them from doing that.

Nice picture choice. I wonder what those who are actually awake and paying attention are thinking. I'm no mind reader, but I would think something along the lines of, Blah, Blah, Blah...Whateverrrrrr."

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump -- missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 -- and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Katherine Hunt
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co. (HAL) , said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said.[emphasis mine] The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.

Here is a reminder:

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

New rules covering the death penalty in military courts suggest the US army may be preparing for its first execution since 1961.

The new rules spell out the procedures for carrying out death sentences imposed at courts martial.

There are six men on death row, all held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Anti-death penalty campaigners fear the new move may pave the way for the execution of Pte Dwight Loving, who was convicted of killing two taxi drivers.

The drivers were killed while Loving was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1988.

The court of appeals for the armed forces rejected his latest appeal last month.

He now has few legal resources left at his disposal.

The execution would have to be approved by President George W Bush to go ahead

Procedures

Two other servicemen were sentenced to death last year.

Sgt Hassan Akbar was convicted of killing two officers in Kuwait in 2003.

A jury also sentenced Senior Airman Andrew Witt for stabbing to death his wife and another airman.

The new rules are acknowledged by senior ranks as a major revision of the existing situation.

The revision also makes it possible for executions to take place at any military prison, not just Fort Leavenworth.

This, according to anti-death penalty protesters, means it would be technically legal for executions to take place at Guantanamo Bay.

Currently 10 detainees there have been charged with various offences, but none of them are capital cases.

When I read this article it wasn't the hostages in Gitmo I first thought of. My mind when straight to the links posted by Trevor Blake's , recomendations of the progressive link entitled:American Short Timer, in paticularly, uncle sam's trigger niggers. I was really impressed with the incredible writing of most of the soldiers, apart from the Lincoln Corp plant but I felt like shaking them and sayin "What are you doin, don't be blogging about this, its time for action.

Then you will have earned the respect that many of you claimed that you joined up to garner.

I decided not to cause, although I can't really feel for those guys, I'm gonna keep my respect for the guys who pull themselves out of unemployment,drug addiction, incarceration and eath by deciding up front not to shoot other meat for the machine, I understand their position enough to wish them no ill will and a posting on their blog recommending they shoot the shit telling them to pull the trigger rather than their fellow humans, wouldn't achieve anything apart from maybe giving the shit an excuse to close down their bloggs.

From reading whats being written on these bloggs I think that it must only be a matter of time before the troops do mutiny. When they do though it will be as a resuly of a group decision from within.

Army combat life has got them so locked into the 'band of brothers thing' in the same way a biker gang or rock band does for its members that these guys are only gonna move when the urge comes from within, not cause some idjit on the other side of the world harangues 'em.

That said I think we need to recognise that the shit in suits at the pentagon will also be feeling that 'tipping point' is coming close.

That is what this regs change is about.

The blokes who were too busy making their first mil to get drafted a generation ago must be feeling pretty nervous and I'd say a lot of Jack Murtha's mates are also feeling like the troops aren't gonna take much more.

So BushCo is gonna start offing a few grunts pretty soon in the hope that will help them to concentrate and remember to only kill those they're told to and not those who they think deserve it.

The Gitmo gang will be safe until so many grunts have been offed that a certain section of the sheeple will be gettin agitated. Then they'll commit one of the worst, most abhorred and longest outlawed war crimes, that is taking the life of an enemy who is your captive and/or who has surrendered.

But that's OK cause these guys will be unlawful combatants.

Assholes are so predictable.

It's almost enough to make you laugh -- bitterly, of course. Here was Ford Motor Co. announcing yesterday that it had cut 10,000 jobs last year and that it will cut up to 30,000 more. But shedding jobs at muscle-car acceleration rates didn't stop Ford from pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars courtesy of the American Jobs Creation Act.

No, I'm not making this up. Right there, on page 2 of one of its news releases yesterday, Ford said that "repatriation of foreign earnings pursuant to the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 resulted in a permanent tax savings of about $250 million."

Hello? How can you simultaneously cut jobs and benefit from the American Jobs Creation Act? Welcome to the wonderful world of Washington nomenclature.

Ahh, the wonders of corporate welfare.

