b was right…
Bin Laden card – that is capturing him – or in this case presenting a dead mutilated corpse (any large corpse will do) since he’s been dead for years now, to be played before November 4 to insure Mc/P selection.
Bin Laden Card

Bush Puts New Focus On Bin Laden, Al-Qaida
by Tom Bowman and Melissa Block
Listen Now [3 min 4 sec] add to playlist
All Things Considered, September 12, 2008 · NPR has learned that the Bush administration is pushing for increased military action along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The plan is part of an effort to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders by the time the president leaves office.

More bread, corpses, and circus. ~isachar

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 13 2008 19:47 utc | 4

In a roundabout way, r giap’s post illuminates why Palin is so attractive.
(derailing..)
Alaska is the richest, or the potentially richest (?) State of the Union.
The oil benefits return this year will be (about, google will provide) 3,000 dollaris, to each citizen, in Alaska. It was Palin (…) who pushed / organized for that direct return.
More prudent, less populist types would have kept the money, used it carefully for community benefits, and invested in alternatives. Distributing oil rents directly is what Iran, Saudi (for ex.) do, thru social services, Gvmt jobs extravagantly paid, and bottom gas prices. Palin could only do it by this direct return mechanism.
Alaska has no individual income tax, no state tax on income earned or unearned. (Some individual cities may collect tiny sales tax or other small levies. I don’t know the details, all minor for sure.)
Her husband, I have read, belonged, maybe does still, to a separatist organization, as is frequent in the richer parts of our great Nation States, as the better endowed regions now balk at supporting poor / lazy dopes in other places. In Europe, typical examples, if without oil, Northern Italy, Basques,…
There is Palin, re-affirming that Alaska is whole heartedly part of the US. Oil rich Alaska – belongs. Is heartland Amerikka, reinvented! Moose burgers and snow machines (not snow mobiles, that is lower 48 talk) reign…
I can’t help thinking that oil, national cohesion, are playing a big big part in the Palin story.

Posted by: Tangerine | Sep 13 2008 19:52 utc | 6

Alaskans have been receiving oil rebates for years, Palin did up the amount by only a third by increasing taxes the oil co’s pay. It makes it look like she is bringing the big corporations to heel, while at the same time pushing very hard to allow their operations to expand. Neat trick. Considering Alaskans already receive the largest percentage of federal money in the union. Reeks to high heaven of classic corporatism.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 13 2008 20:34 utc | 8

spyware
if i can be so frank, like all journalists you are a little too fascinated by yourself. i don’ know what you presume about the people posting here but has always been my position that they function fully outside our communications. you imagine impotence because it serves your rhetoric purposes to state that. you can presume all you like but it is a reflection more on you than on the community
otherwise, i hope that it is ture – that a people can not be totally inured to their own destruction & are capable of doing something about it
i have one worry though & that is the unparalleled opposition to the iraq war around the world – 12 million people marched, did something – but once that immoral war began they ‘appeared’ to become silent. i know that is not true. even in the small provincial city i inhabit – it metastasised into multiple & ongoing action on a whole lot of levels
privilege, especially white skin privelege is a very hard habit to break

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 13 2008 21:45 utc | 10

We were listening to Frank Sinatra last night as we enjoyed our wine. It got me to thinking. The members of the Rat Pack have all passed away, or at least I think they have, but either way, it doesn’t matter. That was a bygone time/era, and there’s no going back, you can never go back …..or can you? Some are trying, as Mr. Rich so adroitly points out.

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?
It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.
No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.
The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it, too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation, whether they’re wearing lipstick or not.
This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, “run our factories” and “fight our wars” and are “always proud” of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didn’t have to name names — who are none of the above.
There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.
Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.
Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created “a whole new Republican Party,” but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.
The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay “cosmopolitan” urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.
The racial component to this brand of politics was undisguised in St. Paul. Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obama’s “only in America” success as an affirmative-action fairy tale — and when he and Palin mocked Obama’s history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.

The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket

Posted by: Marilyn | Sep 13 2008 23:22 utc | 12

Besides asking McCain on the record if he considers a draft potentially necessary (he does), he should be asked if he will attempt to sign a new nonproliferation treaty with Russia (he won’t).
After Bush backed out of the previous agreement, seeking missile defense (defacto first strike) installations around Russia, pushed for NATO membership for Georgia, mischaracterized Russian response to Georgian aggression if not having given Georgia the go ahead in the first place, we have the latest wonderful news of Russian strategic bombers in Venezuela, perhaps for some time, in response to US warships in the north sea.
McCain should be asked if these failures are, in fact, failures.

Posted by: aumana | Sep 13 2008 23:51 utc | 14

okay, I’ll bite.
Why does Vidal blame Truman?

Posted by: fighting bob | Sep 14 2008 0:41 utc | 16

http://www.news8.net/news/stories/0908/552040.html
“Dusty” Foggo of CIA exec fame threatens to flip on the admin in order to procure a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Could get interesting, , ,

Posted by: Li | Sep 14 2008 1:46 utc | 18

sorry ’bout that, fighting bob – had a wedding reception to get to
continuing w/ gore vidal,

Little was known in 1945 about the new president, other than that he played piano. Currently he is being turned into a hero, a Frank Capra sort of leading man who actually stands up for the little guy. Actually, he was a capable, sharp, machine politician who privately remained deeply unsure of himself in the big league.
When he took charge, a decision had to be made: to convert from war to peace or to maintain our military capacity at full strength. The economic reasons for maintaining a war economy were seductive, for president and arms manufacturers alike.
The Democrat Truman was told by Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, You’re going to have to scare the hell out of the American people to make them spend all that money on war in peacetime. Truman accepted the assignment.
Truman set out to convince the American people that the Soviet Union meant to conquer the earth. The fact that we alone had the atomic bomb as well as bases all around the globe apparently counted for nothing. The fact that they had lost twenty million people was not factored in.
They were monolithic, and worse, Communism, always identified as godless and atheistic, was an attractive religion for evil people in every land, particularly in western Europe, where Communist and socialist and labor parties – they were all the same to Truman – were showing their postwar muscle. From the White House television studio, you can convince the whole world that black is white, up is down, freedom is slavery.
For nearly fifty years, occupants of the White House television studio have been able to convince most Americans that the Soviet Union was far in advance of us militarily and economically, even though a walk down a Moscow street was quite enough to convince even the most fearful anti-Red that Russia was a sad Second World country. The flush toilet was a mystery to them, while a workable top for a vodka bottle was the unattainable holy grail.
In due course they did become a formidable atomic military power of course. We had turned them into one.
Truman was reelected – barely – in 1948. And we lost the opportunity of transforming our superpower status into prosperity and growth at home. By now the presidency had embraced the military and we were ready to become a national security state.
What is the national security state? Well, it began with the National Security Act of 1947 and was implemented three years later by a harmless-looking document know as National Security Directive No. 68, kept secret until the mid-1970s.
This contained the blueprint for a new kind of country, unlike anything the US had ever known before. First, there was to be a permanent Cold War. We would never negotiate – ever – with Russia.
Second, full speed ahead on developing the hydrogen bomb, so when the Soviets finally managed an atom bomb, we still wouldn’t have to deal with them.
Third, rapidly build up conventional forces. Although Stalin had cut his military forces from twelve million to four million, a complete military draft was introduced – something unheard of in peacetime America.
Fourth, a massive increase in taxes to pay for all this. The sky’s the limit, income tax as high as 90%.
Fifth, set up a strong alliance system of friendly nations, directed by the US. This was to become NATO, which tied western Europe to America militarily, effectively giving us dominion over a fourth continent. (When the first B29s landed in Britain in 1948, it was the first successful conquest of those islands since 1066.)
We could control and intimidate our allies with something called the CIA, with its secret, unconstitutional budget, and its mandate to overthrow governments, kill foreign leaders, do whatever dirty work needed doing.
And finally, mobilize the whole of America to fight the terrible specter of Communism. Root out the enemy within with lists of dissident organizations, wiretaps and survelliance – and loyalty oaths for all federal employees.

