Good Ridgeway article in the Village Voice.
Quote:

As for the Customs Service, it inspects as little as 5 percent of the cargo going through the New York ports.
This is a dream setup for any arms or dope dealer, and that’s exactly what the United Arab Emirates is all about.The ties between its top officials and royal family with the Taliban and Al Qaeda go back at least a decade.
The UAE is not only the center of financial dealings in the Persian Gulf, it is switching central for dope and arms dealing. The dope comes out of Afghanistan into the UAE where tax monies are collected and used to buy arms, which were sent back in for the Taliban. Some of this money is thought to have helped finance the 9-11 attacks. A money trail is set forth in the government’s filings in the Moussaoui case.
Long at the center of this operation is the mysterious Russian arms dealer, Victor Bout.

I blatantly stole this reference from Rigorous Intuition blog, which covers conspiracy in general and phenomena in particular. Some interesting comments there.

Posted by: jonku | Feb 24 2006 22:03 utc | 4

ok uncle$cam, here’s some wtc detonation fun.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 24 2006 22:59 utc | 6

Before Bush took office, “political rantings and musings about current events” were protected under the 1st amendment.
No more.
The War Department is planning to insert itself into every area of the Internet from blogs to chat rooms, from leftist web sites to editorial commentary. Their rapid response team will be on hair-trigger alert to dispute any tidbit of information that challenges the official storyline.
…
Rumsfeld is right. The only way to prevail on the information-battlefield is to “take no prisoners”; police the Internet, uproot the troublemakers and activists who provide the truth, and “catapult the propaganda” (Bush) from every bullhorn and web site across the virtual-universe. Free speech is a luxury we cannot afford if it threatens to undermine the basic platforms of western white rule.

Posted by: DM | Feb 24 2006 23:54 utc | 8

A good look at the Democratic party.
– it’s about Cynthia McKinney and Nancy Pelosi.

Posted by: citizen | Feb 25 2006 1:58 utc | 10

Off any topic:
I went looking for something I once posted and using the power of google I found it.
I also found that the Free Baluchistan thread here the 6:th of april 2005 has been copied by Baloch Unity page.
And the Fox lab at the University of South Florida Department of Biology once, but no more had the August 12:th 2005 frontpage copied.
Thought I’d share it.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Feb 25 2006 3:35 utc | 12

.. racist and xenophobic nonsense
A worth-while essay by Kurt Nimmo on William F(uckwit?) Buckley.

Posted by: DM | Feb 25 2006 3:55 utc | 14

Interesting National Journal piece: TIA Lives On

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

TIA, under a new name, is now used in conjunction with the NSA domestic spying.

Posted by: b | Feb 25 2006 9:41 utc | 16

@B:
Thanks for the mathematical tutoring by EMail.
It helped me understand the thing better.

Posted by: Groucho | Feb 26 2006 0:47 utc | 18

Austin’s Mercenary Hospital?
Is it named after the profession of the person who will finish Wittington of if he does not keep his mouth shut?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Feb 26 2006 4:07 utc | 20

Interesting doings in Uganda:
Send lawyers, guns, and money.

Posted by: biklett | Feb 26 2006 8:41 utc | 22

@annie – New Yorker Front Page

Posted by: b | Feb 26 2006 9:18 utc | 24

The ‘Christians’ are really peaceful, but the belligerent Moslems must have goaded them into it, not stopping until the ‘Christians’ had no choice. I fear you will never win this argument against the kind of ‘Christians’ we have a superfluity of.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 26 2006 16:02 utc | 26

pretty good rant

Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 26 2006 20:41 utc | 28

Hmm – just heard the winter olympics are over. Did anybody care? These games seam to get less and less attention.
For it is much too comercialized. It is like watching some shoping TV on rap speed. How can anyone stand this without being druged?
Why did Germany so only got six bronze medals? It used to be better in that category.

Posted by: b | Feb 26 2006 22:16 utc | 30

I rather liked the way this book review in The eXile suggested how people from the U.S. fool themselves about electoral politics and what makes it tick. Less hard to grok for being about Russian politics rather than U.S.

Posted by: citizen | Feb 27 2006 1:48 utc | 32

AP – Iraqi Army has NO units who fight alone. Clearly the military has no plan even to reduce forces in Iraq in the forseeable future.
Wasn’t a small troop reduction the plan that was supposed to save Congress for the GOP in 2006? What is the backup plan?

