New moon shining …
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June 10, 2005
Open Thread
Comments
it’s thundering and lightening here, as it has for the last few days. I kind of love it.
Which brings to mind a saying I received from an old friend (from the 80’s.) I have on a plaque on my wall which she painted on a piece of slate. Which might help explain some of my posts here.
It says:
“My Mind Works Like Lightening…
(Then her piece of artwork which is a cloud with a lightning flash coming out of it, and below it:)
one brilliant flash and it’s gone!”
Posted by: Juannie | Jun 10 2005 19:32 utc | 1
“A neo McCarthy MOMENT? : Republicans abruptly shut down Patriot Act hearing ”
This was one of the most biased and bizarre examples of the Republicans closing out reality that I have ever seen. This was blatantly foolish and irresponsible. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the Republicans on this committee are interested in fixing what’s wrong with our country. They were so busy trying to ignore, hide reality and power grab that they looked like arrogant fools.
Meanwhile, “2,200 Journalists Await Jackson Verdict”
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 11 2005 8:14 utc | 3
@Uncle $cam above:
watch the CSPAN video on that meeting under Recent Programms “House Hearing on Patriot Act Reauthorization (06/10/2005)” here. Start at 1:26 with the testimony of Mr. Zogby.
Unbelievabel
A typical Friday late night news release: U.S. Officials Confirm Second Mad Cow Case
A second American animal has tested positive for mad cow disease, Agriculture Department officials said last night. The sample, from a downer cow in Texas that died last November, was retested earlier this week at the request of the USDA inspector general’s office.
More information at the Organic Consumers Association site.
response to jj, continuing open fifty-five:
(the topic was Bill Gates and the WHO)
The institution (non private sector) taken over – or utterly altered by powers above and outside the institution:
is subject to internal difficulties, odd flurries, scandals (these last may be very minor)
its personnel rallies behind the director, the top guns
many people quit but keep mum (you see them popping up in other places!)
it re-affirms its main aims vociferously
it puts forward its most popular, central, etc. or well understood, publisised, actions/aims/programs/etc. The ‘we do this well’ spiel is a give away. It means they are under siege..
it generally gives up politics (Gvmtal politics, even if it had a strong supporter before) in the interest of ‘unity’ or ‘our mandate’ but in effect because it is some political force that is attacking them or taking them over
in some cases it may suddenly take on new tasks or discover an original, now desperately important ‘niche’
it cuts budgets, fires, hires temps (this is supposed to look positive), may move geographically, may abandon part of its activities, may decide to downgrade some others, may change its rules (internal but usually not external), always pointed towards enforcing its own authority
As it is a public inst. and paid for by the tax payer (or mixed gvmt. funding etc.) it treats, deals, cooperates with the competitors. It may even eventually seamlessly ‘fuse’ with them.
The take-over is kept from the public, both parties collude in that secrecy. The original bozos want to conserve a role, position, power, participation; and the new lot cannot openly say they are taking over a people-paid institution that worked (as far as the public knows) and that big changes will result.
Therefore, common ‘bashes’ or speech occasions are scripted, the journos are called on to scribble.
Not very specific I know – time, place, function, all that – but one can see traces of these things in various US Gvmt agencies.
The WHO is on the skids!
— colman thx for the rails in China
Posted by: Noisette | Jun 11 2005 17:03 utc | 6
Few Terror Convictions in Cases Since 9/11
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.”
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government’s efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department’s list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people — not 200 — have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.
Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law — and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows. Overall, the median sentence was just 11 months.
Another article on Mad Cow in the U.S.
Concerns raised about 1997 U.S. mad cow tests
On b’s Few Terror Convictions in Cases Since 9/11,
Exactly the point. Has been obvious since the gitgo. “Terrorists” are bullshit thought up by Cheneyites prior to 9/11 to justify.
Absolutely no basis in fact.
Posted by: rapt | Jun 12 2005 2:25 utc | 9
From mad cows, to Royally Pissed Off Cow Owners…
If anyone believes “free-trade” is anything but new name for the Plunder of Pirates…
In its 85 years of existence, Smith Brothers Dairy in Kent has survived all manner of misfortune and mistakes.
