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August 13, 2011
Open Thread – Aug 13
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Driving from Ghazni to Kabul – video: 27 burned out tankers along the way
27 x 9000 x $400 a gallon equals $97,200,000. As some were smaller, let’s say $50 million.
Well, nobody’s going to say no, either Obama or the Tea Party.
Posted by: alexno | Aug 13 2011 18:47 utc | 2
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/-/688340/1218176/-/11gtw82/-/
non reported news – which ececutive members of Benghazi Lybian TNC?
Posted by: somebody | Aug 13 2011 20:03 utc | 3
still non reportet – but revealing –
“After some initial gunfire by fighters from the family of General Younes, the council appeared to have persuaded his tribe, the Obeidi, to put their faith in an open investigation by the rebel authorities, Mr. Feltman said. “They were able to avert a real cycle of violence,” he said. “I would give them a passing grade, given where they are starting from.” He added, “They have made commitments to us that you would never get out of Qaddafi.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/world/africa/14libya.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
Posted by: somebody | Aug 13 2011 20:56 utc | 4
A good article by Joshua Landis (who runs Syria Comment) over at Voltaire Network discusses the Syrian Armed Gangs controversy (in fact one of the Syrian soldiers murdered by the armed gangs was his wifes cousin). He makes a pretty good case that there are armed gangs in Syria and that they probably are left over fighters from the Iraq war (over 250,000 Iraqis are refugees in Syria and the Syrian border was a main transit point to insurgents during the Iraq conflict).
http://www.voltairenet.org/Syria-The-Armed-Gangs-Controversy
Elias Muhanna who runs the Qifa Nabki blog and Michael Young an editor at the Beirut based Daily Star newspaper talk for an hour on bloggingheads about Syria and the International players involved in the crisis.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/37961
Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Aug 13 2011 23:24 utc | 5
Franklin Lamb comes down hard on the Nazi-American Terrorist Organisation (NATO) and its cowardly fake war of conspicuous (weapons) consumption.
NATO’s massacre at Majer, Libya.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb08122011.html
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 14 2011 4:42 utc | 6
Video: The world’s smallest airport
Watch in full screen mode and choose the HD1080p version to get the real impression.
And yes, it is in Hamburg.
That is brilliant b, bet the engineer in you would love to own that
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 14 2011 12:34 utc | 8
bet the engineer in you would love to own that
Not own. The engineer in me would love to build that.
The airport is only a small part of the project. Here is another older video showing some of the other stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA
way cool, my dad used to have a train and model toy (modelbau) store in the eightys.
While I hated inventory day,i did like building sets, somuch fun.
that airport is awesome.
Posted by: sabine | Aug 15 2011 8:23 utc | 11
“Jon Bruning, Nebraska Senate Candidate, Compares Welfare Recipients To Raccoons “:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/jon-bruning-nebraska-welfare-raccoons_n_922312.html
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning exemplifies the man in the silk suit who catches the poor old ladies’ eyes and says just for the fun of it — “Get a job!”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlRQjzltaMQ
But thanks mostly to ALEC, the shadowy organization that’s played a huge role in shaping pro-corporate legislation in a number of states, we can take our unemployed and arrest them and then throw them into one of our privatized prisons where they can earn 23 cents an hour assembling weapons for the military-industrial complex:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25376
That’s one way to fix our unemployment problem. But by fixing that problem, we have created the problem of having too many fat and bloated plutocrats pigging out on the taxpayer’s dime.
Thinking back, Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” is one of the very few decent pop rock tunes to come out of the 80’s. Ronald Reagan deserves a lot of blame for this due to him being very instrumental in crushing all forms of creativity in America. Creativity in America, as reflected in American rock music, peaked out in the late 70’s and has been on a downward slope ever since.
