Boo!
Of course, this would never happen here… /snark
Who is Peter Finn?

Washington Post Staff Writer | Peter Finn is the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. Before moving to Russia in the summer of 2004 he was based in Berlin for four years and covered international terrorism. He was based in Warsaw as the Post’s Eastern Europe correspondent from 1998 to 2000. Finn joined the Post in 1995 from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and in his first three years at the Post worked on the Virginia staff for the Metro Section.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 2 2006 10:47 utc | 3

In light of recent events:
The Franklin Coverup Scandal (Google Video)
The Child sex ring that reached Bush/Reagan Whitehouse
From wikipedia… Conspiracy of Silence is a 56-minute unreleased documentary film produced by Yorkshire Television in 1994. The subject of the film is an alleged child sexual abuse ring involving a number of prominent Nebraska persons, including Lawrence King, an Omaha banker, political fundraiser, and convicted felon.
The documentary was listed on TV Guide for broadcast in the United States on cable outlet Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. However, it was not aired and was never broadcast on televison.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 2 2006 11:27 utc | 5

“Led by the nosering of humanitary intervention into the next ressource war.”
That is how a letter writer to today’s TAZ, a daily in Germany, characterized the reaction of young progressive to calls for intervention in Dafur.
We Saved Europeans. Why Not Africans? ask three Democratic Party people in a WaPo OpEd.

After swift diplomatic consultations, the United States should press for a U.N. resolution that issues Sudan an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the U.N. force within one week or face military consequences. The resolution would authorize enforcement by U.N. member states, collectively or individually. International military pressure would continue until Sudan relented.
The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan’s oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy — by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.
If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it.
…

Sick idiots ..

Posted by: b | Oct 2 2006 13:53 utc | 7

Frank Rich has a nice smack down for Beinart and other Democratic hawks in the New York Review of Books

However many quarrels he has with the Bush administration, Beinart is still hoping to prove that those who did not get it wrong were somehow wrong anyway—or at least more wrong than he was, and more frivolous. This leads him to echo the Bush White House, as he attempts to conflate the serious pre-invasion opponents of the Iraq war with a mindless, cut-and-run mob of peaceniks who don’t understand the threats to national security posed by Islamic radicalism, who opposed war in Afghanistan and who now can’t be trusted to protect America because they’re too busy hating Bush to take on terrorists. He warns darkly that this crowd could yet hijack the Democratic Party with apocalyptic results …

Posted by: b | Oct 2 2006 14:22 utc | 9

@Antifa – And if the Democratic Party lays right down for this their Third Bi-annual Raping of the New American Century, will the American public accept it?
As long as it doesn’t interrupt their cable or satellite TV reception, I don’t think the majority will care much either way.

Posted by: mats | Oct 2 2006 15:22 utc | 11

These are Interesting Times!
Condi Rice denies George Tenet held the terrorist gun to her head prior to 9-11. She is bringing a message to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. GOP House leadership is under fire. Will the House Speaker, Denny Hastert, resign? US Army stages a bureaucratic revolt and holds back its budget. US Corporate media gets vicious.
George Bush and Karl Rove cannot go into November without an October surprise. If they loose either the Senate or the House, they are facing hard time.
Juan Cole on Sunday presented the Lily Pad oil security scheme. The US is taking over of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves to control them prior to the advent of Peak Oil.
Combine Jail Time, Peak Oil and Guidance from a Higher Father, you get a bombing campaign against Iran. Despite the failure of Shock and Awe in Lebanon, 140,000 hostages in Iraq, $200 barrel oil, or even that escalation will assure the release of tactical nuclear weapons, it is “Bombs Away Iran”

Posted by: Jim S | Oct 2 2006 16:52 utc | 13

Krugman has some wise words about this:

At its core, the political axis that currently controls Congress and the White House is an alliance between the preachers and the plutocrats — between the religious right, which hates gays, abortion and the theory of evolution, and the economic right, which hates Social Security, Medicare and taxes on rich people. Surrounding this core is a large periphery of politicians and lobbyists who joined the movement not out of conviction, but to share in the spoils.
Together, these groups formed a seemingly invincible political coalition, in which the religious right supplied the passion and the economic right supplied the money.
The coalition has, however, always been more vulnerable than it seemed, because it was an alliance based not on shared goals, but on each group’s belief that it could use the other to get what it wants. Bring that belief into question, and the whole thing falls apart.

