The military industrial complex wins.
The U.S. Army can hardly get enough people:

From June to September, the Army will try to recruit 8,600 to 10,400 soldiers a month.
To help reach those goals, a new law will allow the Army to give larger financial bonuses for enlistments and re-enlistments, doubling the maximum payment to $40,000 for new active-duty recruits and to $20,000 for reservists. It will also raise the top age for recruits to 42 from 35. And the top re-enlistment bonus for active-duty soldiers will increase to $90,000 from $60,000.

And at the same time were lots of money is wasten on weapon programs that without justification, the Army cuts back on personel.

The Army announced yesterday that it will cut six National Guard combat brigades — or up to 24,000 infantry and other combat troops — as part of an effort to ease budgetary pressures and shift manpower into homeland defense missions.
In addition to scaling back the guard’s combat brigades to 28 from 34, the active-duty Army will add one fewer combat brigade than it had planned, ending up with 42 instead of 43, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told a Pentagon news briefing yesterday.

I am all for reducing the U.S. Army but what screams out here is the hypocrisy of spending more money on useless weapons while having no feet on the ground.
At the same time these people argue they are for a strong military. I wonder how long it will take for a backslash from some conservative voters and the military itself.

Posted by: b | Jan 19 2006 13:37 utc | 4

Essentially this is a big pharma takeover of all US Foreign Aid. You are in need of help, we could give you money, but first you sign here to never use generica in your country again and here to …
Rice to Group Foreign Aid in One Office in State Dept.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 – In a shake-up of the foreign aid bureaucracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to set up an office under her direct supervision to oversee agencies and bureaus that dispense $19 billion each year, State Department officials said Wednesday.
Randall L. Tobias, a former pharmaceutical executive and Republican campaign donor who heads the administration’s anti-AIDS assistance program for poor countries, is expected to be named Thursday as the new administrator of the Agency for International Development and director of the new coordination office.
A.I.D. has been an independent agency since it was founded in 1961, but Ms. Rice has made little secret of her frustration over what she has said is a lack of accountability. In addition, foreign aid has been parceled out to numerous other offices that do not coordinate with A.I.D., officials say.

Posted by: b | Jan 19 2006 14:01 utc | 6

The US, of course.
What a cogent chilling post, b.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 19 2006 15:13 utc | 8

The US, of course.
What a cogent chilling post, b. I advise everyone to follow the link and read the whole thing. It is worth it. God, if I could only write like that.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 19 2006 15:39 utc | 10

Yes, definitely follow b’s link.
truth will out

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 19 2006 16:07 utc | 12

amy spends the hour today on democracy now interviewing ex-british ambassador to uzbekistan craig murray on those classified memos & fleshing out his experience wrt the human rights attrocities in uzbek & the u.s. support for it. partial transcript @ link.

Posted by: b real | Jan 19 2006 17:51 utc | 14

Now, Richmond Virginia is the old capitol of the Rebels, the Confederacy.
Message?
To whom?

Posted by: citizen | Jan 19 2006 18:04 utc | 16

I appreciate your p.o.v. Aigin. It all makes good sense. I was born in D.C. though I grew up in Arlington. I’m trying to make Richmond more like there. It’s getting better.

Posted by: beq | Jan 19 2006 19:15 utc | 18

Aigin, thanks for the further information.
I’ve recently read Eric Foner’s history of Reconstruction, and am struck by how much that period has to say to us today about how the Republicans and Democrats reconcile their old differences repeatedly by finding new ways to agree that the massive power of the state organized during the Civil War should be used to entrench factory fortunes (in whatever form) and defeat labor.
Seems like the old wounds will have to get picked at publicly and loudly before this country ever finds a sensible way toward living as if we all share the air, and water, and justice that makes life possible.
So when I hear Richmond, I think: could go either way.
And I’m glad to hear what you have to say. But I still don’t hear signs that the Democrats don’t need to follow the Whigs into deserved oblivion. I’d be happy if Kaine showed me wrong by starting something in Richmond – because we are are going to have to walk backwards through the trauma before we ever recover from Dred Scott, currently plaguing us as Bush v. Gore, a case decided by citing (wtf?) private ownership interest as a reason to award a presidential election?
There is no state in the union in which we are not owned, at least as citizens, by Bush. That’s our Dred Scott decision. Slavery undead.
And we may never be cured till the South cures us. So Richmond interests me.

