Quick Guide to the Truth about 9-11

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 6 2007 22:32 utc | 4

hey, me here. it cannot be overstated none of this, none of us could be experiencing this miracle of onlineness becomes reality without you know who. w/the same determination he applies to our home here he has applied to showing us his home. i, in my naivete assumed this was going to be a much more laisse faire event. ah .. this was no blind leading the blind, it was him… leading us, showing us history thru his eyes. it only became apparent to me a thousand steps in that every step was orchestrated , carefully planned. and we were not an easily conforming group in any sort of lockstep (he said something about herding cats more than once!!) we looked more like a straggling assortment of farm animals, me the taggler, always last in line (i slow, i see, i suffer) different drummers, different paces, but all same heart this group of ours.
i cannot over emphasize enough how incredible we are in the flesh. predictable doesn’t cut it. more like perfect fit. so many aha moments it is as if i have known these people for years, and you know.. i have.
back to b. we are all very lucky, but we know that now don’t we?

Posted by: bertold brecht brigade | Jan 6 2007 23:10 utc | 6

as ever and more than ever, words fail me but what everyone else said and special thanks from me to b for helping me negotiate in the flea market this morning.
you may get some pictures soon but even the pictures can’t convey the experience we have shared and the friendships forged in the most precious of elements.
what a hek of a slumber party!

Posted by: bertold brecht brigade | Jan 6 2007 23:34 utc | 8

extree! extree!
toenails are being painted.

Posted by: bertold brecht brigade | Jan 7 2007 0:44 utc | 10

for the record. some of the trip was about the exhale, as well.
not everything can be told here. Too many things happen in a moment that then passes but that moment sometimes represents a lifetime.
sometimes traveling is about letting go, about leaving things behind. all of us here know this in different ways. know about the river spree and crossing that bridge into the center of another time and place and life. about barriers falling and life beginning again and about hoping something is learned from the past and taken into the future.

Posted by: fauxreal of the bbb | Jan 7 2007 1:12 utc | 12

i’m living in my own private idaho.

Posted by: bbb | Jan 7 2007 1:16 utc | 14

I am putting a call out to all the wonderful people commenting here. One of our loveliest commenters is experiencing the loss of a loved one. Grief and the comforting of someone experiencing bereavement must be so carefully undertaken, I am suddenly aware that I know so little about Christian culture and what is appropriate to say and not to.
I do know that warm, kind people are in the thoughts of all they touch and this person should know she is mine.

Posted by: Amurra | Jan 7 2007 1:23 utc | 16

amurra
if you can lend the person a little of your stillness then you are doing great good
& the bertolt brecht brigade – i told ya so
& maybelline – well, i’ve covered the waterfront

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 7 2007 1:34 utc | 18

wise words, maxcrat. and thank you, amurra. you are a kind soul. my guess is that is all a matter of time.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 7 2007 2:12 utc | 20

the independent reports that the psa law in iraq is being drafted by the u.s. and will come before the iraqi parliament within days. the provision will give big oil companies 30 year contracts to “modernize” iraq’s oil industry allowing them to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. after that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits – twice the industry average for such deals.
from the independent:

Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country’s oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. “It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard,” said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.

bought and f**king sold.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 7 2007 3:15 utc | 22

