News & views …
Back to Main
January 25, 2006
OT 06-10
Comments
Nobody in the blogsphere seams to have noticed that the Washington Post editorial borad today called for an illegal war on Pakistan:
In keeping with his double game, Gen. Musharraf’s government publicly criticized the latest attack even though his intelligence service reportedly cooperated with it. Now he and Mr. Aziz, who met with Mr. Bush yesterday, are saying U.S. forces should carry out no more such attacks without Pakistani agreement. We’ll assume that’s more of their bluster. Even if it is not, Mr. Bush should ignore it. Gen. Musharraf perhaps cannot be forced to side decisively with the United States against the terrorists, as the administration once hoped — though much more could be done to raise the price of his feckless cooperation. But Mr. Bush must take every available measure to eliminate the al Qaeda and Taliban operations in Pakistan. If targets can be located, they should be attacked — with or without Gen. Musharraf’s cooperation.
On the last open thread Dan of Steele had question on U.S. jews position on Israel.
Malooga gave a very interesting (and long) answer
…
Now, what percentage of Americans understand the way the world really works and is able to see through the American propaganda system to the truth that, to quote King, “America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world?”; that Vietnam was not an aberration, but one of a long string of American incursions in support of corporate profits? 10% would be a very generous figure. I would argue, that for all the propaganda, American Jews of that generation penetrated the curtain in even greater numbers; and we have many examples: Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsburg, and Susan Sontag, and the many Jews who took part in the civil rights movement, among others.
The Holocaust has moved from being an supreme atrocity to becoming a convenient symbol appropriated by some Jews as an aid to extortion when they can prove even the remotest complicity. Norman Finkelstein has been denied a teaching position in American Universities for having the temerity to expose this racket. It is particularly sad when brilliant people like Elie Weisel sound like a skipping record about the Jew’s tragedy, but fail to connect this particular case to larger issues of global social justice, remaining silent about Rwanda and Iraq.
To climb the ladders of corporate leadership you have to absorb the very same values, therefore corporate leaders are naturally much more conservative than the rest of society. And there you have the Mortimer Zuckermans and his ilk.
…
Well worth your time – read it”
Spengler, always worth a read: Why the West will attack Iran
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 26 2006 5:06 utc | 3
I gave up on Spengler a long time ago. Yeah – we really gotta worry about the Iranian empire (bloody wogs).
Posted by: DM | Jan 26 2006 7:10 utc | 4
Hamas wins!
Fatah Party: Hamas Wins Palestinian Vote
RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Islamic militant group Hamas said Thursday it won control of the Palestinian parliament and officials from the ruling Fatah Party confirmed the estimate _ though Palestinian election officials delayed the release of preliminary official results.
The claim by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was based on reporting by Hamas activists who observed the counting in the polling stations, the group said. He said Hamas had won about 70 seats, enough for a majority in the 132-seat parliament.
…
Officials with Fatah also said that Hamas had won about 70 seats, which would give the Islamists a majority in the 132-seat parliament. They spoke on condition of anonymity because counting in some districts was continuing.
Palestinian officials delayed the release of official results from the Palestinian legislative vote until the end of the day. Results, initially scheduled to be announced at 9 a.m., will now be released at 7 p.m., the Palestinian Central Election Commission said. It gave no reason for the delay.
Why the delay? Someone playing dirty?
Milbank: For Would-Be Lobbying Reformers, Money Habit Is Hard to Kick
The senators seemed virtually unanimous in their view that, when it came to influence peddling, “the status quo stinks,” as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the recipient of more than $2 million from lobbyists and lawyers in recent years, succinctly put it.
As the hearing kicked off the congressional debate on lobbying reform, the lawmakers had no difficulty conceding they had a problem. But there was yawning disconnect between the problem and the proposed remedies
…
Registered lobbyists have served as treasurers of at least 868 political committees, according to the Center for Public Integrity, including the campaign committees or leadership PACs of at least 39 sitting members of Congress. And virtually all members benefit from lavish fundraisers arranged by lobbyists or contributions from lobbyists that have exceeded $100 million in recent years. This money frightens challengers out of the race — a main reason 98 percent of incumbent House members won reelection in 2004.
