De-lurking here for a moment.
First, unfortunately, my rhetorical skills can only render a pale version of the appreciation that I have for the dialogue and the folks that are engaged here…That said, I felt a number of waves of curiosity about the read here wrt what transpired in the global markets today.
A member of my family is of that staid, traditional banking ilk that evidence very little reaction whatsoever to volatility along the lines of what occurred today. Over the years, I’ve come to conflate that with his preternatural republican nature insofar as it sometimes feels almost like a passive attempt toward willing a different reality (notably Cheney-esque in its nature, granted). His continued unflappability in light of my dollar bear-ishness seems to take root in the fact that
he says there isn’t anywhere substantial enough for China (or anyone else potentially dumping dollars) to put their resources if they were to massively divest themselves of dollars. My non-fiscally schooled mind says – Swiss francs, gold, or a basket of other currencies…
Any thoughts?
I’ll also offer that this is only a very thin thread in the wide fabric of my heightened concern, but I suppose there is also a first public query…
TIA

Posted by: wa sabi | Feb 27 2007 23:51 utc | 4

oh. so that’s what it was about

A suicide bomber attack on the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan where Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting also rattled the market.src]

bigger than the flap of a butterfly wing, that’s for sure…

Posted by: b real | Feb 28 2007 2:53 utc | 6

Another source of calm is knowing that after the crash, you still have a shitload more than most. It’s all relative.

Posted by: biklett | Feb 28 2007 4:04 utc | 8

goddamnit
here’s the link

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 28 2007 4:12 utc | 10

*Rolls eyes*
Israel asks U.S. to defray cost of 2006 Lebanon attack.
weird… I just read two articles yesterday detailing how last summers war with lebanon boosted Israel’s economy hugely… and in general I always found it strange that the US sends arms to Israel while Israel’s largest export is… arms.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 28 2007 7:16 utc | 12

Yeah, annie, i’d be nice if he stopped by once and a while..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 28 2007 7:39 utc | 14

Biklett nailed it in No.5: “I think Wile E. Coyote (Greenspan, et al.) just looked down.”

Posted by: jonku | Feb 28 2007 9:02 utc | 16

Regarding the stock markets (and elections), the problem can be pinned on the machines…
Computer glitch causes Dow average to fall faster than normal
That’s a little comforting. A Canadian co-worker of mine said it was China’s fault.
It’s comforting because it’s supposed to be comforting. “Investor confidence” (read: wishful thinking) actually creates the reality that is the Dow Jones Industrial Average (or whatever you you’re using to measure the “worth” of what is, at the end of the day, a consensus fantasy.) It should be no surprise, then, that the idea has arisen that other “realities” are just as malleable to the will by those obsessed with pecuniary matters. They prevail for no other reason than that they agree to remain invested (read: never take their heads out of the sand).
Click your heels together and chant “there is no place like the Hague” to counter the “reality” being created by those who chant nonsense like “We were never about stay the course”. The new consensus “reality” will be shaped by whoever has the most faith.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 28 2007 13:24 utc | 18

Hey people check this out. U.S. Will Join Talks With Iran And Syria. Can anybody figure out what’s their plan? My guess is that they are going to produce a disaster out of that talks and shutter another oppotrunity for diplomatic solution. It won’t be the first time.

Posted by: PaulM | Feb 28 2007 14:31 utc | 20

noirette, i watched that video when uncle posted it yesterday, also recieved it via email. if you listen carefully a few minutes in he says “it is now 8 hrs since the attacks.”
i think someone has their timing of this newscast off, possibly by tweleve hrs.

Posted by: annie | Feb 28 2007 16:31 utc | 22

Noirette:
WTC7 had the living shit pounded out of it by debris from the north WTC tower. The side of 7 facing what was left of the north tower looked like the remains of the OKC Federal building after McVeigh’s bomb went off. It was known 7 would likely collapse well before it actually did so.

Posted by: Loveandlight | Feb 28 2007 17:25 utc | 24

thanks dick.
lovelight It was known 7 would likely collapse well before it actually did so.
when i saw the video of the owner being interviewed stating he got a call the building was going to be ‘pulled’ i knew there was no likelihood but certainty.
The side of 7 facing what was left of the north tower looked like the remains of the OKC Federal building after McVeigh’s bomb went off.
do you mean before or after it collapse? if before, got photos?