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

Google, which recently won praise for refusing to turn over search data to U.S. government authorities, has now given in to pressure from another authoritarian state. The company will censor search results for users in China. Evidently the company's mantra, "don't be evil", doesn't apply to facilitating evil done by others.

Victor Willis, the original cop in The Village People, is back in the public eye. Willis, who failed to appear in court today on drug and handgun possession charges, will be featured on an upcoming episode of "America's Most Wanted". Authorities are said to be looking for Willis in area YMCAs and Navy recruiting stations.

Good write-up on the former director of NSA, General Michael Hayden's recent speech defending the Bushco.

BBC: "New rules covering the death penalty in military courts suggest the US army may be preparing for its first execution since 1961. The new rules spell out the procedures for carrying out death sentences imposed at courts martial. [...] The new rules are acknowledged by senior ranks as a major revision of the existing situation. The revision also makes it possible for executions to take place at any military prison, not just Fort Leavenworth. This, according to anti-death penalty protesters, means it would be technically legal for executions to take place at Guantanamo Bay."

The Ford Motor Company will send 30,000 workers to the unemployment line as part of its "Way Forward" reorganization plan. Wall Street investors--none of whom, it would appear, actually know any auto workers--reacted with glee, pushing Ford's share prices up 7%.

Company chairman Bill Ford had this to say about the massive job cuts: "I appreciate the fact that winning will require sacrifices by the people of Ford, and there will be fewer of us here in the future than there are today." Ford's touching expression of empathy would, perhaps, be more credible if he and his boardroom cronies were among those facing the axe. But, as usual, the top corporate brass--those actually responsible for the company's lagging performance--will lose neither their jobs nor their generous compensation. Ah, the wonders of capitalism.

By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."

Just something to keep in mind when the evenings news insists that an audio tape trying to scare you into war is really a dead guy... or that people were making cell phone calls from doomed aircraft to their families.

When George W. Bush delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now, William Rivers Pitt proposes that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out in silent protest.

First women elected president in Chile.

Liberian becomes Africa’s first female president.

Bikers Win One: Judge Nixes City Law on Parade Permits.

Court nullifies ban on assisted suicide.

Ex-Pentagon analyst sentenced for sharing secrets.

Health:

'No link' between cellphones and brain tumours .

- Rose Colored News.

University of Chicago Law Professor gets to the heart of the matter:

Whatever else Judge Alito may or may not have made clear about his views on such issues as abortion, federalism, and religious freedom, he has certainly made clear that he has no interest in restraining the acts of this commander-in-chief. That, in my judgment, poses a serious threat to the nation, and is a more than adequate reason for the Senate – Republicans and Democrats alike – to deny his confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States.

(01/19/06 -- DURHAM) - A Duke professor says he is doubtful about Thursday's audiotape from Osama bin Laden.

Snip:
He thinks bin Laden is dead and has doubts about the tape. Lawrence recently analyzed more than 20 complete speeches and interviews of the al Qaida leader for his book. He says the new message is missing several key elements.

Molly Ivins has a message for the Democratic Party:

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If only there were any reason to hope that the party's leadership would listen.

(Thanks to Brian Leiter for the pointer.)

What were you doing in March 2003? That was when President Bush gave Saddam Hussain an ultimatum: either they had to leave Iraq or the United State would invade. And sure enough, Saddam Hussain didn't leave and the United Sates did invade.

With all that going on, perhaps it is understandable that many of us didn't notice that the nuclear power of North Korea successfully attacked the United States with a missile. Good thing the US government had its priorities straight, invading a country that posed no possible threat to the US while ignoring a country that actually did attack the US. And thank heaven for the mass media, that reported on this attack so thoroughly.

Two words:

Porter Goss

.

If you flip over the rock of American foreign
policy of the past century, this is what crawls out ...

A choice quote from todays basement hearings: (Of course the CIA controled media will never tell you this)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said he agrees a special counsel is needed.

"If you're dealing with what appears to be a criminal conspiracy by the president, the vice president, the attorney general and others, you cannot ask the attorney general and the people under him to fairly investigate," Nadler said. "Obviously, they will dismiss this out of hand because they will not admit how real this is."

P.S. Somebody should torrent this:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter012006_spying.rm?mode=compact

More here.

Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have turned over records of internet search requests to the U.S. Department of (in)Justice. Google, to their credit, refused. The records contain information only about the search terms and results themselves, and do not identify users or their ISP addresses. Still, this latest news should only add to concerns about federal "data mining" and other surveillance.

Further demonstrating his impressive capacity to spout utter bullshit with a straight face, White House spokesman Scott McClellan had this to say in response to the latest message from Osama bin Laden:

Clearly the al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists are on the run. They're under a lot of pressure.

Regarding bin Laden's offer of a conditional truce with the U.S., McClellan declared (inexplicably neglecting to beat his chest as he did so):

We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.

And how's that working out for you, Scotty?

The Impeach Bush Coalition is asking people to add this message to their e-mail signatures, as a means of raising awareness about the Administration's illegal domestic surveillance programs:

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President.

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption [overseas] in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

"This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote, 'Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism...'



"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time...

"We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.' There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Kayam is right: 'The moving finger writes, and having written moves on.' "We still have a choice today: non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation... [Said another way: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." --Ed.]



"We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam,"
Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967

[Please note: a reader correctly pointed out yesterday that a website I had linked to supported a pro-violence organization: the PFLP. While I support the nonviolent struggle of Palestinians to stop the ever-encroaching religious fundamentalist settlements, I do not support violence. My fault for not being familiar with the PFLP or looking it up. I had assumed it was nonviolent when I read that the website mentioned gave money to "radio stations and graphics workshops." While I strongly oppose violence, I rigorously support radio stations and graphics workshops and all enablers of free speech and discussion. Apologies for not doing my homework.]

. . . anyone have any recommendations for new Progressive Blog of the week?

But we actually have no reason whatsoever to believe that these tapes are authentic. While there have been reports of scientific voice analyses performed on them, these studies have been invariably done by CIA experts. In fact, on only one occasion was an independent analysis done. And while US officials were certain of that tape’s authenticity, Swedish scientists were equally convinced that it was a fake.

Wait, didn't Ledeen say OBL was dead? Be that as it may, on the assumption that the tape is authentic why would Osama release an audio tape rather than a video like he usually does? Could not some high tech agency use his voice and reconstruct the message "they" want w/his voice signature? Take a lot of .wav files of OBL blathering, then cut&paste snippets until you've got something that approximates what you want said. THEN record it onto crappy audiotape, copy that tape to another, then copy it once more.

Send to Al Jazeera, and "OBL LIVES! He ain't dead, really! See, we've got an AUDIOTAPE of him! We can't come up with a video because, because, uh, have you taken a LOOK at how expensive videotape is at the Peshwar WalMart? We're POOR! All we can AFFORD are the used cassettes from Abu Ali's Bait & Pawn when we go and buy our explosives!"

And so begins the great Bush/Cheney Reboot, this is just what they'll need to get an excuse to invade Iran. I have no idea what chain of evidence they'll use to link OBL to Iran but I'm sure they'll make up something.


Let's see: election year...check.
Lots of Republicans under investigation...check
Wiretapping scandal hasn't just gone away...check.
Lets wait and see if he doesn't keep popping up at just the right times between now and midterm elections. Got to go watch more 24!

My latest post comments on Judge Sam Alito's Supreme Court nomination, his integrity or lack thereof, his wife's just pretend tears, and the likelihood of a filibuster. It includes five Sam Alito poems in different formats, starting with this one:

If Not Now, Then When?
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Will Senate Dems preserve our rights
And filibuster Sam?
How 'bout it Dems? Let's see you fight
And prove you give a damn.

Cause Democrats must do much more
Than talk and primp and bluster.
It's time for Dems to show some guts
And Sammy filibuster.

The post with all five of my latest Sam Alito poems is here and my podcast version is here.

June 22 , 2005
An Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

am Gardiner has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College. He was recently a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defence College. During Gulf II he was a regular on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as well as on BBC radio and television, and National Public Radio. He authored “The Enemy is Us” an article describing how the Bush Administration used disinformation and psychological warfare – weapons usually used against the 'enemy' – against the American public in order to support the war in Iraq. He has done an extensive analysis of the media coverage before the war, during the war and during the occupation as well as of the statements of Administration officials. His conclusions are startling and of great concern. He has put his findings in a report entitled: “Truth from These Podia".

Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?: Historical outreach?

Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France's Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army's 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.

In the U.S. media, so far only Alexander Cockburn, columnist for The Nation and co-editor of the newsletter CounterPunch, has picked up on the story. Cockburn's column on the subject is available at www.counterpunch.org.

The story is disturbing. In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies.

A senior US official described OPD as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory." (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.

CNN has always maintained a close relationship with the Pentagon. Getting access to top military officials is a necessity for a network that stakes its reputation on being first on the ground during wars and other military operations.

What makes the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army's covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against CNN itself?

For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN's satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.

An unofficial strategy paper published by the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 and written by an Army officer ("Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier") urged military commanders to find ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection."

PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror

The use of misleading information as a military tool sparks debate in the Pentagon. Critics say the practice puts credibility at stake.

Published on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

Does it strike anybody else besides me, to see Bushes intrepid and "little-noticed provision" to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as "disruptors" looking a bit like the above Aritcle 58-3,10,12,13,

?

By way of truthout, "Environment in Crisis: 'We Are Past the Point of No Return'" by Michael McCarthy in The Independent UK. Clips:

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again . . .

read the entire article at P!

Poets Against the War Winter newsletter by Sam Hamill

What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.

In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.

I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

via Lisa in Los Angeles over @dkos

Scary:

David E. Rosenbaum spent his long newspaper career unraveling the lies and scandals of Washington, from Watergate to Iran-Contra to Samuel Alito's defense of illegally spying on Americans.

The veteran reporter was attacked Friday night by two men on the street near his home in a wealthy Northwest D.C. neighborhood where crime is unknown.

[...]

Instead of calling a nearby ambulance, dispatchers made the inexplicable choice of sending one from the other side of the city.

D.C. police, meanwhile, have an explanation for their own bizarre behavior: They didn't pursue the suspects because they allegedly believed Rosenbaum had a seizure or stroke.

Yet police immediately told Rosenbaum's horrified family that he had been beaten and robbed of his wallet. The family was even told on Saturday that someone tried to use one of the reporter's stolen credit cards, but no details were offered and nobody has been arrested.

Read the whole thing.

Also be sure to check out the bottom section for similar crimes in the past 2 months.

Update: Arrests have been made.

'America's Constitution is in grave danger'

A barn burner! Must be heard.

C-SPAN link to speech:

rtsp:/video.c-span.org/project/ter ter011606_gore.rm?mode=compact

At least seven House Democrats learned about the NSA's secret spying program four years ago.
So why didn't anyone blow the whistle? [via whatreally happened]

maybe Wayne Madsen knows why, as his Jan 15th post says:
the Anti-leak policy [was]enacted at [the]Pentagon before and after 9-11.

A favorite standby of pundits and columnists is to predict what developments will transpire over the next 12 months. I've decided to take the reductio ad absurdum approach, and predict what might happen in 2006 should the most disturbing trends of the last few years with respect to liberty and personal freedom continue unabated. You might find what follows to be a bit farfetched. Silly, even. But bear with me.

Sorry for missing last week... was busy moving. Here's the past two weeks worth. I've been on the go, and don't have Internet at the place I'm staying, so there's not as much here as usual.

Politics:

Rhode Island approves medical marijuana.

Record Fund-Raising for the DNC.

Health:

Cancer may prevent suppress breast tumors.

Scientists Develop New Anthrax Antibody.

New ovarian cancer therapy ‘promising’.

Bird flu may be more common, less deadly.

Clinton expands program for cheaper AIDS drugs.

A book about psychopathy and politics entitled Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil as adapted for political purposes is soon to be published. The author, Andrew M. Lobaczewski, is a Polish psychologist. Now 84, he was part of a secret research project in Eastern Europe under communist rule collecting data from his clinical work.

He noticed a high correlation between acts we would classify as "evil" and pathologies that were able to be clinically diagnosed in the perpetrators.


One of the points that Lobaczewski makes is that psychopaths are aware of their difference from normal people. They have a certain special knowledge that comes from their study of us, and they are experts in manipulation. Moreover, the smarter ones work together to orient social movements and whole societies when they come to power in the direction of pathological values.

