Billmon:
Oh when the frogs go marching out
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April 21, 2006
WB: Hip Hop
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Got a nasty suspicion this is more bread and circuses sans bread. I’d love to believe that the US still has some tiny remnant of a genuine judicial system left… or even that things have gotten bad enough for the neocons that they would have to throw a heavyweight (take that however you want to) like Rove to the wolves to save their own hides… but there have just been so many disappointments in recent memory that I just can’t get that fussed about rumours anymore.
Posted by: Monolycus | Apr 21 2006 4:55 utc | 1
Red-5
Negroponte was doing the talking today,
crowing or cheerleading, take your pick,
but one thing he didn’t tell us about was
a covert spy ring which first came into
existence after 2003, when George Bush
authorized indiscriminate wiretapping
without warrant against his own country.
That group, code named R-5, perhaps in
homage to Britain’s infamous M-5, has a
commercial cover like every spy agency.
R-5 sells its services to phone companies
as sort of a super database for 555 calls,
providing operators with one or two most
likely ‘hits’ within moments. R-5 also sees
that information operators limit your calls
to the shortest possible time, which makes
the phone companies lots of money.
R-5’s real involvement, however, and it’s
paid for legally by phone company’s 555
revenues, is as a macro-consolidator of
911 calls, looking for patterned “clusters”.
But more importantly, R-5 ‘tails’ people,
many of them non-citizens, but also US
citizens with wrong political affiliation.
R-5 tails phone calls made from flagged
phones by adding a 3-digit code onto each
outgoing call number, in the brief moment
before the call goes through, which causes
the calls to be rerouted internationally.
Within their own group, this domestic US
phone spy ring is known as Red-5. Tagged
phone calls, and even internet messages
made over hard lines, are automatically
routed by Red-5 to a low-cost call center
in Bangladesh, where there are no laws
against wiretapping, and where Red-5
can carry out their digital archiving and
scratch-and-sniffing spy activities without
drawing attention from US regulators.
Just another anonymous Indo-Paki call center.
If Red-5 were just tagging terrorists, that
would be one thing, but they’re known to
be tagging international royals, most US
Democratic party members, and influential
global financial leaders. Any industrial
espionage they carry out is free-lance.
So if you e-mail without encryption, you
can bet Red-5 knows your dirty secrets,
and from your domain, where you live.
Of course, cell phones are open season
for any NSA eavesdropper, and nobody
with any sense uses cell phones without
talking in code and using fake names,
buying their minutes with phone cards,
and passing phones around to avoid a
steady location, entirely anonymously.
The craft of covert knowledge peddling
to the influence makers is big business.
Red-5 lives right inside our mind space.
All Hail Negroponte.
Posted by: Larry Frank | Apr 21 2006 5:02 utc | 2
@Monolycus – I agree with you — this is bait for those who have a belief in Truth, Justice, and the American Way engraved in the heart.
The ‘Plame’ Affair? Big fuckin’ deal. There’s gonna be a grand jury? Hey — these rumors alone should be enough to keep those anti-war pinkos busy scribbling, analysing and blogging till the cows come home.
Posted by: DM | Apr 21 2006 5:16 utc | 3
In an interview Wednesday, Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove remains a “subject” of Fitzgerald’s two-year-old probe.
How old is Fitzgerald? Anyone got any idea how long he has to go before retirement?
Posted by: DM | Apr 21 2006 5:43 utc | 4
Larry, thanks for the tip.
I have, since working for the local telephone company back in the late 1970s, been well aware that anything said on the phone, certainly posted on the Internet, or sent via email … and any other public space for that matter … has absolutely no chance of being confidential.
As soon as the conversation involves money or business (international espionage), sex (scandal), or any possible illegality, or mention of criminals or suspected criminals or anything else like that, it will become interesting and people will pay attention.
So yes, we all have to be a little careful.
On the other hand, after working in the Internet for ten years or so, I also know that so much of it is so boring that there is a threshold within which most conversations can be speculative, most transactions can be safe, without too much concern.
But anyone who is even thinking about serious things would need to be careful, and even then be careful. As the old saying goes, the only ones I trust are you and me, and I’m not too sure about you.
Posted by: jonku | Apr 21 2006 5:43 utc | 5
Two years ago, the US military death toll stood at 740. At the moment it stands at 2,738.
Meanwhile, we are all breathlessly waiting on Fitzgerald to indict on the Plame Affair. What was supposed to happen after that? Something about checks and balances and truth and justice winning out in the end?
In the end, we’ll all be dead.
Posted by: DM | Apr 21 2006 5:51 utc | 6
that was a typo – 2378 dead (not 2738) – in case anyone is counting.
Posted by: DM | Apr 21 2006 6:20 utc | 7
Larry, jonku,
You’re overlooking the biggest collector, cataloger and dossier-builder on the planet. Google.
And unlike Negroponte and the NSA these guys know what they’re doing. They hired nearly the entire systems research group from bell labs when funds ran out at lucent.
I will not allow google to set cookies when I use their search engine… still works fine. I will not correspond with a gmail address. Check it out and you won’t either.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 21 2006 8:45 utc | 8
frogs , ducks, and chickens.
can i put in a request billmon.
rove as a pig? this farm needs a pig.