The senators yesterday sounded like addicts, powerless to overcome their reliance on lobbyist cash. “It’s out of control,” lamented Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), a recipient of $573,000 from lobbyists and lawyers over five years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. “We all hate it. And it’s about time we collectively think about how we can get off the treadmill.”
“I’m afraid nobody will take me seriously unless we can also find some way to do something further about campaign spending and fundraising,” fretted Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), recipient of $314,000.
New Mexico Republican Pete V. Domenici ($196,000) proposed limiting fundraising to a lawmaker’s home state. Alaska Republican Ted Stevens ($229,000) suggested a constitutional amendment.
But these cries for help fell on the deaf ears of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the man designated by Senate GOP leadership to draft a lobbying reform bill. Santorum, in a tough reelection race, ranked fifth out of the 535 members of Congress in receipts from lobbyists and lawyers ($519,000 last year alone).
“We need to look at a variety of different things — look at gifts, we need to look at meals, we need to look at travel,” Santorum testified. He didn’t say a peep about campaign financing.
Blogger Glenn Greenwald yesterday had found and published the proof that the administrations argument for ignoring FISA is a big lie.
The administration itself rejected to widen FISA’s “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion” in 2002. Now they lie again with this orwellian claim
“The FISA ‘probable cause’ standard is essentially the same as the ‘reasonable basis’ standard used in the terrorist surveillance program,” said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos, using the term for the NSA program the White House has adopted. “The ‘reasonable suspicion’ standard, which is lower than both of these, is not used in either program.”
If it is essentialy the same, why not use FISA?
Anyhow, WaPo, Knight Ridder and LA Times picked Glenn’s post up.
Today he has a follow up.
Smothering The Hearts and Minds
So ruled a jury of six U.S. Army officers in the case of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. much to the disgrace of our country, our people and, yes, the American armed forces. At least the Army had the basic humanity to put this torturer on trial for murder and demand life imprisonment. We were all dishonored, however, when the military jury let this guy off with just short of a back-slap and hand-shake.
…
Remember that the victim in this case, Iraqi General Abed Hamel Mowhoush was a top, uniformed officer of a recognized state-sponsored enemy army and not some “illegal combatant.” Worse, when Mowhoush was suffocated in November 2003, it was after he had voluntarily turned himself in to U.S. military authorities. At least, sort of voluntarily. Fact is, the General surrendered to American troops because they were holding his sons hostage – yet another stark violation of international law.
Finally, the US and Iran find common ground.
In a reversal of policy, the United States on Monday backed an Iranian initiative to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a coalition of 40 organizations, led by the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called for an explanation of the vote which aligned the United States with governments that have long repressed the rights of sexual minorities.
“This vote is an aggressive assault by the U.S. government on the right of sexual minorities to be heard. It is astonishing that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China, Iran and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic.”
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 27 2006 0:30 utc | 9
Lupin, whom sometimes posts here, has an interesting dairy over at dkos:
Emmanuel Todd interview Must Read
What seems to me more striking is the way this America that incarnates the absolute opposite of the Soviet Union is on the point of producing the same catastrophe by the opposite route. Communism, in its madness, supposed that society was everything and that the individual was nothing, an ideological basis that caused its own ruin. Today, the United States assures us, with a blind faith as intense as Stalin’s, that the individual is everything, that the market is enough and that the state is hateful. The intensity of the ideological fixation is altogether comparable to the Communist delirium. This individualist and inequalitarian posture disorganizes American capacity for action. The real mystery to me is situated there: how can a society renounce common sense and pragmatism to such an extent and enter into such a process of ideological self-destruction? It’s a historical aporia to which I have no answer and the problem with which cannot be abstracted from the present administration’s policies alone. It’s all of American society that seems to be launched into a scorpion policy, a sick system that ends up injecting itself with its own venom. Such behavior is not rational, but it does not all the same contradict the logic of history. The post-war generations have lost acquaintance with the tragic and with the spectacle of self-destroying systems. But the empirical reality of human history is that it is not rational.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 27 2006 7:19 utc | 10
@Uncle – thanks for the Todd link.
