Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
December 16, 2005
Open Thread

We are baaaaaccckkk.

Hope you have missed MoA!

What happened? 

The typepad folks somehow screwed up their scheduled maintenance.

Shit happens … I once kicked half a million users offline by accident and it took 2/3 of a day to get them back online. They were not amused … Anyhow:

News & Views …

Comments

verily b

Posted by: r’giap | Dec 17 2005 0:03 utc | 1

Interesting that the comments on the $300 Million Propaganda thread are still gone, there was some insightful discussion going on there..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 0:04 utc | 2

Thanks, b. I thought it was me.

Posted by: beq | Dec 17 2005 0:18 utc | 3

@Uncle – I am confident they will come back – though not sure. I will have to republish the blog which may take a while and I will start that only tomorrow morning (in U.S. nighttime).
This wasn´t a MoA issue. The WaPo blogs, runnig on typepad, were also effected as were various others I checked.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 0:18 utc | 4

w on Lehrer. I’m slapping the tv with a pillow.

Posted by: beq | Dec 17 2005 0:26 utc | 5

Good to see that Typepad was able to get things back.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 17 2005 0:32 utc | 6

We had lost three days there.
I thought it was a conspiracy.

Posted by: Lionel Twain | Dec 17 2005 0:33 utc | 7

Big deal today: The “Bush ordered NSA to spy on U.S. folks disregarding law and the constitution”.
I guess everyone has seen that story by now, but don´t miss Larry Johnsons take. This is much bigger than it looks at a first glance. It is a.) an attempt to set the office and power of the President above ANY constitutional limits and b.) the use of such gained information for partisan politics.
As a BIG sideshow, the NYT says:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

The publishing of the piece last night is obviously a political act. Today the renewal of the Patriot Act did get filibustered, with credit to that report.

So the NYT does react political in the timing of their reporting. Wasn’t there something going on about a year ago between Kerry and Bush? How would the report -at that time- have effected the outcome of the election?

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 0:40 utc | 8

A comment of mine had floated to the top when I logged in – thought for a moment I’d passed out and dreamt the days since – r’giap posts and all
strange

Posted by: drunk as a rule | Dec 17 2005 0:42 utc | 9

drunk as a rule
not so strange
after all
i am your conscience
(just joshing)

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 17 2005 1:28 utc | 10

i’m an impertinant fellow but i would like to have a an abramoffologist here of the rigour of our resident plameologist, annie
i’m reading these things & i believe it but really can’t believe it – the open criminality is really breathtaking
clearly abramoff has comprimesd a lot of people & i’m sure that includes the judiciary but it seems his only way out is a car drive nto a river
can someone suggest to me someone who is following the abramoff labrynth

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 17 2005 1:39 utc | 11

bush on NewsHour tonight was strange. One bizarre negation of reality after another: …we have a different war, not like the uss missouri where we surrendered…we have a different approach to airline security…everything we can do within the law (smirk)…I’m w/ Mccain on torture, but you know jim these people want to hurt us (smirk)…
I mean, you couldn’t rehearse such absurdity for theater.
And my favorite: “victory means a democratic Iraq…”
It’d also be funny in a theater. That’s the most regrettable part of this horror.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 17 2005 1:44 utc | 12

In The Kingdom Of The Half-Blind
Bill Moyers
In his recent book, The Gospel According to America, David Dark reminds us again of a lesson we seem always to be forgetting, that “as learners of freedom, we might come to understand that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” He might well have been directly addressing the press when he wrote, “Keeping one’s head safe for democracy (or avoiding the worship of false gods) will require a diligent questioning of any and all tribal storytellers. In an age of information technology, we will have to look especially hard at the forces that shape discourse and the various high-powered attempts, new every morning, to invent public reality.”
So be it….