Posted by: citizen | Jan 19 2006 19:53 utc | 20

beq- it’s a little too conveeenient, isn’t it? ..considering Bush’s poll numbers, and all the scandal shits hitting the fan. but maybe this one is for real. the guy said the attack that would soon be coming was not because they couldn’t do it (because of security measures.)
—but considering the knee jerk reaction to anything he says, you have to wonder…he attacks Bush by attacking Americans’ lack of support for Bush’s war.
A reasonable person would say…okay, truce. what do we have to lose from that? And if it’s not true, it’s not like we can’t continue the mess we’re in.
Let’s deal with the mess in our country right now, and call a truce in order to do so as effectively as possible. Let’s get American soldiers out of Iraq…the whole thing was and is a fiasco, and not one more person should have to die because of the neocon lies.
(I also wonder if the bombing in Pakistan might have something to do with this, but in that case, it would have to do with ppl in that region wanting Al Q to get out, I’d think…but I’m just guessing.)
here’s a transcript via TimesUK
Peter Bergen talks about the Iraq war also creating a new bin Laden.
After Sept. 11, 2001, a backlash against bin Laden developed among various jihad elements, which believed the attacks hurt their cause more than it helped them. “It’s a myth that all jihadist groups are united by their hatred of the United States and have a single perspective,” said Bergen. “The jihad groups hate each other more than they hate the Bush Administration.”
Speaking alongside Bergen was Steve Coll, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning “Ghost Wars; The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden.” Coll said that “Bin Laden’s greatest gift as a leader is to control the public narrative. He has a sense of the ending of his own narrative and that ending is martyrdom.”
Consequently, both authors believe that a practical mechanism for dealing with bin Laden is simply not available. From Bergen’s point of view, bin Laden has two choices at this point, “He can disappear into the history books and never say anything again or he can remain in the game and risk the possibility of revealing himself.” At this point in the development and disintegration of al-Qaida, Bergen believes that bin Laden has carved out a role for himself as the elder statesmen, playing a role in the media battle.
Both Bergen and Coll said that while the threat of Osama bin Laden has decreased in the past few years, there are still lessons to learn from his leadership style. “The theater of competition is rapidly changing,” said Coll. At age 50, bin Laden is a product of the pre-digital age in which terrorists disseminated their message by broadcasting via radio or videotapes from a mountaintop.
I’m sure the right wing commentators are losing spittle from the sides of their mouths over this newest video, tho. But, sincerely, anyone who wants to stay in Iraq, imo, should immediately enlist and ask to be sent there..

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 19 2006 22:41 utc | 22

Christian Jozefowicz the ‘dapper’ , ‘nerdy’,’geeky’,enterprizing young brit, otherwise known as christian baily.
and for those of you who care to do a little brushup on those white house sleepovers…..

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2006 0:16 utc | 24

I turned on CNN and found that William Blum, the author of Rogue Nation, was on Wolf B.’s program. Apparently Blum’s book is one with which OBL is familiar and recommended?
Wolf, who surely is not an idiot, asked Blum about his opinion of the 9-11 attacks– as though, b/c of a book Blum wrote long ago made him incapable of both recognizing problems in U.S. actions and mourning the deaths of ppl who died in the WTC attack.
Why stoop to such a low-level of questioning??? What a dumb ass question is that? Is it just a way to discredit Blum by insinuating any criticism of policy is not allowed in Bush Amerika.
I’ve been reading comments on blogs like MyDD and it’s incredible how the right wing conflates Bush with this country…as tho any criticism of him means you hate the U.S. Just imagine how they can’t make a distinction between criticism of foreign policy and hatred.
…and you know, I have to wonder, considering the new threats by OBL, why repukes still support Bush when he’s on record saying that OBL doesn’t matter. does he matter if there’s another terrorist attack? will any journalist ask Bush about his statement, considering this new threat?
the hypocrisy of ppl like Blitzer make my head do a 360 while I spew green pea soup…metaphorically, that is.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 20 2006 1:06 utc | 26