We may actually just see the apex of the Republican shit wave and the next one will have, again, a Democratic Party label.

Posted by: b | Oct 2 2006 17:46 utc | 15

mono
I suggest michael berube’s blog. you’ll discover much solidarity there.

Posted by: slothrop | Oct 2 2006 17:51 utc | 17

Young children fight U.S. troops in Iraq

Posted by: beq | Oct 2 2006 17:58 utc | 19

Not that this disgusting habit is peculiar to only catholics. We were married by a presbyterian minister. Imagine my surprise to see his photo in the paper a few years later for spelunking three boys

Posted by: gmac | Oct 2 2006 20:53 utc | 21

The Asylum Street Spankers: Stick a Ribbon Up Your SUV.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Oct 2 2006 22:06 utc | 23

@Antifa
The entire Iranian war is planned and predicated on the people of Iran overthrowing their anti-American government within days of the start of the bombing.
This is probably what the craziest crazies in the admin are hoping for. But its not going to happen.
The best we can probably hope for at this point is a controlled escalation that starts off with an ultimatum/face-off in the Gulf, followed by an embargo of some sort, missiles fired both ways, some islands and other minor terrain is seized, air strikes (non-nuclear) against suspected nuclear facilities, escalation of attacks by insurgents in Iraq (most coalition troops will be garrisoned and well stocked), the UN gets into the act, and things begin to cool off and oil prices drop down.
Then both sides declare victory and everybody goes home.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 2 2006 22:33 utc | 25

@gmac it certainly isn’t and apologise if it came across that was my point of view. as an aside years ago I knew a bloke who was a coke dealer by trade and his brother a presbyterian minister had staked the younger sibling into his first solo run. He got the money for the start-up capital by putting his wife on the game! Nice people -yuk!
Anyway I hope the next post dispells the misconcetion that it is only the cathoilics which don’t meet the Did standard of probity -in fact I suspect that organised religion of any kind, by it’s very nature is self-serving bulldust.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 2 2006 22:51 utc | 27

heheh The combination of universal easy access to information dissemination (the Internet) and cult of the individual, where every half-assed bourgeoisie revels in his/her own importance, makes political careers both mercurial and redolent of an early afternoon soap-opera.
Wannabe Socialist candidate for the French presidency Ségolène Royal has discovered that even her own family can’t be trusted to put self-aggrandizement ahead of her candidature. She would have expected no less from hubby François Hollande, the Socialist Party’s erstwhile leader and wannabe candidate himself.
In fact he is reported as telling the French media that he is “living through a tragedy”. By that he meant that the ‘little wife’s candidature’ was meant to be a red herring to distract other opponents particularly Laurent Fabius, while he emerged from the melee after the dust had settled, polished, profound and disturbed at the vicious attacks on his wife, but ready in “the interest of France”, to reluctantly take up the nomination for himself.
That hasn’t been the case. Royal has proved to be a remarkably strong contender amongst a population sick of ‘the same old same old’ who perfectly understandably but mistakenly have come to believe that a change in gender may cause a more than superficial change in the political landscape.
So now the knives have really come out and one of Royal’s brothers, Antoine appeared on national TV alleging that another brother, Gérard Royal, of the French intelligence service was the man who planted the bomb on the side of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985 thereby murdering a crewman with his terrorist act.
Segoline has had no choice but to deny all knowledge of this while pointing the finger at Sarkozy and his Conservative party. However it is a safe bet that the culprit for this timely (right before the Socialist nomination is decided) leak is a lot closer to home.
Laurent Fabius who has been quick to act appalled at this scandal “It must be pure coincidence, total fluke … for people to dig up this story which happened 20 years ago and which tars the reputation of [Royal] when she is putting her name forward … and perhaps me too, given that I am also a candidate. I don’t believe in gutter politics, and if they want to stop the Socialists like that, it won’t work.” — is in fact it’s most likely source.
The Rainbow Warrior affair has dogged him for twenty years. As Prime Minister under Francois Mitterand when the terrorism occurred he was thrown to the wolves by Mitterand when the kitchen became too hot. He has been assiduously sleazing his way back into a position of power within the Socialist Party ever since and now it seems that some damned female is going to steal the gig from him he has gotten even sleazier, even nastier.
Since the Rainbow Warrior bizzo is already intimately linked in the minds of Socialist Party members who regard it as the nadir of their party’s corrupt behaviour, to Fabius, he really has nothing to lose by stirring it up right now. On the other hand if it is that business which is encouraging members to favour Royal over himself, tarring her with the same brush may cause some of them to rethink and switch back to Fabius.
The Independent has run a story on this account of politics as usual in a party allegedly of the left but they have chosen to concentrate on the reception the revelation has been getting in New Zealand where many people would like to see the whole mob of murdering swine locked up for the rest of their natural lives.
Now although that is how people feel, they also have come to accept that it is never going to happen. A side of the story that the Independent has neglected to put across. A slightly more objective report on the Kiwi point of view can be found here in today’s edition of the NZ Herald which is incidentally a stable-mate of the Independent.
The more prurient Kiwis who would normally be chewing up the talk-back airwaves and letters to the editor pages of newspapers as well as NZ blog’s comments sections, have been engrossed in a more contemporary scandal.
It seems that the bunch of religious fundamentalists who belong to a sect of amerikan origin but which has also infected NZ, England and Oz, weren’t content with their failed attempt to bribe some of the minor parties in the legislature into forcing a change of foreign policy to support the BushCo Iraq invasion.
They have gone on to greater acts of treason and perfidy and employed a band of private detectives to follow Prime Minister Helen Clark around 24/7. It seems they are about to release proof that Ms Clarke bats for the other team! shock! horror! yawn.
NZ Herald 1/10/2006:

Proctor said the investigation was still under way, and the final pieces of information were arriving on Wednesday.
“We were retained by the Brethren to do certain things which we achieved. The majority of those things continue, and the results will be well known by this time next week.”
Proctor said information was being sourced from beyond New Zealand, including from a contact who had been in the United States.
He said next week the public would see “the reason why members of a certain party are just little wee bit upset … about these private investigators who have been let loose on them”.

Now I won’t bore readers with a lengthy account of NZ’s oppressive libel laws which never seem to protect the innocent but which do a fine job of protecting the rich and powerful except to say that one would expect that the herald (even the Sunday edition) wouldn’t publish a claim like that without having seen some evidence that the allegations had substance.
So maybe it is just the air of calm certainty that Ms Clark has been showing while declaring that her life is an open book and let these sleazy sticky beaks do their worst, that has the Herald questioning and mud-slinging it’s own sources
New Zealand Herald today (3/10/2006):

The investigator hired by the Exclusive Brethren to tail Prime Minister Helen Clark assaulted a man in custody and kicked a senior police officer in the groin during a bar-room brawl 25 years ago.
Herald files show private investigator Lew Proctor was convicted of assaulting three officers and another man after going berserk during a drinking session at the Papakura Police Station bar when still in the force as a detective in 1982. . .

I suspect that most Kiwis have always sort of assumed that Ms Clarke’s hobbies probably include unspoken membership of ‘the tongue n groove set’ so that even if it can be demonstrated that their prime Minister has a girlfriend tucked away somewhere, once they get over trying to work out if they are somehow related to this hidden ‘power behind the throne’ they won’t really care one way or the other. The men’s rights groups will jump up and down since many of them are still learning that they need to get equal rights activists onside rather than alienate them further.
Whatever it is; given that the agenda of those behind this chaos and scandal appears to be to promote the views of amerika’s religious right and that this organisation or cult (The Exclusive Brethren, which originated in amerika sometime in the early 20th century), has been behind movements in Australia, and the US to ensure that the war criminals be elected and stay in power, this scandal has served to confirm most kiwis in their belief that they are wise to keep amerikan foreign policy at bay.
R’giap may remember the exclusive brethren from his childhood in Australia, they were the kids at school who always had to go off and eat their lunch away from ‘outsiders’ – – IE anyone else, but given that the US is awash with these sects, it is unlikely that this particular one will strike a familiar chord in the minds of amerikan readers. Therefore I commend this page of links about E.B. compiled by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 2 2006 23:03 utc | 29

Uncle,
There is probably no other writer who has been more influential on me since I first read him than RAW. He has prodded, humorized, satirized, homogenized, and has jarred some of my most cherished programs into “Error” messages. Among my top most influential non-familiar people in this world, Robert Anton Wilson in the upper echelon.
Bob,
Good luck friend, even if this isn’t just another pseudo-demise, ha ha. I know you would satirize me to death if I didn’t hold some degree of skepticism after your past performances. But I will celebrate your final and help support you in whatever till then. Thanks for letting us know.

