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February 19, 2008
OT 08-09
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Interesting outcome in the Pakistan elections. There seems to have been less fraud than expected.
Musharraf’s PML(Q) had big losses. The Bhutto family’s PPP and the Nawaz Sharif PML(N) have won but neither is in a position to form a government of its own. PPP has a slight advantage.
There will now follow long backroom deal attempts and maybe a dangerous stalemate as none of these parties likes the others one bit.
asshole of the week award appears to already be wrapped up
Bush calls for use of nets in malaria war
President George W Bush has urged African countries to fight malaria, the continent’s leading killer disease, through the use of treated bed nets.
He said there was significant progress made in controlling the mosquito-borne disease with the use of bed nets treated with insecticides.
The US president made the plea after visiting the Arumeru District Hospital in Tengeru on the outskirts of Arusha. During the visit, he distributed bed nets to patients.
President Bush, who arrived at the hospital at 10.40am, said his government launched the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 2005 because it believed every human life was valuable.
Posted by: b real | Feb 19 2008 5:56 utc | 3
I was thinking more like asshole of the decade…
President Bush Eliminates Funding for Reading Is Fundamental’s Historic Book Distribution Program Serving 4.6 Million Children
President Bush’s proposed budget calling for the elimination of Reading Is Fundamental’s (RIF) Inexpensive Book Distribution program would be devastating to the 4.6 million children and their families who receive free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 20,000 locations throughout the U.S.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 19 2008 8:13 utc | 5
Castro Resigns Cuban Presidency
Ailing leader Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba’s president early Tuesday, saying in a letter published in official online media that he would not accept a new term when the newly elected parliament meets on Sunday.
This report
picked up via Immad Khadduri’s Free Iraq, site will come as no
surprise to b’s followers, but is nevertheless of interest.
In particular, it would be interesting to have confirmatory Pentagon documentation for the statement “In 2007, The US military conducted more than five times as many airstrikes in Iraq as it did in 2006.” It seems to an accomplishment that the Air Force and Marine Aviation leadership would boast about and for which the leadership would confer accolades. If doucmented by “unimpeachable” sources, such figures could (but undoubtedly won’t) lead to some rather pointed questions regarding the alleged success of “the surge”. Indeed, the entire propaganda exercise built around “the surge” might be revealed to be merely the latest manipulation of information about Iraq for U.S. political ends. The notable aspect would then be that it has been the most successful deformation of reality since the misbegotten build-up to the invasion of Iraq. It seems that Republicans are banking on being able to forget about Iraq as an electoral liability during the upcoming U.S. campaign. Neither HRC nor Obama seem to have any interest in calling that bluff, and most certainly not by pointing out the contradiction between the much vaunted “progress” in Iraq and the major increase in aerial operations there. Republican electoral propaganda would surely tar any such questioning as detrimental to the safety of U.S. military personnel operating in Iraq, and would more or less explicitly invoke the “sacred principle” that only U.S. casualties count.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Feb 19 2008 8:19 utc | 7
Amazing news about Fidel, Bernhard.
I enjoyed reading the following eyewitness reports from Saul Landau in 1968:
Fidel in the Fields
A Jeep Trip With Fidel
Filming Fidel
These must be from Landau’s film trip to Cuba:
(Editors’ Note: In May 1968, Saul Landau received a call in San Francisco where he worked for the local public television station. From Havana, Dr. Rene Vallejo, Fidel Castro’s doctor and confidante, said: “Come down with your crew as soon as you can.” In other words, Castro was ready to cooperate on a film portrait for public television. Landau and crew arrived shortly thereafter and waited for seven weeks. This first of a series is a Landau’s diary and commentary about the jeep trip with Fidel through Oriente Province in July 1968.)
Posted by: jonku | Feb 19 2008 8:40 utc | 8
On Castro’s resignation:
Anyone care to speculate whether this will affect the Florida vote – and if so how?
Posted by: Hamburger | Feb 19 2008 8:43 utc | 9
Quote from Landau’s first article above, showing FC is no slouch.
“Underdevelopment,” Fidel continued as the jeeps pulled away, “is more than an economic or technological problem. It’s also a psychological issue. The people have lived for so long without hope and the resources and education that make optimism possible, that they feel paralyzed by the challenges before them, the tasks required to build a nation.”
“It isn’t just that we lacked the scientists and the technology, which indeed we lacked,” Fidel emphasized. “We had also lost a lot of the skilled and educated population. 3,000 of Cuba’s 6,000 doctors had gone by the end of 1960, 90% of our lawyers and most of the engineers, architects, chemists etc. We had a longer learning process than we anticipated, but I think we’ve come a long way. Obviously, we have a long way to go”
I began to understand the nature of underdevelopment as well as the results of eating fresh pineapple on an empty stomach. I fought to ignore the gas pains and concentrate on Fidel’s wisdom.
“The imperial countries have no interest in the third world overcoming underdevelopment,” he said. “Their interest is to continue exploiting them, only now most of the former colonies have formal independence. That doesn’t make them independent. They have no access to modern technology unless the developed countries deign to share it with them.”
I asked how he thought development could occur.
“In Cuba we are building roads. With roads comes access to schools, hospitals, culture, everything.” I had seen construction crews at various sites. Alongside Soviet heavy machinery, men banged with large hammers.
He asked me how many miles of road had been constructed in the United States, explaining that roads were a key measure of development.
I confessed I had no idea. I thought I saw in his reaction a look of disgust at my ignorance on such a basic subject.
He continued. “Moreover, one must invest resources in the infrastructure that had gone neglected for so long. Not just building railroads from banana plantations to the shipping ports as United Fruit did in Guatemala, or railroads from sugar mills to the sea as they did in Cuba. The point is that the third world cannot afford to develop a society of consumers. Aside from the spiritual shallowness of such a society, we simply can’t afford it.”