from DM’s Fisk link:
It’s a game. Bin Laden has no intention of calling an end to his own war and nor has George Bush and nor has Tony Blair. The Bin Laden offer, almost certainly, is intended to be rejected. He wants Bush and Blair to refuse it. Then, after the next attack, will come the next audio tape. See what happens when you reject our ceasefire?
yes, this makes absolute sense to me. bin Laden is goading Bush.
but this:
one of Bin Laden’s old themes: the idea that these wars will bankrupt the United States.…
with:
…these are almost the same words Bin Laden used to me when we last met. “The Americans will be bankrupted,” he said, not realising that war primes the pumps of a superpower economy.
Isn’t bin Laden just parroting the tactic of the U.S. by drawing and keeping Russia in Afghanistan?
In fact, that’s what Reagan supporters have hooted about for decades, that he brought down the USSR by this war (and the Star Wars baloney.) Like this site deconstructs
bin Laden repeated this idea in his November, 2004 address to Americans that the repukes used to rally the vote for Bush.
But I ask Fisk: isn’t war a boon to an economy when the wealth is not concentrated in one percent of the population? The huge deficits are not going to be paid back by the tax cuts for the richest, and the middle class and lower classes are not seeing the benefits that Bush’s base has received.
How can a war be a boon to an economy when, at the same time, that economy does nothing to benefit the majority of the population?
…sort of like the USSR…

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 20 2006 1:28 utc | 28

Which bin Laden is a member of the Carlyle Group with popsie?

Posted by: beq | Jan 20 2006 1:45 utc | 30

Osama bin Laden suddenly issues a statement while Bush is trying to justify illegal wiretaps. Oh, yeah. He’s not spying on domestic opposition, he’s fighting evildoers. Oh yeah, that evildoer. I’m sorry, I forgot. Let’s all be afraid again and give the White House a blank cheque.
But wait a minute. When was the last time that Osama bin Laden issued a statement? Oh yeah… it was a few days before the 2004 election when Bush the Younger was running on a “protect you from the evildoers” platform. Oh, yeah. That evildoer. I’m sorry, I forgot. Let’s all be afraid again and give the White House four more years.
These manipulations have gone beyond formulaic; the village idiot should be able to see that bin Laden is trotted out every time the White House feels that they need some help keeping people on message. For as much as they spend on perception management, this is really starting to feel like amateur hour. Never mind the fact that neither Osama bin Laden nor any real terrorist announces an attack a priori (you call in afterwards to claim credit, you don’t call in ahead of time to get your plans foiled).
I’m willing to forget that bin Laden was on the payroll of Bush the Elder when the mujahideen in Afghanistan was fighting the Soviets, but toss me a bone here if you want me to honestly believe that he isn’t still on Bush-Walker payroll. I don’t know, maybe have him make a statement at a time when it actually worked counter to the interests of the House of Bush? Just a thought.
And speaking of formulaic… has anyone else here noticed a pattern about where to put fascist and antidemocratic riders in legislation? Google is being pumped for records (domestic spying) because of the new “won’t-someone-please-think-of-the-children” anti-pornography law which the White House tried and failed to get passed on its own merits once before. We discussed in another forum how they inserted the clause into the “protect-those-defenseless-women” that would make it illegal to annoy someone using a screen name (Bush the Younger also tried and failed to get that one through by itself after the GWBush.com satire in 1999). So what’s next? Privatising Social Security as a rider in the “help-the-fluffy-bunnies” bill?
I should be encouraged that at least these riders were killed (or at least severely wounded) as stand-alones. I should be encouraged that only the most brain-dead, partisan, mercury-and-beer addled, slack-jawed, third-grade dropouts are still running out to buy duct-tape whenever the DoD releases pictures of someone of Middle Eastern descent. I should be encouraged that little Scotty McLellan sweats droplets of blood as he is forced to spin faster than Rumplestiltskin in order to stay on message.
I should be, but I’m not. So what if their psyops are half-assed these days? They don’t have to sell us anything anymore and it’s merely a courtesy that they are even going to the trouble. After Diebold, voting the bastards outta office isn’t an option and they know it. I guess that’s what I miss the most… in the good old days of checks and balances, they at least put on a good puppet show for us. Now they’re just getting that sloppiness that comes from genuine job security.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 20 2006 4:33 utc | 32