Posted by: b real | Sep 14 2008 3:59 utc | 20

sudan tribune: Britain & France will support freezing indictment of Sudan president

September 13, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – The British and French government will back efforts in the UN to stall the issuance of an arrest warrant for Sudan president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir, the Guardian reported today.
The newspaper said that officials from both capitals informed human rights activists that they have taken this stance to protect the peace process in Darfur and Southern Sudan.
The human right advocates said that Britain and France will join the Arab League, African Union, China, and Russia in backing a resolution by the UN General Assembly this month requesting a deferral of the charges against Al-Bashir.
Both UK & France are members of the Hague based court and have been the main advocates of referring the Darfur case to the ICC.
…
An ICC official speaking to the Guardian said that they would meet UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, to outline the ICC’s position on September 23rd.
It was not clear however if Paris or London intend to table down a formal resolution in the UNSC calling for a suspension or if they would just simply not use their veto power to block it.

Posted by: b real | Sep 14 2008 5:36 utc | 22

b real The notion that election fraud committed by the authorities should be followed by power sharing agreement will give the green light to dictators to fix elections,” he said.
the fascist option of last resort when all else fails for team empire/america.

Posted by: annie | Sep 14 2008 8:18 utc | 24

Buckarro (or should that be Buckaroo?): Yes, I know I bollocks on about the barricades but it’s mostly tongue in cheek. Folks is frightened. The masses (Marx’s darlings: “das lumpen proletariat – what he ungenerously called: “The scum of the earth”) do as they are frightened and herded into doing. Tell ‘em Communism’s bad—bang, it’s bad. Tell ‘em Islam’s bad—bang, that too.
The lexicon of fear words is legion. They get het up about a cause, go on to the streets, raise hell for a couple of hours and then go home and watch TV. They’re angry, they’re indignant, but they’re also powerless. It aint really the system (if it were it would all have changed a long time ago)—they’re made that way. There’s not one heck of a lot they can do about the system, the government, their own lives and that is why they lose it and kick the dog, whack the kids, shout in traffic and sometimes even break out a lever action Winchester 30-30 and kill off their workmates.
But, you know all this We’ve been here before. What we’ve lost, we lost a long time ago in the interests of earning a crust, maybe putting aside a few coppers here and there and just getting on with the mess of living day to day. In the interests of maintaining some sort security (pay, pension, promotion) we have sacrificed any sense of our rôle in the larger community—as being a vital part of it on every level and so we substitute protest demonstrations with presumably like minded persons to give us a sense of belonging and common cause. But, we are all of us really out there on our own and we damn well know it. So—enter blog spot comments pages. Kinda naff but it suits some and it’s a lot safer than having some cop wallop you over with a night stick.

Posted by: Spyware | Sep 14 2008 12:21 utc | 26

I think Spyware’s comments are valid and necessary. He’s basically saying “Where’s The Beef!” He’s right, for now, there’s just Big Buns, but no beef.

Posted by: Marilyn | Sep 14 2008 14:17 utc | 28

Sarah the patsy Judas goat will be newsworthy ’til three seconds after the election.
Spyware is correct that this blog wears it’s cynicism like a twelve-year-old in a superman cape.
Americans have become so enamoured of their own mythology that they’ve lost the ability to recognise a good man and the courage to support him.
First the presidency, then the rest. Forget how groovy and cool you are, get off your cynical asses and support Obama.

Posted by: waldo | Sep 14 2008 14:50 utc | 30

Spyware – @9 – Unlike some I got more to do with my time than sit hunched over Moon Of Alabama waiting for b. to post a fix.
Obviously you had enough time to post four comments in this short thread.
You somehow seem to believe that people have no life beyond commenting and posting here. But you do know nothing about these people. Not one bit. I have met several of them. All are engaged in progressive projects of this or that kind. Barricades? I have build some with my own hands, defended them against water cannons, teargas and pepperspray and guess what, back then we won the cause. Today my methods differ, that doe not mean that I don’t fight.
I wonder about the arrogance you expose here. Think something needs to be done, do it. If you don’t like ‘cheap talk’ here, why do you add to it?

Posted by: b | Sep 14 2008 15:43 utc | 32

So—voila! stop moaning people. Take a page out of the calendar for 1968. What I’m talking about is public insurrection on a massive scale in towns and cities throughout the United States. Impossible? Don’t you believe it. What happened in Chicago and the Champs-Élysées can happen in their counterparts all over America. Remember: at the time “They” all said it couldn’t happen. You want to change the system? Good. Then pack in covering your bourgeois backsides from the safety of your internet blogs and the pages of all those radical tabloids and go out and man the barricades. You’re all just too precious most of you for anybody to take you as anything more than more of the same.
On a bad, smart-ass paper I wrote exactly fifty years ago, my professor left the following comment: “you are amusing some of the time, petulant most of the time, and wrong all of the time.” And this was absolutely true. It’s also true for the sentences cited above.
To keep it simple, the notion of the “front” no longer pertains as it used to do. There are no “lines drawn in the sand”, no oppositional parties offering apparently contrary options. The topology is entirely different, and to think otherwise–to think in terms of the barricades of 1968, for example–is to bathe in the warm waters of uncritical, unthinking nostalgia.
At some level, the author of the lines cited above knows this all only too well–hence his petulant remarks about the phenomenon of the blog (an excellent, because mysterious, instance of our novel topology). In effect, the internet has completely altered the classical distribution of published and unpublished knowledge and opinion, and a good journalist would take this into account, acknowledging that the scene today is no longer as it was forty years ago. A good journalist would also try to analyze this transformation, and, though bound to fail at the exercise, if only because the necessary (i.e. the adequately descriptive and pertinent) concepts have yet to be developed, he would at least be contributing something of value to the discussion.
Maybe someday he will. Being a creature of hope, I certainly hope so!