Posted by: jonku | Feb 19 2008 8:50 utc | 10
HKOL, interesting note. You point out that the US bombed Iraq 5 times more in 2007 (surge year) than the one previous, then claims surge success.
We don’t forget that the air force gets big bucks for its “successes.”
I saw a Canadian news show yesterday about the liberated Kosovo, with a news clip of a Canadian plane bombing the area during its NATO liberation.
I said to my wife that as I young man I wanted to be an astronaut, and planned to join the Canadian Air Force and be a pilot as preparation, but bad eyesight at six convinced me I had no future there.
I also pointed out that it could have been me dropping bombs on the people below.
Oops.
Posted by: jonku | Feb 19 2008 9:00 utc | 11
Oooppps: US banks borrow $50bn via new Fed facility
US banks have been quietly borrowing massive amounts of money from the Federal Reserve in recent weeks by using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch.
The use of the Fed’s Term Auction Facility, which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wider range of their assets than previously permitted, saw borrowing of nearly $50bn of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.
…
“The TAF … allows the banks to borrow money against all sort of dodgy collateral,” says Christopher Wood, analyst at CLSA. “The banks are increasingly giving the Fed the garbage collateral nobody else wants to take … [this] suggests a perilous condition for America’s banking system.”
The $280bn question: where are the rest of the subprime bodies?
However, at the weekend meeting in Tokyo, Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, revealed that the G7 now thought subprime losses could reach $400bn – markedly more gloomy than anything that has emanated from official quarters.
But if that is striking, what is doubly thought provoking is that Western investment banks have hitherto confessed to “only” $120bn-odd of losses. The question worrying G7 leaders is where the remaining $280bn of problems may lie? Or as one senior policymaker confessed: “What everyone is trying to work out is where the rest of the bodies are.”
Do we deduce from #12 that the Feds are simply printing $$$ & shipping it off to banks by the tractor trailer load? No pretenses anymore. Let’s see we have a ton of garbage tonight, which we can collateralize @$x/lb… 🙁
Posted by: jj | Feb 19 2008 9:15 utc | 13
“What everyone is trying to work out is where the rest of the bodies are.”
Hey, look over here.
Posted by: Hamburger | Feb 19 2008 9:16 utc | 14
The Brits let terrorists escape:
Police feared ‘airport stand-off’
An Israeli general wanted for alleged war crimes escaped arrest in the UK because British police feared an armed confrontation at Heathrow airport.
Documents seen by BBC News reveal how Major General Doron Almog managed to fly back to Israel when police failed to board his plane in September 2005.
He stayed on board for two hours after a tip-off that he was facing detention.
Police were concerned about a potential clash with Israeli air marshals or armed personal security on the plane.
Hannah K. O’Luthon:
Neither HRC nor Obama seem to have any interest in calling that bluff, and most certainly not by pointing out the contradiction between the much vaunted “progress” in Iraq and the major increase in aerial operations there.
There was a guy that pointed out the same kind of contradiction in the last Democratic primaries. Howard Dean stated that the capture of Saddam would make no difference and not only took flak from the Republicans and media but also his own party ridiculed him. We are talking about the country that took Phil Donahue off the air and placed Judy Miller on the front page of the New York Times. The bubble must never be broken.
Like I said in the last political thread pay attention to their actions not their words:
When Bush proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt,” Clinton sprang to her feet in applause but Obama remained firmly seated.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/clinton-obama-steal-bushs-final-show-2008-01-29.html
Posted by: Sam | Feb 19 2008 11:32 utc | 17
@1 wikileaks
They could only remove the DNS-Records, so while wikileaks.org goes nowhere, the hole site is still up and running under 88.80.13.160. Their is also a Press Release about the case on Wikileaks.
Like it.
Posted by: snafu | Feb 19 2008 13:46 utc | 18
@1 wikileaks
They could only remove the DNS-Records, so while wikileaks.org goes nowhere, the hole site is still up and running under 88.80.13.160. Their is also a Press Release about the case on Wikileaks.
The structure of the internet still seems to confuse some lawyers…
Posted by: snafu | Feb 19 2008 13:49 utc | 19
hannah, 7
In particular, it would be interesting to have confirmatory Pentagon documentation for the statement
the escalation in airpower was widely reported last month. here’s the wapo version
U.S. Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq
Strategy Supports Troop Increase
the way i see it, the surge was just a framing job to cushion the blow of saying ‘we are escalating the war w/ bombing campaign’.
The military assures that the precision attacks are designed to minimize civilian casualties — particularly as Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy emphasizes moving more troops into local communities and winning over the Iraqi population —
….”The Iraqi population remains at risk of harm during these operations,” said Eliane Nabaa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. “The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.”
The strategy was evident last week, as U.S. forces launched airstrikes across Iraq as part of Operation Phantom Phoenix. On Thursday morning in Arab Jabour, southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military dropped 38 bombs with 40,000 pounds of explosives in 10 minutes, one of the largest strikes since the 2003 invasion. U.S. forces north of Baghdad employed bombs totaling more than 16,500 pounds over just a few days last week, according to officers there.
“The purpose of these particular strikes was to shape the battlefield and take out known threats before our ground troops move in,”
every time the press reports on the airstrikes, including the gov trolls on iraqi sites, they make a point of reporting they are ‘designed to minimize civilian casualties’. which is total horseshit because how can you tell when you are bombing a building how many civilians are inside.
Posted by: annie | Feb 19 2008 13:52 utc | 20
“because how can you tell when you are bombing a building how many civilians are inside.”
They’re smart bombs 😉
Posted by: jcairo | Feb 19 2008 14:18 utc | 21
@jcairo – that was yuk
—
Fidel sends you a Message from the Commander in Chief.