It’s certainly not done as well as Billmon’s “compare-n-contrast” literary style, but even US conservatives are starting to have trouble swallowing the cognitive dissonance that resonates like a death knell from the Republican Party. No amount of selective amnesia is going to wipe away the vile hubris formerly displayed by the likes of such tools as Michael Ledeen or Charles Krauthammer. That these people who have been so incredibly, consistently and demonstrably wrong are still paid to write their “informed opinions”, while people like Bernhard, Billmon, Jérôme, Badger, Justin Raimondo (aw, Christ… I could go on and on… and that’s not even mentioning the sensible contributors here) are still plugging away in relative obscurity… well today, I’m feeling a little bitter about it.
I’m feeling a little bitter about a lot of things, truth be told. Maybe it’s because I can’t bring myself to suffer from “selective amnesia” and turn around on a dime. Maybe it’s because I don’t think this moment of relative calm will last forever and, while I’m making some tiny progress in my attempts to forgive, I haven’t even begun down the road of forgetting. I remember the 1980’s pretty clearly… but after Ronald Reagan was canonised for finally pulling off the miracle of quietly dying, I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m the only one.
The Republican Party is showing signs of growing at least a very short-term memory. They were cautioned by Bob Dole against outlawing a minority filibuster a few years back on the grounds that it was never written in stone that they would always be the majority party in the US Congress. It was sound advice that was reluctantly accepted even though it turned out that there was no need for it anyway… they had apparently forgotten that their “opposition” was the Democrat Party, who in their own turn had forgotten where they had left their tickets when they took their spines out to be dry cleaned.
Now it feels like the morning after a drunken bender when the memory of the previous night (or last six years) starts to intrude in uncomfortable little fits and starts. US Rep John Boehner (one of the more aptly named walking suits on Capitol Hill) seems to be amongst the first to show signs of that morning-after repentance. Dimly aware as he sobers up that he behaved like an asshat at the office party, he’s entreating the Democrats to be good sports about the whole thing while turning the spirit of the Golden Rule on its ear:
“What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would liked to have been treated.”
Boehner has nothing to worry about. The Democrat Party has no longer memory (or integrity) than the Republicans do. Sure, there’ll be some tough talk, but after a few meaningless appeasements and hollow gestures, the Democrat Party will straighten its skirt, walk out of the copy room, and rejoin the festivities while pretending that nothing has taken place. Sadly, the rest of the office will go along with the act and only the cleaning staff, saddled with the duty of disposing of a few indiscreet xeroxes of intoxicated asses, will be any the wiser.
As I mentioned, there will have to be some tough talk and appeasements made before the business-as-usual resumes, so let’s all put on our most dour expressions for the morning meeting and pretend that we’re going to address the issue of who did what to whom and how we will not abide any talk of it around the water cooler. The Democrats have prepared a 100-hour long power-point presentation about how things are going to be done around here from now on:

Congratulations to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats, who begin their new control of Congress today. They also deserve full marks for paying attention while in the minority, because it’s clear Democrats learned a few things from Tom DeLay–to wit, how to rush through legislation without any minority participation or public debate.
House Democrats plan to pass a pile of legislation in their first 100 hours, bringing the measures quickly to the floor without committee hearings. These are issues they campaigned on last year and that do well in polls at first blush, such as a higher minimum wage, price controls on prescription drugs and “ethics reform.” The rush is supposed to show Democratic resolve to get things done, but it’s enough to make us wonder if they’re afraid that some of their ideas won’t hold up under scrutiny.

There’s a lot of bold-sounding initiatives in a short space of time (but we’re getting used to that, right?). Let’s take a closer look at just one of the proposals being rushed through; namely, the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 (introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy [D-Vt]).
“War Profiteering Prevention”. Wow. Anti-American sentiments like that should have Cheney organizing a weekend hunting trip tout de suite. Settle down, folks. Nothing to see here. The language of the bill (which nobody ever reads, anyway) makes it absolutely unenforceable except in the most half-assed and inconsistent manner conceivable (read: this will not affect anyone who tows the party line). Turns out that Leahy is only concerned with cracking down on “materially overvaluing any good or service with the intent to excessively profit from the war and relief or reconstruction activities”. How’s that for taking the fangs out of it? To begin with, you still can “excessively profit” (which means, what, precisely?), just so long as nobody can prove you “intended” to do so. Put that shotgun away, Dick… when you have a net worth as high as yours, it will be awhile before anyone can accuse any single one of your enterprises as profiting “excessively”. We have narrower definitions about what constitutes “pornography” (HA!), and that hasn’t stopped anyone from making a quick million on the side with it.
So, really, the only obstacle to putting this whole messy bender behind us and penciling the next office party into our DayRunners is the slim chance that one of those aforementioned ass-xeroxes will find their way into the hands of an oblivious spouse or possibly into an interoffice memo. Once again, no worries… the Republicans have been in charge of human resources, and they’ve already given us the best cleaning staff money can buy… just a few snips:

The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.
The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

snip…

In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration.
The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.
The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo “a political maneuver couched as a legal one.”
“It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda,” Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Friday.

snip…

Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush administration, in response to three lawsuits, provided an incomplete picture of how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the White House.
The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House committee that collected the lobbyist’s billing records and e-mails. The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove.

snip…

The Bush administration’s agreement with the Secret Service “at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who these records belong to,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “This memo reflects the Bush administration’s view of American government, which is that the people’s business should be conducted behind closed doors.”

So, you see? Everything’s covered. These things happen… mistakes… blah, blah, blah. Now is the time for us to begin the process of healing by… well, forgetting anything happened.
Get back to work.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 7 2007 5:55 utc | 24

very nice post Monolycus.
miss catlady too.

Posted by: beQ | Jan 7 2007 9:50 utc | 26

Amurra- to our fellow moonbeam who has lost a loved one- may she find comfort in the community of friends, both here and where ever she locates her corporeal self. it is hard to say goodbye, whether for the moment or for a lifetime.
we wish for infinity for those we love. and as we each return to the more amorphous nature of our mutual existence, as atoms, as vapour, as breath, we do know eternity.
so, Uncle, even tho we cannot save ourselves, hopefully we can join together in some way to create life that simply is. that’s my hope, at least, when the world no longer makes sense.
mono- very nice post. thank you for your considered thoughts. it is good to remember to keep from repeating the past.
I, too, already miss catlady and conchita and rick and dan… and hamburger with bun and askod, tho still nearby for the moment.
today is my last day with the moonbeams. I will miss them all very much, but I am also so thankful to have had an opportunity to meet at this special place and time. our gathering will stay with me as long as I have the capacity for memory…and I hope this meeting is just the first of many gatherings of moonkind.
as annie noted earlier, b has been an incredible host in real time, just as he is online. he gives so much to make this space happen.
if each of us could give him a post to create a thread…one person, one time, once a month, it would make it much easier for him to continue his work both here and in the outside world.
something to consider. I often only have silly or small things to contribute. however, I know and see that there are those here who have the time and intelligence to dissect the workings of the world, as we see with mono above.
I’m glad to see the phoenix post from the other o-t thread. certainly billmon’s wife has been gracious to share him with all of us…so it’s good to know she was also just pleased to know she could find him. 🙂
billmon, if you read this, maybe you can use this forum from time to time and thus still sleep upon occasion.
until later, friends.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 7 2007 10:48 utc | 28

dismal science and other gardeners: i finally had a chance yesterday to clean up and mulch my garden in preparation for the onslaught of winter. hard to believe i am still waiting, but it was over sixty degrees in new york yesterday. weird. so in my roof garden i found many things still green and some even still blooming – roses, honeysuckle, nurembergia, clematis, snapdragons. i also found my daffodils beginning to poke above ground. if my little rooftop biosystem is this messed up, the world is in a sorry place.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 7 2007 21:03 utc | 30

Feds pushing for Internet records

MINNEAPOLIS — The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.
For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.

You know, it’s ‘for the children’…/sarcasm

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 7 2007 22:30 utc | 32

kunstler (from b’s link): yet, marvelous to relate, the whole toxic, entropy-laden, creaking, reeking cargo of shit-and-deceit that comprised this system just managed to keep rolling along for another year without collapsing under its own stinking, fantastically stupid weight
exact-a-mundo, i can’t decide if we’re living in 1788, 1928, 1938, or some other wormhole-related retread
in one respect tho’ we are on new ground entirely: global warming, and
@conchita: yep, it’s a mess. here the little hedgehogs are suffering. i have not planted my daffs as i intended because it is so warm they would come straight up. i keep thinking it will get cold in february like it usually does (usu coldest month imo, which would then kill them off), but who knows? i don’t really know what to do, the pattern i have worked to all my (brief) gardening life appears to be gone. today walked in the park, windy as hell, but not that cold. it is strange looking round and thinking the landscape looking like this may be over, and having little idea what will come in its place.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Jan 8 2007 2:19 utc | 34