coming and going at the same time….

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 20 2006 5:48 utc | 34

@John
Two versions of the Treaty were sent out to be signed. One version written in English which few of the Maori chiefs were fluent in and the other version was written in Maori which maori understood far better but which few English understood at all.
The treaty was signed in 1840 over the protests of early settlers in particular the New Zealand Company. A good account of the treaty signing process which basically involved taking both translations of the document out to Maori around NZ and conducting hui which were extended talkfests which Maori would use to work together to solve inter -tribal issues is given by William Colenso here
this account gives background to the entire process.
The english always claimed they decided on the treaty process in order to protect the natives who were being dealt with by the rapacious NZ Company in a similar way that had been used on Australian Aborigines or Native Americans.
There may be some truth to that as the crown initially at least prevented some of the worst excess. The fact that the French were sniffing around with the assistance of a (Shock Horror) “Romish bishop”, M. Pompellier, would have been an equally important incentive.
Nowadays most New Zealanders hold to the view that the english resorted to the treaty process because despite the english superiority in arms and munitions, they couldnt beat maori in battle. There is truth to that as by the mid-nineteenth century the empire that the sun never set on was getting too large to manage.
There are also the many tales of Maori giving the english wounded water and treatment during battle and a couple of stories of Maori giving the english ammunition when the english had used theirs up.
Maori tribes fought between ech other and a code of conduct seems to have evolved, whereby the quality of a man’s actions in battle were important and could be more important than winning.
That sort of stuff can make invasion troops less than single minded in their pursuit of the enemy.
By 1841 the NZ company and it’s toadies were seeking to subvert the treaty.
Trail of Waitangi is a page of these and many other weblinks.
It is important to remember that even getting the treaty as accurate as possible in terms of the two languages won’t necessarily make it more linguistically correct as languages aren’t codes.
That is, just as no two words in the English language mean precisely the same thing, neither do two words, each from a different language.
This becomes more difficult when the cultures are so completely different.
Ownership of an object is likely to carry different meaning in a communal society such as Maoridom than it does in the european private ownership culture.
I guess that one of the reasons you asked for a link is that you have bumped into the same problem as I have discovered. The bulk of the recent debate about this occurred in the 1980’s following renewed interest in te Reo the Maori language which had for all intents died out by the mid-20th century.
As soon as Maori started to compared their translation of what their forefathers had signed with the english version acted on by the courts, the issue became the subject of intense debate.
However by the early 90’s when the net was taking off, the argument was over apart from a ‘backlash’ from the whitefellas who have posted some very subjective re-translations.
I suspect the best translations free from an axe to grind are in hard copy ie books, or if online will be contained on the University of Aucland, University of Wellington (Victoria), and University of Christchurh (Canterbury) history departments.
This Xtian site here appears to be relatively objective.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 20 2006 6:22 utc | 36

Uncle $cam
Swedish scientists were equally convinced that it was a fake.
The link properly identifies the scientists as Swiss.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 20 2006 7:24 utc | 38

C-SPAN others to cover Congressman John Conyers hearing/briefing on Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program
The hearing will commence at 11 am ET, and will be broadcast live on C-SPAN, Radio Pacifica, and ABC Radio. It will also be covered by CNN, the New York Times, and many bloggers. This is particularly timely since the DOJ today issued a 42 page rant that again attempts to defend the indefensible – spying on Americans without court approval. For those in the DC area, you can see the hearing in person at B 339 Rayburn Bldg (1116 Longworth for overflow).