Some U.S. politicians seem to scarmble for “action”. What do they expect to change? It is not Fidel alone running Cuba and it is not only his movement.
Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait.
— A. Whitney Brown
What you can’t find, what you don’t see, you can’t oppose.
The big story about the “surge” is the compliant “free” press which happily went along with the restructuring of the narrative line, and the relegation of coverage from A1 to A32, col. 5, below fold.
The more people know and understand about bombing campaigns, the more they are against them.
No problem.
“Where was Moses when the lights went out?”
“In the dark.”
Well, let’s keep him that way…..
Posted by: Malooga | Feb 19 2008 18:02 utc | 23
fidel, the exemplary comrade fidel castro has been not an icon but an example to many many people. there are few exemplars alive today – who have led their country with such courageousness – only nelson mandela & fidel castro – come to mind & heart
the whoremongers of miami & their servants in congress will no doubt be salivating at the thought of fidel resigning – but i have confidence in the process that has brought cuba this far
already this little island has shown what it means to stand up to terror – terror integrated at every level since the u s established their blockade & encouraging every terrorist action against cuba whether it was by goons like posada, the cosa nostra or the narcotrafiquants – thi brave little island has always sd – cuba si, yanqui no & they have proved to the world what heroism looks like
it has been on of the great pleasures of my life as a writer to work with cubans on a production of el macbeth & i learnt much from their day to day courage & their ability to look truth in the face
what other society could have endured what cuba has & survived
the dream & posssibilities of cuba are now being carried throughout latin america & never again will u s imperialism have the same room to manouevre
venceremos
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 18:19 utc | 24
for b real and of course all others too:
a. via Froomkin So Who’s Counting?
At a briefing in Dar es Salaam yesterday, Mark Dybul, the president’s global AIDS coordinator, asserted that the United States is the largest contributor to the fund, which is certainly true. And he said the president has proposed an increase in the U.S. contribution for next year, which is debatable at best.
“The president is requesting an increase for our contribution to the Global Fund, an increase above his last year request from $300 million to $500 million,” Dybul told reporters.
A casual listener might think the United States is increasing its contribution to the Global Fund. Not really: As is often the case with Washington budget claims, it’s important to look at exactly what is being asserted. Bush did request$300 million for the Global Fund for the current fiscal year, but Congress decided to go further and approved $841 million. So even though Bush’s request for $500 million for the next fiscal year is higher than he requested the year before, in reality it would cut the contribution back from the $841 million it is getting in cold hard cash this year.
2. a question – who of the candidates would be a perfect tool to implement Africom and the ideas behind it? (I think Africom is currently the biggest US strategic project.)
watching & reading a crosssection of responses in the ruling class media to the announcement by fidel & ô yes they are drooling into the gutters of their perverted & failed policies
what a fucking world – where sovereignty of this or that nation or this or that people decided by cretins who crawl through the corridors of washington corrupting not only concepts but cosmologies
the highest office holder in washington isn’t an equal in grandeur or humanity to the lowest cadre in havana
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 19:34 utc | 26
obama says this, clinton says that mccain mumbles – about their position on cuba.
why don’t they simply – shut the fuck up. these worthless harridans holed up in their hideouts of a hideous ideology that brings grief not only to tohers but to their own citizens
the scandal that is new orleans could not have happened in the most underdeveloped latin american country – it is not a question of economics but of morality
what works in washington is a morality so murderous & mendacious it’s stench fills out nostrils every day – with words & actions that are descents into depravity of a kind unknown in its concentration
the united states remains the principal threat to humanity by word & deed, through intent & through reaction
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 19:45 utc | 27
not news:
Saboteurs may have cut Mideast telecom cables: UN agency
Posted by: manonfyre | Feb 19 2008 20:01 utc | 28
worse. for the next 24 hours we will have to listen to mental midgets demonise a man who has become a monument
what would fucking george bush know about the fucking blessings of fucking liberty
it isn’t accidental that cuba brought health & the empire brought & continues to bring sickness. it continues to subert the soverignty of others – when it cannot it turns the country into a slaughterhouse
it is precisely because of the cuban people & fidel that the people of many third world countries are more able to fight imperialism
as b real would note – the cuban military comradeship with africa was decisive in bringing down apartheid south africa & confronting the puppets of imperial power elsewhere in africa
these sorry excuses for statesmen from france, england or the us wouldn’t know history if it hit them in the face. they are barely literate & from these last twenty years we can say they possess almost no comprehension of history or of its mechanisms
they want to turn cuba into the whorehouse it was for imperialism under batista but the cubans are too instinctive, too cultivated a people to be fooled by tthe lies that pass through the lips of those who rule from the role of dollars
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 20:24 utc | 29
& if i seem extreme i am but a shadow of the fury of paul craig roberts
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 20:29 utc | 30
giap, their drooling over the island paradise they can re-inhabit. You know, give me back my motel and farm I lost fifty years ago.
The feds have to keep printing that money. It goes down the black hole of banks or the Pentagon. Read: http://www.solari.com.
According to audits four trillion is unaccounted for. The US government hasn’t had a certified audit in years.
Oh yes, does anyone really care if Obama scooped up someone elses rhetoric on the campaign trail? I don’t give a flying f—.
Posted by: jdp | Feb 19 2008 21:26 utc | 31
knowing that behind every fortune lies a crime – it is still beyond me – the absolute crudeness of the empire’s project
on every continent they despoil & demolish & it is central to their task to try & destroy a people’s dignity – whether they are venezuelean, or kenyan, or serbian or indeed even american
power is drowning in power but it is blood that we witness
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 21:41 utc | 32
& their narratives are repulsive in the deepest sense of that word, indeed the repulsion i feel towards the narrative of thos who rule from the role of dollars – possesses a spiritual character. that is, capitalism’s humanism – is so hollow that it has become abject
abject to a level – where the laws of history – as hegel hinted – are the real succour of the spirit
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 22:10 utc | 33
The Militarization of the World’s Urban Peripheries
Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of “sanitary cordon” to keep the poor isolated from “normal” society.