There was the Depression, when milk sales plummeted. There were cow-killing floods. There were modern times, when it appeared the old-fashioned idea of fresh milk delivered to the doorstep had died.
And there was the crackdown when society realized cow manure could be as toxic to fish as anything produced at a nuclear plant.
“None of that compares to this,” says Alexis Smith Koester, 60, dairy president and granddaughter of the founder, Ben Smith. “This is the biggest threat we’ve ever faced.”
She’s talking about the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed new rules that could force Smith Brothers to either give up half its business or close up shop entirely, Koester says.
What are the feds trying to stop? They’re trying to keep Smith Brothers Dairy from selling its milk for less.
Please follow the Link to read the full story & get the email address for where to object.
It’s be great if Billmon would like to follow his “economic populist” inclinations & do a blog on it that might be picked up by cursor. We need to get this story Out There Far and Wide. This family dairy that delivers now to 40,000 homes around Seattle is the Heart and Soul of America. We have to help protect them.
Posted by: jj | Jun 12 2005 3:38 utc | 10
@DM
Citizen DM, I as a duty bound patriot must warn you. Your link sympathizing to sign-up terrorists has been duly noted, and will be turned in, unless you accept Jesus Christ/Bush as your leader. And swear an oath to the dominate party.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 12 2005 9:06 utc | 13
A good one in the NYT Magazine: Interrogating Ourselves
It has been more than a year now since we (and, of course, the region in which we presume to be crusading for freedom) were shown a selection of snapshots from Abu Ghraib with their depraved staging of hooded figures, snarling dogs and stacked naked bodies. For all the genuine outrage in predictable places over what was soon being called a ”torture scandal” — in legal forums, editorial pages, letters columns — the usual democratic cleansing cycle never really got going. However strong the outcry, it wasn’t enough to yield political results in the form of a determined Congressional investigation, let alone an independent commission of inquiry; the Pentagon’s own inquiries, which exonerated its civilian and political leadership, told us a good deal more than most Americans, so it would appear, felt they needed to know. Members of Congress say they receive a negligible number of letters and calls about the revelations that keep coming. ”You asked whether they want it clear or want it blurry,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said to me about the reaction of her constituents to the torture allegations that alarm her. ”I think they want it blurry.”
One result is that we’ve insulated ourselves from the really pertinent, really difficult question: How do we feel about coercive techniques that are commonly, if somewhat cavalierly, held to fall short of torture? These methods are variously known as C.I.D. (for ”cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment) or H.C.I. (for ”highly coercive interrogation”); or, in blander Pentagon-speak, ”counterresistance strategies” (ranked in order of severity in two groups, Class II and Class III); or ”professional interrogation techniques,” to use the postmodern gloss recently offered by the director of Central Intelligence, Porter J. Goss, to describe ”waterboarding” (a refinement of the ancient practice of water torture, with which American troops first experimented a hundred years ago on Philippine insurgents). All these terms are sometimes loosely subsumed in opinion articles under the heading ”torture lite” (though you might wonder what’s so ”lite” about waterboarding). None of them would be remotely legal in an investigation of an American on American soil.
“I have no information about a strip to separate Syria and Iraq, but I can confirm that US troops have been engaged in combat operations inside Syrian territory for months.” This is what an official from the United States State Department told me, in response to a question I asked on rumors of the imminent creation of a separation strip between Iraq and its Western neighbor which will extend 10km wide into Syrian land.
…
Dripping Water or Playing Christina Aguilera Music: After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.” He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.” At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap, TIME reports.
Invasion of Space by Female: Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female, and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. “I will tell the truth,” he says. “I am doing this to get out of here.” He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner. Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler. Agitated, al-Qahtani takes back the story he told the day before about meeting bin Laden, TIME reports.
Inside the wire: TIME obtains secret Gitmo interrogation log; Torture by Christina Aguilera
Your fine Senate leader:
Frist’s finances questioned
Frist began focusing on raising record amounts of cash for other Republicans. But while he was picking up political IOUs that could aid him greatly in a run for president in 2008, his own campaign finances took a sharp, and in some ways baffling, turn for the worse.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars Frist’s supporters had given him to run for the Senate were dwindling at a rapid rate. Much of that money was lost in a stock market investment that experts say was out of line with the way candidates traditionally invest campaign funds. Frist’s campaign also took on more than $1 million in debt so that it could repay Frist for interest-free loans he made to his campaign six years earlier.