Different pathological types play different roles at different moments in the development of a social movement, until, at the end, the essential psychopaths have taken over control. Lobaczewski looks at how these different types work together. His analysis suggests that the dominant ideology that brings the pathocracy to power is less important than the pathological underpinnings, which is why fascism, communism, and, more and more, democracies, share the same dynamic.

Also, a new story about how NSA Uses Local Cops To Track Peace Groups

You may want to look into the history of Cheney's influence/involvement in the surveillance and detention of Americans. As Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s

In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed just such emergency surveillance and detention powers in a super-secret program that planned for what was euphemistically called "Continuity of Government" (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster.

and that

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly 9/11 would meet this definition..

via gabriella@dkos

I have a feeling of dread and disgust about my government. I don't fear it as much as I fear for our country's future under this government's ongoing destructive policies at home and abroad.

Let's get something straight: I've never been a left-winger. I'm a hawk when it comes to national defense. I grew up in a military family and spent years living overseas during the Cold War. It takes real provocation, personal and direct, to get me to "go political."

However. This fool from Texas has pretty much made a mockery of himself, our country and our freedoms with his reactionary, fearful, panicky response to events that were his responsibility to prevent in the first place: The 9/11 attacks happened on his watch.
It's interesting to note that on the morning of 9/11, George Bush senior was meeting with Osama Bin Laden's brother in New York City.

King George isn't really a joke to me any more as much as he is a clear and present threat to our nation's most sacred values and security.

truth to power:

When is America going to wake up? WHAT does it take?
Believe it our not, the Bush family played a critical role in Hitler's rise to power.
In 1938, Time Magazine's Man of the Year was Adolph Hitler.
In 2004, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was Monkey Boy, King George.

The pResident is signing laws that include signing statements that exempt him from the laws.

Like a terrorist, this man is using the American system against its own citizens.

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh.

With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt 'ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho.'

No joke.

'I laugh every chance I get,' says the instructor, retired Army colonel James 'Scotty' Scott. 'That's why I'm blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely need a lot of laughter in our lives.'

Scott, 57, is certified as a laughter training specialist by the Ohio-based World Laughter Tour, a group that promotes mirth as medicine. It touts scientific research that suggests chuckling can boost the body's immune system and decrease stress hormone"

"Ahahahahahahaa! My son is dead...Bwahahahahahahahah! Oh man, sometimes I just kill myself. Hahahahahahaha-snort!"

Or opponent moves of "The Grand Chessboard," of THE COMING WARS .

Manipulation in crisis? or the Hegelian Dialectic of Problem-Reaction-Solution.

Faster, please.

When you are inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies.You have to understand most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many are so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

Another tasty NSA tool
This one pinpoints the physical location of a computer...

The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring out an Internet user's geographic location.

Come an get me you fucks, I am not scared. I do not fear you. However, I bet that scares you.

"During that time, I was moved to the camp clinic because of the terrible state of my health. They would take me for investigations which were mostly held at night; they would beat me severely and tell me to confess that I was a terrorist!! Once, from the excessive and severe beatings, one of my foot shackles broke. Once, they poured boiling hot liquid on my head and the investigator stubbed his cigarette out on my foot. I said to him, "why are you treating me like this?" He then took a cigarette and stubbed it out on my right wrist and said, "in the name of Christ and the Cross I am doing this". Once, they had beaten me so severely that my clothes were ripped and my genitals were exposed. I tried to cover myself up but they started kicking me with their boots.

They stripped me of my clothes and lay me flat on the ground. One of the soldiers urinated on my head and my face after one of the other soldiers had raised my head by the hair. After that, a soldier brought petrol and injected it into my penis. I screamed because it was extremely painful. They took me back to the camp after a long night of torture. I was bleeding where they had injected the petrol and it was very swollen so I asked to see the doctor. When I met the doctor and told him what had happened, he became very angry and said, "you’re a liar and a terrorist and you deserve worse than this". He left me and went away. When it was almost sunset, they took me to the investigation tent, the torture tent, and beat me as they were taking me there. I saw the investigator and he was really angry with me; he said, "you’ve been complaining to the doctor about us?! We’ll show you what we’ll do to you" and they hit me really hard all over my body. They started kicking me with their boots and then they took me to another camp while I was blindfolded. I heard an Afghani prisoner scream; he was crying and saying, "O Allah, O God", in Afghani and other words in his language that I did not understand. When I approached the door of the camp, they took off the blindfold.