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged capable of fighting the insurgency without U.S. help has slipped from one to zero since September, Pentagon officials said Friday.
But the number of Iraqi battalions capable of leading the battle, with U.S. troops in a support role, has grown by nearly 50%, from 36 to 53, Air Force Lt. Gen. Gene Renuart said, and the number engaged in combat has increased 11%, from 88 to 98.
. . . The U.S. military says its short-term goal is to train more Iraqi units to a level at which they can lead the fight, because that will allow American troops to focus on other tasks and could reduce U.S. casualties. . . .
In the new report to Congress, the Pentagon also said the insurgency was losing strength, becoming less effective in its attacks and failing to undermine the development of an Iraqi democracy.
The report was written last week, before the bombing of a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad and a wave of deadly reprisal attacks.

Posted by: small coke | Feb 27 2006 4:24 utc | 34

Some of todays press pieces:
Army payment to Cheney’s stock options:
Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by Audit

The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon’s own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
…
The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency had questioned $263 million in costs for fuel deliveries, pipeline repairs and other tasks that auditors said were potentially inflated or unsupported by documentation. But the Army decided to pay all but $10.1 million of those contested costs, which were mostly for trucking fuel from Kuwait and Turkey.

—
I tend to think of this as a conscience, planned “leak” to put pressure on Germany. The “plans” in question, at least from the graphic (a horoscope?) and discription NYT provides are redicules.
If these were the plans, why didn´t Saddam implement them? The “red line” around Bagdahd, which is taken as part of the plan, was at that time a U.S. propaganda tool item.
Anyhow, it will hurt futrue cooperation between US and German services. Fine with me.
German Intelligence Gave U.S. Iraqi Defense Plan, Report Says

Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion, according to a classified study by the United States military.

—
If one does not want to negotiate, one just has to says there is no negotiation partner.
Israeli Official Says Hamas Has Made Abbas Irrelevant

Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday that Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was “no longer relevant” in a Palestinian government that will soon be led by the militant Islamic group Hamas.
The remarks by the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, are consistent with the tough stance Israel has adopted as Hamas prepares to take power, but her view is at odds with the efforts by the United States and the European Union to work with Mr. Abbas and to bolster him.

—
DeLay induced smear campaign was baseless. But it tells you how they operate:
Texas Nonprofit Is Cleared After GOP-Prompted Audit

The Internal Revenue Service recently audited the books of a Texas nonprofit group that was critical of campaign spending by former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) after receiving a request for the audit from one of DeLay’s political allies in the House.
The lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group, Texans for Public Justice, from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents.
…
The IRS sent two auditors last year to comb the 2003 books of Texans for Public Justice and an affiliated foundation that collected donations for the organization. No tax violations were found, according to a letter the IRS sent the group.

—
War criminal H. Kissinger wnats Hamas to cave in to any Israeli demand.
What’s Needed From Hamas
—
A relativly fair article on the Iranian nuclear program. Lots of doubt, no smoking gun.
Case Against Iran Differs From Iraq
—
Good OpEd by Niall Ferguson: The crash of civilizations

But [Huntington] went on to say: “Conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization.”
Sorry, wrong. It’s well known that the overwhelming majority of conflicts since the end of the Cold War have been civil wars. The interesting thing is that only a minority of them have conformed to Huntington’s model of inter-civilization wars. More often than not, the wars of the “new world disorder” have been fought between ethnic groups within one of Huntington’s civilizations.
To be precise: Of 30 major armed conflicts that are either still going on or have recently ended, only 10 or 11 can be regarded as being in any sense between civilizations. But 14 were essentially ethnic conflicts, the worst being the wars that continue to bedevil Central Africa. Moreover, many of those conflicts that have a religious dimension are also ethnic conflicts; in many cases, religious affiliation has more to do with the localized success of missionaries in the past than with long-standing membership of a Christian or Muslim civilization.

Posted by: b | Feb 27 2006 9:09 utc | 36

Wayne Madsden describes entering the twilight zone otherwise known as the Pentagon.