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 2:08 utc | 13

washington monthly
/kevin drum weighs in on bush breaking the law

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don’t care. It’s bad for the country, and that matters most.
But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it’s not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.
And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

Posted by: annie | Dec 17 2005 2:21 utc | 14

annie
i really do not understand why this pitiful excuse for a man is not being impeached
it is as if (& there are parallels here to andreotti)they are so open about their crimes – to shamme us – to rub into our faces the fact of their hold on power & heir willingness to go fither with that power than any amerian administration in your history
as slothrop suggests – it has so many comic aspects – like very badly performed slapstick except that it is covered in blood & in suffering
& i want slothrop to understand that as an anti imperialist i never forget the suffering of the american people in this terrifying burlesque – their pain & their shame are real – why cannot it not be transformed into fury against this vulgar vaudeville

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 17 2005 3:13 utc | 15

Rememberinggiap….I’m sorry, but my browser won’t let me cut and paste(maybe someone else could post the links) but for good articles on Abramoff go to Daniel Hopsicker at Mad cow News(I know they are funny names but he is a hell of a reporter) and Joesph Cannon at Cannongate.Hopsicker has had more in-depth stuff than I have seen anywhere!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:27 utc | 16

Rememeringgiap……If no one comes up with links to the sites I named,ask again in some thread and I will get the tinyurls!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:31 utc | 17

ABRAMOFF
scroll dwn just a little…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 6:39 utc | 18

Rememeringgiag….Make that Mad Cow Morning News.Or just E-mail me and I will forward them to you!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:41 utc | 19

Thank you Uncle $cam….As you see, my browser makes me run late and not in real time! Maybe you could post cannongate too!

Posted by: R.L. | Dec 17 2005 6:48 utc | 20

This diary over at CIA, er, I mean KOS, grabbed my attention:
Sibel Edmonds Case May Reveal Plame’s CIA Role
Here’s an excerpt from the article: The outing of Valerie Plame may have severely damaged a CIA operation to monitor a nuclear black market faciliated by the shadowy but well-connected Washington lobby group, the American Turkish Council (ATC). (Those familiar with the Sibel Edmonds case will know the ATC is the very same organization that the former FBI translator heard on wiretaps in connection with various alleged illegal activities, some connected to 9/11.) From Edmonds, Deliso obtained the following admission: “Plame’s undercover job involved the organizations [the FBI had been investigating], the ATC (American-Turkish Council) and the ATA (American-Turkish Association) . . . the Brewster Jennings network was very active in Turkey and with the Turkish community in the U.S. during the late 1990s, 2000, and 2001 . . . in places like Chicago, Boston, and Paterson, N.J.”
The American Turkish Council is also connected to the neocons like Perle and Feith[…]
@R.L.
for thee,
CANNONFIRE ?
also, see: The sound of one hand slapping

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 7:44 utc | 21

Imad Khadduri’s always valuable Free Iraq
blog signals this interesting bit of analysis-cum-conjecture.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 17 2005 8:15 utc | 22

Totalitarian state is when…The government shuts down dissident websites. Nah, but I was rather concerned, particularly with the coincidence of the totalitarian thread in the $300 million post. I was also paranoid that I’d been banned, because of the Forbidden sign when I first tried to access my favorite non-local bar. Fortunately a friend of mine and I ascertained that it was Typepad and not, probably, the government.

Posted by: Rowan | Dec 17 2005 8:28 utc | 23

@allo – comments in older threads are available again now. Pictures will follow sometime this weekend. Anna_missed sent me some new art, but I will have to wait posting it until the image problems are resolved.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 8:33 utc | 24

Another vicious Bush administration attack on a U.S. intelligence professional The other plame?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 8:41 utc | 25

Fast and thick, the news of late…

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 17 2005 9:17 utc | 26

the above was me…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 17 2005 9:37 utc | 27