Posted by: alabama | Sep 14 2008 16:21 utc | 34

some reports in the somali press this w/e on the following announcement
Al-Shabaab tips airport’s closure

The Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, launched Saturday what it describes as a “final warning” before the closure of the Aden Adde airport in Mogadishu, threatening to retaliate against anyone violating their ultimatum.
“Since the airport is regularly used by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies and also serves as a military base for the Ugandan and Burundian occupation troops, we, the Mujahideen of Al-Shabaab, have taken the decision to close to the airport,” said a press release published Saturday on the website of the resistance organization.
“The airport is a major source of the income for the Ethiopian forces who manage it,” said the document, adding that Al-Shabaab will begin to implement their decision to close Aden Adde airport Tuesday (16/Ramadaan/1429H or September 16th, 2008). According to the Al-Shabaab fighters, if their orders are ignored, they will then begin to stage attacks on the airport.
“We know that in the near future foreign soldiers are scheduled to arrive at Aden Adde airport, therefore, it must be closed,” the communiqué continued.

after midnight tuesday, they will consider any planes trying to use the airport as working for the occupying forces
uganda is scheduled to rotate in fresh AMISOM troops sometime in october

The Spokesperson for the UPDF, Maj. Paddy Ankunda says the new force will replace the current 1,600 UPDF troops currently doing peace keeping duties in Somalia.
Maj. Ankunda says UN peace keeping regulations require that a peace keeping force in operation be withdrawn after six months, and replaced by another peace keeping force.
He says Uganda delayed to change the peace keeping troops who begun their duties early last year because of the dire insecurity in Somalia as well as logistical challenges.
Ankunda says the new peace keeping comprising of 1,600 peace keeping troops has been well trained and is ready for deployment next month in October.

uganda’s radio katwe notes that

the Somali mission in Kampala has become a business bureau for Museveni and his family members. The lady who is building a shopping centre next to Garden City is a Somali national called mama Amina, she is also a concubine of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samuel K. Kutesa. Museveni’s half-brother General Salim Saleh is rumoured to have Somali blood in him, that his father was a Kenyan-Somali.
There are some other stories circulating that Museveni was thinking of sending his son, Lt. Col. Muhoozi Kainerugaba to Somalia to check on the Ugandan troops there. Other sources say he will be deployed there not to be in charge of the troops but as a way of Museveni giving him combat experience since the son has never been in any truly dangerous situation, and this would be a good chance to put on his record that he is a veteran of the “successful” peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

the rest of that article refers, belatedly, to the u.n. report we linked to back in late spring on UPDF troops selling arms to the somali insurgency. otherwise, it is incorrect in stating that, b/c of this, the insurgency ignores the AMISOM presence & only targets ethiopians. all one has to do is read today’s somali press to read of a sunday morning roadside bomb “targeting AMISOM troops in KM 4”.
while factions of the resistance may indeed be more conciliatory w/ the ugandans, there have been plenty of stmts from some that occupation is occupation & that AMISOM, rather than being peacekeepers — what peace? — support the occupiers & thus are legitimate targets.
on museveni’s son, the following is from an article, Are presidents’ sons ‘taking over’ Africa?, in botswana’s mmegi from august 22nd

In East Africa, a tragedy is brewing. Unlike Nelson Mandela who sat at the peak of political Kilimanjaro, Mandela and Gen George Washington of the United States did not allow disease, death or defeat to set the terminus of their tenure in office. Uganda’s president General Yoweri Museveni in July 2005 raped, scrapped and eventually deleted the constitutional clause that limited presidential tenure to two five-year terms so as to allow him stay in power as long as he wishes (and the West is quiet?). That constitutional amendment ushered him to the presidency in February 2006 but says he is still available to the electorate in February 2011. But more constipating now is his recent comments, at the graduation of his son, “sons of revolutionaries completing the tasks of their fathers.” Gen Museveni’s only official eldest son, Lt Col Muhoozi Kainerugaba, in June, added to his resume a diploma in military strategies having joined the Kansas-based army college of Fort Leavenworth, the US Army Command and General Staff College, in July 2007.
Before his Leavenworth graduation, Maj Muhoozi was the commander of the elite Presidential Guard Brigade in charge of his father’s security. He enrolled into the army in 2001 after a cadet course at Britain’s Sandhurst Military Academy and the rank of major was bestowed upon him by ‘another revolutionary’, Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi. That was January 2001 when Gaddafi had joined his friend Gen Museveni in commemorating Museveni’s 15th anniversary of his military takeover of power on January 26, 1986. At the same occasion, Col Gaddafi advised Museveni that “revolutionaries” – apparently Museveni and himself – “do not hand over power voluntarily.” Following his June graduation and the subsequent promotion to the commissioned officer rank of Lt Col, Muhoozi has been appointed and reassigned by his father to command the ‘Special Forces’ in charge of guarding the oil fields recently discovered and ready for exploration in Uganda. So with these galloping rates of promotions, it is doubtless the 34-year-old Lt Col is being groomed for higher altitudes, including the presidency, once, when and until probably ‘death does; his father apart with leadership’, which is a mandate yet Museveni takes it for a career or job!