Arriving at the Pentagon for Tuesday’s ceremony was like an opening scene from the show “Get Smart.” The only sensible way to get to the Pentagon’s visitor’s entrance is by Metro train. After clearing the turnstiles, the first sign seen is a camera with a red slash through it — no photography — and that is only for the Metro station. Then one’s attention is drawn to a series of posters on the Metro station wall showing troops armed to the teeth. The posters warn: “Every Step You Take . . . Every Move You Make . . . Every Plan You Make . . . We’ll be Watching You.” Who is “we,” you ask? Well, its the good folks at Northrop Grumman, weapons suppliers to warlords everywhere.
After ascending from the Metro’s escalators, the first stop at the Pentagon’s “improved” security access system is an outside tent, where one must show two forms of photo ID. Then you proceed with an escort inside the building where you empty your pockets and go through the metal detectors. A security guard asked me to lift up my pants legs and show him my shins and calves, which I thought was strange (unless Jeff Gannon is now working for Pentagon security along with his “HotMilitaryStuds.com” crowd). . .
After flashing your legs to the security guard, you’re then required to once again show a photo ID and provide your Social Security Number. Your photo is then taken and you’re issued a Pentagon visitor’s photo ID badge requiring a cleared escort at all times. All this, to attend a retirement ceremony on the main mall concourse, next to a couple of fast food joints, a bank, and the civilian dental office.
That’s how an American citizen and a military veteran is treated within Rumsfeld’s “death star.” However, one has to ask with whose “defense” the Department of Defense is now involved. Walking around the Pentagon are a number of foreign officers — Colombian, Norwegian, Polish, South Korean, Dutch, Australian — decked out in their uniforms with all sorts of rank insignia and various festoons — all with full unescorted access to the building. Is the Department of Defense now a global praetorian defense department?

Posted by: small coke | Feb 27 2006 14:38 utc | 38

@ annie, et al…
THE GRAND CHESSВOARD
American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives
by ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI online book.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 27 2006 16:45 utc | 40

@annie:
You are doing great work here 🙂
*********************
So let’s review what we know, and then move on to what we can presume:
Dubai is already the New York of the Muslim world–fully 1/5 of the world’s population. It is no accident that all the infrastructure is in place.
The entire muslim world is to be reformed for the benefit of international capital.
All of this has been planned and decided perhaps decades ago.
This is bigger than the United States alone.
Lack of resistance indicates that many of the elite who are in on this feel confident of their chance for success. Perhaps they know more about Iran then they let on.
The final steps of buy-in are complete. We have no idea what Russia and China have gotten for their aquiescence. Perhaps Russia is getting greater contol of a few satellites. Europe gets to keep its free press so it can run more cartoons. Seriously, it might get to keep its prior investments if it is lucky. France will get the water concesions; Germany, drugs and chemicals; Britain, Israel and the US, arms sales. Maybe China will get some factories, I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be significant resistance to the plan, because everyone will benefit except the muslim hoi polloi.
This is very exciting for them. They are working with a clean slate here. Whole markets are to be opened up as they destroy regional agriculture, small industry and local markets. Anyone who gets in the way will be destroyed through ‘divide and conquer’ religious wars. This has been tested. If they can impoversh the region enough, it could eventually displace China as the ‘low cost manufacturing center’ for the world, thus wresting significant power away from China. They will use every lesson learned so far to recreate the entire culture.
Sistani has been on board since his ‘operation’ in London. If he has not decided to ask the occupiers to leave by now, he never will. Those who haven’t read Mark Ames’ review of the book, “Virtual Politics”, might want to read it at this point. We have no idea how many of the politicians and religious leaders in Iraq, possibly even leaders of the opposition, have really been bought off. We just don’t know. But perhaps it would be presumptuous to believe that their political process is less hollow than ours or Russia’s.
The master plan calls for one large ‘free trade’ zone. Baghdad is already in the process of being downgraded to Kansas City status. Beirut to a Denver. Saudi Arabia itself will be treated like our largest oil producing area, Louisiana.
*****************
Anway, this is their optimistic scenario for the ‘final solution’ of rationalizing labor in the service of capital. It is a twenty five year plan approximately. After this, they turn their attentions to Africa. Then……..
*****************
On the pessimistic side, one should note that taking over one province of Iran and ‘bringing it to its knees’ is not exactly the ‘being showered with flowers’ scenario that didn’t even pan out in Iraq. It is a recipe for mass pandemonium and attacks at the occupiers.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 28 2006 2:06 utc | 42

tho the costs of that betrayal in iraq seem to be appreciably higher than the puppets of the empire have had to experience before

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2006 2:30 utc | 44

Afghanistan as an empty space – The perfect Neo-Colonial state of the 21st century. Part one.
Baudrillard buttressed with facts; a good synopsis of our real strategy.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 28 2006 17:17 utc | 46

drinking AWAY my distractions.