Posted by: Juannie | Oct 3 2006 0:56 utc | 31

Arroz Con Pollo
It’s like my grandfather used to say: A mule will work for you twenty years just for the chance to kick you once. It looks like Tenet aimed straight for Condi’s head.
Ah, Billmon… very, very good. And you make it look so easy. Don’t look for anyone her to stop you before you blog again. Take care of your health your family and your finances though. Lord knows no one else will.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 3 2006 1:25 utc | 33

For French-speaking Stalinist fruitcakes, but not only for them: there is an interesting Marxist interpretation of 21st century globalism posted (in French) on Reseau Voltaire. The data series in the appendix, in particular, are worth looking at. One thing has not changed: Marxist writing style is still all fucked up.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Oct 3 2006 3:51 utc | 35

@ Guthman Bey
This version of your link works (I hope). Meanwhile
thanks for pointing out the interesting Reseau Voltaire site.
I suspect the old illuminist would like it, although maybe it’s a bit too conspirational to satisfy his passion for lucidity.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 3 2006 11:08 utc | 37

It’s strange I can’t get a direct link to work but if I cut and paste http://www.rawilson.com/main.html into my browser for RAW’s home page, it works.

Posted by: Juannie | Oct 3 2006 11:59 utc | 39

New Militias Push Govt Back Further

RAMADI, Reports of the setting up of U..S.-backed Sunni militias have brought new uncertainty to deepening chaos within Iraq.
Some Sunni leaders from the troubled al-Anbar province west of Baghdad recently met away from their tribes to set up new militias, according to local reports.
These new armed groups have received early praise from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. officials. The United States had earlier called for the disarming of all militias for the sake of social peace and reconciliation, but that policy has clearly changed. The occupation forces now back both Shia and Sunni militias in different areas of the country.
These new groups are drawing strong condemnation from other Sunni tribal chiefs.
“They are a group of thieves who are arming thieves, and this is something dangerous and nasty,” Sheikh Sa’adoon, chief of a large Sunni tribe near Khaldiyah city in al-Anbar told IPS. “This only means we will have more disturbances here, and it could create local civil war.” Another tribal leader in the area, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, said “they are only doing this in order to kill as many Sunnis as possible, and this time with Sunni hands.”
He said true tribal leaders should lead any militias they form, rather than issue orders from the Green Zone, the U.S. and Iraqi government enclave in Baghdad.
“Leaders should lead their soldiers on the battlefield, but those so-called sheikhs are well protected behind concrete walls inside the dirty zone (green zone),” he said. “How can they win a battle by remote control?” The controversial move appears to have brought widespread condemnation also from academics, Iraqi military leaders, and even Shia politicians. “It is a new way of making millions of dollars,” a professor at al-Anbar University in Ramadi told IPS.
Brigadier-General Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimi from the new Iraqi Army in Anbar province told IPS: “I cannot imagine 30,000 more guns in the Iraqi field. I hope they will reject the idea. Iraq needs more engineers and clean politicians to solve the dilemma of the existing militias rather than recruiting new ones to kill more Iraqis. The idea sounds to me as turning the country into a mercenary recruitment centre.”

Posted by: annie | Oct 3 2006 17:16 utc | 41

Trying again

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 3 2006 17:33 utc | 43

Period US UK Other* Total Avg Days
10-2006 14 1 0 15 3.75 4

Posted by: DM | Oct 4 2006 10:00 utc | 45

New revelations about the so-called ‘laughing hijackers’ tape expose its release as a stage-managed politically timed trick. The father of Mohammed Atta blasts the video as a “fake” while contradictory claims of its origin and nature baffle even mainstream terror experts – while even the media admits that the tape was released not by Al-Qaeda but by the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
Firstly, the father of Mohammed Atta, who has previously stated that his son is still alive, has blasted the video as a total fake. “The video-testament of my son is false and I continue to believe he is innocent” Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta, 71, told Saudi daily al-Watan. “The Americans tampered with and falsified that video” he alleged, ” they want to change the truth in order to achieve their goals in the Middle East.”
“There is a big difference between this photo and the images shown by the Americans – that one is not my boy.” he went on to say.

InfoWars
Nimmo

Posted by: DM | Oct 4 2006 12:06 utc | 47

@slothrop- will be interested in hearing your take on the castells. get the impression that you have more depth of knowlege in this area. definitely a grand project he undertook. impressive stuff.

Posted by: b real | Oct 5 2006 3:36 utc | 49