i’ve always been happy with our small little blog.you all are the cream of the crop in my opinon.every once in a while though,the point has been raised that we could use more posters.anyway daily kos is updating its blog links.so my question is should we be added to the list?in one repect i think the moon has the best info. and i would like to expose others to this info.on the other hand i would hate to get to much attention.then again out of the visitors we do get, we seem to only retain the good ones so far as i can tell.i would never do something like this without hearing from the rest of you.so let me know what you think.conchita you read kos what do you think?

Posted by: onzaga | Jan 8 2007 3:15 utc | 36

Interesting opinion in the Independent:

As sure as night follows day, the West is being led into a military confrontation with Iran with imponderable, but certainly terrifying, consequences. The cycle of leak followed by denial should fool no one. The Israelis are the source of both. We need put little store therefore in Ehud Olmert’s denials that Israel is planning a nuclear strike on Iran to disable Tehran’s own nuclear ambitions. The denial serves the same purpose as the leak: to orchestrate and acclimatise Western public opinion to the likelihood of war. If, or when, the strike comes, it will be sanctified by an aura of inevitability. As with Iraq, the line will be: there was no alternative.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 8 2007 4:25 utc | 38

glad you had a safe landing catlady (life of the party) we miss you. faux leaves in an hr 🙁
the other night at hamburgers we noticed the rhodies were already springing buds.
onzaga, it is fine w/me. there are probably a zillion blogs on their blogroll and anyone who find us and thinks simpatico is welcome imho

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 8 2007 4:39 utc | 40

Report Reveals 2.2 Million Borrowers Face Foreclosure on Subprime Home Loans; Homeowners to lose Billions

Posted by: Rick | Jan 8 2007 4:55 utc | 42

there are about 1,000 currently serving military signers to a petition for appeal for redress to be delivered to congress in mid-January. the action is being compared to 1969, when 1,366 active-duty service members signed a full-page ad in the nyt calling for an end to the vietnam war. because they are petitioning their congressional representatives the uniformed signers should not be subject to reprisals within the military. the appeal consistes of three simple sentences with a powerful message:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

petition signers include 75% enlisted and 25% reserves and spans ethnic lines and ranks and includes a good number of colonels.
don’t know if bush will listen to them, but our new congress may be forced to. this could be a very decisive and effective action.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 8 2007 7:16 utc | 44

Britons to be scanned for FBI database

Millions of Britons who visit the United States are to have their fingerprints stored on the FBI database alongside those of criminals, in a move that has outraged civil rights groups.
The Observer has established that under new plans to combat terrorism, the US government will demand that visitors have all 10 fingers scanned when they enter the country. The information will be shared with intelligence agencies, including the FBI, with no restrictions on their international use….
Sources said 10 airports would initially be involved. The scheme will cover most of the major airports frequently used by British travellers, including New York, Washington and Miami. Countries subject to the new scheme include Britain, other European Union nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand….
‘The technology at US airports will be far less reliable. That means anyone could be the victim of a false match, Davies said. ‘Be warned. A San Francisco Bay family holiday may easily become a nightmare.’
Britons already have their credit card details and email accounts inspected by the American authorities following a deal between the EU and the Department of Homeland Security. Now passengers face having all their credit card transactions traced when using one to book a flight. And travellers giving an email address to an airline will be open to having all messages they send and receive from that address scrutinised….
The Department of Homeland Security aims to have the new system in place across the US by the end of 2008….