Posted by: annie | Feb 28 2006 18:43 utc | 48

annie
i hope yr a little like me & conchita – you are here even when you aren’t here & you are here all the time
we feed each other
but i am very very concious of the work done by b, uncle $cam, cloned poster & many others bringing us link after link which i find on a dailu basis – helps the work of synthesis
it is a progressive alchemy – we have the art, the songs & the passion

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 28 2006 18:50 utc | 50

…to be found… (sometimes even a preview doesn’t help)

Posted by: beq | Feb 28 2006 19:11 utc | 52

@beq: not yet
@jj:
I expected you to do a riff linking port deal w/dumping of Summers @Harvard. The groundwork has been laid since ’73, now the outlines are becoming obvious to the american victims…
You’re too sharp for me. Actually, I wrote a great riff last week after I viewed the 9-11 video you linked to on Today in Iraq, comparing the explosions before the building fell with the attack on the mosque and other ‘strange’ unexplained events, basically saying, “Get ready for the big one because here it comes.” Unfortunately, my computer ate it and I never had the chance to rewrite it.
My understanding about Summers is that the thing that sunk him was his meddling directly with the careers of tenured professors that he didn’t like, as in the case of Cornell West. This is completely against standard protochol of working through established channels and VERY threatening to the faculty. Thus the continued votes of ‘no conffidence’ which forced him out. A University President is not a CEO of a corporation….yet, at least.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 28 2006 20:58 utc | 54

Again vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, I point readers to the Mark Ames review of the book, Virtual Politics for a little more insight into Russian politics. The true story of the fall of the Soviet Union is far more complex and far dirtier than we are led to believe. Our economic hitmen played a large role in encouraging the right kind of self-interset behind the scenes. Then, the likes of Jeffrey Sachs and others swooped in to make it happen. Today, they express surprise at the level of corruption. Well, we are slowly working our way to the same level of corruption and vacuity.

Posted by: Malooga | Feb 28 2006 23:32 utc | 56

is he any reltion to the ames currently residing at marion prison

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 1 2006 0:46 utc | 58

The Pentagon Archipelago

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 2 2006 1:34 utc | 60

Baghdad official who exposed executions flees

Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed.>/blockquote>

Posted by: annie | Mar 2 2006 17:25 utc | 62

@annie
It gets worse. According to AllSpinZone, Yasser Salihee, the reporter who broke that story you quoted has been killed by an American sniper: head shot.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 2 2006 20:17 utc | 64

@citizen:
Been reading more “War Nerd.” It’s an apt title.
He’s the big, quiet, doughy kid with sweaty palms and black frame glasses in the back of the class. The one who didn’t know how to fight in Junior High School. If he got punched, he would lash out helplessly, trying to bite or kick, while others gathered around and laughed. Now he’s the “War Nerd.”
Still, he’s a great writer. And you’re right, he is to be congratulated for not being afraid to take politically incorrect positions. In fact, that is probably how the leaders of the world think. Nuke ’em. Bomb ’em. Make them glow!
And I’m probably the fool for wishing the world were different, because it isn’t, and it is unlikely that it will ever change. I should just get with the winning team and be done with it. Instead I’m the fool on the sidelines whinging for justice while the victor makes off with the spoils.
I enjoyed his ode to when “Scandinavians were real men.” Our northern friends here should probably read it. And his riff on Liberia is essentially correct, in a cruel way, except that he again glosses over the Ameican role in maintaining such helpless dependencies.