Emmanuel Todd: The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis
This social system no longer rests on the Founding Fathers’ Calvinist work ethic and taste for saving – but, on the contrary, on a new ideal (I don’t dare speak of ethics or morals): the quest for the biggest payoff for the least effort. Money speedily acquired, by speculation and why not theft. The gang of black unemployed who loot a supermarket and the group of oligarchs who try to organize the “heist” of the century of Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves have a common principle of action: predation. The dysfunctions in New Orleans reflect certain central elements of present American culture.
yukk
Final (?) report of the US Special Inspector General in Iraq (via Informed Comment/Reuters) – security environment not as “permissive” in ’04 and ’05 as it had been in ’03.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jan 27 2006 15:45 utc | 14
Utter incompetence:
U.S. posts wrong photo of ‘al-Qaida operative’
“After year and a half, wrong man’s photo removed from wanted page”
Upps:
Growth pace weakest in three years
The U.S. economy ended 2005 on a surprisingly soft note as consumer spending grew at the slowest rate since 2001 and businesses were less eager to boost investment, a government report on Friday showed.
The Commerce Department said gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity within U.S. borders, expanded at a weak 1.1 percent annual rate in the October-December period — little more than a quarter of the third quarter’s 4.1 percent rate.
GDP was often mentaly associated with industrial production. The picture Yahoo news shows next to piece is not of production, but of a harbour with container loading. Interesting…
national security archives: Rumsfeld’s Roadmap to Propaganda
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
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 177
narcosphere: Words from a whistleblower on a slow train coming
[Sibel] Edmonds sent Narco News the following opinion piece and asked that we post it for our readers.
Illegal & Indiscriminate Spying Hurts Our National Security, Here is Why
. . .
Mr. President, please stop. You are damaging our national security and simultaneously destroying what makes us American in mind and soul; our Bill of Rights. Remember what you told us just a few days after 9/11: “The terrorists hate our way of life, and they want to take it away from us.’”
Mr. President, they haven’t, you beat them to that result. Do you really want to fix our security problems? Do you really want to address and fix our vulnerabilities? Then here is a start for you; implement a three-phrase program, and we can guarantee that you’ll make our “national security” problems disappear: Government Accountability, Government Oversight, and Government Integrity.
Posted by: b real | Jan 27 2006 18:43 utc | 17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drongo
drongo
noun:- a stupid, inept, awkward or embarrassing person, a dimwit or slow-witted person, a fool.
Posted by: DM | Jan 28 2006 4:13 utc | 19
Yes, the wheels are coming off the US administration. Just in time they can be replaced. But as I’ve said before, they have been successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Money and influence flows like water; they, from Richard Perle to the top numbskulls and every minion of use: chiefs of staff and spokespeople, they are set for life. Their incomes are assured so long as they toe the line when asked and tow the party line always.
The powers will igonore them, they have made their deal at the crossroads.
The lawyers, bankers and speculators are minions too. That style of loyalty, fealty to the next one up goes quite a long way. Every step up the ladder reveals a more competent wielder of confident power.
I don’t suppose they are fighting over access at the top echelon, more likely they are amusing each other with puppetry at their command. They are not puppetmasters, they own some puppermasters, perhaps one each.
And that is not a pretty sight.
Posted by: jonku | Jan 28 2006 8:31 utc | 20
“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.
“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.
The document’s authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. “Specific boundaries should be established,” they write. But they don’t seem to explain how.
“In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States – even though they were directed abroad,” says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.
And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to “provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum”.
US forces should be able to “disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum”.
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?
The fact that the “Information Operations Roadmap” is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military’s ambitions for it.
Posted by: DM | Jan 28 2006 12:06 utc | 21