Posted by: Bea | Jan 8 2007 8:09 utc | 46

Condi’s Savage War on the Palestinians

Abbas, still mindful of the national interest, sought a unity government with Hamas, based on a compromise document forged between Fatah and Hamas prisoners held in Israel. But Rice was having none of it — it didn’t require Hamas to grovel sufficiently and apologize for disrupting the Bush administration’s somnambulent stroll in Middle Eastern fantasy — and pressed Abbas to abandon the plan, and instead seek national unity on terms less acceptable to Hamas.

Posted by: ww | Jan 8 2007 8:33 utc | 48

Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.
“The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors,” their statement said. “The occupier seeks and wishes to secure… energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation.” a few more details here

Posted by: jj | Jan 8 2007 10:15 utc | 50

Exxon secrets…
Global Warming Heat Wave? January Temps Hit Record Highs Across Northeast DemocracyNow Interview w/John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA
It was 63 degrees yesterday, IN FUCKING MONTANA… My garden from last summer has shit budding…
Public Interest Watch sics IRS on Greenpeace

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2007 14:40 utc | 52

For those who have not read this article before, please do:
The lions of Babylon
[snip]
The museum’s vaults had been opened with special keys: an armed guard at the museum told Asia Times Online that American soldiers had not taken anything, but that they had opened the doors for “people from other nationalities” to loot. “The way they opened the locks, no Iraqi could do it.”
Specialists at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in their headquarters in Paris are convinced that this was a concerted operation organized outside of Iraq. Not all the oil in world – which as a matter of fact will not benefit Iraqis anyway, but will serve to pay foreigners for the Iraqi war – would be enough to compensate the Iraqi population, the whole Arab nation, and the whole civilized world for what has been lost in the looting.
Meanwhile, in a deserted Babylon tormented by sandy winds, Hussein Sahab wants to keep his job. He shows the visitor that the Lion of Babylon is still standing: it has not been stolen or vandalized. The Lion of Babylon – supposedly a trophy from Hitite times, middle of the 2nd millennium BC – is an enigmatic basalt statue representing a man who is about to be killed by a lion. But in fact the man is resisting: with one hand he tries to shove the lion’s mouth away, and with the other he fights one of the lion’s menacing paws. Legend rules that as long as the statue is there, Babylon will never be conquered.
[snip]
A more recent article on the destruction of Babylon can be found here and and here (British Archaelogogy, Oct. 2006. Moreover, a Google search using the words “destruction looting Babylon” reveals many upsetting stories. The looting is continuing even as I write this post.
A quick look at these Iraqi Resistance headlines is quite revealing. In a classic tale of irony, where Saddam’s own live lions were said to have been used to intimidate Iraqis by the U.S., what could be more fitting than Saddam Hussein now becoming known as “The Lion of Babylon”.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 8 2007 14:59 utc | 54

Laura Rozen: Cheney’s Dead-Enders

Call it Cheney’s state within the state. Herewith a brief guide to the Cheney network, dwindling and beleaguered, but by no means to be underestimated:

Posted by: b | Jan 8 2007 20:17 utc | 56

Very insightful piece on the politics and economics of oil in the Iraq war. H/T Helena Cobban.
Searching for the Truth
~Snip