Posted by: annie | Feb 28 2007 18:04 utc | 26

Monolycus 23 –
Curious thing is that I heard a general, recently arrived in the hinterlands from a Pentagon post, say something similar a week ago. Only his phrasing wasn’t as diplomatic as the Depty Sec, who is, after all, a civilian appointee. The gen’l said, “This is going to go on until 2008, the election of 2008.”
My interpretation: he was signalling that the military decisions now are being made entirely by the political leaders, and that many top military leaders are not happy about their choices. Not a firm end date, but an indication that the military commanders intend to start bringing troops home then.
In all his remarks the genl’s phrasing was notable. “The president is, whatever he is, is resolute.” “So I have to ask you to return to Iraq in August, and not for just 12 mos, closer to 15 mos for most troops. That is the time that most units will be there now.”
Absolutely no cheerleading at all, as he made the official, if not unexpected, announcement that the date of deployment back to Iraq, for one of the local brigades, has been moved up from October to August. This means that their time at home will be 8/9mos rather than 1 year. The same speed up is occurring for troops everywhere.

Posted by: small coke | Feb 28 2007 19:47 utc | 28

@ DS ET AL…#29
Ahhh, Philippe Sands, author of ‘Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules’, certainly rings a bell with me and should you too after you watch the above…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 28 2007 20:09 utc | 30

One of the rituals attending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when our opponents score a goal, is for an American general to materialize before the press and announce, in his best miles gloriosus manner, that “we face a thinking enemy.” Wow. Who ever would have imagined that the enemy might think and learn?
The latest example followed the insurgents’ success in shooting down seven American helicopters in Iraq. According to the February 18 New York Times, Major General James E. Simmons, an Army aviator, told reporters, “We are engaged with a thinking enemy.” General Simmons should know; the mujaheddin shot down his helicopter on January 25, fortunately with no casualties.

Wm S Lind
a thinking enemy? who knew? thought they were just a bunch of Backward Wogs, did we, guys? barely primate, let alone human? incapable of observation and reaction?
the nickname of Cheney’s plane is hardly needed to complete the picture, but there it is. the Spirit of Strom Thurmond is indeed alive and well among the US command, evidently.
it looks like a colonial racist mindset and it quacks like a colonial racist mindset and goddammit, I think it’s a colonial racist mind[sic]set.
I’m too disgusted to type properly. meanwhile, another feelgood whitefella propaganda flick is ably deconstructed by historian Peter Linebaugh, one of my favourite contemporary writers. hagiography of Wilberforce? we are way beyond satire. we are through the looking-glass and playing hedgehog croquet.

Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 1 2007 2:04 utc | 32

much going on with the gonzalez seven (actually now 8) today. feinstein, schumer, and whitehouse (new senator from rhode island) all spoke on the senate floor and ap reports that the house and senate will both investigate.

Democrats are moving to compel some of the eight U.S. attorneys, including one in San Diego, who have been ousted to tell their stories publicly, under oath, after a federal prosecutor claimed he was fired for political reasons.
A House subcommittee is slated to vote Thursday on subpoenas for four of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, will send letters to those fired before voting next week on compelling their testimony, according to officials with both panels.
The prosecutors have privately told both committees that they would not testify voluntarily but would honor a congressional subpoena, according to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and an official close to the House subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.
House subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez said her panel will vote on subpoenas for fired prosecutors Carol Lam of San Diego, David Iglesias of New Mexico, H.E. “Bud” Cummins of Arkansas and John McKay of Washington.
“In order to get the full picture of why these U.S. attorneys were fired, we need to hear from the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys themselves,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.
Schumer, in a telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, said: “If they say they won’t come voluntarily, Sen. Leahy will authorize subpoenas.” The Senate panel is expected to vote on whether to issue the subpoenas next week, said Tracy Schmaler, spokeswoman for Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Spurring the developments was a new report that one of the eight, New Mexico’s David Iglesias, claims to have been forced out after refusing a request by two congressmen to rush an indictment that might have helped Republicans in the 2006 election. In the story and a subsequent interview with the AP, Iglesias refused to identify the members of Congress.

iglesias seems to be fighting back and held a press conference this morning on his resignation. apparently when you serve at the president’s pleasure resignation = being fired. and iglesias, who had positive performance review, is not going quietly into the night.
feinstein has tried to introduce legislation to reimpose the time limit for the senate to approve appointments that was removed by the reauthorization of the patriot act and has faced opposition from kyl. not giving up, she has also tried to reattach it to an omnibus bill on homeland security. in the house, conyers will begin hearings in march.
this is an excellent source for keeping up with this inrun on the constitution.