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 19 2008 23:09 utc | 34
Millions of Americans could ditch homes
Millions of U.S. homeowners who bought homes with sinking value are set to abandon the properties and cut their losses on bad investments, a leading housing market economist said on Tuesday.
That’s Nouriel Roubini.
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 19 2008 23:11 utc | 35
i don’t know if you have it in america but on cable here in europe – next to the bbc – is a godawful channel called godtv – & it is so utterly craven, so utterly without an ounce of spirituality, without an ounce of wonder & their constant call of cash & their promenading of hucksters in the elmer gantry tradition. so crooked, so corrupt & yet not so different from all & i mean all the channels of information with rare rare exceptions. their narratives so disgustingly derived, their history completely corrupted so that it doesn’t represent anything approaching fact – the existence of such moral-less mediums force me more & more into a rereading of hegel & marx & yes of blake
the more destructive our world becomes – the more i seek solace in the golden words of marx that i imagine others find dry & for which it doesn’t resonate but it’s very speculations are based on a kind of wonder, a kind of questionnement, a kind of doubt that is at its very heart both full of tenderness & force
information otherwise in our epoch is delivered with a sledgehammer – there is no colour, there is no subtlety, there is no hint of shadow or silhouettes
those who rule from the roll of dollars would rob us, despoil us of our very interiority. this interiority, this matter – from which compassion comes – which at its very centre is the sense if someone is hit somewhere then we ourselves feel hurt. it is that which brings discernment & it is that discernment which brings about measure & it is that measure which demands justice
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 23:50 utc | 36
i am sorry for these melancholic meditations but sometimes my disgust with the world that is being wrenched is so deep that to articulate even the most minor irritation takes on a healing character. simply hoping that it does not bore you
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 19 2008 23:53 utc | 37
remembering giap, of course it does not bore. Never! But you should stay away from those poisonous channels. I avoid the NYT, BBC, all mainstream media as much as I can, because their crass lies/delusionalism literally makes me sick.
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 20 2008 1:16 utc | 38
Yesterday it was Baghdad airport. Today,
8 Katyusha rockets hit two U.S. bases in Baghdad
and
British base in Basra comes under Katyusha attacks
In Mosul, however, the plans are proceeding:
U.S. troops erect walls in Mosul as inhabitants flee
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 20 2008 1:20 utc | 39
from your last link alamet
With no guarantees given that the troops would not repeat the mistake committed in other rebel cities in the subjugation of which the U.S. employed warplanes and heavy artillery, tens of thousands of residents are fleeing to safer areas.
Posted by: annie | Feb 20 2008 2:17 utc | 41
i feel compelled to follow what is happening as a citizen & as a writer & has been so all my life but it is essential what alamet suggests – the narratives that inondate in the media are literally sickening, they degrade & defile & i feel guilty watching & for some years have difficulty watching – perhaps the english language especially has become so corrupted so venal in its articulation – that writing becomes simply the search for breath – the search for clean air
i watch these things sometimes because i literally cannot believe what i am hearing or whyat i am watching – rather than something complex mystifying me – it is the contrary – a crudeness beyond words
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 20 2008 3:12 utc | 43
@28
as b real would note – the cuban military comradeship with africa was decisive in bringing down apartheid south africa & confronting the puppets of imperial power elsewhere in africa
Yes it is a historical fact that more than any other nation on earth, the people of Cuba in mind & deed were unflinching, decisive and determined to endure whatever sacrifice required to end colonization & slavery by the barbarians who had invaded Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa.
Posted by: jony_b_cool | Feb 20 2008 4:32 utc | 44
Tonight on public TV comes the news from biologists in Africa that, of all the apes,
the chimpanzee is the smartest because … wait for it … they’ve begun crafting
spears to kill other animals with! Then a close-up of this bloody-faced chimpanzee,
morphing, morphing … into George Bush turkey-bobbling in an African net factory.
Well, not really … we changed the channel, happy at that serendipity. What better
proof that America is the ‘last best hope of Mankind’, than George Bush’s courageous
pesticide-laced net campaign, slap in the face to Bill Gates and all those IT-heads.
Have to be some kind of payback, after promising Kofi Annan $10B for AIDS in Africa,
if Kofi would twist the UN Security Council into giving the go-ahead for Gulf War 3.
George and Dick got rich, and Kofi got a heap of mosquito netting. No harm, no foul.
Posted by: Wai Lapeng | Feb 20 2008 4:49 utc | 45
@manonfyre – 28: Saboteurs may have cut Mideast telecom cables: UN agency
DOHA (AFP) — Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday.
“We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago,” the UN agency’s head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.
Bullshit: “may”, “could have been”, “we rule not out”, …
Sorry but that applies to about everything in life.
Thanks to Annie @ 20 for the link to the Wash. Post story confirming
the “5 times” figure. In all likelihood this was the source of the
“original” Iraqi figure cited in my link. The associated bar graphs to the WaPo story are interesting: it seems that much more ordnance is being expended in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Indeed, if the graphs are to be believed “only” 1447 “munitions” were dropped on all of Iraq in 2007, less than 5 a day. (Obviously for those who find themselves with in the
” probable circular error” range of even one such bomb, even 1 would be
an intolerably high number.) Since the source of this information is
the U.S. Central Air Forces Combined Air Operations Center it has
desired imprimatur of officiality (not, of course, to be confused with
truthfulness), although leaving both Army and Marine ordnance out of the
accounting. It will be interesting to see if the “just pretend it’s not there” campaign strategy with regard to Iraq will prove to be sustainable. I doubt that very much.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Feb 20 2008 8:51 utc | 47
Hillary Clinton, the loser in the Wisconsin primary, got more votes than the total number of Wisconsin rethug voters.