And then, in a decision experts say violated federal campaign regulations, Frist filed reports with the Federal Elections Commission that made it difficult for his contributors and political foes to determine just how bad off his campaign finances were.
…
Frist’s first critical decision, made in June 2000, was to take $1 million of the contributed money out of the bank, where it was helping earn up to $170,000 a year in interest, and invest it in the stock market.
Frist put the money into a mutual fund managed by the Charles Schwab investment firm, his campaign said. And that fund, which Frist’s aides refused to identify beyond saying it was an index fund, quickly began losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Frist’s next crucial decisions came in November 2000. Having decided that this would be his last run for the Senate and knowing that by law he could not use his Senate cash in a race for president, Frist wanted to get back $1.2 million he had lent his campaign in 1994, when he first ran for office.
But Frist 2000 Inc., with just over $1 million available, didn’t have enough money to pay Frist back and continue operating. Frist solved that problem by having his campaign take out a $1.44 million bank loan, at a cost of $10,000 a month in interest, and used that money to repay himself.
Assuming the new debt would have drained all the operating funds Frist 2000 had available, according to FEC documents. Yet that didn’t happen. Even after taking out such a huge loan, Frist 2000 still looked rich on paper — much richer than it actually was.
That’s because Frist made a third key decision — one that experts on campaign disclosure call highly questionable — to not report the new debt on the FEC paperwork filed by Frist 2000, as required by law.
Instead, Frist told the FEC that the $1.44 million loan was held by another committee he controlled, the Bill Frist for Senate committee, which had been around since his first race in 1994. That fund was virtually dormant by 2000, with just $50,000 in the bank.
Shootings may lead to security guard curb
They are even more unpopular with Iraqis. Interior ministry officials say at least 12 Iraqi civilians are killed by contractors every week in the capital.
“Enough is enough,” said an official at the interior ministry. “We are looking at ways to tighten weapons licenses, and to punish the worst cases. The culture of impunity must stop.”
A senior member of one private security firm in Baghdad said: “Like it or not we are combatants. If our guarantees are removed, we would have to leave.”
For fans of Gravity’s Rainbow, Zak Smith has produced illustrations for the book, one for every page.
Posted by: citizen | Jun 12 2005 21:42 utc | 19
From dawn to dusk on 7 June, the BBC News website chronicled in detail events throughout Iraq. We talked to Iraqis from all walks of life about their everyday experiences and the impact of the violence that surrounds them.
We will be revisiting the day on Monday 13 June – to follow up on the main news events, ask people living in Iraq to reflect on their day and publish photographic essays taken on the day.
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 13 2005 5:14 utc | 20
Lookey here ——
A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush’s first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is ‘bogus,’ saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.
“If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an ‘inside job’ and a government attack on America would be compelling,” said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.
Reynolds, now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, also believes it’s ‘next to impossible’ that 19 Arab Terrorists alone outfoxed the mighty U.S. military, adding the scientific conclusions about the WTC collapse may hold the key to the entire mysterious plot behind 9/11.
When they really want to impeach the Bastards, this is the obvious place to go; conversely if they don’t go there, I don’t see any chance of retaining even our shell of a democracy. Link
Unfortunately, there’s mention in art. of where those remarks were made – I somehow doubt it was at his University’s graduation ceremony!!
Posted by: jj | Jun 13 2005 5:14 utc | 21
This is where Morgan Reynolds posts articles regularly.
Posted by: citizen | Jun 13 2005 7:02 utc | 22
citizen &( slothrop for you) thanks for the link outstanding artwork.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 13 2005 8:06 utc | 23
It’s interesting that some of the material
posted by Outraged comes from “right-wing” sites
like lewrockwell.com. This just proves that the
left-right dialectic is, at least for the present,
superseded by that of criminality vs. constitutionality.
In this vein Justin Raimondo gives a plug to the
Huffington post blog, which is making a praisworthy attempt at
assembling a wide consitutionalist array of opinion. That site is too slick and crowded for my taste,
but others may find it agreeable.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 13 2005 8:23 utc | 24