I have to admoit it crossed my mind that the server crash wasn’t unconnected to the publicity on the prez’s illegal spying.
I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking the last couple of days trying to make a couple bucks to get thru the consumerist splurge with which is why I didn’t finish a post on the silly season and the danger it poses to freedom and democracy each year. Now I’m too late.
This year in NZ the biggest silly season releases have been 1/The politicians increasing their pay way ahead of anyone else. That’s a perennial and has been executed seamlessly for so many years now that only professional cynics notice it.
2/ The biggest city in NZ had their last council meeting of the year. Most turned up thinking they’d pass a couple of dodgy things for mates, then settle down with a couple of beers and unwind. The mayor turned up with a multi-billion dollar bypass proposal that had to be approved that night to take advantage of the central government funding round. (yeah right a project 10 years in the making suddenly and without a hint of trouble a complex submission/proposal must be given the go-ahead.
This was real bolt outta the blue stuff. The proposal has been on the backburner for years because whatever route is decided about 300 residences are going to be demolished to make way for it. That is 300 NZ families’ quarter acre castles. It may be mortgaged up to the hilt but it’s theirs.
No credible explanation was given about why it had to be approved that night. But it just had to be. Because there wasn’t sufficient time for consultation the council will consult with the people effectted next year. A rather pointless act because of course it will already be a done deal. The eleohant in the room was a thing called The resource Consent Act passed by politicians before they lost all idealism the damn thing basically says if enough people in an area oppose something being built in that area then consent to build it must not be given.
Anyway that was just business as usual for most politicians but this is the time of year when for example if someone has died in police custody during the year the report of the commission of inquiry into the death is released. Everyone in the public is too busy spending and consuming to take much notice until the end of January and the same goes for the official ‘watchdogs’ meant to watch out for this sort of stuff. No one wants to take on something big and controversial right before they go on holiday.
The revelation that b highlighted above, that is NYT has sat on the story of BushCo’s illegal espionage for more than a year tells us this is a silly season release. NYT covering it’s ass. I’m no expert on criminal law particularly not US style protect the infrastructure kill the people type laws. It would seem to me though that anyone who was spyed upon by BushCo since the NYT heard about this but chose to suppress it should be seeing a prosecutor to take a look at having the NYT and the staff who made this call prosecuted for aiding and abetting the commission of a felony, and probably obstruction of justice. If they could show material disadvantage the civil courts should be asked to provide financial redress from NYT.
But I noticed something even more murky that McCain and his repug mates the demopublicans are using silly season to hide it behind.
That is this little number; while everyone is patting themselves on the back for the successful filibuster of the Patriot Act and the torture ban the hidden barbs go thu un-noticed:
“Congressional negotiators worked out the final details on Friday of a bill that bans torture of detainees in U.S. custody, but also allows evidence obtained by coercion to be used against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay”
Those poor fuckers are NEVER gonna get outta gitmo alive. Hell they could end up having just about every legislator in Washington in some war crimes dock!
For those that are expecting/hoping for an impeachment, don’t hold ya breath.
These low lifes are not going to kick a comrade in the guts for doing what they would do given the chance.
Although any number of politicians aren’t averse to a quick game of hide the sausage they are far too passionless to shit in their own nest the way that Clinton did. That was an easy impeachment but Georgie 2 well he’s another kettle of fish altogether, cause most of these disordered little men would give anything to strut their stuff same as Georgie.
p.s. I hope the spelling and punctuation are OK cause eyes are givin out tonight and I can’t sub or proof this one.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 17 2005 10:24 utc | 28

Silly season? The NY Times article seems to be a Big Deal. I’m not sure why, it seems like old news to us, perhaps, but politicians and mainstream media types seem to be really pissed off. Welcome to the bandwagon, kids, you’re three years too late.
Still, the NYT sitting on the story for “a year” throws up all kinds of red flags for me. Given that this seems to be a major PR disaster for the Bush White House, theoretically, had it been released say, a year and 6 weeks ago, it could have changed the outcome of the presidential election. This is just speculation, maybe it’s slightly less than a year. The “October Surprise” may have been surprising in what wasn’t published, not what was.

Posted by: Rowan | Dec 17 2005 10:53 utc | 29

Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran
ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible
strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources
have revealed.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 17 2005 11:26 utc | 30