Posted by: Cynthia | Aug 15 2011 15:41 utc | 12
For the historically minded, these recently declassified CIA documents on the Bay of Pigs fiasco, will have some lessons to offer about what might be happening now. I confess to have read only the brief initial comments, but even they are sufficient
to make the link worthwhile.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 15 2011 16:38 utc | 13
Hannah,
I thought you might be interested in listening to Howard Jones, history professor at the University of Alabama, talk about the Bay of Pigs fiasco and how it laid the path for a whole series of fiascos to come:
http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/06/11/howard-jones/
Posted by: Cynthia | Aug 15 2011 18:37 utc | 14
Thanks, Cynthia. I will listen to the Jones talk as soon as I have my usual “good connection”: for the moment I am in “conserve bandwidth mode”.
Certainly reading about the intra-administration maneuvers and rivalries regarding the Bay of Pigs (and the interesting failure to inform the Kennedy brothers of the negative estimate by the scheme’s architects) makes one wonder about the shades of difference between a “rogue operation” and “wanting to be more Catholic than the pope”. Presumably John and Bobby had made it clear that they wanted to “get rid of Castro”, and the spooks were to handle the details in a “deniable fashion”. The technique had, after all, worked in Guatemala, Iran, and who knows how many other places. On the other hand, there were almost certainly hard-core anti-Kennedy elements (Ted Shackely and Howard Hunt come to mind, but more informed folk will undoubtedly be able to provide the names for members of a real anti-Kennedy faction within Alan Dulles’ CIA) who would have been delighted to create a fiasco to dim JFK’s popularity. Although the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion actually HELPED Kennedy’s popularity, that would surely not have been the desired result for the (hypothetical?) anti-Kennedy faction. Interestingly, this same “problem” comes up repeatedly. One thinks, for example, of the hostage rescue debalce and the October Surprise for Carter. Even Bush the lesser was at war with the “progressive elements” within the CIA (and State and Defense Departments). Similarly, it seems certain that those Republicans whose first goal is to prevent Obama’s re-election must also have a sympathetic hearing within some circles of the intelligence apparatus. Were it not for the cancerous secrecy congenital to the CIA and its ilk, this would be a normal, even healthy, example of the partisan dialectic in a democracy. However, the fact that such internecine backstabbing is blanketed with the cover of “national security” renders it a true peril to the U.S. republic. The pessimists (realists?) will say that there is no hope of excising what is by now a long metastasized cancer in the U.S. body politic, but I still like to hope that things will change for the better in the future. I am not waiting for Obama to lead the charge for reform.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 15 2011 20:58 utc | 15
someone recently claimed Global Research.ca is a Russian sponsored disinfo site. anyone here @ MoA ever hear that? is their validity to the claim?
Posted by: lizard | Aug 15 2011 21:25 utc | 16
What fun! Thanks b. (was that the “white house” upside-down?)
Posted by: beq | Aug 15 2011 23:22 utc | 17
@ Lizard 16
I have no way of knowing if there is Russian influence behind Global Research.ca, but, if so,
I can only welcome an alternative source of disinformation. The best disinformation is purportedly that which is “mostly true”, so having a rich variety of sources of “reliable” disinformation is almost as good as having “honest information”. Even honest researchers can inadvertently subscribe to and propagate
false information, but should be willing to modify opinion in the presence of new data. Unfortunately,
this is much more easily said than done for all of us, but at least the ideal is clear.
Just to toss in an interesting link, the redoubtable Imad Khadduri’s Free Iraq site continues to offer detailed information on corruption in Iraq and the commendable fight against it. One wonders about the exact identities of the non-Iraqi participants in the attempted fraud.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 16 2011 11:31 utc | 18
Lizard,
I don’t know if Global Research.ca is a Russian-sponsored disinformation site or not. But what I do know is that the folks at Global Research.ca aren’t alone in making claims that ALEC is hijacking our domestic policy to the detriment of our workers– similar to the way AIPAC has and continues to hijack our foreign policy to the detriment of our national security. Both PAC groups serve as a conduit for corporate welfare and both act as a drain on our economy. But what’s worse about ALEC, in comparison to AIPAC, is that its primary goal is to put even more downward pressure on American wages, causing even more of our nation’s wealth to transfer to the top of the wage pyramid.
I just wish b and other progressive bloggers would shed more light on these PAC-rat cockroaches before they reduce the bulk of our workforce to slave labor!