Posted by: b real | Sep 14 2008 17:02 utc | 36

Surgar Weekly English Edition, Afghanistan
—-
1200 insurgent bombings this year
Kabul Surgar
On September 1st, a German ISAF general concluded that government-opposition insurgency attacks have reached their highest levels for the year, with 1200 bombings compared to only 800 in the same period of time last year,
claiming that roadside bombing increased fifty percent in the last eight months. He called the increasing number of bombings a concern, and measurable proof the insurgency is nowhere close to being defeated, despite some
statements by international forces’ commanders that the insurgency in Afghanistan had dwindled.
In the last several months, insurgents have increased their attacks, showing they are still in command. Their new bombing tactics have greatly increased the ongoing violence, as in the deadly Sarobi raid which killed and
wounded tens of French soldiers and the first multiple attacks in Sahrah Bagh base in Khost province.
The Afghan government has called an assembly of ministers to address the impact these increased insurgent attacks have on civilian populations, and to evaluate the often excessive response from the international coalition.
—
Ancient Statue saved from smugglers
Kandahar Surgar
Kandahar culture and information department officials have retrieved a stolen ancient statue, believed to pre-date Islam.
On September 7th, Abdul Majid Babai, head of the department of culture and information in Kandahar, told reporters that the statue was recovered with police assistance in the Sanzari village of Zari district, at the home
of the alleged smuggler.
Ghulam Mohammad is charged with intent to sell the stolen statue for 160000 US dollars to a buyer in neighboring Pakistan. The ancient statue is thought to date from between 1500 to 1800 years ago. According to Mr. Babai,
the statue, a religious prayer artifact, is approximately 65 centimeters by 35 centimeters in size.
The recovery was a great achievement for the Kandahar museum, according to Mr. Babai, who added that such findings are essential for preserving the country’s historical record as a great civilization. He explained it’s not
yet certain how the statue came to be in Kandahar, but is believed to have come from the central province in Bamiyan.
Mr. Babai pledged to hand over the statue to the culture and information ministry for research, in order to determine its exact antiquity. At the same time, officials in Bamiyan claim to have been discovered a 19 meter
statue believed to be 2000 years old, which was discovered beside others destroyed by the Taliban. Archeological exploration continues in hopes of finding other still-intact pieces.
In 1258 AD the Mongols descended on Baghdad in what is now Iraq, and pillaged its magnificent libraries, renowned in antiquity. A well-known adage states that the Tigris River ran black from the ink of the countless
texts the Mongols destroyed, while the streets ran red with the blood of the city’s slaughtered inhabitants, as happened again in 2003 when international allied coalition forces bombed and then looted Baghdad museums,
and slaughtered countless thousands of civilians. Afghans must never let that happen to their priceless heritage, martyred with the destruction of the world-famous Bamiyaan Buddha statues by the fundamentalist Taliban.
—
Human Rights Office: Civilian deaths unacceptable
Kandahar Surgar
Concerned at the sharp increase in civilian deaths through clandestine air strikes by the international allied coalition forces, the Afghan Human Rights Independent Committee office in Kandahar has insisted on putting an
end to such attacks in a published announcement.
On September 7th, in a report sent to Surgar Weekly Newspaper, the local office claimed that prior to the recent high-publicized attacks, the international coalition was pressured by the Human Rights committees in order
to prevent further civilian killings, but regrettably the number of deaths has risen rapidly as the allied war strategy enters a new, far more intense phase especially along the mountainous territory bordering Pakistan.
Air strikes in Arghandab district of Zabul province and Musa Qala, Nad Ali, Sangin, Kajaki, Waasheer, and Gareshk districts of Helmand province by international forces have left many civilians dead and even more wounded.
While critically condemning the air strikes, both the Human Rights Office and President Karzai demanded an end to such air strikes and said their repetition will be unacceptable in the future. As well, opposition militants
have been called on to stop killing civilians in bomb blasts and suicide attacks, and to avoid using peoples’ homes and villages as a protective shield.
The allied command’s response, however, has been to stage continuous attacks along with an increase in troops levels, in what is the first phase of a planned three-phase escalation into all-out war, including armed covert
ground and aerial incursions into border areas inside Pakistan and Iran.
The official announcement was ended with conveying condolences to the families’ losses.
—
No music during Ramadan!
Kabul Surgar
As the month of Ramadan comes to a close, the ministry of pilgrims and religious direction of Afghanistan has passed out new rules asking people to observe the restrictions in the Islamic Sharia laws and avoid listening
to music and avoid eating or drinking anything in the daytime in the month of Ramadan.
In another request, the ministry urged all the local TV channels and radio stations to broadcast prayer calls five times a day, and has asked both sides in the war to suspend attacks in the holy month of Ramadan, but the
TV and radio stations have not changed their programming, and fighting continues none the less.
—
Price controls enacted!
Kabul Surgar
Due to severe problems with the high prices of food in the month of Ramadan, the 24 districts of Kabul city will begin controlling food prices.
while talking at a conference with the districts chiefs on Tuesday September 3rd, Wahabulldin Saadat, city service deputy of Kabul municipality, told reporters that the prices and quality of different items should be
controlled by the municipality, with the help of district officials. According to Saadat, rules will be imposed by appointed officials in the districts in order to control both prices and quality, and anyone found breaking
those rules will face legal action.
Giving a specific example, Saadat told the bakeries if the weight of a single loaf of bread differs from that of the weight designated by the municipality, that bakery will be closed until a future time determined by officials.
In order to have control over city markets, Saadat said, an official request had been sent to the presidential office in Kabul, requesting authorization for the municipality to shut down any store or shop, in cases of rules
infractions.
In a response to the official requests, the president’s office has appointed a committee to agricultural ministry, ministry of economy, ministry of taxes, and the municipality officials.
Lately food prices and costs of other daily needs prices have soared in Kabul, and it is hoped new pricing rules will play a major role in lowering them.
—
170000 students get literacy education
Kabul Surgar
Based on Afghanistan education ministry officials’ claims, one hundred and seventy thousand students, and primarily females, have received literacy education in fourteen thousand different education centers.
In the last seven years, thirty four percent of the population was provided with literacy education, according to the ministry, and it plans to raise the number to fifty per cent in the upcoming year.
In these centers, education is provided to those who don’t have access to even the basic reading and writing tools.
According to education ministry deputy Khaleq, speaking at an assembly organized in Kabul about the literacy day, more than thirty hundred thousand uneducated people have received the necessary literacy education
bu the need exists to expand these education centers educate those who are still illiterate. Khaleq talked about leveling teaching program norms with those of international education centers and providing updated
school study programs to future students.
Many Afghans were obliged to be left without an education during the decades-long war, due to lack of facilities, economical poverty, and opposition to secular education by the Taleban, whose forces have burned
girls schools and murdered their teachers.
—
Foreign troop deaths increasing
Kandahr Surgar
International coalition force leaders in Afghanistan claim the deaths of foreign troops is on the rise. According to them, August alone was the deadliest month since the occupation began, in which 43 foreign soldiers
were killed in militants’ attacks.
General Richard Blanchette, the international forces commander in Afghanistan, said the past August was the deadliest month than any other for foreign troops since the 2001 invasion.
In the last eight months of this year, 200 foreign troops have already lost their lives, compared with 230 during the entire year in 2007.
Nine American soldiers died in July, with ten French soldiers’ deaths and three Canadian troops losing their lives in August. Militants have increased bombings by 30 percent and new troops are needed to prevent such
attacks. A request has been made to redeploy 4500 new troops to fight Taliban in Afghanistan, and American President Bush has authorized covert incursions into Pakistan and Iran along their borders with Afghanistan.
—
Last year bad one for journalists
Kabul Surgar
On September 3rd, the Independent Journalists and Defend Journalists committees submitted their annual reports to the media at a news conference.
Mohammad Zia Bumiya, head of the Defend Journalists Committee, told reporters about a new book describing Afghan journalists duties from 2007 to 2008 which will be published later this year.
According to Bumiya, the book will contain vital subjects as well such as journalism related information, publication subjects, newspaper and media progress, and other stories from the media world.
Rahimullah Samandar, head of the international journalist committee, said written reports about cultural events in the country would be included in the upcoming publication. He described some forty
different incidents of forceful beatings of journalists, and said last year was a bad one for Herat journalists. According to him, two female journalists were even obligated to flee their home town
province of Herat and settle abroad in Tajikistan and Qatar. And not just in Herat, but journalists in other provinces of the country like Ghazni, Khost and Nengarhar continue to complain about the
way they are treated by government security officials.
Mr. Samandar called use of force against journalists a concern, and told reporters about the committees’ talks with the presidential office, but no official responses have been made yet.
—
Suicide bomb blasts Kandahar
Kandahar Surgar
Recently two suicide bomb blasts inside the headquarters of the war troubled provincial offices in Kandahar have left tens of people dead and wounded, and greatly increased the level of insecurity.
This was the second biggest attack in Kandahar since the recent attack on the main prison by Taleban militants, which freed hundreds of criminals and political prisoners.
The two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside the main police headquarters in Kandahar, once believed to be the safest place with tightest security in the entire province.
Although the exact numbers are not yet clear, two policemen were said to be killed and approximately thirty eight others, including eight civilians, were wounded.
Taliban claimed responsibility while stating that two of their martyred comrades, residents of Zabul and Kandahar provinces, had carried out the attacks. Their claims to have been wounded the fourth
brigade commander of border police, Abdul Raziq Khan, were discounted when the commander assured Surgar Weekly he was in healthy condition suffering minor injuries.
This is not the first time Abdul Raziq has survived attempted suicide attacks.
The suicide attacks occurred after the successful attack on Kandahar prison, following the interior ministry deputy’s remarks about inventing new strategies to make better security in the province.
General Muneer Mangal called the new approach towards better security in the province productive, and hoped that future attacks would be prevented in Kandahar.