The investigator then started taking off her clothes – the soldier with the camera was filming everything. When she was in her underwear, she stood on top of me. She took off her underpants, she was wearing a sanitary towel, and drops of her menstrual blood fell on me and then she assaulted me. I tried to fight her off but the soldiers held me down with the chains forcefully and ruthlessly so that they almost cut my hands. I spat at her on her face; she put her hand on her dirty menstrual blood that had fallen on my body and wiped it on my chest.

This shameless woman was wearing a cross on a chain. The cross had a figure of a crucified man on it. She raised the cross and kissed it, and then she looked at me and said that this cross was a present for you Muslims. She stained her hands with her menstrual blood and wiped my face and beard with it. Then she got up, cleaned herself, put her clothes back on and left the room…then the soldiers took my hands and tied them to my feet on the ground. All the soldiers left once they had taken my clothes from the corner of the room and left me in this state – tied up, naked and smeared with [] menstrual blood...

Also see:

Moral Disengagement and Dehumanization

The psychological mechanisms involved in getting good people to do evil

Senator Frank Church chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro operation, which spied upon & attempted to INFILTRATE, DISRUPT & DISCREDIT the peace movement, even Martin Luther King Jr.

"if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable [him] to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."

via whatreallyhappened

I've posted five new limericks today. Here's the one about Bush and Abramoff:

A Bush Pioneer Who's Named Jack
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A Bush pioneer who's named Jack
Raised for Dubya a huge money stack.
Bush now queries, Jack who?
Though he won't bid adieu
To the dough from that scurrilous hack.

All five of my new limericks are here.
And the audio / podcast version is here.

Here's hoping Alito has very bad luck on his nomination, his role on Supreme Court could be disastrous....
From Salon: "Alito's bad luckThe latest Supreme Court nominee has to face a Senate newly emboldened to challenge the imperial Bush presidency. And his paper trail gives senators plenty of ammunition to do it.
By Walter Shapiro
Jan. 09, 2006 Samuel Alito is a passionate fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, a baseball team so star-crossed that it has won the World Series exactly once (1980) in the past century. Alito was already a federal appeals court judge in 1994 when he attended his favorite team's fantasy camp, where middle-aged men suit up in Phillies' uniforms for a few days on a spring-training diamond in Florida and pretend that with the right set of breaks they could have been big-leaguers themselves. Rooting for the Phillies and indulging his inner 11-year-old at fantasy camp should have taught Alito something about the role that luck plays in sports -- and, yes, the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
At high noon Monday (or probably a few minutes later since we are going by congressional time), Alito will stride confidently to the witness table of the Senate Judiciary Committee, smile at the 18 preening senators on a raised platform, put on his most thoughtful, nonthreatening, man-of-the-people expression for the cameras and begin the most grueling version imaginable of the law boards. But before Alito is allowed to recite his opening statement (the major event of the first day), protocol demands opening statements by those 18 senators, all of whom will make a public-television pledge drive seem like a model of brevity in comparison.
Trying to look engaged while the 18 senators read prepared remarks that reflect the law-library erudition of their staffers, Alito will have ample time to reflect on how the political clouds have darkened for presidential appointees since Chief Justice John Roberts glided through his own confirmation hearings last September. As Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Oregon and an Alito critic, put it, "He has the worst luck in the world to have his nomination come up in the middle of the NSA wiretapping scandal."
Context often trumps content in politics. Even before the New York Times revealed last month that George W. Bush has acted out his belief that court orders are for wimps when it comes to eavesdropping on purported terrorists, a rebellion was already brewing over the administration's assertion of wartime powers until the last surviving member of al-Qaida gives up and goes to work for Halliburton. The libertarian wing of the Republican Party belatedly showed its moxie when three conservative true believers (John Sununu, Larry Craig and Lisa Murkowski), plus GOP maverick Chuck Hagel, joined Senate Democrats in a filibuster that has delayed a no-questions-asked extension of the Patriot Act. The Senate also expressed rare bipartisan unity in support of John McCain's notion that torture should be regarded as the ultimate un-American activity. Newsweek summarized the changed mood with its cover line last week: "A New War Over the 'Imperial Presidency.'"
Concepts like the "imperial presidency" have a special meaning for those of us who came of political age during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Ted Kennedy harked back to the favorite political scandal of aging Democrats when he said at a get-ready-for-Alito press conference last week, "The role of executive power [will be] an area of enormous importance and consequence during the course of this hearing because I believe that we have seen historically where presidents have believed that they are above the law. We saw that with Richard Nixon in Watergate." Even Texas Republican John Cornyn -- a Judiciary Committee member who began a conference call with reporters by denouncing "hard-left opposition groups" -- conceded, "I expect that you'll hear questions from both sides on this balance between civil liberties and security."
A fair reading of Alito's paper trail suggests a strong philosophical tilt in favor of bold Bushian assertions of presidential power. This conclusion is not based on the ideological assertions in Alito's now-famous 1985 job application when he was bucking for a promotion in the Reagan Justice Department: ''In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with the Warren Court decisions.''
Salon.com News Alito's bad luck