The single most important goal of the Iraq invasion was to ensure that Iraq ended up on a petrodollar recycling arrangement like the United States has had with Saudi Arabia, where much of the money is sent back to the US through service contracts, and the much of the rest is invested on Wall Street. In fact, President Bush’s advisers may have been telling him that literally the economic future of the United States hinges on long term success (and by success I mean the recycling of petrodollars back into the US economy) in Iraq. The US is already on a precarious economic footing with its budget deficit and current account deficit both spiraling out of control. This would explain the uncharacteristic behavior of officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney over the past five years.
Making the economic situation even more critical is the fact that that the major Western oil companies are already having a big problem with reserve replacement that is going to get a lot worse in the years to come. Many have likely been fudging their books for years as Royal Dutch Shell was caught doing a few years ago. The market capitalization of the oil companies, which is critical to Wall Street, ultimately hinges on their ability to replace the oil that is being produced and sold to consumers with new reserves. They have been frustrated in being able to do this by the fact that they are for the most part frozen out of the best areas of the world by national oil companies, which dominate OPEC.
Iraq has the second largest conventional oil reserves in the world (five times more oil than in the United States), and they are largely undeveloped. This is shown in the scatter chart that is depicted below. It would have been clear to any sophisticated observer of the oil industry back in 2001 that Iraqi oil production was destined to increase significantly within the next few decades, simply because that is where the oil is. As Saudi production declines (it may be beginning to decline right now), within a decade or so Iraq will almost certainly become the world’s leading oil exporter. It is clear that the US/UK saw Iraq as a ripe plum for the picking back in 2003. What we don’t know is whether they thought control of Iraqi oil was a dire necessity to US interests or that it would just be nice to have. We are going to find out in the next year, I think.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 8 2007 21:04 utc | 58

Clear as day:
This is another excerpt from the Searching for Truth piece I linked to in #58:

The key group of lawmakers within the Iraqi parliament would appear to be the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. Originally part of the pan-Shi’ite United Iraqi List supported by Ayatollah Sistani, the Sadrists have been boycotting parliamentary sessions and there have been rumors that they have been contemplating leaving the Shi’ite bloc in favor of a coalition with Sunni legislators. This has caused a great deal of concern, both in Washington and Iran. Despite a low level of armed conflict between al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and certain Sunni factions (possibly exaggerated by elements that would like to drive them apart), the Sadrists and the Sunnis have certain positions in common, such as favoring a strong central government and opposition to the continued presence of foreign troops within Iraq. A successful Sadr-Sunni alliance would be a disaster for US neocon policy makers.

Bingo — Doesn’t the rush to execute Saddam, and release the video to stress that Sadr’s forces were taunting him, now make perfect sense? Driving a wedge between the two powers whose uniting, should it occur, would gravely jeopardize the passage of the hydrocarbon law?

Posted by: Bea | Jan 8 2007 21:36 utc | 60

Comet confirmation:
http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_mcnaught.htm
I’m excited that I saw it before I read about it. This one isn’t as big as Hayakutake and Hale-Bopp, but it’s plenty bright for viewing without magnification.
Comets were long thought to be portents of change or disaster (from dis + astre, “bad star”).

Posted by: catlady | Jan 8 2007 21:38 utc | 62

at the risk of arousing bob m.’s ire, i cannot help myself and must post this link to the most recent update on the paulson-wanta story. paulson flew to israel in a rush and we can be relieved that cheney not he has been in control of the money bags since. recommend donning tinfoil and sense of humour first before linking. i do wonder if bev marcus is moonlighting as a copywriter for them. the reality is though, for all of her hyperbole and teeth-gnashing, bev is right about the black boxes. wonder if these guys are too….

Posted by: conchita | Jan 8 2007 21:53 utc | 64

Who cares about my ire? If you want to believe in fairy tales go ahead. Every source that guy quotes is just a varying version of his own website. It’s impossible to understand this guy’s feverish reasoning as to exactly why the financial world is so threatened by this Wanta guy, and why — if the world was so threatened by it — Cheney would hesitate to put a hit out on the guy. Why do “several media sites” even need to be paid off to keep a secret? They seem to enjoy carrying the regimes dirty water in every other case.
The whole fervid tale reads exactly like one of those emails purportedly from a Nigerian Oil Prince who seeks to find an “agent” to run a banking favor for him in exchange of a huge commission. Which reminds me, anybody want to purchase some certificates for oil exploration leases from me off the coast of Florida. I would be willing to part with these said certificates very reasonably despite the fact that any one of them could pay back millions should oil be discovered within their sectors.
I have enough to worry about with Bush pushing to bomb Iran, and global warming. We might very well be staring down the barrel at the end of life as we have known it to be — relatively safe, comfortable and affordable for those of us in the developed world, and somehow people have time to focus on the fact that the world isn’t quite how we might Wanta.