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 20 2006 8:20 utc | 40

i don’t believe the tape of osama is real. but it seems irrelevant.
what difference would it make? should i say all my good byes just in case? tell everyone how much i love them?

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2006 10:19 utc | 42

The Return of the Puppet Masters

Are brain parasites altering the personalities of three billion people? The question emerged a few years ago, and it shows no signs of going away.

Posted by: fwiw | Jan 20 2006 13:40 utc | 44

Democrats wake up!
http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2006/01/the_dems_are_bl.htm

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 20 2006 14:16 utc | 46

Molly Ivins just went off:
LINK
Brilliant piece.

Posted by: Groucho | Jan 20 2006 16:48 utc | 48

@ Groucho, b real. Thanks for the links.

Posted by: beq | Jan 20 2006 18:14 utc | 50

A concise synopsis of the economics of the American Empire and the threat of the Iranian oil bourse:
Abstract: the proposed Iranian Oil Bourse will accelerate the fall of the American Empire.

….from a purely economic point of view, should the Iranian Oil Bourse gain momentum, it will be eagerly embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar. The collapsing dollar will dramatically accelerate U.S. inflation and will pressure upward U.S. long-term interest rates. At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and Charybdis-between deflation and hyperinflation-it will be forced fast either to take its “classical medicine” by deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets, with a total financial collapse, or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, whereby it pegs the long-bond yield, raises the Helicopters and drowns the financial system in liquidity, bailing out numerous LTCMs and hyperinflating the economy.
The Austrian theory of money, credit, and business cycles teaches us that there is no in-between Scylla and Charybdis. Sooner or later, the monetary system must swing one way or the other, forcing the Fed to make its choice. No doubt, Commander-in-Chief Ben Bernanke, a renowned scholar of the Great Depression and an adept Black Hawk pilot, will choose inflation…..The Maestro has taught him the panacea of every single financial problem-to inflate, come hell or high water. He has even taught the Japanese his own ingenious unconventional ways to battle the deflationary liquidity trap. Like his mentor, he has dreamed of battling a Kondratieff Winter. To avoid deflation, he will resort to the printing presses…..he will monetize everything in sight. His ultimate accomplishment will be the hyperinflationary destruction of the American currency….

Then there is the decision not to report the total money supply (M3) beginning in March. Is this coincidental to the talk of war in Iran in March? And why would they want to hide M3 from us?

“There is only one reason for the Fed to conceal important monetary component information,” The King Report says. It’s “to cover up the truth about what the Fed, central banks, and the really big money are doing.”
The Fed, central banks, and other groups are informally known as the “Plunge Protection Team.”
The reason the Fed will stop publishing weekly M3 totals, says financial analyst Robert McHugh Jr., is “so that the Plunge Protection Team can hide its market manipulative equity-buying activities.”
The PPT is poised to buy stocks and do it secretly, McHugh says, “to stop the higher-than-normal probability that the market could crash.”
McHugh surmised this in October, “because of the M3 numbers. We could see there was too much money being created. … M3 was being pumped at three times the rate of growth” of the Gross Domestic Product.
Unlike M2, M3 includes items that are the most obvious signs of PPT market-buying transactions, McHugh says. “If they no longer report this item, folks like us who monitor the growth of M3 for clues as to when the PPT is likely to buy the market will have a harder time reporting that fact. Investors will be left more in the dark as to any secret rigging of the stock market.”
A possible market crash is only one reason for secrecy, McHugh postulates. “Is the economy closer to the brink than anyone realizes? Or is it politically expedient to goose markets? Do the corporate elitists want the big payback for backing the powers that be and insist upon a rising market into year-end?” he asks. “Do they see a catastrophe coming that will require hyperinflation to bail the U.S. out? Maybe.”