The creation of the new market states is the result of NAFTA, the EU, and other new evolving models of contractual corporate and state cooperation. They are the WTO, APEC , etcagreements and meetings that are occuring that have set in motion the evolution of the market state that Bobbitt speaks of below.

The War in the Balkans followed by the war in Afghanistan followed by the war in Iraq is not just the war of Empire and Imperialism but of private armies and private contractors, becoming in effect a state, since they provide privatized functions of the state as I have blogged about. (He links to an earlier post of his here.)

The attack on the Balkans was an attempt to end the last vestiges of State Capitalism and pound the Serbians into submissive acceptance of the privatization of the State through strategic bombing of industries.

It is the same with Iraq. It too was the last state capitalist country in the Middle East that had to be privatized. The other countries were less vulnerable since they are hierarchical societies that had opened their markets to capitalism, while remaining fuedalistic social constructs.


An interesting analysis of this concept of the War of the Market State can be found at Global Guerrillas which reviews this book [Phillip Bobbit's - the Shield of Achilles - which Elites were reading ~911 I think]

.........

Thus the War on Terror is a war on two fronts. One to smash and transform the last outposts of state capitalism in Europe and the Middle East, and a war on the unregulated market.

Global Guerrillas says; The similarity between these commercial networks and those of modern terrorism (my global guerrillas) is not incidental.
Nor is it incidental that the American Empire is sowing the seeds of its own self destruction, not only in expensive military operations that rack up thousands of corpses and trillions in deficits, but in the fact that like the British Empire before it in order to finance these wars, it too relies on the black market. The British Empire set itself up for decline as it persued its Opium Wars against China. The US set itself up in the 1980's providing stinger missles to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan who paid for them in opium money. Who transported them through smuggling routes, still with us today used by Bin Laden Inc.

Capitalism has outgrown the Nation State. It reguired it for its period of ascendency. Now that it is the real domination of everything , of all social relations it needs a new state, a market state. One that can continually destroy its overproductive capacities. As capitalism evolves better technonological production, increases productivity and reduces the need for real labour, it amasses capital, which becomes unproductive. It is here that the new market state can use this capital to create permanent war, small scale localized war, that does not threaten its global expansion, but allows it areas for wide scale destruction of productive capabilities to offset its cancerous growth.

If war is privatized and all state functions are privatized, then the individual is no longer identified as a citizen, or as a wage labourer, but as 'free' individual, a contractor in a market state. Capitalism will have evolved to its logical conlusion; that we remain wage slaves but no longer to a particular boss or business but to the market. Our alienation will be complete. And it will be a society of barbarism, of all against all.

The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed 3.9 million lives, according to a study.

It says starvation and disease caused by a conflict, which began in 1998, were by far the greatest killers.

The results of the study, conducted by the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based relief agency, are published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

"Congo is the deadliest crisis anywhere in the world over the past 60 years," said Richard Brennan, the study's main author. "Ignorance about its scale and impact is almost universal and international engagement remains completely out of proportion to humanitarian need." The committee found that Congo's war claimed 38,000 lives every month in 2004.

I don't know who this guy is but he has been kicking major ass over at digby.

From the NY Times:

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

...For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lost lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops. Officials have said they are shipping the best armor to Iraq as quickly as possible. At the same time, they have maintained that it is impossible to shield forces from the increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices used by insurgents. Yet the Pentagon's own study reveals the equally lethal threat of bullets.