Posted by: Bob M. | Jan 8 2007 22:53 utc | 66

Just Curious.
Is there any text editor or whatever the fuck one calls it, that allows one to create text with embedded links relatively easily without the

Posted by: Ms. M. | Jan 9 2007 0:22 utc | 68

U.S. airstrike targets al-Qaida in Somalia

Posted by: Rick | Jan 9 2007 0:38 utc | 70

DEBKAfile: Three US Norfolk-based amphibious assault ships set out for Persian Gulf Saturday
January 7, 2007, 11:33 PM (GMT+02:00)
They are part of the USS Bataan Strike group carrying 2,000 Marines and equipped to insert forces ashore by helicopter, landing craft and amphibious vehicles. The Baatan is equipped with helicopters and fast hovercraft capable of landing thousands of Marines on beaches and providing the landing with cover. The Shreveport, known as the Super Gator, combines the logistical-intelligence support of a command ship with the assault capabilities of combat loaded marines. It is designed for extended amphibious operations. The USS Oak Hill is designed to assist distressed vessels.
DEBKAfile’s military sources add that another three warships are due to sail out of Norfolk for the Gulf this week with marine personnel aboard. This will bring to more than 20,000 the complement of sailors, marines and pilots either heading for the Gulf region like the USS John C. Stennis strike group, or already present like the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Boxer.
The deployment of the USS John C. Stennis strike group, announced last week, was billed as “a warning to Syria and Iran”.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 9 2007 1:06 utc | 72

My purpose here is not to dispute Global Warming, but to keep things in perspective as I read so many posts here about the warm winter.
Extreme Winter Weather 2006
Winter weather
Record-setting snowfall throughout northern Japan that began in December continued through mid-January, dropping 13 feet of snow on some areas. By the end of the heavy snowfall, 87 people had been killed.
Cold weather that began in December spread throughout Bangladesh and northern India, leading to the first freeze in New Delhi in 70 years and killing at least 180 people throughout the region.
In January, the coldest weather in decades, accompanied by heavy snowfall and high winds in areas, occurred throughout Russia, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, leaving hundreds of people dead.[18] Snow fell throughout Europe, even as far south as the Greek Isles or the Portuguese sea resorts, with record-setting snowfall and near-record cold in many areas.
In January, heavy snow in Afghanistan and Tajikistan killed a total of 35 people.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 9 2007 1:43 utc | 74

re Rick’s at #74–indeed, and Denver is getting socked again too.
I expect extreme weather, hot and cold and really windy, all over the world, as the chaotic system gains energy through warming and shifts out of its current attractor. Eventually it will settle into predictable patterns, but they’ll be very different than what we’ve known in our lifetimes. And a lot of species will be gone. “oh well, that’s this world over…” (XTC)

Posted by: catlady | Jan 9 2007 2:43 utc | 76

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush’s oil company emerged from a 1950’s collaboration with a covert CIA officer.
Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a ‘real shocker.’

Also see, Dallas police seal off book depository building guess whose there…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2007 3:54 utc | 78

re rick’s links on u.s. shooting up bogeymen in somalia, the nbc rpt says the target may have been “leader of al-Qaida’s East Africa cell … Fazul Abdullah Mohammed”
according to global security’s profile of fazul abdullah mohammed, one of their sources of “intel” on mohammed’s involvement w/ the embassy bombings is a character named ali mohammed, who “trained Fazul Abdullah Mohammed in urban and guerilla warfare, and the evasion of surveillance in 1991 and 1992 in Afghanistan.”
ali mohammed was a witness in United States vs. Usama bin Laden, Nov. 4, 1998. r.t. naylor mentions the guy in his book, satanic purses: money, myth, and misinformation in the war on terror, regarding that trial, which, among other dubious & circumstantial testimony/witnesses, centered largely on the testimony of another character, jamal al-fadl, whose sensational revelations did for the international organized structure of the al-qa’idah myth what joseph valachi did for organized crime.