Massive US debt, a declining dollar which would crash if the rest of the world is allowed to buy oil with Euros, an empire with only it’s MI complex and printing presses poised to defend it’s privileged position, major supporting cast members (Britain and Israel) whose own fates are largely tied to that empire…are things coming to a head?

Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 20 2006 18:27 utc | 52

thanks for the links lonesomeG

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2006 18:54 utc | 54

@Uncle – some of them, there is a bit fo explanation at the link.
—
Pentagon Analyst Gets 12 Years for Disclosing Secret Data

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 – A federal judge sentenced a former Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, to more than 12 years in prison today after Mr. Franklin admitted passing classified military information to two pro-Israel lobbyists and an Israeli diplomat.
The sentence meted out to Mr. Franklin, 59, by Judge T. S. Ellis III in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., was at the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines. Judge Ellis said at the hearing that he believed Mr. Franklin was motivated by a desire to help the United States, not to damage it.
Mr. Franklin’s sentence, which included a fine of $10,000, was the first victory for the government in a case in which prosecutors have also indicted the two lobbyists with whom he shared classified information. The charges against Mr. Franklin and the two lobbyists are offenses under the Espionage Act, but none of the men have been accused of spying.
The lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were senior staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, a pro-Israel lobbying organization with close relationships to officials in the Bush administration.

Posted by: b | Jan 20 2006 19:15 utc | 56

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 20, 2006 1:22:09 AM | #
Great. Thanx Debs.

Posted by: John | Jan 20 2006 19:24 utc | 58

Tenure in Gitmo?

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 20 2006 20:40 utc | 60

The English have been getting carried away about a whale swimming up the Thames. Many animal fanciers will take this as something positive; as if this whale has dropped by to say gidday to humans now that whales aren’t meant to be commercially hunted any longer.
These are the people who believe that animals particularly large mammals esp, whales, bears and large cats are somehow infallible. They can’t make mistakes. A sort of an anthropomorphic version of the noble savage.
Unfortunately animals do make mistakes and for some reason this is especially true of whales.
The most likely reason I can think of for the whale going up the Thames is in search of food.
It seems to have belonged to a pod of 3 and a small pod such as that; could be an indicator of how tough life may be for North Atlantic Cetaceans. They may not be being hunted anymore but they are starving.
The effects of commercial fishing, pollution, and the development of massive viral and bacterial infections along with other infestations in ‘fish farms’ must have made North Atlantic pickings very lean indeed.
IMHO the future is pretty grim for this northern bottle-nosed whale. Whales appear to form close family bonds and this whale has been separated from its family which may cause a disorientation induced by distress at the loss of its clan.
In an ideal world a giant heavy lift helicopter would be employed to carry this luckless creature back to it’s family’s vicinity. That way it would probably find it’s clan and live or die accordingly.
The most likely outcome however is for the elites to decide that having a whale expire right in front of them might get the sheeple thinking about how it came to be.
So they will have the whale shot in the dead of night (“to put it out of its misery”) then carve up the carcass with chainsaws, still protected by darkness.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 20 2006 21:32 utc | 62