The vulnerability of the military's body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until this September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine Corps officials acknowledge.

This should definitely cause an uproar.

Funny how the war in [on] Iraq/terror has a convert component. A two fold developmental mechanism if you will, that hardly gets the container needed to scrutinize it's beneficial or detrimental effects on us all. Moreover, it's a shell game, with (power) money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIADIANSA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers - and presidential family members - lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how the United States, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes and runs it's republic.

Welcome to the machine:(of course by passing this on I realize I am probably doing their work for them)

In 2001, President George W. Bush gave US $43 million to a faith-based drug rehabilitation program. What has that program done lately?

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

That's right, "Fear, Inc." -- a consortium of politicians, press, police, advertising, insurance, healthcare, and numerous other components of our society, each with a vested interest in promoting fear -- has finally found a king and court in this Administration. And that is largely because this Administration is afraid itself. It's nothing more than a clump of barroom bullies. Glenn Greenwald, Attacking Bush's only weapon: Fear.

Also, a request: Anyone here remember the symposium or conference Al Gore gave in 2004 on fear in politics? On February 9, 2004, on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Gore gave what many consider his harshest criticism of the president yet when he accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. "He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."

Al Gore Speaks on Fear:
It's Political Uses and Abuses

I bring this up not so much because of Gore's speech, however good it may have been, but because I was listening to the introducer or MC before Gore spoke and he mentioned several "white papers" on this subject of "fear in politics" by several political scientists, who had done groundbreaking academic work in this area. However, he never mentioned who they were or how to follow up on it. It has been like a splinter in my mind ever since. Anybody got any clues on how to find these research papers?

The NY fucking Judas Miller Times has an op-ed suggesting that it would be good for democracy if we repealed the 22nd Amendment. You know, the one that says that Presidents can only have 2 terms.

“As reported below, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell – based on some information she clearly hasn’t yet made public – is asking if Bush specifically wiretapped CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. The fact that the question was asked so publicly and so specifically means that Mitchell knows something.”

And they have since changed the transcript too
--unbelievable.

"The person who reforms society is still caught in society; but the person who is free of society, being free from conditioning, will act in his or her own way, which will act again upon society.

"So our problem is not reformation, how to improve society, how to have a better welfare state, whether communist or socialist or what you will. It is not an economic or political revolution, or peace through terror. For a serious person, these are not problems.

"The real problem is to find out whether the mind can be totally free from all conditioning, and thereby perhaps discover in that extraordinary silence that which is beyond all measurement."

-- J. Krishnamurti, London, 1955

This really is as easy as this guy says... a sixth grade geek could generate these types of lists. Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists via Boing Boing

My latest song parody celebrates Jack Abramoff's plea bargain. Here's how it starts:

Say Goodbye To Tom DeLay -- Song Parody (Sing to "Yesterday")
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Tom DeLay,
He's got troubles. They won't go away.
Jack's pled guilty and he'll have his say.
So say goodbye to Tom DeLay.

Abramoff,
He's pled guilty. Now Tom won't get off.
Yes, they've got him cold, though wingnuts scoff.
Can't wait to hear from Abramoff.

The rest of my Say Goodbye To Tom DeLay song parody is here.

In the Urca neighborhood near the base of Rio de Janeiro's Sugarloaf mountain, architect Alexandra Lichtenberg tackled a remodeling project that demonstrates that being green isn't the exclusive domain of high-cost, luxury residences and backwoods off-grid dwellings. A good green remodel is within reach of the average well-intentioned homeowner in the average urban neighborhood anywhere in the world, and the EcoHouse proves it. [more]

corrupt politicians trembling in Washington as hopes emerge that their Play for Pay schemes, i.e. taking bribes from lobbyists and pushing legislation while be uncovered and Big Boys will go down from Tom DeLay and Bob Ney to corrupt staffers, this could be biggest political scandal of the season (though many more wait in the wings)
Lobbyist Set to Plead Guilty in Florida; Second Plea in 2 Days - New York Times

A nice summary of our current predicament.

Todays democracy Now is of interest I promise:

Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state." [includes rush transcript], but it must be heard and seen.