Much the way Joseph Valachi’s account was taken to confirm an image of the US Mafia as a corporate body, so most understanding of bin Laden’s Holy War Inc. as a multidivisional entity that financed itself by global businesses, legal and illegal, and functioned as the master treasury for attacks across the world, derives from claims by Jama al-Fadl during the trial of the alleged perpetrators of the 1998 embassy bombings. Valachi had been too young to witness many events on which he expounded and too marginal to participate in others. Similarly al-Fadl, a former “al-Qaeda financial executive” who had broken with bin Laden after being caught taking kickbacks, left bin Laden’s employ before the worst acts ascribed to al-Qa’idah were committed. Nonetheless he performed to order. His testimony bolstered the comic-book version of Islam, the Hollywood caricature of Arab society, and the law-enforcement fantasy about al-Qa’idah.
…
But then the purpose of the indictment was not to actually try bin Laden in a court of law. Rather it was to create a media extravaganza, sow public fear, and demonstrate that the government was on the job.
The government did have one witness, Ali Mohammed, a former US Army sergeant, to directly implicate bin Laden. However, his testimony posed a rather large problem. It is bad enough in ordinary criminal cases to use informants who have been offered cash, leniency, or a license to continue their own rackets if they rat out the competition. But when, as in terrorism cases, the government has an ulterior (and superior) objective beyond the courtroom, informants are schooled not merely in what to say against the individual(s) on trial, but what tales to tell about unindicted, perhaps unindictable “co-conspirators” and broader causes they espouse. Therefore if in strictly criminal cases, turned witnesses need to be treated with skepticism, in political ones it is wise to presume them to be liars unless they are proven beyond reasonable doubt to be telling the truth. In the case of Ali Mohammed, the incentives went much beyond money or reduced jail time. The government told him he could face trial and a high probability of the death penalty, or he could plead guilty in open court with the promise that the prosecution would only ask for life imprisonment – with the chance for parole. Presumably having a gun to the head (metaphorically speaking) or a set of lethal chemicals poised above the arm (literally true) might have affected his willingness in his scripted plea bargain to accuse bin Laden of responsibility.

so here you’ve got an american army officer who was an “AQ trainer” turned parrot. polly wanna raghead …ACK!.
folks, the u.s. govt/military/intel/law-enforcement/oil cartels are lying their asses off & on a killing spree. and we haven’t stopped them. yet.

Posted by: b real | Jan 9 2007 4:58 utc | 80

b real,
Very interesting… this recent killing spree is certainly suspicious. Again, we are in the dark.
I’m waiting for word/info about the dead. Not much yet in the foreign media.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 9 2007 5:20 utc | 82

Somalia: Ethiopian Fighter Jets Bomb Southern Region
Is this the same C-130 attack?

Posted by: Rick | Jan 9 2007 6:21 utc | 84

With re: to #55
The American government wanted Saddam Hussein executed for the Dujail killings to avoid revealing its complicity in his bigger crimes.

Commentary
U.S.-ordered rush job
The American government wanted Saddam Hussein executed for the Dujail killings to avoid revealing its complicity in his bigger crimes.
By Gwynne Dyer
It was not the Iraqi government but its American masters who chose to execute Saddam Hussein in a great rush as soon as the first sentence was confirmed, thus canceling all of the other trials on far graver charges that awaited him. The current Iraqi government had nothing to hide if those trials went ahead; the United States government did.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2007 8:02 utc | 86

re b’s #79
Total war (pdf)
That’s the game plan for the neocons.

Journalist John Pilger recalled how he interviewed neo-conservative Richard Perle during the Raegan (sic) administration. “I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about ‘total war,’ I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America’s ‘war on terror’. ‘No stages,’ he said. ‘This is total war.’ We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq . . . this is entirely the wrong way to go about it.
If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war . . . our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” -“emphasis mine”.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2007 14:38 utc | 88