Posted by: Cynthia | Aug 16 2011 17:37 utc | 19
omg, those miniatures are amazing “even houses with bad reputation” !! lol
Posted by: annie | Aug 16 2011 23:12 utc | 21
And in competition with the Onion:
S&P Downgrades Planet Earth, Citing Unbalanced Carbon Budget, Reckless Political Debates and Role of “Deniers”
“In a way, we’re glad that SETI is getting involved,” he said. “They should start the hunt for terrestrial intelligence, too.”
Markets Party on News
Responding to the downgrade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average clocked its best day ever, soaring 1,000 points to 12,200.
Some male residents of Earth, dressed in suits, were observed performing chest bumps on the floor of the New York Stock Exhange.
China, meanwhile, announced billions in new investments in clean energy, and a ramping up of its space program.
Posted by: juannie | Aug 16 2011 23:22 utc | 22
Re: #9.
“Not own. The engineer in me would love to build that.”
There’s some engineer in me, too.
Does the engineer in you have an opinion on 9/11 Truth’s theory that explosives were necessary to bring down WTC1 & 2?
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 18 2011 4:16 utc | 23
Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi has another must-read story on “regulatory capture” at the U.S. SEC. The story was picked up and commented on at Naked Capitalism, but merits being perused from beginning to end.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 18 2011 9:54 utc | 24
Speaking of U.S. monetary crisis, Karl (at the Market Ticker) is full of piss and vinegar this morning and has a righteous rant about America’s economic future. He specifically mentions this section of the Coinage Act of 1792:
Section 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of the fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same out to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.
How can you argue with that?
Peace
Here’s a nice critical analysis of the New Yorker Bin Laden assassination story signalled at Boiling Frogs. Close in spirit to the discussion here at MOA.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 18 2011 16:50 utc | 26
Israel tent protests called off after Eilat attacks
Now you know why the attacks happened. They were Netanyahu’s response to the tent camps. He was panicked by those protests.
And if you don’t think Israel goes in for black operations, you’re a hasbarista.
Posted by: alexno | Aug 18 2011 20:01 utc | 27
alexno
in the long run, there’ll be revenge, but not much justice… which is what the big operators are counting on.
Posted by: lead.and.lag | Aug 19 2011 0:19 utc | 28
There is probably less than meets the eye in this report that Venezuela has displaced Saudi Arabia as #1 in proven reserves, since the “surpassal” comes as a result of reclassification of what had been heretofore labeled “tar” as “heavy crude”. Presumably sophisticated recovery technology is needed to exploit that field, but high oil prices will probably make the recovery economically attractive. Needless to say, this story must be read in tandem with the recent decision of Venezuela to repatriate its gold holdings and dissolve inconvenient bonds with U.S. controlled banks.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 20 2011 15:57 utc | 29
Another Oz soldier was killed in Afghanistan yesterday. Pro-Israel PM, Julia Gillard, soothed our collective regret by trotting out the time-worn trope that he was part of the detail doing the important work of training Afghanis to defend themselves.
We are assailed with this nonsense every time on of ‘our heroic troops’ is killed or injured. It seems to have escaped the notice of closet Zionists/Western politicians that the Afghanis are showing us how to defend Afghanistan but we’re not paying attention.
10 years is a long time to have your ass kicked from one end of the country to the other, by a bunch of shepherds and poppy farmers, and still cling to the delusion that you know something the people who are thrashing you don’t.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 22 2011 16:28 utc | 30
I’d say that these are severe underestimates of civilian deaths:
“Counting the cost of the 9/11” wars http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/22/9-11-wars-war-on-terror
Posted by: felix | Aug 23 2011 8:38 utc | 31
AUTHORITIES IN RUSSIA have arrested a former senior police officer on suspicion of organising the murder of campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
http://www.thejournal.ie/suspected-mastermind-of-anna-politkovskaya-murder-arrested-208686-Aug2011/
Posted by: bokonon | Aug 24 2011 12:31 utc | 32
This interview of Davied Graeber by Phil Pilkington (picked up at Naked Capitalism) is fun to read. Indeed, it makes one want to follow up on the suggested reading implicit in the interview.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 26 2011 15:43 utc | 33