Posted by: Shah Loam | Sep 14 2008 18:59 utc | 38

And how do we prevent the takeover of the Internet if they keep closing all the Starbucks, and the libraries have to cut back their weekend hours and throttle and censure their Internet bandwidth because the American Taliban is ratcheting up their Global War of Terror until it deficits the entire $2T discretionary budget, not already wholely encumbered by repaying Treasury interest to the Chinese underwriters, what’s not directly servicing the open-door Fed bank window, and disappearing $100B’s in radioactive waste from the Neo Twin-Tower GSE receiverships now hollowing out the American Dream right before our very eyes!!!
Well, Marilyn, we’ll all have a lot of time to sit around our smudge fires under the freeway overpasses and hobo jungles and talk Obama-Clinton up for 2012, because there ain’ta gonna be no soup kitchens and bread lines under Pres’nent Palin, no sir, lessin’ you swear on a stack o’ Bibles to oppress them’there sinners, gays, evil RTL’rs and other ungodly heathenry, and lead a life filled with “well-intentioned and deserving” humility and gratefulassitude for whatever small urine drops the NeoZi.con Mercy Squad trickles down your back, and says it’s ‘raining roses and chocolates’ on this, your Sabbath day.

Posted by: Tom Terrific | Sep 14 2008 19:56 utc | 40

Tantalus, b real, if you check back in comments (way back) you’ll find me commenting on this blog in a supportive and fraternal manner. The fact I don’t comment regularly does not mean that I drop in, shit on the floor and stroll back out just to annoy people. This blog has strayed from it’s roots and become anarchistic. Cynicism has become the currency of exchange and this has led to a spiralling negative debate that leads to ludicrous assertions e.g. the current Democratic nominee a “war-mongering corporate stooge”.
It’s easy to understand Republicans supporting McCain. Fear is their motivator; fear of white supremacy becoming redundant, fear of their priviliged lifestyle and culture being subsumed by immigrants and people of colour, fear of being exposure as pathetic religious hypocrites and being relegated to their deserved inconsequence.
But the basic ethos of the Democratic party is courage and empathy: courage to stand on the side that supports the underpriviliged, the helpless, the simple, the downtrodden. It’s easy to sneer at everything, find the worst in everything, to refuse to believe that many people have an honest and positive motivation to support and expand the democracy of America. And Rove would be clapping his hands in glee to see his strategy of smearing the Democratic party being so enthusiastically adopted here.
My support of the real America, the democratic America, the intellectually honest America has not wavered (in the face of fearsome provocation) in 40 years. I know that most people are basically good, caring and honest. Political systems can pervert these traits. Commu/Fascist Russia demonstrated how far. Orwell’s 1984 illustrated how even love can be corrupted and destroyed.
America has had eight years of hatred, pessimism and cynicism injected into It’s culture and society (and eight more if you include Republican behaviour during the Clinton administration). The GOP inspired attack on America has neutered the courage of many. However, some people will continue to strive for the common good, for intellectual honesty and the true principles of Democracy.
Barack Obama is one of these bright and honest lights in the gloom of war and political perversion. He’s is obviously a far-and-away better candidate to lead America than McCain and *shudder* Palin. Refuse to believe it, don’t vote or throw it away on a 3rd party candidate and all your fearful imaginings may come true.
In the mean time, continue to indulge your cynicism if you must but if you can’t say anything good about Obama, STFU.

Posted by: waldo | Sep 15 2008 2:15 utc | 42

waldo, you are hilarious. i especially like the part where you state that “the basic ethos of the democratic party is courage and empathy.” seriously, with all the depressing economic news breaking today, i needed a real lol moment, and your post provided a much needed respite from the ominous fiscal gloom. so thank you.
here’s the part you won’t like, because i refuse to STFU when it comes to pointing out what should be obvious to you. obama had his chance to bring his actions in line with his rhetoric, but of course he didn’t. or couldn’t. to prove he will be a responsible custodian for his corporate paymasters, he turned his back on progressives, and let the groundswell of excitement fizzle as he sauntered to the right. as an anarchistic cynic (i’m lol-ing again–awesome!) i was disappointed, but not surprised.
as for that courageous and empathetic party you think is the panacea for all the ills visited upon us by the nasty GOP, the democrats had their chance to do something after their stunning victories in 2006, but they didn’t. or couldn’t. and so it goes as the sun sets on this psychotic, brutal nation on the brink of collapse.
***
tantalus: you’re a good man for humoring our friend waldo. i hope fleeing this bestial country becomes a realistic possibility for you.

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 15 2008 4:13 utc | 44

Thanks to b real @ 33 and alabama @ 34, and to b passim. Meanwhile, it looks like financial Armageddon has arrived: just desserts, mere coincidence, powerful occult forces (probably non-U.S.) favoring Obama, or none of the above? The great depression was the formative experience of my parents lives. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to relive that experience. It now seems entirely possible that millions of U.S. citizens may have that “opportunity”.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 15 2008 9:13 utc | 46

Thanks, Lizard! I don’t know why I bother, honestly…
What’s not to love? This blog has strayed from it’s roots and become anarchistic…
STFU? UAW/MF!

Posted by: Tantalus | Sep 15 2008 12:54 utc | 48

@Tangerine
Oh–I am so yesterday!

Posted by: Spyware | Sep 15 2008 15:52 utc | 50

breal & b
there is a diary on dkos about chavez – read the commentary & these are supposed to be ‘people of the left’ – ‘left’ in the space between joseph mcarthy & roy cohn

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 15 2008 18:10 utc | 52

frida berrigan @ tom dispatch: Military Industrial Complex 2.0: Cubicle Mercenaries, Subcontracting Warriors, and Other Phenomena of a Privatizing Pentagon

Consider the following: In fiscal year 2005 (the last year for which full data is available), the Pentagon spent more contracting for services with private companies than on supplies and equipment — including major weapons systems. This figure has been steadily rising over the past 10 years. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, in the last decade the amount the Pentagon has paid out to private companies for services has increased by 78% in real terms. In fiscal year 2006, those services contracts totaled more than $151 billion.
Ever more frequently, we hear generals and politicians alike bemoan the state of the military. Their conclusion: The wear and tear of the President’s Global War on Terror has pushed the military to the breaking point. But private contractors are playing a different tune. Think of it this way: While the military cannot stay properly supplied, its suppliers are racking up contracts in the multi-billions. For them, it’s a matter of letting the good times roll.
…
Consider fiscal year 2001, which conveniently ended in September of that year. It serves as a good, pre-War on Terror baseline for grasping just how the Pentagon expanded ever since — and how much more it is paying out to private contractors today.
Back then, the Pentagon’s top 10 suppliers shared $58.7 billion in Department of Defense (DoD) contracts, out of a total of $144 billion that went to the top 100 Pentagon contractors. Number 100 on the list was The Carlyle Group with $145 million in contracts. Keep in mind, of course, that this was the price of “defense” for a nation with no superpower rival.
Fast forward to 2007 and the top 10 companies on the Pentagon’s list of private contractors were sharing $125 billion in DoD contracts, out of a total of $239 billion being shared among the top 100 contractors. The smallest contract among those 100 was awarded to ARINC and came in at $495 million.
In those seven years, in other words, contracts to the top 10 more than doubled, the size of the total pay-out pie increased by two-thirds, and the lowest contract among the top 100 went up almost four-fold.
Just as revealing, almost half the companies on the Pentagon’s Top 100 list in 2007 were not even on it seven years earlier, including McKesson, which took in a hefty $4.6 billion in contracts and MacAndrews and Forbes which garnered $3.3 billion.
And here’s a fact that makes sense of all of the above: Given the spectrum of services offered and the level of integration that has already taken place between the Pentagon and these private companies, the United States can no longer wage a war or even run payroll without them.