Posted by: Malooga | Mar 2 2006 22:29 utc | 66

JHKunstler has some thghts. on Iran worth considering, though he neglects to mention the complexity that Iran is colluding w/US in Iraq:
As the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra last week resolves into the Iraq civil war that everyone has feared, expect a more widespread uproar against western interests generally through the Islamic world, with Iran doing everything possible behind the scenes to incite the main actors: underemployed young men from Algiers to Jakarta.
     The west and Islam have reached an inflection point. American influence in the eastern hemisphere may be the main object of Islam’s wrath, but Europe can no longer pretend to be a disinterested bystander. The big issues are the perceived weakness of the west, the steady draining of the Islamic world’s most precious resource, oil, and the hateful presence of western persons and culture in the Islamic ummah.
     Iran’s wish to inflame, in effect, a world war may be based on equal parts delusion and realpolitik, but the wish itself is more powerful than any sense of consequence. Iran sees the opportunity to run America out of the Middle East and to seize leadership of the Islamic world from the corrupt sheiks who have been sucking up to the west for decades and trading Islam’s chief resource for whoring sprees in Monte Carlo and Las Vegas.
link

Posted by: jj | Mar 3 2006 3:19 utc | 68

@Malooga, I disagree widely w/JHK, particularly his tone & lack transformative energy, focus, etc, but I thght. this was a valuable corrective to consider that Iran has its own interests which may be counter to those of xUS elites -whose interests have only the most tangential & antithetical relationship to those of US citizens anyway – and which they might be pursuing. I’d like to see more writing about this by people who are knowledgeable about the subject, which he’s surely not. Hopefully more interesting stuff will turn up.

Posted by: jj | Mar 3 2006 7:09 utc | 70

jj,
For the past month I’ve been doing some contracting work for a guy who I’d describe as an ideologically pure conservative, who incidently also loves to talk and would, every single day sit next to me (trying to work) and talk politics all day long. All day long, whew, but he was civil about it and very well read so it was fairly interesting — plus I was getting paid.
I bring this up, because I also read Glenns post, and I think Digby also talked on the subject, and I reflected on it with regards to this fella above. I wont go into this in depth, but in relation to Glenns post I would summerize the purist conservative position as being very different from what Glenn calls “Bush cultists”. And not only different, but an even greater threat to conservative values than the “liberals”.
Essentially, the central core value of conservatism is freedom (of the individual) and naturally followed by responsability (of the individual). Freedom is characterized most often as freedom from governmental controls, most especially in the form of taxes, which conservatives feel is a form of legal robbery (by the liberals). Taxes are followed by the imposition of values that are legislated into law,ie anti-gun regulation, affermative action, foreign aid, hate crime laws, seat belts etc. Values themselves or morality flow naturally enough out of laissez-fare meritocratic values inherent in the entrepreneural spirit, or the work ethic as to be evaluated by success. Moral inequities are to be solved as business equations weighed between relative economic costs vs the social costs of doing nothing. In addition, ideological conservatives believe in the rule of law especially in business practice in order to preserve a level (economic) playing field (for the individual), a belief in the checks and balances between the branches of government, to prevent things like excessive presidential powers, or judges making legislation from the bench, and a seperation of church and state. The paleo-conservatives might add protectionism and restrictions to outsourcing and a general anti-emperial stance to the list of essentials.
As an aside, the previous paragraph could also be characterized as a classic definition of American exceptionalism, the bulk of which if strictly adhered to (supposedly) would generate an egalatarian society unique in its abscence of a classic socialist or communistic elements.
The problems Glenn tries to address as the “Bush cult”, are in many ways the problems inherent within exceptionalism as well, and are a deviation of, or erosian of the principals of ideological conservatism. Here jj’s notion that the deviation of these principals constitute its own ideology is interesting in that the original principals (of conservatism) may have inherent within them a deep structure of ideology that informs and ellucidates the surface structure (sorry Noam) without it actually being acknowledged or seen as such. So Glenn sees the Bush cultists as having boiled down all of the principals (ideology) of conservitism to a residue of blind faith, beholden only to domination (ends) at any cost (means). And jj is saying that this is in effect the mission of the cultists, as a function of elite power, or an ideology within an ideology. Which is where its more (potentially) productive to side with jj, in that if the cultists have bled conservatism of its essential structure to the degree that it has become an entirely new animal (say fascism) its trivial to declare that it’s no longer an ideology, when no doubt that it is, just a different one. But what is worth understanding is how conservatism, or better yet exceptionalism, always carries within itself the ability to deny its structural ideology to serve another master. Or to be so frought with internal contradictions — as a matter of course — to devour itself in the name of self-preservation. Back to the civil war again.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 3 2006 8:08 utc | 72