r l & uncle $cam
i am in your debt

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 17 2005 16:01 utc | 31

I thought it was just Christmas. Then I thought I was banned. For a change! Then I saw that wasn’t so. Anyway, Happy Holidays to all.
1) ‘We’ have been discussing the proposal to include ‘extreme bias’ as a psychiatric classification in the DSM.
one article: WaPo
2) The WHO has announced it will no longer hire smokers. (Offices and grounds of the WHO have been strictly non-smoking for ages.) No snooping will be done, but those who lied on applications will be ‘punished.’ Smokers who are working there at present will not be fired (it would create too much of an outcry and there probably are very many) although legal opinion has it there is no obstacle to such an action, as International Organisations are not subject to ANY National laws, only their own (many grey areas here natch.)
3) There has been some discussion in the US about preventing ‘mental defectives’ getting on planes. Veterans are a target. The two links below give an apercu – I could not find the article I read, which was more complete.
NPR
Sam Smith /dec15-05
Bullet point: The PTB and the local authoritarian security types are not terribly interested in banning or thrashing communication, but people.
After all, the KGB didn’t destroy postcards did they?
Second bullet point: If large numbers of people don’t protest, condemn, attempt to reverse such implemented or projected measures there is no point hoping for more facing the ‘big stuff.’

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 17 2005 17:00 utc | 32

Guardian : The interrogation camp that turned prisoners into living skeletons
Torture? Yes. Iraq? No. During a war? No.

Curled up on a bed in a hospital in Rotenburg, near Bremen, was a cadaverous shadow of a human being. “The man literally had no flesh on him, his state of emaciation was incredible,” wrote Morgan-Jones. This man had weighed a little over six stones (38kg) on admission five weeks earlier, and “was still a figure which may well have been one of the Belsen inmates”. At the base of his spine “was a huge festering sore”, and he was clearly terrified of returning to the prison where he had been brought so close to death. “If ever a man showed fear – he did,” Morgan-Jones declared.

Prisoners complained thumbscrews and “shin screws” were employed at the prison and Dr Jordan’s report highlighted the small, round scars that he had seen on the legs of two men, “which were said to be the result of the use of some instrument to facilitate questioning”. One of these men was Hans Habermann, a 43-year-old disabled German Jew who had survived three years in Buchenwald concentration camp.

All of these men had been held at Bad Nenndorf, a small, once-elegant spa resort near Hanover. Here, an organisation called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) ran a secret prison following the British occupation of north-west Germany in 1945.
CSDIC, a division of the War Office, operated interrogation centres around the world, including one known as the London Cage, located in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery.
As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse. Last week, Foreign Office files which have remained closed for almost 60 years were opened after a request by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. These papers, and others declassified earlier, lay bare the appalling suffering of many of the 372 men and 44 women who passed through the centre during the 22 months it operated before its closure in July 1947.

Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency. A significant number, however, were industrialists, tobacco importers, oil company bosses or forestry owners who had flourished under Hitler.
By late 1946, the papers show, an increasing number were suspected Soviet agents. Some were NKVD officers – Russians, Czechs and Hungarians – but many were simply German leftists. Others were Germans living in the Russian zone who had crossed the line, offered to spy on the Russians, and were tortured to establish whether they were genuine defectors.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 19:27 utc | 33

The Patriot Act and NSA spying:
Agents’ visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2005 20:34 utc | 34

@b it never ceases to amaze me that so many imagine torture and ghost prisoners, kidnapping to be some sort of recent aberration attributable to moral decay in modern society. We know from the “Tiger Cages” that the US used in vietnam that many worse practices than have been revealed at either Gitmo or Abu Ghraib were routine in the Tiger Cages. A couple of dem prez’s were in power and the US population hadn’t suffered nearly as much social dislocation as now. But this sort of stuff has always gone on in war. That is why many of us abhor war so strongly and why war should never be used as an instrument of policy but only be used in self defense to an actual hostile act committed on the soil of one nation by another.
Although this sad reality puts BushCo in a cleft stick it does the same for opponents of the illegal invasion of Iraq who don’t use these facts very carefully.
Sometime in the wee hours of this morning the Beeb showed a mock trial of USuk charged with murder, kidnapping and torture.
A couple of experienced courtroom lawyers were drafted to prosecute and defend. The prosecution witnesses were ex-Gitmo inmates, reporters who had been in Fallujah when it was under attack by US forces, and relatives of the child victims of US snipers in Iraq.
The nub of the defense was that this sort of stuff always went on in war, that the fault lay not with the invading regimes but with individual bad apples.
It wasn’t a very successful defense but it was repeated by one of the defense witnesses who was some ex whitehouse rethug legal eagle.
Even though the jury selected by the Beeb wasn’t representative of Brits ie the numbers of people opposed to the illegal invasion on jury duty was the same as the number who supported it.
Surveys of the brit.pop have consistently shown a majority are against the invasion.
But still when polled a majority of jurists found USuk guilty as charged.
So despite the flatout denials the sub-text of BushCo defense will be that this stuff is S.O.P. in ‘wartime’ Once again the furphy of Carlos the jackals illegal kidnapping by France was raised by the rethugs. I reckon this will be the line that the boys from Lincoln will be paying newspaper administrators around the world to publish.
It is important not to get caught up in a debate about who is less guilty and and emphasise that if these people have that evidence they should demand a prosecutor have charges laid. That the issue over the current deployment of special forces and intelligence agents is an issue right now because it is happening right now.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 17 2005 20:48 utc | 35