Posted by: b real | Sep 15 2008 18:56 utc | 54

the economist basically comes to the same conclusion we have touched on here on several occassions wrt exaggeration of “al-qa-idah in the mahgreb” by the press/GWOT & so-called ‘terrorism’ experts
A real network of terror? Al-Qaeda’s claims to have a network in the Maghreb are probably premature

..does AQIM really exist as a co-ordinated regional organisation?
So far there is little evidence that it does. Until now, nearly all of AQIM’s claimed attacks have been in a rectangle of land to the east of Algeria’s capital, Algiers. (The GSPC, from which AQIM has emerged, is a ruthless remnant from the civil war which began after the Algerian army stepped in to prevent Islamists from taking over after they had won the first round of an election in December 1991, thereby prompting a decade of strife that left as many as 200,000 people dead.) In this mountainous zone, clashes between AQIM fighters and Algerian security forces are occurring almost every day. Whenever the authorities claim a big victory, AQIM invariably sets off a suicide-bomb or a remote-controlled explosion, usually aimed at Algerian forces, sometimes at foreigners. AQIM said it was behind the double bombing last December of the UN offices in Algiers and a court house, killing more than 40 people.
But AQIM’s presence elsewhere in the region is fuzzier. In Algeria, says George Joffé, a north Africa specialist at Cambridge University, there is “constant low-level violence, a bit like in Colombia”. But he doubts that AQIM is a “coherent regional organisation, more a series of groups with national agendas and a common ideology”. He discounts the idea that they are controlled by al-Qaeda’s leaders on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
…
..Wolfram Lacher, an analyst for Control Risks, a security consultancy with headquarters in London … says … “On the whole, Algeria is the only country in the region which hosts a large and active terrorist organisation. In the other countries, such organisations are not able to survive, due to the tight control of the security forces.”

the article concludes,

But governments in the Maghreb are certainly trying to stir Western anxieties in order to get more American and European cash and support.

w/ more than a little encouragement from the west, no doubt

Posted by: b real | Sep 16 2008 4:39 utc | 56

Bob Woodword, eh! Pathetic beyond comment. Go read Chris Floyd.

In a TV appearance to puff the book, Woodward celebrated the arbitrary murder, by methods unknown, of people designated “terrorists,” by criteria unknown, as “a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have.”

Posted by: DM | Sep 16 2008 11:05 utc | 58

This Wikipedia article seems to be a good starting point for the basic information on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. As always, what is reported there should not be taken as Gospel. I don’t know the truth in this case, but there’s enough stench of illegality, kidnapping, and torture to raise legitimate suspicions of yet another miscarriage of justice.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 16 2008 12:46 utc | 60

ips: Leaders Express Full Support for Bolivia’s Morales

SANTIAGO, Sep 16 (IPS) – After an emergency summit in the Chilean capital, the presidents of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) expressed their resounding support for the government of Bolivia and decided to set up commissions to support talks and to investigate recent killings in that country, which is caught in a wave of political unrest.
“The member countries of UNASUR express their fullest and most decisive support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales,” says the statement unanimously approved by the presidents, which was read out by host President Michelle Bachelet at around midnight Monday after the six-hour meeting.
Along with Morales, the emergency meeting brought together centre-left and leftwing presidents Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Cristina Fernández of Argentina, as well as rightwing President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, Peruvian Foreign Minister José Antonio García Belaúnde in representation of President Alan García, and delegates from Guyana and Suriname.
The governments of South America “vigorously reject and will not grant recognition to any situation that implies a civil coup or the rupture of the institutional order, or that will undermine the territorial integrity of the republic of Bolivia,” Bachelet read.
UNASUR also issued a call to all concerned political and social factions in Bolivia to take the necessary measures to stop the violence in that country and to reach a “lasting solution.”
The fledgling South American bloc, which groups the 12 countries of South America, also vigorously condemned the attacks on public institutions and the murders of indigenous supporters of Morales in the northern Bolivian province of Pando, where more than 30 people were killed and dozens are still missing.
…
Both Bachelet and Morales underscored the role played by UNASUR in the first crisis that it has faced since its formal creation on May 23 in Brasilia.
“After this lengthy but very fruitful meeting, and the agreements reached, UNASUR has been consolidated,” said Chile’s leader.
In a press conference, Morales said he was pleasantly “surprised by the solidarity” expressed by the 12 governments represented at the special summit, and expressed gratitude for “the firm position to defend the democracy and unity of the Bolivian nation.”

others elsewhere point out that UNASUR was the obvious choice, rather than the OAS, in order to limit u.s. interference

The UNASUR emergency meeting was officially called over the weekend by Bachelet, as president pro tempore of the regional bloc.
…
After flying in to Chile from Ecuador, Correa said that “we will see here if integration is real or just more blah blah blah.”
“We all know perfectly well what is going on in Bolivia; hypocrisy has no place here. Phantoms that we thought were banished from the region are appearing again in other forms, in other clothing, as other ghosts, but they are the same spectres as before,” he said.
For his part, Chávez said that “35 years ago this continent stayed silent, the governments of the Americas kept mum,” when Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973) was overthrown in a coup that gave rise to the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
“In Bolivia there is an international conspiracy taking place, a conspiracy directed by the U.S. empire, just as occurred in Chile” in 1973, he said.
…
Although UNASUR was created only four months ago and does not yet have fully formed official institutions, “it could become an important forum for dialogue,” because it groups the countries of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and Andean Community trade blocs, University of Chile Professor Paz Milet told IPS.