Wisc. Dem total: Over a million
Wisc. rethug total: less than half a million.
Hope you’ve snagged a Viagra contract, John.
Posted by: Hamburger | Feb 20 2008 13:46 utc | 48
i take heart from your words r’giap in that there is some humanity left…
North America may not have godtv, but it is overrun with that ilk and it is truly disgusting
I worked for Confederation Life (once the 3-4th largest insurer in Canada – brought down by mgmt greed) and they owned the lease on the property for “100 Huntley Street”.
Confed ended the lease because the greedheads wanted to build a new HQ (good idea maybe, but very bad timing).
So I watched a couple of these godly shows and they were pressing hard for those donations to build their new HQ – get your very own pillar (steel I-beam building supports) and place in heaven for $2500 because we’ve been thrown into the street. Can’t afford that? How about a ceiling tile for heaven? Sickening.
Posted by: jcairo | Feb 20 2008 15:03 utc | 49
Not sure why it’s so important to Bush to secure immunity for the telecoms since his cronies on the US Supreme Court wouldn’t hear a case against them anyway: Supreme Court Rejects ACLU Challenge to Warrantless Surveillance Program
Snip…
The Supreme Court dealt a setback Tuesday to civil rights and privacy advocates who oppose the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The justices, without comment, turned down an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to let it pursue a lawsuit against the program that began shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The action underscored the difficulty of mounting a challenge to the eavesdropping, which remains classified and was confirmed by President Bush only after a newspaper article revealed its existence.
“It’s very disturbing that the president’s actions will go unremarked upon by the court,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project. “In our view, it shouldn’t be left to executive branch officials alone to determine the limits.”
The Terrorist Surveillance Program no longer exists, although the administration has maintained it was legal.
Yeah, sure, it “no longer exists” just like the Total Information Awareness program “no longer exists”. Or, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, “Give it a new name. Bwaaaaa-ha hah ha ha ha!”
Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 20 2008 15:44 utc | 50
When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department. “[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.
“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.'”
Welcome to the MACHINE 21st century folks, I’m sure your aware ‘Full Spectrum Dominance‘© includes the ascendancy of your mind.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 20 2008 18:12 utc | 52
from the web presence of the law school @ the univ of pittsburgh
The ‘Rwanda Genocide’ Cover-up
JURIST Guest Columnist Peter Erlinder of William Mitchell College of Law, lead defense counsel for former Major Aloys Ntabakuze in the Military 1 Trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and president of the UN-ICTR Defense Lawyers Association, says that recently issued French and Spanish international war crimes warrants and new evidence at the UN Rwanda Tribunal have exposed current Rwandan President Paul Kagame as the man primarily responsible for the 1994 “Rwanda Genocide” and the beneficiary of a decades-long US-sponsored “cover-up” of Pentagon complicity in the massacres committed by his regime…
As George Bush continues his much ballyhooed African safari, he has heaped praise on Rwandan President Kagame as a “model for Africa,” and mourned with Kagame the victims of the “Rwanda Genocide”. But recently issued French and Spanish international “war-crimes” warrants, and new evidence at the UN Rwanda Tribunal, have exposed Kagame as the war criminal who actually touched off the 1994 “Rwanda Genocide” by assassinating the previous President and who is benefiting from a decades-long U.S.-sponsored “cover-up” of Pentagon complicity in massacres committed by Kagame’s regime, which even Britain’s Economist has called “the most repressive in Africa.”
…
[h/t to david barouski’s world news journal]
Posted by: b real | Feb 20 2008 19:14 utc | 53
Continuing from my # 39,
Baghdad airport, again: Baghdad International Airport rocketed
Five Katyusha rockets on Wednesday afternoon fell onto Baghdad International Airport west of the Iraqi capital, an Interior Ministry source said.
(snip)
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 20 2008 19:29 utc | 54
One more from Monday!
Rocket fire kills five people at U.S base in Iraq
At least seven people have been killed and 12 wounded, including two U.S soldiers, in a barrage of rockets on a U.S military base in Baghdad.
Insurgents fired a series of rockets at the Victory Base Complex in southwestern Baghdad Monday afternoon.
Military reports say 7 Iraqis were killed and twelve wounded.
Two US soldiers were also wounded in the attack on the base, which is located within the perimeter of the Baghdad airport.
Military sources say U.S and Iraqi security forces searched the area from where the rockets were launched and captured six suspected insurgents.
At first I thought it might be the same attack as the one I had linked here earlier, but apparently this one is separate.
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 21 2008 1:02 utc | 55
‘Sick Of It Day’ Campaign Kicks Off
Veterans For Peace Today Kicked Off its March 19, 2008 “Sick Of It Day” Campaign to End The War in Iraq
(But very unfortunate choice they made there, linking to Albert Einstein Institute of all places.)
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 21 2008 1:05 utc | 56
MEK at it again:
Group claims Iran speeding up nuke plans
An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed Wednesday that Tehran was speeding up a program to develop nuclear weapons. “The Iran regime entered a new phase in its nuclear project,” said Mohammad Mohaddessin of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.
(snip)
They keep repeating the same old tripe with clockwork regularity, and news agencies never fail to run with it.