wayne madsen on the alleged UBL tape & the reference to blum

The reason the tape is as phony as Niger yellowcake documents and Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction is as plain as day. Bin Laden quotes from the introduction of a book written by long-time Washington, DC progressive author and journalist and a friend of mine, Bill Blum. Bill was once an editor and contributor to Covert Action Quarterly, a magazine devoted to exposing CIA operations like the arming, funding, and training of Bin Laden and his mujaheddin guerrillas during the Afghan-Soviet war.
The Bush perception managers are either incredibly stupid or are trying to ensnare liberal journalists as aiders and abettors of Al Qaeda, something that is certainly within their scope.
. . .
Bin Laden might not be so eager to quote Blum if he was aware of his other work, Killing Hope, an expose of the CIA’s covert wars. In it, Blum defends [the] Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as self-defense against the CIA-backed Islamist guerrillas, including Bin Laden’s forces, that were backed by the CIA. Now, why would Bin Laden plug an author like Blum who backed Bin Laden’s hated enemies, the Soviet Communists and their Afghan allies? Because the Bin Laden tape and his purported oratory are frauds.
. . .
So, we’re now supposed to believe that Bin Laden has come around to plug the book written by an author who demonstrated that the Soviet cause in Afghanistan was for self-defense and in furtherance of the well-being of the Afghan people and that Bin Laden’s and his mujaheddin compatriots’ cause was anti-progressive and destabilizing to the central Asian region?

also, olberman jan 20th interview w/ blum

Olbermann: In the audio message, bin Laden specifically referenced the introduction to your book, saying that you had said, let me quote it exactly, “if I were a president, I would halt the operations against the United States. First, I will extend my apologies to the widows, orphans and the persons who were tortured. Afterwards, I will announce that the U.S. interference in the world countries has ended forever,” ending the quote from bin Laden. Am I right that’s not even from your book, “Rogue State”?
Blum: No, it’s not. It’s taken from something I wrote which appears in one of my other books. It probably also appears all over the Internet because I’ve used it in various speeches I’ve given and the writings of mine. So it’s very easy to find that paragraph on the Internet. And what he quotes there is just a small portion only of that paragraph.

dumb spooks. dumb.

Posted by: b real | Jan 21 2006 6:46 utc | 64

As an American, I found the reaction of the regime in Washington much more “interesting” than the contents of the “Osama tape” itself.
AFP reports :

‘ WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States rejected a truce offer from Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, with the White House declaring: “We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.” ‘

Four years after a criminal gang used United States commercial aircraft to destroy the World Trade Center in New York City and a good piece of the Pentagon in Washington DC, murdering 3000 innocent Americans in the process while the present US regime whistled and looked the other way, four years later the exact same criminal now threatens us again… and Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s boss, claims that “we put them out of business”??!!!
Self-evidently they did nothing of the kind!
Instead they viewed 9/11 as a “godsend”, deliberately chose not to pursue Osama bin Laden and the criminals behind the mass murders of 9/11, rather chose to pursue the entirely unrelated war of aggression in Iraq that had been hoped for for years by their oil patch and military industrialist cronies, and planned for years by the neocon-likudniks, the drive wheels behind “our” present, criminal regime in Washington.
The remarkable thing about all of this is that war criminal Dick Cheney can make such absurd statements and have them blandly repeated in the American corporate media and swallowed by the comatose American public.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jan 21 2006 12:34 utc | 66

Thanks for the correction, b real. I didn’t bother to check to see if I had the correct name, tho I’m familiar with both of Blum’s books..in fact, I own both of them. Chalmers Johnson’s book, Sorrow of Empire briefly hits on some of Blum’s information about American actions in nations around the world, but doesn’t offer the systematic lists of regions and actions.
Interesting to see the buzz for Blum’s book now at Amazon. also…there are so many versions of the OBL tape going around…and so many of them exerpts…is there a complete version that you’ve found?
I met the editor of Covert Action Quarterly at a rally in DC a couple of years ago and he had Blum at his table signing copies of his book…I just missed him.
I am a geek in that way. Had to stay after and get Cornell West to sign his books, too, when he was here in the recent past.
Ferguson never did seem to hit it big in my town with his cheerleading for the U.S. to embrace its empire and go for the big F.U. He’s consigned to the remainder bin.
He and Gertrude Himmelfarb and Victor Hansen make an neo-intelligensia daisy chain, if you know what i mean… if that image doesn’t scare you, nothing will.
and btw, I pride myself on not responding to the blue tooth in Tokyo post…till now…but I can’t stop myself any longer. Apparently for the “party in your pants” aficionados, there’s also the i-pod i-Buzz
I read about this earlier, and the (fake) reports of women buying the 14.5 hour Wagner Ring Cycle…
I like live performances, myself. No Wagner, tho, even then (snooooze). But it helps to have a bf who plays blues harmonica to up your music appreciation, or so I would guess…
And you’ve got to give a tip of the hat to Richard Pryor for that “coming and going at the same time” snap- his tribute to his dad.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 21 2006 18:06 utc | 68