Posted by: b real | Sep 16 2008 18:39 utc | 62

b real & dan
i have been trying to watch this closely – feeling at some levels it has felt like the months before september 11 in 1973 in chile – clearly, that is what the empire wants – i hope over hope that the solidarity between these latin american countries can forestall any american adventure

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 16 2008 20:01 utc | 64

inca kola news: The thing to take away from the Unasur declaration

The declaration hammered out by the Unasur heads of state last night is, I believe, one of those moments in history that is not recognized as such until much later (text in English and Spanish linked here). For sure the resolution was about the current unrest in Bolivia, but after reading it through several times I’ve been struck by its recognition of Latin America’s turbulent past and the declaration’s mature, forward-looking tone. What it’s really saying to the world is something far more important than “hey, Santa Cruz, stop being jerks” (vitally important though that is). The Moneda Declaration says to the world
WE
DO
NOT
NEED
YOUR
HELP
ANY
MORE

coha: Bolivia: A Profound Breakdown of Communication with Latin America

…
UNASUR’s Debuting Role
If such a re-positioning does not happen soon, it may well be too late for Washington to develop cooperative and mutually beneficial policies. Latin American-led trade agreements such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) could appear more sensitive and better adapted to regional well-being than any U.S.-crafted free trade agreement with nations that are too weak, like Costa Rica and Panama, to defend their authentic self-interests against subsidized U.S. farm products. Also, the fledgling Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) joins the Organization of American States as a multilateral, democratic body capable of facilitating regional integration and conflict resolution. The difference is, of course, that the former does not include the U.S. as a member. It is this stunning difference that ultimately could lead to the supplanting of the OAS by UNASUR a development that would be sure to lead to the return of Cuba to a major regional body. At its September 15 emergency meeting on the Bolivia crisis in Santiago demonstrates, the leaders of this multilateral organization are capable of engaging in constructive and balanced dialogue that is certain to profoundly affect the separatists. Refusing to fall prey to the mudslinging in which U.S. diplomacy frequently engages, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa dismissed probing by the press into the possibility of covert U.S. intervention in Bolivia, a charge that Correa himself was not making in other contexts, and he reiterated the support of member states to the restoration of order and preservation of unity in Bolivia.

and more positive news from inca kola news
Bolivia round-up

Posted by: b real | Sep 16 2008 22:05 utc | 66

This article in one of the Pakistani newspapers today describes Aafia Siddiqui’s son’s release to an aunt in Pakistan. An Afghan government official in the article claims that this is not the son that disappeared with her and two other children from Karachi back in 2003, but instead is an orphan she adopted in 2005 after the devastating earthquake in the Kashmir region. Elsewhere in the article it says the U.S. has been searching for her as a dangerous terrorist since 2003, so it is hard to see how she somehow managed to adopt an orphan in 2005 without the notice of anyone in officialdom.
The most interesting item, and something I had not read anywhere else before, is at the end. The article asserts that Aafia Siddiqui’s husband is a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammad and is being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay. If true, one can’t help but wonder if she has been apprehended and held (and perhaps her husband as well) by the USG to apply pressure on KSM.
Still looking for more pieces of this puzzle, but it really smells bad.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/09/16/top4.htm

Posted by: Maxcrat | Sep 17 2008 0:54 utc | 68

“But that was back when I was more naive, and actually believed that the electoral process could really bring about fundamental change in this country. Camejo never lost that naivete. For a positive personal recollection of Camejo, please read this one by the As’ad Abukhalil, the Angry Arab. Turns out that Camejo had the intelligence and integrity to solicit Abukhalil as a candidate to run against Diane Feinstein for the Senate.
Abukhalil appreciated the offer, but being an anarchist, declined. His explanation resonates with my current attitude about the political process: Furthermore, I do not, as an anarchist, believe in the American political and electoral systems, and thus do not harbor hopes, or illusions, of change “from within” so to say, although I remain optimistic of the prospects for progressive change on a global scale, affecting us here in the US.” -American Leftist

Posted by: waldo | Sep 17 2008 1:27 utc | 70

I lifted this quote from another site. Hunter S. Thompson is the author, and he wrote the following eight years ago:

No sir, not a chance. Mr. Jones does not even pretend to know what’s happening in America Right now, and neither does anyone else.
We have seen weird Times in this country before, but the year 2000 is beginning to look super weird. This time there really is nobody flying the plane … We are living in dangerously weird times now. Smart people just shrug and admit they’re dazed and confused. The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.
The autumn months are never a calm time in America. Back to Work, Back to Football Practice, etc….Autumn is a very Traditional period, a time of strong Rituals and the celebrating of strange annual holidays like Halloween and Satanism and the fateful Harvest Moon, which can have ominous implications for some people.
Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings.
Most of these things are obviously Wrong and Evil and Ugly — but at least they are Traditional. They will happen. Your driveway will ice over, your furnace will blow up, and you will be rammed in traffic by an uninsured driver in a stolen car.
But what the hell? That’s why we have Insurance, eh? And the Inevitability of these nightmares is what makes them so reassuring. Life will go on, for good or ill. But some things are forever, right? The structure may be a little Crooked, but the foundations are still strong and unshakable.
Ho ho. Think again, buster. Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in. … There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all — not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as whoever has to pass for the “New President.”

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 17 2008 3:30 utc | 72

oops. guess i was chuckling too much to notice that i forgot to paste the url into that link…
sorry ’bout dat – Stuttgart community gets update on HQ renovations

Posted by: b real | Sep 17 2008 4:32 utc | 74

gotta like this (even though the blogger has a problem w/ it)
inner city press: At UN, Nicaraguan Priest Takes Helm and Swings Left

UNITED NATIONS, September 16 — A priest has taken the reins of the UN General Assembly, and Tuesday he preached peace and love. But Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann at his post-preach press conference, when Inner City Press asked the first question about what he will do to defuse what’s been called the New Cold War, said that there are many more serious issues than Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Georgia, the ones Inner City Press listed from this summer.
Iraq, d’Escoto said, do you know how many people have been killed there? He cited the Lancet, as he had to journalists throughout the week. When asked by another reporter if he equated Russia in Georgia with the U.S. in Iraq, as wars of aggression, d’Escoto touched his hearing aid and said he hadn’t heard right, was the question if Georgia’s entry into South Ossetia was an aggression and against the UN Charter. Of course, he said.

Posted by: b real | Sep 17 2008 4:56 utc | 76

and, the inner city press article i linked above didn’t mention it, but d’escoto, of course, was the foreign minister for the sandinista govt back in the eighties & a liberation theologist

Posted by: b real | Sep 17 2008 5:04 utc | 78

i’m listening uncle.
though i’m afraid many of us still lack the diabolical imagination to really appreciate what these old lines of sociopaths are capable of.

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 17 2008 6:18 utc | 80

b: at what point do the details become an impenetrable white noise?

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 17 2008 6:56 utc | 82

uncle #75, Lizard #80, yes indeedy.
From uncle’s timeline (October ’03), I googled American Scientist, because I believe at that time the 1918 flu DNA sequence was published, (to help other scientists prepare vaccines of course, not to give the famous terrorists a leg up), was curious if it was here. Still don’t know, am not paying the $12 for a pdf (hell, that’s 1.75 liters of vodka retail), but if I had some of that mysterious terrorist funding, $12 (8.45 euros) for info that took a super-computer years to deduce? Happy happy terrorist, lap dances all around.
This is the abstract:

In 1997 the world came perilously close to a global epidemic of the “flu.” If this particular virus had attained the ability to spread from person to person, the pandemic might have taken the lives of a third of the human population. As it was, only six people died—and all of them had contracted the virus from chickens sold in Hong Kong poultry markets. The only thing that saved us was the quick thinking of scientists who convinced health authorities to slaughter more than a million domesticated fowl in the city’s markets. The avian virus turned out to be a new strain—one that the human population had never seen before. Webster, one of the scientists who consulted Hong Kong authorities in 1997, and Walker tell a horrific tale: These new, deadly strains arise a few times every century, and the next one is around the corner.

link
What I love is the “the quick thinking of scientists” line. Holy obviousness, Batman. (And of course, quick thinking leads to slaughter.)
Lizard #72, yes, especially HST’s

Autumn is always a time of Fear and Greed and Hoarding for the winter coming on. Debt collectors are active on old people and fleece the weak and helpless. They want to lay in enough cash to weather the known horrors of January and February. There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings.