Posted by: conchita | Mar 1 2007 5:41 utc | 34

Paul Craig Roberts interviewed at Needlenose. With a picture of him.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 1 2007 9:16 utc | 36

there was a memo? i missed the memo

Posted by: Dismal Science | Mar 1 2007 16:16 utc | 38

& daniel pipe together with douglas feith must be the dumbest motherfuckers this side of somalia

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 1 2007 17:54 utc | 40

Didn’t link to this this morning: The Guardian, not well sourced, but anyhow: US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq – or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
…
“They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about ‘Plan B’ by the autumn – meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it’s getting harder every day,” [a former Senior Administration Official] said.
…
But the next six months are make-or-break for the US military and the Iraqi government. The main obstacles confronting Gen Petraeus’s team are:
· Insufficient troops on the ground
· A “disintegrating” international coalition
· An anticipated increase in violence in the south as the British leave
· Morale problems as casualties rise
· A failure of political will in Washington and/or Baghdad.
“The scene is very tense,” the former official said. “They are working round the clock. Endless cups of tea with the Iraqis. But they’re still trying to figure out what’s the plan. The president is expecting progress. But they’re thinking, what does he mean? The plan is changing every minute, as all plans do.”
…
According to a British source, plans are in hand for the possible southwards deployment of 6,000 US troops to compensate for Britain’s phased withdrawal and any upsurge in unrest.

Posted by: b | Mar 1 2007 19:41 utc | 42

Libby Trial Exposes Neocon Shadow Government

Day by day, witness by witness, exhibit by exhibit, Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the trial of Dick Cheney’s man, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, is accomplishing what no one else in Washington has been able to: He has impeached the Presidency of George W. Bush.
Of course, it’s an unofficial impeachment, but it will also, through its documentation, be inerasable. The trial record—testimony, exhibits, the lot—will be there, in one place, for investigators, scholars, reporters and Congress to pore over. It goes far beyond the charges against Mr. Libby. It is, instead, a road map to the abuses of power that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and their shadow government of neoconservatives have committed as the neocons carried out what they had been planning for years: an invasion of Iraq—and other military excursions—for the purpose of expanding American dominion.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 1 2007 22:40 utc | 44

r’giap, i wouldn’t be so sure. given his history of going after the little guy first is his mark. another aside, i have no doubt libby would be pardoned if convicted and i may be mistaken but i think once you are pardoned you cannot take the fifth or lie about what has been exposed at trial if your testimony is required for an investigation that springs from your conviction.
fitz did not only allude to libby being the fall guy for cheney, he down right stated it in his closing. he also held back many witnesses that could be used in later investigations, why? my hunch is that if libby is convisted he will go for the big fish and use libby against him. if libby lies again he can be prosecuter again, not for the same crime, but for lying in a new investigation. in other words libby could land right back in the hot seat. also, w/the illinois trail of the gov in which fitz took 64 state employees down prior to the gov the trials lasted a few years. if any scenario like this were to take place, bush wouldn’t be in office long enough to pardon cheney. the wheels of justice and all that.

Posted by: annie | Mar 1 2007 23:18 utc | 46

annie – I hope you’re right. I just want to see them exposed and hung out in the open (one way or another 😉 ) so that NO ONE can ever deny what they’ve done. No pretty little history books down the road.
Are we still waiting for Fitzmas?

Posted by: beq | Mar 2 2007 1:26 utc | 48

It was never clear that the intent of Nixon/Kissinger negotiations was a peace agreement either. Managed to muffle domestic critics for several years though.

Posted by: small coke | Mar 2 2007 5:24 utc | 50

Rice Names Critic Of Iraq Policy to Counselor’s Post

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has tapped Eliot A. Cohen, a prominent writer on national security strategy and an outspoken critic of the administration’s postwar occupation of Iraq, as her counselor, State Department officials said yesterday.
…
Rice has lured a leading figure of the neoconservative movement as her policies toward North Korea and Iran draw fierce attack from the Republican Party’s right wing.
…
Cohen was also fiercely critical of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report, writing in the Wall Street Journal that “a fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results.” Cohen, who has described himself as sympathetic to Israel, also denounced a paper last year by two prominent professors on the influence of the “Israel Lobby” as “inept, even kooky academic work” that was undeniably anti-Semitic.