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 21 2008 1:09 utc | 57
Gaza siege intensified after collapse of natural gas deal (January 23, 2008)
Mark Turner writes in Electronic Intifada
Israel claims its recent moves are retaliation for continued rocket attacks originating in Gaza that despite their consistency cause scant damage and few actual casualties. But the reasons may include motivations with roots back in 2000, when the British firm British Gas Group (BG) discovered proven natural gas reserves of at least 1.3 trillion cubic feet beneath Gazan territorial waters worth nearly $4 billion.*
Posted by: jonku | Feb 21 2008 4:42 utc | 58
Guardian: How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret
The document reveals how the Foreign Office successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN’s authority on weapons of mass destruction.
The dossier was made public this week, but the Foreign Office succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.
just what u s imperialism needs today – an embittered serbian cadre – that would make the i r a look like playschool
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 21 2008 19:10 utc | 60
Here’s one for you Uncle:
ENDGAME
Rule by fear or rule by Law?
Posted by: beq | Feb 21 2008 19:28 utc | 61
@beq
By fear, of course.
We’ve become a nation of pseudo-fear junkies, from our games to our government. A long way from Roosevelt’s “only thing to fear…”
From Homer @ Pat Lang’s blog:
Adam Smith, all the way back in 1776, in An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, described the fun, entertainment and deep psychological fulfillment which Wars against Supremely Evil Enemies provide to many who don’t have to fight them:
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies . . . .
They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.
Smith apparently doesn’t address the situation where the Evil Other dwells among us. “Terrorism” is the perfect vehicle for focussing fear afar, then moving it onshore among “Us”.
Posted by: small coke | Feb 21 2008 20:26 utc | 62
Katyusha watch:
British base in Basra rocketed
Basra, Feb 21, (VOI)- The British base at Basra International Airport, northwest of the city, came under an attack with Katyusha rockets, Multi-National Forces spokesman said.
“The base at Basra International Airport came under Katyusha rockets attack late Wednesday,” Spokesman for the Multi-National Forces in southern Iraq Captain Finn Aldrich told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI).
(snip)
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 22 2008 0:24 utc | 63
that’s the 3rd airport rocket attack this week isn’t it? 2 others in baghdad?
Posted by: annie | Feb 22 2008 3:05 utc | 64
okay, i know i’m dealing w/ a pbs program here & that pbs/npr are really just state-run media, and i’m not recommending that anyone actually bother to follow the link & waste their time (unless you’re conducting research on how state media protects — and shapes public opinion in favor of — the state, in which case this program holds value), but i simply feel compelled to point out the following excerpt which poses as “analysis” on race wars’..i mean ray suarez’s online newshour discussion of bush’s trip to africa.
RAY SUAREZ: Why so late to the party? Is it because so much of Africa was controlled by European powers until the ’60s?
JULIUS NYANG’ORO: Well, when we go back to the 1960s, the United States’ policy towards Africa was really based on the former colonial powers, and the U.S. really didn’t know much about Africa. And as a result of that, many poor choices in terms of policy were made.
For example, the U.S. came very late to the anti-apartheid struggle in southern Africa. It wasn’t until the time that Zimbabwe was becoming independent in 1980 that the United States actually got on the bandwagon of anti-apartheid policies.
And for this reason, I think, the U.S. is catching up, but it’s catching up fairly quickly, and I think this is a good thing.
hogwash. whitewash. brainwash. rinse & repeat as desired.
Posted by: b real | Feb 22 2008 4:14 utc | 65
since PINR no longer appears to be publishing analyses, michael weinstein has another of his on somalia up at garowe online, which makes clear how the move to bring in nur “adde” (“the white”) hassan hussein as the TFG’s PM has done absolutely nothing to stop that bus from speeding over the cliff.
The “New Strategy” for Somalia Collapses
Posted by: b real | Feb 22 2008 5:41 utc | 66
A well written and funny comment on the lost g-spot: Come again?
Well praise jeebus b, the lost shall be found again.
[must be Friday]
Posted by: beq | Feb 22 2008 17:39 utc | 69
A week ago I predicted the following:
# The U.S. accuses Iran of some nefarious programs Iran has most likely never done.
# Selected secret evidence for such programs from the highly dubious Niger papers “Laptop of Death” has been given to the IAEA. (The Laptop might be somewhat authentic and include some Iranian student’s college notes. Its content could also be completely forged. Most likely it is a mix of both. The Niger papers were false but written on real Nigerian embassy stationery.)
# The U.S. now officially demands that Iran “Must Confess” that it has had the military nuke program the NIE alleges.
# The IAEA will ask Iran about the plans and experiments laid out in the secret evidence and, as Iran has never had these, come back with nothing.
# El Baradei, the IAEA chief, will say that there is no proof for such programs. But he will be pressed into also saying that the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
…
Here we are: Iran more open on atom work, bomb fears remain–IAEA
Iran has revealed some nuclear advances earlier off-limits to U.N. inspectors, but a failure to clarify explosives and missile work relevant to atom bombs is a “serious concern”, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Note that there is no qulification on “explosives and missile work” in the opening paragraph of the AP story. Only down in paragraph 8 we learn that IAEA says:
“The agency will not be in a position to make progress towards providing credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran before reaching some clarity on the nature of the alleged (weaponisation) studies, and without implementation of the Additional Protocol” on wide-ranging, snap inspections.
The allegation are from the bogus “Laptop of Death” …
Annie # 64, I’m not sure, they are coming in too fast for me to count. 😉
Basra airport closed because of Katyusha attacks
Basra, Feb 22, (VOI)- British forces in southern Iraq said on Friday that the Basra International Airport will be closed after two Katyusha rockets hit its runway.
“Two Katyusha rockets targeting the British base at the Basra international Airport, northwest of the city, landed on the civilian planes runway,” read a statement released by the British forces received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI).
“The attack damaged the runway and forced the authorities to close it,” the statement added.