and btw, if, as it seems, the OBL tape may very likely be a fake, does this mean that he is dead as of the recent bombing, or that he was dead before the Nov. 2004 psy-ops tape that just so happened to help Bush…or is he on some dialysis machine somewhere in a hospital in Pakistan or wherever, unable to comment on these tapes?
If OBL is such a media saavy watcher of US polls, why would he choose to release such a tape at the moment he knows Bush is weaker than ever? He would know such a tape would only strengthen Bush…b/c that’s what happened before. OBL is or was a smart guy, no matter how he used those smarts.
all to say, if the tape is real, its purpose would seem to be to keep the US entrenched in Iraq. if it’s not true, it’s distraction from the Republican machine that is going down faster than a monkey blow job.
…and as others have noted, it makes valid criticism sound like collusion.
and apropos to nothing, but lots of things, too, I keep thinking of the internet in relation to the literary underground and the ancien regime. as related by Robt Darnton.
Here’s a Nov. 05 take from Greider, via Vermont Commons that touches on this sense from Darnton, too, Found this now while I was looking for a link to his book.
the contemporary system looks a lot more like the ancien régime than its practitioners realize. Control is top-down and centralized. Information is shaped (and tainted) by the proximity of leading news-gatherers to the royal court and by their great distance from people and ordinary experience.
People do find ways to inform themselves, as best they can, when the regular “news” is not reliable. In prerevolutionary France, independent newspapers were illegal–forbidden by the king–and books and pamphlets, rigorously censored by the government. Yet people developed a complex shadow system by which they learned what was really going on–the news that did not appear in official court pronouncements and privileged publications. Cultural historian Robert Darnton, in brilliantly original works like The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, has mapped the informal but politically potent news system by which Parisians of high and low status circulated court secrets or consumed the scandalous books known as libelles, along with subversive songs, poems and gossip, often leaked from within the king’s own circle. News traveled in widening circles. Parisians gathered in favored cafes, designated park benches or exclusive salons, where the forbidden information was read aloud and copied by others to pass along. Parisians could choose for themselves which reality they believed. The power of the French throne was effectively finished, one might say, once the king lost control of the news. (It was his successor, Louis XVI, who lost his head.)
(here’s the full Greider in The Nation)
and an interview with Darnton
here’s an interesting web site relating to censorship across time and space.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 21 2006 19:49 utc | 70

One fly in the ointment of the ‘it ain’t Binny’ school of thought in regard to the tape.
That the tease for Robert Fisk’s article says this:

Osama bin Laden: Is it him? Almost certainly.
By Robert Fisk
Published: 20 January 2006
So why only on audio? Why no video tape? Is he sick? Yes, say the usual American “intelligence sources”. It’s the same old story: Osama bin Laden talks to us from the mouth of a cave, from within a cave, from a basement perhaps, from a tape almost certainly recorded down a telephone line from far away. Yesterday’s message, broadcast as ever by al-Jazeera television, was a reminder that security – not sickness – decides his method of communication.
We invaded Afghanistan to find Bin Laden and we fight and die in Iraq to kill his supporters – yet still he eludes us, still he threatens us, still he taunts us.
Article Length: 1434 words (approx.)

Fisk has met and talked with Bin Laden extensively on at least two occasions. Fisk is fluent in Arabic so he would know Bin Laden’s voice.
Of course there’s a chance the actual article puts it differently, but I don’t give media magnates, even relatively minor ones like Tony Reilly, my money.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 22 2006 8:27 utc | 72