Posted by: b | Mar 2 2007 7:51 utc | 52

jj- that’s too bad. gonna miss his coverage in dc, definitely.

Posted by: b real | Mar 2 2007 15:38 utc | 54

US, Israel begin talks on new 10-year aid plan
Meanwhile, New Orleans is having to sue to get disaster relief.
What is wrong with this picture?
Billmon often referred to the cultural impact and messages from the dystopian sci-fi movies of the 70’s such as the Planet of the Apes warning us of our lost humanity, hubris and civil disaster.
At one time in history, the hubris of, ‘Let’em eat cake’: When Marie Antoinette advised the starving masses, “Let them eat cake,” when told they could not afford to make bread, she eventually paid for it at the guillotine.
The malthusian trap: I can envision a time –in the not to distant future– when we will have soup lines and starving in the streets, ‘depression redux’, while the private gated communities golf and feast, protected by Blackwater types; hell, it’s already happening.
Malthusian catastrophe: The Malthusian catastrophe or better, ‘the Malthusian limit’ is upon us when a return to subsistence-level conditions as a result of agricultural mishap (or, in later formulations, economic/political) mishap brings on environmental or ecological breakdown. Production is eventually outstripped by growth in population or I suspect inability of production. Or indifference to subsistence crisis, now known as “food insecurity”.
Not long before billmon closed shop, he had mentioned another movie entitled: Idiocracy. I was able to get a copy a few nights ago, and while it certainly was a cheesy b rated movie, with it’s goofy acting and over the top ridiculousness of humanity, it hit home. While it wasn’t a great movie it has stayed with me long past it’s ending. While I hope not to spoil it for those whom haven’t yet seen it, there was one scene in it where corporations has so taken over that, they were watering the agriculture with Gatorade.
From that same era billmon speaks of –the 70’s– there was another movie that had a much more profound impact on me, at the time than the Planet of the Apes, in part because I was so young, that movie was Soylent Green ….
Today, instead of ‘let em eat cake’, we have ‘let’em eat each other’ Soylent Green is people!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 2 2007 17:31 utc | 56

From the “You call this ‘conservative’?” Department:
When will our U.S. Government and their ‘Corporate Goons’ leave us people alone?
DOD, Microsoft sign deal to data mine health records
[snip]
Dr. Deborah Peel, chairwoman of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, views the patient information not as a goldmine ripe for exploitation but as a collection of personal and sensitive health information that needs to be zealously guarded and only accessed with express consent by the patient.
[snip]
[snip]
The data-mining project means that end users will have access to clinical data on millions of people, Peel said, adding that “to date, the government and the American health care industry has shown an extraordinary lack of commitment to health data privacy and security.”
[snip]

Posted by: Rick | Mar 2 2007 19:49 utc | 58

Noriette, what have your folks done: Swiss … Invade Liechtenstein
🙂

Posted by: b | Mar 2 2007 20:37 utc | 60

@ b #60
Expect to see this used as an excuse by our neocons. they can now march into any country they choose and say they accidentally got there….after all, it happened to the Swiss!

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 2 2007 22:36 utc | 62

WTF!?
No really, wtf?
And you thought Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis of civilizational clash was fucked up, just wait till you read this!
It only takes a few minutes with this document to realize that the “Crisis” in question here is actually Democracy itself. It’s an old report but still a very interesting read, and we present a few nuggets along with the download.
The Increase in Social Interaction

In every developed country man has become much more of a social animal than before. There has been an explosion of human interaction and correlatively a tremendous increase in social pressure. The social texture of human life has become — and is becoming — more and more complex, and it’s management more difficult. Dispersion, fragmentation and simple ranking have been replaced by concentration, interdependence, and a complex texture. Organized systems have become tremendously more complex, and they tend to prevail, in a much more composite and complex social system, over the more simple forms of yesterday. Because of the basic importance of the comtemporary complex social texture, it’s management has a crucial importance which raises the problem of social control of the individual.

The Democractic Challenge to Authority

The essence of the democratic surge of the 1960s was a general challenge to the existing systems of authority, public and private. In one form or another, this challenge manifested itself in the family, the university, business, public and private associations, politics, the government bureaucracy, and the military services. People no longer felt the compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character and talents. Within most organizations, discipline eased and differences in status became blurred. Each group its right to participate equally — and perhaps more than equally — in the decisions which affected itself.