“Regular flights to and from the airport are expected to be affected by the closure,” the statement noted.
(snip)
Posted by: Alamet | Feb 23 2008 0:11 utc | 71
alamet, now, if they can just close the airports supporting the airbomb campaigns.
Posted by: annie | Feb 23 2008 2:01 utc | 72
slow night so hope you don’t mind if i put some music on
– the amazing toumani diabate of mali tearing up the kora
– fantastic classic from senegal’s orchestre baobab – autorail (imagine your own video or just kick back & enjoy the ride)
Posted by: b real | Feb 23 2008 5:46 utc | 74
saw Henry Rollin’s spoken word show a few nights ago. dude is fucking indefatigable. highly recommended.
Posted by: ran | Feb 23 2008 5:52 utc | 75
The idiocity of ethanol use: Ethanol Demand in U.S. Adds to Food, Fertilizer Costs
About 33 percent of U.S. corn will be used for fuel during the next decade, up from 11 percent in 2002, the Agriculture Department estimates. Corn rose 20 percent to a record on the Chicago Board of Trade since Dec. 19, the day President George W. Bush signed a law requiring a fivefold jump in renewable fuels by 2022.
Increased demand for the grain helped boost food prices by 4.9 percent last year, the most since 1990, and will reduce global inventories of corn to the lowest in 24 years, government data show. While advocates say ethanol is cleaner than gasoline, a Princeton University study this month said it causes more environmental harm than fossil fuels.
…
Corn doubled in the past two years, touching a record $5.29 a bushel today in Chicago. The price of young cattle sold to feedlots gained 8.7 percent in the past year, reaching a record $1.1965 a pound on Sept. 6 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Average whole milk rose 26 percent to $3.871 a gallon in January from a year earlier, the Department of Labor said yesterday.
“For thousands of years, humans grew food and ate it,” said Andrew Redleaf, 50, chief executive officer of Whitebox Advisors LLC, a Minneapolis hedge fund that manages $3 billion. “Now we are burning crops to make fuel.”
Whitebox bought three U.S. grain depots in the past year to profit from the growth in demand.
…
Researchers led by Timothy Searchinger at Princeton University said their study showed greenhouse-gas emissions will rise with ethanol demand. U.S. farmers will use more land for fuel, forcing poorer countries to cut down rainforests and use other undeveloped land for farms, the study said.
Searchinger’s team determined that corn-based ethanol almost doubles greenhouse-gas output over 30 years when considering land-use changes.
(Not sure if this should go on “bubble” thread, but since it’s about collapse not bubbles per se, I’m putting it here.
YOU KNOW IT’S BAD WHEN WaPo writer pens this:
It doesn’t look like an old-fashioned bank run because it involves the biggest financial institutions trading paper assets so complicated that even top executives don’t fully understand the transactions. But that’s what it is — a spreading fear among financial institutions that their brethren can’t be trusted to honor their obligations.
Frightened financiers are pulling back from credit markets — going on strike, if you will — to escape the unraveling daisy chain of securitized assets and promissory notes that binds the global financial system. As each financier tries to protect against the next one’s mistakes, the whole system begins to sag. That’s what we’re seeing now, as credit market troubles spread from bundles of subprime residential mortgages to bundles of other kinds of debt — from student loans to retailers’ receivables to municipal bonds.
Investors are nervous because they aren’t sure how to value these bundles of securitized assets. So buyers stay away, prices fall further, and the damage spreads.
The public, fortunately, doesn’t understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands. Wall Street Bank Run
Posted by: jj | Feb 23 2008 23:15 utc | 78
@jj – The public, fortunately, doesn’t understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands
The public is out shopping – yesterday, today, tomorrow. Only when their credit runs out and they find that plastic cards are not a food item they will change.
Will they change to the right or to the left?
Difficult to say … and dangerous …
I often asked about drug use in the military and anna missed procided some links to such. It seems not be illegal drugs in this war (at least not acknowledged yet) but the difference to Vietnam seems to be that the military made lots of psycho-pharma part of their regular soldier diet.
One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.
Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”
Battle Company Is Out There – warning – biased and long story – good anyway“The moral compass of the army is the P.L. and the C.O.” — the platoon leader and the commanding officer, Kearney told me. “I told every one of my P.L.’s that they have to set that moral standard, that once you slip to the left, you can’t pull your guys back in.”
…
As Giunta said, “The richest, most-trained army got beat by dudes in manjammies and A.K.’s.” His voice cracked. He was not just hurting, he was in a rage. And there was nothing for him to do with it but hold back his tears, and bark — at the Afghans for betraying them, at the Army for betraying them. He didn’t run to the front because he was a hero. He ran up to get to Brennan, his friend. “But they” — he meant the military — “just keep asking for more from us.” His contract would be up in 18 days but he had been stop-lossed and couldn’t go home.
more on spielberg, china, darfur, & the “genocide olympics”
reuters: Spielberg never took on Beijing Olympic role-China
LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) – A Chinese official said on Thursday he was surprised by Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg’s withdrawal as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics because he had never formally taken up the job.
Liu Guijin, China’s special representative on Sudan’s Darfur region, said the Beijing Olympic organising committee had sent Spielberg a recruitment letter but because he had not signed it by the deadline of May 10 last year “theoretically he was not art(istic) director to the … Beijing Olympic games.”
“It was a great surprise for me that he should have resigned. There is no such question of resignation,” Liu told reporters during a visit to London.
Spielberg last week said he would end his involvement as one of the overseas artistic advisers to the Olympics over China’s policy on the conflict in Darfur.
“I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual,” Spielberg said in a statement issued on the same day as Nobel Peace laureates sent a letter to China’s president urging a change in policies toward its ally Sudan.