It’s been a hobby of mine to always look at whats happening in other places when the shit is hitting the fan here, I always find interesting news for instance:

Iran President’s Bodyguard Dies in Ambush

Tehran, Iran — One of the bodyguards of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed and another wounded when an attempt to ambush the presidential motorcade was thwarted in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, according to a semi-official newspaper and local residents.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 18 2005 2:55 utc | 36

uncle $cam
by your diligence we become aware of the wildness of the beast

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2005 3:21 utc | 37

memories & futures 1

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2005 4:40 utc | 38

memories & futures ll

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 18 2005 4:43 utc | 39

Today’s Frank Rich column liberated here

Though “Brokeback Mountain” is not a western, it’s been directed by Ang Lee with the austerity and languorous gait of a John Ford epic. These aesthetics couldn’t be more country miles removed from “The Birdcage” or “Will & Grace.” The audience is forced to recognize that gay people were fixtures in the red state of Wyoming (and every other corner of the country, too) long before Matthew Shepard and Mary Cheney were born. Without a single polemical speech, this laconic film dramatizes homosexuality as an inherent and immutable identity, rather than some aberrant and elective “agenda” concocted by conspiratorial “elites” in Chelsea, the Castro and South Beach, as anti-gay proselytizers would have it. Ennis and Jack long for a life together, not for what gay baiters pejoratively label a “lifestyle.”
But in truth the audience doesn’t have to be coerced to get it. This is where the country has been steadily moving of late. “Brokeback Mountain,” a Hollywood product after all, is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out – quite literally – what most Americans now believe. It’s not for nothing that the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vanished as soon as the election was over. Polls show that a large American majority support equal rights for gay couples as long as the unions aren’t labeled “marriage” – and given the current swift pace of change, that reservation, too, will probably fade in the next 5 to 10 years.

Would love to see that movie. Unfortunatly it will not run here for a while.

Posted by: b | Dec 18 2005 9:30 utc | 40

The UK governemnet had a spy in the top ranks of the IRA for over 20 years. Focus: The spy at the heart of the IRA
You may start to wonder what IRA actions have been initiated by this spy and on who’s order.

Posted by: b | Dec 18 2005 10:40 utc | 41

Things as prosaic as ‘known IRA code phrases’ always make one pretty sure that the brits had a channel to the top of the IRA and I strongly suspect the IRA a channel from the Brits. The fact that this guy doesn’t appear to have gone into protective custody and even more obvious is Adams claim that Denis Donaldson’s confession was the first he heard of it lead me to believe that the chap was a triple if not a quadruple agent.
The IRA pulled off some pretty amazing actions in the last 20 years so it is difficult to belive that their strategies weren’t cpmpletely compartmentalised and that combined with an efficient internal security means that Adams’ claim “The Sinn Fein president said he had suspected that an informant was at work but that Donaldson had never occurred to him as a likely candidate.” is unlikely to be factual.
Of course it hardly matters at this distance but it is another example of intelligence and counter-intelligence forces becoming perpetual motion machines. These organisations which are dedicated to the overthrow of each other cannot afford to endanger their balliwick by doing their job too well.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 18 2005 11:21 utc | 42

Exit specialist and war criminal Henry Kissenger on How to Exit Iraq
Lots of bullshit in that stay the course piece. Do people remember his role in prolonging the Vietnam war at all?

Posted by: b | Dec 18 2005 11:51 utc | 43