Posted by: plushtown | Sep 17 2008 11:02 utc | 84

lion lying down with us lambs. Riding out Ike on an island, with a lion
We are being taught.
IN AN AFRICAN MARKET, PENNIES ARE NOT PEANUTS
I particularly like the comments. 95% on the first 3 pages are near this “I wish I was there! sounds like fun” (on 3rd page, towards bottom, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1:28 AM))

Posted by: plushtown | Sep 17 2008 16:32 utc | 86

@ShaLoam – thanks!
—
Hmm – someone hacked a private Palin email account she also used for gov. business and put screenshots up at wikileaks.org.
Hackers Access Palin’s Personal E-Mail, Post Some Online
Wikileaks.org seems to be down now. I can’t reach it.

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2008 6:54 utc | 88

great essay from mahmood mamdani: Darfur, ICC and the new humanitarian order: How the ICC’s “responsibility to protect” is being turned into an assertion of neocolonial domination

Posted by: b real | Sep 18 2008 18:05 utc | 90

in kenya, the kriegler commission report, the culmination of months of ‘investigations’ and hearings by the “independent review of the elections commission (IREC)”, as expected did not challenge the stolen presidential election nor attempt to determine who actually won. in fact, it ‘found’ that allegations of rigging were just that – allegations, which only adds to the complete farce surrounding the entire ordeal.
but, as i said, that was to be expected – it was never really an ‘independent’ commission. kreigler’s presentation to kibaki & odinga: “Even if you wanted a re-tallying of the results, still you won’t have sorted out the mess. It would have been impossible to tell who won or who lost between the two of you. The decision to work together was the best for this country.”
where have we heard that talking point before, eh?
as if anyone needs yet more evidence of who was behind the coup, here’s another piece on that hypocrite, piece-of-shit ambassador ranneberger
east african standard: Envoys urge State to push for reforms

The US Government will sustain pressure on Kenya to reform its institutions regardless of the outcome of the November US presidential elections.
Mr Michael Ranneberger, the US Ambassador to Kenya, told Kenyatta University students in Nairobi on Wednesday America’s future relations with Kenya would be determined by evidence of commitment to effective reform and democracy.

asshole

He said the US seeks to entrench historical relations with Kenya and support generational change in leadership.

as in ‘change that takes several generations’, or the creation/production of amenable leaders?

The ambassador said the US would also maintain its role as an ally on the East African seaboard.
“The future of our relations depends on actual reforms. We must have these reforms by the next 2012 elections.”

sounds like an order

The US policy in Africa on human rights, he added, was based on the rule of law and would not change “no matter who becomes president of the United States”.
“The country is at a turning point. If it does not learn from what happened it will go in the wrong direction.

finally, a stmt we can both agree on!

We have told Kibaki and Raila that future relations with the US depends on actual reform.”
The envoy said the US expects a swift implementation of the recommendations of the Kriegler and Waki commissions.
He said Washington regards the reports as a basis for reform and the rule of law.

no shit. more rigging, of the kriegler rpt at least. the release of the findings of the waki commission — the “commission of inquiry on post-election violence” — have been extended into mid-october, but they have no bearing on the status of the election result.

Posted by: b real | Sep 19 2008 4:25 utc | 92

I know the matter has already been discussed at length here and elsewhere, but I would be interested in another go-round with regard to the Israeli raid on Al Kibar on September 6, 2007. The reason for renewed interest is this speech by CIA Director Michael Hayden (noted at Cryptome). This is an official statement rather than an unsourced report or anonymous tip. Hayden explicitly states the reason for the Al Kibar raid, and narrates its background as a triumph of U.S.-Israeli cooperation. Hayden’s brief mention of the dismantling of the A.Q. Kahn network might also elicit some further questions. We are being presented, after over a year of winks, nods and leaks, with a nice piece of “official truth”. I would like to see a reasoned and documented deconstruction of that proffer, although I seriously doubt that relevant documentation is available. Further discussion of the secrecy subsequent to the raid would also be welcome. If things did indeed stand as Hayden states, that would have been superb grist for the Bush-neocon propaganda mill, heretofore not noted for its reticence.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 19 2008 5:58 utc | 94

Hannah K. O’Luthon: since that speech isn’t actually saying much, we’d have to wonder why Hayden goes on at such length and with such warmth. In particular, he makes a big fuss about the CIA–as the brains of the intelligence community and a great member of the team. And while he also goes on about the “reasoning” that led to the raid, he doesn’t tell us that the CIA was the source of that reasoning, or that it was a happy sponsor of the raid. He does, however, remind us that the CIA has to defer to the new umbrella agency….
Oh, and he also tells us that the on-site wreckage was cleaned up overnight.
From all of which we might infer (1.) that the CIA didn’t think for a minute that the installation was “nuclear”; (2.) that it had to watch, helplessly, as the True Believers did their bombing thing; and (3.) that when the wreckage vanished in the twinkling of an eye, the CIA made merciless fun of the True Believers, who, no doubt humiliated, probably started pushing back at the CIA in bureaucratic ways that I can’t even begin to imagine.
If so, then this speech is meant to soothe the hurt feelings of everyone.
Will it work? I infer from the speech that the CIA’s sense of injured merit is causing major problems for its “team-mates,” especially because the CIA is right far more often than the other players.
And then, of coure, there’s the Plame Affair, a legend that may well outlast the U.S. government itself.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 19 2008 9:04 utc | 96

John McCain Is a Senile Idiot

Oh jeez listen to this interview with a Miami radio station, in which John McCain thinks Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is some sort of leftist Latin American leader. Ha ha, that’s Zapatero, you crazy old coot, not Emiliano Zapata from 100 years ago. How old are you, anyway?

here’s the relevant transcript

QUESTION: Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you’re elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?
MCCAIN: I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion, and by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I’m glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. I intend to move forward with relations, and invite as many of them as I can, those leaders, to the White House.
QUESTION: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president itself?
MCCAIN: I don’t, you know, honestly I have to look at relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.
QUESTION: So you have to wait and see if he’s willing to meet with you, or you’ll be able to do it in the White House?
MCCAIN: Well again I don’t, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region.
QUESTION: Okay… what about Europe I’m talking about the President of Spain?
MCCAIN: What about me what?

Posted by: b real | Sep 19 2008 15:09 utc | 98

i am concerned that we have not heard from deanander & there seems to be either no updates on her site nor any recent contribution to feral scholar – hope things are well

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 19 2008 18:28 utc | 100