A Question of Vision

What is in short supply in Democratic societies today is not consensus on the rules of the game, but a sense of purpose as to what one should achieve by playing the game. In the past, people found their purposes in religion, in nationalism, and in ideology. But neither church, nor state, nor class now commands people’s loyalties. In some measure, Democracy itself was inspired by manifestations of each of these forces and commitments.
Protestantism sanctified the individual conscience; nationalism postulated the equality of citizens; and liberalism provided the rationale for a limited government based on consent. But now all three gods have failed. We have witnessed the dissipation of religion, the withering away of nationalism, and the decline — if not the end — of class-based ideology.

The Dangers of Freedom

The democratic spirit is egalitarian, individualistic, populist and impatient with distinctions of class and rank. The spread of that spirit weaks the traditional threats to democracy posed by such groups as the aristocracy, the church and the military. At the same time, the pervasive spirit of democracy may pose an intrinsic threat and undermine all forms of association, weakening the social bonds which hold together family, enterprise, and community. Every social organization requires, in some measure, inequalities in authority and distinctions in function. To the extent that the spread of democratic temper corrodes all these, exercising a leveling and homogenizing influence, it destroys the bases of trust and cooperation among citizens, and creates obstacles to collaboration of any common purpose.

The Crisis Of Democracy: Report On The Governability Of Democracies To The Trilateral Commission (pdf).
Michel J. Crozier
Samuel P. Huntington
Joji Watanuki
Seriously, thinking MOA’s will want to try to wrap their heads around this. If the PNAC papers were their manifesto, this seems to be the Magnum Opus.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 3 2007 10:57 utc | 64

This whole Walter Reed episode is quickly blowing up for the cheney admin. CNN had a scathing report on privatization at the top Army hospital. You all may not know that Walter Reed is also scheduled to be closed and all patients will be seen at Bethesda Navy Hospital. that can’t can’t set well with the Army.
also connected or not, the head of DoD Health Services, William Winkenwerder suddenly decided he needed to go back to the private sector. his claim to fame is the anthrax windfall for a certain investment group.
this could get interesting.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 3 2007 18:53 utc | 66

As Rudy Guiliani gains some ground in the polls, threatening the horse race that was promised to McCain in exchange for selling his soul, the inevitable small-minded, pig-ignorant, puritanical, homo/xeno-phobic, bigoted, mudslinging has begun. Predictable bastards, the lot.
This one smells particularly like Rove’s work. If I didn’t dislike conservatives so much, I’d be tempted to defend Guiliani.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 4 2007 5:55 utc | 68

Hmmm. Typepad won’t take the rest of that link no matter what I do.
The rest of that comment (sans link) was…
…mudslinging has begun.
This one smells particularly like Rove’s work. If I didn’t dislike conservatives so much, I’d be tempted to defend Guiliani.
(link went to the New York Post story about the new whisper campaign that Guiliani is a cross dresser.)
link
[link fixed – b.]

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 4 2007 5:59 utc | 70

here it is monolycus. it’s worth it for the photo alone.

Posted by: annie | Mar 4 2007 15:39 utc | 72

Hearts and minds – Marines as recruiters for the Taliban:

As the Americans sped away, they treated every car and person along the highway as a potential attacker, said Mohammad Khan Katawazi, the district chief of Shinwar.
…
More than a half dozen Afghans recuperating from bullet wounds told The Associated Press that the U.S. forces fired indiscriminately along at least a six-mile stretch of one of eastern Afghanistan’s busiest highways — a route often filled not only with cars and trucks but Afghans on foot and bicycles.
“They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway,” said Tur Gul, 38, who was standing on the roadside by a gas station and was shot twice in his right hand. “They opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot.”
…
The gunfire from Americans prompted angry demonstrations in the region — just 30 miles west of the Pakistan border. Hundreds of Afghans blocked the road and threw rocks at police, with some demonstrators shouting “Death to America! Death to Karzai,” a reference to President Hamid Karzai.
At the Jalalabad hospital, several victims said the American convoy approached them on the highway and opened fire. As the convoy neared, many cars pulled over to the side of the road, but were still hit by gunfire.

link

Posted by: b | Mar 4 2007 19:40 utc | 74

Scott Ritter takes Hillary down by the numbers:
“Run, Hillary, run. But your race towards the White House will never outpace the hypocrisy and duplicity inherent in your decision to vote for war in Iraq.”

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 5 2007 7:57 utc | 76

Free porn.

Free porn video. Free porn.

Posted by: Free porn. | Jan 6 2010 9:08 utc | 78