Posted by: annie | Apr 21 2006 9:27 utc | 9
MP3 Interview – Paul Levy on the Madness of George Bush (about a 1 hour interview).
For me, at this point in my life, Paul Levy is the only person who seems to make a bit of sense. recommended (fwiw).
Posted by: DM | Apr 21 2006 12:59 utc | 10
I think it is all over but for the crying.
See my post Camelot, April 21, 2006 at http://www.pamlico.org
Walking the White House Plank by Sidney Blumenthal
Events that could truly shake the Bush White House to its foundation, however, may be discerned elsewhere. On Monday, in Chicago, a jury found former Republican governor George Ryan guilty of 18 counts of corruption. His trial was the climax of a nine-year investigation that had yielded 75 convictions, including some of the most powerful figures in the Republican party of Illinois. The federal investigation, dubbed Operation Safe Roads, began by looking into bribery for driver’s licenses. Over time, prosecutors systematically uncovered broader and deeper patterns of corruption reaching up to the governor’s office. Patiently, they built their cases until they reached the top.
snip
Having successfully completed his most extensive investigation and prosecution, ending with the conviction of former Governor Ryan, Patrick Fitzgerald returns to the unresolved case before him. The federal grand jury considering his evidence began meeting again this morning. Karl Rove remains a subject–for now.
Posted by: beq | Apr 21 2006 14:52 utc | 12
John Francis Lee – You’re tripping about Google. Try Google-ing the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe – General James L. Jones. All you get is blah bio-pics. Try Google-ing the US State Department Section Chiefs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nothing. Try Googling yourself. All you’ll get is every post you ever made to MoA, and that’s your own fault, not Google’s.
Rick, what you and Democracy Now doesn’t seem to understand is the Pentagon thrives on war, it needs war, it depends on war. Pulling out now, and we are at an apogee of war spending, is the death knell to the Pentagon. All those military pensions are determined by time in service and by campaign ribbons. No campaign ribbons, low pension. The Pentagon will do ANYTHING to keep the war going and expand it’s margins, so more birds can have higher pensions. It’s good for NSA/CIA as well, SoS incountry personnel also, it’s good for the whole DHS/DOD welfare state. You pull in $150k living behind a compound wall in Iraq for a year, you’ve doubled your pension,
and that’s a f–king pension for life.
We are living in an idealization of Communist Utopia, at least for the Supreme Soviet in DoD. Many observers have compared the Rove Neo’s to Trotskyite’s. Bush and Fed are communalizing the common man by monetizing the debt, printing $2T in excess fiat currency, forcing all of US into a communalist welfare state, ruled by an elite.
Would you like turnips with your cabbage soup, comrade?
Posted by: Larry Frank | Apr 22 2006 2:23 utc | 13
Larry,
As much as it pains me in my heart to agree with you, I do agree.
Your words “… forcing all of US into a communalist welfare state, ruled by elite.” is exactly what’s happening, although I am ignorant as to how much of this is by design or just the common man is/will be receiving the scraps of the dinner table, so to speak. I do feel the public and some of the corporate elite have reached the tipping point with the Bush cabal. The corporate media will now let the timbers fall around this regime. At least, that is my hope.
Sound Familiar
Jim Marcinkowski speaks:
“We fought the Soviets and I fought the Soviets because they had a fatally flawed, intolerable system of government where (and think about this):
The government was always right and never apologized;
Any dissent was suppressed, ridiculed, banned or worse;
Secret prisons were denied and never acknowledged or spoken about;
The torture of captives (in Lubyanka) was condoned;
State incarceration was not subject to the checks and balances of a legal system;
Economic plans, like for oil, were established/determined in closed sessions between politicos, commissars and production managers, far outside public view, and where government claimed privilege in so doing;
Wages were set at the lowest common denominator, no matter what Bloc country you were in;
Government agents had access to your medical records, your library records, your telephone, and your e-mail.
A place where judicial power and judicial review were proclaimed concepts, but simply ignored in application;
Where criminal records of young adults were closed to all but the military;
Where a Constitution was a mere facade and ignored by state actors.
Any dissent, debate and protest were deemed unpatriotic;
The public media was bought, paid for, and provided by the state;
The military clandestinely and shamelessly influenced the national media and public opinion;
A place where wrong was declared right;
Where tapping a phone was like tapping a pencil;
Where lying was considered a patriotic skill;
The extraction of natural resources was paramount to any concern for the environment and the impact on the health of its people;
Where the use of “state secrets,” (those things embarrassing to the government) were confused with legitimate issues of “national security”;
A place where “secrecy” and “national security” were used to control debate;
Where legitimate secrecy, was subject to political use and abuse;
Where “legislators” were mere mouthpieces for and rubberstamps of whoever was in power;
Where you lived and died with the permission of the government;
A place where foreign policy was more important than domestic concerns;
Where fear was used as a political weapon and an acceptable means of control;
Where the best medical care was reserved for the influential;
Where wealth was concentrated in the top 5%;
A place where there was no middle class – just a small economic and political elite, and the working poor.”
Would you like turnips with your cabbage soup, comrade?
Posted by: Larry Frank | Apr 22 2006 3:48 utc | 15