A spokesman for the director said on Thursday Spielberg himself noted in his statement that he had left unsigned the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics Games contract, but that there had never been “formal closure” of any kind.
and even alex dewaal, in the following commentary, has to admit the obvious
China and Sudan: Defining the Turning Point
As Beijing has been quick to point out, it neither designed nor implemented the Darfur crisis, and its traction over the Sudan government is limited. And others have pointed to the large number of other countries that invest in Sudan or provide it with arms—India, Iran and Malaysia among them. What can we expect China, singularly, to do?
…
Taken individually, no single country can dictate a course of action to the Sudan government. As pointed out by Dan Large, Khartoum doesn’t trust China any more than it trusts America, and is keen to limit Beijing’s influence. And as Chris Alden points out in his superb book, China’s political influence in Africa is often overstated, for a range of reasons including multiplicity of Chinese institutions engaging in Africa, clumsy and sometimes unpopular policies, and a general Chinese reluctance to involve itself in domestic issues within African countries. At this moment, the U.S. continues to have more influence than China — not least because normalized relations with Washington DC are the key to a better relations with the World Bank and IMF and hence a chance of debt relief.
…
But there’s no doubt that China has real traction on Sudan. It helped Sudan escape from its international isolation ten years ago, imports Sudanese oil, and sells Sudan weapons. And China is in Sudan — and in Africa — for the very long term, and is planning accordingly. Beijing has already demonstrated its influence, for example by playing a key role in pushing President Bashir to climb down from his rejection of UN troops for Darfur and instead accept the hybrid UN-African mission that is now partly deployed. And perhaps more important than China’s influence in Sudan is China’s influence globally — it can take a lead in marshalling others to adopt a common approach.
ummm. so what about “the U.S. continues to have more influence than China”? if you’re serious about making a difference in the lives of the sudanese, why not direct your efforts toward the most important pressure point? oh yeah, forgot .. there are certain activists that don’t want to bite the fist that feeds them & find satisfaction in only selectively appearing righteous.
Posted by: b real | Feb 24 2008 6:22 utc | 81
mel goodman report for Center for International Policy – The CIA and the Perils of Politization
ignores the more subtle politicizations of the latest NIE on iran, which have been pointed previously here at MoA, but the report contains a readable summarization of some of fixed intel rpts over the past few decades. lots on gates. nothing new for the informed, but a decent primer nonetheless.
Posted by: b real | Feb 24 2008 6:57 utc | 82
Ireland sending a Turkey to Serbia for the Eurovision!
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Feb 24 2008 9:05 utc | 83
Occupation: For IDF brigade, ‘Hebron is like Wild West and army is the law’
While driving through the town of Dahariya, the soldiers noticed a young man approaching the vehicle. According to the indictment, the officer ordered one of the soldiers to “distance” Badham Samamra, 18, from the car with his weapon. The soldier pointed his weapon out the window of the taxi and shot Samamra. The bullet entered Samara’s left shoulder and exited through his chest, causing moderate to serious injuries.
During the trial of the commander of the force during the Dahariya incident, First Lieutenant Ya’akov Gigi, his lawyers argued that his actions were part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior within the brigade that had filtered down to the junior officer corps and the combat troops.
Other soldiers from the Kfir Brigade are currently being tried separately for allegedly taunting Palestinians by exposing themselves. Meanwhile, soldiers from another infantry unit are suspected of applying an electric heater to the face of a Palestinian youth. According to Israel Radio, IDF soldiers used the cameras on their mobile phones to record themselves abusing detained Palestinians. Some of the soldiers allegedly beat the detainees while one of the soldiers is accused of exposing himself.
Channel 2 television’s “Fact” investigative program recently aired additional alleged incidents of abuse by soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. “We’d go on a patrol,” one soldier told Channel 2. “If even one kid looked at us the wrong way, he’d be slapped. Rocks were thrown at us during one patrol, and we caught one of the kids who knew the perpetrators. We beat the crap out of him until he told us who did it.” The soldier said that he and other soldiers tracked down a boy said to be involved, aged 14, and placed the tips of their rifles in his mouth. “We said, ‘You want to die? Just say when and where,'” the soldier recalled.
In another instance, soldiers at roadblocks choked 10-year-old Palestinians with their bare hands until the children passed out. “Hebron is like the Wild West and the army is the law,” a soldier said. “We would see who could go without breathing the longest.”
Could have been written about Iraq or Afghanistan with only small changes ..
b#80,
Been thinking of some of the implications from the Rubin article. It would appear that it’s common for troops to be given psycho-active drugs for PTSD while remaining in theater, or better yet, to keep them in theater. I would imagine that they have been diagnosed with PTSD in order to justify the prescription. PTSD is not like having a temporary ailment and taking an aspirin in order to go to work. In that it is a little understood chronic psychological condition, that in all likelihood means the end of military career and a lifetime %disability payments from the VA. Soldiers with PTSD symptoms have no place in theater, for a multiplicity of functional reasons – the least of which is the condition will continue to get worse the longer they stay exposed.
One has to wonder if the U.S. as a matter of actual fact has adopted in real time, the fantastical catch-22 as real policy. And acting as an enterprising drug pusher as well. So who needs pot or junk, when the military doc himself is dispensing the really good stuff, in order to keep the numbers up?
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 25 2008 9:04 utc | 85
@anna – 80 – yes, it seems to be systematic. There were reports like this from Iraq too. If soldiers get uptiedy or so, they get drugged. No need for getting heroin from the outside when the medic freely dispenses whatever you want …
The backslash will be immense when those soldiers return home.
So much for the hippocratic oath, maybe the army docs thought it was the hypocritic oath they were signing. Because thats exactly what they’re doing – doing harm most cynically.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 25 2008 10:20 utc | 87